The current was so powerful at the bridge's location, which was also where the riverbed was narrowest, that even the heaviest stones had rolled dozens of metres downstream.
"That's what they call the Venturi effect," Hichy saw fit to explain to his sister. "When a channel narrows, it causes an increase in the speed of the water. It works with wind too."
"Thank you for those details, mister professor," Inata mocked. "In the meantime, that changes nothing about the fact that the task is harder than I had imagined."
"See! I was absolutely right to worry about your stupid idea."
Even manipulating matter with their magical powers, they still had to fight against the elements to bring the rock blocks back to the surface and carry them toward themselves. If it was not exhausting for their muscles, the work remained exhausting for their minds. They could feel the mass of each stone in the deepest part of their beings, and they might have sprained their brains if such a thing had been possible. One by one, they wore themselves out gathering every stone of that immense three-dimensional puzzle. That backbreaking work occupied them for several hours, and when they had finished, Hichy felt only more despair.
"It's impossible to know where each block goes," the boy lamented. "We'll never make it in time!"
"There's no need to put them back in exactly the same place. The only thing that matters is that the bridge holds."
"Oh, because you know something about bridge construction, do you? How many bridges have you built in your life? This isn't something you improvise, and certainly not in a single night. I think we'd better give up right now. Too bad about the gold coins."
"I've never built a bridge, but I know how to observe things, and we understand matter. You'd do better to help me instead of whining like some poor little lapdog to his mummy. Just do what you do with your Kapla blocks."
The bricks of rock gradually piled up one atop the other. To cement them, the twins devised a mortar made of clay and sand. The pillars rose little by little on either side of the river, but the serious part was only just beginning. The hardest thing was ensuring that the two sides met without the central arch collapsing.
"I'll hold everything in place with my power while you finish setting it all up," Inata said.
"It's too heavy for you! You're going to break your back... I mean your mind. You're going to get a brain lumbago!"
"That way I can become as stupid as you are."
"You already are, and..."
The first rays of the sun interrupted the twins' bickering. They had barely half an hour left before daylight came. They were not going to fail so near the goal. Inata sat cross-legged in a Buddha-like posture so as to concentrate as much as possible. Then she suspended the stones above the centre of the raging river. The effort was so intense that she trembled all over while Hichy placed the stones as best he could and made the joints. Even as he hurried, he had to make sure the surface of the structure would be smooth enough for carts.
He finished just as the sound of the first hooves began to draw near, as the bridge keeper came lumbering up on foot, and as Inata lost consciousness. The poor girl had not withstood the insane pressure that had rested on her shoulders, figuratively of course, but also literally if one accepts that magic is a physical extension of human capacities.
The fat man might have eaten his cap for how stunned, astonished, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, stupefied, speechless, and thunderstruck he was by what he saw. Only an intervention by the Celestial forces could explain such a miracle, and he did not for a single second imagine that those scrawny children had accomplished such a feat. Be that as it may, he was quite prepared to give up on understanding it. The day's takings promised to be plentiful, and such a rapid repair was well worth the two hundred gold coins he had promised. He would recoup his losses in less than three months, that is to say in barely a quarter of the time it would have taken to rebuild the structure. He removed the barrier blocking access to the bridge so as to welcome, and above all charge, the first travellers coming forward.
"No! Absolutely not!" Hichy objected while his sister slowly came back to her senses.
"What do you mean, no? You mean your bridge doesn't hold?"
"Yes, it will hold, but it doesn't hold yet. The joints aren't dry."
"Then you've lost your bet!" he exclaimed slyly.
"Oh really? We bet that the bridge would be repaired, not that it would be dry and usable immediately. You owe us two hundred gold coins."
"No way..."
While the fat slob was trying to entangle Hichy in the most twisted possible arguments, Inata had got back up and rejoined her brother. She fixed her gaze on the keeper, who immediately began to sweat profusely. The man's eyeballs turned painful, and veins reddened his eyes, which were on the verge of bursting.
"Stop!" Hichy whispered to her. "We'll get noticed."
The bridge keeper's sight blurred, and he capitulated before going completely blind.
"All right, all right. You deserve one hundred gold coins," he said, panting.
"Two hundred," the young woman replied coldly.
"One hundred and fifty."
"Two hundred."
"One hundred and ninety, to cover today's loss of earnings."
"Two hundred, or we'll put the bridge back exactly the way we found it."
"Ow! What's happening? My eyes! Fine, two hundred. You've won."
"Very well, give us the money!" Inata ordered him.
"Give it to you... You really thought that... Good grief, that's too funny!" exclaimed that huge mass of fat, rubbing his eyes. "You may not have come from the moon, but you did come from Mars. You don't even know that money has been entirely digital for more than twenty years? Where do you come from? Some house lost in a forest with Snow White and the seven dwarfs? The money is on your account, right in front of your eyes."
GP = 200
"In the end, I think you should have made his eyeballs burst," Hichy said to his sister as they walked away.
The twins retrieved Darok, who ran circles around them with his tongue lolling, and Melio, who was conscientiously licking himself. The smaller one climbed onto the larger one, and they plunged into the river at the ford. The little ginger cat certainly tried to bite and scratch his master, who was holding him as high above himself as possible, but they managed to cross without trouble. Only the wolf was delighted to splash around in the freezing water, as if everything were a game and life could suffer no annoyance whatsoever. They hid a little farther away and dried themselves in a fraction of a second by the most effective method imaginable, though one mastered only by them.
The twins collapsed a little farther on, dead tired and exhausted by their sleepless night. Though tormented by hunger, Hichy did not even have the courage to go looking for food, and their two four-legged companions were granted a whole day of freedom, chasing hares, birds, and rodents.
Only the following day, after an entire day and night of sleep, did they reach the nearest town. It was not very large; it contained barely more than three thousand souls. And yet it seemed gigantic to them, who had never seen such a concentration of human beings. Melio had taken refuge in his master's arms, but Hichy was even more terrified than the little animal. Darok and Inata, for their part, darted merrily from one spot to another, constantly discovering new interesting things.
"Hey, you!"
Inata froze. In the end it had not taken them long to fall into the claws of the Celestial forces. She would have thought it might last longer. The guard approached her with a threatening look.
"Has no one ever told you that canids have to be kept on a leash? I can see on the register that you are responsible for this beast. The fine is ten gold coins for a first offence, one hundred in case of repeat offence, and ten days of bodily immobilisation if that is not enough."
"Please forgive me," the young woman replied. "I didn't know. But I would like..."
Inata did not have time to finish her sentence, the Celestial officer having already turned on his heel.
GP = 190
Their first purchase was a lovely red leash for Darok from a druggist. The wolf jumped for joy when Inata slipped it around his neck, under the condescending gaze of Melio, who saw no reason to rejoice at such a restriction of freedom. As a cat and a feline, he was all the prouder of his privilege to come and go as he pleased and submit to no authority. The one who was called his owner was in truth master of nothing at all, and it was only because he had accepted it that he had bonded with that adolescent human.
Those two-legged mammals were swarming everywhere, moreover. Most had big pig noses, and few had fine ones, which suggested that this was a second-rate town. The looks were just as contemptuous, but the twins had become used to them or, at the very least, had learned to ignore those presumptuous beings. Those people who thought themselves superior spoke too loudly, threw their rubbish into the streets, urinated directly on the ground, and belched after biting into a clove of garlic.
"Grrrrowl..." Hichy's stomach growled.
"You're right," Inata said. "Let's buy ourselves something good and filling to eat."
"You mean like one of those little children with pig noses?"
"How horrible! No, an animal like..."
Darok looked at his new mistress with a questioning expression, but she stopped herself in time.