Chapter 24: Willow Ford

They went down the mountain in the grey light, Cen Yu on the courier's mule.

Pei Ruo walked at his stirrup.

Gao Tie came behind with a sack of the Hall's good rice on his shoulder, the oil jar under his arm, and a complaint about every stone.

Cen Yu did not feel the road.

He felt the sun on his face and the cold of his own hands.

He felt Pei Ruo's fingers close round his ankle to steady him.

Those were enough.

The villages along the river had pinned no grey slips over their doors this morning.

The Abbot's couriers had been through at dawn.

A woman at a well looked up at the three of them and said nothing, and then bowed.

At Willow Ford, the washing stones were empty.

His mother's door stood open, and the oil jar sat on the table inside, with the moth walking its glass.

She lay on the bed with her face to the wall, and she was breathing in short hard pulls.

"Mother."

She turned her head, and he saw how little was left of her.

"You came," she said. "I told the boy not to frighten you."

"He didn't."

Cen Yu sat on the edge of the bed, with Pei Ruo behind him and Gao Tie filling the doorway.

"I came to give you something."

"Not another spoon."

"No. A cure."

He cut the heel of his hand where it had never healed.

It opened at once, and he held it over the oil jar.

He let the first drop fall through the hole in the lid.

The moth drank it off the glass.

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