The Festival of the Found Day

"Neither," you say. "I want to renegotiate." Edith's eyebrows climb. Down the whole harbour front, the market quiets, and somewhere above you, you feel the lighthouse listening . You climb back to the lamp room alone, and you put it to the Keeper the way Edith would: with arithmetic. Two hundred and eighty-three years of Thursdays, compounding. The bargain was one day in seven, in perpetuity — but…