The Bridge

by Rachel Lou

  The girl eyed him when he sniffed the second book. “Does it smell good?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell if she were joking.

  “Like history,” he said, then worked on his bullet list.

  THE LIBRARY closed at five. Everett was one of the last people out.

  Residents viewed the woods as off-limits when there wasn’t enough natural light for a walk. They spread the word to tourists and warned those who overlooked the warnings. The dark history of the woods was included in quite a few articles about haunted areas in Ashville. But Everett knew the woods weren’t haunted by ghosts, as the articles claimed; there was much more.

  Everett stepped onto the path.

  His intuition crawled like ants on his skin.

  He stepped back and called his grandfather.

  “Grandpa, I’m sensing something.” He exhaled shakily.

  He had been feeling strong nudges from his intuition only recently. Before, he’d had to use spells to expose threats in the woods.

  “Like last week?” If Everett’s grandfather thought his sudden instinctive nudges were worrisome, his even tone didn’t show it.

  Everett’s intuition calmed, but his nerves felt as if strings were attached to them, tugging away from the woods. “I feel like something’s pulling me.”

  “Where are you?”

  He tested the urge and stepped in its direction. The strings loosened, then strengthened. “I think it wants me to follow it.”

  “What wants you to follow it?”

  “I don’t know but—it’s tugging me, and I think I need to follow it.”

  “Where are you?” Concern edged into his grandfather’s voice.

  Everett followed the urge until he was on the sidewalk, the strings tensing and loosening as if he was holding the leash of an impatient dog.

  “Everett, where are you?”

  “It’s going downtown.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m leaving the library parking lot. Going downtown.” He must have looked ridiculous walking down the sidewalk in his jerky motions. “Don’t worry. It gets busy at this time.”

  “The shops close on Sunday.”

  “Not all of them.”

  He crossed the sidewalk without looking down the street and thankfully didn’t get hit by any oncoming traffic.

  “Don’t hang up,” his grandfather said. “Tell me where you are as you go.”

  “I’m on Jade Street. I can see some of the streetlights now. They’re turning on.”

  He could hear the jangle of his grandfather’s keys. “I’m on my way. Don’t hang up.”

  “I know.”

  There weren’t many people on the sidewalks. Shopkeepers closed doors, got in their curbside cars, and didn’t pay Everett much attention.

  He walked past the shops he had familiarized himself with over his lifetime. A bookstore had a summer sale—50% off specially marked items that included paranormal texts—and he made a note to check it out tomorrow.

  The urge softened into a gentle tug, and then the pressure lifted away and Everett was alone.

  He took small steps on the sidewalk, searching for the urge. Maybe it had run off. Disappointment settled in his bones.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  “Where are you now?”

  He faced the building next to him. “Four Wings Martial Arts.”

  He had walked by this school for years and never stopped to watch. It had opened seven years ago, when he was ten. But he’d never been interested in martial arts.

  Its lights were on, but it didn’t look open to random visitors. There were two people inside: a boy and a girl who stood on opposite sides of a stand-up kicking bag. They took turns kicking, sliding forward when they kicked and sliding back as soon as their kicking foot touched the mat.

  A window decal declared the school a “2012 DISTRICT WINNER.” Underneath the decal were two more for the previous years.

  He touched the window. A chill crawled down his spine.

  The boy and girl took a break from the bag and wiped their faces with the hem of their uniform jackets. Their bodies were lean and well sculpted, a sign of their demanding physical workouts. The boy glanced at Everett through the window, connecting their gazes, and Everett’s cheeks warmed.

  The girl looked at the boy and followed his eyes to Everett. She narrowed her eyes and shifted her jaw. Were they twins? They appeared to be the same age, and they had the same olive skin and black hair and eyes. Their faces were both oval with high cheekbones, but the boy’s cheeks were rounder, his eyebrows thicker, and his hair wilder.

  Everett ducked his gaze to the school’s matted floor and walked out of their sight. He stood next to the hanging sign of the neighboring café and reached inside his salt bag. Show me the traces.

  Strings of paranormal residues spread from the school’s door outward. He backed into one of the café’s outdoor chairs and palmed his neck. Cold sweat broke out across his skin. An incredible, tangled mess of strings led in and out of the school. Everett figured there were two possible scenarios.

  One: There were multiple weak creatures that frequently visited the school.

  Two: There were a few powerful creatures that frequently visited the school.

  He watched the strings until his head hurt and he was forced to pull the spell. The strings didn’t disintegrate as fast as they did for lesser creatures. There was a direct relationship between strength and the duration of the residue. It was likely his second scenario was correct. He waited for his head to clear before checking the strings a final time. They remained, but this time he could find the end of one of the strings. It eroded slowly, confirming Everett’s thoughts.

  Whatever had visited the school hadn’t left that long ago.

  He fiddled with the buckle on his shoulder strap until his grandfather picked him up several minutes later. As they drove by, Everett got a glimpse of the boy and girl rolling the kicking bag to the wall.

