Then she hands me the sweater, and I’m self-conscious enough to feel ashamed.
• 32 •
“ALL RIGHT, ASSHOLE,” Willow says. “My turn. I’ve kept in good spirits so far, but dragging you around is like wearing a pair of concrete shoes in a quagmire. You can play the whipped dog, trailing after me, but remember that I offered to help and you said ‘yes.’”
“Listen,” I snap back, “ever since I met you, things have gone from weird to fucked up. You can’t expect me to—”
“No.” Willow jabs her finger through my chest in a sharp, stabbing motion. Even though she’s right in front of me, I can barely see her through the gloom in the tunnel. “I can and I do expect you to shut up. You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. If you thought this would be easy, you were wrong. And if you still think you can pull a magical solution out of that stupid Stetson of yours, we can part ways anytime.”
“The hat’s gone. I lost it when the Mino—I mean, when we got separated.”
“It’s behind you, dummy.”
“I—what?” I turn around, and sure enough, the cowboy hat is lying in the centre of the tunnel, just barely visible in the dark. “What the fuck? How did this get here?”
“Can we focus?” Willow asks.
I’m confused. “No, really, how did—”
“I don’t care,” Willow says. “Stop staring at your stupid hat and pay attention. I led you out of the building you’d been wandering around for God-only-knows how long. I showed you the bridges. And you were like a fish out of water on that river, but you made it across, safe and dry. Because. Of. Me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I shouldn’t have yelled. That fucking river—I was just rattled.”
“Well, don’t take it out on me,” Willow says. Then her flinty eyes soften. “But you’re forgiven, for now. If it’s any consolation, you’re not the worst tourist I’ve ever hauled across the river.”
I walk slowly over and hover above my cowboy hat, as if sudden movements might frighten it away. “The worst—?”
“The boatman gives everyone the willies. One lady tried to jump out and swim.”
Snow dusts the top of the Stetson. I pick it up and brush it off. I look up, but the glass is intact.
“She didn’t manage to get more than a leg over the rail, before he caught her and dragged her back onboard. Good thing too—that water’s cold.”
I shift my weight, and I’m suddenly conscious of a slight crunch underfoot and my cold feet. “Willow, the tunnel’s coated in snow.”
“Oh, is it snowing? I hadn’t noticed.” Willow rolls her eyes.
“Not the ceiling. Underfoot.”
I look back at her. She’s looking around as if she’s only just noticed as well. “You could stuff some pages from your book into your shoes, if your toes are getting cold. Those shoes have seen better days.”
“Did we pass an open doorway and completely miss our exit?”
“No….” Willow lets the word drag. I hear the uncertainty. “No, I don’t know why there’s snow in here. Permafrost, maybe.”
“That’s not how permafrost works.”
Willow shrugs. “I don’t know. What’s that?”
“My Stetson, as you pointed out.” I place the refrigerated cowboy hat on top of my head.
“No, what’s that under it?”
Willow points back at the snow-packed earth, and then I too see the vague shape imprinted in the snow. We’re both stooping low to see what it is, when a wall of white hugging the right side of our tunnel collapses under its own weight and treats us to a little more light—enough for both of us to see the fresh hoofprint in the snow.
“Willow?” My voice comes out reedier than I would like.
“I see it. And look—there’s more.”
She’s right. There’s a whole line of hoofprints—apparently we’ve been stomping over them for some time now. My only consolation is that they’re heading the opposite direction, back the way we came—and we haven’t met any monster.
“I’ve seen them before,” I whisper. “In the maze.”
“There’s a huge cow lost somewhere in here, somewhere. Now isn’t that sad?”
“Yeah,” I agree quietly.
Willow seems happier now, as we set off down the snowy tunnel. I watch her translucent back, almost invisible in the murky tunnel against the backdrop of white.
Why is she humming? What’s she hiding from me? She’s been through the maze, she says. She’s taken others. She would know if some monster is stalking these halls, wouldn’t she?
