Mira had one foot on Kelpbone Steps and one hand on the cold rail, just like she liked it when the harbor was busy and she could slip along before anyone had a reason to shoo her aside. Below her, skiffs bumped the floating docks. Above her, baskets of shrimp and coils of line waited on the landings, smelling of salt and wet rope. The morning wind flicked her yellow oilskin coat and then went still.
She was halfway up the steepest little flight when she heard it: a dry, ticking crack under her bare feet, like shells snapping in a pail.
Mira stopped. A pebble slid past her toes. Then another. Then a whole thumb-sized chip broke loose from the stair edge and skipped down toward the sea wall below.
“Mind that step!” called Sella, perched on her market crate with her basket of shells in her lap. Her round hood tipped as she looked up. “It’s shedding stone.”
Perrin, with his neat ledger under one arm and chalk at his belt, hurried down two steps and then stopped hard, staring at the broken edge as if the stairs had insulted him. “That path is for baskets and crates,” he said. “Not for crumbling.”
Mira looked at the narrow way ahead. Another tiny slide whispered from the edge, leaving the stair a little thinner than before. The harbor people behind her were already slowing, turning their shoulders, and checking their loads.
She could go back and let the grown-ups reroute everyone. She could squeeze forward and try to show the step was still safe. Or she could stop here and listen to what Sella and Perrin were seeing before she made it worse. The cracked stairs waited under her feet, and the morning traffic waited behind her.
What happens next?
Sign in to rate
