Red Fen, known to everyone who has ever shared a fence with him as old Fen, is an elder of the country around Brindle Hollow in the Greenfold. He is a farmer and hedge-keeper who has hauled rope, timber and fence-posts for most of a century, and he has a voice loud enough to carry across a river in flood. That voice was heard on the night the river rose.
Appearance
Fen is a broad, solid man in the late years of his life, still vigorous in the long Hearthkin way, with a deep chest, a slight stoop and big, knuckled hands. His wide, ruddy face is creased around the eyes from squinting into rain, and his pale blue eyes are shrewd under heavy brows. His hair and beard were once fox-red; they have faded to a rusty gray streaked with white, and he wears both thick and roughly cut. He dresses in a clay-brown wool coat patched at the elbows with bold, decorative stitching, a faded red neckcloth and a broad felt hat the rain has long since bent out of shape. A coil of old rope hangs from his shoulder, and his pockets fill up with whatever the paths offer: a reed knot, a pin, a stone, and once a silver survey stake.
What he believes
Fen loves the familiar valley: its old crossings, its known paths, the things that have stood long enough to be trusted. More than any bridge, he wants the valley to remain the valley's own, whatever stands or falls in it. He grieves loudly and does not pretend that losses do not matter. But he will not let the Crown decide what replaces what the river took. Fen is proof that holding on to the past and adapting to the present are not enemies.
His place in the story
When the Brindle Flood came and the whole vale stood at Brindle Bridge with ropes around the beams, Fen was the one crying "Hold the crossing", insisting the old oak had stood through ten floods before. Then the river brought down roots and rooftops, and Toman Reedwhistle cut the center stay so the bridge could go and the homes below could stand. At dawn the Crown surveyors arrived with their silver stakes. Fen did not sulk. He went out into the dark with the Quiet Paths, turned the markers east to west on Brindle Rise and made the west path disappear. He and Toman had stood on opposite sides at the bridge, and soon after they worked side by side in the night. What the sabotage made possible soon reached Mara Brambleheart.
Heard in: Before the River Takes Us, Ink Against the Hedge