Shadowbridge

by Gregory Frost

  Beyond the third branch the crest of a larger hill protruded and upon it a single tower—another of those crooked cup stacks.

  It was the first span they’d come to that incorporated a landmass, although Soter imagined that she couldn’t be too terribly surprised—he had taught her stories that could not have unfolded upon bridges, and thus implied the existence of the larger landmasses. She must have realized that Bouyan could not have been the only island linked with a span, else it would have been celebrated as a novelty instead of shunned as a backwater that nobody cared to visit. Of course, knowing that abstractly wasn’t the same as seeing it.

  He commented as if to himself, “The right-hand path is the main thoroughfare. Good, good. I guess we can trust this map of Grumelpyn’s a little more.”

  Ahead of them on the streets, people milled about, dressed in jackets and robes of a finer quality than those worn on Vijnagar. A man who seemed to be acting as gatekeeper on this end of the tunnel bowed to them most formally. He wore a long dark coat, and he said something incomprehensible as he gestured for them to enter the span. Clearly, he wasn’t asking for money, but was welcoming them. It was a completely alien gesture. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

  As had happened previously when they stepped onto a span, everything changed in a moment: The foreignness of the place evaporated like a sun dog. This, as he had explained to Leodora on the voyage out from Ningle and before they’d set foot on Merjayzin, was the magic of the spans. How it worked was something only the gods knew, but work it did. The symbols upon the nearest banner shifted from incomprehensible hatchmarks into easily discernible text, now reading quite obviously: THE SPECTER OF NIKKI DANJO. Diverus asked, “What does it mean, do you know?” Soter glanced back to confirm that they were staring at the same thing, but Leodora answered before he could.

  “It’s a story,” she said, and then to Soter added, “You taught me a version of it.”

  “That’s right. A ghost story.”

  “It means we have something to perform tonight. Assuming we can find a place to perform.”

  “We’ll have a place. I’ll find us a venue.” He stared at the sky and with affected injury said, “The child does not trust my powers.”

  Leodora set down her case. “The child,” she said, “has seen you drunk.”

  At this the one-man welcoming committee roared with laughter. Soter opened his mouth as if to tell the man to be quiet, but instead chuckled, too. He hefted the undaya case again and marched into Hyakiyako.

  . . . . .

  The banner over the door read, EAT THIS AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA, and beside these words was the drawing of a circle.

  Soter reacted to it as if he’d been hunting for the very phrase, and lurched suddenly across the cobbled road to the wide steps up to the porch that appeared to girdle the building. A pedicab for a single passenger ran past, cutting him off from the other two. It slowed as the puller considered Leodora and Diverus, asking a question with his eyes. She shook her head, and the cab trundled on.

  At the entrance beside the steps, Soter had left his case and removed his shoes, which sat next to a row of others, giving the impression that a dozen people had been lifted from their footwear and vanished upon the threshold.

  Leodora placed her own shoes beside his, set her case beside the one he’d carried, and then sat upon the two of them. She stretched her neck and flexed her knotted shoulders. As her muscles found their limits and her vertebrae cracked, she groaned luxuriously. “We could use one of those pedicabs,” she remarked to Diverus. “Put the cases in instead of us, and pull them along. It would have to be easier than these straps.”

  “We can trade if you like,” he suggested. “My instruments aren’t nearly so heavy.”

  Before she could reply, Soter burst onto the porch. “We have lodging!” he proclaimed. “And a courtyard in which to perform.”

  “A courtyard?”

  “It’s their custom here. The entertainments are held outside but inside.” He clambered down the three wide steps, shooed her to her feet, and then grabbed his case by its strap.

  “Would this have something to do with the parade?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve no memory of the place, though we must have played here. Of course we played here.” He stood with one foot on the porch, the other on the step, a majestic pose as he looked at the city around him and added, “I think.”

  “Maybe you went some other way?” she suggested.

  “How? There is only this one span linking Vijnagar to other places north. Yorba to the south. I remember it.”

  “You said that you didn’t begin at Ningle when you traveled with Bardsham. You began somewhere else, you said. Somewhere—”

  “South,” he interrupted. “Traveled for years, you understand? Years before we crossed paths with your mother. Took boats between spirals. Years and never the same span twice. That’s how big, how vast, the world is. Maybe we sailed off after Vijnagar, didn’t come farther north. Maybe we came back to Grumelpyn’s span from another. His is the end of this one, I think. The final curl in this spiral. There were places down south that thought we were thieves, stealing part of their lives and like that—telling their stories was taking their souls, keeping them. You definitely don’t want to go in that direction. Anyway, I have a map now. I’m your guide, Lea, you have to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  “You know what you’re doing but you don’t remember what it is.” She tried to remain irritated, but in the face of his ebullience this proved impossible. “All right,” she said, and perched again upon her case, flexing her toes, and considered that his justification had inadvertently provided her with more information than he’d given her since leaving Ningle. Why, she wondered, hadn’t he told her about those southern venues before? He’d told her so many things about traveling with Bardsham, but she realized now that they were only cursory things, events without details, as if he’d hoped she would take no interest in life on the spans. He’d answered questions when confronted, but he had never volunteered anything.

