Rich Horton - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

It was dark and knobby, shiny with moisture, flat as a skate; and it went on forever—thirty feet long perhaps, or forty, twisting as it rose to expose its underside, or what he thought might be its underside. As Kit watched, the mist curled back from a flexing scaled wing of sorts; and then a patch that might have been a single eye or a field of eyes, or something altogether different; and then a mouth like the arc of the suspension chains. The mouth gaped open to show another arc, a curve of gum or cartilage or something else. The creature rolled and then sank and became a shadow, and then nothing as the mist closed over it and settled.

Kit had stopped walking when he saw it. He forced himself to move forward again. A Big One, or perhaps just a Medium-Large One; at this height it hadn’t seemed so big, or so frightening. Kit was surprised at the sadness he felt.

Farside was crammed with color and fairings, as well, but Kit could not find Rasali anywhere. He bought a tankard of rye beer, and went to find some place alone.

Once it became dark and the imperial representatives were safely tucked away for the night, the guards relaxed the rules and let their friends (and then any of the locals) on the bridge to look around them. People who had worked on the bridge had papers to cross without charge for the rest of their lives, but many others had watched it grow, and now they charmed or bribed or begged their way onto their bridge. Torches were forbidden because of the oil that protected the fish-skin ropes, but covered lamps were permitted, and from his place on the levee, Kit watched the lights move along the bridge, there and then hidden by the support ropes and deck, dim and inconstant as fireflies.

“Kit Meinem of Atyar.”

Kit stood and turned to the voice behind him. “Rasali Ferry of Farside.” She wore blue and white, and her feet were bare. She had pulled back her dark hair with a ribbon and her pale shoulders gleamed. She glowed under the moonlight like mist. He thought of touching her, kissing her; but they had not spoken since just after Valo’s death.

She stepped forward and took the mug from his hand, drank the lukewarm beer, and just like that, the world righted itself. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him.

He took her hand, and they sat on the cold grass, and looked out across the river. The bridge was a black net of arcs and lines, and behind it was the mist glowing blue-white in the light of the moons. After a moment, he asked, “Are you still Rasali Ferry, or will you take a new name?”

“I expect I’ll take a new one.” She half-turned in his arms so that he could see her face, her pale eyes. “And you? Are you still Kit Meinem, or do you become someone else? Kit Who Bridged the Mist? Kit Who Changed the World?”

“Names in the city do not mean the same thing,” Kit said absently, aware that he had said this before and not caring. “ Did I change the world?” He knew the answer already.

She looked at him for a moment, as if 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 stones will fall eventually, these cables—but the dream of crossing the mist, the dream of connection. Now that we know it can happen, it will always be here. My mother died, my grandfather. 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 Heart 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, fisherfolk preparing for the night’s 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, feeling stubble under his fingers, happy to skip that small ritual for a few days. “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 there. I’ll start midwinter maybe.”

“A mile,” Rasali said. “Can you do it?”

“I think so. I bridged this, didn’t I?” His gesture took in the beams, the slim stone tower overhead, the woman beside him. She smelled sweet and salty. “There are islands by Ulei, I’m told. Low ones. That’s the only reason it would be 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. “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, wasn’t it?” 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 else lives there?”

“Nothing’s on the other side,” Kit said. “There’s no crossing something without an end.”

“Everything can be crossed. Me, I think there is 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 fish-skin 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. 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 the 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.