39.

Two Names on the Cover

Orbag, 167

The woman at the front of the class turned the drawing upside down, considered it, and started up the wrong path.

“Stay there a moment,” Runa said.

The woman stopped. The man behind her turned his own sheet over to match. Beyond them, the upper branch of the path entered a gap in the scrub; the lower continued beside the wall, whose uneven top hid most of what lay beyond it. Both paths were perfectly good. Only one went where the class had agreed to go.

Runa moved far enough back to see what the woman could see. She was twenty-eight, an orc field teacher with enough paid mornings behind her to distrust an answer given from the wrong place. Here the drawing offered a small, inviting gate, a clear slope, and a destination standing nicely against the sky. There was no destination in the sky before her. There was a wall at shoulder height and a fork under her feet.

Tarren came back from the turn. Their coat was open, and the sheets they had been handing out were tucked under one arm. Runa had met them that morning at the start of the route, where the organizer had introduced them at considerable length and then said, “And Runa Bengtsson will take the practical work.” Tarren had interrupted to ask which practical work Runa wanted them to help with. She had liked that.

“Where's the gate?” the woman asked them.

Tarren pointed beyond the wall. “Just there. If you imagine the wall lowered, the gate sits under the rise like a tooth missing from a comb.”

The woman peered at the drawing. “The gap?”

“The little square opening.”

“Up there?” She pointed to the scrub.

“No, below. The perspective's doing something rather unkind to us.”

“It isn't doing much for me,” the woman said.

Runa put her own folded instructions away. “Tell Tarren where to stand.”

“Me?”

“From what's on your page. They want to find the gate.”

The woman looked at Tarren with new concern, as though entrusted with something costly that was about to be dropped. Tarren waited. At last she directed them two paces uphill, stopped them, and told them to come back.

“I'd send you through that gap,” she admitted.

“Then I'd be up there looking for a missing tooth,” Tarren said.

They joined Runa at the lower approach. The wall cut off their view too. They crouched a little, straightened, and looked at the sheet.

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Runa said.

“I've drawn it after the decision.”

One of the other learners had gone to look at the top of the wall. Runa called him back before he could climb. She wanted them to get a view they could find again without balancing on someone else's stonework.

“Where does the wall end?” she asked.

The woman pointed along the lower path to a rough upright stone, half hidden by grass.

“Walk to that. Keep the wall beside you until it ends. Then stop.”

This brought the woman around the blunt end of the wall. From there the small gate was visible on the far side of a shallow dip. She looked back with an expression that made Runa smile before she could help it.

“That gate.”

Tarren knelt on the dry edge of the path and took a pencil out. Runa gave them a spare sheet. They drew quickly, keeping the wall large and leaving the distant rise almost empty. The end stone had an awkward bulge low down; their pencil caught that, then the narrowing of the path beside it. They offered the page to the man who had turned his copy over.

He started to turn this one too.

“What are you trying to match?” Runa asked.

“The top of the hill.”

Tarren pointed at the end stone on the drawing. “Start here. This is the one beside the path.”

“I thought that was farther away.”

Tarren took the sheet back and added a small figure at the bottom, facing into the page. The figure stood below the stone, where the learner was standing now. He looked from one to the other.

“Oh. Why doesn't mine have that?”

“I liked the hill better,” Tarren said.

“Do you still?”

Tarren looked up at him. “No.”

Runa laughed, and the man grinned without having to be congratulated for it. He took the amended sheet to the wall's end, stopped at the right place, and pointed out the gate to the person following him. Tarren stayed kneeling long enough to add the same figure to a spare copy.

There was more route after the gate. On the slope beyond it the wind pressed the warm backs of Runa's legs through her trousers, and the class spread out enough for people to stop pretending they all walked at one pace. The woman who had taken the upper path wanted to know how much of a view she ought to recognize before trusting it. Another learner wanted to draw everything, including a pile of cut branches that would almost certainly be gone by their next visit. Tarren gave him two minutes to sketch it for pleasure, then asked what he would use when it had been carried away.

Runa listened while she drank. Tarren did not snatch the pencil or supply the answer. They sat on a flat stone and waited for the learner to look up from his page.

By the time the group reached the return road, Runa had a pebble working its way under her heel and a page of corrections to her instructions. She sat to empty her boot while the organizer paid the two teachers. Her fee went into her own purse. Tarren checked theirs, thanked the organizer, and began helping retrieve the sheets someone had let blow under a bush.

The learners departed in small groups, talking about meals, the wind, and whether the first drawing ought to be kept because it was nicer. Runa told them to keep it. They could write on the back where its view began. The woman from the first turn handed Runa her much-folded copy anyway. She had put the route in her notebook and did not want another loose sheet to lose.

