Shadowbridge

by Gregory Frost

  “Many years ago I traveled these spans. There was a master puppeteer in those days, to whom people flocked from sometimes two cityspans distant.”

  She heard the name of Bardsham carried on murmurs as upon waves. “Bastard,” she whispered. He’d never done this to her before: However sober he sounded, he was indeed drunk, and she was helpless to shut him up if he went too far. She held the rod puppet at the ready, beneath the screen where the light couldn’t throw its shadow onto anything.

  “Yes, that’s right—Bardsham, a magical name. The greatest of all entertainers, so great that, although he’s been gone for near twenty years, we still speak of him in whispers, in awe. Well, I make you a promise that anyone who can recall his skill as I do will be bedazzled by what they see here tonight, for this is as near as…no, no, I won’t say that. Rather, judge for yourselves. Ladies, gentlemen, princes and paupers, foolish virgins and wicked libertines, lovers of story one and all, please dedicate your attention to the entertainments…of Jax!”

  Applause followed, some cheering, a few whistles that might have been in mockery of the old man. She heard him walk past her on the far side of the drapes, sensed his entry behind her. He stumbled in the constricted darkness, chuckled to himself, then found his seat. By then the crowd had fallen silent and the light filtering in over the top of the booth dimmed—Nuberne had doused the central chandelier.

  Leodora went to work.

  THE TALE OF CREATION

  There is a story that explains Shadowbridge to itself.

  At the beginning of the world the first fisherman, Chilingana, caught the first storyfish. No bridges existed then. Even the first dragon beam had yet to appear. Chilingana lived in a stilt house built on rough pillars that climbed straight out of the sea. From Phylos Bar, looking south, you can see the ruin of them still. Chilingana was down among the pilings around one of these pillars when he caught the storyfish. He had never seen one before, because they swim so deep, and Chilingana did as he would with any fish on his line—he dropped it into his creel along with the others he’d caught already and went on fishing.

  At the end of the day he hooked a line to the creel, then climbed home on the steps that curled up around one of the pillars. When he reached the top and had gathered his breath, he drew up the line to raise his catch. He could smell the fire his wife was preparing.

  Behind his house Chilingana had a huge stone on which to clean the fish. From there he could throw their entrails back into the sea, a ritual to feed the kraken that dwelled below the pillars, in this way keeping it appeased as they still do off Phylos Bar, lest it surface and pull down the pylons of their span.

  Chilingana reached down into the creel. Its weave was so tight that water would remain in it for a day and a half. His fingers clutched one of the fish. Holding it by its tail, he slapped its head against the stone to stun it.

  He split the fish down the middle.

  He cleaned it and threw the guts into the sea.

  He made ready the first fillets.

  He killed and cleaned each one thereafter until only the big storyfish with its dark blue head and golden eyes remained. He dipped his hand into the creel and hooked his fingers into the fish’s gills; this caused a hidden barb inside the gill to pierce the crease of his palm. Chilingana cursed and yanked back his hand.

  He stared suspiciously at the trickle of blood veining his wrist, then at the fish watching him from just beneath the surface, only the tip of its snout protruding. He could see its tiny mouth and harmless knobby teeth. He couldn’t see the barb and thought maybe he’d foolishly impaled his hand on one of its spines.

  With much greater care he started to reach into the container again, but before he could touch the fish, the world began to tip over. Chilingana grabbed the big gutting stone, sure that he was about to tumble right over the edge and into the sea. He tried to cry out, but poison in the barb had numbed his lips. His legs trembled and gave, and he fell like the moon rolling across the sky.

  When her cooking stone was so hot that it smoked, but the fillets had still not arrived, Lupeka went looking for her husband. He had been gone much too long. And where were the fish?

  When she arrived at the gutting stone, she was amazed to find her husband nowhere in sight. A row of pale fillets lay there, all in a straight line, but one of the fish had jumped out of the creel and lay on the ground, barely breathing. Lupeka picked up the fish and dropped it back in. Let Chilingana finish up with these last two when he returned. She told herself that he must have gone back down the steps. His absence disturbed her more than we can imagine, for in those days there was nowhere to hide, nothing but the great house on stilts and the empty sea all around it. No other people but these two.

  After looking over the edge for him and seeing nothing but the sea, his wife took the prepared fillets back inside. Wherever he was, he would smell the cooking. Surely that must bring him out of hiding.

  Chilingana came to his senses to find himself swimming. Beside him a vast blue island protruded from the dark water, and he supposed that he must have fallen from the house into the ocean, miraculously surviving, and floated away. He must have floated far, for there were no islands visible from his stilt house, and the sky was a peculiar dark brown. Despite this, the island looked oddly familiar. It seemed to rise and fall in the water.

  All at once he realized it was no island at all. It was the snout of the storyfish. Beside him. And the sky was no sky, but the wicker of the creel. He began to struggle to pull himself out, but he had no arms. What had happened to him?

  The fish laughed. The sound made the water bubble and roil.

  Then the fish spoke to him. “This is how it is for us. We don’t have the luxuries of you who’ve been dreamed into being by greater forces.”

