Sect Year 3 · eighth month · night of day 22, to dawn of day 23 · the twenty-ninth life, her ninth year. Then Azure Stream Sect, north ridge
The sun slid off the stones and the cold came back into the air. Yanne sat on the flat stone with her knees drawn up and her hands folded between them. The bucket sat beside her, its water going flat and still. Below, the children at the ford had stopped shouting. She couldn’t have said when that happened. The sheep bells had stopped too, or she had stopped hearing them.
Her mother called down again. The voice was smaller now, and it had to rest between words.
“Five,” it said. Five were still owed, and the bucket on the stone had not yet been counted in.
Yanne did not answer. She had the number ready in her mouth, the easy number, the one that would have sent her mother’s breath back into the pattern it knew. She kept it there. The wind came down the stones and went past her.
“Yanne. How many?”
She sat with the wet sleeve pulled over her wrist. Across the valley a dog barked twice and gave up. She thought of the hand on her hair that morning, light and cool, and of the goats penned behind the house with nobody to feed them. She thought about the goats for a while, because they were easier.