She was crossing out a line when Tarren returned with the last two sheets.

“What are you changing?”

“I told them to find the gate before I told them where to stand.”

“So did I.”

“Yours was more attractive.”

They leaned against the wall beside her, still holding the rescued paper. “Will you put both instructions in?”

“No. I'll make them arrive first.” She tried a shorter sentence. “Then ask them which opening they think I mean.”

Tarren read it over her shoulder. “You don't mind them choosing the wrong one?”

“I mind them following it while I explain something else.”

The road had emptied. Their organizer had gone. Tarren's interest could no longer be mistaken for the performance owed to a class, and Runa found she wanted to go on answering it. She also wanted to take her boots off for longer than it took to remove a stone.

“I'm going to eat,” she said. “Come with me.”

“Is that the next instruction?”

“It's an invitation. You can fail it without getting lost.”

“I won't risk that.”

*   *   *

The place Runa chose had one table too near the door, one under a hanging bundle of drying herbs that shed into anything placed beneath it, and a third beside the warm wall. Tarren went toward the herbs. Runa caught their sleeve and steered them to the third.

“I like those,” they said.

“You can see them from here.”

“You're very decisive.”

“I ate a piece of string here last week.”

Tarren inspected the bundle from their safer seat. Runa stretched her legs under the table and let the heat settle into her tired calves. A woman brought them bowls, bread and a little dish of something red. Runa tasted it before putting any on her food. It was sharply sour, then hot enough to make her stop.

Tarren took a larger spoonful.

She watched them swallow.

“How is it?”

“Very good.”

“Yes.”

“I may need some of your bread.”

She pushed the loaf between them. After a while they could both speak again.

Tarren wanted to keep the woman's first route sheet, with its folds at odds with the drawing. Runa had it in her bag. She spread it on the table, weighted the corners with two spoons, and showed them where the learner's finger had worn a faint dirty oval into the paper.

“There. She kept returning to that shape.”

“Because it looked like the gap she could see.”

“And because you drew it so beautifully. She thought it must matter.”

Tarren turned the sheet toward them. “It did matter. To me.”

Runa went on eating while they looked. She had expected a defense of the drawing, and was pleased not to have to argue with one. The food was good under the relish: soft beans, a little onion, a crust at the edge of the bowl that she saved until the end.

“I could put an inset here,” Tarren said. “The place you're standing before the turn.”

“You could.”

They took a pencil out.

“You could also eat while it's hot.”

The pencil went back. “Do you dislike talking about work over dinner?”

“No. I dislike doing all the eating.”

That made them laugh. They tore the bread and asked where she was teaching next. She told them about a short course on keeping route notes that another person could use. Most of her students did not want to become explorers. They wanted to find the same place twice, or explain to a workmate where a job was. One woman had brought three sets of directions to three different entrances of the same yard and wanted to know why all of them were considered her mistake.

“Were they?”

“She'd written the second set. So one was.”

Tarren asked what the woman had changed. Runa found herself describing the class at length, including a disagreement over whether a sign could be trusted after the business behind it had moved. Tarren had an opinion about signs made to be admired from too far away. Runa had an opinion about instructions which began with the word simply. Neither had to yield much ground to the other.

When their bowls were empty, Tarren tried pouring from the water jug. The lip sent a neat stream onto the table beside Runa's cup.

“Here,” she said, and moved the cup.

The stream followed it.

Tarren stopped pouring. Runa moved the cup back. They tried again, very slowly, and the water reached its proper destination only because Runa held the cup against the jug.

“You have to meet it,” Tarren said.

“I didn't come out to court a jug.”

They put it down with exaggerated care, and this time Runa laughed hard enough that the woman carrying empty bowls glanced over. Tarren looked pleased, then tried to conceal it by straightening the abandoned route sheet. That pleased Runa still more.

They stayed after the food was gone. Runa asked about the picture Tarren had been working on before the course, and they described an ordinary path they could not yet make look ordinary. Every time they omitted a detail, the path acquired an importance it did not possess. Runa suggested drawing the place beside it.

“That's a different picture.”

“You said the first one wasn't working.”

“I see why your students pay.”

“They get to leave at the end.”

“So could I.”

Tarren had said it lightly, but they were watching her now. Runa let the answer wait while she gathered the spoons off the sheet. She wanted the walk after this. She wanted to find out whether the attention would feel different when they were standing close and had nothing to examine between them.

“Could you?” she asked.

“Yes.” They put their hand beside hers on the table. “I don't want to yet.”

