Sect Year 1 · fifth month · night of day 23 · the thirteenth life: the salt road to the coast, his sixth year
“Carry the salt to the coast and bring the sack back.”
Echo of a Past Life.
Dov rode the salt sled behind his father, sitting on two sacks of coarse grey salt with his bare feet tucked under the rope. The sled was low and wide, built for hauling, and it creaked on its runners at every rut. The mule pulled it along the road with its head down and its ears flat against the wind coming off the flats. Dov’s job was the wheels.
Each time the sled stopped, he got down, walked back along its length, and struck each iron with the knuckle of his first finger. Then he listened. A good iron rang clean and went on ringing a little after the blow, the way a word said once in a cold room will hang in the air. A bad one gave back a dull thud with no ring at all.
“Good,” his father said each time, without turning round. “Good. Get on.”
Harl was a big man with a red neck and a laugh that came out of him before his jokes did. He had bought the mule from a cousin and the sled from a man who had since died, and he had told Dov both stories so often that Dov could say them along with him. The mule had a…