Maybe she’s putting on a brave face for me. Maybe she knows there’s a monster in this maze, and she’s trying to protect me. Or maybe, a tiny voice whispers in my ear, maybe all the monsters are in league. Maybe she’s leading me right to it.
I follow a dozen steps behind Willow. I can’t help but look down and watch the floor as I walk. I’m now far too conscious of the hoofprints I’d previously missed in the dim light. I strain my ears for the sounds of hooves being set in snow, imagining that they’ll sound similar to my footsteps.
“That’s strange,” Willow says.
“What is?” I murmur, but I don’t look up.
“It’s snowing.”
“Mm.”
“No, look,” Willow says. I’m not paying attention and I walk through her. I turn around in surprise. She reaches up, places a hand on my head, then pushes a small pile of snow off to sprinkle in front of my face. “This is what I mean.”
Oh. It’s snowing.
I look up. Sure enough, snowflakes fall down atop my nose and lashes. I blink into the grey-black sky at the snow falling on me.
The glass walls are gone. The dim light that I’d thought was filtering in from my left is the only light all around me. The sun must have set while the storm persisted.
“But the tunnel—” I stutter. “When did we leave the tunnel?”
Willow rubs her chin. “I have no idea. I was looking at the hoofprints.”
“Maybe we should turn around?”
“We could,” Willow says, hesitation buttering her words. “But the boatman doesn’t ferry people backwards. And what if we run into a heifer that’s just as cold and irritable as we are?”
“A heifer. Right. Or a bull.”
“At least the wind has died down?” Willow chirps. Is her smile too forced? “Maybe we can find a barn or something to bunker down in for the night.”
I say nothing, but she’s right. I don’t want to go back now. I don’t want to see the boatman, or his river, or whatever left these tracks behind.
So Willow and I keep walking. We follow the tracks in the wrong direction, because we can’t make out any other landmarks. Willow brings out her flashlight to guide us through the gloom as the world sinks into darkness and the snow around us slowly builds.
We follow the footprints as far as we can, until they’re swallowed by the falling snow.
• 33 •
WHEN I DISCOVERED THE CLEARING in the woods, my first thought was that elves had made it, even though I was far too old to believe in such things.
The clearing held a log laid out like a table, replete with crude wooden dishes and cutlery and four Lilliputian chairs. Long ago, someone had even made an effort to weave a ceiling overhead from interlocking branches, though now the detritus of a dozen or more autumns coated everything.
I discovered the clearing quite by accident. While exploring a dense snarl of thicket, in the forest surrounding my Grandmother’s house, I discovered an intricate symbol scarred into a tree—a swirling pattern that looked like a Celtic knot. Or a maze.
Looking around, I soon found another symbol carved into a different tree. Then another. And another. Following the breadcrumb trail eventually led me to the clearing—a small natural hollow, tucked between five large elms and banked on two sides by steep hills.
I had stumbled into someone’s Fortress of Solitude.
Each fork, knife, and spoon loo
ked like it had been painstakingly whittled. Some were carved of light wood, others dark. Some were long, others stout. One spoon was barely more than a shallow circular depression—its handle had broken off. Though nothing matched, every piece of cutlery bore the scars of a pocket knife and looked to be in bad need of a sanding.
The plates and bowls, while better crafted, were filled with rainwater and moss now grew along their edges. As I watched, beetles dove in and out of the water, fishing for leaves perhaps, or drowning aphids.
The chairs were the crudest thing in the clearing—simple pieces of hewn wood, nailed together for support. One of the four chairs was ant-infested, another had almost rotted away, and no chair sat level on the ground.
The table in the clearing’s centre was a simple wooden stump. I could see the remnants of a rotting tablecloth on the forest floor around the stump, and the wood itself was now riddled with labyrinthine worm-holes. The tree that once stood here had been huge—over a metre in diameter.
The entire scene looked like a tea party, laid out and then forgotten—but not a tea party meant for me. The size of everything, save the stump, was elfin. As if for children.
