Chapter 49: The Bridge

Brannoc sleeps in the old gatehouse when he stays at Greykeep.

Nobody gave it to him. He's been offered every guest room in the west wing, and every time he's thanked whoever offered and gone back to the gatehouse with his bedroll under his arm. It's a little stone room built into the thickness of the outer wall, over the arch of the castle gate, with one narrow window looking down the hill toward Havenreach and one looking in across the court. It has a cot and a chair and a brazier and a shelf, and nothing else. Corra sleeps there too, when she's in Greykeep. She brings things. A jar of rose hips on the shelf. A bunch of dried oak leaves over the door. A woven blanket the color of a beech wood in October.

I asked Brannoc once, when I was about eleven, why he didn't want a proper room.

"I like to sleep over a gate," he said. "Then if anything comes, it has to come through me first."

I thought about that for a long time. I still do.

* * *

Faelan went to find him on the third evening after the day with the map.

I know that because I was sent to fetch him back for supper, and Helena told me where he'd gone. "Gatehouse," she said, without looking around from the stove. "With his book. He's been working up to it since breakfast. Don't hurry him."

So I went across the court in the dusk, with the first stars coming out over the east wall and my breath smoking in the cold, and up the narrow stair inside the gate tower. And the door at the top was open, the way Brannoc always leaves it. And I stopped on the top step, just outside, because I could hear Faelan's voice, and I could hear what he was asking.

"Who was he?"

I didn't go in.

It didn't feel like listening at a door. It felt like coming to the edge of a firelit circle at night and stopping, because everyone inside it was very still, and if you stepped in, they'd look up.

So I stood on the top step, in the dark, and listened.

* * *

Brannoc was sitting on the cot with his elbows on his knees. Corra was in the chair by the brazier with her feet tucked up under her, in a long rust-colored dress with a leaf stuck in the hem. And Faelan was on the floor between them, cross-legged, with the green ledger open on his knees and his pen in his hand, and his enormous gray eyes on Brannoc's face.

He'd turned to a new page. I could see the heading from the door, in his enormous ten-year-old capitals.

FAELAN.

"You're named for him," said Brannoc. Not a question.

"I know," said Faelan. "Mother told me. She said he was a river god and he held a bridge. That's all. She said I should ask you. She said you were there." He hesitated. "If you don't want to, you can say no."

Brannoc didn't say anything for a long time.

He's thick, the way an old wall is thick, gray in the beard, with scarred hands and knuckles flattened from years of holding things that didn't want to be held. He was looking at those hands now, in the brazier light. Not at Faelan.

Corra, in her chair, reached across without a word and put her hand on his knee.

"I'll tell it," said Brannoc at last. "You should have it. You carry his name." He looked up. "But I'll tell it true. Not the way they tell it in the songs. The songs leave out the parts that matter."

"I want the true one," said Faelan.

"I know you do," said Brannoc. "That's why I'm telling you."

* * *

"It was the last year of the war," said Brannoc. "Before we'd ever met your father. Before Greykeep was Greykeep again. There were twelve of us. We called ourselves the Unbound. It was a stupid name. We were young and frightened and we thought a name would make us braver." He almost smiled. "It didn't. But we kept it."

"Twelve gods?" said Faelan, writing.

"Twelve gods. Wenhild cooked. Dun kept the horses. Corra made us stop after every fight and eat and talk about something that wasn't the war." He glanced at her. "She was right. She's always right. It's very tiring. And there was Faelan. God of rivers. Not a big river. Not the sea, or a great river with cities on it. A mountain river. Fast and cold and loud, the kind that comes down off the snow in spring and knocks your feet out from under you if you try to wade it. That's what he was like, too. Fast and loud and cold and very, very cheerful. He talked all the time. He sang off-key. He told the worst jokes I've ever heard, and he told every one of them three times, because he said a joke wasn't finished until it had been ruined."

Faelan wrote that down. THE WORST JOKES. THREE TIMES.

