6.0

But even with a curious old woman who ate nothing but parboiled rice and who spent her days watching rice grow and her nights imagining the salmon swimming through the skyscrapers of the ravine, this would be the end of the story had there not been the child. On a bright Tuesday afternoon when MSN had declared that there was no news of note and had instead offered Bing searches of scantily clad movie stars, a strange woman walked toward the village.

Lines of exhaustion moved not only under her face, but under her arms where she carried a heavy bundle of child and under her stomach where she had not eaten for many weeks, and under her feet where she had walked countless thousands of miles on the edge of the ravine.

(For really, there was nothing other than this tiny village perched on the edge of the ravine for as far as you could walk without becoming so exhausted that you simply could not walk any longer. )