Tales · from · my · Head

The builders knew what they were doing, when they mixed the mortar that would hold the keystone in place. They added a splash of rich red wine, and then dropped in a silver coin and an iron nail. The congratulated each other on a job well done, and fitted the last stones, and went back to their offices on the high street, in the capital.

The bridge was a new project, paid for by the king in the faraway capital, to facilitate trade in his realm, since his citizens had a tendency to be clannish and isolated, journeying only when it was absolutely necessary, and no farther than the next town, whenever they could get away with it. The bridge would span the muddy river – too fast-moving for boats or easy fording, too shallow to dig out canals – and it would let traders, tinkers, and travelers move themselves and their goods from town to town, village to village. The king’s ministers had planned a whole network of bridges, canals, and roadworks, and they all hoped that their efforts would ensure them their place in history.

They hadn’t expected, of course, that the bridge wouldn’t be used.

***

A man and a woman, middle-aged, and clearly familiar with each other, stood at the edge of the bridge where it met the deeply-rutted dirt road. Already the dandelions and columbine, and other hearty wildflowers had begun to sprout around the bridge’s stones, such flowers having no interest either in bridges, or stones. The woman said to the man “Well, I don’t care who hears it, but you won’t get me across that damned thing.” The man just nodded his assent.

“Everyone knows,” the woman continued, “the first person across a new bridge might as well have walked right into church and spit on the altar. There’s no recovering from a sin like that one!” The man nodded again. His views on the permanence of sin difference somewhat from his female companion, but her meaning was true enough: the first one to cross a new bridge was damned, and that was the way it was. Three months since the mortar had set, and three months the bridge stood there, with nobody using it but local foxes, who had quickly discovered that they could get close enough to the village to snap up a hen or two, and then run right across the bridge without being followed.

“I don’t know why they built that bloody thing anyways,” she said. “Peddlers just take the long way ‘round anyhow, and always have. They don’t need some shortcut to get here any sooner. The bridge down by Nettleton serves just fine, and it’s not like we need more strangers.” The man, growing bored with the conversation, watched some rabbits chasing each other through the grass about a stone’s throw away, and wished he’d brought a sling.

“Well, if we were down south a ways, maybe it wouldn’t matter so much. People down there, they can always find a sinner or two in the village, someone who wouldn’t be losing much by inviting the Devil’s gaze like that. But us? Up here?” She looked both shocked and mightily offended. “We’re good honest folk in these parts! Not one of us enough of a black soul to be so bold and impious!”

The man broke his silence: “Why do you think it attracts the Devil anyway, to walk across a new bridge?” he asked. “I mean, is it because building bridges is unnatural? Goes against the laws of nature, maybe?” The woman gave him a foul look, like he was a moon-brain, and shook her head.
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