“Because of me? You have too high an opinion of my abilities,” Mia said. “It’s because of the prosperity of this place.”

“Mia is a true Deserted villager.”

“Thank you, Lohan.”

The water dropped in the well. All three of them stood at the edge of the well and looked down. They saw that the water was moving farther and farther away from them, and that the well had become an unfathomable bottomless dark hole, though they could still hear the wonderful sound of water.

“It will come often in the future,” said Lohan.

“My tortoise!” Milan shrieked.

The tortoise had rolled over the edge of the well and fallen, making a sound like waves at the bottom of the well.

Milan was quiet, sitting at the edge of the well.

After a while, Mia whispered to her son, “Milan, have you thought it through?”

“Yes, Mom. The tortoise went home from here. It will come again. It likes to play with me. Mom, let’s go back and eat dinner. I’m hungry.”

The family went to bed early that night. But in the middle of the night, Mia heard a noise in Milan’s room.

“Milan, where are you going at this hour?” Mia asked her son seriously.

“I thought I heard my tortoise coming back. It was crawling in the mountains. Mom, do you remember it promised me?”

“I know, my dear, but I don’t think he’ll come again so soon. Tortoises are slow, aren’t they?”

“How long do I have to wait?”

“First, you have to learn waiting, Milan, and then you’ll know how long you have to wait.”

“What is waiting?”

“Waiting is thinking of all the fun, happy things.”

Milan put down the flashlight, and also the sack, which he had prepared to hold the tortoise. Then he took off his hat and coat, and went to bed again. Soon he was snoring.

Mia and Lohan returned to their bedroom. They stood in each other’s arms in the middle of the room, thrilled and nervous, for they also heard the sound: the tortoise was crawling this way from Blue Mountain.

“This movement has been going on for tens of thousands of years,” Lohan said softly.

22
Gray

Spoon left him. Every time Gray thought of this, his heart ached. Sometimes he felt that he understood, but the next minute he didn’t.

It was a cloudy, windless day. Gray was in high spirits as he and Spoon went up Niulan Mountain. He had been thinking of the slope next to the cliff, where wild lilies grew. He had gathered many of them last year. Spoon didn’t look as cheerful as usual, and sometimes her thoughts wandered. Gray thought she was simply tired from hard work. He blamed himself for not taking good enough care of her. Today was a good example: he should have let her stay home and rest, but he took her up the hill just because he was in a good mood. He still hadn’t learned to be considerate of other people.