Sect Year 2 · ninth month · night of day 14 · the twenty-fifth life: the valley under Silent Terrace, Ah Dong’s tenth year
The teacher let him strike alone at the start of the warm months. Nobody announced it. One morning Xu Anning laid a bar in the coals, sat down on the bench by the house with his back to the forge, and said, “It’s yours. I’ll be where you can’t see me.”
“You’ll see me,” Ah Dong said.
“I’ll see the iron,” said Xu Anning. “That’s the part that matters.”
Ah Dong’s hands shook on the tongs. They had been shaking since he came up the path, and now that the thing he had asked for was given to him, it seemed much too large. It was like the bellows had been when he was small, a tool that had been waiting for him to grow into it, and he hadn’t grown into it yet.
He stood over the fire and watched the bar go from grey to red to deep plum. His arms ached from the lever before he had moved the lever once. He let the cherry fade. He let the red go down. He counted, and at a hundred and twelve he lifted the bar onto the anvil and tapped it with one knuckle.
