Page 30 of Pocket Wife

When we reach the yard, the eastern sky has only begun to pale.

The lower irrigation tower is dark.

It should never be dark.

I run.

Cold mud sucks at my boots as I cross the first field. Behind me, my father shouts for tools, fuses, spare line, anyone awake enough to carry weight. The sunwheat bends silver in the dimness, rows upon rows waiting for water that stopped moving sometime in the night.

At the tower base, Torren is already on his knees beside the control housing.

“Tell me it’s a breaker,” I say.

He doesn’t look up. “I would love to lie.”

My stomach hardens.

The panel hangs open. Three regulator cores have been cut clean from the frame, not burned out, not cracked from age. Removed. The coolant line has been sliced and crimped to slow the leak until pressure collapsed across the lower field.

Not failure.

Hands.

Samuel reaches us breathing hard. One look at the panel changes his face. “How long?”

Torren wipes mud from his knuckles. “If we bypass within the hour, maybe we save most of it.”

“Maybe?” I ask.

His silence answers.

More neighbors arrive in a rush of boots, lanterns, and half-buttoned coats. The Odell boy carries a coil of cable nearly bigger than his chest. Jessa arrives with a basket of bandages, because somebody always cuts themselves when farm metal and panic meet before sunrise. No one has to be told where to stand. They see the tower, see me, and become a working line.

“Manual gates first,” I call. “Open the north channel and divert from upper storage. Torren, say what you need. Pa, get the old pump from the cider barn. Jessa, keep children away from the ditch.”

“What about Helix?” someone asks.

The name cuts through the group.

I keep my voice steady. “Helix can wait until the wheat has water.”

A tall shape appears at the rim of the lantern light.

Rethan Veyr looks badly suited to a crisis involving mud. Formal coat. Gloved hands. Silver-blue skin catching the first thin light. Yet he comes down the slope without hesitation, gaze moving over the damaged tower, the cut line, the missing cores.

“This was deliberate,” he says.

“Good morning to you too,” I reply.

His eyes move to me. “What is required?”

The question stops me for half a heartbeat. Not what happened. Not who is responsible. What is required.

I point to the manual gate wheel at the ditch junction. “That needs turning until the upper channel opens. It sticks.”

Rethan checks the wheel. “Direction?”

“Clockwise.”