by Robin Hobb
In the pouring rain, she stooped down and pulled her boots off. Her bare feet would give her a better grip, and she had no desire for the water to pour inside her boots and ruin them. She clutched them to her chest and walked out onto the bridge. The wooden planks muttered and shuddered under her step. The water was cold as it rushed past her bare feet. Then suddenly it skipped up over the top of her foot, and on her next step, she found herself ankle deep.The water tugged at her and with one hand she snatched her skirts up out of its reach. She glanced back, but she was already in the middle of the bridge. As well go on as back.
Timbal took two more steps before the world bucked and lurched. For a moment, nothing made any sense. Then she realized that she was clinging to the bridge railing with one hand while clutching her precious boots to her chest with the other. The bridge was still there, under her bare feet, but she had lost her grip on her skirts. They tugged at her wetly as the water that was now knee-deep rushed past her. Her mind made sense of the tangle of lumber that loomed over her, pressed hard against the footbridge. The cart bridge upstream had given way, just as the fellow in the tavern had predicted. It had washed downstream, slammed into this bridge, and now other debris and the press of the flood waters was threatening to rip her bridge free of its supports and send it hurtling downstream. With her on it.
Or most likely, not on it, she realized, as timbers groaned and the bridge gave a lurch under her. She could not separate the thundering of her heart from the vibration of the bridge, nor the ringing in her ears from the roar of the water. “I cannot be this afraid,” she told herself sternly. “Not if I want to live.” And in that instant, she realized that she very much did want to live, Azen or none. The realization that she had asked dark El for death and the god had abruptly granted it to her shook her to her core. “NO!” she shouted above the harsh roar of the furious water. “I don’t want to die! I won’t die here!”
She flung her precious boots as hard as she could. The pouring rain obscured her vision but she thought they landed on the bank. Then, with both hands free to grip the shuddering railing, she began to lurch and sidle across the bridge toward the shore. She was a body’s length from the jutting stone support for the bridge when the wooden part tore free. She knew three seconds of a wild ride on a lurching raft of wood before it became merely a jumble of timber. It parted beneath her and she fell through it, into water thickened with forest debris and the broken jumble of planks and timbers the river had made of two bridges. She caught wildly at chunks of wood that turned under her, dousing her yet again. Her skirts caught on a tumbling snag. The roots bore her under, then up, then under as she frantically tried to breathe, scream, and tear her skirts from her body. Before Timbal could get her skirts free, the snag suddenly discarded her as abruptly as it had snatched at her. A floating plank slapped her, then spun away before she could catch at it. Flotsam that was close enough to bruise her floated tauntingly out of reach when she tried to cling to it.
The choking clog of debris that had smashed the bridge slowly dispersed.In the torrential downpour, she finally caught hold of a splintered section of bridge planks. When she tried to climb up on them, they shifted, dunking her again. She found a new grip and held on, her head barely above the water. Her existence narrowed to a single task. When there was air on her face, she took a breath. When there was not, she held it. When her chilled hands wearied, she clamped them more tightly, willing the pain to keep them awake enough to grip.
Darkness soon cloaked the river, but the rain and the push of the water did not ease. She shifted her grip, was dunked, nearly lost her plank, and then found a new hold with her elbow wedged between two of the boards. She had no breath to weep or cry for help. All she could do was cling and pray to Eda, mother Eda, that she would be carried to shore out of cruel El’s reach.
In the dark of night, her raft fetched up against something and stopped. She held to it in the darkness, glad to be still even as she dreaded that some larger snag might come with the current to slam into her. Once, she tried to drag herself up out of the water, but when she did so, the wood she clung to came loose and turned for a moment before once more halting. The rush of water against it now sheared up in a spray. Timbal averted her face from it and stayed as she was. She would wait for morning and light before she tried to move to a safer place. She pressed her elbow down into the crack between the planks and tried to stay conscious.
She did not think she slept, but there came a moment when she suddenly knew that dawn had come and passed before she was aware of it. The rain had lessened but not stopped, and the river still raged past her. But by the gray light of the overcast day, she could see that she and a great amount of branches, planks, and one dead sheep were all tangled into one large mass braced against a fallen tree that jutted out into the river. She did not shout for help. There was nothing but forested riverbank as far as she could see.
The arm Timbal had used as a brace was numb, and her other hand so cold it scarcely worked. Her legs dangled and tugged in the water that swirled past her. It took half a lifetime for her to work her numbed arm free. Slowly, she dragged her body up onto the tangle of timbers and wreckage. She lay there for a time, trying to decide if she was colder now that she was out of the water. She worked her ankles, trying to feel her feet, and moved her arm. When finally it tingled, she shrieked breathlessly at how much it hurt, until she remembered to give thanks to Eda for being able to free it at all.
