Mandala lotus design with arrow stem

The guard at Kessel Mill made her unfold it on the counter. There was a lotus there, the petals stacked like the lids of a silver box, every one packed with ornaments finer than lace, and dots thick as spilt sand where the shadow should be. He turned it to the lamp and said, that is only a flower. She said, no, it is a door. The stem ran down the page, curled into two green swirls like a fiddle's scroll, and ended in a small arrow pointing back the way she had come, with three dots beneath it like rain that had not yet fallen.

He asked why a flower should point backwards. She told him a lotus grows out of the mud of a pond and still opens its whole face to the sky, and an arrow on a stem is only a reminder of where the mud is. Then she asked him what he would do with a woman who could draw a route so exact that a man could follow it through the reeds by moonlight. The guard was quiet a long while. Then he stamped the paper, pinned it inside his coat, and let her go, saying nothing about the lamp that had gone out behind him.

That is why the sluice-keepers on the far bank still cut lotus heads into their doorposts, and why the arrow always points at the water. Count the dots at the foot of the stem if you ever doubt it. Each one is a person who walked behind her through the reeds and came out dry on the other side. Now hush, I hear the boat knocking on the piles.