Drämmen

• The word: Swedish drämma means to slam down hard, to bring something down with one heavy blow (drämma näven i bordet, to slam your fist on the table). En dräm is a heavy whack; drämmen is the slam. The word sounds like what it means.
• One line: Drämmen catches what the Null is taking and slams it back into the count with one heavy fist that has never opened, then counts it home, one beat at a time.

• Build & height: 2.2 m and bloated: waterlogged deadwood in the shape of a man, swollen wide at the chest and belly, with heavy, slow arms. Bigger and wetter after every return (ch. 202, 208).
• Face: a swollen driftwood face, half collapsed on one side like rotted timber. His mouth hangs open and water pours out of it when he talks. More of it sags loose after each return ("half his face sloughed loose", ch. 208).
• Hair: black weed, long and slimy, hanging over his face and shoulders.
• Eyes: two pale pits crusted with barnacles, with a dim sea-green light deep inside, like something seen at the bottom of a harbour. It glows brighter when he drags something back (ch. 208).
• Skin & burl-mark: grey-green wet wood, covered in barnacles and black weed. No sin (Scarwood). His burl is a drowned knot on his chest, thick with barnacles, glowing faint sea-green when he drags something back, and pulsing with each beat he counts (ch. 396).
• Hands: "a hand the size of a hatch-cover" (ch. 396). The left does the holding and hauling (Bakasura in his left arm, ch. 201; the boy against his chest, ch. 396). The right is the fist.
• Clothing, layer by layer: none. Strands of old net, a rope-end, a rusted chain from some lost ship, all grown into him.
• Signature item: his right fist, which is always closed. He has never once opened it. Barnacled, held against his chest. It is also what he slams with.
• Movement: slow, heavy, lurching like a drowned thing walking up a beach. The slam: the one fast thing he does. The fist comes down in a single panel, all his drowned weight behind it, water bursting out from under it.
• Voice: gargled and far away, as if spoken from the bottom of a lake. Short, broken sentences ("…Half in. … Can still drag half. … Takes a tide."). His balloons are wavy-edged, with bubbles at the tail, and they drip.
• Variant looks: Wading (waist-deep in the Tideline, where colour drains from everything to blank white past him; going dotted, then sketch, then faint grey line as he goes deeper). Returning (climbing out of the edge again after being killed: more water, less shape, ch. 202). Counting (ch. 396–399: a half-taken boy held against his barnacled chest, the knot pulsing sea-green with each beat). Later.

The Null expands in stages, and Drämmen lives at its drowning edge, the Tideline, where things are halfway through being uncounted. He can wade into that edge, grab what the Null is taking, slam it back into the count, and drag it home before the Null finishes it: a half-erased city, half a name, a soul that is fading.

• 1 · The slam (one beat): his hand comes down on what is going, DRÄM, all his weight behind it. Whatever of it is still counted stays counted from that beat: the Null takes no more. (On the page: he catches the Tidekant boy with the forearm already gone, and the white takes nothing further, ch. 396: "Got you, lad. Half of you, anyway.") The blow never hurts what it lands on: it lands on the count, like a door slammed shut.
• 2 · The drag (a tide): then he hauls it home, and counts it back: his heart starts from zero and climbs, and each beat makes what he holds one beat more counted (ch. 201, 396). A drag-back takes a tide: hours (four, for Bakasura, ch. 201; all night and on, for the boy, ch. 396–399).
• Only the half-taken. What is fully uncounted is gone, even to him.
• He has to be holding it when he climbs out.
• Everything he drags back comes back wrong. Something is missing, something is extra, a colour is off. Bakasura came back with a white streak through his jaws and the memory of a blue whale he never ate (ch. 201); Ysel, long ago, half her face fading, and since ch. 207 no shadow at all.
• He can't die. Every time he's killed, he sinks to the Tideline and climbs back out (ch. 202).
• The Tideline rule (home field): things half-uncounted can be dragged back. It breathes: it rises in the dark and falls at dawn (ch. 206).
• Inside the white there is no sound, so a slam in the Tideline is drawn as an empty SFX box; it still lands. On counted ground it is the loudest thing on the page.
• What it can't do: touch the fully uncounted, bring back the erased (Rougeina's dead are forgotten, not uncounted: a different sea), hold half for long on its own ("Half always slips back. Unless someone remembers the whole.", ch. 207), or bring anything back unchanged. Only remembrance (Öde) brings a thing back right.

• Tempo: 0 on return, rising. After every death his heart starts at zero and counts back up, one beat at a time, to about 300.
• Home tempo: the Tideline, the only shore where a heart can start from nothing.
• Heartbeat technique: THE COUNT-BACK. As he climbs out of the edge, his heartbeat counts back up from zero, and each beat he counts makes what he's holding one beat more counted. He drags things back by counting them. No one else starts from zero. The first beat is a dräm: a heart that has stopped starts with one hard blow, and every beat after it is a smaller one, hammering what he holds back into the count like nails into a plank.
• Burn cost: each return, there's more water in him and less of him. And every slam spends him: the black water that bursts out under his fist is him, and so are the puddles he leaves ("Don't mind the puddle. It's me.").