Perhaps her prayer to the more kindly goddess of the fields angered sour El. She had lifted her head to try to decide her best path back to the riverbank over the packed debris when she saw what she had feared. A large chunk of the cartbridge had decided to join the rest of itself. It was moving down the river in a majestic chaos, rolling in slow splashing turns that sent gushes of white water shooting up. It was coming straight at her. It was unavoidable.
She scrambled up on the debris raft, slipped, fell between pieces of wreckage, and for one nightmare instant was trapped beneath it. Then she saw a slice of daylight and frantically clawed her way up into it. She got her head above water, hooked an arm over a tree trunk, and then just had time to see the bridge bearing down on her. “Damn you El!” she shrieked to the merciless sky. He’d taken everything from her, father—lover, even her precious blue boots. Taking her life would probably be the only act of mercy he ever committed.
Much later, she would wonder if she said those words aloud, or if a god did not need the words spoken to respond to them. The last thing El would do was to give mercy to anyone. By a superhuman effort, she pulled herself up on the floating junk just as the bridge hit it. Timbal saw it turn as it came, saw it crashing toward her, and then saw a blast of white light.
ADRENCHED WOMAN awoke on the bank of a river. Her wet hair was strewn across her face. Her clothes were waterlogged, her skirts tattered. She was barefoot. Blood was thick on her hands. It took her a little while to understand that a cut on her head was still seeping blood. And she could not recall who she was or how she had come to be there.
The sun had come out and a thin light warmed the air. She managed to stand, and then to limp. She followed the river downstream until she saw a bridge, then climbed up the bank, through a shallow edging of forest, and found a road. She followed it, staggering gamely along until a woman driving a donkey cart came by and gave her a ride.
She awoke later in a room at an inn. She gazed around her groggily, then lifted her hands to look at the heavy bandaging that wrapped one of her forearms. Her head was bound also, her hair cut away from one side of her skull. She could not remember who she was or how she had come to the inn. A girl came to her room, bringing her a simple meal on a tray. “You’re Timbal,” the girl told her. “You used to work here, but you left here months ago. Looks like you fell in the river, or maybe got beat up and left to die in the storm. But don’t you worry. You’re safe here, and with friends. The King’s Patrol has been looking for you for quite a while. They found your father’s wagon
and team, and the men who killed him. They had to sell off the team and wagon when they couldn’t find you, but the money they got for them has been waiting for you for a while now. So don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of you.”
It was all too much to take in. It took several long days for her to accept the past the innkeeper and his employees assigned to her. It took longer than that before she could cross the room without staggering sideways. Gissel, the pleasant girl who had been tending her, assured her that she had plenty of money to pay for her care, but Timbal soon insisted on coming down and resuming her tasks at the inn. The work seemed familiar and pleasant enough. Bits of her old life came back to her, and she fit them together as best she could. No one could tell her where she had gone after she left the inn’s employ, or how she had come back, and eventually she let that year of her life go. The money from her father’s team and wagon gave her a nice little nest egg, and she was able to add to it with her wages from the inn.
She cut the long hair on one side of her head to match the short curly crop that was rapidly covering the scar where the healer had stitched her scalp closed. Soon she could serve in the tavern again as well as cook in the kitchen. She made friends easily with the regulars and was a favorite with the King’s Patrol when they were in town. Her life, she decided, was good. The only time she became melancholy was when minstrels came to the inn to entertain, and even then, it was only certain old songs that brought tears to her eyes.
Three months after her accident, she was waiting tables on the evening that the good news arrived from upriver at Timberrock Keep. “Lord Just has an heir!” a young teamster announced loudly as he entered. Timbal was shocked at the roar of approval that went up. That night it seemed that everyone in the little town and surrounding farmsteads flocked into the inn to raise a mug to the wonderful tidings. Timbal was kept busy trotting back and forth from the kitchen to the hearth tables, and only learned in snatches of gossip from Gissel why the rejoicing was so raucous. It was no newborn child they celebrated; the people of Lord Just’s holdings had reluctantly given up the hope that their beloved but crippled lord could sire a child. Instead, they had lived in fear that his lands and holdings must be inherited by his cousin Lord Spindrift. All knew how he had already plunged his own inheritance into ruin and taken all his folk with it, enacting taxes no one could possibly pay and running up debts that would never be settled. The prospect of the reckless young noble becoming their lord was now at an end.
Lady Lucent had traveled to her home, taking with her a minstrel loyal to her and her husband, so that her adoption of her sister’s son might be witnessed and made legal before Lord Spindrift could mount an objection. To hear the teamster tell the tale, it had been a plot long in the making, with the minstrel sworn to secrecy and the lady herself begging on her knees that her sister would give up her youngest son to them. By all accounts, he was a goodand likely lad, open-faced, friendly, and an excellent horseman. All the folk at Timberrock Keep were rejoicing, and all who lived in Lord Just’s holdings could now know and share the good tidings.
