Sect Year 1 · tenth month · day 16 · the fork below Farrow Post
They had waited four days at Farrow Post for the south ford to drop. On the fifth morning they left before the light, and the door of the room beside the common room stayed shut as they went past it. Lin stood in the dark passage for the space of three breaths and listened. He heard a man turn over on a bed, or a man lying very still on purpose, and he didn’t knock. In the yard the well rope was wet and cold in his hands. The post-master’s wife came out with a cloth bundle, pressed it into Pei’s arms without a word, and went back inside. It held oat cakes still warm from the griddle and a twist of salt. Behind them, through the common room window, the lamp was still burning when they turned onto the road.
The road ran down from the post in long loops through terraces of dead rice. The dykes between the fields had broken in the summer floods and never been mended, and the water had left grey silt in lines across the stubble, like the tide marks on a rock. Pei walked ahead. She had the bucket on her hip, and every few steps she turned her head to count the fenceposts that ran along the left-hand side of the track. Some still had rails nailed to them. Most had only the posts, grey and…
