I splay my arms out as I’m carried downhill, desperate to catch myself before I’m crucified on the laughing vines. I scream, but even over that I can hear the hooves bearing down on me from behind. I crane my neck to look back, but can’t see my pursuer.
Ahead, the trees disappear and I see a city. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree and plumes of smoke stretch into the grey sky. People! Civilization! Am I finally free?
And then the slide disappears. I spill over a precipice and plunge into a turbulent river that sweeps me away downstream.
• 51 •
WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER FOUND ME, she said that I’d been lost for less than an hour. I could swear it had been days and days. Time moves different when you’re hurt and chilled to the bone.
One winter morning, I’d woken up to my grandfather tugging on his winter coat and whistling. Ice had super-glued the front door shut, so he left the house through the garage to spend his day shoveling all thirty metres of my grandparents’ country home driveway.
After a bowl of porridge that I barely tasted and a glass of cold milk, I spilled into my snowsuit and trundled out after him.
The day was beautiful, but biting. Every breath soaked into my lungs like an ice bath, and in the second it took to blink, my eyelids would fuse shut. It was one of those days that only the comfort of a warm house twenty feet away can make pleasant.
Nevertheless, I was determined to help. I said I was going to “shovel,” which my Grandmother knew meant “play in the snow.”
So I built tunnels in the banks my grandfather built, and stocked them with snowballs, but with no targets in sight, I quickly moved on. I carved betoqued angels into snowdrifts while my grandfather toiled away and my Grandmother set up her easel by the window.
Then, when the clean sheet of snow in my grandparents’ front yard was irreparably spoiled, I went looking for fresh stomping grounds.
I’d moved to the side of the house when I saw a great grey owl, hunting for movement in an ocean of white. I watched her shadow glide across the dunes of snow like a black specter, moving in for the kill, before sweeping toward the back of my grandparents’ house.
Naturally, I gave chase. Well, the ghost of a chase. It isn’t much of a sport when one participant can fly and the other has to wade through thigh-high snowdrifts.
The owl lured me to the woods at the edge of my grandparents’ property. Not very far, by any stretch of the imagination, but the land sloped in such a way that the only visible sign of their house was a smudge of grey against the grey sky—the lazy coil of smoke, rising from their chimney.
The owl blended in too well with the birch wood, and the light snow that began to fall gave her the perfect camouflage. I hunted the wood for some minutes, and had almost decided I would never outhunt the crafty hunter.
Then my foot sank into a rabbit hole, hidden beneath the snow. I sprawled forward and, with nothing to break my fall, plunged mittens first into a snowbank as tall as I was.
I emerged from the snow gasping. My hot breath melted the snow on my lips and nose, then moments later they froze again. I brushed the white powder out of my eyes and collar, and began to scoop handfuls out from my boots, which were filled to the brim.
I sacrificed one of my mittens to the snowbank that tried to swallow me. We looked for it, come spring, but never did find it again.
Though I was wet and miserable after my spill, the fear didn’t creep in until I realized I didn’t know how to get back. My fall had disoriented me. Worse still, someone else had wandered through the snow, and trails led off in three directions. I picked one and followed it.
I shivered into my wet collar. The wind tried to weasel its icy fingers between my layers of clothes and the cold stung my eyes. I breathed into my one gloved hand, to avoid swallowing any more biting air.
The trail I’d followed was the wrong one. Or maybe it wasn’t, but as the storm picked up, I gave up all the same. I curled beneath a small overhang of earth, sheltered from the wind and snow. Icicles as thick as my wrist caged me in on all sides.
My Grandmother found me there. I saw her purple parka and bright red mittens moving between the trunks, like the world’s most outrageous yeti. See knelt down beside me and brushed the snow from my face.
“That’s all the fight you’ve got?” she asked softly.
“I’m lost,” I muttered. “I twisted my ankle. My mitten’s gone.”
My Grandmother took hers off and handed it to me, but I didn’t put it on.
“C’mon,” she said, and reached her bare hand down to help me to my feet. “I’ll carry you back if I have to, but you wouldn’t do that to your Gran’s poor back, now would you?”
