Sect Year 5 · fifth month · night of day 1 · the forty-ninth life: Orrel Lane, his fifty-second year
The lamp was lit again. Garrow could see it from the bed, a small yellow thing in the window past the foot of the blanket, with the rain running down the glass in front of it like water from a jug. Hester had lit it with a splinter from the box by the door. She sat on the stool beside him now with the loaf on her knee and the tea going cold in its cup.
Ruel slept at the foot of the bed, curled on his side with his cheek on the wool and Garrow’s boot still caught in his fist. Garrow had not the heart to take it back from him.
The mill bell rang across the water. Garrow counted it the way he counted everything on a road, under his breath, and he could still manage that much. Four. Five. The sound came over the river and in through the gap in the shutter, thin under the rain, and then it stopped.
“Is she at the window?” he said.
Hester looked. She had looked at every bell since the lamp came back, and each time she turned her head the same way, to the glass and then back to him. “Still nothing, Garrow.”
