Sect Year 6 · third month · night of day 29 · the fifty-eighth life: the same schoolhouse, his tenth year
Ren Zhuo was given the window latch to oil each morning, because he was the smallest hand in the school and the latch was the smallest piece of iron. He tapped every hinge and bolt in the room on his way to the stove, without thinking about it, as other boys bit their nails.
That morning the snow had come down in the night, and the room was colder than usual. The window glass had a skin of frost along its lower edge. Ren Zhuo wiped it with the cloth and then knelt on the bench to reach the latch. It was a plain square catch set into the frame, black with years of hands, and the master had asked him to oil its pin before the first bell.
He put the oil-stick to the pin. Then, without thinking, he tapped the latch with one knuckle.
The iron rang.
It was a clear note, true and high and steady, and it went out into the room and did not stop where the room ended. It went past the stove and the benches and the cold slate roof, and it came back to him from somewhere far off, flat and true, with nothing in it but the iron. His hand had tapped on its own, as it always did, and the note that answered made him stand very still, as…
