An island at the edge of the East China Sea, where the land runs out and the prayers begin.
More than a thousand years ago, a monk from Japan set sail for home with a statue of Guanyin, the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world. Near this island the sea rose and would not let him pass. Each time he tried, the waves turned him back. So he left her here — and she is called, still, the Guanyin Who Would Not Leave.
In the caves along the shore, the tide breaks with a sound like chanting. Fishermen once listened to it before they put out to sea. Their wives climbed the hills before dawn, watched the horizon, and asked for only one thing: that the boats come home.
At first light the sun rises straight out of the water, and for a moment the whole sea turns the colour of sunstone.
This chapter is for safe passage, and for the ones you wait for.
