Sect Year 6 · fourth month · night of day 9 · the sixty-second life: the ford, his thirteenth year
Running in the ford was a different thing from walking it. Oro had crossed it a dozen times with the ferryman’s rope round his middle, and he had never once tried it at a run. Now the stones shifted under the balls of his feet, and the weed on their edges gave like wet hide. The water pushed at his thighs with a weight that did not care whose boy he was.
He kept counting. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. The numbers came out of him in gasps, and the river took the gaps between them. The packet was in his left fist, held against his chest, and its oiled cloth had gone slick and cold on his skin. He didn’t let go of it. The red thread at the seal had darkened in the water, and he could no longer see its colour, only the fact that it was there.
Behind him the landing was getting smaller. He couldn’t turn his head to look for long, because the river took his balance whenever he tried, but he saw the ferryman’s lantern come alight in the hut window, a small, late, unrushed flame. The old man had given up on the boy and gone to watch from his own door. Oro thought he should be angry about that, and found he wasn’t. He was only cold, and the cold was very clear.