They paid for their own meals before going out. The evening had cooled the streets. They walked toward Runa's rooms, Tarren carrying the folded drawing because she had nearly left it under her bowl. At the turn where their routes divided, she stopped.

“I liked working with you,” she said.

“So did I.”

“That isn't all I meant by dinner.”

Tarren's smile changed before they answered. “I was hoping it wasn't.”

Runa stepped closer and put a hand against their coat. They lifted their free hand to her cheek. She could still have said something clever; she was glad she did not. She kissed them, felt the answering pressure of their mouth, then the edge of the folded drawing against her wrist. Tarren lowered it to their side. Her hand closed on their coat, and she kissed them again, more slowly.

When Runa drew back she had one of their coat buttons caught under her palm.

“I'm busy tomorrow,” she said.

They laughed softly. “I wasn't about to take attendance.”

“I mean the day after. Are you free?”

They were free in the evening. She named a time and her address. Tarren repeated both, then told her how to reach the hill home they shared with their cousin Eren, in case her work ran late and she needed to send word.

Runa kissed them once more before letting go. They set off toward the hill. She watched until they looked back, raised the drawing in an absurd little salute, and nearly missed the turn.

At home she put tomorrow's teaching notes where she would see them in the morning, then took her boots off and sat on the edge of the bed. There was still a place on her cheek that seemed warmer than the rest of her. She rubbed it with the back of her fingers and smiled.

170

The view Tarren had promised her was entirely white.

Runa stood beside them on the path and looked into it. Somewhere beyond the low cloud there was supposed to be a long fold in the land, with a road entering it at one end and coming out, unexpectedly, halfway up the other side. She had brought them by a route with a turn she thought they would like. They had brought her here for the great view after it. They had managed the turn, which was now behind them. The wet stones underfoot were clear enough; beyond the next shoulder of the path, the land disappeared.

“I believe you,” she said.

“It was here.”

“I believe that too.”

Moisture had gathered in little beads along the edge of Tarren's drawing case. They wiped it with their sleeve, which was hardly drier. Runa had a wet place at each knee where she had pushed through the grass. The weather had come down gently enough that they had kept believing it would lift.

“We could wait,” Tarren said.

“We could eat while we wait.”

“I thought you wanted to see the next bend.”

“I do. I don't need to see it hungry.”

There was shelter under a shallow overhang a short way back. Before returning to it, Runa went to look at the low rock shelf beside the path. The top was rough and almost level. From the path, the curve ahead disappeared behind a shoulder of stone. One step higher might show whether it continued around the shoulder or doubled back. She pressed a boot onto the shelf, testing the purchase, then tied the lower corners of her coat together to keep them clear of the wet rock.

“Don't go past where you can see,” Tarren said.

“I'm going up one foot.”

“A very ambitious foot.”

She planted the boot, left the other on the path, and raised its heel. The little gain in height showed a pale strip of gravel beyond the shoulder. It bent inward. She lowered herself, looked again from the path, and lost the strip completely.

“Come here.”

Tarren found the same stance. Runa watched them look, then take the foot down and put it back.

“I'd have drawn the shoulder,” they said.

“I know. It's a good shoulder.”

“With a little line for the path.”

“Which little line?”

They reached for the case.

“After food,” she said.

“Stand there once more. I'll be quick.”

Runa took the step again. Tarren made a rough outline of her with the coat tied high, the planted boot and the other heel lifted, then put in the near edge of the shelf. She began to feel the hold in her calf.

“Your quick is getting longer.”

“You can come down.”

“I was going to.”

The sketch made her look determined to inspect a very small and disappointing piece of world. It was accurate enough that she protested. Tarren showed her the narrow shape visible past the stone, and she put a finger beside it.

“Keep that. Otherwise no one will know why I'm doing it.”

Under the overhang they discovered that the soft cheese had escaped its wrapping. Tarren had put it beside the bread, which would have been sensible if they had wanted cheese pressed into every available surface. Runa had brought crisp cakes in the bottom of her bag under a flask. The cakes were no longer cakes.

For a while they ate crumbs with the backs of their fingers and blamed one another's packing. Tarren found a piece of bread with an intact crust and held it up for inspection. Runa took a bite before it could be divided.

“That was the best piece.”

She chewed, nodded, and handed back what remained.

Tarren considered it. “I was going to give you half.”

“You still can.”

They sat close because the dry part of the ground was narrow, then closer because Runa wanted to. Tarren put the drawing case across their knees, and she leaned against their shoulder while they ate. The cloud moved slowly past the mouth of the shelter. Every now and then a darker patch appeared in it, enough to make them both lift their heads; each time it closed again. Runa was content to watch. She had arranged this day free of students and was unwilling to fill it with their imagined questions from morning to night.

