9. I Love Bridges
I Love Bridges
Sammy
Nobody told me about the bridge.
I felt that was information that should have come up.
Somewhere between the map and the market and the gnome elder’s pine-and-honey tea, someone could have mentioned, Oh by the way, there's a rope bridge over a gorge, and it is exactly as terrifying as it sounds.
I would have appreciated the heads-up. I would have prepared.
Heck, I might have worn different boots.
Instead, I came around a bend in the path, and there it was.
It was not, objectively speaking, a dangerous bridge.
I could see that. It was well made with thick rope and solid planking, anchored to stone posts on both sides that looked like they had been there for a century and intended to be there for several more.
It spanned a gorge that was, if I was being honest about it, not catastrophically deep.
The river at the bottom was a thin blue thread, sparkling in the morning light, pleasant from up here.
Up here being the operative problem.
“ I don’t like this.”
Guruk came to stand beside me. “I can see that, my little human, but we must cross here.”
I sucked in a breath. “Yup, right. Got it.”
I did not move.
Berry, from Guruk’s shoulder, looked at me, then at the bridge, and then back at me. A wave of comfort hit me as they reached down to place a tiny paw on my head.
“Thank you,” I whispered, trying my hardest not to freak out.
“Sammy,” Guruk started cautiously as if speaking with a cornered animal. “Have you crossed many bridges?”
“Tons,” I said with false confidence. “All the time. I'm a big bridge person.”
He hummed, his voice dripping with doubt.
“Yup,” I inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled. “I love bridges. Heights are the best.”
“Of course.” He held my elbow.
“Let's go,” I said, shaking off his hand and walking forward before my nervous system could file an objection.
I made it four steps onto the bridge before my hand found the rope railing with a grip that was, in retrospect, not the grip of someone who loved bridges.
Not that high. Absolutely not that high. I kept my feet moving. A river wind would definitely not come up from below and shake the whole structure, so that it would do a thing that bridges should not do, which was move, anywhere close to the ground.
I looked straight ahead. Bile rose in my throat, but I refused to let it free. The far side of the bridge to safe, beautiful ground was perhaps forty steps away. Maybe thirty. That was nothing. Nothing at all.
The bridge swayed, oh so gently, in a gust.
“Totally not going to plunge to my death,” I said aloud.
“Tell me about the market,” Guruk said, from directly behind me.
I blinked. “What?”
“The market. The ember bread.” His voice was even, conversational, as though we were walking through the village square. “You said you would consider restructuring the journey to get more of it. What would that look like?”
I took a step. “I…,” my stomach plunged to my toes, but I kept my focus on Guruk’s question, “the detour would probably add two days minimum.”
“And would it be worth two days?”
Another step. The planking was solid under my feet. “The herb paste alone might justify one day. The bread itself, maybe one and a half.”
“So the full two is debatable.”
“The full two is a stretch,” I conceded, taking three more steps without thinking about them. “But if there were other things in the market I hadn’t gotten to yet,” I thought on it more, “I didn't finish the northern stalls.”
“What would you have looked for in the northern stalls?”
“Information, mostly. Different travelers come from the north. The sightings could,” I stopped. Not because of the bridge. Because Guruk’s hand had come to rest between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, and I had just realized I was halfway across.
I stared ahead. Twenty steps to the far side.
I glanced over my shoulder. Twenty steps to where we’d started.
“You did that on purpose,” I chided him, not daring to turn around.
“Did what?”
“The ember bread. You were distracting me.”
“I was having a conversation,” he said, entirely without guilt, “with my mate, whom I enjoy talking to.”
Okay, twenty steps. I could see the stone post on the far side, the rope wound around it in thick coils. The individual planks between here and there. I counted them.
“Keep talking,” I said.
Guruk’s voice lowered, and I could hear the amusement in it, “About the bread?”
“About anything.”
“The view from here is quite lovely,” he said, his hand still steady at my back.
“The river runs all the way down from the highland ridge. In the summer it runs fast, and you can hear it from the path. In autumn, it slows. By winter, it freezes in sections, and the ice catches the light in the mornings.” Two steps.
“I have always thought I would like to see it in winter with someone.”
Another step. “You’ve come here before?”
“Once. A long time ago. It was a,” he paused a heartbeat, “quieter time in my life. I came to see the falls, and I crossed this bridge both ways alone.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I don’t recommend that. It is significantly better with company.”
The stone post was ten steps away.
“Why was it quieter?” I asked, taking the last steps without counting them, and then my foot was on solid ground, and the post was under my hand, and the gorge was behind me, and I was on the other side.
I stood there for exactly two seconds.
