Sect Year 2 · eleventh month · day 30 · the Qingliu fork post-house, the window and the yard
The snow came in the last days of the month and did not stop. It fell first on the pass road, which climbed out of the fork between two walls of thorn and went up into the grey hills. By the second morning the road was white as far as the first bend.
By the third the milestone on the north track wore a cap of snow, and the wagon drivers at the fork stopped saying that the pass might clear by midday. The post-house boy came round at dusk with a lamp in each hand and told the carriers that the pass would stay shut until the thaw. That anyone who wanted to try it could go up and find out for himself.
Nobody tried it.
Three of the carriers had come up the lower road on the last clear morning, with their bundles on their backs and the snow already loud on the hills behind them. One was a carter with a patched coat who had walked the whole of the river road on a bad knee. One was a woman with a bundle of cloth in her arms that turned out to be a sleeping child.
