Chapter 40: Under the Lake

They went down farther than the lake could be. Mei had sounded every bend and reed channel when she was twelve, because her mother said a ferrywoman who did not know what lay beneath her hull was only a passenger holding a pole. The deepest place took twelve men standing on one another's heads. She and Liulang passed twelve, and twenty, and then so many that Mei decided the lake had lied, which was a poor habit in water trusted with boats. His cold hand held hers. Her mother's lamp burned in the crook of her other arm, making a gold room ten paces wide as they sank through the dark, and dozens of pale faces gathered beyond it with long hands that could not cross. Twelve years of wine had been poured for the drowned beneath that lamp, six by her mother and six by Mei, and the dead…