“I have no wood left,” he whispered.
At dawn, he carried the plank back to the Meadow. Kregždė sat by the whalebone lintel and whined softly. Beldziant lifted the linden door—light as a sigh—and set it into the arch. It fit without a gap. The wood grain flowed from pillar to pillar like a river meeting the sea.
A voice came from within the arch—not loud, but as clear as water from a spring. “Beldziant, you have measured every threshold but your own. Build this last door, and you may enter.”
But Rasa died before he could finish. He buried her beneath a linden tree, and for thirty years he built gates for others—for brides, for harvests, for the dead. Yet his own heart remained ajar.
“You have,” said the voice. “The wood you kept for Rasa’s gate.”
But the gate had no door. Only an arch into darkness.
One autumn night, as fog swallowed the moon, Beldziant heard a knock. Not on his door, but inside his chest. He rose and followed the sound—a faint, humming rhythm like a distant saw cutting through silence. Kregždė limped beside him.