Sect Year 4 · eleventh month · day 26 · Ketch Shoal, the Qerrin flats
The south packet put in at Ketch Shoal’s raised stone road on the morning low water, and Lin went ashore with his pack on one shoulder. The Grey Heron would take him off from the landing at the raised stone road’s end on the morning tide of the next day. That left him one day on the flats, and he spent the first part of it walking out over the stones.
The mud lay open on either side of the raised stone road like a sheet of hammered tin, cut with channels the tide had not yet filled. The stilts of the village stood up out of it in their rows, grey with weather and black with tar at the feet. The stake-line ran out across the crust toward the Reach in its old crooked order.
He had walked this raised stone road once with a runner’s packet in his coat, counting stakes, and his feet remembered the planks better than he did. His left foot caught on a loose stone now and then. He let it catch. The stone was only a stone.
The well tower stood at the landward foot of the mud, a squat grey thing with its door shut and its bronze bell hung in the open crown. The bell had cracked from lip to crown in the sixth month, and it didn’t ring. A boy sat on the bottom step…
