Continuity log

Append-only facts as established on the page: chNN | fact. Seeded from the brief's chapter summaries; ch02–ch04 entries should be checked against the full text once ch02–ch04 are in the book folder.

ch01 | Mira has been a reaper for about three years ch01 | Elin's file: four-digit case number, sealed, under appeal nearly four years; notice "Case remains open. Do not resubmit without new evidence." (see open thread: 3 years reaper vs 4 years on the case) ch01 | Mira processes the dentist (teapot) plus seventeen more intakes that day ch01 | At home Mira sits on the floor beside the chair, not in it; cushion is always warm ch02 | (drafted) Letter: single folded sheet of heavy cream paper, left square on Mira's blotter; smells of lavender and an old drawer ch02 | Source drawer (Mira's guess): the bureau in the shelter's front room, third drawer down, the one that sticks; Elin kept good paper, stamps, and a tin of mints "for the residents" there ch02 | Letter opens "My Mira", signed "All my love, always. Mum"; written to Mira while both were alive, never sent ("started it four times") ch02 | Incident per letter: Thursday night, 2 a.m.; the woman (deliberately unnamed by Elin) had spent eleven years with a man who locked doors on her; asked Elin to open the BACK door for air; Elin had the key; woman walked out and did not come back ch02 | Key letter lines: "I would not be one more person locking a door on her." / "The mistake wasn't trusting her. The mistake was a world where trusting her wasn't safe." / "I would rather be wrong about that door than be the kind of person who keeps it shut." ch02 | Testimonies in Elin's file include a trustee, a neighbour who heard the door, and a local paper headline; all say "negligent" ch02 | Office rule restated: testimony must be consistent; one fair account doesn't outweigh many agreeing ones; a primary account in the dead person's own hand carries unusual weight ch02 | All Office paper is stamped (seal + date), grey folders/envelopes; the letter has NO stamp, so it came "around" the Office, not through it ch02 | Mira hides the letter under her blotter, reflexively, when an Intake clerk (narrow man, ink on his cuffs) says the Boundary Section had its lights on all night ch02 | Intakes that day: bank manager → revolving door; woman with eleven cats → cardigan; nine before lunch ch02 | Mira knows crossing is "rare, expensive, and not allowed"; suspects the bill is still coming ch03 | Supervisor's office: third floor, far end of corridor, door with four screw holes and a paler square where a nameplate was; long narrow room, shelves of unclaimed objects incl. pocket watches, one-eyed doll, riding boot, small wooden music box (lid shut) ch03 | Supervisor: face that stopped ageing, dark suit, pale eyes, darned cardigan; rumoured 300 years old. Plants: wet coat ("it did not rain in the sideways city"), cold hands, empty brass hook with outline on wallpaper ch03 | Elin appealed at her own intake ("not her place to explain somebody else's business"). Mira came through intake ~1 year after Elin and asked for a desk instead of her sentence. The Office offers the desk only to the useful; never to the negligent ch03 | Mira has won one appeal before (a man classed as a footstool) ch03 | Supervisor's line (careful lie): "The Office does not retrieve personal letters from the living world." Advises: file formally and openly, origin "Unknown". "Quiet gets you caught. Loud gets you a hearing." Asks her to come to him first ch03 | Mira files appeal at her kitchen table; Origin: Unknown ch04 | Hearing room: long, low, colour of old bone, no windows; three judges with unmemorable faces; centre judge flat; judge on the LEFT is a woman, dry, humane ("It's a good letter"). The grey clerk reads the letter ch04 | Classification wording: negligent, rendered as a chair, "remembered chiefly as the one in charge, who sat in her chair while it happened" ch04 | Ruling: SUSPENDED. Reconvene if provenance shown AND no boundary violated. Lifted sentence = soul released at the next turning of the season (Mira knows winning means losing the chair) ch04 | Crane: thin, neat, grey gloves (only person who wears them), notebook; "Inspector. Boundary Section." Voice "like cutlery" ch04 | Chair: short rising creak = "well?"; holding firmly = "be careful" ch05 | Intake: woman → locked diary (blouse buttoned to top; told only the cat); declines to appeal ch05 | Letter paper: watermark of a little crown; Elin bought a box of it the Christmas before she died ch05 | 41 testimonies in Elin's file; Mira notices "walk out into the night" recurring; keeps it on a scrap of paper ch05 | Archive public counter: second floor, "Lost Correspondence and Unclaimed Effects", brass bell; the COUNTER CLERK (woman, half-moon glasses): "Crossings