"We had a place," said Brannoc. "In the hills. An old fort on top of a tor. Carrow Tor, it was called. We kept people there. People we'd got out. Gods who'd run from Varrick, and mortals who'd run from his officers, and children. A lot of children." He was quiet for a moment. "And somebody told. We never knew who. Varrick's officers could take a name right out of your mouth, if they got close enough. So maybe it wasn't anybody's fault. But somebody told, and they came up the valley for us. Giants out of the south, twenty of them. And Varrick's binding officers. Forty, maybe more. With rods. And nets."

"Nets?" said Faelan.

"For catching gods," said Brannoc, very quietly.

Faelan stopped writing.

"There was a bridge," said Brannoc. "Below the tor. Stone. Narrow. Over Faelan's own river, as it happens, though that was luck. It was the only way down to the valley on the far side, where there were caves, and woods, and somewhere to hide. So we had to get everyone across. The children first. Then the ones who couldn't fight. Then the rest of us. And the giants were coming up the valley road, and the officers were coming through the trees, and somebody had to hold the bridge while we went."

He looked at his hands.

"I said I'd do it," he said. "I'm the god of the hold. It's what I'm for. I said I'd stand on that bridge and nothing would come across." He shook his head. "And Faelan laughed at me."

* * *

"He laughed?" said Faelan.

"He laughed." Brannoc almost smiled again. "He said, Brannoc, you great lump, you're the only one of us who can hold the line at the bridgehead when the officers come out of the trees. And they will come out of the trees, because that's what I'd do. He said, Besides, it's my river. It'll listen to me. I'll make it so loud they can't hear themselves think. And then he said, Go on. Get them across. Nobody's coming over this bridge while I'm on it." Brannoc stopped. "He said it the way you'd say I'll put the kettle on. As if it were nothing. As if it were the most ordinary thing in the world."

Corra's hand tightened on his knee.

"So I went," said Brannoc. "I went back fifty paces, to the bridgehead, because he was right, they did come out of the trees. And Corra stayed on the bridge behind him, pulling people across. Getting the little ones over. Carrying them, two at a time, when they were too frightened to walk." He looked at her. "She went back nine times."

"Eleven," said Corra.

"Eleven," said Brannoc. "And Faelan stood in the middle of that bridge, with the giants coming up the road and the officers coming through the trees, and he made his river stand up."

Faelan's pen was very still.

"I saw it from the bridgehead," said Brannoc. "Fifty paces back. The whole river. He lifted it right up out of its bed, the way you'd lift a sheet off a line, and stood it up on either side of the bridge like walls. White water. Taller than the giants. Roaring so loud you couldn't hear the officers shouting. The first giant who put his foot on the bridge, Faelan just flicked his hand, and the river came down on him like a fist and carried him half a mile downstream. The second one, the same. They stopped coming after that. The giants." He swallowed. "And every child we had got across that bridge. Every single one. And all the ones who couldn't fight. And Wenhild, and Dun with the horses, and the rest of us after them. Corra carried the last little girl across herself. The very last one. And Faelan was still standing in the middle of that bridge with his river up on both sides of him, singing."

"Singing?" said Faelan. His voice had gone very small.

"Off-key," said Corra softly. "Very loudly. A drinking song. A very rude one." She smiled a little, though her eyes were wet. "It was the only one he knew all the words to."

* * *

"And then the nets came," said Brannoc.

He said it flatly. The way you say a thing you've said to yourself so many times that the words have worn smooth.

"Out of the trees. On the far side. Where we'd sent everyone. We thought the officers were all on the road behind us, and they weren't. Some of them had gone around. Up the river, and across above the falls, and down through the woods on the other bank. Waiting." He shut his eyes. "They didn't go for the children. They didn't care about the children. They went for the gods."

"For Faelan," said Faelan.

"For Faelan first. He was the one holding the river. They threw the nets from behind him, from the far end of the bridge, where he wasn't looking, because he was looking at the giants. Iron nets. With something woven into them that I've never understood, that made a god heavy and slow and small. I saw them go over him. I saw the river fall." Brannoc's big scarred hands closed slowly into fists. "Both walls of it. All at once. Back into its bed. Like a held breath let go."

"And Corra turned around," said Corra quietly, "to help him."

