Sect Year 6 · first month · night of day 10 · the fifty-sixth life: the Mott basin, his ninth year
“Notch the fall each year and say nothing.”
“Long Look.”
Lin lay down on the cot by the gallery wall, and he did it of his own accord, with his coat folded under his head. He let his breath slow until he was calm enough to be willing. Then the Wheel’s voice came into the dark, short and formal.
“One night. One life. Will you turn?”
He didn’t answer aloud. Yes, he thought, and that was all.
The path up to the hut climbed through grey grass that cut at Hollis’s shins. He carried his father’s knife up it in both hands, because the blade was longer than his forearm and he didn’t trust his fingers on the handle when the slope tilted. The village had no word for the sea. Hollis had never seen one, and nobody he knew had come back from the coast to describe the water. What the village had instead was the Mott, the dry country that lay in every direction under a sky the colour of old tin. A basin in the middle of it that his father said had once held water to a man’s chest. Hollis did not believe him. The clay at the bottom had cracked into plates as wide as a hand, and the plates curled up at their edges like bread left too long on a shelf.
