Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 22 · the eighth life: Oxbow Ferry, her thirty-first year
The river had got into Tolan on the morning after the wedding. The physician from the bend had sat by the bed that day with two fingers on his wrist. Then he had said that the fever had gone down into the water, where such fevers lived. That a man as young and stubborn as Tolan might come up out of it if he was given enough broth. He had come up. He had laughed at the physician’s long face and asked for the rope. For twelve years the boat had gone across and back on his shoulders and hers.
The fever came back in high summer.
It came in through the window of the back room. There, the river air lay heavy and sweet on the doorstep. Nessa kept the shutter open because Tolan asked her to. She sat beside the bed and listened to the water under the landing, which made a sound like someone breathing through clenched teeth. The physician came up the path twice a day and stood in the doorway with his hands folded inside his sleeves. He didn’t come in. He had nothing left to bring in with him.
