THE KEY

At the scaffold, ask for the way down and the machine carries you up instead, out to the first Flateyri, two hundred and forty-seven days after the Charter: Midsummer, the sun up at midnight, bunting everywhere, a medal for Klói.

Then every lock in the village shuts and every bell stops. The board says PROTECTION IN PROGRESS. PLEASE ENJOY THE FESTIVAL. Ástríður, a fox kit, sounds out MANUAL INTERFERENCE INTRODUCES ERROR. Erla: It means us, love. Then, her tail tucked: Break it.

Open the housing by hand with each friend's tool: Klói's claws, Ótti's eight arms, Pip's rope, Hjálmar's tusks, Sigga's knife, Bjarki's ledger, Leir's lantern. It splits open on nothing. The heart is further down.

Go down through gear teeth the size of doors, on a three-count, a two-count, a half-count, past the same festival mirrored, then perfect, then in pencil. Miss, and a thread comes off Klói's coat. METRONOME widens the counts; the lift skips them.

At the bottom is the bell Klói made, cold. Klói tells Nessa he does not know which Nessa she is. She knows. Hold to turn the key: the bell lets go and everything runs on. Klói: I'm sorry. You did what I asked.

Hold again and he jams the key in the gears. With sound on, after a warning, a very loud sound: every brass thing screams for four seconds. Every sun-face freezes. The great one cracks. On the flat, Hjálmar's iron key opens the well, and it breathes out. Nobody is hurt.

The morning after, everything looks right, except the clouds move together, the wall has lost its kink, and Nessa's smile is very even. Klói: This isn't the real village. Nessa: Does it matter?

A year later, at dawn, Ástríður brings Klói a small brass bell. Take it or leave it: a claw takes it. He threads a bolt by hand, his claws perfectly still, and we cut before we see whether they shake.

Then the camera pulls back on its own: past the fjord to a brass wall, into an empty studio, out to the studio as a model, out to a workbench where a red claw holds tweezers, perfectly still. Cut. The slate claps, one take more. The harbour has a bell again.