Rain had always spoken in borders. It drew coastlines down the window glass, joined silver rivers at the sill, and left whole countries trembling in the puddles beneath Elian Voss's chair.
He began collecting those countries in the winter of his thirty-ninth year. At first, it was only a way to pass the long wet mornings. He laid sheets of paper beneath the leaking frame and traced the shapes before the stove could dry them. Some resembled islands. Others were no more than a bay, a peninsula, a scattering of lakes.
But on the first Thursday in March, the rain made a map he recognised.
There was the crooked harbour of his childhood. There was the road climbing east through the orchard. And there, marked by a single dark drop, was the house his mother had vanished from twenty-six years before.
Elian stood very still. Outside, Bellwether's roofs shone like black scales. The clock on the mantel counted nine careful seconds before he reached for his coat.
By noon, the rain had washed every road clean except one.