Sect Year 4 · fourth month · day 3 · the foot of the well tower, the tide turning back
The tide had turned by the time Lin came down off the stair. He stood on the last stone of the tower’s base with the rope still in his right hand. He watched the grey water come in across the mud in thin sheets, each one a little deeper than the last, and he saw that the place where the child’s shoe had lain was gone under it.
Her father had pulled the shoe out of the mud and forced it back onto her left foot. That was because the girl stood at the edge of the rope’s ring with her right foot bare and the left in a shoe full of wet sand. She held her bucket by the bail.
Beside her was a man in a brown coat with a wooden board under one arm and a bundle of wax slips tied to the board with string. He had ink on his fingers and a tired, closed face. He saw Lin come down and his mouth tightened, and then he went back to looking at the girl.
“That’s the witness,” he said to her. “That’s the one who came by the stake.”
