At midnight, the chains go taut.
I stand on the bridge, father by my side, our shirts wet with sweat. The town holds its collective breath when the locks slam home, but the River flows on.
“What if it doesn’t happen?” I ask, peering down into the raging waters below.
“It’s what the books say,” father says. “Regular as the tide.”
I kick a stone at my feet, watch it fall the ten yards where it vanishes into the white foam without a sound.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“It has to. Our future depends on it.” Father clamps his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”
I nod, but what choice do I have? I white-knuckle the staff, the touch of mother’s tears cool on my neck as she hugged me for the last time. Shut herself inside after the ceremony, unable to watch her only son go to meet a God. 
“Yes,” I say, gaze locked on the horizon.
“My son. Warden.” His face beams with fatherly pride. “Gods, I wish I could be there, watching it all happen.”
He rubs a calloused hand through my hair, his big laugh gone soft. I offer a weak smile.
“Probably nothing to see,” I say.
“Maybe. All the same, you are Warden. Never forget that. Once a century, the River reverses course. And the Warden goes to meet it. After tonight, the village eats for a hundred years.”
“What if it rejects me?” I say. 
“It won’t,” he says, eyes going quiet. “The River is the source of everything. We live and die by it. ” He points a finger up to the sky where the twin moons shine so brilliant only the bravest of stars break through. “But the Upstreaming is both blessing and curse. And the River will have its due.”
He holds me tight to his barrel chest and he tells me that, one day, we will row down the River together.
An hour later, I am alone at the foot of the bridge. Below me, the great chains, some as thick as my arm, dangle above the frothing waves.
The River, that unceasing flow of life and death, stretches on to the horizon, dwindling to a line in the distance. What is there to see beyond this village with our daily struggle of crops and harvests and keeping warm in the winter?
I lean on the staff, eyes growing heavy. A fishing boat moored to a wooden dock below bobs in the churning water. In that boat I can find the River’s secrets. Row downstream over the horizon and past the last bend that feeds into the great salt sea.
With a snort, I slip forward, catch my footing on the edge of the bridge. Cursing, I dig the sleep out of my eyes with the heel of a hand. Staff planted firm on the bridge, I lean over the side and hold my breath.
Except for puddles filled with moonlight and fish flopping on the ground as they drown in the air, the channel is empty. The once-ceaseless roar of cascading water is silent. 
Mouth wide, I raise my gaze back to the horizon. There, a black-silvery mass swells like a mountain rising from the deep. In a thunderous rush, the uncounted miles of the River entire shoots under me, rattling the bridge with seismic force. The great chains burst in an explosion of steel and I fall to my knees as the bridge collapses into the deluge below. 
Eyes shut, ears plugged against the crush in my ears, I shudder against the power surging in the earth.
Was this the power of a God?
Then, all at once, it stops. Trembling hands gripping the staff, I slowly open my eyes. 
The River continues its upstream journey, following bend after bend toward the mountains, but all I see, standing on the bed below with the water parting with a word of command, is a figure. Human-like but not human. No eyes to see. No mouth to speak. No hands to grasp. But the figure regards me soundlessly from the bottom of the flow.
The books say nothing about this.
“I…” I stammer, trying to catch my breath, “…am Warden of the River.”
The figure cocks its overly long neck then, in a burst of liquid fire, launches itself onto the remains of the bridge.
I cower back, staff clasped before me.
The figure—this God—immensely tall, features shimmering like oil on water, leans toward me. It reaches out a sort of hand, touches me on the knee. Cold spring water soaks into my britches, the taste of salt in my mouth.
The figure gestures as if trying to say something, but it was like talking to the sea. Life was there, but impossible to understand.
Life for life. That is what it means to be Warden. Or so the books say.
I sit up and reach out a trembling hand. The figure hesitates as if in contemplation, twin moonlight shining through its translucent body. Then, with a shock of being tossed into deep winter water, it lunges.
My screams are cut as water fills my lungs. 
The staff slips from my fingers as I fall from the bridge, broken chains hanging slack as the water rushes up to meet me.
An explosion of life envelops me as I hit the water. Every sensation, every tiny movement along twisting miles flows through me. I am the trout in mountain lakes, the wheat in summer, the woman fetching water for supper. The connectedness of life from the mountains to the sea surges in my mind in this liquid embrace.
The knowledge is dizzying, and I want more.
I float to the surface, look back at the bridge, see the God pick up the staff with human hands, grip it with human fingers, kiss it with human lips. Wearing my skin, it holds up the staff. Not in defiance, nor in victory, but in farewell.
I try to raise a hand, but I am the River, and I only flow on. Past the line of the horizon, round the bend, and join my consciousness with the great salt sea in a rush of water.