Sect Year 2 · eighth month · day 5 · the Qingliu dry hills, a shepherd’s fold
The dry hills did not look dead. They looked tired, like a dog that has lain too long in the sun and can’t be bothered to lift its head. Grass grew on them in tufts the colour of old rope. Thorn bushes leaned away from the wind, all of them in the same direction. Every hollow held a stone-lined well dug by someone who had expected rain. Every well had a bucket beside it on a frayed rope, and none of them held water.
Lin walked at the front with dust in his teeth. Each dawn, before the others were up, he took his water skin off its peg and held it to the grey light and judged what was left. He had done that since the basin, when he had carried another woman’s water across a dry lake, and he had never got used to how little a skin weighed when it was nearly empty. He hadn’t told anyone about the habit. Pei had noticed it anyway, and had said nothing, which was its own kind of remark.
Tian Mao’s cough had grown worse in the dust. Lin had given the boy the first drink from the skin at the top of the hill and the second at the well. Even so, the well was dry and they had only pretended to draw from it. The boy had laughed at the pretending…
