Sect Year 1 · fourth month · night of day 22 · the eighth life: Oxbow Ferry, her seventy-third year. Dawn of day 23
The years went by on the river as the river went under the boat: steadily, and with no regard for who was ready for them.
The boat had a new keel by then. It had two new oars and a new awning. The rope had been replaced three times, each time by a rope-maker from the upper bend who swore it would outlast the boat. None of them had. Nessa had watched each one go, and had laughed at each rope-maker’s face when he came down to the landing to swear to her again.
Bani had grown up in the hands first. Her shoulders came before the rest of her did. Then her voice went deep and even, and by the time she was thirty she could bring the boat across the wet season’s current with a farmer’s mule and a load of seed and not raise her voice once. Now she taught the young ones. She let them row until the boat began to wander. Then she steered it home with a single word, and the child would look up with a face full of disappointment and the whole river in its eyes.
