Chapter Three: The Street Written into Being

They followed the pinholes. Wherever the path crossed burned paper, old bones showed through the modern city. A shopping atrium became a stone bridge. An office elevator opened onto an abandoned stage. Four-hundred-year-old rain hung inside a subway tunnel. Pedestrians unconsciously avoided these sights, then forgot why. The closer they came to Intercalary Lane, the more Su remembered: her father's hand stained with cinnabar; ten bronze mirrors containing no reflections; officials behind a curtain saying, “What the people can forget, the city can survive.” Lin told her about the white-robed man's warning. “Only now?” she asked. “I needed to know whom he was protecting.” “And?”