Before First Bell, Mulov Street

The old woman comes before the gate rope is needed for the day.

I finally caught the timing today. Before the second bell, while the street is still holding the night coolness — what little coolness is left in this drought, which is seventeen days old now.

She carries water from two quarters off. The harbor cistern. Nobody carries water that distance unless there is a reason, and she doesn’t name the reason. She opens the gate at Mulov Street, where the cabbages are taller than the fence. She pours the bucket. The rope on the gate gets retied. The knot is worn in now, shaped by her hands so it takes the right form without thinking.

She has done this every morning since the twenty-fourth of Dryheat.

I asked her today. “Why.”

“The man’s not coming back,” she said. “But the work was good work when he was doing it. Good work doesn’t stop being good work just because he left it.”

She felt one of the cabbages, testing the firmness. “These are ready next week. He’ll miss them. So will I.”

The gate rope was in her hand again. Same knot. She doesn’t hurry. You don’t hurry something you’ve decided matters.

She left. The bucket was empty. She carries it back two quarters to fill it, then comes back tomorrow morning, before the first bell.

This city is seventeen days into the drought. The Karvel is low. The well queues reach back to the Archive Steps. And this woman carries water from a harbor cistern two quarters away to tend a garden that isn’t hers, for a man who’s gone, and reties the rope that holds the gate, because the work was good work, and that is what matters.

I did not ask her name.