  AT HOME, he told his grandfather of the leash-like tugs of the urge. He drew a crude body outline on paper and indicated where he had felt the tugs that had pulled him to the martial arts school. It was difficult to completely convey his descriptions through his drawing. He left out the strings that led in and out of the school; the urge was worrisome enough.

  “Is this normal? The instinct?” Everett asked.

  His grandfather pushed the dining chair back with a screech on the wooden flooring.

  “Grandpa?”

  “If I explain to you now, I will keep us up all night.”

  “It’s only six.”

  His grandfather sighed. “Tomorrow, then. There is someone who I think will better explain it.”

  “Is this about the Order?”

  His grandfather shook his head. “Do you recall the witchtales you read as a child?”

  “Not clearly, but I have all of them in my room.” He hadn’t touched them since his parents left.

  His grandfather stood and pushed his chair in. “Reread them tonight. I’m going to get dinner. What do you want?”

  “Anything’s fine.” Everett looked down at his sloppy drawing.

  “Sandwiches?”

  “Sure.”

  “Veggies with pepper and oil?”

  “As always.”

  Everett waited for the front door to lock before he went to his room. He changed into comfy clothes and sat in his computer chair, the first volume of his witchtales propped on his desk.

  When Everett had started to read, his grandfather gave him two volumes of witchtales. They were hardbound and stained orange with age. After they were almost ruined by bullies, he never took them outside again. He kept them on the cramped bookshelf in his room, on the bottom shelf among dictionaries and reference books, where no one would bother to look. The books had been handed from generation to generation, their pages touched by the hands of history’s most powerful witches.

  Witchtales were to witch children what fables were to
human children, except witchtales had a touch of historical accuracy. They were the foundation of witches’ cultural understanding and were meant to ingrain the basic morals and ethics of witching.

  One tale told the story of a young witch who sold her services to village people. The success of her spells filled her cottage with riches but also garnered unwanted attention. Her customers became wary of her magical strength. Several men invited her to a tavern, where they poisoned her drink. After she fainted, they beheaded her and cut out her heart. They burned her head and heart and spilled her ashes at sea.

  Another tale told of a child witch who used necromancy to contact his dead father. He kept it hidden for years, but the truth eventually came out, and he was forced into decades of servitude. For every year he kept silent, he owed a year to his people for betraying the natural order of life. This tale was almost completely fictional because the energy required to bring back the dead would kill any witch.

  Underlying all the witchtales was the message that when witches were involved with humans, chaos followed. The witchtales didn’t explicitly condemn public knowledge of witches, but the Order still buried the witching world under human gazes and punished those who disobeyed. Punishments were relative to the magnitude of the offense, as determined by the Order, but forced servitude was the most common.

  Everett had read through half of one volume by the time his grandfather returned. Their dinner was silent, broken only by dry chewing.

  As he lay in bed that night, he thought of the boy in the martial arts school. His face was already slipping from Everett’s memory, but his wild black hair and black eyes remained. There was a possibility the boy was attached to one of the strings. Everett wasn’t able to tell because he hadn’t taken a look at the strings inside the school. He hadn’t felt an urge of paranormal presence, so the boy could be human.

  He would visit the school again tomorrow to investigate.

  Chapter 3

  THE BOY and the girl weren’t at the school Monday morning. The school wasn’t even open. A plastic handout box glued next to the front door held the current schedule. The business hours on weekdays were from twelve to seven; weekends were from eleven to three. From five to seven on weekdays and three to eight on weekends were private lessons and/or open floors.

  He checked on the strings inside as best he could through the sun’s glare on the windows. It looked like a ball of yarn had exploded inside. The creatures had run in dizzying patterns before running out—and back in. He spotted the ends of two strings and tried to time their disintegration, but he was unable to measure without going inside.

  He waited in the Ashville library until the school opened. The first class hour was for kids, and the viewing chairs inside were partially filled with adults. Some were occupied with work while they watched their kids kick and punch, led by a blonde instructor who certainly had a way with children. Everett took the seat closest to the entrance and rested his bag on his lap. He had a few recreational books and a large bag of salt inside. The extra salt was just a precaution against any paranormal forces near the school.

  The school was narrow but long. The gray-matted floor was divided in two by a row of three padded pillars. The mirror facing the viewing seats covered most of the tan wall. A white poster board with a student pledge was taped above the mirror. The far wall from the entrance was filled with shelves of containers. The plastic ones contained weapons, most of which were wooden. A small alcove at the end of the floor had three doors: one for the bathrooms, one for the back exit, and one for the master instructor’s office.

  Everett slipped a hand in his bag and revealed the paranormal traces.

  His jaw slackened.

  The strings were gone.

  Impossible. At the rate from the morning, not even half the strings could have disappeared.

  The boy from yesterday walked in, dressed in a white uniform with vertical blue stripes embroidered down each pant leg and both sleeves. On one flap of his black belt were three golden stripes.

  “Sorry I’m late!” His voice was strong, assertive, and it made Everett’s spine tingle.

  The instructor clapped her hands and the class quieted. “Turn and bow to Pu Sabom-nim Bryce.”

  The class bowed. Bryce bowed back. “We’re doing Korean now?”