"And Corra turned around to help him," said Brannoc, "and they took her too. And Dun, who'd come back for one of his horses. All three. Off the bridge. In the time it takes to say it." He looked at Faelan. "I was fifty paces away. I ran. I've never run so fast in my life before or since. And I couldn't reach them. Fifty paces." His voice cracked. "I've thought about those fifty paces every day since."

Faelan had stopped writing altogether. His pen was lying in the crease of the ledger, and his hands were flat on the page.

Corra looked at the boy on the floor for a long moment. Then she leaned forward in her chair.

"I'll tell the next part," she said gently. "It's mine."

* * *

"They took me south," said Corra. "Into Surtr's country. Into the burned forest. As payment, they told me. For the giants." She said it calmly. "I won't tell you about that. I'm the autumn, and it was a burned forest, and you can imagine. Every night I said Brannoc's name across the river. I thought if I kept saying it, he'd come."

"Did he?" said Faelan.

"He did," said Corra. "With Thor, and your father, and a great many others. He came across that river for me. Fifty paces were nothing to him, that night." She smiled at Brannoc. Then she looked back at Faelan. "And years later, after the war, Surtr came to me. On his own. With Julian beside him. He stood in front of me with his hands open and asked me to forgive him for the forest." She paused. "I made him wait a long time for the answer. But I gave it."

"That's why you went to the feast," said Faelan slowly. "On the bridge. At harvest."

"That's why I went to the feast," said Corra. "Because I'd said yes. And when you say yes to forgiving someone, you have to turn up to their feasts afterward. Otherwise it doesn't count." She sat back. "But Faelan and Dun didn't go to the forest. They went north. To Varrick's hall. To the cells underneath it."

The brazier ticked. Down in the court, somebody went past with a lantern, and the light swung up the stair wall and away again.

"Dun told us about it after," said Corra. "When he came home. The cells were in the very bottom of everything. No windows. No light. Just stone. Dun was in one, and Faelan was in the next. And Faelan talked to him through the wall. Every night. About the river. About the bridge. About the worst jokes." Her mouth trembled, very slightly. "About Brannoc."

"Three times each," said Brannoc roughly. "The jokes."

"Three times each," agreed Corra. "And then one night Varrick came down to the cells. And Dun heard him, through the wall, talking to Faelan. Very quietly. Very kindly. Dun couldn't hear what he said. He only heard Faelan stop answering." She looked down at her hands. "Varrick put his hand on Faelan's chest and took the river out of him. And kept it. The way he kept everything."

Nobody said anything.

I was holding on to the doorframe. I hadn't noticed when I'd started.

* * *

"I got him back," said Brannoc.

He'd lifted his head. He was looking at Faelan now, straight at him, with his scarred hands open on his knees.

"At the very end. In the throne room. When your father and your mother and Evelyn and Aurelia and all of us stood in front of Varrick's door and said no. Hollis lit her lamp at the edge of the wall, and the Keeper of Roads held it, and all the dead Varrick had kept behind his door started walking out toward it. Thousands of them. And Faelan was one of them." Brannoc's voice had gone very low. "I heard him. Under the floor. He said my name. He sounded so surprised."

"And you held on," said Faelan. A whisper.

"I put my hands on that floor," said Brannoc, "and I held on to him. And I pulled. Not him. He was already walking. I pulled his river. Out of Varrick. Out of all that cold. Varrick screamed. He'd never been hurt before. He didn't know it could happen." He swallowed. "And the river came. Running. Clean. It went with Faelan, past the wall, toward the lamp. And Faelan said, It's mine again. And then he said, He's so much smaller than I thought." Brannoc stopped. "And then he was past the lamp. And gone."

"And Brannoc wouldn't let go of the floor," said Corra. "Afterward. He didn't know how."

"She lifted my hands off it," said Brannoc. "One at a time."

He looked down at them now. At his own two hands, open on his knees.

