Sect Year 3 · twelfth month · night of day 2 · the thirty-fourth life: the Tolu uplands, his eighth year
The herd went up to the high grass when the snow had left the lower slopes and lay only in the gullies, grey and crusted like old bread. Ulla walked at the front with the milk pails swinging from a yoke across her shoulders. The old dog trotted at the flank, nose down, stopping every few steps to bark at a marmot that whistled from a rock and then dived out of sight.
Edrik came behind with the lead ewe on a halter. She was grey in the face, with a notch cut out of her left ear, and the notch turned toward him whenever he spoke. He had learned her in the autumn. She went where she wanted, which was always the easy path, and she was never wrong about where the easy path lay.
The children ran up and down the column shouting at the stragglers, and the herd’s two ponies carried the tents and the bedding up the slope behind them, roped in bundles that swayed at every step.
They crossed the stream at the first bend on a plank bridge the herders laid each spring and took up each autumn. The planks were grey and split, and the water ran white under them. Edrik stopped at the foot of the bridge with his hand on the rough post. He didn’t mean to stop.
