Dolly was saying, ‘Yack come over. You to go over cluck click.’
Me to go—
The bridge was for me to go – over—
Whirr was pushing at me. Was he trying to herd me to the bridge? Or worse –? I tried to fight, and into my punching hands he thrust a piece of paper, folded once and with a seal of black wax.
I stared at it. For a minute the seal was all I could see. The wax had been stamped with the shape of – a wolf.
The dolls had all moved back, and now the monkeys were making less row. And like a fool I recalled, last thing last night, hearing Yazkool cursing away from the house stairs about dropping his second best beetle-box. So that had happened then, not because of some attack. As for the monkeys, the bridge would have scared them. Everything explained.
I broke the wax seal (it was a wolf with some sort of bird flying over it –?), undid the paper.
The writing was in blackest ink, and the language of the House, and of Nemian’s City, though some of the words were spelled another way; this didn’t look like mistakes. It said: ‘Greetings from the Rise. The men who brought you here have been paid and you may release them.’ (Fine chance, they hadn’t waited.) ‘The bridge is for your convenience. Cross at your pleasure. The slave will escort you. Until we meet – V.’
That was all.
‘What slave?’ I nervously asked. The least important question.
Then anyway I saw him, standing waiting in the courtyard below. A man with thick green hair.
At the House, there were fashions and even rituals that involved differently coloured hair or wigs. At first I thought the escort-slave was wearing a wig.
Before I left, I ate a mouthful of toast, swallowed a few sips of the green milkless tea. I had a bath and put on another dress. I brushed my hair. All this to waste time, to put off going. Also to see if it would be allowed.
Apparently it was. No one came to hurry me.
When I came out in the yard, the slave was still waiting, still just standing there, as if he hadn’t moved an inch.
He wasn’t mechanical. I kept wondering if he was. He was … odd.
I carried my WD and this book and pen, and a few things, underclothes, comb etc., in a bag I’d handily found in the closet. Put there to be handy for me?
Dolly, Bow and Whirr stood in the veranda, as if waving me off. So I waved. They didn’t wave back. Why would they?
It’d been no use asking any questions either.
As we walked down the uneven slope between the fig trees and palms, towards the white bridge, I tried questioning the slave.
‘What’s your name, please?’
Instant reply. ‘Grembilard,’ he said.
‘I’m Claidi,’ I said. At the House, or in the City, one didn’t speak to slaves like this, but what the hell.
‘Lady,’ however promptly said the slave.
‘No, not lady. Call me Claidi. Try it.’
‘Lady Claidi.’
That sounded ridiculous. But I let it go. Wanted to move on. ‘Who sent you for me?’
Then the slave said something I thought meant he was a doll, and his mechanism had gone funny, like Dolly’s and Whirr’s.
‘Could you repeat that?’
He did. I realized he’d put Prince on the front too, both times.
Was it a name? I tried it hesitantly over:
‘Prince – Venarion-yellow Kasmel—’
Obligingly Grembilard helped me.
‘Prince Venaryonillarkaslemidorus.’
‘oh.’
Then we came around a giant stand of blue blooms like lupins (eight feet tall) and there was the bridge.
I’d felt nervous. Now I felt Nervous.
‘Who is he?’ I demanded, stopping.
The slave stopped. ‘Prince Venaryonillarkaslemidorus.’
‘Yes, I know, but—’ Grembilard took my bag. I looked at it in his hands. Everything had been taken out of my hands.
The bridge was terrifying.
How it had anchored itself into the ground this side I couldn’t make out, but the earth was all displaced. The bridge looked solid. Immoveable. It was straight as a ruler, as it spanned the tremendous gulf. It was white as icing on a cake, with a lace-delicate rail that would come, once I stepped on the bridge, to just above the height of my waist – not very high. And it was narrow. Only wide enough for us to go single file. The distance from here to there was about a mile.
He walked in front. I was just supposed to follow. I followed.
At first I was afraid to look anywhere but at Grembilard’s back and peculiar, leafy hair. My legs shook. I could feel the distance rushing below, down and down.
But the bridge was if anything horribly solid. It didn’t even vibrate from our footsteps or the roar of the fall. Which got louder as we went on, and everything was slick with moisture, and then in places dry where somehow the fine spray didn’t come.
(The noise of the fall is always there, and I seem always to be hearing it suddenly for the first, as if I’ve only just noticed it, or it’s only just started, like a vast tap turned on in the cliff. But that’s because it’s constant, you just forget to hear it most of the time, hear other things above, below, around it.)
I think we were about halfway across when I thought I would look down.
The thing anyone – you, for example – would have said don’t do. But I kind of had to.
So I stopped and put my hands firmly on the little handrail. I looked straight out, then over.
For some moments I was simply so astonished I didn’t feel anything but – astonishment.
If the way across is a mile, it must be three miles, four miles, down.
There is a river at the bottom, a tiny shiny dark blue worm, coming and going through veils of spray. The fall reaches it,
