Keep It Where You Keep Coins

Listen, you'll do fine. You take her at the low gate, the one that doesn't latch, and you go quiet from there because the dogs are bored, not mean. Her name is Edda. Say it back. Edda. Good — keep it where you keep coins, somewhere you'd notice it missing. She's xanthochroid, fair as the inside of a pear, so in a crowd you find the lightest head and that's yours, that's her, don't let go of the wrist. At the line they'll want to see the both of you; you cross once, slow, and you let them note the hair, they always note the hair, and then you're over and you don't look back at the crossing because looking back is how people remember you. After that it's seven steps up from the road — count them, I counted them myself — to the blue door, third from the corner, the number you already know, the one I wrote down twice so you'd have it twice. It's all in here, here, in the — you'll be over the line by then and the light comes different on that side, softer, and you'll have the little fair one still by the hand, lighter than you'd think, whose head catches the lamp, and when you reach a door, any door that looks right, you go up the few steps and you knock the way I showed you. Don't worry about the number. They'll be expecting them — the one on the paper, the one with the — they'll know them when they open up, they always know their own. So you knock, and you say you've brought them, and you let go of the wrist, gentle, and you don't wait to be thanked. You'll know it when you see it. Just bring them to any door that's lit, on the far side, where it's light, and leave them where it's warm.