The solstice week came in on the year's shortest days. The cough had begun to go down the street the way it had come up it: a door at a time.
The light was thin by the middle of the afternoon now. The snow lay iron-hard in the street's shade, and soft nowhere. The knocks at the shop's door came spread through the day. One knock, and a long quiet, and one more — the way knocks come when a street is mending.
On the counter, under its stone, the list still stood: twenty-three names, in their order, in ink. On the high shelf, in their own short row, stood the eleven.
The eleven were the list's, and the list would be served in its order. That had been said at the counter in the open. The street had heard it said. The week would keep it.
The first name on the page was a second name. It belonged to the carter's house, down the lower street. His mother had taken a jar in the first week of the snow. Now the heat had come back into the house with the deep cold, and the name stood written again, in its turn.
The carter stood at the counter while Ren read the name where it stood. Ren took the jar down off the high shelf. He read its label aloud.
"One measure at morning, one at night, in hot water," he said. "Three days for the heat to break. If the breath shortens, you come back to this counter, or you send. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you," the carter said.
"Three hundred. The price on the board."
The carter counted the coins out of his sash onto the wood. Ren counted them off the wood into the till. Then he drew one line through the name — no more than one — so the name stood readable under it, served and not erased.
So the week went. A jar down. A name read. The words said. The coins counted. The stroke drawn. By the middle of the week, five of the eleven had gone out under their names. The short row on the high shelf stood shorter. Every seal that left it left a name struck and readable on the page.
The list did not only empty. On the week's third evening, the lamp was lit and the shutter half down when a knock came at the small door. A name was written at the list's end, for a house in the lower street. An old man's daughter did the asking, her hands still in her sleeves against the cold. On the fifth evening, another name came: a carter's house, the man's own name this time. He stood in the doorway and coughed into his fist while it was written.
Two names in the week, against the nine of the week when the wave was climbing. Ren wrote each in its order. He read each back aloud, so its house would know it stood in its place on the page.
On the week's fourth day, in the thin light of the afternoon, the street heard sled runners on the hard snow. Beside them came a man's step, slow, with a stick's tap between the steps.
Daichi of the yard came down the street beside the yard's sled. He walked on his own legs, with a cane in his free hand. The sled was loaded with split firewood, stacked tight and roped — the yard's winter cutting. He stopped the sled at the shop's step. He leaned on the cane a moment, the way a man leans who has walked a street he was once carried up.
"The hill sent me down with my papers in order," he said. "Weeks with them, they said — and they kept their count. The leg is theirs no more. It is mine, with a cane charged for the hire of it."
He would not bring the sled into the yard. He stacked the wood himself against the shop's back wall, armload by armload. He worked slow, at a mending man's pace, with the cane hooked over his wrist. No offer of help was accepted past the holding of the door.
"It is the yard's wood," he said, "for the shop's stove. Split, and dry, and a full load. The yard owed the shop a warm winter for a page well carried. I am the yard's hand for the paying of it."
"The yard offered me the stool and the tally board, herb-man," he said. "I told them the stool can wait for a worse winter."
"What do I write against it?" Ren said.
"Write that it burns," Daichi said. "That is the whole of its account."
All winter the stove had burned bought charcoal: two thousand, four hundred, counted out to the charcoal seller by the gate across the fever weeks. The yard's wood would burn for nothing.
He gave the hill's news standing at the counter, plainly, and as a count — the way news was given in that street. The wards were emptying. The hill's fever had broken in the week. Half the beds that had stood full stood bare. Andō had said, on the night of the requisition, that word would come down when the hill's fever broke. The word had come down on a cane, carrying firewood.
"The street's count and the hill's count are the same count this week," Daichi said. "Going down."
That night Ren wrote it in the day book, under the day's own page.
Daichi of the yard came down from the hill on a cane, walking beside the yard's sled. He brought firewood, a full load, split and dry, for the shop's stove, and stacked it himself. No coin asked, and none taken. It is written here as warmth, not as money. Word from the hill, by his mouth: the wards are emptying, and the hill's fever is broken. The leg holds him, at a cane's pace.
On the week's fifth day, the hill's clerk came down the street with a paper in his sash. The street made its small way for him, the way it had learned to.
The paper closed an account. Through the fever weeks, the shop had sent dried materials up to the hill's storehouse in lots: leaf by weight, roots, and powder in sachets, for the bench that still stood without its preparer. Each lot had been inspected at the storehouse as it came in, and entered in the office's book. The deliveries stood complete. The paper named the balance due on the whole of them, in the office's clean hand — and nothing else: no asking, and nothing promised.
"Eight thousand, six hundred," the clerk said. "The balance of the materials, the deliveries complete. The office pays on the closing of the account."
The money came out of the office's bag onto the counter. Ren counted it across the wood by hundreds, and into the strongbox. The clerk watched the count the way clerks watch counts. Then he set the office's mark on the paper's foot. Ren folded the paper into the day book, at the winter page, beside the requisition paper. The two papers had come down the same street, in the same way.
On the week's last day but one, the eleventh jar went down in the morning, to the last of the kept names. The high shelf stood bare behind the counter all day, the way a field stands after the cart has taken the last of the crop.
That day, the gate watch's man came with a paper of his own and a purse at his belt.
The watch kept the gate sheds through the dark months. The sheds' men cut themselves, and burned themselves, and froze their hands at their work — the way they had on the night of the bell. The watch's office ordered for its own store, off a written list, at the board's prices: salve and powder, against the winter's work.
Toma counted the crate aloud, piece by piece, as Ren packed it. "Twenty pots of salve," the boy said. "Twenty sachets of powder." The watch's man counted after him, off the paper's list. The counts stood the same: twenty, and twenty.
The coins crossed on the counter: four thousand, counted. Twenty pots at the board's eighty. Twenty sachets at the board's hundred and twenty. The same prices any name on the list had paid all winter. The watch's man tied the crate's cord and took it up on his shoulder. The paper went into the day book with the others.
That night, with the shutter down and the lamp trimmed, Ren closed the winter's money.
The day book stood open at the winter page. The strongbox stood open on the floor by the counter, and the till beside it. Toma read the lines off the page, one by one, in the flat voice he kept for figures. Ren counted the purse that answered each line, before the next was read.
"Winter sales," the boy read. "Nine thousand, four hundred."
Ren counted the strongbox and the till together onto the wood, and back into the box. Nine thousand, four hundred, as the winter pages stood. Fever cures, and salve, and powder, and leaf by weight — the street's coin and the list's coin together, in the order the book had taken them.
"The hill's materials," Toma read. "Eight thousand, six hundred."
"The gate watch's order," Toma read. "Four thousand."
Ren set the last stack in. He shut the strongbox's lid on the whole of it. Then he wrote the winter page's end in his own hand, large — the way a man writes the thing he wants found first.
Twenty-two thousand, whole, in the strongbox. Winter sales: nine thousand, four hundred, as the pages stand. The hill's materials balance: eight thousand, six hundred, the deliveries complete. The gate watch's order: four thousand, delivered and counted. The number at the head of this page stands at twenty-two thousand. Tomorrow is the solstice.
He stood a while and looked at the high shelf, where the short row had stood.
The shelf stood empty of the reserve. Eleven seals had gone out under eleven names. The shelf had been built all autumn against this winter. It stood bare at the winter's heart, having done the thing it was built for.
Fourteen names stood on the list. The wave was going down.
He trimmed the lamp, and left the strongbox where it stood, in the lamplight, against the morning.