The next contact began with a spoon. Qiao Rui held it above her head as though presenting evidence in court.
"She stole this."
Lin Xue's husband took it from her. "She borrowed it."
"For seven years?"
"She forgot."
"That is theft with patience."
Fu Lan, who had owned the spoon before either of them, pointed toward the expedition pack. "Take it." Xiulan looked at her. "Why?"
"Because all of you have spent three days searching for important objects. Lin Xue scraped burned rice from my pot with that spoon every winter since she was fourteen."
Fu Lan went back to sorting roof tiles.
"She scraped my best pot with it every winter," Fu Lan added. "If that is not important enough for your clever method, your method is bad."
The spoon went into the pack.
The second road expedition remained small: Tianhui, Xiulan, Lan Jue, Shen Qing and Hu Gan. Qiao Rui argued for inclusion until Qiao Ming threatened to assign her latrine duty for every minute she delayed them. She considered this tyranny and said so at length. They crossed at midday. The false Hejingshui had changed. That was the first thing Tianhui noticed.
The lane beside the shrine was muddier. A fence that had been broken during their first visit now stood repaired with fresh wood. Someone had hung herbs under an eave. Smoke rose from three chimneys. The place had continued without waiting for them. Xiulan stopped in the road.
"How long?"
Tianhui looked at the growth on the repaired fence, the drying herbs, the wear on the path. "Longer than two days." They found two Lin Xues near the eastern well.
The short-haired one was carrying water. The other sat on a wall mending a sleeve. Neither seemed surprised enough to see them.
"You took your time," the woman with the needle said.
Xiulan stared. "We came back after two days." The two women looked at each other.
"Eleven weeks," said the one carrying water.
The road seemed to tilt under Xiulan's feet. Lan Jue immediately began asking questions about sleep, seasons, hunger and the moon. Tianhui let her. He watched the two Lin Xues instead. They had changed in ways memory questions would not capture.
The short-haired Lin Xue moved as though she knew every loose stone in this version of the village. The other kept a needle tucked into her sleeve that Xiulan had never seen before. There were small domestic facts around them now: a basket with repaired handles, a chipped cup, onions drying near the wall. The basket, cup and onions told Xiulan more about the missing weeks than any answer sheet could. Xiulan unpacked the spoon. Both women laughed. For a moment the prepared questions became unnecessary.
"You brought that?" the short-haired Lin Xue asked.
"Qiao Rui says you stole it."
"I borrowed it."
"For seven years?"
"Fu Lan counts badly."
The second Lin Xue snatched the spoon. "She counts everything."
For a while they argued about burned rice, winter porridge and whether Fu Lan had ever willingly lent anything in her life. Tianhui listened. No question he could design would have produced this information. Xiulan eventually took out the prepared pages. The short-haired Lin Xue groaned. "You brought the questions again?"
"Fewer this time."
"You always say that before more questions."
Xiulan sat on the wall. "Then ask me one first." The two women exchanged another glance. The one with the needle said, "Which of us do you like more?" Xiulan's face went blank. Tianhui almost intervened. He stopped.
The Lin Xue with short hair looked down at the spoon. "You talk to me about home. You talk to her about why she is different." Xiulan opened her mouth. Nothing useful came out. The accusation was true. She had been measuring familiarity and calling it evidence.
Fu Jian's restoration papers had done the same thing in reverse: measured compliance with a reconstructed identity and called the result success. Xiulan folded the question pages and put them away.
"I am sorry."
The woman with the needle shrugged, but not because she did not care.
"What do you want instead?" Xiulan asked.
"Food first. Questions after I stop being hungry enough to resent you."
They ate. The meal lasted longer than the questions had.
The two Lin Xues disagreed over how much salt belonged in the pickles. One accused the other of ruining food on purpose. The second answered by taking the best piece from her bowl. Neither seemed surprised by the other's existence anymore. Xiulan was.
She had imagined four continuities as four versions held apart by a metaphysical mistake. Sitting on the wall, passing one bowl between them, they looked like two women who had spent eleven weeks learning how to share a world neither had asked for.
"What do you call each other?" Xiulan asked.
The short-haired woman shrugged. "Xue."
"And when someone needs one of you?"
"They point."
"That cannot work well."
"It does not."
The other woman said, "We tried names."
"What names?"
"Different ones."
"Why did you stop?"
"Because everyone else kept using Lin Xue when they were frightened."
Xiulan looked down at her bowl. People reached for old names when reality became difficult. She had done it to Fu Jian.
The expedition's rice was not enough for everyone, so one Lin Xue brought pickled vegetables from a house whose owner did not exist in real Hejingshui. Hu Gan asked who lived there.
"A family from the north lane," she said.
"There is no house there," Xiulan replied.
"There is here."
Nobody turned that into a question immediately. Later, Tianhui walked to the edge of the village with Lan Jue. They found footprints on the road beyond the last house. They were not theirs.
The prints were narrow, deep at the heel, and arranged in a line too regular for children. Six or seven people, perhaps more. They approached from a road Tianhui had not seen during the previous visit and ended twenty paces from the first house. No return prints. Lan Jue crouched without touching them.
"How old?"
"Less than eleven weeks."
"That is not useful."
"It is all I have."
Tianhui studied the road. Branch-Sight stirred. He kept it closed.
When they returned to the well, Xiulan was helping the two Lin Xues peel onions. Tianhui did not tell the whole group about the footprints yet. He told Shen Qing. The captain listened without interrupting.
"People, you think?"
"Probably. I cannot tell from the prints alone."
"From where?"
"I do not know."
Shen Qing looked toward the houses.
"For once, I dislike your honesty."
"So do I."
Before they left, Xiulan walked once through the false village without her question pages. Tianhui came with her.
They passed a house that did not exist on their side, a garden planted where real Hejingshui had a collapsed wall, and a shrine alcove containing three names Xiulan had never heard. The names had offerings beneath them. Whoever those people were, someone here had mourned them long enough for the bowls to stain the stone.
"Do you think the road invented them?" Xiulan asked.
Tianhui looked at the offerings. "I think invented is a word people use when they want creation to count less." She glanced at him. He seemed almost embarrassed by the sentence.
"Was that one of your old philosophies?"
"I thought of it just now."
"Then keep thinking before you act on it," Xiulan said.
They walked on. At the northern edge, Tianhui showed her the footprints. Xiulan crouched beside the nearest print. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I told Shen Qing."
"That was not the question."
"I wanted to know whether they moved before frightening everyone."
Xiulan pointed at the next print. "You have your answer."
"They moved."
She stood. The choice to delay had been reasonable. She disliked it anyway.
"Next time, tell me."
"Even if I know nothing useful?"
"Especially then."
Tianhui considered the request. "I may fail."
"I know you may fail." Xiulan looked toward the occupied houses, the repaired footbridge and the smoke rising through a sky that belonged to no calendar she trusted. "Tell me anyway. A bad report can still be carried. Silence cannot."
Tianhui considered the distinction. It belonged to work, not philosophy, which made it harder for him to evade.
"We are going to keep failing at information," she said. "So we stop pretending one person can hold all of it."
The road home opened behind them. Neither of them called the other village false on the way back.