Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · night of day 11 · the thirty-third life: Ammel Gorge, her thirteenth year
The toll-house ledger lived on a shelf above the water tank jar, wrapped in oiled cloth against the damp. Ysha had looked at that bundle every day of her life and had never been allowed to open it. She opened it now, on the first cold night of the year. Meanwhile, her father dozed on the bench by the stove and his cough rose and fell in his chest like the bellows of a forge.
The pages were thick and soft at the corners. Each held a column of keeper names, one to a line, and beside each name a few words in the keeper’s own hand. Carried the tally through the flood year. Lost two fingers to the gate chain and kept the book with the rest.
Would not sell the water tank key to the Dunning men, though they offered a cow. Ysha turned the leaves slowly and counted the years by the names. She counted past sixty before she stopped, because the hands changed and the ink changed, and it was no longer the toll’s business to say how long the keepers had kept.
