Sect Year 2 · ninth month · night of day 14 · the twenty-fifth life: the valley under Silent Terrace, Ah Dong’s eleventh year
The harvest was in by the time the frost came back. The bean baskets stood stacked against the dry wall of the top terrace, and the forge had gone quiet for the season, its bellows hung on their pegs and the fire kept small.
Ah Dong had spent the afternoon on the lower terraces carrying water to the late millet with Fen. It was almost dusk when he climbed the steps to the house with the day’s tally in his head. Four bars drawn out. One plough-share finished. One hoe blade for the bean terrace, its edge drawn out and ground true.
Fen had walked back up with him as far as the fork in the path. She had said very little all afternoon. A carter had come up the valley road that morning with word of Ruan. He had gone down the river with the salt boats at the thaw, and he hadn’t come up again. The carter had seen the boat at the coast, and he hadn’t seen the boy.
“I’ve stopped waiting for him,” Fen said at the fork. Her voice was perfectly steady. “It doesn’t help the millet.”
