The Wish Bridge
There is a bridge that appears with every full moon. It isn’t an ordinary bridge, clearly, and it is both more and less helpful than others of its kind. It doesn’t lead anywhere (not really, anyway—it’s not a portal to another world or anything), and it has some restrictions.
To cross it, for example, one must face the guardian who stands at its gate.
The guardian is a woman, or something that looks very much like a woman, though she is inhumanly beautiful and unnaturally still. There is something in her that resembles a river itself, in that she seems both placid and restless; eternally in place, and yet constantly in motion. She doesn’t have a name, though most people don’t bother to ask. To most people, her identity is inextricable from her purpose.
“I can grant you a wish or tell you a truth,” she says when you meet her, “but not both.
“I can forgive you a sin or permit you a wrong,” she adds, “but not both.
“And lastly,” she murmurs, “I can give something back that you’ve lost, or I can remove something you wish to have excised, but not both.
“Once you choose,” she says, “you have chosen. Once I speak,” she promises, “I have spoken. There are only three choices. Choose carefully, for no matter what you choose, you will almost certainly pay more than you know.”
If it sounds as though she’s said this before, it’s because she has. Many times, in fact, and to many supplicants, most of whom have heard of this bridge via stories and legends, and who’ve spent much of their lives trying to find it. She repeats the offer to anyone who comes her way for an entire night, but when the sun rises, she and the bridge disappear, and the promise she offers is gone with the stars that fade from the sky.
How do I know this, you ask?
It’s sort of a long story.
Well, it’s my story, actually, because the guardian of the bridge is my mother, and today, the first blue moon of the year, she passes her vocation on to me.
“What if I don’t want to?” I ask, and she flashes me a look of impatience. When she is not in service to the bridge she doesn’t have any particular face to maintain, and when it comes to me, this is the one she often chooses.
“Do you think I wanted to?” she prompts knowingly, and I sigh. “We’re made for this, daughter. This is our purpose, our calling. It is a summons like any other, and we have no choice.”
“But where will you go?” I implore her. “Why must you leave?”
“Because I’m done,” she says, closing her eyes. I think she feels it in her bones. She seems to feel most things in her bones. I’m young still, so I don’t feel much of anything. I feel sadness, I think. My world has always been very small, and my mother (aside from the bridge, which is enormous—the length of several trees, at least) has been the largest thing in it.
I was born with a vastness inside me, and sometimes I feel it will swallow me up.
“Are you ready now?” she asks me, sparing me a bit of gentleness. I think she understands in some abstract way that I resent our ties to the bridge, but she seems convinced I will grow to accept it. Not love it, of course, but accept it, as she has. I suspect, though, that she and I are more different than she thinks.
“I’m ready,” I say, because it’s what she wants to hear, and because this is only the first wish I will grant. Considering it’s for someone so close to me, I try very hard to make it a truth.
My mother sends a kiss of luck my way, like a breeze that settles my hair around my shoulders.
And then, as she has done for so many others, she disappears, and the bridge and I are alone.
* * *
The first traveler who finds me has come a long way. His nose is very dirty, and his clothes are a bit torn. Part of me hopes he will ask for a new set of clothes, though I know perfectly well that would be a wasted wish.
I recite my part as my mother has always done, but the man is so eager to ask for whatever he’s come here to ask that I scarcely get to any theatrics.
“Once you choose, you have chosen,” I say, “and once I speak, I have spok—”
“Okay, here’s the thing,” he interrupts me, and while I think that this is very rude, I allow him to continue. After all, there might be many supplicants this night; then again, there might not. This is a very remote river. “I know what I want.”
“Well, that’s promising,” I tell him, which is something that would make my mother’s eyes cut to mine with dismay, but she isn’t here anymore. “What is it, then?”
“I killed someone,” he says.
“Oi,” I reply. “Yikes.”
“I know,” he ruefully agrees. “So, here’s the deal: I need to be certain I get away with it. It was the man with whom I had previously quarreled over a woman’s heart. My sweet Katya,” he explains, giving me a piteous look. “The death of my rival, Ivan, was an accident. We were only fighting,” he concedes with a grimace, “but now, sadly, he is dead.”
“Is that your wish?” I ask him. “That you want the people of your village not to know it was you?”
