Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · night of day 11 · the thirty-third life: Ammel Gorge, her twelfth year
Brown and loud, the spring melt ran down the gorge for three days, and on the fourth morning the dam’s gate came down. Ysha heard it before she saw it. It was one flat note, like a bell struck by someone who meant to strike it only once. The note rolled off the stone walls and came back from the far side a little late.
The gate was a leaf of black timber bound in iron, hung across the dam’s face above the Span’s central pier. Each spring, when the melt was done, the Hesk men lowered it onto its doorstep so that the pool behind could fill for the summer. Ysha had watched it come down every year she could remember. She had never heard it sound like that.
She was on the Span when it sounded. Her father had sent her up with the tally board to count the carts coming off the Hesk road, and she had counted three. The fourth had not come yet. She stood at the rail with the board pressed against her hip and the wind pulling at her sleeves. She waited for the river to answer the note the way it always did, with its talk under the arches.
