Sect Year 2 · ninth month · night of day 14 · the twenty-fifth life: the valley under Silent Terrace, Ah Dong’s seventh year
The valley forge stood below the teacher’s yard, beside the stream. There, the path from the bean terraces came up to the foot of the stone steps. Below it the valley fell away in steps of green and brown, each step held up by a dry wall of river stone. Above it the high shelf of rock the children called Silent Terrace hung grey against the sky. Nobody in the valley could say why it had that name, only that nothing up there had ever answered when it was called.
Ah Dong worked the bellows. The leather lungs were too big for him, and he had to put both hands on the lever and lean his whole back into each squeeze. The fire answered with a roar and a spray of sparks that climbed past the forge roof and hung over the terrace before they went out, one at a time. He liked to watch them go.
The bar lay in the coals. It was a length of iron as long as his forearm, and it had gone the colour of a ripe plum. He could see it through the red glow, and he wanted it out. Every part of him that could reach wanted to reach for it.
