After Pip and Tin' disappearance, a heavy veil descended over the village. People's voices quieted. Their faces hardened, closing themselves off against the sorrow and the worry. There was no trace of the boys, no indication where they had gone and what had happened.

The question nobody dared to ask was, Who took them?

Aunt Sybil kept a close eye on Sofia, and even Uncle Tomas spent less of his time in a drunken haze, although he didn't manage to abstain completely.

Meanwhile, Sofia started her studies under Aunt Sybil's strict gaze. Most of it was geography. There were thirty-two border villages, and thirty-two bridges leading over to the forbidden world of Nihon, or into their world, depending on from where one was looking. The maps depicted the villages as identical in size and shape, although Sofia couldn't imagine that being true.

"Are they really all the same size?"

"Why shouldn't they be?" was Aunt Sybil's answer.

"It seems strange. Places are just different. Their climate, vegetation, and so on."

"I'm sure they are not identical," Aunt Sybil said, not in the mood for a discussion. "But it must be helpful for the administration to create as many similarities as possible. It just makes things easier."

"I guess," Sofia replied, which was her answer to most of Aunt Sybil's unsatisfying explanations.

The maps themselves were drawn in a very simplistic manner. They cut the world in two parts, like two halves of a globe. The separation was as neat as if it had been drawn with a ruler.

When Sofia asked her aunt if that had been the case, she was scolded again.

"You're acting stupid, Sofia. The border is made up by the river. But what do you expect from maps? That they show you every tree and every bump on the ground?"

Yes, Sofia thought but didn't say it.

"It is an abstraction," Aunt Sybil added. "It is not meant to be anything else. After all, what use is there in knowing about the other villages?"

"Then why learn about them at all?"

"To teach you that you are a part of something bigger. You might look down on the notion, at your age, but it has helped me through many a lonely day to know that I am not alone in fulfilling my duty."

"Have you ever met another Guardian, except Tessina?"

"Of course not. How would that go? I am at my post, and they are at theirs."

Sofia nodded along. Truth be told, she liked her aunt's explanations even less than she liked the book, but it was so dreadfully boring that she kept jumping at every distraction that presented itself, no matter how unpromising.

In the very early mornings, she still managed to sneak out of the house to meet Orì, but she had to be careful to get back before anybody was up. Aunt Sybil had decided that she was too old to play outside anymore, and anyway, who knew what could happen.

That was the way Aunt Sybil said it. Who knows what could happen.

Sofia had still not told Orì that she was to be the next Guardian, but she had told her about Pip and Tin's disappearance. Orì had sat there quietly, not saying much about it, and not looking directly at Sofia.

"Do you think they might be in Nihon?" Sofia asked eventually.

Orì looked offended.

"In Nihon? They couldn't be."

"How do you know?" Sofia asked. "Do you know everything that happens in Nihon?"

"I don't know," Orì said. "But what would we do with your kind?"

She looked away, miffed.

"If we're not good enough for you, why do you keep coming here? Maybe you're a spy!"

At this, Orì burst into laughter, and as Sofia became aware that she wasn't laughing at her, but merely at the notion that she could be a spy, she joined in with her laughter.

"I would love to be a spy!" Orì said. "I would be a great spy!"

"You could be invisible!"

"Or change form!"

"But you'll need to hold it longer."

A few days before, Orì had shaped herself into a tree, her feet growing into roots on the dry surface of the rock, cracking it open. Her body had covered itself with a hard brown bark from the legs up, and her arms elongated into branches, her fingers growing and growing until small, heart-shaped leaves sprouted from them. Her face had disappeared in the crown of a young, green tree, but then she had started laughing, and the tree had shaken until Orì had broken out of it in full form, and, losing balance, had fallen into the water with a big splash.

Sofia had laughed until her stomach hurt, and when Orì had emerged, she had been laughing as well, until she had gotten the hiccups from swallowing too much water.

"Yesterday, I did it for almost five minutes," she had said when she had caught her breath. "You distracted me."

"I didn't do anything!"

"You were watching me!" Orì had said as if it was a reproach, yet unable to keep the look of pride from her face because Sofia had obviously been deeply impressed.

"Do you learn these things at your school?"

She was very curious about the school, and envious too, but Orì only spoke of it with anger, and therefore she didn't dare to ask many questions.

She knew that it was located many miles into the country, though Orì refused to tell her how she was able to cross the distance every morning and still be back in time before anybody noticed her departure. They had strict rules at the school, rules that Orì delighted in breaking, for apparently her family was important enough that she couldn't be sent away, but she still didn't want to be caught sneaking out.

"Pah!" Orì said, taking on a high and mighty look. "They don't teach us anything fun! It is all about concentration and self-control. As if they want us to make our minds smaller instead of larger."

"You could do with more self-control," Sofia teased. "Then you wouldn't have fallen into the water. I almost thought I would need to rescue you again."

"You didn't rescue me! You can't even breathe underwater. You have never seen how beautiful the ground looks on some days."

"You could teach me," Sofia said before she could stop herself. Orì wasn't a natural teacher. She preferred to show off what she could do, instead of focusing on somebody else.

