## Chapter 497 — A Place in the Book

The Lifegiver had the London book open beside her on the low stone by the stream. She had been through it often enough now that several pages fell open more readily than the rest, but one had held her attention since breakfast. She had marked it with a narrow scrap of paper and then spent most of the morning doing other things while repeatedly looking back at it.

Her garden offered no particular objection. Water moved through the channels, insects worked among the flowers, and somewhere behind her a bird had been attempting the same short phrase for long enough to become irritating. The cookbook and romance novel remained inside. This time neither food nor Ian’s fictional competitors had anything to do with what she wanted.

She picked up one of the leaf-shaped missives he had left her and rested it on her knee. The first version of the message became too long before she reached the second sentence, so she crossed most of it out and began again beneath it.

*I want to go back to London. I have chosen somewhere I want to start. I would like to do most of it without you this time, but I need several practical things first. Come when you have time.*

She read it twice, considered adding something friendlier, and decided that asking him to come was sufficiently friendly. Then she signed the missive and sent it, leaving the London book open beside her while she waited.

Ian appeared a little way from her. His face lit up as their eyes met, and he waved.

The Lifegiver looked up at the movement and her expression changed at once. The pleasure was unguarded enough that she seemed briefly surprised by it herself before she smiled and lifted a hand in answer.

“I’m glad you came.”

She shifted along the low stone, leaving room beside the open book, then tapped the marked page with one finger. “Do you want to see where I chose?”

Ian walked over and gave her a hug. “Yes, please.”

The Lifegiver rose into the hug and put both arms around him. She held on for a moment longer than a casual greeting required, then let him go without making anything of it and turned back to the book.

The marked page showed a roofless church caught between newer buildings, its old stone walls still standing around a public garden. Trees and climbing greenery filled spaces where windows had once been, and benches sat among the ruins. The heading named it **St Dunstan in the East**.

“This one.” She touched the photograph. “It was damaged, rebuilt, damaged again, and eventually they made a garden inside what remained. I want to see what people chose to keep.” Her finger moved to the small map on the page. “And I want to find it myself rather than have you put me at the gate.”

She looked up at him. “I think I need money, somewhere sensible to begin, and a way home that doesn’t require you to come and collect me. Can we do that?”

“Yes, we can. I’d be happy to help.” Ian smiled at her. He gave her some cash and a prepaid debit card with some more money on it. “Some places don’t accept paper or coin any more.” He explained how the card worked and told her the PIN. “I can let you return to your realm at will. Please try not to do it in front of anyone. Ready?”

The Lifegiver listened closely, turning the prepaid card over between her fingers while Ian explained it. The idea that a small piece of plastic could represent money without carrying any of the money itself interested her more than the cash had. She repeated the PIN once under her breath, then stopped herself from doing it again.

“And if I forget it, I do not keep guessing until the machine becomes angry with me.”

She tucked the card into the small purse she had bought on the previous visit, separate from the notes and coins. At his warning about returning, she nodded more seriously. “Somewhere private first. I remember.”

When Ian asked if she was ready, she closed the London book and stood with it under one arm. Her dark-green dress was one of the outfits she had chosen for herself in London, paired this time with the white trainers she had liked so much. The pale flower was gone from her hair now; whatever remained of it stayed in the garden.

“Yes.” She smiled at him, excitement beginning to show beneath the composure. “Somewhere I can work out where I am before I start getting lost.”

Ian took a brief look at her, maybe a second or two too long, smiled, and then she was gone.

The Lifegiver caught the extra second in Ian’s look. Her smile deepened just before the garden disappeared. London replaced it with stone, traffic and the layered noise of people going somewhere. Ian had left her on a side street rather than in the middle of a crowd, with the busier road visible beyond the end of it and enough space to stand still without obstructing anyone. She remained there for a moment, feeling the abrupt absence of her garden and the equally abrupt fact that there was no Ian beside her to explain what she was looking at. That was what she had asked for.

She opened the London book and found the marked page. The little printed map made considerably more sense now that she understood street signs, although it still reduced a complicated city to a handful of lines with unreasonable confidence. She found the nearest street name on a wall, found it again on the map, and turned the book until both agreed about which way she ought to be facing. A man in office clothes passed her without interest. Two tourists stopped farther along to argue quietly over a phone. Nobody looked at her as though she belonged anywhere unusual.

