She looked at him for a moment as though trying to gauge his feelings. “Yes,” she said slowly after a moment. She turned her face up toward the loose strand of bobbing lights: “There’s your proof, as permanent as stone and sky.”
“‘Permanent as stone and sky,’” Kit repeated. “This afternoon—it flexes a lot, the bridge. There has to be a way to control it but it’s not engineered for that yet. Or lightning could strike it. There are a thousand things that could destroy it. It’s going to come down, Rasali. This year, next year, a hundred years from now, five hundred.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “All these people, they think it’s forever.”
“No, we don’t,” Rasali said. “Maybe Atyar does, but we know better here. Do you need to tell a Ferry that nothing will last? These cables will fail eventually, these stones will fall—but not the dream of crossing the mist, the dream of connection. Now that we know it can happen, it will always be here. My father died. My sister Rothiel. My brother Ster. Valo.” She stopped, swallowed. “Ferrys die, but there is always a Ferry to cross the mist. Bridges and ferryfolk, they are not so different, Kit.” She leaned forward, across the space between them, and they kissed.
“Are you off soon?”
Rasali and Kit had made love on the levee against the cold grass. They had crossed the bridge together under the sinking moons, walked back to The Deer’s Hart and bought more beer, the crowds thinner now, people gone home with their families or friends or lovers—the strangers from out of town bedding down in spare rooms, tents, anywhere they could. But Kit was too restless to sleep and he and Rasali ended up back by the mist, down on the dock. Morning was only a few hours away and the smaller moon had set. It was darker now and the mist had dimmed.
“In a few days,” Kit said, thinking of the trunks and bags packed tight and gathered in his room at The Fish: the portfolio, fatter now and stained with water, mist, dirt and sweat. Maybe it was time for a new one. “Back to the capital.”
There were lights on the opposite bank, fishers preparing for their work despite the fair, the bridge. Some things don’t change.
“Ah,” she said. They both had known this. It was no surprise. “What will you do there?”
Kit rubbed his face and felt stubble under his fingers. “Sleep for a hundred years. Then there’s another bridge they want, down at the mouth of the river, a place called Ulei. The mist’s nearly a mile wide. I’ll go down and look at the site and start working on a budget.”
“A mile,” Rasali said. “Can you do it?”
“I think so. I bridged this, didn’t I?” His gesture took in the bridge and the woman beside him. “Ulei is on an alluvial plain. There are some low islands. That’s the only reason it’s possible. So maybe a series of flat stone arches, one to the next. You? You’ll keep building boats?”
“No.” She leaned her head back and he felt her face against his ear. She smelled sweet and salty. “I don’t need to. I have a lot of money. The rest of the family can build boats but for me that was just what I did while I waited to cross the mist again.”
“You’ll miss it,” Kit said. It was not a question.
Her strong hand laid over his. “Mmm,” she said, a sound without implication.
“But it was the crossing that mattered to you,” Kit said, realizing it. “Just as with me, but in a different way.”
“Yes,” she said and after a pause: “So now I’m wondering. How big do the Big Ones get in the Mist Ocean? And what’s on the other side?”
“Nothing’s on the other side,” Kit said. “There’s no crossing something without an end.”
“Everything can be crossed. Of course it has an end. There’s a river of water deep under the Mist River, yes? And that water runs somewhere. And all the other rivers, all the lakes—they all drain somewhere. There’s a water ocean under the Mist Ocean and I wonder whether the mist ends somewhere out there, if it spreads out and vanishes and you find you are floating on water.”
“It’s a different element,” Kit said, turning the problem over. “So you would need a boat that works through mist, light enough with that broad belly and fishskin sheathing; but it would have to be deep-keeled enough for water.”
She nodded. “I want to take a coast-skimmer and refit it, find out what’s out there. Islands, Kit. Big Ones. Huge Ones. Another whole world maybe. I think I would like to be Rasali Ocean.”
“You will come to Ulei with me?” he said but he knew already. She would come, for a month or a season or a year or even longer, perhaps. They would sleep tumbled together in an inn very like The Fish or The Bitch, and when her boat was finished, she would sail across Ocean, and he would move on to the next bridge or road. Or he might return to the capital and a position at University. Or he might rest at last.
“I will come,” she said. “For a bit.”
Suddenly he felt a deep and powerful emotion in his chest: overwhelmed by everything that had happened or would happen in their lives, the changes to Nearside and Farside, the ferry’s ending, Valo’s death, the fact that she would leave him eventually or that he would leave her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said and leaned across to kiss him, her mouth warm with sunlight and life. “It is worth it, all of it.”
All those losses, but this one at least he could prevent.
“When the time comes,” he said: “When you sail. I will come with you.”
A fo ben, bid bont. To be a leader, be a bridge.
2012 NEBULA AWARDS WINNERS, NOMINEES, AND HONOREES
Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
The Kingdom of Gods, N. K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
“The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)
“Kiss Me Twice,” Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2011)
“Silently and Very Fast,” Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA Press; Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2011)
“The Ice Owl,” Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2011)
“The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary,” Ken Liu (Panverse Three, Panverse Publishing)
“With Unclean Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2011)
“What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)
“Fields of Gold,” Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse 4, Night Shade Books)
“Ray of Light,” Brad R. Torgersen (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2011)
“Sauerkraut Station,” Ferrett Steinmetz (GigaNotoSaurus, November 2011)