"I'm the god of the hold," he said. "I close on something and I don't let go. That's what I am. And all my life I'd thought that was the best thing a god could be." He shook his head slowly. "Then I watched Faelan stand on a bridge with a whole river held up in his two hands. Holding it. Holding it so that everybody else could get across. Not to keep them. To let them go." He looked at Faelan. "There's two kinds of holding, boy. There's the kind that keeps. And there's the kind that holds a door open, or a bridge, or a river, so other people can get through to where they're going. And the second kind is the only kind that's worth anything at all."

On the top step, in the dark, I thought of Carol, sitting at the top of the north tower with her hands in her lap, afraid of what she'd kept.

I thought, I have to tell her this.

* * *

Faelan picked up his pen.

He didn't write anything for a long time. He just held it over the page. The three questions were already written there, in his enormous capitals, the way they are on every page. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? WHAT DO YOU DO? WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING? And under the first two, in the brazier light, he'd written very small, while Brannoc talked: FAELAN. HE WAS A RIVER. HE HELD A BRIDGE SO EVERYONE COULD GET ACROSS.

Under the third one, there was nothing.

"What was his favorite thing?" said Faelan.

Brannoc opened his mouth.

Then he shut it again.

I watched his face change. I watched him go back through all of it, the tor and the bridge and the year of fighting and the hundred nights by the fire with Faelan talking and singing and telling the worst jokes three times each. Looking for it. And not finding it.

"I don't know," said Brannoc.

He said it as though it had cost him something.

"I never asked him." He looked at Corra. "Did you?"

Corra shook her head slowly. Her eyes were very bright.

"We were at war," she said. "We never asked anybody anything. We just tried to keep them alive."

The little room was very quiet.

* * *

Then Faelan said, "Oh."

He said it the way Mirelle had said except, on the floor of the map room. Very quietly. As if something had come up to the surface in front of him, and he was trying not to frighten it.

He turned the pages of the ledger back. Fast. Past Moth, past Loki, past Damar. Past the god of lost buttons. All the way back nearly to the beginning, to one of the very first pages, where the ink was a different color and the capitals were even bigger and more wobbly, because he'd been younger when he wrote them.

He held the book up so they could see.

THE BEND IN THE RIVER BELOW HAVENREACH.

"I found it when I was eight," he said. "There's a place below the town where the river goes around a big flat rock, and the water goes slow, and it's very deep and green. I used to go and sit there. And one day I thought the water was looking at me." He swallowed. "So I asked it. Every hour. For three days. Mother thought I'd gone strange. And on the third day, it answered."

Brannoc was staring at the page.

"What did it say?" said Corra.

"It didn't say anything. It's very small. It's only a little god. It can't talk properly." Faelan turned the book back toward himself and read off the page, in a careful voice. "What is your name? It doesn't have one. What do you do? It goes around the rock. What is your favorite thing?" He stopped, and looked up at Brannoc. "When I said my name. The first time. On the third day. When I said Faelan. That's when it answered. It went all bright, and it made a sound like somebody laughing." He looked at the page. "I thought it just liked my name."

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

Then Brannoc stood up.

* * *

That was when he saw me, on the top step, with my hand on the doorframe.

He didn't say anything. He just looked at me for a long time, over Faelan's head, in the brazier light. Then he nodded, once, very slightly. The way you'd nod to someone who's come to the edge of the firelight and stopped.

"Get a lantern," he said. "We're going down to the river."

* * *

It's a long walk in the dark from the castle to the river below Havenreach. Down the hill road, through the town where the windows were all lit for supper, past the Lantern and Oar, and out along the towpath beyond the last houses, where the river runs wide and dark under the stars.

Nobody talked much. Faelan walked between Brannoc and Corra, holding the ledger against his chest. I walked behind with the lantern. Once, on the towpath, Faelan reached up without looking and took Brannoc's hand, and Brannoc's big scarred fingers closed around his very carefully, the way you'd close your hand around a bird.

The bend is a long way past the town. I'd never been there. There's a great flat rock, the size of a barn floor, sloping down into the water, and the river goes around it in a long slow curve, and the water under the rock is very deep and very green, even at night. You can feel it, standing on the rock. Something there. Very small. Very young. The way you can feel a sleeping cat in a dark room.

