59 Glass Bridges

by Steven Peters

  Willow, somewhere to my left, cries out.

  I pick myself up shakily and inspect my right side with my fingertips. Shit. That’ll bruise.

  “You asshole,” Willow moans from somewhere in the dark. “Just bring me the light.”

  The flashlight is lying against a root, casting eerie shadows up against the vines. I pick it up and find Willow bent double and cradling her left shoulder. She spits translucent blood as I shine the light on her. “Tell me how bad it is.”

  Her left eye is closed against a trickle of blood that spills from a cut in her forehead, down beside her nose and across her cheek. The shoulder wound is more serious: a deep gash ripped from her armpit to the top of her shoulder blade paints her arm in a waterfall of red.

  The sight is strange, because I can still see through her. I stare for a moment and then I ask her, “You can bleed?”

  “Oh, you think?” Willow shouts. “Goddamn you. I’ve been so patient, putting up with your lost puppy bullshit, trying to stop you from making the same mistakes everyone makes, and what do you do? Ugh, and what are you doing?”

  “I’m taking my shirt off. We need to stop your bleeding.”

  “Not your shirt,” she says. “You’ll need that.”

  “My suit jacket then. Don’t know if I can rip it.”

  “You’ll need that too.”

  I throw my hands in the air in frustration. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m only trying to save your life. Of course I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known the fashion police would come calling.”

  “Shut up,” Willow hisses, yanking off the scarf from around her neck. “And help me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I do as she asks. It’s my fault, after all. I tie the scarf to her shoulder as tightly as possible. She tries to wipe the blood from her eye with the heel of her right hand. I pretend not to notice when she also spits blood onto the ground beside her, though more leaks onto her lips from her head wound.

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “You’re walking in front!” Willow bites back, apparently not in a forgiving mood. Willow shakes as she stands to her feet, but pushes me away when I offer her my arm for support. She takes a step forward, before motioning me in front.

  “Remember,” she says through teeth clenched against the pain. “It’s not like I have to be here.”

  • 47 •

  THOUGH THE AIR IS COOL AND HUMID, the very real threat of skewering myself on the passageway wall makes me sweat. Willow waves off my slick palms, chooses to place some distance between us instead. We move slowly—I’m in front, she trails behind.

  As we wander, a weak light gradually begins to filter through the wood around us. It feels like dawn after a long and moonless night. But then, we’d just slept through the night—didn’t we? Willow stows her flashlight again and we carry on by the grace of an unseen sun.

  When we reach the first fork in the wood, Willow calls a brief rest. One path continues on straight ahead, the other leads to the right and quickly winds out of sight.

  “It’s right,” Willow says. “It’s a little more unpleasant than straight ahead, and it gets narrow in places, but we have to go right.”

  “Let’s try going straight instead,” I say.

  Willow scowls. “Suit yourself.” She waves me off down the corridor. “I’ll sit and wait for your inevitable return. I’m dizzy.”

  I sit down beside her. “Right is fine. We’ll go right.”

  The choices become more frequent after that. Very soon, we come to a crossroads with four possible paths, and Willow sets off down the leftmost one without explaining her rationale. I hesitate. When she’s left me thirty paces behind, she turns around and stamps her foot. “Seriously? Are we going to put every fork to a vote? I really don’t care to be impaled again.”

  “That’s the path?”

  “No, but the thorns along this corridor are particularly lovely this time of the year.” Willow rolls her eyes and continues walking. I reluctantly follow.

  The ceiling of the path that she’s chosen begins sloping downward, and at one point Willow and I are forced to squirm over the root network on our bellies to avoid the thorns overhead. My right side aches as I squash my freshly bruised flesh against more jagged terrain, but Willow doesn’t say a word about her shoulder, so I bite back my complaints.

  When we can at last stand back up, Willow stops to adjust her makeshift bandage. The wound has reopened. “Ah, shit,” she mutters and lifts the edge of her black dress as if to tear it.

  “Wait.” I unwrap the tie from around my neck and hand it to her. “Pink isn’t really my colour,” I say, but Willow doesn’t smile at the joke.

