The bell called, and Jiang's feet turned toward it.
His body knew the sound. An emperor penguin had vanished into distance and was asking the colony to answer. Every clean note shaped a hidden bird somewhere ahead.
He took one dragging step across the chapel floor.
Ruth caught the wet blanket as it slipped from his shoulders, then waited for him to choose whether she should replace it.
"Is that you choosing?" she asked.
Jiang tried to stop. His toes pressed harder against the stone instead.
Above the front nave, the old bell hung inside an open timber frame built through the ceiling. Its broken rope ended near the rafters, swaying while the bronze mouth faced Jiang. Black dampness shone inside it.
Again the call rolled from the bronze. Aylin raised both hands, and a narrow green band climbed the wall to close around the bell's shadow.
"I can break the bronze," she said. "Move away from it."
Ruth looked up at the beams, then at the lit side door. "The frame crosses our only dry exit. Drop that bell and nobody leaves this way."
"If it calls the core together, there may be nothing left to leave."
"Then hold it while we think."
Aylin's jaw tightened, but the green band stopped climbing. It pinned the bell's shadow to the wall without touching the beams.
Jiang planted his beak against a pew leg. The wood scraped along his bill as his feet tried to advance.
Penguin Instincts opened beneath the sound, not as words but as pressure.
Copper-Band's calls had carried direction. His alarm pushed companions away from a danger he had already seen. His softer contact note asked where the others were and left room for an answer.
Beneath the clean notes, the bell wanted only one thing: come closer.
It never waited. It offered no location, no safety, and no change when Jiang resisted. The sound was perfect. The social act behind it was empty.
Jiang tore his beak from the pew and gave the sharp warning call he had used at the colony drain.
Ruth lowered her gaze. "That one means trouble, doesn't it?"
He struck the floor once.
"Good enough for me."
Ruth crossed to a narrow door beside the organ pipes and pulled it open. A steep maintenance stair turned upward behind it.
"The wheel has a wooden stop," she said. "If the thing lets me reach it, I can keep the bell from swinging. Keep the side door clear."
She took the blue scarf from her neck, tied one end around the stair rail, and left the other hanging into the nave. Anyone below could follow the cloth even if Gredudande filled the stair with borrowed directions.
From above, the bell copied Jiang's warning call.
This version was as accurate as the contact note. It carried the same sharp rise and cut-off ending, yet Penguin Instincts found no direction in it. Gredudande had copied pitch and rhythm while missing what one penguin risked by warning another.
Ruth paused with one foot on the stair. "Was that warning yours or its?"
Aylin's face answered before her voice. "To me, they were identical."
Whether Copper-Band could sense the missing pressure remained unknown. In Jiang's mind, the colony door opened to a familiar call after Samira had gone home, giving Gredudande a trap he would turn back for without using his mother's voice.
Jiang answered with a rough bark and pointed his beak at the maintenance stair.
Ruth climbed. The timber frame shook over her head as the bell swung against Aylin's restraint.
Dust sifted down the stairwell. One jolt drove Ruth against the rail and made the blue scarf snap below her, but she found the next tread with her heel and continued upward. The bell borrowed voices while Ruth's feet kept the real stair.
Black water seeped from the mortar beneath it. The overflow pipe inside the cistern must have risen through that wall before bending toward the street. Each swing pulled the damp line upward, joining floor, pipe, bell shadow, and bronze.
Aylin saw the route too. "The water is feeding the echo."
Jiang stepped toward the seep.
She moved between him and the bell. "You spent too much heat below."
He pecked the floor beside her boot, then pointed toward the green band. Holding Gredudande there was already making her throat bruise darker.
"I can endure it," she said.
Jiang pecked the stone again.
Aylin looked at the wet gauze, his lowered flipper, and the tremor running through both feet. "That is what they said."
Another call pulled at Jiang. He leaned into it without taking another step.
"The four before you," Aylin said. "Two treated their changed bodies like borrowed weapons. They spent pain, hunger, and breath because they believed the temporary shape would take the damage while their true selves stayed untouched."
Her green band jerked. She widened her stance and kept it pinned.
"The other two tried to become nothing except the body. Hunger chose for one. Fear chose for the other. They stopped asking what the person inside still owed anyone."
Jiang watched her bruised throat work around the words.
"I told all of them to synchronize," she said. "I never understood that I was asking for both halves until they were dead."
The admission stayed between them. Aylin kept both hands on the work and left Jiang free to judge her.
Anger warmed him better than the wet blanket had. Four people had paid for the lesson she was giving him late. He held onto that anger, and he used the lesson anyway.
Again, the copied contact call sounded.
Jiang let his body hear it. He felt the tug toward an absent colony, the cold ache of separation, and the need to answer. Then his human judgment asked what the caller offered in return.
Nothing waited behind the sound.
He turned his back on the bell.
Even after he turned, the pull remained without choosing his feet.
Above them, wood struck wood. Ruth had reached the bell wheel and driven its stop into place. The bronze halted halfway through a swing while its dying note trembled through the chapel.
"It is held," Ruth called. "Please do not make me regret standing under it."
Aylin pointed toward the wet line. "One Frostwake use. I pull the shadow when the reflection breaks."
Jiang walked to the edge of the seep. Each step required him to lift a foot that wanted to stay flat against the stone. Cold had turned his joints thick and slow.
In the shallow water, black dampness shaped his mother's mouth.
"Where are you?" it asked.
Jiang placed one webbed foot into the seep.
Frostwake took his heat at once. Clear ice spread only beneath his toes and along the water touching the edge of his breast. It reached no farther than his body and cracked as soon as he shifted his weight.
Ice fractured the reflection beneath him.
For one clean beat, black water and bronze shadow separated. Between them lay a dark silver line embedded in the floor, too straight to be a crack and too narrow to be the overflow pipe.
"There is the seam," Aylin said.
Her green band pulled downward. Gredudande's shadow stretched from the bell like tar caught on a hook, but the silver line under the floor drew the other end toward the altar.
Jiang stepped off the ice. His foot folded beneath him.
He caught himself with his good flipper and rolled onto his breast before the damaged side struck stone. The ice skin shattered into wet grit around his toes.
A burst of contact calls escaped the bell. Some came from the bronze. Others traveled under the floor and answered from beyond the altar.
Ruth descended until her shoes appeared on the maintenance stair. "I can feel it pulling against the stop."
"Keep the wheel locked," Aylin called. "The echo is leaving."
"Leaving this bell for where?"
Aylin followed the dark silver seam with her eyes. It vanished beneath the raised altar platform, where an old service door sat flush with the woodwork.
"Something that used to be here," she said.
Around the bell, Aylin's green band snapped empty. Its shadow returned to ordinary gray, but the copied call continued beneath the floor.
"It left the echo," Aylin said. "It kept the call."
Ruth reached the bottom stair and listened to the false penguin under the altar. "Then we assume every voice can be stolen now. Even his."
Jiang lay shaking in Ruth's blanket while the false penguin searched for him under the altar.