The Lifegiver glanced once in the direction Ian had vanished from her life for the afternoon, though there was nothing there to see. “He was looking at me,” she murmured, pleased despite herself. Then she tucked the book against her side and started towards St Dunstan in the East.

The book got her most of the way there, but London made the last part unnecessarily difficult. A street which appeared obvious on the little printed map divided around a building without warning, and another changed name between one junction and the next. The Lifegiver stopped beneath a street sign, turned the book ninety degrees, decided that made matters worse and turned it back. She had no intention of asking Ian. There were several million other people available if the situation became desperate.

It did not. A narrow lane opened where the map promised one should exist, and beyond it she recognised the broken arches from the photograph. She slowed before entering.

The place was smaller than the book had made it feel. Old stone walls enclosed patches of green without completing a building; window openings framed newer offices and pieces of sky, while climbing plants softened edges that had never been repaired. Benches stood among the planting. A few people had come deliberately, judging by the phones already raised towards the ruins, while others simply sat with drinks or bags beside them.

The Lifegiver walked the perimeter first. She wanted to understand the shape before sitting inside it. Parts of the old church had survived strongly enough to make the missing roof and walls obvious, which pleased her more than a complete ruin swallowed by vegetation would have. Someone had chosen what to remove, what to stabilise and what to let plants occupy. It was neither restoration nor abandonment.

She stopped beneath one empty window and looked through it at a modern building beyond. “If someone had asked me,” she murmured, “I would probably have made a terrible decision here.” Rebuilding everything would have been tempting. So would encouraging the green until the stone vanished beneath it. A climbing stem had found a crack beside her hand, and she spent the next minute deciding whether it was using the wall intelligently or merely opportunistically. The plant was winning either way.

When she finally sat, she opened the book to the marked page and compared its photograph with the view in front of her. The photographer had clearly waited for different light and considerably fewer people. She approved of the dishonesty less than she expected.

“Excuse me?”

A young woman stood a few steps away with a phone in one hand and a man beside her. “Would you mind taking a photo of us?”

The Lifegiver looked behind herself before realising the question was addressed to her. “Yes,” she said, then reconsidered the phone. “But you may need to show me which part I press.”

Neither of them seemed to find that especially strange. The woman unlocked it, opened the camera and pointed out the button on the screen before handing it over. The Lifegiver held the device carefully. Ian had shown her moving images and she had watched people use phones throughout her first visit, but holding somebody else’s expensive object made experimentation less appealing. She raised it, saw the couple framed against stone and greenery, and pressed the indicated circle.

Nothing obvious happened beyond a tiny movement on the screen. “Did I do it?” The woman assured her she had. “That seems insufficiently ceremonial,” the Lifegiver said.

The man laughed. “Take a few. One of them might make us look good.”

“That sounds like a dangerous amount of authority.” She took four, changing her position slightly after the second when she noticed an ugly metal bin intruding at the edge of the frame. On the fourth, the woman laughed at something her companion said just before the Lifegiver touched the screen. When she returned the phone, they looked through the results together.

“Oh, that one’s lovely.”

The Lifegiver leaned closer to see which they meant. It was the last, with the woman still laughing. They thanked her and moved away, discussing which picture to keep, and the Lifegiver sat down again with a small, ridiculous amount of satisfaction.

For most of the next hour, nobody needed anything from her at all. She read several pages, watched a pigeon investigate crumbs beneath one of the benches and listened to fragments of conversations which had no reason to include her. Two people discussed an office problem. A child wanted to know why the church had no roof and received an answer involving bombs, rebuilding and a parent admitting uncertainty about the details. An older man slept for perhaps ten minutes with his folded newspaper against his stomach.

When she closed the book, Ian came to mind anyway. She remembered his face immediately before she disappeared from the garden, the extra beat in his attention which he had made no effort to disguise. The memory warmed her more than the mild London air justified. She let herself enjoy it until Lethira arrived in the thought without invitation.

The Lifegiver frowned at an innocent section of wall. She still wanted Ian. She still liked that he wanted her. A small and distinctly ungenerous part of her wished he had kept looking for another several seconds. After a while she stood, brushed a speck of grit from her dress and left the garden.

The little map annoyed her within fifteen minutes. It had been designed to help someone find the places in the book, not to explain every street between them. The Lifegiver reached a larger road, discovered that three streets visible in front of her were represented by one vague line, and stopped outside a shop whose window displayed newspapers, magazines, books and several folded maps.

She went in.

The man behind the counter looked up. “All right?”

“I need a better map.”