I took her hand. She led me to the edge of the wood and across the lawn, all while the snow tried to smother us and the wind did its best to rip us apart. She tightened her grip, so I did too.
Back in the house, my Grandmother contented herself that I didn’t have any frostbite and saw to it that my ankle was wrapped in a tensor bandage. Then she mixed me a cup of bitter cocoa and brewed a mug of strong, black coffee for herself.
She stood by the window, while I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat shivering in front of the electric heater. And she never once brought up the fact that I’d lain down to let sleep take me less than fifty metres from her front door. Not that night or any night thereafter.
• 52 •
I’M SAVED BY A DARK HAND with a grip like a steel vice. It hauls me bodily from the water and spills me unceremoniously onto a wooden floor. I lie shaking on the floor of the boatman’s skiff.
He chews thoughtfully on a length of crabgrass above me. “Little dickybird’s flown away,” he muses. “Lucky to escape the weir.”
“Y-you’re n-not—” No good. My lips are blue with cold. The words won’t form.
The boatman seems to understand. He stokes the fire in the centre of his raft, then picks up his paddle and moves us closer to the shore—close enough that grey sand crunches beneath the wooden planks.
We rest on a river bank in the shadow of a long bridge made of glass and red steel. Across the bridge, on the far side of the river, I can still see the city shining.
Though the sky still spits rain on us, the fire chases the worst of my chills away. It’s not enough to dry my soaking clothes, but at least my shivering subsides. All the while, I’m disconcerted by the boatman’s stare. He sits across from me, skinny knees pulled up beneath his chin, and watches me. He doesn’t seem to feel the rain. And he doesn’t blink, not once.
“Thank you,” I say to him, when I recover my voice. “The Min—something was after me.”
The boatman nods.
I point at the shore we’re beached on. “You’re just letting me go?”
The boatman nods again.
“Why?”
He looks contemplative for a second, then answers in the same gap-toothed sing-songy voice he had on our first crossing, “If the river gets you wet, don’t forget to shiver. If you see a little mouse, listen to it squeak. If you catch a little fish, let it off the hook. Plus,” he adds with a rueful grin. “You overpaid.”
“I don’t suppose you want to be my guide, hey?”
“I never set foot on the far shore, doodle doo.”
“Right. Then … I don’t suppose you’ve seen Willow?”
The boatman looks sad. He shakes his head slightly, then spits his grass into the water and watches it spin away on the current.
“I’ll be going then. Thanks again.”
“Wait,” the boatman says. “A parting gift: cold and raw, the north wind blows, bleak in the morning early. The hills and knolls are covered with snows, and winter, she comes fairly. So don’t fret little dicky bird. Don’t fret.”
I don’t know what that means, but I do feel a little better. “Thanks,” I say, “but I think we passed that part already.”
After leaving the boatman, I climb a steep hill to reach the bridge above me. The wind up here is bracing and I shi
ver into my damp clothing, hungry for whatever scrap of warmth I can find. I suddenly miss my scarf and windbreaker.
When I reach the bridge, the curved glass plates overhead protect me. Unfortunately, the relief is short-lived—the bridge is open to both sides and gusts of wind still whip cold water at me.
The bridge is eerie. It’s too narrow for cars, but bicycles lie abandoned down its length, as if cyclists and pedestrians were whisked away mid-commute. Ferrari-red steel beams rib the bridge’s sides and knit the glass together—and lend it the appearance of a distended caterpillar.
Wet hands in wet pockets, I trudge forward. I curse the weather, but thank god for the caterpillar bridge, especially when hail begins to fleck the rain and batter the glass.
The river flows beneath me, white ridges on a belt of black, moving too fast to reflect the night sky. The water beneath the city reflects the streets and buildings’ lights as an abstract blur of colour—red, yellow, white—swirling together, dripping away with the current. In the distance, I see the boatman’s fire bobbing downstream.
