This essay combines a report on a journey to an abandoned military fort located on a marshy island with an experiment in narration—eleven architectural arcades centred on an island, the 21 arcanes of the tarot, a duo of wanderers, and stones collected along the way provide the frame for the story, the characters, and the authors and for a literary appropriation of Hoo Fort. This narrative experiment approached the fort through a tarot card game and the further stories that evolved from this original matrix. We experimented with methods of description, recording, and storytelling that addressed the nexus of lived experience and material traces of the past.