Sect Year 5 · ninth month · night of day 2 · the fifty-first life: Dunlin Ford, his thirty-first year
“Count the one who is not on the list.”
“Quick Count.”
The flood had been down three days, and the valley still smelled of it. Hal Pellam could taste the silt at the back of his tongue whenever he breathed through his mouth. That sour iron taste had got into the lamp-oil and the paper and the wool of every blanket the families carried up the schoolhouse steps. The water had left a brown line on the schoolhouse wall at the height of a tall man’s shoulder. Each family looked at the line when they came through the door. Then each family looked away from it, and then they sat down on the benches beneath it as if it were a wall like any other.
Outside the rain came down in long grey ropes off the ridge. It drummed on the tin gutter above the steps and ran over the top door beam in a sheet. Every time the door opened the cold came in with the smell of wet earth and the shouts of the men at the ford.
