A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,138

the victims of discrimination to the proprietors of such a dynamic. It was hard to believe, that I had actually succeeded in doing such a thing – started it, in any case.

Bits of the essence of my journey – and that of those around me, in accordance with the things I had taken on as my cause – flitted through me as I ran my hand over the length of that balustrade. Flashes and tidbits and flurries of quintessence pertaining to everything I and those near me had been through over the course of these last few, momentous months. It was all mixed in with the paranormal cement of this structure, what made it strong and pitched it upright, a vital ingredient.

It was only when I reached the middle that something in it faltered. It took me a moment to distinguish that it was not something in the soul of the bridge itself, but rather something that had happened here, and left its mark on the overpass.

I could see the image of someone – someone other than me – being the first to cross the bridge. He had come to its arch as rain came down on the city, and crossed it without a second thought as the Ravine took to quickly filling up, its current rapid in the swell of the storm. Halfway across he had stopped all amid the rain to look length-wise down the river, taking in the stunning evolution from dry chasm to rapids that had transformed it in a day.

Then he turned to cross the remaining half of the bridge – but slipped, the well-worn tread of his boots failing on the rain-slick slope of the overpass. The railing that was hip-height on me went only to mid-thigh on him, low enough that it did nothing to catch him as he fell against it. If anything, in fact, it tripped his body additionally.

Halfway across that bridge on his way out of the city, one Tanen of Cathwade went headlong over the side, and fell into the roiling rapids below that had surely drowned a great many other whiteskins that day.

F o r t y – F o u r –

The Irony of Fate

Strangely alarmed, I went back to the waterside to test the current again. I had not felt Tanen's presence in it, the first time. As I knelt at its edge, I was once again invested in what precisely had come of him, because now I was confused. The significance of the bridge and its completion had suggested I had actually succeeded – hope had actually planted itself in me once again – and, running my hand over the balustrade, the visions had all but confirmed that victory. Even up to Tanen crossing that bridge himself.

Until he fell, halfway across. What could that mean? Surely he couldn't have come so close only to lose his way half a dozen steps short of completing the journey.

I plunged my hand into the water, drank up everything it had for me. There was the sweet taste that was Ombri's spirit, the taint that was the mischief being carted out of the city, the fresh identity of the cloud this rain had hailed from, the smooth flavor of each drop being polished by the sky. I felt everything in the water that I had felt in the rain, all of the meaning and purpose – but where was that taste I knew all too well; the taste that belonged to Tanen? I knew for a fact (the visions had become as much to me) that he had fallen in, so where was the evidence?

Thoroughly washed downstream, it seemed.

I rose and tried a ways farther down. This time, beneath the surface, there was the hint of something that might have been him, at one point, but in such a ghostly form that I would never go as far as to bet my life on it.

Farther still, and I found it. A trace. And no wonder I hadn't been able to pick up on it near the bridge – it was washed so far downstream at this point, and –

Not on the surface.

Suddenly the water felt icy, strangling. I faltered, shocked by what the awareness implied.

Tanen, what have you done? I was torn between running farther down the bank and approaching at a much more hesitant pace, not sure I wanted to find what lay at the end of this rope. But I couldn't just let it go, so I