Sect Year 2 · fourth month · day 3 · the rim of Sallow Basin · the unnumbered life, seen from the rim: a river village, her thirty-eighth year
The spring on the far hill had gone to a green stain. The rim let Lin see it from the rail, a dull smear in the grass where the water had once lain clear enough to show the stones on its floor. The woman had not walked up to it that year. Her knees would not take the slope any longer, and the cord at her waist carried a knot for every bucket she had drawn since the spring went low. There were a great many knots by then. The cord hung heavy against her skirt, and when she shifted her weight it knocked against her hip like a second, smaller bucket.
The rail creaked when she leaned on it. The pin had worked loose again, and her husband stood in the doorway of their house with his arms folded, watching her hook the bucket.
“I will see to the pin after the midday meal,” he said.
“You said that yesterday.”
“Then I will see to it after the meal, and I will be a day late, the way I was yesterday.” He came down the step and took the rail from her with his left hand, and shook it, and the whole post sighed in its hole. “It will hold until the rain.”
