Chapter 21: East Bridge

Chengzhi's POV

We left Qinghe at dawn, in the third of five carts the county had hired for its licentiates.

Lanxi sat beside me on the hay with a basket on her knees.

Our mothers had walked as far as East Bridge and stopped there, one on each side of the road.

Madam Lu had pressed my new brush case into my hands and told me to eat properly.

It was the nearest she had come in my life to saying she loved me.

Madam Shen had said nothing at all.

She had only taken Lanxi's face in her hands and held it, and then let it go.

The road went down off the bridge and ran along the river.

I had known it would.

I had not known how my stomach would turn over at the bend.

The willows leaned out there, and the bank dropped away to the water.

"Stop," I said.

The carter looked back.

"Please," I said. "Only for a moment."

I climbed down.

My legs were steady, which surprised me.

The road was frozen and rutted, and a thin white frost lay on the verge.

It was the same stretch of dirt I had seen from the saddle on the twelfth of the eighth month.

It had been dusk, and I had a letter against my ribs.

I stood in the middle of it and made myself remember.

The sky had been dark with cloud.

I had been late, because I had written the letter three times.

Far off to the west, someone had been setting off crackers for a wedding, and the horse had never liked that.

Then thunder came down the valley.

The horse reared, and I came off.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.