Chapter 45: Dragon Boats

They went up faster than they'd come down. Mei didn't understand it at first. Liulang was waiting at the edge of the white lawns, where the white sand met the dark, exactly where he'd said he'd be. She came running down the white path through the willows, the lamp in her arms, Fish beside her in his torn white wedding robes with her headscarf tied round his shoulder and the blood soaking through it. Liulang held out his hand to her. She took it. And Fish stepped off the white sand into the dark water after her, and the lake spat him out. It spat him up. All at once, as it had on the first night, when he'd dived off her ferry in a long clean arc and come straight back up as if he'd hit the bottom of a basin. Only now there was no surface to come…