Tarren took the flask, drank, and passed it back. “Would you put the two views together?”

“Which two?”

“Where you begin. What you can see from the step.”

Runa held the flask between her palms. “With the action between them.”

“A person stepping?”

“That too. But I'd say what they're trying to find before they do it.”

They spread the sketch on the case. Runa wanted the starting view large enough to recognize, with the shelf's broken near edge visible. Tarren wanted the small glimpse beyond the shoulder enlarged, so that a reader would know which pale streak mattered. There was room for both if they stopped trying to fit everything around a grand view from farther up the route.

“We have quite a lot of these,” Tarren said.

“Separate drawings.”

“And your exercises.”

“Separate exercises.”

Tarren used a second sheet for the view from the path, before the step. They laid it beside the sketch of Runa on the shelf. She borrowed the pencil and wrote three short instructions beneath the sketch. The second was too long. She crossed it out, wrote it again, then added a warning in the margin.

Tarren tapped the margin. “If they can't see the gravel?”

“They stay where they know they are.”

“We need a picture for that.”

“We need to leave them some room to do nothing.”

Tarren moved the sheets apart. “There.”

She bumped their shoulder with hers. But the space helped. By the time they packed away the food, they had a page that could be followed and two arguments saved for a table. They went back the way they had come. The view never arrived, and neither of them proposed waiting longer.

At Runa's home she changed out of the damp clothes and put water on while Tarren laid the drawings where the table was dry. Her teaching accounts occupied one end. A stack of pages for a small paid commission occupied the other. Tarren asked before moving either, and she made room herself, leaving tomorrow's work together.

Tarren had brought a drawing of the distant view from their earlier visit. Once they added it to the sheets, the first sample chapter was too beautiful. It drew the eye away from the ugly useful stone at the reader's feet. Runa put a clean cloth over the view.

“Now tell me what you lose.”

“The reason to go.”

She lifted the cloth. They both looked.

“It can go at the end,” she said.

Tarren tried it there, then shook their head. “On this page it's promising you can see it from the step. You can't.”

They took it away. Runa felt a little pang at the empty place. She had enjoyed that drawing from the first line. Tarren set it on the mantel where they could still look at it.

Her long warning was harder to surrender. It accounted for poor light, cloud, branches, and the possibility that someone would see something similar and proceed without checking the near edge. Tarren read it aloud, stopped in the middle, and asked her what they were supposed to be looking at while they read the rest.

“The edge of the shelf.”

“Then put this here.” They laid a finger on the one sentence that distinguished the near edge from the stone behind it. “And the cloud goes beside the view it hides.”

“The branches?”

“With the cloud.”

“Very hospitable of it.”

She cut the warning apart. With each useful bit beside the thing it concerned, half the introduction became unnecessary. She kept it on a spare sheet for a while before crossing it out.

Tarren wanted to discard the close drawing of the near edge because it was dull and took up space. Runa covered it and asked them to place a finger where the reader ought to stand. Their finger landed beyond the little notch that made the position recoverable. They put the drawing back without argument.

Later, Runa crossed out the short comparison between a glimpse and a whole view.

“Leave that,” Tarren said.

“Everyone knows they're different.”

“You've told me to find the gravel. I've found it. Can I go on?”

“No. You can see one bit of path. You can't tell where it goes beyond that.”

She looked at the lines she had crossed out, then put them back.

The water cooled while they worked. Runa reheated it and made a late meal from what she had in the kitchen. Tarren set the table with the drawings still spread across one end, then moved them when she put down the hot dish. They ate with their knees touching. Runa was tired enough to feel the weight of each movement and interested enough to keep forgetting it. Twice she began another argument about the page. The second time Tarren kissed the place just above her wrist and she lost the sentence.

“I did have a point,” she said.

“Write it down.”

She found a scrap of paper, wrote three words, and set the pencil down deliberately.

“It can wait.”

Their night together began with the practical difficulty of getting all the paper off the bed, where Tarren had put it to clear the table. After that there was time to be slow, and to laugh, and to stop speaking. Runa woke once in the dark with their arm across her and drew it closer. In the morning she wanted to stay exactly where she was until the light changed, but she had a class. Tarren had work waiting at the hill.

They ate standing at the table. Runa read the three words she had saved, could not recover the argument, and accused Tarren of destroying useful thought. They took her hand, kissed it again, and left her with a worse chance of remembering.

The sample chapter went to a publisher after they had tried it with people who had never walked the route. More pages followed. Runa kept teaching and writing other work; Tarren kept their separate commissions. The book grew in visits, wet outings, corrections carried between two addresses, and hours each spent alone making something the other would need. They were paid as it progressed. When one of them was busy, the other had to wait. Sometimes Runa minded, and sometimes she was glad of an evening in which no one wanted to discuss a stone.

