The Troll Bridge (1/?)

It's a troll bridge. At least that was what the kids told him. The village left it well alone - they'd not wanted to risk anything since five of their children were eaten just a month ago.

Eaten? he had asked at the pub, incredulously. Yes, eaten, they had replied him. They had not wanted to comment further on how they had come to that conclusion. He had finished his beer, brooding, then stepped outside for a smoke.

It was a chilly night. Winter was fast approaching and the air was thick with impending rain. He turned up the collar of his coat and looked down the end of the long street, down into the darkness where the bridge waited. Where the troll bridge waited. Puddles of lamplight pooled along the path but lit nothing beyond the last shop.

Once there, were one to walk a little ways more, one would come to the troll bridge.

Nothing lit the troll bridge. It was expected. The village was an old one, and though the modern world was swallowing its heritage up like a cancer from the centre out, its boundaries, its edges, its dark corners - all that was still old, and would remain old. Certain things could not be altered nor changed by the shiny chrome of the new.

He looked back, over his shoulder, at the pub. Warm light spilled from its windows and he could smell alcohol. It was dry inside, a stark contrast to the humid and cold night he currently stood in. But the troll bridge beckoned, and he obliged. It was, after all, what he had come to the village for.

-

At the troll bridge the man stopped and stood at its edge. He was a hair's breadth away from treading on its ancient stone. A long time ago, the first villagers had built this bridge of granite. They had hewn the blocks and placed them one atop the other so they could ford the river. Over time the water had worn away the bottoms of the blocks, creating a little arc under which cold, clear water now flowed.

The air was wetter by the little creek the troll bridge curved over. The atmosphere was thicker, denser than it had been in town. And where the main street had been quiet, the chatter of human voices and the clink of porcelain and glass muffled by closed doors, here the night was alive. The chirrup of night birds, the babble of the creek, and the rustle of the leaves - they melded together in a harmonious hum.

And the troll bridge, it stood there waiting in silence, of course.

The man took his hands out of the pockets of his coat. He took a deep breath of the wet night air. Then he lifted on booted foot and placed it firmly on the stone.

The moon shivered in her velvet shroud of the night sky. The birds quietened.

And the troll, she clambered up from her upside down perch beneath the bridge and barred his way.