A Light with No House

‘One more book and you're carrying your own bag,’ Sami said.

Noor hugged the otter book to her stomach. There was plenty of room. She only had to move the book about space over a little.

‘It's thin.’

‘Easy to say when you don't have to pedal.’

They were both ten. But Sami acted as though he ran an entire delivery company, with Noor as his one troublesome customer. His bike rack was allowed to carry three library books. Four if the fourth was about football. Noor had asked where it said that in the rules. He had told her the rules hadn't been printed yet.

She put the otters on the counter.

Farah passed the book under the scanner. No beep. She tried again, rubbing the barcode with her thumb.

‘It wants to stay here,’ Sami said.

‘Funny, it's spent all afternoon somewhere else.’ Farah blew a speck of dust off the cover. ‘It was with the cookery books. Next to the casseroles.’

Noor studied the otter on the front. It was holding something between its paws that looked like a little stone. She could find out about that on the way. She put the book on top of the other three and zipped up the bag, carefully easing the zip round the corner.

A wooden board stood on a table by the window. A blue stripe ran across it. Two chairs blocked the space in front. Noor wanted a closer look, but Farah switched off the light above the reading table.

‘Tomorrow. Your dad's waiting outside.’

Noor put on her coat. One sleeve was inside out. She pulled it the right way first, then pushed her arm through. Sami was already waiting by the door.

‘Staring won't make me any quicker,’ she said.

He quickly looked somewhere else.

Outside smelt of wet leaves. The library stood beside the bridge, on Noor's side of the water. Her dad, Daan, was waiting with his bike beneath the outside light. A shopping bag hung from his handlebars. He was trying to push down a packet of rice cakes that kept poking out.

‘All sorted?’ he asked.

‘Four,’ Sami said.

‘Books, you mean?’

Noor put her bag on Sami's rear rack. He stretched the elastic straps over it and tugged a handle. The bag stayed put. Noor thought that was a better test than talking about permits.

At the bridge they had to wait behind Daan. A cargo bike was coming the other way. A little boy waved from the box at the front. Sami waved back and nearly forgot to brake. He put a foot down.

Noor got off too. From the bridge she could see across the water without parked bikes getting in the way. Straight ahead lay the opposite bank, with a strip of reeds along it. In summer, ducks had disappeared between them. Now the stalks were brown and crowded close together.

Behind them, Farah turned on the light by the library's side door. For a moment the water under the bridge looked bright, then darker as Noor looked across.

A yellow circle glowed among the reeds.

At first she thought it was a window. But there were no houses that close to the water on the other side. She narrowed her eyes. The circle vanished.

‘What's that?’

Sami looked over her shoulder. ‘What?’

‘There.’

The light came back, a little further along between two stalks. It was low down. No large dark shape beneath it, the sort a boat carrying people would have.

‘Someone fishing,’ Sami said.

Noor waited for a head to appear above the reeds. Nothing. No fishing rod either. Just the light, with a thin yellow patch beneath it that kept breaking into pieces.

‘They'd have to be very small.’

Sami leant his bike more firmly against his leg. ‘A fish with a torch.’

‘Then it's pointing it the wrong way.’

Noor did not lean further over the railing. She moved a step sideways to look past a thick reed plume. The circle had gone, but now something white showed just above the water. She pointed. Sami followed her finger.

‘I can only see a stalk.’

‘It's behind that.’

Her dad had ridden to the end of the bridge. Noor called him. He looked round and wheeled his bike back.

‘There's something with a light on it.’

Daan took the lamp off his handlebars and shone it at the reeds. The nearest stalks gleamed white. Behind them, Noor could see even less.

‘A bit lower,’ she said.

He moved the lamp. The yellow circle appeared again, just outside the white beam. Daan saw it too now.

‘That's not a streetlight.’

‘I knew that.’

‘At least we know the same thing, then.’

He lowered his bike light. There was no path on the other bank that would get them closer without a long walk round first. It was getting dark quickly. And the sauce at home still needed warming up.

‘You'll be able to see better tomorrow,’ he said. ‘In daylight.’

Noor kept watching the gap between the stalks. The light moved left. She could tell because the windmill's sails stuck up above the reeds. First the circle was below the right-hand sail, then nearer the body of the mill.

Something red poked up above the white edge.

‘There! Red!’

Daan looked again, but a broad clump of reeds shifted in front of the light. The stalks kept moving. The yellow circle did not come back.

At home, Noor had her otter book open before Dad put the pans on the table. She looked for a blank corner to draw in, remembering just in time that it was a library book.

‘Paper?’ she asked.

Daan searched his coat pocket. He took out a receipt, smoothed it flat with his hand and turned it over. There was plenty of room on the back.

Noor drew a yellow circle. Below it she made a white edge, shading round it in pencil so it would show. Above it went a red thing. She drew a windmill sail on the left and a little arrow beside the circle.

Dad put the cheese on the table and looked over her shoulder.

‘An egg on toast?’

Noor covered the receipt with her hand. ‘The white bit's far too narrow for bread.’

‘A very thin slice, then.’

‘It's what I saw.’

He pushed her plate towards her and asked her to pass the cheese. Noor did. Before she started eating, she wrote Friday beside the drawing. The pencil nearly poked through the paper.

After dinner she messaged Sami. Back to the bridge tomorrow morning?

His reply came when she already had her toothbrush in her hand. Library first. Your book permit's expired.

Noor put the receipt under her watch on the bedside table. The otter book could go beside it, but not on top. She wanted to be able to see the yellow circle.