  She wanted to know about the south. Had they gotten into trouble there? Had her mother been with them then? Had something happened on the southern spans that led to…led to—and once again, she didn’t know. She didn’t know the specifics at all.

  She looked up to ask him, but Soter had left her and entered the building, disappearing into its depths.

  She dusted off her feet, then wearily stood, lifted the case, and climbed up the steps. The slickly polished floor of the porch like unbroken water reflected the case and her upside down.

  Diverus made no move to follow her. He stared at the rows of empty shoes as if they troubled him.

  “Come on,” she said, but in response he only shifted his weight uncertainly from leg to leg. “Diverus,” she inveigled, “I’ll leave you outside if you don’t climb the steps right now.” He slipped off his own shoes, placing them against hers, watching her as if fearful she might vanish in an instant. He climbed up beside her.

  “I just play music,” he said, as if that explained something.

  “Tonight you do that in here.” She lifted her puppet case. Side by side, they went in.

  The glossy floors extended all the way into the depths, making the place seem huge, reflectively doubling the height of the translucent wall panels. The light melting through them rendered the interior into a state of permanent, golden dusk. People sat cross-legged on the floor at low tables, eating—at least it was her impression that they were eating—and drinking. They remained no more than shapes, lumps in silk tucked into corners and alcoves of which there seemed to be an impossible number. She wondered how they could see well enough to know what they were eating. Or maybe they didn’t care. She couldn’t tell if they were watching her, or even whether they noticed her. Perhaps not, if they couldn’t identify more about her than she could of them. She might have been nothing more than the scent of barbecued eel, collecting for an instant above the tabl
es.

  Then out of the shadows the proprietor emerged, coming right up to them—a small man with crooked teeth and a sloping forehead, not much hair, and bright, eager eyes. Like two smooth white gems in that dusky light, his eyes glittered. “Yes, you come, you come,” he said. He plucked at her sleeve, at Diverus. “You both come!” He tugged them still deeper into his establishment.

  It hadn’t looked all that impressive from the front, but Eat This and Have a Cup of Tea proved to incorporate more rooms in its depths than she might have imagined. She soon realized that they were walking around a central area, the source of the wan light beyond the screens, and guessed that it must be Soter’s courtyard. At the point she decided she had been led through a complete circuit, the proprietor abruptly turned and pushed back a screen, revealing another room, this one with mats on the floor.

  There, seated beneath a low table, Soter twisted around as they entered. He held a small cup in one hand, and a small pitcher in the other, caught in the act of pouring. “About time,” he said. “I’m famished.”

  The meal proved to be sumptuous and exotic. Neither Leodora nor Diverus had ever tasted anything like it, and once sampled, she could not imagine never having it again. When she raised the question of the central space they had seemingly walked around, Soter confirmed that it was the courtyard where they would perform. “It is outdoors but protected from the parade. Oh, yes, Mutsu told me about the parade. A horrifying thing, to be avoided at all costs. Your very life could be forfeit.”

  “Mutsu. You remember his name?”

  “Naturally.” He sipped his tea under her critical gaze, which exerted a kind of pressure on him. He set down his cup. “The truth is, he came up to me, called out my name, and said, Don’t you remember me? I’m Mutsu. So, there. He remembers me. All I remembered was the banner. Satisfied?”

  “For once,” replied Leodora.

  They ate awhile in stiff silence after that, until Diverus asked: “What happens now?”

  . . . . .

  “Now,” said Leodora as she stepped around a cart peddling fruit, “we hunt for stories. It’s what my father used to do wherever he went. It’s how he learned everybody’s tales.”

  “Soter doesn’t come?”

  “No. He makes arrangements, asks questions, tries to find out if there are other places on a span we should play, promotes us to the local people.”

  “He angers you,” Diverus stated.

  She eyed him askance. They walked through a bazaar of stands, most sporting bright awnings. The smells of fish and confections mixed with more human, bodily smells. It all reminded her of Ningle and her childhood, back when her uncle had been clement. Those memories were intertwined with Soter, too. “He angers me because he lies,” she replied. “I don’t always catch him out, but the occasions that I do only make me assume he’s lying the rest of the time, too.”

  He changed the subject: “How do you hunt for stories, then?”

  “Well”—she glanced around—“you look for signs that stories are about.”

  “Signs,” he repeated with evident confusion. The confusion wasn’t his alone, either, for in truth she had little experience looking for stories. Prior to arriving on Vijnagar, Soter had been too nervous to let her go off on her own for very long, and when she could sneak off at all she’d climbed the bridge towers to escape from him. Yorba had been the first place she’d asked about a story and been given one, by a group of workers who’d been mortaring a building. That was the Dustgirl’s tale.

  A palanquin crossed their path. Four men hefted it by two poles, which rested upon their shoulders. A woman’s silhouette was just visible behind the gauze curtains.

  Leodora tilted her head at the passing vehicle. “There. Like them.”

  “The palanquin?”

  “Not the palanquin itself—the carriers. If you could spend time with them, there would be stories in it for you.”

