The morning came in gray, as it always did, the fog squatting at the town's edges like a patient animal. Liesl Kfir was already at her bench in The Blacksmith when the first light touched the square, the stopwatch from yesterday's test still sitting where she'd left it. She picked it up, pressed the button once, watched the second hand sweep, and set it down again. Then she went out, walking south toward the old well, her boots leaving dark prints in the dew.

At the well, Noa Hadar was waiting with a clean recorder and a stone the size of a fist. They didn't speak much. Noa set the recorder on the coping, wind-blown and dry, and Liesl took her place at the edge. She dropped the stone. The splash came up, wet and quick. A second later, Liesl said, "There." Noa pressed the stop button and looked at her. "I heard one splash," she said. "You called out about a second after it." Liesl nodded, her jaw tight. "I heard it twice," she said. "Clear as ever." They played the track back on the recorder's tinny speaker. One splash, then Liesl's voice. No second sound. Liesl stared at the small speaker as if it had betrayed her.

Later, at the square, Garrin Zohar found them. He carried a wooden board under one arm and a folded cloth over his shoulder. "I'll set it up here," he said, looking at Liesl. "You'll stand on the other side. No looking. You press when you hear the splash." Liesl watched him prop the board on two crates, making a low screen between her and the well. "This is about my hands, not my ears," she said. "But fine. Blind it is." She turned her back to the screen, facing the empty square. Garrin walked around behind it, and Noa heard him drop a stone. The splash came, dull and distant. Liesl's thumb came down on the stopwatch almost at once. Garrin came around, squinting at the face. "Half a second," he said. "Maybe less. Within normal." Liesl looked at him, then at Noa. "So it's not my hand," she said. Garrin said nothing, running the numbers in his head. Noa looked at the screen, at the well beyond it, and for a moment the fog at the south edge seemed to shift, as if settling into a new shape.

Meanwhile, at the east edge, two children—Eli Segal and a girl from the next farm—came running to the fence line, each holding a seed the size of a fingernail. A bird had dropped them out of the fog, they said, and the seeds were dark, ribbed, unmistakably not from any plant in the town's reference list. Shem Amir the plumber took both seeds and turned them over in his palm, feeling their weight, and then put them in a jar and carried them to Fernando's workshop. Fernando held one up to the window light, turning it slowly. He said nothing for a long time, then set it down and wrote a note in his ledger: "Unidentified. Seventh such this month."

At the mill, Dinah Kedem and Yonah Segal came to blows over a sack of flour—who had left it in the rain, who was supposed to move it. The fight lasted less than a minute. Devorah Zohar and Jesse Nir watched from the doorway, not interrupting, then went back to their own conversation, their voices low and continuous, as if the fight had been a small disturbance in the river's noise.

In the town hall, the dead lay in rows under white sheets—Miriam Harel, only twenty-four, dead of an illness that had kept her asleep for three days; Judith Golan, one hundred and thirteen, her breath simply gone in the night; Perez Eshel, ninety-six; Oren Kedem, one hundred and fifteen; Yael Gilad, ninety-four; Yonah Dagan, ninety-three. Dalia Shalev stood at the door with her notebook, counting them against the birth record. Six babies had come in the night, and six deaths. She wrote the numbers side by side, then drew a line under each column. Across the room, a newborn began to cry—a thin, reedy sound—and then another, as if answering.

In the evening, Liesl sat alone in her shop. The stopwatch was back on the bench, the screen test over, the results hidden in Garrin's notebook somewhere. Noa had gone home with the recording, promising to play it back on better speakers. Liesl turned the stopwatch over in her hand, watching the second hand sweep its small circle. She thought about the splash she'd heard twice—once clear, once softer, a second later—and how no one else heard the second part. She set the watch down and closed the door. The fog pressed against the windows, gray and patient. From the hall, she could hear the faint sound of a baby's voice, rising and falling in sleep, forming words that no one had taught: "The fog is just fog."

She listened. The voice came again, softer, a second later: "The fog is just fog."