177

The first bound copy opened at the shelf.

Runa held it in the publisher's workroom with one hand under each cover. The page lay flatter than she had expected. The little figure stood exactly where she had stood, one heel lifted, the coat drawn up in its ridiculous knot. The close view of the stone had survived printing without losing the notch. Beside it was her instruction, clear enough to read outdoors without bending close.

She turned to the next exercise, then back. She was thirty-eight, and this was not the first work she had been paid to write. It was the first book whose whole weight she could hold and remember making in so many separate places. She ran her thumb along the edge of the pages.

“The binding's good,” she said.

The publisher looked up from the bundle being opened on the workbench. “It had to be. People will bend it backward.”

“I already have.”

“Not that one, please. I want a few untested copies for the sellers.”

Runa chose another from the stack to take home. Turning it over, she saw the cover again. Tarren's name occupied the broad space below the title. Her own appeared in a smaller line, after with field exercises by. She had corrected the title page, where both names were set together; the cover design had come later with the selling materials, which she was seeing now.

She put the two copies side by side, one open at the title page and the other shut.

“Why are we different here?”

The publisher followed her finger. “That is what the shops have asked for. They need to be able to show Tarren's name.”

“They can show it. Why is mine an addition?”

“Because people ask for Tarren. The first letters I had were about the illustrations.”

Runa looked at the sales circular on the bench. It offered readers a way to accompany Tarren through the regional landscape, with practical material for use in the field. The example printed beneath it was her exercise about choosing a recoverable starting place. No one was accompanying Tarren in that exercise. A reader was learning to return to a place without either author there.

“This calls my method practical material.”

“It is practical material.”

“It's the thing the book teaches.”

The publisher put down the string from the opened bundle. “I'm not saying it isn't good. We need people to pick it up before they can discover that.”

Runa read the circular again. She could see the offer it made. She could also see why it would be easier to argue about a future cover than stop the present workroom and ask for a change to all this paper.

“I want to discuss the next printing,” she said. “And this notice.”

They agreed to meet in several days, with Tarren present. Runa took her copy and the circular. Outside, she opened the book once more before wrapping it against the damp. The page still pleased her. She resented having to make room for that pleasure beside the rest.

The teaching invitation was waiting at her home. An organizer had read the shelf exercise and wanted a public session built around it. There was a date, a likely number of participants, and a request that Runa arrange for Tarren to attend. The fee was left for discussion. She had held that date free after their first inquiry.

She went to the organizer's office the next morning, bringing the book.

“Yes, exactly that page,” the organizer said when she opened it. “Where you show how to use a partial view. People keep asking us for something they can try.”

“I can teach it. I'll need a short route they haven't already memorized.”

“Good. And Tarren?”

“The teaching method is mine. We can run a joint session if you want both parts, but those are separate bookings.”

The organizer reached for the draft announcement. “Of course. I can change this. Runa Bengtsson, author of the field exercises.”

“Coauthor of the book.”

The words were written down. Runa watched the correction go into the announcement and felt, briefly, foolish for having expected difficulty.

“Will Tarren be available?”

“I haven't asked. You've asked me to teach this.”

“Yes. We may not get enough people if we offer just the lesson.”

Runa put her hand over the open page, keeping it flat. “The lesson is what you've described.”

“It's what I want. I have to fill the places too.”

They discussed the fee, the route, and how many learners Runa could usefully take. The organizer agreed with each of her practical limits, then returned to Tarren's name. By the end there was an accurately worded announcement for an event no one would confirm.

“I can't keep the day open for you after tomorrow,” Runa said.

“I understand. If you can find out whether they'll come, I can give you an answer.”

She closed the book. The organizer offered her the corrected draft to show Tarren. Runa took it, though she disliked the implied errand. On her way home she stopped to answer a different inquiry about a short course. It was for another month. The day she had reserved remained unbooked.

*   *   *

Tarren arrived with a parcel that smelled of roasted onions and a complaint about a picture they could no longer look at. Runa made room for the food, took their coat, and kissed them. She was glad to see them. She had spent half the afternoon composing sentences to them and was already tired of all the versions in which she sounded more composed than she felt.

“Before we eat,” she said, “read this.”

They read the announcement standing at her table.

“I can write to them.”

“What would you say?”

“That it's your session. They should book you.”

“I said that.”

Tarren looked at the page again. “They may listen to me.”

Runa pulled out a chair and sat. She wanted to be fair to the offer. They were probably right, which was part of what made it so unpleasant.

