Perfect Bridge

The little bridge over the stream had been a good bridge for two summers, and then one wet morning it stopped being a bridge and became some sticks in the water.

Nobody had jumped on it. Nobody had broken it. It had simply been a bridge for as long as it could manage, and then it wasn't.

Cheri got there first, because Cheri could see the stream from her tower and had noticed the shape of it change.

By the time the others arrived she had already measured the gap.

"Four steps," she said. "Four of mine. Six of Kiwi's. Eleven of Jackfroot's, and I would like everyone to know that I counted those twice."

"So what do we need?" said Kiwi.

Cheri had the answer ready. She had had the answer ready for a while, in the way that some people carry answers around in case a question turns up.

"Bamboo," she said. "One piece. It has to reach four of my steps, and it has to be this thick." She held up her hooves a little way apart. "Thinner than that and it bends. Bend is how bridges end up in the water."

So they went to the bamboo.

The bamboo grove at the elbow of the stream is tall and green and rustles like something whispering about you. Cheri walked into the middle of it with a length of vine knotted at exactly the right width, and began.

She measured a stalk. Too thin.

She measured the next one. Too thin.

She measured eleven stalks in a row, which took a while, and then she measured a very promising one twice, because it looked right, and it was not.

Kiwi wandered off to look at the bank. Taro sat down. Jackfroot ran to the far end of the grove to see if the bamboo was different there, and reported that it was not, and then ran back to say so again in case anyone had missed it.

The sun moved. Cheri went on measuring.

"Cheri," said Kiwi eventually, "we could start on the—"

"We can't start without the piece."

"Right," said Kiwi. "Right."

Because she was correct. That was the difficult part. Cheri was completely correct: one thin stalk over that stream would bend, and dip, and sit somebody in the water. The bridge she could see in her head was a good bridge, and she could not build a single part of it until the woods produced a stalk it had no intention of producing.

She measured stalk number forty. Too thin.

And then there was a great deal of crashing, and Tang came out of the grove sideways with his arms completely full.

He had not measured anything. He had grabbed. He had grabbed skinny ones, crooked ones, ones Cheri had personally rejected, and he had grabbed them because he wanted to get to the other side and he wanted to get there now.

He dumped the whole armful across the stream, bank to bank, in a rattling heap.

Then he jumped on it.

Everybody flinched.

The bundle went whump, and sank a little, and held.

Tang bounced twice on the middle of it, which is where a bridge is supposed to break, and it did not break.

"Huh," said Tang. He looked genuinely surprised. It is his most honest expression.

Cheri stared.

One stalk bends. She was right about that, and she was still right about it. She had simply never asked what twenty of them did when they were bent together.

She was already moving.

"How many," she said, "how many did you bring—" She counted the heap. She counted it again. She counted the ones still lying in the grass. "Nineteen. That is nineteen. Nineteen is not enough for six of us at once and I can tell you precisely how much it is not enough by."

"So we get more," said Tang, already gone.

They got more. Jackfroot ran them in armfuls. Kiwi cut the ends square. Cheri did the tying, because tying was the whole bridge now — she wound the vine in a spiral the length of the bundle, tight and even, the way you wrap a thing that is only strong when it agrees to be one thing.

She counted the stalks in out loud as they went. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.

At thirty-three she stopped.

"That's it," she said. "That's the number."

They all walked across together at the end, all six, on purpose, to see.

The bridge gave a little under them.

Cheri felt it come up through her feet, the small living dip of thirty-three thin things holding hands, and she stood very still in the middle of the stream with everyone piled around her, waiting to be upset about it.

She was not upset about it.

"It's supposed to do that," she announced.

Later she cut a flat piece of bamboo, wrote 33 on it in charcoal, and stuck it in the bank at the end of the bridge, where it stayed for years.

Nobody who crossed afterwards ever knew what the number meant.

Cheri knew.