Orì looked thoughtful at the request because she had only wanted to taunt Sofia, but she could see that it really pained her that she wasn't able to do all the things that she could.

"It's not like painting with your fingers," she said. "You'd need to grow gills."

"How do you do that?"

Orì shrugged.

"I just do. I guess there are some useful things I learn at school after all. About the natural world, and such. The more you know, the better you can make things appear. It's not enough to know what gills look like, you have to understand how they work. It's the same with the tree, you have to know everything about it for it to become real. Otherwise, it doesn't come out right."

Sofia thought about this. It made a lot of sense. But somehow... it also didn't.

"You said it is the imagination that limits the things you can do. Wouldn't it be enough to envision yourself breathing for it to work? And couldn't you be any kind of tree you wanted, if it exists in reality or not?"

Orì pulled a face.

"You don't understand this," she said, but she didn't look so sure.

"Yes, probably," Sofia said. Unlike Orì, she didn't want to fight all the time.

"I know so!" Orì said immediately. Then she smiled. "Let's paint."

It had become a kind of ritual for the girls, before parting ways, to paint the river in a myriad of colours, each time more elaborate and beautiful than the time before. By now, Sofia had learned how to let the colours flow out in rings so that they looked like large, expanding blossoms.

Only, in the beginning, she always had trouble getting it started, but Orì had learned to wait for her so that they could do it together.

*

They went on like this for weeks, each girl with her own secrets, her own evasive answers to certain questions. But there was a change taking place in Orì.

She became more affectionate towards Sofia, one time even bringing her a little gift. It was a square-shaped, solid black quartz that glittered in a different color on each side. Orì claimed to have found it on her way to the river, but the way she played it down told Sofia that this was a lie and that she had probably been planning to give it to Sofia for a while. Sofia took special care to thank Orì and to admire the stone, which was very beautiful indeed.

But on other days, Orì was fidgety and unfocused, and when Sofia asked her what was the matter, she answered in a mean and vicious manner, deriding Sofia for having "no idea what is going on in the world," but refusing to say anything else.

She would look around herself as if she had heard a noise and ask queer questions about Sofia's aunt. It almost seemed to Sofia that she knew that she was studying to become Guardian of the Bridge, but she still didn't dare to mention it. It felt like a betrayal, but she feared that the confession would mean the end of their friendship.

The thought of losing Orì and with her, the glimpses into the magic of Nihon, made Sofia feel like she was drowning on dry land. A grey shadow was encasing her future. She saw herself locked up in the tower of the house she had grown up in, forever confined to the same place, the same air, the same view.

Orì was the only thing that made the world open up.

Then, one morning, as Sofia came out, Orì was already waiting for her. She looked pale under her blue skin, but she waved at Sofia excitedly.

"You are late."

"Am I?"

"Actually, I don't know," Orì said. "I might be early. We're having a silly test later at school, so I can't stay that long."

"Did you prepare for it?"

"I don't have to prepare," Orì boasted. "It's so easy like it's for babies."

But she continued to talk about it, and Sofia listened intently. She knew that tests were stupid and irritating, but she wished that she could take it as well. It was a history test on the nine kingdoms of Nihon, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to answer any of the questions, no matter how easy they were. It saddened her.

"Pah! I grew up with the History of Nihon's Kingdoms. My brother has bored me silly with them from the moment I was born," Orì said.

"I'm sure you'll do just fine."

"Yes," Orì said, uncertain.

She opened her mouth to say something else when there was a sudden commotion behind her. She turned around before Sofia even became fully aware that something was going on.

There were five or six figures, clad in shadowy black as if they were not fully solid. Their shapes were uneven around the edges, changeable. They moved with an unbearable speed, like clouds rushing past the sun.

Orì shrieked as they came towards her.

Sofia stood like she was rooted to the spot. Her mouth was open but no sound emerged. Her hands reached out as if she could do anything, but the river widened in front of her, the sky became dark and stormy, and the water crashed against the shore with loud roaring as if trying to flood over.

The figures closed in on Orì. She looked panicked, her stare going from one to the next, unable to do anything, or to get away from them.

One of the men grabbed her, and then, the others did the same, and Orì screamed a scream that didn't travel through the air but stayed on the other side of the shore. Sofia couldn't hear it, but she could see it.

"Orì!" she shouted now, but the figures vanished as quickly as they had appeared, and Orì was gone with them.

Sofia remained standing there, dumbstruck. The river calmed down, the sky opened up again. A pretty meadow appeared on the other side as if deliberately concealing what had just happened.

Sofia didn't understand what had happened. She couldn't do anything, that was the worst of it, and she couldn't tell anybody.

She closed her eyes, and then she felt a sudden rush of air.

In front of her was Orì's shape, almost see-through as if it was made from the thinnest gauze. Her arms were outstretched, her face fearful. Sofia could see the concentration on her face, the strength it took for her to come this far. She was dissolving like ink in water.

"Help me," Orì's vanishing shape breathed.

And then she was gone.