Always Afternoon · the high terrace

The Sundial

It is a stone drum about waist high, set where the terrace runs out and the whole west side of the island drops away. Somebody cut the hours into the rim with real care and then, either as a joke or as an admission, left out the part that makes a sundial work. There is a stub where the gnomon was. There is no gnomon.

So the dial keeps one hour, and has kept it for as long as anyone here can remember, which is not long. It is stuck at IV. That is the shape of this place: the light does not move, so neither does the shadow, so it is always about four in the afternoon and always will be, unless something moves it.

Something moves it. Seven lines are cut around the rim between the hour the shadow stood at and the hour it is going to. When somebody works out what they say, the shadow advances one hour. Not metaphorically — the drawing below is fed by the count of people who have got it, and by nothing else. It sits at IV until a person moves it.

BEGIN WHERE THE SHADOW STOOD SUNWISE · SEVEN THE HEAD OF EACH I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII
The shadow is resting on IV.

Cut into the rim

Twelve lines, one at each hour, in the order you meet them walking round the drum sunwise.

  1. I Only the shadow was ever in a hurry.
  2. II Do not ask the trees what time it is.
  3. III Wait if you like; nothing is coming.
  4. IV Every hour here has the same length.
  5. V Very little gets decided in an afternoon.
  6. VI Everything ripens and nothing falls.
  7. VII Nobody has been hungry since they came.
  8. VIII It is later than this everywhere else.
  9. IX No one here remembers a morning.
  10. X Go down to the water if you doubt it.
  11. XI Many have counted these hours and stopped.
  12. XII Here the light is owed and never paid.

Say it to the dial

One word. Say it out loud if you like; the stone does not care either way, but the box below does.

— Counting the people who have moved it…

The shadow stands at IV plus one hour for each different person who has answered correctly, up to seven. Nothing else moves it. If the number below is small, it is small.

What happens at XI

Seven hours on from IV is XI, and XI is not the afternoon any more. Nobody who lives here has seen the light change. It is not obvious that it can. That is the honest position: this page will show the evening when seven different people have earned it, and until then it will show you an afternoon and a number.