“And the next organizer?”

“I can make it much clearer when I speak about the book.”

“I need the book to make it clear. Look at the cover.”

They had seen the cover. She could tell from the way they picked it up that it had not struck them as something requiring a separate conversation. Their thumb rested beside their large printed name.

“I thought we could change that for the next edition,” they said.

“We have a meeting about a new printing in three days.”

“A printing of the same edition. I meant when we revise it. Once we know how it's doing.”

Runa looked at the onion parcel. Grease was making a dark patch through the paper. She got up to fetch a plate because she could do that without choosing what to say next.

Tarren followed her as far as the kitchen doorway. “I don't want you hidden.”

“I know.”

“Then let me speak to them.”

“About the printing?”

“About the invitation first.”

She put the plate on the table too hard. “I'm not asking you to find me a day's work.”

They stopped with their hand on the back of the other chair.

Runa unwrapped the onions. She had been looking forward to them. It seemed possible to go on being angry while being hungry, but considerably harder to explain herself accurately while preserving the food as a monument to the evening they were supposed to have had.

“Sit down,” she said. “Please. We can eat.”

For a few minutes they did. Tarren gave her the larger piece of bread without comment. Runa took it, then broke some off and put it back on their plate.

“The fee we agreed,” she said at last. “It paid for the work we were making. Now they're selling a visit with you, with my exercises included. They want me to arrange your visits as well. That wasn't the work I agreed to.”

Tarren put down their fork. “Do you want me taken off the cover?”

“No.” She was sharper than she intended. “It's your book too. I like your pictures. I would like people to know what they're buying.”

“So would I.”

“Then we need to change what it says. And what we get paid for. And what they can print again without asking us.”

Tarren leaned back. “The publisher won't thank us for reopening everything now.”

“I don't need thanks.”

“I know. But if the first printing doesn't sell, there won't be another one to argue over.”

Runa opened the book at the shelf. She wanted it in bags and on worktables, marked up by people who used it badly before learning to use it better. A few corrections were already waiting for a later edition. She could put the cover with them. The sheets were printed; someone ought to be out using them.

“If we change the notices now,” she said. “Then the cover when we revise.”

“I can write the new notice tonight.”

She reached for the invitation. It already called her coauthor; nothing was wrong with the wording now. She had still come home without the booking. She laid it between them.

“I won't promote another printing like this,” she said.

Tarren sat forward again.

“I'm not saying you can't,” she continued. “But I won't give them more teaching work under this description. I can write a separate book. I have the classes, I have the instructions, and I know someone who will print a small run. I'd rather do this one with you.”

“I want that.”

“Then decide what you're asking for at the meeting.”

Tarren started to answer and stopped. They drew the circular out from under the book and set it beside the corrected invitation. Runa watched them read the two together. She had an urge to point to every line. She made herself finish eating instead.

“Can I take these?” they asked.

“I need the invitation back.”

“I'll bring it.”

“And look at the agreement. The part about reusing the exercises.”

They nodded, still reading.

After the dishes were done, Tarren returned to the table with the book. Runa worked on her own lesson for the next morning. The silence was awkward in a new way; it made her conscious of movements she usually ignored, the turn of a page, Tarren shifting their chair to get more light. She did not want them to leave on the assumption that she had dismissed them. Nor did she want to supply a kiss that would be mistaken for a conclusion to the argument.

When they put the papers together, she said, “I'm glad you came.”

“So am I.”

At the door Runa put her arms around them, and they held her for a while before setting off for the hill. The publisher's meeting was still three days away.

*   *   *

Tarren was waiting outside the workroom when Runa arrived. They had the book, her invitation, and the agreement folded into a leather case.

“They can lift your exercises into another book under the present wording,” they said.

“Yes.”

“I thought that line meant a selection from this one.”

“So did I when we first discussed it. Then I asked what selection meant.”

Tarren handed back the invitation. “I read all the selling notices I could find. They get worse when they're shortened.”

Runa was glad they had looked. She waited for the rest.

“I'll ask for both names on the cover,” they said. “The contributions described properly. And separate permission to use your work.”

“Our work. You need that too.”

“Yes.”

Inside, the publisher had cleared a place on the bench between bundles of finished books. Runa sat and spread out her accounts, then shifted a stack of books that shaded the figures. Tarren sat beside her. For a moment she felt all the discomfort of the evening at her table rise again: the conspicuous nature of the meeting, the stock already printed, the possibility of being offered something generous enough to make refusal look petty.

The publisher offered a new introduction.

“Tarren can explain how the method developed,” they said. “More prominently than we have it now. I can put a notice of that on the cover.”

“What would the notice say?” Runa asked.