“Yes,” he says.
I cast off the truth he might have received (like whether Katya actually loves him, which seems like an important truth to know, but he didn’t ask for my opinion) and grant the wish. Nothing will tie him to the crime.
“What else?” I prompt expectantly.
“I need the sin forgiven,” he says to me.
This, too, is easy enough. “Done,” I say.
He hesitates before the final part.
“Ivan,” he begins, and then his grimace deepens. “He’s my brother.”
“OI!” I reproach him firmly. “You didn’t tell me that!”
I wish, now, that I hadn’t forgiven him. Service to an eldritch bridge can be so restricting.
“I know,” he says sheepishly. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but we have both loved Katya for some time, and now…”
He trails off.
“I can give you something back that you’ve lost,” I remind him for his final wish, “or I can remove something you wish to have excised. But not both,” I add hastily, in case he’s forgotten, though that seems unlikely. He seems clear on the rules, which means that someone in his village must have spoken to my mother before.
“Excise my memories of my brother, please,” he begs me. “The pain.”
“The memories,” I clarify, “or the pain? Because they are not the same.”
He thinks about it.
“Or is it the guilt?” I prompt. I shouldn’t interfere, I know, but he strikes me as a man prone to doing stupid things. “Perhaps it’s your guilt you wish to have excised?”
He nods, relieved.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s very burdensome, and I wish to be rid of it.”
I nod.
“Okay, then,” I say. “It’s gone.”
“Thank you,” he exhales, having been holding his breath. “Thank you, thank you, thank y—”
“You can go now,” I inform him, gesturing behind me to the length of the bridge. My mother always suggested I not stand idle too long. Queuing for this type of thing can be a disaster. “You have to cross the bridge to finish the transaction.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well—” He shuffles uncomfortably. “Thanks.”
I step aside, permitting him to pass.
Then I turn back toward the night, waiting for the next petitioner.
* * *
I grant a few more wishes. An old woman with a sick granddaughter who wishes for the ability to turn straw into gold. Not very creative, but she’s relatively well-meaning, so I send her on her way. There’s a younger woman, too, who wishes for the affection of someone she’s long admired. I want to tell her that perhaps he won’t be worth the wishing, but she seems so happy when I grant her his love that I can’t bear to tell her my suspicions.
All in all, I find the entire process a bit overwhelming. I find myself not at all as serene as my mother would be.
This next petitioner is a very skinny boy-man. I think he’s probably a man-man, but he has elements of boyishness; his legs are too long for the rest of his body. Perhaps his torso is long, too. He seems entirely too long, in my opinion. I wonder if that’s what he’s here about.
He also has very messy black hair. I wonder if he’ll wish for a comb.
“Oh,” he says, stopping as he sees me. “Who are you?”
I blink.
There’s a speech for this, but for whatever reason, I’ve sort of momentarily forgotten it.
“This is my bridge,” I say, gesturing to it, and then I grimace. “I mean, I’m this bridge’s guardian.”
The boy-man looks over his shoulder, and then back at me. “The villagers nearby didn’t tell me there was a bridge here.”
I gape at him. I think possibly he might be stupid.
“There isn’t normally a bridge here,” I explain slowly, as if I’m talking to a child. “It only appears once every full moon.”
“Oh,” he says. “And where does it go?”
“I—” He’s definitely stupid. Where does any bridge go? “Across the river.”
“Oh,” he says again. “And who are you?”
“I told you,” I begin to say, but he cuts me off.
“I meant what’s your name,” he amends quickly, and then adds, “I’m Nile.”
I want to still be irritated, but unhelpfully, it fades. “I’ve been there,” I say excitedly, because the Nile is a river, and one that I’ve seen several times.
He nods happily. “And what can I call you?”
“I don’t have a name,” I tell him, “so I guess you can’t call me anything.”
“Well, that just seems wrong,” Nile remarks, and frowns. “How can you not have a name?”
“I don’t need a name,” I remind him. “I’m not really a person.”
“What? Where did you come from?”
“My mother. I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, I assume.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t have one.”
“How can you—”
“I just don’t.” I pause, glancing upward. “I like to think the moon is my father.”
Copyright © 2024 by Alexene Farol Follmuth
