Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 22 · the twenty-ninth life: a stony hill village beyond the Wide Sea, her ninth year
“Carry the water up the hill to her mother.”
“Thread of Fate.”
Yanne was nine years old. The spring was at the foot of the hill. The stone house stood at the top, and between the two ran a path of pale stones worn into steps by feet that had gone up and down it for longer than anyone in the village could say.
Her mother lay in the doorway of that house on a reed mat. There, the wind off the pasture could reach her. She hadn’t stood since the cold summer. Two of the neighbour men had carried her out there on a board, and she had told them where the wind was best. Every morning she called the trips down the slope, and every morning Yanne went down for the water.
The bucket was her own. It was made of red clay, with a bail of braided rope gone grey with handling. The rope had worn a groove across the heel of her left hand, and the groove stayed pale even when the hand was warm. At the spring she knelt on the flat stone where the water came up clear and cold, filled the bucket to the rim, and lifted it.