The publisher had thought about it. A celebration of Runa Bengtsson's practical teaching, with some account of how the two authors had worked together.

“And the names?”

“As they are. The shops know this cover.”

Runa opened the book at an exercise and turned it around. “If someone teaches this, whose teaching are they buying?”

“Yours.”

“Then say that where you sell it. Not in a story about how Tarren discovered it.”

The publisher looked toward Tarren. “You could make the introduction very clear.”

“I could,” Tarren said. “I'd still like the cover changed.”

Runa took out the circular and the invitation. She described the booking she had not received, including the organizer's willing correction and the condition that remained. The publisher began to say that a celebrated name brought people through a door. Runa agreed before the sentence was finished.

“Keep using the name. Put mine beside it. Tell them what each of us does.”

“Beside it in the same size?”

“Large enough to read as the other author. Show us a design.”

The publisher drew two lines on a spare cover sheet. Tarren's name went on the first, Runa's full name on the second. The second line was longer. The publisher shortened it to Runa, looked at her, and crossed that out without waiting for an answer.

Tarren turned the sheet across its width. “They can sit together here.”

“That crowds the title.”

“Then give the title less room.”

They tried three arrangements. Runa disliked the first because her name still looked like a subtitle and the second because neither name could be read at a glance. The third put both above the image, with a short description below: field methods and exercises by Runa Bengtsson; route illustrations by Tarren. The publisher wanted the notice about Tarren's work on the back. Runa read it, changed the sentence that made the exercises sound incidental, and handed it back.

The publisher tapped a bundle of books. “I can't unprint these.”

“No,” Runa said. “What can we put around them?”

The answer was a new outer cover for unsold stock. Copies already sent to shops would receive the corrected covers with the replacement circular. The publisher would write to the organizers who had been sent the earlier notice, naming the separate teaching work available from each author. No one claimed that everyone would replace a cover promptly, or forget the first notice. Runa asked when the materials would go out and wrote the date down.

The earnings took longer. She had brought her own account of the work supplied: the exercises, the field testing, the text revisions, the teaching demonstrations used to sell the book. The publisher's account treated much of it as a completed contribution already paid for. Runa wanted the book's continuing earnings to reflect what readers continued to buy.

“I can change your share on the next printing,” the publisher said.

“This one is still being sold,” Runa said. “Most of it is still on your bench.”

“And it has already cost me money.”

They went through the costs. Tarren asked whether the stronger binding really required the extra work listed against it. The publisher brought out the binder's account and showed them where it did. Runa left that figure alone.

Farther down, Tarren put a finger beside an allowance for paper. “Is this separate from the printer's charge?”

The publisher checked. The paper was already included. The allowance had been carried forward from the first estimate.

“That comes out,” Runa said.

It did. The smaller total left more to divide, though not everything she had asked for. She agreed to a lower amount on this printing than on the next, provided the change applied to the whole printing, including the copies already sold. The publisher worked through the altered reckoning, then wrote the two rates into the agreement. Runa read her column again before moving on.

Each author would receive a separate reckoning and payment. Teaching fees would be agreed with the person doing the teaching; a joint appearance would require two bookings, described as such. The publisher could suggest one without assuming the other.

For future use, they worked through the words selection, revision and new edition until none could silently do the work of the others. Runa's text and teaching material would need her agreement for separate reuse. Tarren's images would need theirs. An altered edition presented as their joint book would need both of them to agree, including to the description under which it was sold.

The publisher read the new paragraph twice.

“This means waiting when one of you is away.”

“It means asking before the sheets are printed,” Runa said.

Tarren moved the sample cover away from a wet patch on the bench. “We can give you an address for each of us.”

There was something so ordinary about that answer that Runa nearly laughed. They had always had two addresses. Now both went onto the practical arrangement, where a letter could reach the person whose answer was needed.

By the time they finished, the workroom had grown cold. Someone had opened the outer door to carry a stack of bundles through. Runa read the final copy, asked for one ambiguous sentence to be rewritten, then signed. Tarren signed after her. They each took a copy of the terms and an unbound version of the proposed cover. The publisher kept the marked original to give the printer.

Outside, Runa discovered she was ravenous.

“I owe you an apology,” Tarren said.

She stopped with her hand still on the fastening of her bag.

“I thought being pleased with your work made it obvious whose work it was. I should have looked at what I was asking you to wait through.”

“Yes,” she said.

They waited while she put the papers away. She was glad of that too.

“Thank you for looking,” she said. “And for checking the accounts. I'd have paid for the same paper twice.”

“The paper was very persuasive.”

“It was. Take me to lunch before I buy anything else.”

