59 Glass Bridges by Steven Peters

Author:Steven Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781926455792
Publisher: NeWest Press
Published: 2017-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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THE BOATMAN NOTICES MY SILENCE and discomfiture. “How many strawberries,” he probes me, “grow in the sea?”

I ignore him, but Willow comes to my rescue, “As many red herrings as swim in the wood.” Willow returns to staring into the boatman’s flames, her hands on her knees. She hums a tune I don’t recognize.

Lank seaweed dangles from the boatman’s fishing rod as he plucks it from the water, only to stick the pole back in again. There are no other signs of life—no mosquitoes or black flies, no minnows in the deeps, and no waves churning these waters.

The boatman tries again, later. Not a question, this time, but a challenge: “Pretty little goldfish,” he sings at me, “never can talk. All it does is wriggle when it tries to walk.”

When I stay mute, he champs off the end of the grass clutched between his incisors, and the pale stalk falls down to blemish the dark water. I take it as a sign of his frustration and grin to have thwarted him.

Unfortunately, as the far shore finally comes into view, his rhyme proves oddly prophetic—I attempt to stand up on the barge, and then I do, indeed, flop back down to wriggle on the deck. As quickly as it had evaporated, the boatman’s grin returns, and then it splits into pealing laughter.

The far shore is no true shore at all, but a wall rising from the water. I’m hypnotized by its approach, rising like a mountain of grey through the darkness. A dim light partially illuminates the wall, though I cannot find its source. The top of the cliff—if, indeed, there is a top—is lost in the starless gloom overhead.

The boatman steers his vessel straight towards this wall, and I wonder where he plans to make berth, or how one would scale a cliff like that. The cliff is bone dry above where the river knives off its bottom in a horizontal black line. No waves ever crest these waters.

I’m eager to be off this barge and away from this river as soon as possible, even though the boatman is the first human being I’ve seen in days.

If all the maze’s denizens are like him, and the figure lurking beneath the bridge, maybe I’m better off alone.

I become aware of a small light on the wall, as the boatman poles us forward. A single light illuminating a white dock, which looks similar to the one we disembarked from. I stand up again as our boat pulls level with the dock, eager to be rid of the boat and our host, but the boatman stands up with alarming speed to block my path.

The hand that he holds in front of my face is dark and weathered, and lacking its pinky and the adjacent ring finger. The skin around the missing fingers is glossy with old scar tissue, stretched tight where it has grown over and forgotten the missing digits. Why did you let it go? Willow had sung to him on the far dock.

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