By the time the ridge mirrors reached Iva’s window, they had already lit the clinic, the water works and the school. Her sitting room received the sun at nine precisely. Sana knew because she wrote the timetable.
Morren stood in a narrow valley. The sun cleared the ridge but could not reach the town directly during the long winter. A chain of polished mirrors caught it and sent it down, window by window, while the great crescent of the planet hung over the peaks.
The beam warmed a room and fed a tray of plants. It lasted twelve minutes before the mirrors turned to the next address. Families moved their chairs to meet it. Bakers lifted bowls of dough from insulated cupboards.
Iva spent her twelve minutes mending clothes. She set her chair inside the bright rectangle, squinted at seams and complained that the town's needles were getting worse. When Sana visited, her mother sent her home with a repaired cuff or a lecture about buying boots that could be resoled.
Iva died at the first frost. Sana entered the death in the civil register. She cleared the medicine from the cupboard, gave away the sewing machine and shut off the water. But on the separate lighting schedule she left the room marked IN USE.
Every morning, just before nine, Sana unlocked the door. She opened the shutters, sat in the old chair and watched the rectangle of light cross the bare table. After twelve minutes she went back to the mirror station. No one had asked what use the room was being put to.
∗ ∗ ∗
Neri came to the station carrying a flat of seedlings. She taught the younger children at the school and had permanently dirty fingernails from making a garden wherever she was permitted.
“Our lamps will keep them alive,” she said, setting the tray on Sana’s desk. “But the roof room is too cold. I wondered about your mother’s place. The window faces exactly the right way, and the beam is already scheduled.”
Sana looked at the timetable. A new public space would need a caretaker and a different entry in the register. It would also need people to come through the door.
“It’s a sitting room.”
“We could put growing shelves in there. The children would carry the trays up each morning.”
“There are other windows.”
“They’re taken.” Neri waited, giving Sana time to read the addresses. There was no free beam in the morning circuit; every minute was already promised to someone.
“I’ll look at the route,” Sana said.
Neri lifted the tray. A white root had begun to push through its paper cup. “All right. They can manage another week under the lamps.” She left no petition on the desk.
That night Sana went to the house to check whether the latch could hold a shelving unit. She told herself that was the reason. The room smelled faintly of ironed cotton, though no iron had been heated there since autumn.
Her mother disliked company. Sana remembered Iva making a visiting cousin move his elbows off the sewing table, then watching until he put his tea down on a coaster. She could not pretend Iva would have welcomed a classroom.
But Iva also disliked waste. Sana found three jars of mismatched buttons, sorted by size. In one, among the smallest, was a screw from the first ridge mirror Sana had repaired. Iva had saved it because Sana brought it home proudly at sixteen.
∗ ∗ ∗
At the station the next morning Sana read the public-space rules. A room used for instruction could keep an existing light allotment if the owner granted access six mornings a week. The classification was reversible only after another review, and the town had a waiting list.
She would give up her private mornings. She could visit, but she would no longer unlock the door knowing nobody else had been inside since yesterday. She had mistaken that certainty for a way of keeping something.
Sana called Neri and asked how many shelves she needed. Neri said four, then cautiously revised it to three. Sana told her four would fit.
At the allocation office she filed the change. The clerk glanced at the old description, DOMESTIC ROOM IN USE, and the date of Iva’s death. Sana expected a question. The clerk asked one: “You understand the access condition?”
“Yes.”
“You'll need a second key for the school.”
That afternoon Sana moved Iva’s chair into her own kitchen. She wrapped two jars of buttons in a towel and left the third to sort later. She kept the sturdy table, over which the light fell perfectly. When Neri arrived with a carpenter, Sana insisted the shelves not cover the lower window latch. The room needed air.
The carpenter asked if the school should put Iva’s name on the door. Sana thought of her mother refusing a commemorative plaque because it would be one more thing to polish. “South Growing Room,” she said. “That will tell people what it’s for.”
∗ ∗ ∗
On the first morning, four children climbed the stairs carrying trays. Their boots left dark marks on the floor. One said the room was too small; another said there was enough space if everyone stopped turning around at once.
Neri handed Sana a schedule: watering days, lamp checks and a rota for cleaning the glass. Sana pointed out that the beam would begin at nine whether the trays were ready or not. The children moved faster.
At nine the light came through the window. It touched the table and spread across rows of small leaves. A child reached to turn a tray and knocked Iva’s remaining button jar off the shelf. Sana caught it.
“Sorry,” the child said.
“Move the trays first,” Sana told him. “There’s a better place for those jars.” She set it in the drawer and showed him how to angle the rack so the back row received light.
At nine twelve the mirrors turned, and the room fell into its familiar shade. The children switched on the lamps, swept soil from the table and began arguing about whose turn it was to water.
Sana stayed to settle the argument. When she went downstairs, she realized she had missed her twelve minutes alone with Iva. She would miss them again tomorrow. Upstairs, someone called for another watering can, and she went back to find one.