  “Why not the woman hidden behind the curtains?”

  “First, she would be reluctant to tell a complete stranger very much. Second, her carriers would tell me all about her because they’re paid to transport her but also to be blind and dumb about it. They’ll have seen things. They would want to talk because they’re not supposed to. They carry her and they carry her story.”

  “I see. That is, I think I see.”

  She grinned. “I’m making this all up.” Doubt clouded his expression, and her smile grew wider. “The truth of it is, so far anyway, stories seem to find me.”

  “The way mine did?”

  “Exactly. I didn’t attend the paidika in search of a story, but I found an extraordinary one that even has elements in it from other tales I’ve been taught by Soter. Your life up till now is a story.”

  “So he does know something.”

  “He knows quite a lot,” she admitted, and stepped through an open space between two stalls selling various aromatic kernels, the combined smells making her nose twitch as if she might sneeze. “But I think he withholds more than he tells. When he was training me, that was helpful because he forced me to knit stories together out of scraps. As a test.”

  Diverus was thoughtful for a while after that, and soon they passed the stalls and the crowd thinned, at which point he asked, “How can you be sure that the tests are over?”

  She had no ready answer to that.

  Ahead, there lay a park lined with intricately shaped trees and shrubs. Some looked like exotic animals. Others were either abstract or imitations of things she had never seen. In the middle of the park, a group stood clustered beneath one tree, watching two figures in their midst. The two were engaged in a game of some sort, sitting opposite each other across a square board, with the rest ringing them as though they represented the height of excitement.

  Diverus followed Leodora through the park. The group might have been her ultimate goal, but she took the most circuitous route to arrive there—pausing to contemplate the unusual displays of flora: One bush had been sculpted into a flock of pigeons just leaving the ground. The fronds that represented the outstretched wings even seemed to be shaped into feathers. The artist had cleverly linked them so that from any angle some of them looked completely separated from the rest.

  Eventually she did make her way to the game. Members of the group glanced her way. One nodded in so formal a manner that it seemed a shallow bow. That man had a narrow spear-shaped beard growing off the point of his chin. He turned his attention back to the game immediately but as if his look had been a signal, the people to either side of them edged away to give them space to join in.

  The two players hadn’t acknowledged any of this. One was a small, thin man with a shaved head save for the wide stripe of red hair that hung from the back of his skull. He would have been the most striking member of the group were it not for the second player, who had the long-snouted head of an animal, completely white, and who sat beneath a strange ball of light. Fist-sized, it floated just above his head. Diverus touched Leodora’s shoulder, his eyes wide. She understood his startlement, and whispered to him, “Kitsune. A foxtrickster.”

  The kitsune gazed intently at the crosshatched board and the array of small stones dotting it, as if the stones might change position if he looked away. If there was a pattern there, neither Diverus nor Leodora could fathom it.

  The stones—some light and some dark—looked as if they’d been polished by the sea, like the little stones and shells that washed up on the beaches of Bouyan all the time; in fact, some of the white “stones” proved to be small shells. The aggregate of dark and light remained obscure to Leodora even as two more stones were laid, one by each of the players.

  With the kitsune’s placement of the next dark stone, some of the watchers exchanged knowing glances as if something significant had occurred. The fox-player picked up a group of the lighter stones from the board, placing them in the lid to a small clay pot at his side, and she gleaned that he had surrounded them somehow, and thus won them. Even as he collected the
“dead” stones, she noted, his black eyes remained locked on the board, his expression hard and his whiskers bristling. She had the sense that he was not certain he’d made the best move. The excitement wasn’t necessarily in his favor.

  The other player picked a white shell from his pot and held it a moment while he pointedly assessed the arrangement of the remaining stones. As if following his thoughts, the fox’s seemingly permanent smile fell with resignation. He muttered something that sounded like shimata. The light stone was placed. The fox nodded. Then he and his opponent eyed each other. The dark-stone kitsune waved a furry hand once—he would not take his turn. The other placed another stone, and the fox waved away his turn again. The group relaxed and began to talk to one another as if picking up from an earlier conversation that had been suspended by the game.

  The two opponents clasped hands across the board.

  Diverus leaned forward and asked, “What just happened? I couldn’t see why they stopped—there are still lots of open lines.”

  “I don’t know, either. Let’s find out.” She moved around some of the observers and approached the white fox. He stood now, stretching cat-like, his orange-furred arms above his head, the loose sleeves of his gown falling down around his skinny arms to his shoulders. In that position he turned to them as they approached. Leodora repeated Diverus’s question to him.

  He gestured to the board, where three of the observers were bent over and discussing, apparently, earlier moves in the game. “I arrived at the point where I could see the outcome. The battle is engaged where I removed his stones, and that and this other are the only two open areas remaining. But the most I will be able to do from this moment forward is expend more stones before he deprives me of them. If this were truly war, what a foolish general I would be to send more and more soldiers into a place where I know in advance they cannot prevail. Those already taken are lost, and I cannot have them back.” He reached into his pot, raised a handful of black stones, opened his palm. “Should I not preserve these soldiers for another day and a better game? Only an idiot would do otherwise.”