By the bridge’s far end, my black pants are once again soaked through and I wear my white shirt like a second skin. My shoes, completely waterlogged, refrigerate my feet. The hail falls harder now, bunching up in small snowbanks along drains and gutters, and the cold rain rakes down my back.
I race for the safety of a nearby bus shelter. Like the bridge, the city streets are empty, but I keep my eyes peeled for any of the shades Willow and I saw from our last bridge. Either the street is truly bare or else I cannot see them amidst the rain. I seem to be alone.
Lightning starts stabbing the sky in the distance. The thunder that chases it is almost instantaneous. I haven’t heard any sound of pursuit since falling afoul of the river, but I suppose even a Minotaur could sneak up on me in this squall.
Still, I can’t brave the world. Not until the storm dies down. I lie on a bench in the bus shelter, listening to hail and thunder punish the world around me. The tarmac outside my little hovel glistens beneath a thin sheen of rainwater, rushing miniature icebergs towards nearby storm drains.
And as the storm lifts a little and I begin drifting into sleep, I think I see the caterpillar bridge lift itself from the far bank. It curls its body into itself to avoid the rain and begins wrapping long threads along its body. Then I close my eyes. I think I sleep.
• 53 •
I WAKE UP DAMP AND SHIVERING, staring at cold steel and an advertisement for cologne on the bus stop’s wall. My body aches where the thorns tore into my flesh, and my flesh is numb from exposure.
My bus shelter is an island surrounded by streets pooling with winter slush. The rain—far from abating—has turned to sleet. I look at the bridge, but I’m not surprised to see that it’s gone. Instead, a large cocoon rests on the river bank.
The city streets are emptier than an apocalypse. A Metro News lies waterlogged beside a trash can, a tattered shoe braces against the gutter, a squashed Starbucks paper cup swirls on a small stream down the street. I brave the elements long enough to pick the garbage up and throw it in the trash can, thinking it’s what Willow would want.
As I head back to the shelter, thinking to wait out the storm, I see something. The glass on a nearby shop window is fogged over and there, drawn on the cloudy surface, is a happy face. Beneath that, an arrow pointing on.
“W-Willow,” I stutter through chilled lips.
To my frozen ears the rain sounds like hoofs clattering against asphalt. The wind’s heavy breath sounds like an animal’s snort. I can’t see anything but ice and rain, but even if a Minotaur does haunt these streets, the choice now lies between braving the city or hypothermia.
The smiley face gives me the strength to step out into the street.
Rain flogs me with every ragged step I take. The air I breathe is ice, and I exhale clouds of steam. I trudge through the empty streets that Mother Nature seems intent on turning into another river.
I walk for some time. How long? My watch keeps fogging up—and the minutes are blurring together.
I’m cold. So cold. But I’m still shivering, so I’m not dead yet. The world is white and grey around me.
Above me, I see the outline of a glass bridge spanning two buildings. I stumble towards that shelter, thinking to escape the rain—if only for a moment. I’m no warmer underneath it, but I’m granted a small reprieve from the rain that’s now driving straight down.
I’ve followed the street straight as an arrow, but I’ve seen no other sign from Willow. If that even was her sign. Maybe someone else left it. Another ghost. Or the monster.
I angle myself under a corner of the bridge, so that I can watch the sky for any sign of alleviation. I hug my knees to my chest. I rub my arms with pruney hands, attempt to rediscover warmth. Well, I think grimly, this is what I wanted. I’m outside. Sort of. Wish granted.
I look back up at the bridge. The Minotaur looks down at me. I exhale my shock in a cloud of steam, but I’m too cold and weary to do anything more than try and shrink further into the shadows.
I can only see the Minotaur’s outline through the curtain of rain, but there’s no mistaking the humanoid body, nor the horns jutting from its head. I see it for only an instant, before it steps away from the window and out of sight.
This is it. The maze wins. Endless halls. Impassable rivers. Bleeding thorns. Hypothermia. One way or another it’s going to kill me. I may as well sit back and let it happen.
But even as I think that, I see the train approaching.