Faelan went down to the edge of the rock and knelt and put his hand in the water.

"It's me," he said. "Faelan."

The water went bright.

I don't know how else to say it. There was no moon. The lantern was behind us. But the green water under the rock lit up from inside, very faintly, the way a pond lights up when the sun comes out from behind a cloud, and a sound came up off the river that was exactly like somebody laughing. Somebody young. Somebody very, very cheerful.

Corra made a sound behind me and put her hand over her mouth.

Brannoc went down onto his knees on the rock beside Faelan.

He didn't say anything. He just put both his scarred hands into the river, flat, palms down, the way he'd put them on the floor of the throne room at the end of the war. And held still.

The water came up around his wrists.

I watched it. It came up, and up, around his hands, cold and green and bright, and it held on. It closed around his fingers, the way a child's hand closes around yours. It didn't pull. It didn't push. It just held. As though it had been waiting for a very long time for those particular hands.

"It's not him," said Brannoc. His voice was barely there. "It's not him. He went past the lamp. I heard him go." His shoulders were shaking. "But the river came back with him. I felt it. It came back clean, and it ran down every river there is, all the way to the sea. And some of it must have stopped here. Around this rock. Where it's slow." He bent his head. "And it remembers. Not him. Not all of him. Just..."

And from the water, very faint, came a sound.

A tune. Off-key. Very loud, for something so small. Going up where it should have gone down. A drinking song.

A very rude one.

Corra laughed out loud. She laughed, standing on the flat rock in the dark with her hand over her mouth and tears running down her face, and the leaf fell out of her hair and landed on the water and turned slowly around and around in the green light and went on down the river toward the sea.

* * *

Faelan had the ledger open on his knees. He'd got the pen out. His hand was shaking so badly he could hardly hold it.

"Brannoc," he said. "Can I ask it? For him? It might know."

Brannoc nodded. He didn't take his hands out of the water.

Faelan leaned over the edge of the rock, until his face was very close to the bright green river.

"Excuse me," he said. "You can say no. But do you know what Faelan's favorite thing was? The other Faelan. The river one. Who held the bridge."

The water went quiet.

The singing stopped. The light dimmed, a little, as if the river were thinking. And then, very slowly, all around Brannoc's two hands where they lay flat in the water, the river tightened. Closed. Held on. The way you'd hold on to somebody who'd just pulled you out of a flood when you were young and foolish and thought you could swim against the current.

And the light came up again, so bright that for a moment I could see every stone on the bottom, and every scar on Brannoc's hands, and the tears running into his beard.

"Oh," said Faelan.

He bent over the ledger. He wrote it down. It took him a long time, because his hand was shaking and his eyes were full, and I held the lantern up over his shoulder so he could see.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING?

WHEN BRANNOC HELD ON.

* * *

Brannoc didn't take his hands out of the river for a long time.

In the end it was Corra who knelt down behind him on the rock, and reached around him, and put her hands over his in the water. And lifted them out. One at a time. Very gently. The way she'd done once before, on the floor of a throne room, at the end of a war.

He let her.

And the water let go of him, softly, and went on around the rock, slow and deep and green and very faintly bright, the way it always had, and would.

We walked back up the hill a little before ten. Faelan fell asleep on Brannoc's back halfway up the market street, with the ledger buttoned inside his coat. At the castle gate, under the little stone room where he sleeps, Brannoc stopped.

"Thank you," he said to me. "For not coming in."

"I'm sorry I listened," I said.

"Don't be." He looked up at the dark window of the gatehouse. "You needed to hear it too. I saw your face. About the two kinds of holding." He hitched Faelan higher on his back. "Tell your sister."

"I will," I said.

Helena had kept four plates warm in the little kitchen. She didn't ask where we'd been. She just looked at Brannoc's wet sleeves, and Corra's face, and Faelan asleep, and me, and put the plates on the table, and went to put the kettle on.

And the next morning I went up the hundred and forty steps of the north tower before breakfast, and sat on the end of Carol's bed while she was still half asleep, and said her name, the whole thing, the way we do. And then I told her about the bridge.