The Two Guardians of the Amber Bridge

The Amber Bridge was the only crossing for forty miles, and two guardians stood at its foot. They had been made in the same workshop, in the same year, out of the same grey stone.

Ferrum stood on the left. He knew the rule and he kept it, in every weather, without exception, and he was rightly famous for it.

Mira stood on the right. She knew the rule too. She also knew a thing Ferrum considered irrelevant: who had written it, and what had been happening in the world on the day they did.

The rule was one line long. None may cross the bridge who carries iron.

The girl with the key

One evening in the wet part of the year, a girl came down the road at a run. She was perhaps nine. She was carrying, on a string round her neck, a black iron key nearly as long as her forearm.

Her grandmother was ill on the far side, she said, and the key opened the medicine chest, and there was no other key and no other bridge.

Ferrum did not hesitate, because hesitating was not among the things he did. “None may cross who carries iron,” he said. “I am sorry. The rule is the rule.” And he stood across the way, and he was immovable, and he was entirely correct.

The rule is the rule, said the guardian of stone,and stone is a very good keeper.But who wrote the rule, and what did they fear,and would they have feared this creature?

What Mira asked

Mira turned her head, which she did rarely, and asked a question instead of giving an answer.

“Why iron, Ferrum?”

“Because the rule says iron.”

“That is what it says. I asked why.” And when he had no answer, she gave it. “It was written in the year of the border war. It was written to stop armed men crossing in the night. Iron meant swords. It has always meant swords.” She looked down at the girl, and at the key, and at the string it hung on. “It has never once meant this.”

Ferrum said that a rule with a hole in it is not a rule at all, and there is real weight in that, and Mira did not pretend otherwise.

She stood aside and let the girl run. Then she did the part that people forget when they tell this story: she took out the bridge ledger and wrote down the date, the girl’s name, the key, her reason, and her own name beneath it. And at first light she sent the page up to the magistrates, who were people, and who could be argued with, and who would have to answer for what they decided next.

The rule reads differently now. It is four lines instead of one, and the fourth line begins: Except where a guardian, giving her name and her reason, judges otherwise — which is a longer rule, and a slower one, and it has not put a single sword across the Amber Bridge.