The villagers fell. One by one, they dropped to their knees, their foreheads touching the dirt. The same people who had shoved Suyin aside, called her cursed, closed their doors, turned their backs. They knelt before her now, trembling, begging.
Suyin ignored them.
Her large brown eyes scanned the crowd. She found her son — the small boy, standing at the edge of the kneeling mass, his eyes wide, his face a mixture of confusion and awe. She descended. Her bare feet touched the dirt. She walked to her son, her thick body moving with a new, composed grace — the bearing of a cultivator, not a broken widow. She picked him up. He clung to her neck.
"Mother," the boy whispered. "You're glowing."
"I am, baby," she said. "Mama is strong now."
She looked toward the ridge. Toward the pond. Toward the figure standing there.
