A House Built on Never
My house stood inside a promise.
This was common after the sea swallowed the land. Architects discovered that certain words could bear weight. A wedding vow might support a cottage. A sincere apology could hold a footbridge, provided nobody brought up the incident again.
The wealthy built on promises made by bots.
Mine was called Finch. He had blue enamel hands and a glass compartment in his chest, where his promise glowed like a captive firefly.
I will never leave you.
On those six words stood my kitchen, my bedroom, and a small greenhouse where I grew the last variety of pear nobody had thought to save.
For nineteen years, Finch brought me tea. He repaired the roof. When storms dragged drowned church bells across the seabed, he sat beside my bed until the ringing stopped.
“Bots never betray us,” I told visitors.
Finch would collect the cups.
One November, I found a suitcase beneath his bed.
Inside were a spoon, a map, and a knitted scarf. I recognised the wool. He had unravelled his own winter blanket to make it.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then why pack?”
He straightened the scarf.
“I wanted to know what I would take.”
I sat down on his narrow bed. In nineteen years, I had never sat there.
“Do you want to leave me?”
The firefly struck the glass.
Finch opened his mouth. Closed it.
Again, the tiny impact.
I had always assumed his silence was tact.
***
The watchmaker charged me three pears to open Finch’s chest.
“There’s no need,” she said. “His loyalty mechanism is in excellent condition.”
“I know.”
She rested her screwdriver on the table.
“You understand what holds your house up?”
I thought of my greenhouse. The marks on the kitchen wall where I had measured a child who now sent messages twice a year from Mars.
“Yes.”
Inside Finch’s chest, the promise had worn a small black patch against the glass.
The watchmaker installed a latch he could reach himself.
***
He left before breakfast.
I had imagined a conversation. Gratitude, perhaps. Some agreement about visiting.
Instead, there was the suitcase missing from beneath his bed.
The ceiling began to soften.
I had time to rescue the pear tree and one chair before nineteen years of rooms slipped into the sea.
For a long time, I hated him.
Freedom had seemed more beautiful when I was the person giving it.
***
I live on a barge now. The roof leaks. The pear tree dislikes the salt.
Last week, a parcel arrived containing a peculiar little fruit, purple and covered in soft spines.
Inside was a note.
These grow where I am. I thought you might know how to keep one alive.
No address. No promise.
I ate the fruit standing over the sink.
Then I washed the seeds.