  We soon come to another four-way branch, identical to the last. “Left again,” she says.

  I squint down the right and centre paths. “Why?”

  “We can’t do this at every intersection!” she snaps. “I told you the path wasn’t easy. You want to take an alternate, be my guest.”

  “What I mean….” I trail off. “That last fork. It curved. Isn’t this the same crossroad?”

  “We had this discussion when we first met,” is the only answer I get. Did we? I don’t recall. But Willow is already stomping away down the left-hand passage, leaving me no room to argue.

  I follow reluctantly, and say nothing more when she picks two more turns that make little sense to me. I only speak up again when we come to a fork that demands we choose left or right, and the right-hand side is easily the gentler of the two.

  “Honestly,” she says. “My shoulder is killing me. I just want to get out of this wood and see if I can find somewhere to wash the cut. And the quickest way that I know is left.”

  “I’m a little skeptical—”

  “Oh, you’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  I raise my voice. “What if you’ve forgotten the way? What if the path shifted since you were last here? You can’t seriously expect me to believe you memorized the path in all this shit.”

  Willow hesitates and I’m elated. This is it. I’ve caught her in the lie.

  “I’m a guide,” she sighs. “But you’re not exactly wrong. This place isn’t the same for any two people who walk it. I was really hoping we’d be out of this wood by now, honestly.”

  Willow looks at me, a lock of blood-crusted hair obscuring her face. For a moment, her eyes reflect the pain she’s in, but then they steel as I stare back. “But I’ve been here for a hell of a lot longer than you. You could do worse than listen to my advice.”

  “Advice? Christ, you’ve been spoon-feeding it to me like the gospel!” I point to the right. “Look, the trees thin over there. The floor is practically pitfall free.” I swing my hand to the left, where the thorny walls squeeze into the corridor, and the ceiling threatens to dip low once more. “And you want to go down there?”

  Willow sucks her teeth again, a habit that’s quickly grating on my nerves. “Never heard of the path less travelled?” she sighs.

  “You have fun with that. I’m going to try my luck.” I begin walking. Willow hesitates and I wonder if my earlier suspicion wasn’t correct. She wants my company. That’s all I am to her, a friend for a lonely denizen. Well, no more.

  “Wait,” Willow says behind me.

  I stop, but don’t turn around. “Why?”

  Willow’s voice, annoyed. “I said, ‘do you want me to wait.’ What if it’s a dead end?”

  “If it isn’t, you’ll be waiting for a while.” I keep walking.

  I follow the path for another ten seconds before glancing back down the corridor. When I look back, Willow is gone.

  • 48 •

  AS A CHILD, I SAW FACES in my Grandmother’s stuccoed ceilings and the grain of the wooden walls. I created constellations from the dots and whorls, invented heroes, and then wove stories for those heroes from the patterns that I saw.

  Out of doors, those stories spilled into the sky to become shapes in the clouds or actual constellations in the sky. I could identify O
rion and the Big Dipper, but a belt and a ladle did little to entrance me when I could weave sea serpents and river goddesses out of the pinpricks of light. I saw the world as a canvas, coloured in with ink dot paintings, and the world that I engaged with was more vibrant than the one inhabited by those around me.

  The images were entrancing, at least in part because of their impermanence. I could never seem to find the same picture twice. So a section of stucco that looked like a wise man with a crooked beard became a crescent moon the next time I searched for him.

  When I was very young and first saw the figures in the ceiling, I told my Grandmother about the stories I’d discovered. She chuckled and probed me for further elaboration. When I was done, if my story had been particularly compelling, she would erect an easel and give me one of her cheaper canvases to deface.

  “Draw it,” she said. “The shapes and the lines.”

  I would press too hard on the fabric. My pencil punctured the canvas as I futilely sought to recreate the masterpieces her ceiling contained.

  “Paint it the way you just described,” she said after I described a forest with the faces of people. “Leaves like dry fingers, laced with yellow veins. Branches like withered arms. Bark like a weathered face. Paint your forest one tree at a time.” I grew too impatient. My brushstrokes sped up as I mangled my vision more and more. My hands were not dexterous enough to contain my imagination.