*   *   *

Later that year, at a different turn on a different route, Runa held up the corrected invitation while the last arrivals found places to stand.

“If you've come for the drawings, Tarren has the drawings,” she said. “If you've come for the field method, you're starting with me. You'll need both before we go.”

A participant near the back had brought the book wrapped in an old piece of cloth. She unwrapped it to show Runa where she had put tabs between the exercises. Runa wanted to ask which ones she used, but the group was ready and the path narrow. She asked the woman to keep the book handy.

The lesson began beside a pile of brush, with a low stone on its pathward side and a taller one beyond it. The brush partly hid both. Runa handed each pair a close drawing of the low stone and asked what they could use to locate themselves before relying on the visible edges. Tarren held up a broad drawing of the slope.

“This one first?” they asked.

“The close view.”

“They'll lose where the brush is in relation to the path.”

“They haven't lost it yet. They're standing beside it.”

The woman with the tabbed book said, “I have. On the page.”

Runa went to stand beside her. Tarren brought the broad drawing down instead of continuing to hold it above the group. From the woman's position the brush hid one end of the nearer stone, making the close view appear to belong to the taller one beyond it. Runa could see the error she had been about to ask everyone to avoid without first giving this learner a way to see it.

“Show us the broad view,” she said.

Tarren put the two sheets side by side. The woman found the nearer stone, then the part hidden by the brush. Runa asked her to point to the corresponding place on the ground. She did, and the rest of the group could use the point she had found.

“Keep the wide sheet up,” Runa told Tarren.

“I was going to enjoy being right for longer.”

“You can enjoy it while you hold it.”

The session moved on. People tried the approach in pairs, one carrying the sheet and the other describing what was actually visible. Tarren helped someone separate a shadow in the drawing from the edge of a stone. Runa worked with a pair who kept giving one another the destination instead of the next action. By the end both were laughing at how far away they could send each other with a perfectly accurate statement.

While Tarren was showing their last learner how much to leave out of a useful sketch, the woman with the tabbed book came to Runa.

“When do you stop offering another view?” she asked. “I've got people who'll keep trying pictures until one seems right.”

Runa knew the temptation. They had spent a whole book making the next picture useful.

“Have them tell you what they still know before they turn the page,” she said. “Where they're standing. What got them there. If they can't recover that, another view may just give them another place to guess.”

The woman looked back along the route. “So I send them back to the last place they can name?”

“If they can return to it safely. Or you stop the exercise where they are. In a lesson, stopping is allowed.”

“I know. I don't think I let them know.”

She opened the book and wrote something beside one of her tabs. Runa waited in case there was another question. There was: the woman wanted to know whether Runa would teach a smaller group she worked with. They discussed the kind of routes involved, and Runa gave her an address for an inquiry.

The organizer paid Runa and Tarren their agreed fees separately before they left. Runa checked hers and put it away. Her legs ached; she had spent part of the afternoon repeatedly walking back to the place from which a learner had begun. Tarren carried the rolled drawings, including the wide view they now claimed had saved the entire day.

“You're carrying it,” Runa said. “You can tell it on the way home.”

*   *   *

There were two revised copies waiting at her table. Runa opened one to the title page, then shut it to look at the cover. Both names remained there. She put her copy beside Tarren's and went to fetch the supper she had left ready to warm.

Tarren had both copies open when she returned. Runa set down the hot dish and took hers. Halfway through an exercise, a sentence instructed the reader to turn around while continuing to face the path.

“We've missed something,” she said.

“Where?”

She pointed and read it again. “I remember that correction.”

“So do I.”

“We made it worse.”

“It's a very attentive reader.”

She looked up.

“They keep the path in mind,” Tarren said. “Spiritually.”

“Show me.”

Tarren stood. Runa pointed to a seam between the floorboards and designated it the path. They faced it, began turning, and stopped with their shoulder in an uncomfortable position.

“You're losing your spiritual attention,” she said.

They turned back, tried the other way, and caught the chair with their knee. Runa laughed. Tarren looked at the chair as though it had introduced a complication absent from the text.

“Perhaps we should cut the whole chapter.”

“Perhaps you should sit down.”

They wrote the correction on a slip and put it inside the cover. Runa checked that the slip would not fall out, then closed both books and carried them to the shelf. Tarren began unfolding another page from their pocket.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

They folded it again. “What now?”

“Supper. Then I want you to kiss me without explaining an illustration.”

“Before supper?”

Runa came back to the table. “You can start.”

The dish on the table was still too hot to eat. Tarren reached for her, and she settled sideways onto their lap, one hand braced on the chair back. They kissed the corner of her mouth first, making her turn toward them for the rest. She did.