Sect Year 4 · fourth month · day 3 · Ketch Shoal, the well tower at the landward foot of the mud
The boy who came for him was a thin thing in a knitted cap, with a rope over his shoulder and a stick in one fist. He didn’t give his name. He looked at Lin’s boots, and then at the mud beyond the stilts, and then he set off across the flats without waiting to see whether Lin would follow. The mist had come in again in the night and lay heavy on the water. The boy walked into it as though it were a road.
“Stay on the stick,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll go first. Don’t step where I’ve not stepped.”
They went out at the low water. The tide had drawn so far back that the flats shone grey and bare for a long stretch in every direction, and the channels were only dark threads between the ridges. The boy did not look at the stakes, and walked faster than Lin wanted to walk, and when the stick in his fist tapped the mud ahead of them it rang a little, and the boy grunted at the sound and stepped on.
