Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · night of day 11 · the thirty-third life: Ammel Gorge, her tenth year
At ten Ysha was trusted with the tally board.
It was a plank of pale wood as long as her forearm, with a ruled column down one side and a row of nails along the top where the day’s count was hung. Her father gave it to her at the foot of the toll-house steps, with a stub of chalk tied to a string and a warning that chalk was dear. The valley was still grey with the early light.
Mist lay in the gorge below the Span, and the goats on the north slope were only shapes moving in it. Her father had already filled the stone jar from the water tank that morning, under her uncle’s eye, and locked the water tank up again with the key on its cord. Then he sent her down the stony path toward the lower ford, with the board under one arm and the jar slung across her back.
“Count everyone who drinks there,” he said. “Goats, dogs, children. Count the children most.”
“Why the children?”
“Because they come for the water with nothing in their hands.”
