listened again for the rain. It continued to fall, and she was sure it was doing some good. She stepped slowly across the bare floorboards, opened the screen door, and stepped outside onto the porch. She paused before the broken-down railing where her husband had once stood and waxed poetic about the divine and mysterious landscape all around. In so many ways, he had been right. She did not regret for a moment coming to this land. For this rough place, with the help of the wolf hide now, had made her fearless. She was a modern American woman after all, striding into a future of her own making.
Grace stepped down the porch steps and into the rain, which was slowing now to a mere sprinkle. Her feet avoided the shallow puddles. When she looked up again, she saw her husband before her, a donkey trailing at his heels. The Reverend John Wesley Watson held the reins in one hand, an open book in the other. His steps were slow as he came closer, his head bent. His boots, long topcoat, and hat were covered in a thick yellow layer of loess. The Reverend squinted through his goldrimmed glasses, concern on his face. He stopped and surveyed their cottage, and Grace wanted to tell him not to be upset at the sight. They would make it right again. But he merely pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his glasses of the infernal dust.
The rain stopped altogether, and Grace turned up the dirt road and began to walk. Little Wesley toddled along not far in front of her. He kicked pebbles as he went. His colorful Mongolian robe caught the sun's rays, and she thought she heard the high tinkling of bells accom panying him. Amulets and talismans swung from his neck and around his waist. Grace was glad he wore a thick fur hat upon his golden head, for it would protect him in the desert climate. She picked up her pace to join her son, but the distance between them remained the same no matter how quickly she moved her feet.
Then she saw why the boy was maintaining such a rapid pace. He followed his father, who strode on ahead, his donkey left behind. The Reverend's footsteps struck the hard dirt, his march unfaltering. Here on the road to Yao dao ho, the Reverend seemed at peace, his gaze taking in the landscape that he loved. Grace trailed after her husband and their firstborn child.
As she walked, she vaguely sensed Mai Lin hovering nearby, pressing a loving hand on her chest and applying the most pungent of compresses. Why was she always administering to Grace? She wished to be left alone now. She was trying her best to hear the song that Wesley and the Reverend were singing. A hymn, no doubt, but which one?
The Reverend stopped singing and counted softly to himself, saying the numbers of churches or converts or perhaps only the calculation of successful crops a farmer could hope to garner in a good year. The number of fields ready to cultivate, enumerated with satisfaction. Grace was happy for him that he had forgotten his disappointments and grave mistakes and had returned to what he knew best: the land. He was born of farmers and remained a farmer in his heart. The Reverend seemed contented as he wiped the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief that bore his initials.
Grace watched as he accidentally let it slip from his hand. When he did not stoop to collect it, she hurried to retrieve it from the muddy road, thinking it might be useful on the journey ahead. Little Wesley traipsed right over the flimsy thing, still singing with his head flung back. A carefree boy on his merry way.
When Grace reached the thin white handkerchief, she scooped it up, but it slipped through her fingers and was lifted away again on the wind. A strong breeze off the desert was not unusual in early summer, Grace reminded herself, as she heard soft moaning and weeping nearby. Mai Lin and Ahcho made far too much of things. She wished she could tell them not to worry. She had found her son and her husband, and they were on the right road now.
Grace turned to watch a gust take the pale handkerchief and blow it further up the trail, where it twisted and hung in the air, finally drifting over an ocean, a vast and white-capped sea. There on