The dry season

The northeast wind has come at last, and with it a dry, bright cold I did not expect this close to the equator. Paper dries in minutes. My paints crack in the tin.

The captain says this is the wind that carried the galleons home. It smells of salt and cut grass, like the stone houses I am told stand at the far north of the islands, their roofs tied down against it. I wrote the smell down before I knew the place.

In the mornings the deck is cold enough to see your breath, and the cook's coffee tastes better than anything I drank in Hội An. Pine, smoke, a sweetness under it.

I keep thinking of the tea terraces above Malacca, mist lying in the hollows at dawn. Everything is clearer in the dry season, the captain says, and he is right about most things.