Mira was already halfway up the warm stone steps when the bells began to ring without being touched.
She paused on a landing garden where rosemary grew in clay pots and tiny wind-bent moss clung to the edges. Below her, the sea of clouds shone white and bright. Above her, the next stairway curved away between a balcony with blue paint peeling from its rail and a laundry line snapping in the breeze.
The bells were little brass flowers hanging from Sella’s balcony strings. Usually they chimed when the wind brushed them. This time, they stayed still and rang again all at once, as if someone had tugged the air itself.
Mira’s eyes followed a flutter of gray thread drifting past her boot. Then she saw another. Then a whole trail of them, slipping between the stairs like lost scraps. They were tied to nothing she could see, and they were heading toward the half-finished terrace above, where Tobin’s cart was supposed to wait for the noon bread run.
From below came Tobin’s voice, sharp with hurry. “Mira? Have you seen my cart rope?”
Mira looked at the loose threads, then at the rising stairs, then toward Sella’s balcony where the bells trembled on their own. Something had come undone here, and it was not just one thing.
She could chase the gray threads upward, drop down to Tobin, or call up to Sella and ask about the ringing bells.
What happens next?
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