Sect Year 2 · eighth month · day 26 · the hill behind the Qingliu fork, at dusk
The days at the fork went slowly and then all at once. Nobody came up the east road, and nobody came down the south. The rain stayed away. The carriers settled into the post-house the way water settles in a jar, and found the small routines that held them there. Gu Lanying braided spare cord from the stable into a new handle for her rope and would not let anyone help her with it.
The keeper’s wife taught Tian Mao to shell beans into a basin, and he did it with great seriousness, counting every pod aloud, and his cough came less often while he counted. Pan Zheng spent each evening in the yard under the lamp he had mended, with a long stick in his hand, adjusting the hook by a finger’s width and then standing back to look at it. It hung straight now. He went on adjusting it anyway.
Pei had given Tian Mao a column of his own at the bottom of the tablet. There, the ticks ran out. He had asked for it himself. Every morning he made a small crooked mark beside his name and told her it was for the beans. She told him that was not how the ticks worked. He told her that was how he worked, and she let him keep it.
