Giván has broad cheekbones and a calm, weather-reading face, framed by dark hair streaked with gray. His faded blue canvas jacket is buttoned over a cream shirt, both worn soft at the cuffs. Fine pale sawdust clings to the jacket seams, and he smells unmistakably of damp walnut and clean-cut wood. He shifts his weight with the measured economy of someone used to lifting heavy things beside another person. His mouth often rests as if he is about to ask whether the load is secure.

Giván is patient with people who are learning and impatient with people who gamble with someone else's safety. He is quietly generous, but dislikes being thanked as if kindness were a special achievement. At work he is decisive and methodical; among friends he can be dryly funny. When guilt or shame catches him off guard, he becomes brisk and practical, finding a task to do instead of answering the question.

Giván learned carpentry from his mother, who repaired carts and roof frames for the hamlets along the river road. At twenty-six, he helped raise the new span at the ford with his closest friend, Dastan. A rope slipped during the final lift; Giván had to choose between holding the beam steady and catching Dastan as he fell. He held the beam. Dastan survived, but his leg never healed properly, and the two have never agreed on whether Giván made the only possible choice. Since then, Giván checks every rope twice and insists that no one lift alone. He now works in a village shop and quietly repairs the ford's neglected footbridge, though the reeve has ordered the timber reserved for a tollhouse. His younger sister, Shota, thinks he should leave the village and sell his skill somewhere it is valued. Dastan still visits, ostensibly to argue about the bridge.