Sect Year 2 · fifth month · day 1 · the basin’s slope, then the milestone camp
At the foot of the slope Pei had stood up on her own, the first time since the rim. She had taken three steps across the crust, then turned round and said, in her own voice, “I’m still here,” as if someone had asked. Then she sat down in the salt and said her legs had gone to string. Lin picked her up.
The slope was worse going up. The crust that had held him on the way down gave under every step, and the grey plates beneath it tipped and clattered like the lids of old pots. Each one he landed on sent a thin cold grit down the back of his collar. He didn’t stop for it. Pei was across his arms the way a man carries a sleeping child, one hand under her knees and the other flat across her back. He had decided he wouldn’t set her down until there was solid ground under both of them.
She was light at the bottom of the slope. Halfway up she was heavy, a sack of grain that had drunk the basin’s water and swollen. Then she was light again. He couldn’t tell whether the weight had changed or whether his arms had simply stopped reporting it.