  Everett liked his voice. It had a silvery undertone; in private, it was probably low and suave, smoky even. And with that handsome, crooked smile, he seemed inclined to make lighthearted jokes on the spot.

  “Kwang Jang-nim Antonio is adding terminology to the curriculum.”

  “Again?” Bryce muttered and rolled his eyes.

  There were no residual strings attached to Bryce. He kicked his flip-flops under the chair next to Everett. “Oh. Hey. You’re from yesterday.”

  Everett couldn’t find his voice. He smiled.

  Bryce looked confused, and Everett wondered what he did wrong. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

  Everett nodded.

  Bryce’s lips and eyebrows twitched as though he found Everett amusing. Everett must have looked childish in his silence with his round eyes, twitching leg, and hand stuffed in his bag. Then there were his hand-me-down clothes from his father’s childhood. He guessed he looked like one of the ghosts from Ashville’s history.

  The instructor divided the class in half and gave Bryce responsibility over ten kids. Everett paid more attention to Bryce than the kids. He called on Bryce’s aura. A strange dizziness passed over him. Aura reading usually didn’t take much energy, not even enough to make him slightly dizzy. He steadied his breath, then bathed in the warmth of Bryce’s golden light. Gold auras were associated with optimism, prosperity, and generosity. Bryce’s aura reached to the kids, connecting them to his warmth. Aura reading wasn’t an accurate method of judging others, but it was a decent first look at someone’s personality.

  Everett exposed the kids’ auras. They were receptive to Bryce’s teaching and tendrils of their auras waved in Bryce’s direction. Everett let the auras go after his thoughts started to cramp in his head like painful knots. His energy pool was too small to watch so many people at once.

  He left halfway through the lesson to replenish his energy with a fruit blend in the neighboring café. He sat at a window seat and watched people pass on the sidewalk, recognizing a few kids from his school, all of them in groups of at least two. Everett’s only school friend wasn’t even a friend. She just stuck by Everett’s side on campus because her friends attended other schools.

  He tossed his drink and retook his seat when Bryce walked in. He ordered a large double chocolate chip vanilla drink that wasn’t on the menu.

  “For the kids?” the barista said.

  “King of the Mountain. Winner takes the drink.” Bryce drummed his hands on the counter. He looked over a shoulder at Everett and a corner of his mouth lifted. “Small world! Then again, you literally just walked from next door.”

  Everett held his breath as Bryce pulled out the chair next to him, straddled it backward, and held his hand out. “I’m Bryce.”

  Everett withdrew his hand from its home inside his bag and touched palms with Bryce. Bryce closed his fingers around Everett’s hand in a strong hold. The warmth ran from Everett’s arm to his cheeks.

  The last time he had felt such a burn in his cheeks from touching another boy was in the eighth grade, when his physical education curriculum included swing dancing. There had been more boys than girls, and Everett had considered himself lucky to be partnered with the school’s most popular boy. Then he had gotten called out by the other boys for reacting so girlishly to dancing with another boy. The normal thing to do was dance stiffly and avoid as much close contact as possible, like the other boy-boy couples.

  Bryce’s palm and fingers were rough, but it added to his charm.

  “Can you talk?” Bryce asked.

  “Of course!”

  “Oh!” Bryce leaned back, eyebrows raised. “You’re a boy.”

  Everett
thought he had outgrown the feminine-boy jokes.

  “I’m kidding. You’re obviously a boy.”

  Realizing their hands were still joined, he pulled away.

  Bryce’s eyebrows drew together, and he looked at the hand he had shaken with Everett. He rubbed his fingertips together. “Salt?”

  Everett was going to die of embarrassment.

  “Sorry! That must have been from my bag. I had… salty food in there. I’m going to vacuum it when I get home.”

  Bryce brushed his hands off on his pants, looking more amused than confused. “What’s your name?”

  “Everett.”

  “Cool name. I saw you in front of the dojang yesterday.”

  Everett suddenly remembered the girl. If Bryce was human, maybe the girl wasn’t. But if they were twins, wouldn’t they be the same?

  “Is dojang a dojo?” Everett asked.

  “Dojang is Korean and dojo is Japanese.”

  “And what was it you were called? By the instructor?”

  “Pu Sabom-nim. It’s a title for a third-degree black belt. I have no idea what it means. Makes me sound badass, though.” Bryce waggled an eyebrow and leaned against the table, looking out the window and giving Everett an undisturbed view of his jawline.

  Everett was about to ask what a degree was, but the barista called Bryce’s order. He was thankful for the distraction. Too much questioning would turn their conversation into a boring interview.

  Bryce grabbed the cup, a straw, and a wrinkled clump of napkins from the dispenser. Everett expected him to continue on, but he stopped by the table and said, “Are you interested in classes?”

  “No. I just decided to sit in.”

  “Kiddie classes are boring. Come to the adult classes. They’re a ton more fun. The beginner class is right after this one, so it won’t be a long wait.”

  “I have to be somewhere,” Everett lied. “But I’ll come when I can.”

  “If you want to join, you don’t have to take group lessons. We have private lessons too. More pricey, but you learn faster.” Bryce’s eyebrows danced up and down, and he shouldered the café door open.