Dawn broke over Kilnstep on Day 160 with the clean, pale silver of late autumn. Frost lay crisp across the pasture slopes, turning the dry blades of orchard grass into delicate needles of glass, but the air at ground level was still and quiet.
Kezra Venn walked out from the back door of her mother’s cottage into the wide yard behind the kilns.
Her boots made a light, steady crunch on the frost-hardened gravel. Buttoned inside the breast pocket of her canvas coat, the waxed calfskin cover of her bonded survey notebook rested against her ribs. In her right hand, she carried her brass-tipped ash sounding rod, its dark wood worn smooth by five months of travel, its brass metal ring nicked and scratched from the sharp granite of the high Spine.
Across the village roofs, thin plumes of pale blue smoke were already rising straight into the calm morning air from three separate hearths. The village was waking to its ordinary rhythms. Down the lane, Master Orin’s apprentices were rolling empty wooden clay barrels across the flat stone slabs toward the river wash, their iron-rimmed wheels clattering over the cobbles. From the parish church beyond the square, the bronze bell rang six clear, slow strokes for prime. And in the lower paddock, a draft donkey brayed with hungry vigor as the stable boy tossed fresh clover hay into the manger.