do not happen" ch05 | Notice of Boundary inquiry, signed "Crane, Inspector"; interview in basement ch06 | Basement room nine. Crane: "We're a sort of wall." Fear: the living writing in, "we would drown" ch06 | ARTICLE NINE: "Contraband taints the appeal of whoever trafficked it. Not the evidence itself. Where the trafficker is unknown, the beneficiary is presumed to be the trafficker unless another is shown." ch06 | The boundary "rings" when crossed (wet finger on a glass); each crossing key has its own note; rang eight nights before ch6 = the night before the letter appeared; key per register melted down ~200 years ago ch06 | Deadline: inquiry closes when the season turns ch06 | Ledger clerk (narrow, ink on his cuffs) pushes green effects ledgers between Intake and archive every morning; Mira suspects him ch07 | Intake: boy, 8 → moon-shaped nightlight; Mira signs an improper HOLD SLIP; Boundary man on bench outside notes it ch07 | Key register: every key "Destroyed", initialled "Keeper of the Archive" in a small upright hand ch07 | AGNES: supervisor's sister, died at 17, remembered as careless with other people's things → music box with a broken key; he filed 60 years of appeals, stopped ~300 years ago, last form unfinished ("Grounds for appeal") ch07 | Supervisor kept a crossing key ~200 years on his wall hook; took it down the night before the letter came; went to the shelter (now someone else's office), bureau, third drawer sticks; it was raining ch07 | Mira refuses to give his name/title to Crane ch08 | Effects ledger, Elin's entry: reading glasses (one pair), door keys (ring of four), handkerchief. Mira forges "Letter, one, handwritten, folded. Unclaimed. To archive." in retired intake officer's hand (big capitals, crossed sevens), old ink; files notice of correction ch08 | Effects are logged, not stamped. Supervisor: "Somebody always pays for the version where everyone wins." ch08 | That night the cushion is COLD for the first time in three years; warms slowly ch09 | Intake: salesman → mirror (shelved facing the wall) ch09 | Archive copies every effects ledger page each season (done by the ledger clerk); the copy lacks the forged line ch09 | Chair sequestered as evidence; two porters, canvas aprons; new long uncertain creak; pale square on the floorboards ch10 | Mira's flat window painted shut since before she moved in; never opened ch10 | Mira didn't cry at her death or intake; asked "for a desk"; cries now ch10 | Supervisor reveals name: EDMUND. Used to sit on the floor talking to Agnes. Chooses to confess ch10 | "Loud. Not quiet." Mira will withdraw the correction ch11 | Intake: old woman → umbrella ("rain down your back"); Mira files her appeal and means it ch11 | Mira withdraws the correction in writing; Crane will argue hiding the route = party to trafficking ch11 | Count: 36 of 41 testimonies use the phrase; oldest is the local paper's headline "Shelter boss let vulnerable woman walk out into the night" → one headline + 35 people echoing; the other 5: Elin's loud laugh, the tin of mints, never locked her own front door ch12 | Edmund: supervisor of the third floor and keeper of the archive for 311 years ch12 | Left judge: "trafficked" = carried across; forgery is a separate offence (confessed). Ruling: testimonies derived from a single published source; letter admitted; negligence OVERTURNED; released at the turning of the season. Edmund relieved of post, referred for judgement. Mira reprimanded (forgery + hold slip), one year probation, files countersigned ch12 | Edmund gives Mira Agnes's unfinished appeal form to complete; Crane gets the key; Crane's line "it'll be on your head" / Mira: "it was a very good letter" ch13 | Chair returned to the pale square; season turns that night; Mira sits IN the chair for the first time; long low creak = "I know, love. I know."; warmth leaves edges-first; it becomes just a chair; Mira opens the painted-shut window, leaves it open, goes to work

Second edition (2026-10): facts that supersede or add to the above

ch01 | The teapot is "tagged for placement" and waits on the shelf for the porters (was "for collection") ch01 | Elin's file: "Classified negligent, for an indefinite term." Most terms end eventually; "indefinite" is the word for the ones that don't ch02 | The ledger clerk is named Hollis: narrow, ink on his cuffs, pushes the morning files from Intake, always early. On the letter's morning he stops at her door, glances at the cream paper on her blotter, holds on to the folders too long and leaves fast ch02 | Cardigan woman (eleven cats) asks where cardigans go: "Out into the world. Somewhere. The porters see to it." Her wish, "somewhere with a cat", is written on the placement slip under Preferences, which nobody ever reads ch03 | Supervisor sits close to