Chapter 11: The Tipsy Turtle

The silver ingot lived in the paper money box under three hundred gold-painted notes, where no thief at Willow Crossing would think to look because everybody knew Hong Mei kept her real money on a string at her belt. She took it out on the morning of the twenty-sixth and weighed it in her palm while Fish held the ferry against the landing. On top of the post a gray heron sat watching, and did not fly, though the lamp burned beside it. A farmer wrestled a pig aboard, two nuns followed, and the comb peddler came last with both arms spread to keep the wares in his sleeves from tangling. "Four hundred coppers," Mei said. "About." "If anyone will change it." Nobody at Willow Crossing could change that much silver without asking where a ferrywoman had found it, and her grandfather had always said the lake's money turned to…