I hadn’t even noticed the light rail transit tracks that I’d been walking beside, or the crosswalk I now huddled next to. The train passes—white, red, and grey—feeling its way along a series of cables overhead.
And suddenly Willow is there. She stares out from one of the train’s windows. There’s a smile on her lips, though her eyes are sad. She sees me and waves, but I’m too numb and shocked to return the gesture. I see understanding in her eyes.
In what feels like an instant, her window draws level with me and then speeds by, but not before she points at something behind me. I follow her finger and see a door tucked into the side of the building I shelter under, beneath the shadow of the bridge. Then she turns away, as if speaking to someone else, and once again I’m left without a guide.
But, no. Even though I abandoned her, she still found a way to help me. I unfold myself from the wall and move slowly over to where she pointed. The door inside is heavy steel, like a commercial freezer, and it doesn’t seem to open from the inside.
To hell with it. I open the door and walk through. I don’t look back.
• 54 •
MY GRANDMOTHER DIDN’T ACT OLD until my grandfather died. She claimed he would recover, even as his final breath rattled in his throat. The adventure left her eyes after that. She didn’t plan any more trips to Japan or Africa. She didn’t bring back any more owl souvenirs.
She was smaller then than she had been in my youth. She shuffled from room to room where once her stride was long and urgent. Her hands shook as she reached her arms around me for a hug. Even as a grown man, I was reminded of my childhood-self thinking, she smells old. Only now she looked old and talked old too.
I’d moved out by this point. Bought a flat close to the city centre, where I worked. I visited her when I could—and in truth, I saw her more than either of my parents. But maybe it wasn’t enough.
Her house needed dusting. The lawn needed trimming. The garden needed to be re-sown. My Grandmother, never one to sit idle, attempted to do these things, but quickly grew fatigued before the task could be completed. When I came to visit her, I arrived in a world half-finished: a clean countertop beside a sink filled with dishes, a stripe of shaven lawn amidst a jungle of green, a single row of bean sprouts while weeds took over the rest.
I would drive out to see her weekly. Maybe biweekly. My life had become busier.
My Grandmother didn’t like it when I did her chores for her—insisted that she’d
“get to them.” She never did. Instead, she told me stories about her childhood, while I sipped tea beside on her on the chipped blue patio furniture and nodded along.
She fell asleep before I left, more often than not. I carried her indoors and lay a blanket across her stomach so she wouldn’t catch a cold.
I didn’t mind her snoring anymore. I didn’t mind her old person smell.
I sat beside her while she slept and cradled her head and wondered about how I might have rewritten my youth, gotten to know her better, given half a chance. Only after she fell asleep did I let myself cry over the chunks of missing hair and her yellowed skin.
• 55 •
I CLIMB OVER THE FIRST BODY before I realize what it is—one of my predecessors. The walls of this room are made of rough-hewn ice, but I hadn’t realized what the indistinct figures encased within were until I find the mummified hand jutting from the floor.
I run my pink fingertips over the other’s blue ones. They feel like ice cubes. If I had a glass of Grandmother’s homebrew, I’d break them off and swill them around, watch them slowly evaporate into oily trails in amber. Macabre thoughts.
I don’t break the fingers. They belong to the hand, and the hand belongs to the shadow frozen in the ice. The shadow whose face I cannot see. Maybe, I think, maybe it’s the last poor soul that Willow tried to lead. Maybe it’s me, for the next pilgrim who travels this way.
The ice cloaks these people in greys and blacks and blues, so I can’t make out specific features, but a silver light illuminates them from somewhere beneath the ice. Or perhaps the light comes from the ice itself. It ripples like aurora borealis, lending eerie life to the figures frozen all around me.
The ice cube people look like they’re frozen middance. I see now that one has both legs off the ground, as if jumping or flying or falling. They froze before hitting the ground. Another is upside down, fingers outstretched and clinging to the ground, legs jutting skyward.
I’m still shivering as I slip down this ghoulish hall of mirrors. The cold weighs heavy on my tongue and I smell copper when I breathe. I spew my hot breath out in quivering clouds.
59 Glass Bridges Page 15