Free Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey Page B

body, nourished by his sweat and blood. He felt neither sleeping nor eating had ever been so rewarding. He savored each meal, each collapse into bed, but looked forward even more to the point when these mere physical needs would be satisfied and he could resume his labor.
    Penny visited occasionally, though she kept her distance. She sat on the river bank and watched the easy way he worked, a body operating in perfect synchronization with an alert and active mind, reminiscent of those first heroes they had once admired together.
    It took Samuel nearly six days to repair the two bridges. Cutting the fence poles into planks alone took almost five. Once the planks were ready, he raised each half from where it dangled in the water to align the walkways. On more than one occasion, a half-bridge collapsed back into the river and he had to raise it up once more. He used the edge of the broken latch to pry up nails from the first, third and fifth bridges, doing his best to take only those nails which held broken planks, so the basic structures of these bridges would remain more or less intact. With these recovered nails, Samuel affixed his hand-cut planks to the bridges using a large rock as a rudimentary hammer.
    The repaired bridges were imperfect at best, yet quite impressive given Samuel’s relative lack of tools and building experience. The new planks stuck out haphazardly on either side of the bridges, and though he had tried to chisel away most of the splinters with the broken latch, they were still considerably rougher than the originals. Yet the bridges held. Samuel walked over them several times, rolled and carried fence poles across, even jumped up and down in the middles, and still they remained intact. Late one morning, more than a week since the day he had started this project, the bridges were complete. Samuel leaned against a tree along the river bank and rested. He tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, knowing the other colonists had grown wary of his presence, yet he felt almost giddy with excitement as he waited for the first person to cross his bridge.
    After about an hour, a middle-aged woman approached, leading a child by the hand. She stopped at the edge of the river, as if suddenly recalling the bridges had been broken. But the child, not sensing anything was amiss, slipped from his caretaker’s grasp and continued straight onto the bridge. The woman returned to her senses and let out a short, choked yelp. She glanced around, then stepped forward cautiously. By now, the child was halfway across and had scampered well beyond the newly repaired middle section by the time the woman caught up with him. She lifted the child in her arms, and only once she had reassured herself of his safety did she dare look around her and observe that the bridge was intact, that she had crossed beyond the halfway point of the river and could continue safely to the other side. She did so now, bearing the child in her arms, and looking furtively about her once she reached the other side before disappearing behind the nearest hall. The bells sounded and Samuel realized he was starving. His legs felt light and fresh as he stood and set off toward the nearest hall for the midday meal.

XII
    S amuel forgot about the piece of paper he had discovered at the broken bridge until a few days later. He had carried it with him in the pocket of his tunic ever since he found it, along with the broken window latch that was now a bit duller from so much use. It was raining. He sat cross-legged on the bed he had slept in the night before as the thick drops streaked the windows of the sleeping hall. Feeling rather bored, he reached into his pocket and dug out the now-crumpled scrap.
    The paper—the first sample he had ever encountered of such a material—was tough and fibrous, similar to papyrus, but not as crisp. The picture was scratched on one side in broad, mottled, black lines. The other side was blank. Two of the edges were perfectly