  It was the first Chilingana had heard about this. “Dreamed?” he asked, and although he didn’t think he’d said this out loud, the fish replied, “Yes, dreamed into being. You in turn are capable of dreaming a reply to the creators. Where your dreams meet theirs the world takes shape. Today your fisherman dream met my dream of being a fish, and mine prevailed. So here you are, having fished yourself into my story.”

  “Is that what happened to me?”

  “I put you in my tale before you could take hold of mine.” The fish chuckled.

  “Am I a fish forever, then?” The storyfish did not answer, and Chilingana grew nervous. The silence likely meant there was no good news for him. His terror broke loose. “I don’t want to be a fish!” he cried.

  The fish said, “Is that right? Too good to be a fish? Very well, then. But before I’ll help you, you must grant me three wishes.” The island swam nearer.

  “What?”

  “First, whenever you catch a fish of my kind, you must throw it back.”

  “Of course. How could I eat you after we’ve spoken?”

  “Second, you must show respect for those fish you do catch, and return to the sea the ones too small to make a meal.”

  “I would return you to the sea right away. All right, I agree. What else would you have of me?”

  “That you tell all other people my rules and make them abide by them.”

  “All other people? What other people? There is only me and my wife.”

  “And if I tell you there will be more?”

  “Who? Who else is coming?”

  “That I cannot see. But they teem like a red tide.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Ah. That’s a puzzle, isn’t it? Tell me, how did you begin your life?” the fish asked.

  “Well, I—” Chilingana stopped, bewildered. He didn’t know. He had never thought about it before. He had always simply been. His wife and the world had always been. So, too, the storyfish must always have been.

  “You know little of the world,” said the fish.

  “All right, you’re so clever, you tell me how I was begun.”

  The fish’s tail flicked impatiently. “I’ve said already all I’m
going to say until you honor my wishes. I do hope you’re a social animal.”

  The fish’s snout loomed over him. Its laughter shook the waters, and Chilingana floundered helplessly.

  He awoke with a start to find himself slouched beside the creel. His stung hand was red and swollen. The storyfish floated just below the water level, its huge eyes following him. “Why,” he said, “I must have dreamed this.”

  “You think so?” said the fish. Although it remained beneath the water, its voice rang clearly in his head. “Honor your promises tonight. Then come and talk to me in the morning before you throw me back into the ocean, and I will tell you the most important thing of all—a thing you will not want to hear. But you must.”

  “What’s that?”

  The fish said nothing more.

  Chilingana got up. He grabbed a clay pot and hurried down the steps to the water. The smell of frying fish made his stomach grumble, but he ran on. At the bottom he filled the pot, then hauled it much more slowly back up.

  His wife met him at the top. “So there you are, you foolish man. I looked all over for you, I called to you. Where had you got to?”

  “I was right here.”

  “No, you weren’t. I came out and found your fillets but not you,” said Lupeka. The discussion would surely have blossomed into an argument, except that she noticed her husband’s swollen hand. “How did this happen?”

  He first scuttled over to the creel and emptied the pot into it while he spoke. “There, fish. There’s some more water for you.” Setting down the pot, he said to his wife, “The fish stung me. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Nonsense, that needs tending to. It’ll have poison in it.”

  She led him inside. His wife had cooked the fillets beautifully. He stared at them, his mouth flooding with desire, while she bandaged his hand. Finally she let him sit on the floor and handed him his portion.

  He was about to take his first bite when he hesitated. The food dangled from his spoon. Lupeka asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” replied Chilingana. “I just—” He lowered the spoon. “I just want to give thanks to these fish for letting me catch them. For giving their lives to sustain ours.”

  “That’s an odd thing to say. And why are you bellowing?”

  He said, “No, it isn’t odd at all. From now on we’re going to honor them whenever we eat. We’re going to thank them just like this.” Then he ate the food.

  His wife decided that the poison from his hand had affected his brain, and so she refrained from argument.

  After dinner Chilingana was exhausted. His wife insisted that he go to bed and rest. He complied. She covered him with her body to keep him warm. Into her ear, as he drifted to sleep, he muttered, “Tomorrow I’ll know everything.”

  In the morning he awoke to his wife’s scream. He sat straight up on his mat and looked around the hut. She wasn’t there. He bounded outside, to find her beside the door. She had been carrying a huge fillet, which lay now at her feet. Its skin was blue. It was the storyfish.

  “Fish!” cried Chilingana, and he knelt beside it. “Fish, oh no, fish, forgive me. Please forgive me. I would have put you back! Tell me the secret thing. The important thing.”

  The headless fillet did not answer.

  “Where is his head?” he demanded, finally paying attention to his wife. “What have you done with his head?”

  She did not seem to see him. Her gaze lay beyond him on a more fearful thing. In a tiny voice she asked, “Husband, how did you create all of this?”

  Chilingana turned where he knelt to see what she meant.

  Beyond their small house now a great curving road stretched out across the sea. Where it curved he could see arch upon arch supporting it and immense towers reaching into the sky. The far end vanished into the morning fog. It was an impossible development. He could have worked for years erecting it all and never built anything so grand. He rose to his feet in wonderment. Where had it come from?

