Sect Year 8 · third month · night of day 3 · the silent life: the terrace road and the terrace market, his sixty-second year
On the morning of the fortieth year of ninth-day walks, Anwen stopped on the top step of the third terrace with a basket on each arm and said that this would be the last walk the road took her on.
“In the old way,” she said. “The carts can have me after this.”
“You said that last winter.”
“I said it last winter and I meant it last winter. This winter I’m going to be right.” She settled the basket straps on her shoulders and looked down the steps, which had not changed in forty years.
The first honey he ever sold on that road had gone to a salt-seller who tapped the cloth on the pot and asked whether it was wild. Ossel had said the bees were wild and the honey was not, and the salt-seller had laughed so hard he dropped his change. Anwen told him afterwards that it was a good answer, and that he must never give it again, because a second time it would be a habit. He had kept the answer for forty years and used it perhaps twice. The salt-seller was dead now, and the answer belonged to nobody but the road.
