Sect Year 4 · sixth month · day 29 · the coast road, the salt-pans north of Ketch Shoal
The salt-pans began two days north of Ketch Shoal. There, the road climbed off the flats onto a shelf of dry stone above the sea. They lay below the road in a long stepped grid. Each was a shallow square of salt water held between clay walls, and the sun lay on them like sheets of beaten tin.
Men in straw hats moved along the walls with wooden rakes, and where the rakes had passed, the crust showed white, then grey, then white again. A rake drawn across dry crust made a long whisper, and the sound came up to the road in gusts.
Near the foot of the grid a girl of perhaps ten walked the wall of the nearest pan with a wicker basket on her hip. She scooped the crust into it with a flat wooden shovel and tipped each load onto a heap on the bank, and she didn’t look up at the road or at the car rolling past above her.
When the basket was full she set it down, counted the scoops aloud under her breath, and started again from the first square. Lin watched her until the bend took her away. He wondered who had taught her to count that way, and whether anyone had ever asked her for a figure.