Everything he drags back comes back wrong, and so does he. Each time he returns there's more water in him and less of him, and every slam pours more of him out onto the ground. He can't die, so it never ends. And he can't remember what he loved, the thing in his fist, the reason he came back at all, the thing every slam is made of.

• Fire and heat dry his puddles and crack his wood ("Mind my puddles, ember-girl!", to Aska, ch. 396).
• The fully uncounted are beyond him.
• Slow. On dry ground he's a lumbering wreck. The slam is the only fast thing he has.
• Half slips back. What he drags out stays half and slides back into the white unless someone remembers it whole (ch. 202, 207).
• Redactor's servants (Saga IV, Arc 6), the Unwritten, want what he drags back, to finish uncounting it properly; they pulled him under in ch. 202.
• Guilt. Show him something he brought back wrong and he stops fighting.

• The closed fist.
• The puddles, and his barrel (he fills it by standing in it, ch. 204, 206).
• Rope: his rope of old net (ch. 202); the crew's rope round his waist when he wades deepest (ch. 207).
• Niva, who left him off her map, and visits once a century ("map-woman").
• Nothing else. The Tideline has no other company.

A drowned bulldozer. He opens by spreading Wet Ground so his side can't be taken, absorbs every blow (he'll be back), slams back whatever the white is reaching for, and finishes with an Undertow he rarely dares to use. Team combos: Drämmen + Öde: he drags a half-taken thing back; she remembers it whole (asking every name), and it comes back right or holds (EKESKÄR, ch. 202; Ysel, ch. 207). Drämmen + the crew's rope: they hold the line so he can wade deeper than ever and still find his way out (ch. 207). Drämmen + Niva: two people who have lived their whole lives at this edge; her stake makes ground, his puddles keep people counted on it (ch. 396). Drämmen + Aska: puddles and footprints, wet and fire, catching the fallers together (ch. 396).

• Wants: to remember what he's holding.
• Fears: opening his hand and finding it empty.
• Contradiction: a horror of a figure who is, underneath, a grieving parent-shape: a tree-root that went under to save something. And the gentlest thing in the series hits harder than anyone.
• Humour: waterlogged and slow. "Don't mind the puddle. It's me." · "…Comes back wrong. Always. … Could've been worse."
• Habits: counts things back up out loud ("one… two…"), even cups and coins; touches his fist to his chest when he's tired; listens for whatever is half, out there ("Something's half. Always something.", ch. 202, 208).
• Alone: sits at the edge of the white and listens to things fading.

• Ysel: "My wrong one." He dragged her back half-erased, and Redactor promised her what he couldn't give: to make her whole. He took the rope from Drekk and went in for her himself ("No. That's my job. Hold the rope.", ch. 207), and brought her out half; Öde made her whole. Her wrong is gentle: no shadow, ever.
• Öde: Saga IV, Arc 6. He drags half a village out; she asks every name and it holds ("…You held it." / "You brought it. I just listened.", ch. 202). Öde remembers Ysel whole (ch. 207). He asks if she could hold what's in his fist ("If I knew what it was?" / "If you ever tell me. I'll listen.", ch. 202); "When you know what's in it. Come and tell me. I'll remember it for you." / "…Might be a long time." / "I've got a hundred and ten names. I'm good at long times." (ch. 208). His farewell: "Wet ground, farm girl. Keep your feet wet."
• Niva: "Map-woman." The one who left him off, and in ch. 396 the one who chose to forget him: she carves Drämmen on her seventh stake ("…Ah. Good choice.") and turns round not knowing him ("Who's that?" / "Nobody, map-woman. Never was on your map."). He knows why, and he's grateful.
• Drekk: he stops Drekk going in after Ysel ("You'd come back half.", ch. 207).
• Smurjan + Bakasura: he dragged Bakasura back, half-taken and wrong ("Ate a whale."), while Smurjan waited four hours without moving (ch. 201).
• Vigolas: "Go in there and you're half. Then I'm dragging you." (a hand on his shoulder, ch. 206).
• Aska: "Mind my puddles, ember-girl!" / "Mind my footprints, puddle-man." (ch. 396)
• The Tidekant boy: half-taken, his forearm gone to the elbow; caught, slammed back, still being counted home (ch. 396–399), asleep against Drämmen's chest at dawn.
• Kompis + Mingus, Rougeina, Trollmage: Mingus brings him a stick (he's mostly driftwood; he keeps it); "Your dead aren't in my sea, lass. Different water."; "She came back holding a page. I never saw it go in." (Ysel's page of the 78th codex). Bakasura and brine for Null-sickness ("…Salty. Good.").

• "I went under holding something. Still holding it. Can't see what." (ch. 201)
• "…Half in. … Can still drag half. … Takes a tide." (ch. 201)
• "More water. Less me. Always." (ch. 202)
• "Don't mind the puddle. It's me." (ch. 396)
• "Got you, lad. Half of you, anyway." (ch. 396)
• "One… two… three… there. Nearly."
• "Nobody, map-woman. Never was on your map." (ch. 396)
• "My wrong one."