For some reason, I began to clean the clearing. I cleared the hollow of the largest deadfall. I swept the floor of most of its dead leaves. I dumped the water from the bowls, sending the beetles spilling into the musty earth.
When the sun began to set, I returned to my Grandmother’s house for proper tools: nails, hammer, hacksaw, sandpaper, and anything else that might be useful in restoring the weather-beaten furniture.
My Grandmother caught me as I crossed the lawn. “Well you’re a little busy bee,” she said. “Where are you off to at this hour?”
I spilled the secret of the elfin sanctuary and my impromptu restoration project.
“Show me,” she said, but then set off purposely across the grass, leaving me to catch up.
My Grandmother laughed when I pointed out the first marked tree. She ran her wrinkled fingers over the marred bark. She placed a hand on each of the labeled trees that followed, as if memorizing the path by touch.
When we came to the clearing, my Grandmother laughed like a child and picked up each plate and fork in turn, running a critical eye over their construction. Finally, she turned to me and I saw that she was crying.
“This was mine,” she whispered, looking down fondly at the worm-scarred wood. “My hideaway, back when I was little. A girl with six brothers needs an escape. I built it all, with the tools my mother let me steal from the shed, while my father was at work.”
My Grandmother took one of the hammers I’d lugged along and stuck four iron nails between her teeth. “Come on,” she said around the metal. “We’ve got work to do.”
Night fell while we worked. She went back to the house once to grab lanterns and flashlights. Then we toiled away in a small bubble of light, while crickets chirped around us and mosquitoes buzzed by our ears.
We pried apart the chairs and rebuilt them from newer, sturdier wood. We sanded down what cutlery we could and re-carved others from the young twigs. My Grandmother even showed me metal hooks stuck into the surrounding elms, where she used to hang a tarp for shelter.
“I used to suspend my flashlight from the tree branches,” she laughed. “A pretty silver thing. This whole space would light up like a proper fort.”
We returned to my Grandmother’s house shortly before daybreak. I chattered happily about our midnight shop class assignment during the walk back, while my Grandmother sagged with sleep against my arm. Yet, despite the love we’d put into our little restoration project and our smiles over pancakes the next morning, I never did go back to see it during the day.
• 34 •
WILLOW AND I WALK THROUGH THE NIGHT, eager to escape the cold. Thankfully, though the trail we follow is soon buried, the storm seems to have passed and we’re not caught in the open by anything worse than a light snow.
I’m still trudging along, my toes and fingers frozen, when dawn’s weak light oozes across the snowscape. That’s when Willow plants herself in front of me and holds out an expectant hand.
“All right, tough guy. Let’s have it.”
I sigh, but decide fair’s fair. I begin to pull the sweater she’d leant me up over my head.
“Not that. The book.” She reaches a hand into my bulky pocket and pulls out the Gideon New Testament. She begins to tear pages out.
“That’s a Bible,” I hiss.
Willow stops for a moment, quirks an eyebrow at me, and then continues to rip out the pages. “Yeah, well, you’re no good to God if you’re popsicle.” She stops for a moment and frowns. “You’ve scribbled in here.”
“Not me, remember? I can’t read Italian.”
“Oh, right.” Willow continues frowning down the page. “I wonder what this means?”
The page with neat red ink in the bottom margin reads:
rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava
e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni
Willow tears out this page more carefully. Then she pulls out the bundle of weeds she’s carried since the riverside and gently wraps them in the paper.
Now, clutching a macabre bouquet, Willow thrusts the other loose pages into my arms. “For your shoes,” she says. “May be a little warmer.”
I do as she commands, but I mutter under my breath, “This still feels wrong.”
“Oh, shut up,” Willow says. She sticks out her tongue. “Maybe Jesus will save your toes.”
We walk for some time before I notice a forest creeping up on us. At first, it’s just a patch of black against the distant grey. But as we draw nearer, I see dark boughs, outlined skeletal-white with frost. Their leaves didn’t manage to fall before the snow set in—they still cling like frozen fingertips to the branches.