Timbal rejoiced in the lively trade and good spirits that provoked such excellent tips that night. The names rang familiar in her ears, but of course they would; had not she worked at this very inn since before her accident? She was accustomed to names and bits of old news that jangled oddly in her mind and almost stirred a memory to the top.
So there was no reason for her melancholy to deepen over the days that followed. Yet it did. She awoke weeping in the dark of the night, felt a weariness that had no reason, and could not find a smile for anyone’s jest. She knew her life was good and nightly thanked Eda for blessing her. But, as she explained it to Gissel, “I cannot find my heart. I feel I have lost something, that I am missing something very important, and can know no peace until I find it.”
“You lost your father not that long ago,” Gissel ventured, but Timbal shook her head.
“I grieve him. I recall him, in flashes. His face seen by firelight, and how his hands clasped my shoulders, and even that he taught me to thank the goddess for every good fortune. No, Gissel. I recall enough of him to miss and mourn him. But there is something else. Something I had and I lost.”
“Tomorrow,” Gissel announced firmly, “we will tell my father we need a day off and we will walk up to Smithfield. It’s the next village on the river. We’ll visit my cousins, for I want you to meet Seck. I believe you’ll like each other, and he may be exactly the cure for whatever you’ve lost.”
Timbal was reluctant, but Gissel pestered her until she agreed. Her father agreed to give them both the day off, for trade was slower in winter. But he frowned at Gissel’s plan to visit her cousins, reminding her, “Seck has been seeing the farrier’s daughter. I heard he was quite taken with her.”
Gissel shrugged that off. “Perhaps he is, but I am not. And once he meets Timbal, he will likely forget all about scrawny Missa and her shrew’s tongue.”
They set out the next morning, catching a ride with a carter that Gissel knew. He was taking a load of late cabbages to Smithfield and would be happy to give them a ride back as well. Timbal sat on the tail of the cart while Gissel shared the seat with the carter, and soon divined that this was a ride that had been arranged well in advance of any favor that Gissel hoped to do for Timbal. He even kissed her before he set them down at her cousin’s house.
Her father’s gossip was correct. Seck was not even home that day, having gone to his sweetheart’s house to help her father repair a fence. Timbal found she didn’t care. The cousin’s house was a noisy place with several small children and an adorable new baby. The women there were as friendly as Gissel, and Seck or no Seck, the visit lifted Timbal’s spirits. She was reluctant to bid them farewell and lingered as long as she could. It was evening when they set out for the Smithfield inn where Gissel’s carter was going to pick them up for the ride home.
“Oh, and if I’d known, I’d have sent you on your way sooner, so you could have had a bit of music there, too,” Gissel’s cousin told her. “I’ve heard rumors of the minstrel playing at the inn. Tall and dark he is, and setting all the girls to swooning over his voice, but not a one of them will he look at! They say he mourns a lost lover, and always plays his last song to her memory.”
That was enough to pique the curiosity of both girls, and they hurried, shawls up against the light rain, until they came to the inn. Gissel’s carter was late, but they found a table near the back. Gissel’s cousin had been right. The inn was crowded with a mostly female population. The minstrel was repairing a harp string when they came in, his head bent over his work. “I’ll get us some cider while we wait for your carter,” Timbal offered, and Gissel declared, “He’s not ‘my’ carter. Not quite yet!”
“Oh, but he will be,” Timbal called over her shoulder and made her way through the throng to reach the tavern keeper.
The minstrel struck up while she was trying to get the man’s attention. The chords rang strangely familiar to her ears. She did not recall learning the song, but she knew it. It was about a warrior come home from his wandering too late. His love was lost to him, carried off by death. A strange prickling ran over her skin, lifting the hair on her scalp. Slowly she turned as he sang of his lost love, and her raven hair and her tiny hands. Then he sang of her blue boots.
Cider forgotten, she pushed her way slowly through the crowd, ignoring the unkind comments of those she jostled. She found him by the hearth, seated on a low stool, his harp leaned against his shoulder as he played. His fingers knew his strings, and as he played, his eyes rested only on the chair before him. Enthroned on the chair were a pair of blue boots. They were clean, but water stained. She knew them. Then suddenly she knew herself. She looked at the minstrel. Her eyes devoured him, and at the sight of him, a flood of memories thundered through her blood.
Azen did not see her. Not until she reached the chair and took the blue boots from the seat. Wordless and pale, he said nothing as she sat down and pull
ed them onto her feet. But when she stood, he was waiting for her. He was shaking as he embraced her. “I thought I had lost you!” he managed to say through the uproar of the crowd’s delighted response. “Gretcha told me you were dead. That they’d found your boots on the riverbank, that you’d thrown yourself in!”
“Gretcha lies about many things.”
“Yes. She does. Blue boots, you must never go away from me again.” He folded her close and held her tight.
“Eda willing, I never shall,” she promised him.
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