The well in that courtyard had been capped with a millstone since before he was born, and nobody had ever given him a straight answer about why. There had been a drowning. It was a long time ago. That was all anyone would say.
He levered the stone off on a hot afternoon in his thirtieth year because the house was his now and the mains had failed again, and he wanted, reasonably enough, his own water.
The shaft went down further than he expected. Down at the bottom, small and bright, was a coin of sky with his own head in the middle of it.
He raised a hand to check the depth against the rim.
The reflection raised its hand too, but late — a beat late, the way a bad line connects. He held still. It held still. He straightened up and stepped back from the edge, and for a moment, before the surface broke up, the face in the water was still looking up out of it.
He put the millstone back that evening, and it took him and a neighbour and a length of pipe to do it, and he did not sleep much afterwards.
In the morning the courtyard was wet in a track from the well head to the door of the house, the way stone is wet when something has come up out of water and walked on it.
He stood at the door with his hand on the frame and looked at the track, and then down at himself, at the water running off his own sleeves and pooling around his feet on the step.