In fifty mortal frontier cities and across ten thousand farming villages, the day of despair became the morning of resurrection.
Outside the gates of Fengsha City, the banks of the reborn Heavenly Mother River were crowded with an ocean of humanity. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children had abandoned their homes, carrying every container they could lay their hands on—chipped clay pot pots, copper flagons, wooden washing basins, and hollow gourds.
They didn’t fight. They didn’t push or trample one another in desperate scrambles as they had at the water-barons’ private wells.
There was no need to fight. The river was four hundred paces wide. It roared with endless, foaming turquoise abundance that lapped gently against the grassy shallows. There was enough water for everyone, enough for their cattle, enough for their withered wheat terraces, and enough for the ages yet unborn.
Mothers knelt in the soft, damp grass along the water’s edge. It wept openly as they dipped soft linen cloths into the cool current to wash away weeks of caked yellow dust from their children’s cheeks.
“Drink, my sweet boy,” a young mother sobbed softly, cradling her feverish toddler in one arm while cupping sweet river water to his lips with her hand. “Drink as much as you want. The river is home. The river has come back.”
