Sect Year 3 · eleventh month · day 12 · the Drum of Hesk, the hill above Ammel Gorge
Su stood up. She closed the record and laid it on the grass at the foot of the drum-pole, carefully, the way she set down anything she meant to come back for. Then she tucked the pen into the spine of the book and came around the pole and stood in front of him with her hands at her sides.
Behind the tents the women had come out to the flaps again. A small girl in a red coat stood between two of them, holding a bowl of something that steamed in the cold. Nobody called her in. The goats had not been driven up from the lower pasture, and the dogs lay flat by the tent ropes with their chins on their paws, watching the drum-pole as if they expected it to speak.
Lin began to rise. Su shook her head.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “I’m saying it first, so it’s in my hand and not only in yours.”
He stayed where he was. The grass was wet through his trousers, and the wind came up the slope from the gorge and pulled at the loose hair across her forehead, and she didn’t push it back.
