Chapter 27: The Third Prince

On the morning of the twenty-seventh it thundered out of a clear sky. Mei was at the post with the paint pot, touching up the sixth line where the storm had scoured it, and she heard it: a long, low roll, far off, at the head of the lake, where the hills went up steep to the thunder falls. She looked up. The sky was blue from one edge to the other. Not a cloud. The water was a finger under the seventh line and lying flat as a mirror in the heat, and the thunder went on rolling down the length of the lake toward her, slowly, like a cart on a long wooden bridge. Then the herons came. There were nine of them. They came down the lake from the north in a long line, low over the water, big gray birds with slow wings. Mei had seen…