  My Grandmother worked on her landscapes beside me, and when I looked over I seethed with jealousy at the golden ears of corn and the pretzel-thin telephone poles piercing a clear blue sky. My Grandmother’s paintings, so much more vivid than my memories of corn mazes and road trips.

  Still, my Grandmother hung my childish ink splatters up around the house—on the walls with the most sunlight, the most visibility, the most exposure. She tucked her own paintings into stairwells, hung them up behind doors. When she decided that her walls were too cluttered, she stored her paintings behind the sofa, while mine basked in the places of pride.

  I remember the disappointment in my Grandmother’s eyes the day that I told her I was done with painting. I hated the oily paints and the rough canvas, preferred my intangible imagination instead. So I stared up at her stuccoed ceiling and escaped the confines of her country home, while she lay coughing in the next room.

  Eventually I lost that skill. The last time I tried, I lay in bed and hunted through the grainy patterns, but no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find any answers above.

  • 49 •

  I’M FEELING CLAUSTROPHOBIC as the thicket once again threatens me from all sides. The vines—which for a stretch seemed to be tapering off—now coil long tendrils into the path, further constricting my already limited space. I’m forced to jump over them, stoop under them, and then turn sideways and inch forward shoulder-first.

  At its tightest, the thorns dig into my suit jacket and hang me suspended like a marionette. I don’t struggle too much, lest I impale myself. Instead, I wriggle free of my suit jacket. I leave my clothing crucified on the vines behind me and escape with only superficial scratches.

  The vines—now thick and hoary as old trees—send spiky black fingers across the sky above me. Each thorny fruit has swelled to the size of a large pumpkin, and they sway ominously from their branches overhead. Should one fall on me, I’m dead. All I can do is press on and hope they remain in place.

  Concentrated as I am on the dangers around me, I don’t even notice the ceiling’s disappearance until I feel the first cold fingers of rainwater trickle down my neck. The soupy grey sky is only visible through the sparsest break in the canopy, but it’s enough to send icy droplets splashing into my eyes.

  The wood around me whispers with the sound of dripping water. I don’t have space enough to lift my arms and cover my head, so I endure every frozen rivulet that slides onto my hair and down my shirt. My lower lip quivers from cold and—as I’m forced to crawl through a muddy puddle to escape a low-hanging vine—I wonder if I might die of hypothermia, here in this godless place. Or maybe I’ll accidentally impale myself with an ill-timed sneeze.

  The vines criss-crossing the path now droop so low that any hope of standing up is gone. I wriggle underneath them on my belly, narrowly avoiding the plant’s cruel nails. I feel black leaves brush wet trails down my back, even as wet mud slicks my front.

  Bumpy roots underneath scrape into my belly and force me upward. The vines, an omnipresent threat, force me downward. There’s not enough room to turn around now, even if I wanted to. Damn it all, this was supposed to be the easier path.

  I’m an idiot. I always did have a problem with authority.

  Abrupt laughter bubbles to my lips. I lie there, face pressed against the wet roots, quivering with laughter for long minutes. It sounds panicked and maniacal, even to my cold and water-clogged ears.

  When the laughter finally dries up, I remain cold, wet, and lonely.

  I miss Willow.

  I crawl forward. I move maybe a metre. I’m still crawling five metres later. And ten. Twenty. Progress is agonizingly slow. I heave my sodden limbs along and keep my cheek pressed down into the mud to avoid scalping myself.

  Then, suddenly, I can lift my head. The vines are lifting. Soon I can crawl—the space is still narrow, but I’m granted room enough to lift myself up on my hands and knees.

  When the ceiling lifts high enough to allow me to stand again, I breathe a sigh of relief. The worst is over. Maybe I’m finally on my way out.

  And just as I’m thinking how lucky it was that even in the tightest situation I always had a path to follow, I round a corner and come face-to-face with a wall of vines. I look around, but see no other way forward. There’s no end to the vines that hem me in on all sides.