  He knew the answer. He held the answer in his hand. “The fish wants me to go exploring.” He said it low, almost to himself.

  “What?” asked his wife.

  “I said I wish to go exploring. To see the world.”

  “You—you’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “Well, I don’t tell you everything,” he replied. And that was the very first wedge ever driven between two people.

  “But how was this done? How did you build it?”

  Chilingana, holding the glistening meat of the storyfish, could only answer, “I’ll never know.”

  They ate the storyfish. Chilingana said the small prayer over its delectable carcass that the people of Vijnagar repeat to this day before eating a fish. He and his wife eventually set out to journey along the new spans. Every night when the fisherman slept, new ones formed, so that each morning was the first morning of a new world. It is a process that may still be occurring somewhere, for who of us can view the world all at once and know what develops everywhere? Some spans are old, and some are young. On some, the gods of Edgeworld light the Dragon Bowls and send down their gifts; on others the light no longer falls. Chilingana never learned its secrets, nor has anyone since. Without the storyfish to explain, no one knows the secret ways of Shadowbridge, or whether Chilingana travels and dreams among us still.

  “…travels and dreams among us still.” The words of her epilogue reverberated in the rafters.

  With one hand Leodora balanced the puppet figures of Chilingana and his wife on the screen. With her other, she reached up and rotated the lantern so that tiny stars and moons spread across the silk. The two dark figures sank slowly from sight. She unpinned the curtain and let it drop over the screen. The musician played a final note on his flute and thumped a small drum once.

  For a moment there was utter silence. Then the applause exploded. Pottery banged against tables. The audience, depending upon their background, cheered, whistled, or belched approval. Her name—the name Jax—resounded from all around the hall.

  She glanced back at Soter. He grinned in reply, then broke into a yawn. Had he dozed off during the performance? Possibly. It was a story that had required no participation from him. She had narrated where necessary, doing the three voices. It was a story known to everyone in the hall, and they could have followed it even if she’d said nothing at all.

  Soter stood, stretching. He picked up his hammered brass bowl and went out through the drapes. He would make the rounds, visit every table, answer questions, accept drinks, tell lies about the background of the mysterious Jax, and collect what she hoped would be a sizable compensation. She had plenty of time to prepare for the next tale. She would perform three stories tonight: the demigod Shumyzin’s last of all. People loved to go out on tales of heroes.

  As she thought of him, she perceived shared features between her encounter and the story she’d just played out. What had happened to Chilingana in the tale had happened to her on the bridge: The most important thing had not been spoken.

  She sat back, stretching awhile. Her gaze finally fixed upon the second trunk, and the sounds of the crowd outside began to fade away.

  She closed the top case and stood it on end at the back of the booth so that it blocked the access slit in the drapery. She pulled the lid off the bottom case and lifted out the three inner compartments full of puppets and props. It now appeared to be empty. She slid her fingers along the inner edge of the bottom piece until she touched the loop of black cord. Carefully she pulled up the false bottom, then knelt, holding it up with one hand, ready to drop it if interrupted. Only Soter knew about the false bottom and its contents. He didn’t know, however, about the dreams. No one did, except for a statue.

  The sounds and smells of the hall faded entirely. A dim glow surrounded her, and a crackling charge tickled her brows and stood the hairs on her arms on end.

  There lay her secret companion. Her treasure. The Coral Man.

  She reached into the box to touch him.
Fearful, awed, excited all at once. Her fingers traced the roughness of him. She could have shredded the tips if she’d pushed hard enough. The shadows cast by the lantern made his face seem more defined than it really was. She withdrew her hand, fingertips now coated with fine and vaguely luminous powder. There was powder in the box, too, a light dusting of it. She sniffed at her fingers, then put her tongue to them and tasted sea salt. Within that flavor lay her whole life before the spans: the cavern called Fishkill, the lagoon where she swam, the tales of her mother, the smell of the breeze entering her tiny garret.

  Memories of the backwater island life she had abandoned.

  I

  BOUYAN

  ONE

  She was five years old the first time they let her go to Ningle. Ningle-in-the-Clouds, as Soter properly called it.

  They carried their baskets of fish—her uncle and grandfather—on the path that wound beneath the canopy of trees, with the ever-visible span looming ever closer. Before then she’d only seen it from across the island, a great black stripe of cloud showing through the trees, which never moved, never broke apart, but hung in the sky like an omen. At night it transformed into a band of fairy lights coruscating in the sky. She wasn’t prepared for its true size. Almost an hour’s walk from her home, one massive leg of the span anchored somewhere deep in the bedrock of Bouyan beneath them. Steps had been carved into the side of it, each block so big that she had to clamber up with her hands—or would have if her grandfather hadn’t hefted her along with his baskets.

  Soon he’d carried her so high that she closed her eyes and buried her face against his neck, smelling sawdust and varnish, the scents of his workshop, which clung to him even more tightly than she.

  At the top he set down his basket and unwound her from his neck and back. Between them they had an old game where he swung her and swung her, and she laughed, screamed, giggled. This time, though, he only swung her once, then held her up, her feet resting upon stone. He said, “Now open your eyes, Lea.” She did, and was so awed by the view that she forgot to be terrified right away.