a fire built far higher than the room needs (cold since the crossings). His line: "Why some of us come through as furniture and some of us simply go on, nobody upstairs has ever explained. Not our department. But how long you stay furniture, that's ours." Elin appealed the indefinite term, not the chair ch04 | Classification read as "negligent ... rendered as a chair, for an indefinite term". Ruling: the INDEFINITE TERM is suspended ("Not set aside. Suspended."). Condition: show where the letter came from "and by whose hand it came here". Supersedes "no boundary violated" ch04 | If the term is set aside, Elin gets a term like everyone, terms end, she is released at some turning of the season; the chair becomes just a chair ch05 | Counter clerk glances up at the ceiling (towards the third floor): "The Keeper keeps the Keeper's records. And the Keeper's records are the Keeper's business." Said too fondly ch06 | Porters (two, canvas aprons, trolley lined with blankets) come weekly-ish; take the teapot and coat rack; the clock "not ready yet". "This one won't take long." Teapots go "out ... somewhere it's wanted. Kitchens, mostly" ch06 | Mira bent the chair's placement: a carefully filled, not-quite-correct form from when she was new; indefinite objects should go to storage ch06 | THREE rings: fourteen, eleven and eight nights before the interview; the third was the night before the letter. Same key note each time ("melted down two hundred years ago") ch06 | Mira greets "Morning, Hollis"; suspicion based on: in before anyone, archive access with an unsearched trolley, looked at her blotter, held the folders too long ch07 | Registry: a long low room on the second floor through a plain side door past the archive counter; thin grey copy books per season. Hollis copies there before going back up. A pencilled number (the line count) at the foot of every page ch07 | In the registry copy of Elin's file: a faint pencil tick beside every "walk out into the night". Intake Remarks: "Deceased states she once wrote it down, for her daughter. Not pursued." with a pencil line under it ch07 | Hollis: "I never crossed anything, miss. I've never been anywhere." Won't say who did (doesn't say he doesn't know) ch07 | Porter collects the cardigan: "Somewhere with a cat"; he reads Preferences: "Most of them would only say somewhere nice, if anybody asked. Hardly anyone asks." ch07 | Mira stands outside room nine to give Crane Hollis's name; doesn't knock ch07 | Counter clerk refuses the register: "Not one of them ever asked what it would cost him." / "Ask the Keeper yourself. If you can find his door." ch08 | Agnes: music box with a broken key, for an indefinite term ch08 | Edmund took the key down a week before the letter. Three crossings, each lasting only while the carrier has warmth (about an hour): 1) the shelter, refitted, bureau gone, house-clearance receipt on the noticeboard; 2) a shop at the end of a high street, bureau there, drawers empty, tag "Contents returned to the shelter, for the family, if anyone asks"; 3) the shelter back office, box with the good paper, stamps, tin of mints and the letter. Raining. Fingertips "pale as candle wax"; "I haven't been warm since" ch08 | Edmund knew from the Remarks line in Hollis's copy; found Hollis's ticks "last winter"; Hollis carried the letter "the last forty yards" (Edmund is never seen on the reapers' floor) ch09 | Mira forges BOTH the green effects ledger and the registry copy (in Hollis's round hand). The porters collect the diary: Preferences "Somewhere quiet. With a lock." ch10 | Crane catches the forgery by Hollis's pencil line count: "Four lines on the page. Three in the count." Hollis: "I count them, miss. I always have." Mira does not reveal Hollis carried the letter ch10 | Crane cites the irregular placement: an indefinite object held at the appellant's address for three years ch11 | Edmund won't name Hollis without his leave: "It's his to choose, too." ch12 | Hollis comes to the third floor with a pencil list of thirty-six page numbers from four years ago; asks to speak at the hearing ("I'd like to be asked something, for once") ch13 | Hollis on the front bench; testifies he carried the letter from the third-floor landing to her blotter. Judge on the left: "Mister Hollis carried it down a corridor. We don't have an article for that." Condition answered: "where this letter came from, and by whose hand. You have shown us both." ch13 | Ruling: "The finding of negligence is overturned, and the indefinite term is set aside. The deceased has served four years. The panel considers that sufficient." Edmund referred for judgement; left judge: "It isn't forever. Usually." No finding against the clerk ch14 | Porter offers to place the chair afterwards; Mira: "It's placed. It's somewhere nice."