The Fort at the Tram Stop

Leona signed the lease on Tuesday. By Friday evening she still had no bed.

The flat was a bright room on the top floor. It had a tiny kitchen and a window above the street. It had no sofa, no chairs and no curtains. The furniture shop said her bed would arrive in two weeks.

"Two weeks is a long time to sleep on the floor," Leona said on the phone.

"So don't sleep on the floor," said Zahra. "Sleep on pillows. I know a man who sells them cheap."

Zahra lived in the flat below. They had met on the stairs the day before, when Leona was carrying a single lamp. Zahra had looked at the lamp, then at Leona, and decided they were friends. At home, Leona's friendships grew slowly, like trees. Zahra simply walked in and sat down.

The man with the pillows had a stall at the night market across the river. He had forty left, all in odd colours. He sold twenty-two of them for the price of a pizza. He packed them into two enormous plastic bags.

"How do we carry these?" Leona asked.

"On our heads," Zahra said. "Like queens."

They did not carry them on their heads. They dragged the bags down the market street to the tram stop at the end. It was ten o'clock, and the stop was almost empty. A glass shelter stood beside the rails. Inside it were a bench and a big lit map of the whole city.

Leona dropped her bag and sat on it. Her arms hurt, and her new shoes hurt more. She had lived in this city for eleven days. She still got lost every time she left the house. She never told anyone that.

"The next tram is at ten past," Zahra said. She read the board, and then she stopped smiling. "Or it isn't."

A paper notice was taped across the timetable. The line was closed for repairs until Monday morning. There was no tram, and there would be no tram all weekend.

Zahra tried to call a taxi. The market had just closed, and every driver in the area was busy.

"One hour," she read. "Maybe more."

"We could walk," Leona said slowly. "It isn't far. It's only two miles."

"My phone has three percent left," Zahra said. "I used it all on pillow photos."

Leona pulled out her own phone. It had two percent. She opened the map, watched the little blue dot turn, and then the screen went black.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Somewhere behind the market, a late stall pulled down its metal shutters with a long rattle.

Then Leona looked at the big lit map on the wall of the shelter.

She stood up and walked over to it. She found the river, then the market, then the tram line with its thin blue stripe. She put her finger on the dot that said YOU ARE HERE. Then she followed the streets with her finger, slowly, all the way to her own front door.

"Left at the fountain," she said. "Then along the canal until the iron bridge. Over the bridge, and the second street on the right. Then straight uphill."

"You know this?" Zahra asked.

"I don't know it yet," Leona said. "Give me a minute."

She said the route aloud four times, first with her eyes open and then with them closed. Zahra waited and did not make a single joke.

"Okay," Leona said at last. "I think I have it."

They picked up the bags and set off.

At the first corner, the bag in Zahra's hand split down one side with a soft, sad sound. Pillows slid out onto the pavement, one after another. A blue one rolled into the road. A yellow one landed face down under a lamp.

"Stop," Zahra said, laughing so hard that she had to hold a wall. "Stop, stop. We have lost the beds."

"We have not lost them," said Leona. "They are everywhere."

She did not feel like laughing. If they could not carry the pillows, they would have to leave half of them here.

Then she remembered the scarf around her neck. She pulled it off.

"Give me your scarf," she said. "And your belt."

"My belt? Why?"

"Because we are going to wear them."

It took ten minutes. Leona stacked six pillows into a tall bundle and tied them tightly with her scarf. Then she pushed her arms through two loops of Zahra's belt. The bundle sat on her back like a school bag. Zahra copied her. They stuffed four more pillows inside their coats, until both of them looked like round, soft penguins. They carried the last ones under their arms.

"You look ridiculous," Zahra said happily. "I love it."

Leona led the way. At the fountain she turned left without stopping. She heard Zahra's footsteps behind her, and the whisper of pillows against pillows. The streets were quiet.

The canal came, just as the map had promised. The water was black and still. They walked beside it for a long time, past a boat with a string of tiny lights. Leona's shoulders ached. But her head felt clear and strange, as if someone had opened a window inside it.

Then she reached the iron bridge, and her stomach dropped. There were two bridges. One was iron, and one was made of grey stone, and they stood side by side.

"Which one?" Zahra asked.

Leona closed her eyes and saw the map again. The mark across the canal had been a straight line. A straight line meant the flat stone one. She had been about to take the pretty one.

"The stone one," she said. "The iron one goes to the park."

"Are you sure?"

"No," Leona said. "But I think so."

They crossed the stone bridge. On the other side, a sign said Mill Road. It was the second street on the right. Leona nearly laughed out loud.

Then came the hill. It was steeper than it looked on the map, and the bundles felt heavier with every step. Twice Zahra stopped. Twice Leona said, "Ten more steps," and counted them aloud. By the end, they were counting together.

At the top of the hill, a familiar yellow door waited under a lamp. It was her own front door.

"We did it," Zahra said. "You did it."

Up in the empty flat, they dropped everything in the middle of the floor. Then Zahra pulled a clean sheet out of a box in the corner. She tied two of its corners to the radiator and the window handle.

"What are you doing?" Leona asked.

"A fort," said Zahra. "Every good flat needs one."

They built it together. The big pillows made walls, the small ones made a floor, and the sheet made a roof. They tucked in the edges until the whole thing looked like a round, lopsided nest. Leona crawled in first. It smelled of dust and market and new cotton.

Zahra crawled in after her and pulled a pillow under her head. "Tomorrow I will bring you a blanket," she said. "And a kettle. And one more lamp."

"You don't have to," Leona said.

"I know." Zahra yawned. "That is why I am going to."

Soon her breathing grew slow and even. Leona lay awake a little longer, looking up at the sheet. A line of yellow light from the street came through a gap in the pillows. It lay across her hand. Far away, down the hill, she could hear one bicycle bell, small and clear, ringing in the dark.

She closed her eyes and let it ring.