After his father died he offered incense every morning. Three sticks, into the censer, and he waited for them to burn down.
They always burned to one long and two short. The long one on the left.
He looked it up. There were a dozen readings and none of them agreed. So he started recording it instead: a photograph every morning at ten past seven.
Four months. The same every day.
Then one morning they burned level — all three the same height. He stood there a while, then emptied the ash.
The next day it was two long and one short. The short one in the middle.
The day after that, still the middle. Then the right. Then the middle again.
He started plotting the short stick's position on graph paper. One dot a day, thirty days.
The thirty dots did not make a line. They made a shape, and it took him a long time to recognise it, because you do not expect to see your own house.
It was the floor plan of the old place — main room, side room, kitchen, yard. The proportions were right.
The short stick fell in the same position every time it moved to the middle. Southeast corner of the yard.
There was a well there. It was filled in in 1998. He was there when they did it.