Jane Higgins - The Bridge

Lanya stood in the doorway. She lifted her chin and watched me, wary.

I said, ‘You make a habit of creeping up on people and giving them heart failure?’

She gave half a smile and came two steps into the room. ‘You didn’t swear this time.’

Like a Citysider. No.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said. ‘Been exiled.’

‘I was. I’m like your knife wound. I don’t exist.’

She began to walk around the edge of the room, still watching me. She had a dancer’s walk, light on her feet. As she reached the far end the east window lit up with the rising sun. She stopped under that window, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the light. She glowed black-gold. For maybe a whole minute she stood motionless, her braids falling back, like she was soaking up the sun, recharging.

The east window was gold with three monks in brown robes holding red bibles and looking at rows and rows of black birds. Lanya opened her eyes and looked at it. ‘Birds,’ she said. ‘In a holy window. Why?’

‘It’s St Francis,’ I said. ‘Preaching.’

She turned to me. ‘To birds? How do you know that?’

I shrugged. ‘Just do.’

‘Well, why then?’ she said. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘No idea. Maybe they’ve got some repenting to do. Maybe they’ve been pecking holes in the grapes before the harvest, or shitting on some laundrywoman’s washing.’

She laughed. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘He’s saying it’s all about bread. Which gets their attention. But then he says it’s the bread of heaven that they need, and they’re thinking, no, thanks very much but if it’s all the same to him they’d rather have the bread left over from breakfast.’

She laughed again; then she stopped and said, ‘That makes you sad. Why?’

‘I knew a window like that once. It’s gone now.’

‘Bulldozed?’

‘Blown up.’

She nodded and resumed her walk around the walls. The room was quiet except for the drip of water into puddles, and still, except for the clouds of our breathing. She arrived in front of me. ‘You didn’t tell,’ she said.

‘At the hearing? They weren’t the sort of people I’d want to tell anything.’

‘Does Levkova know you’re still here?’

When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘If she’s hiding you she must have a good reason.’ She tilted her head and studied me. ‘I didn’t know you’d been ambushed. They told me after the hearing. I’m sorry. Are you hurt?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘What will you do now? Aren’t you going back to Gilgate?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. What about you?’

‘I’m not a Maker anymore. Just a plain person. So I’m joining a squad.’

‘To fight?’

‘Of course, to fight.’ She smiled and turned for the door. ‘I have to go to drill.’

I watched her go, then I realized she might help me. I called, ‘Wait! Will you do something for me?’

She came back into the sunlight. ‘I might. I owe you. What is it?’

‘My friend. Sina. She’s working in the infirmary. She might have heard I’ve been sent away. I want to let her know I’m still here.’

She stood back and did that little bow. ‘I’ll find her and tell her.’

‘Today?’

She nodded. ‘Today.’

‘Can you ask her to meet me here this time tomorrow? And can you not tell anyone else or Levkova will be sunk. And so will I. It has to be a secret.’

Her eyes lit up. ‘I’ll play.’

‘It’s not a game!’ But I was talking to her back. And then she was gone. I stood there a while longer wondering how much of a mistake I might have just made.

I was learning fast – if Levkova was caught hiding me, I wouldn’t be the only one in trouble. I don’t know if they’d cast her out into the snows, but I figured they might. Remnant were old-fashioned like that. She had told me that everything would be much stricter with Remnant running the Council. People who were caught stealing or fighting or trying to go over the bridge without permission – their whole family’d go to the back of the queue for medicines. Their rations could be cut to nothing for a week or a month so they’d have to beg from relatives and friends or people on the street. The worst offenders would be cast out and would have to leave with nothing to go to another bridge or south into the borderlands. And anyone caught helping, well, they got to go too.

I headed back to Levkova’s rooms. She was making tea and she put a mug of it in front of me. ‘Drink.’

When I’d finished, she said, ‘Now, tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Why you’ve been out all night when you have concussion, two cracked ribs, and I don’t know what other hurts.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m worried about my friend. I need to find her.’

‘What you need is sleep.’

‘No, but—’

‘Which is why the tea you’ve just drunk had a sleeping pill in it. Now go into that room and sleep.’

Which couldn’t really be argued with.

What happened next was maybe because the sleeping stuff made me kind of drunk. When I got to the door of Max’s room I turned back and said, ‘I’m sorry about your family.’

‘Ah.’ Her eyebrows rose and she smiled a sad smile. ‘Max has been talking.’ She touched something at her neck and that’s when I saw that she was wearing a talisman like the one the dead boy in the infirmary had worn. Like I had worn, for most of my life.

I said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Only if you put your head on a pillow straight afterwards.’

‘That talisman—’

‘This?’ She held it up. It was silver, like mine.

‘Why do you wear it?’

‘Hopeless, utopian optimism. I gave this one to Pia. And took it back from her when she was killed. There are, you know, too many parents wearing these nowadays. Why do you ask?’

I sat down at the table because the sleeping stuff was making it hard to stand up. ‘I had one once. My mother gave it to me.’

‘Well, well. You are full of surprises. But I’m pleased to hear that. Your mother wanted good things for you. You don’t have it anymore?’

I shook my head. ‘Someone took it. What d’you think my mother wanted for me?’

She took hers off and held it in her palm. ‘The Southside Charter: Not crescent, not cross, but blessing for all . They were utopian, our forebears. But look at us now, at each other’s throats. Each to their own god and their own Rule, but space at the heart of every Rule for mystery, for the unknown . That’s the Charter. I hope that’s what your mother wanted for you – to know that no one’s god, no one’s Rule, can be the whole.’

What my mother wanted for me. My mother.

Levkova put the talisman back round her neck. ‘Now go to bed. If you fall over here, you’ll be sleeping where you lie.’

I dreamed my mother’s voice, singing to me. When I woke up I couldn’t remember the words. Only that they were Breken.

The light was fading and the room was full of shadows. I lay on that lumpy mattress, shivering under a coarse blanket and the army coat, and my first thought was that I’d dreamed the conversation with Levkova. And my second thought was that I knew I hadn’t.

What do you do with that? With discovering your mother was Breken? Does that make you Breken too, even if you’ve grown up your whole life in the city? And what about her dying in the uprising in ‘87 – which side of the uprising was she on? And who was Frieda Kelleran, the woman who put me in Tornmoor? She must have had some clout to get me in. Or my father did. Whoever he was. Was he Breken too?

It was like finding a mistake at the beginning of a pages-long proof – a single mistake and the whole thing unravels and you’re back to square one, knowing nothing.