Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · night of day 11 · the thirty-third life: Ammel Gorge, her thirtieth year
Ysha turned thirty in the month the rains came back. She had stopped expecting them. For four summers the valley had watched the hills over the gorge for a grey edge of cloud, and for four summers the edge had stayed on the rim and never come down. The wells went to mud and then to cracked clay.
The children learned to walk to the ford in the dark so that they wouldn’t waste the day’s heat. Then one evening in the late autumn the cloud came over the rim all at once, and the first rain fell on the toll-house roof with a sound like thrown gravel.
Ivo heard it. He hadn’t left the steps in two months. He sat with his back against the door frame and his rug pulled up to his chin, and he turned his face to the rain and smiled with his eyes shut. The cough had taken most of his breath by then. When he spoke, his voice came in short pieces, one for each pull of air.
“Good,” he said. “Good. The hill will have its water.”
