Chapter Six | The Signal Beneath the Static

The radio buzzed again.

Marblecake had fallen asleep on the floor with a blanket half-draped across her knees and her head resting on a stack of astronomy books. The stars outside blinked in their usual secret language, and the little radio in the corner hummed its familiar nothingness.

Until it didn’t.

A burst of static.

Then a pulse.

Then—a sound.

Not a voice exactly. But not not a voice either.

She scrambled upright, heart thumping, and turned the dial with careful fingers. The volume low, the lights dimmed. The air felt different, like the kind of silence you get when snow is coming.

The signal repeated: three notes, rising like a question.

It tugged at her bones.

Marblecake grabbed her notebook and drew it out the only way she knew how: in shapes and loops and lines that weren’t letters, but meant something anyway. The marks came fast, like her hand had been waiting to remember.

When it was done, she just stared at it.

A symbol. A name. A place?

She didn’t know. But it was hers.

In the morning, she brought the page to Milo and Petra. Neither laughed.

Milo traced the shape with his thumb. “This looks like... home.”

“Or a map,” Petra said softly. “A map back.”

The three of them sat under the weeping spruce in the Thimbletuck park, letting the breeze tug at their sleeves and the paper.

“It doesn’t scare you?” Marblecake asked.

“Of course it does,” Petra said. “But so does trying new soup. Doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

Marblecake laughed, but there was something underneath it. A shift. A knowing.

She wasn’t the only one listening anymore.

The radio would keep speaking.

And soon, she’d have to decide what to say back.