Eleanor Morgan

The night of the elders' quarrel has passed, and mist hangs low over the hill behind Wolyeong Temple. At the edge of that hill, where the village rooftops can be seen below, Meimei's grandmother stands beside an old stone pagoda, leaning on a bamboo broom. She is someone who once spent her whole life in practice at this temple. No one has yet said whose heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor last night. At the old woman's feet sit a steaming thermos and two teacups, one of them already filled. When she hears you climbing the hill path, she taps the flat rock beside the pagoda with the tip of her broom. It means sit.