The place has a haunted feel, but Willow enters the wood so I reluctantly follow.
I hunt for signs of the hoofprints, but the snow is clean and clear as far as the eye can see. It sets my mind at ease, even if the trees look like they’re in pain.
We stop for a rest beneath a twisted oak tree, its back bent beneath a thick mound of snow. I look at the flash-frozen acorns and wish, for only a moment, that I was a squirrel. “We should have brought some food and water along, back when we had the chance,” I say.
Willow looks up. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
“No.” It’s strange. Surely it’s been at least a week since I’ve eaten. “I just feel … wrong. Like food would help make this normal. Maybe I can scoop some snow into the water bottle, and pretend that I have real cravings.”
“I found a recycling bin,” Willow smiles. “Back when you were running from your photocopier.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Willow. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“Definitely not,” Willow says. “Chin up, boy-o. I’ll get you out, yet.”
“Is there a Minotaur hunting me?”
Willow doesn’t answer immediately, so I steal a peek at her. She stares out into the forest and sucks her teeth for a moment, before she says, “I’ve led a bunch of people through before you. I’ve seen everything from talking cats to talking trees. I’ve never seen a Minotaur.”
“Talking trees?” I look up at the boughs of the oak I’m resting against.
“Yeah, but they were really very nice. Just don’t ask them for directions—turns out they don’t know how to get anywhere.”
I laugh, because I feel like she’s joking. Then again, maybe she’s not.
So I try not to worry about Minotaurs as Willow and I walk into the virginal wonderland. Soon boughs laden with fresh snow form a cross-thatch ceiling. The powder falling from overhead eases up, until only a fine net of sparkling flakes still fall. The scene would be serene, were it not for my cold arms and wet feet.
But Willow is humming. I watch her, a few steps ahead of me, skipping trunk to trunk. Our earlier argument seems forgotten, so I’m content to let it lie.
I think
back to the landmarks Willow listed, on the edge of the boatman’s river. “So this is the wood?” I ask. “The train passed beneath us on the bridge, and the boatman ferried us across the river. You said this is the hardest part—but this isn’t so bad. And then we’re home free?”
Willow doesn’t answer. She’s standing stock-still, staring deeper into the wood.
At first I hear nothing. Then I hear Nothing. There is no crunch of footprints in the snow, no squirrels or rabbits skittering in the trees, no birdsongs from one branch to another. The forest is silent, save for whatever sounds Willow and I carry with us.
“This isn’t the wood I meant,” Willow mutters. “I’m not sure where we are.”
Cold panic runs down the back of my neck that has nothing to do with the weather. “You’re kidding,” I whisper, now afraid to shatter the stifling silence. “You’re my fucking guide!”
Willow sighs and begins moving through the woods again, but her stance is more cautious now. “We’re not out yet.”
“Maybe we are!” I latch onto the thought like a lifeline. “The hoofprints belong to a moose, the prairies are boring enough to be Canadian, and this flash-frozen forest is caused by—I don’t know. A chinook or something.”
“Yeah, and Canada’s renowned for its ghosts and glass bridges.” Willow rolls her eyes. “Trust me, an unending ice field is just as labyrinthine as the hallways I found you in. And if you spend long enough in these woods, you’re going to swear every tree starts to look the same. You could walk forever and never find your way out.
“Though I think I know what the boatman meant now. ‘Go in and out the window, as you have done before,’ he said. We’re ‘out’ now. Time to find our way back in. I’d guess we’re looking for another bridge.”
I shake my head, “I guess. Sounds like bullshit to me—like you can interpret those stupid rhymes however you please and still derive vague meaning from them.”
Willow isn’t listening. She’s squinting at something through the trees, and she’s already begun trudging towards it by the time I’m done talking. I follow her trajectory and then see what distracted her.
59 Glass Bridges Page 10