Sect Year 9 · third month · day 4, early afternoon · Azure Stream Sect, the spring
By the early afternoon the water had darkened to the colour of slate after rain, and the reeds below had gone still. Somewhere down the mountain a cart was grinding up the Qingliu road, and the sound came up the cliff thin and patient, and then it stopped, and the spring was the only thing left.
“Bring the seed back to the field before winter,” Lin said.
The last word slipped out of step with the rest. Winter came out of him slack and uncertain, as though it had stepped off a stair in the dark and found no floor. He stopped with his mouth still open on it. Su read the line from the record in her even voice, and he said it after her, and the word came back into place with a small click he felt in his jaw.
The line landed in him like a furrow he couldn’t see. He knew that a field had been waiting for a sack of grain. What came with the knowing was only residue: the cold, and the weight of a sack held hard against the chest, and wind at a cave mouth that was not there. Then that went out of him too. He felt the place where it had been grow still and dim without him.