He glanced at the London book under her arm. “More detail?”

“Enough that the streets stop surprising me simply by existing.”

That earned a smile. He came around the counter and pulled out two possibilities. One folded into a single broad sheet; the other was a compact street atlas with an index and a grid across every page. The Lifegiver opened the atlas, found the district she was standing in and immediately preferred it.

“This one explains itself.”

“Usually helps.”

She took it to the counter. When he gave the price, she reached automatically for the cash Ian had supplied, then noticed the card reader and changed her mind. “I want to try this.”

The prepaid card went into the machine the way Ian had shown her. The request for the PIN appeared. She entered it with one hand shielding the numbers from the man behind her in the queue, waited through a pause she found unnecessarily suspenseful, and watched the payment approve. Her grin escaped before she could prevent it.

The shopkeeper handed her the receipt. “First time using the card?”

“This card,” she said, which was true enough.

Outside, she put the receipt into her purse and stood against the wall long enough to learn the atlas properly. The index led to a page and grid square. Page edges linked into neighbouring streets. Stations, parks and the river gave her larger anchors. Her London book suddenly looked charming but inadequate. She found St Dunstan on the map, traced her route backwards and discovered one of her earlier turns had been entirely unnecessary.

“That was your fault,” she told the smaller book.

The accusation improved nothing.

Lunch presented itself by smell before she deliberately went looking for it. A small place near the next junction had several people eating at narrow tables outside, and the food being carried through the door involved warm flatbread, grilled meat, vegetables and a sauce whose contents she could not identify from scent alone.

She went inside and read the board. The Lifegiver chose lamb in flatbread with salad and yoghurt sauce because she understood nearly all of the description and wanted to know what the remaining parts did together. Lemonade appeared in the drinks cabinet. She took one without considering alternatives.

At the counter she used the card again. This time the cashier indicated that she could simply hold it against the reader. The payment happened quickly enough to be slightly disappointing.

“That is easier.”

“Dangerously easy,” the cashier said.

The Lifegiver considered the bags she had accumulated on the previous visit. “Yes. I have noticed.”

She ate outside. The flatbread was warm enough to soften around the filling, the lamb heavily seasoned and the sauce cool against it. Halfway through, some escaped down the side onto the paper. Her divine dignity proved unequal to eating it neatly, so she folded the bread more aggressively and solved the problem.

A sparrow appeared near her shoe within minutes of the first dropped crumb. The Lifegiver looked down at it. “You are not subtle.” The sparrow hopped closer. “I know exactly what you are doing.” It continued. She eventually gave it a tiny torn piece of plain bread, then immediately acquired two more sparrows and looked at the gathering with suspicion. “There. Now all of you expect something.” The birds appeared comfortable with the arrangement. She finished the meal without feeding them again.

When she opened the London book afterwards, the narrow scrap marking St Dunstan slipped into her lap. Writing showed on the reverse: the ingredient list she had made after her first visit—tomatoes, garlic, herbs and the particular hard cheese named by one of the pasta recipes. At the time, acquiring them had meant waiting for Ian or asking him to arrange another outing. She had apparently been carrying the answer around all morning.

The Lifegiver looked at the prepaid card. “Oh.” She folded the list once and tucked it into the street atlas instead.

Finding a food shop with the new map was easier, although locating specific ingredients inside it created a different problem. The produce section offered tomatoes in enough shapes, sizes and prices that she initially assumed several must be different fruits translated under one convenient word. They were not. The Lifegiver picked up one packet, read its description and put it down.

A loose display made more sense. She chose by sight, touch and smell without reaching any deeper. Several tomatoes were slightly softer than she wanted; one had a split near the stem. She left those and selected four others. Garlic was simple. Basil caused trouble.

There were packets of cut leaves, bunches, and small living plants crowded into plastic pots. The Lifegiver lifted one of the pots. Far too many stems had been grown together. Their roots pressed against one another in a volume of soil barely sufficient for what the plant had already become. The leaves smelled good. One stem had begun leaning away from the rest in search of light.

She stared at it with increasing disapproval.

A member of staff passing with a crate slowed. “You all right?”

“Why are there so many plants in one pot?”

He looked at the basil. “They sell them like that.”

“That was not an answer.”

He laughed, apparently deciding she was joking. “They grow them quick. You can split it up if you want it to last.”

The Lifegiver looked down at the crowded stems again. “I can.”

