The River

The river runs in front of the castle at Déynáir. When the new students arrive, it is at least a hundred metres wide and so clear that it shines in the low light.

The River Test

The first thing the new students face is the river. They have to cross it without getting wet. Professor Haltora shows how: he sets his foot in the water, and the river draws back from him, so that he can walk down onto the bed between two walls of water. The other students follow him.

For Chris, something else happens. The water doesn’t part. It carries him, and he walks across on the surface, alone, while the others walk on the bed beneath him. That is what chapter 3 is named after, and the rumour follows him for the rest of the autumn.

A Shrinking River

By the door to the First-Year Room hangs a board on which someone writes the width of the river in chalk every morning. Nobody knows who. The first evening it says 109 metres, and the number falls day by day. By the end of November it is down to fifty. In December the river is down to ten metres, the banks are covered with ice that crunches underfoot, and it keeps shrinking towards the last day of the year. More about that under the winter solstice.

Cold Water

Chris winter-swam every morning long before he came to Déynáir, and he misses it. After three weeks without water he goes down to the river one early morning, where three older students stand breathing at the water’s edge. There is no ladder to hold on to, as there was at the bathing jetty in Løverodde. In return, the river answers. He can feel that many have stood here before him.

Retia turns up on the third morning, and Chris teaches her the cold with Hanne’s rule of counting to ten. It is the first time at Déynáir that he is the one who knows something. It becomes their regular morning.

Late in the third week Maka teaches him to sit with his feet in the water and listen to the river’s Dherak. Later Surain takes him down to the river at night, so that he can learn to listen instead of smelling.