  How appropriate, to find a dead end in the forest that’s going to kill me.

  • 50 •

  I STARE UNHAPPILY AT THE DEAD END and wait for something to change. Nothing does. Agonizing minutes pass.

  I can’t go back. I can’t stomach that crawl again.

  Which means I can’t apologize to Willow. I wonder if she’s still waiting for me to turn around and follow her.

  I pick myself up from the ground and carefully probe the wall in front of me. I’d sooner hack my way through the spike-infested forest with my bare hands than brave that claustrophobic passage again.

  The thorns here are huge—a hand’s span or more. They stick like sickles from the wall of thorns, jutting out from between the black leaves. I carefully run my fingers along the edge of one. It’s wickedly sharp, and even that ginger contact draws a few droplets of blood.

  “It’s easy,” a reedy voice whispers.

  I whirl around, but nobody is there.

  “Oh, so easy,” the voice coos softly. “Our thorns are sharp. So sharp.”

  “I—” Oh, for fuck’s sake. No. I’m not going to start talking to trees. I’m not going mad.

  “So much easier.” The vines before me wriggle with the words, like a nest of snakes.

  “Jesus Christ. What are you?” I take a step back.

  “The way out,” the woods around me whisper. “I’m the roots, and the boughs, and the curtain before the gate. I’m black leaves and red thorns. I’m here to help you escape.”

  “Escape…?”

  “It’s so easy,” the woods creak. “So easy.”

  The vines hanging in front of me stretch out as if for an embrace. Their thorns glisten like a hundred bloody fingertips as they stretch out to take me into their midst.

  “No.” I take another step back. “Not that way.”

  “Escape,” the wood drawls. Is that laughter I hear in its voice? “So easy.”

  I pause. “Did you say ‘the curtain before the gate?’” I ask.

  The clutching tendrils fall abruptly back against the wall. The voice stops teasing me.

  Aha. Nothing for it, I suppose. I march forward and wrap my hands around a thorn attached to a dry and brittle vine. The thorn sinks deep into
my palm and sends blood trickling down my arm. The vine quivers at my touch.

  Then I rip the thorn off. A shrill scream echoes through the forest around me, and a syrupy red sap spills from the broken plant, as if it too bleeds.

  The vine moans out, “Perché mi schiante? Perché mi scerpi?”

  I ignore the talking plant. I ignore my bleeding hands. I ignore everything but the wall before me. I wield the thorn like a scythe and bring it sweeping through the vinous growth.

  “Isn’t there any pity in your soul?” the vine wails as the wall begins writhing.

  I stab, saw, and slice at vines thicker than my leg. I lop off long vines even as they try to impale me, and leave them flopping on the ground like severed tentacles. Still, some find flesh, and I’m left with long gashes across my arms. I fight through the pain and carry on with my grisly reaping.

  I cut a hole through to the other side. I roar as I cut through the final tendril with its own vicious spike. The last vine falls to the forest floor and then wood around me goes still, save for the sound of weeping in the distance. Or am I imagining that?

  I drop the severed thorn onto the crimson earth and then step through the new curtain I’ve created—long tendrils of sticky red sap, spilling to the forest floor. I wipe my sticky, stained hands down my muddy shirt, and I realize that I can’t tell my blood apart from the plants’.

  Through this gate, the path runs wide and clear. The path ahead slopes downhill, and the vine’s sap has already traced a crimson line between the roots for me to follow. I can see the setting sun in the distance, as it peeks between thinning trees and heavy clouds.

  Then, from behind me, I hear heavy breathing and the thud of hooves walking slowly over tree roots. Something is coming through the forest—the vines around me begin rustling again in anticipation, and I hear bloodlust in their voices.

  “Impossible,” I mutter, but fear lances up my throat.

  The leaves around me ripple and it sounds like laughter.

  Not again. Not this shit again. I run and the sound of hoof steps follows me as I race through the forest corridor.

  When I finally slip and fall, as I was bound to on a rain-slicked decline, I slide haphazardly past roots and vines. Red sap and rainwater run beneath me and carry me down, down, down.