The basil joined the tomatoes. The cheese took longer because she had forgotten the exact shape shown in the cookbook and refused to pretend labels she could read automatically gave her practical judgement. She found the name from her list, checked two packages with different prices and bought the smaller one. A bag became necessary after garlic, basil, tomatoes and cheese proved awkward to carry with two books and a purse.

She paid with the card. By then the small purchase had become absurdly satisfying.

Outside, she rearranged everything until the atlas and London book fit under one arm and the food balanced comfortably in the bag. The basil protruded from the top like badly packed evidence. She walked without choosing another destination immediately. With the atlas, she could stop almost anywhere, find a street name and locate herself. This did not prevent her from taking a wrong turn twenty minutes later, but it meant she recognised the mistake before the buildings had become entirely unfamiliar.

She doubled back without asking anyone. That success encouraged overconfidence. At the next junction she ignored the atlas because she was almost certain a narrow passage would reconnect with the street she wanted. It did not. Instead it ended in a small paved court with service doors, bicycles and nowhere else to go.

The Lifegiver stood in the middle of it. “All right.”

A man locking a bicycle glanced at her.

She held up the atlas. “The map is correct. I was not.”

“Bad luck.”

“No. I was quite specifically warned by the map.”

He grinned and wheeled his bicycle past her. She returned the way she had come.

She spent another hour wandering without needing the walk to produce anything. A delivery driver manoeuvred a van through a space she would not have believed large enough. She spent ten minutes in a stationery shop because the wall of pens came in more colours than seemed administratively necessary and left with a cheap notebook and one dark-green pen. A florist’s window held arrangements so carefully shaped that she disagreed with three of them and liked two.

One handwritten sign among the flowers said **PART-TIME ASSISTANT WANTED**.

The Lifegiver stopped. The sign listed days, hours and an instruction to ask inside. There was nothing divine about it. Someone needed another person to carry, cut, arrange, sweep, serve customers and presumably keep flowers alive long enough to sell them.

Her first thought was that she could do all of that better than whoever currently did it. Her second was that this was exactly the sort of thought which tended to become troublesome when she was allowed unlimited authority. The third was simpler: she did not possess an identity here.

The woman arranging flowers inside noticed her lingering and offered a questioning smile through the glass. The Lifegiver smiled back but did not go in. She took out the new notebook instead, copied the street name onto the first page and moved on.

Later she found a bench in a small paved square and sat with the basil beside her. The plant leaned out of its inadequate pot. She turned it so the light reached the crowded side and immediately realised she was already fussing over something she had only bought that afternoon.

“That is permitted,” she informed it.

A woman on the next bench looked over. The Lifegiver looked back. “I bought a badly potted herb.”

“Ah.”

The woman returned to her phone with the calm acceptance of someone who had heard stranger things in London. The Lifegiver smiled to herself and opened the atlas again.

By late afternoon, she considered dinner, another garden and perhaps finding the river again, then realised she was adding destinations because she was reluctant to finish. She snorted quietly at herself, checked the atlas and chose a route towards a larger shopping street where finding somewhere private would be easy. The return Ian had given her sat in awareness without pulling at her; she could use it when she chose, which made the walk back pleasantly unhurried.

A department store solved the final practical problem. She followed signs to the toilets, waited until a single cubicle was free, went inside with her shopping and locked the door. The Lifegiver looked down at herself: green dress, white trainers, purse across her body, London atlas under one arm and a grocery bag containing a badly crowded basil plant.

She laughed quietly, then asked to go home.

The garden returned around her. For a moment she stood in the locked-cubicle posture with no cubicle present, one hand still half-raised towards where the door latch had been. Water moved through the nearest channel. The warmth was different here, softer beneath the garden’s living canopy, and the familiar pulse of her realm reached her again from every direction.

No Ian waited beside the stream; she had not asked him to. The Lifegiver carried her purchases to the low stone and unpacked them one by one. The tomatoes survived. So did the cheese. The basil looked no worse than when she bought it, which was not the same as looking good.

The prepaid card went back into the purse. Cash remained. She put the receipt beside the new notebook, then opened the street atlas across her knees and found the part of London she had walked. St Dunstan received a small mark in dark-green ink. So did the florist. She closed the atlas before either mark required explanation.

The basil was next. She carried it to the work area, found an empty pot, then stopped with her hand hovering over the crowded stems. There were several ways to separate them, and most would be easier after water loosened the soil. She fetched the watering can and set it beside the pot. The pasta could wait until tomorrow.