Then I turned around and flung my arms around Guruk’s neck, which required him to duck considerably, and laughed in a way that was not quite dignified.
It didn’t need to be, because we were on the other side of the bridge on solid ground, and the gorge was behind us, and we were fine.
Also, my legs were shaking, and I may have needed the support.
“Okay,” I said, into his chest. “Okay.”
His arms came around me, easy and unhurried, as if this was exactly where he wanted to be. “You did well.”
“I was fine the whole time.”
“Of course.” He hugged me close.
“I was totally calm.” I rubbed my face into the tickling hairs of his chest. He had gone shirtless today, which was his habit at home, a quirk of his I very much appreciated.
“Completely,” he agreed.
I pulled back enough to look up at him. His expression was composed, warm, and free of the smugness it had every right to contain.
“Thank you,” I said. “For not making it a thing.”
He shrugged. “There was nothing to make a thing.”
He meant it. That was the part that got me every time. He just meant it.
Berry, who had relocated to a nearby bush with the tact of someone giving us space, let out a sudden, sharp sound.
I turned.
At the near side of the gorge—the side we’d come from, still visible through the gap in the trees—something moved.
It was there for all of three seconds. Long enough to see it clearly: a squat, compact body, long limbs folded close, a hooked nose and eyes that were enormous and black, reflecting the morning light like two dark coins.
It stood at the edge of the trees on the far bank, perfectly still, looking directly at us.
Then, it was gone. Not running, just gone. There and then not, the way a candle snuffed out.
The forest on the far side was exactly as it had been. Empty. Still.
My hand had found Guruk’s arm without my deciding to put it there.
“That was…,” I started.
“Yes," he answered.
“That was the…”
“Yes”
I stared at the far bank for a long moment. The squat body, the long limbs, the gigantic eyes. I had never seen the imp face-on before. But Guruk had told me what he’d seen, during the incident at Inara’s pen. The same event that had brought me here.
The imp had been there.
Guruk crouched to the ground, his attention fixed on something caught in the lower branches of the nearest tree. He worked it free carefully and stood, holding it up between two fingers.
A scrap of dark fabric. Small, palm-sized, torn at the edges. In its corner, a glint of metal, a clasp, gold, shaped like a hook.
I knew that clasp.
“Guruk.” My voice came out oddly even. “I've seen that before.”
“Yes,” he said.
“The night I arrived.” It was coming back in pieces, impressions more than images. “I was wearing a cloak. My character’s cloak from the game I’d been playing with my friends. When I woke up in your house it was gone, and you said you’d removed it, but you described it, you said there was a…”
“A gold clasp,” he said, turning it over once.
“I’ve been thinking about that cloak since the gnome village.
Since Pell described a small creature moving east at night.
” He folded the scrap and put it in his pocket.
“I believe the imp brought you through the veil. Or at minimum, was present when you came through. The cloak may have been,” he chose his next words with care, “taken from you in the process.”
I stared at him.
The meadow’s scorched grass. The shadow in the bracken on the valley path. Pell’s small night-traveler. The deputy at the map stall. The cloak scrap on the branch.
It was all the same thread.
“It’s been watching us,” I said, a certainty filling me. “Since before we left.”
“Since before that.” Guruk clenched his hands into fists. “I believe it was watching us before we left the village.”
Berry made a sound, not alarmed, exactly, but intent.
I reached into my pocket and closed my fingers around the eight-sided die.
Eight possible outcomes. Eight directions the game could go.
I had been treating this as a quest with a destination: find my friends, reach the falls, see what was there.
But quests had antagonists. I had known that logically since we’d established the deputy’s role, since Guruk had told me around the fire last night.
But seeing those eyes across the gorge, the deliberateness of that stillness.
The imp had looked at me. Not at Guruk. At me.
Whatever this was, it knew I was here. It had known since the beginning.
“I see now,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I expected. I squared my shoulders and turned east, toward the path, toward the falls. “Then let's not keep it waiting.”
Guruk fell into step beside me. I felt the solid weight of his presence without looking at him. We had agreed last night; no more carrying things alone.
“Guruk,” I said, after we had walked a minute in silence.
“Mm.”
“The waterfall. You said you’d been there before. Alone. When it was a quieter time.” I glanced up at him. “What changed?”
“Everything.” He stared down at me with a look that could only be described as reverence on his face. “You changed everything.”
I bit my lip. “It’s the same for me.”
“Neither of us is alone anymore, my heart.” He took my hand in his as we walked side by side.
“Never alone again.”
Berry chittered their agreement.
And we continued our journey to the falls, and whatever we’d find at the end of our quest.