Synopsis: Meersh, a trickster, has been put in charge of the two children of his beautiful neighbor, Sun-Through-Clouds. But because he's too busy lusting after her, he fails to treat the children properly, and as a result inadvertently turns them into fish, and they die. The world in which this story takes place is called Shadowbridge. It's a world dreamed into being, where nearly everyone lives on strange, impossible, and seemingly infinite bridge spans. A friend named Beedlo has suggested that he cook the fish to disguise his crime....  

Back inside his house, Meersh took the fish out of their clothes. He gathered up the clothing and threw it behind the tapestry. He placed them in the new frying pan on the black stone stove and considered them. Just two dead fish in a world of fish. That's all they were. Well, he thought, it wasn't as if he'd wanted to kill them.

He gutted and skinned them and tossed the heads aside where he didn't have to look at them. Then as Beedlo had suggested, he mixed butter and wine and began to fry the filets. The fish smelled better even than the meal he'd consumed in his sleep. Once they were cooking, he pulled off his nightshirt and dressed. After breakfast, he would take the remains out and throw them in the ocean.

The fish sizzled and Meersh sang a wordless song in anticipation, and between them made enough noise that he didn't hear the knock on his door.

The room suddenly grew brighter. Meersh turned from his cooking to see a figure silhouetted in the open doorway. There could be no mistaking her ripe form. Sun-Through-Clouds had returned early.

"Oh, you lying children!" he cursed beneath his breath. "You evil penis!"

Aloud he exclaimed, "Why, Sun-Through-Clouds, I didn't expect you for days!"

She smiled at him--the smile that had ignited his desire on many occasions, but which faltered now as her eyes sought her children in the depths of the large room. She reached the low table and stared down at the cards and the open pot.

Meersh swallowed.

He watched in helpless horror as her hands lifted the pot. She peered into it in bewilderment, and from it to Meersh and then back again. He knew what she was seeing, what thoughts would be tearing through her brain at this very moment.

He blurted out, "I have to tell you, your children ran off. I was hoping they'd only gone somewhere to play but alas I fear now it's me--they've run away from me. I would happily help you look for them. Oh, yes, that stuff. You know, I tried it myself, it's not really very edible, plus I'm afraid I spilt some on the--

Her look silenced him as severely as a muzzle. She set the pot back on the table.

He wanted desperately to turn his back on her as though he had no reason to fear her. It might have gone a long way toward reassuring her; but he couldn't. Despite her voluptuous beauty, what he saw in her eyes warned that something ghastly hid within. With one hand, a simple movement, she shoved him aside as forcefully as if she'd struck him. He skittered into a stool and tumbled headfirst into his hammock. It spun, wrapping him up like a tuna.

Sun-Through-Clouds saw the severed heads of the fish. She cried into the pan, "My children, my children!" She tried to touch the lightly browned bodies but could not. She swung about. "You did this. You did this to me!"

Meersh fought his way free of the hammock. The anger spreading from her heart was changing her already. She seemed to grow larger and darker, as if absorbing the light in the room. Her eyes became steel, and her body sharpened and molded into parts both flesh and metal. In places her skin parted, revealing black iron like the stove behind her. Rivets popped out along her forehead and her jaws shifted from side to side with a painful, grating squeal. Meersh knew all about shape-shifters, especially the ones who transformed in anger. They were the most dangerous.

He tumbled from the hammock and bolted out the door and down the narrow lane. He skittered into the main thoroughfare, narrowly missing a scrimshaw-hawker's cart set up at the corner. He fell on the stones, sprang up and ran. People on their knees scrubbing their stoops stared at him as he ran past. Fishmongers glanced up from where they knelt, pouring water onto the stones where they'd gutted the morning's catch. Fish blood was a libation spilt across his path--a terrible, terrible omen.

He dodged around baskets of fish, of fruit, strips of seaweed hung out to dry, a jeweler's glittering cart. To his left, the masts of fishing boats clustered motionless above the ocean. He never stopped, never slowed. Too close behind him he heard shrieks from the same people he'd passed. He didn't have to look back, nor did he wish to for fear the sight of Sun-Through-Clouds completely transformed would ground him to the spot.

If he'd had an inkling how to swim, he might have leapt the railing into the sea. He cursed himself for the life he'd wasted, rejecting knowledge and skill in pursuit of base desires of the moment. It was true, completely true, and if he could only elude this monster and relocate to some other span of the eternal bridge, why, he would definitely change his ways. Become a priest. Devote his life to charitable duties. Become the eyes for someone blind or work to feed starving children--no, no, bad idea. No children, he should never be allowed near children. He should go on a pilgrimage instead. Soon.

On his right he passed a five-story apartment building with shops on the ground floor. A turret ran up the corner. Higher towers prodded the sky above the apartments, with pennants hanging, waiting for the winds. He ran past alleys and lanes, and looked down every one for some idea of an escape. He had to get off this empty thoroughfare before she caught him.

With no more plan than that, Meersh turned down the next lane he saw, then into other, smaller offshoots--dodging blindly through a section of the span full of treacherous alleys and subversive streets. He wove in and out, hoping that such a maze might save him. Even he didn't know where he was.

He dodged around sacks of milled grain and kegs of wine waiting to be hauled in. Any other time the smells would have beguiled him.

He turned mistakenly into a stinking alley that ended in a fence. He had to throw three crates up to dive over it. His tunic caught on the rough poles and tore. He landed hard on dungy straw, amidst a flock of goats that whickered and neighed. They sprang aside, but some came back and nudged him in friendly fashion. One started to chew on his torn tunic. He shoved them all aside, waiting and listening. Hoping. Then he heard the whuffling of something rushing down the alley. Guttural, grating noises behind the fence.

A hand clutched the top of the fence. It was black and shiny, spiked at every joint and as big as his face. Smoke boiled up behind it. A colossal blackened skull with smoldering eyes peered down into the pen.

Meersh screamed. He bounded over the railing and ran on.

He ran so long that he lost all sense of what he was doing. Running became the only thing in life. He crossed the entire span that morning--four hundred wyrths at least--until he could see ahead the great south gatehouse of Valdemir.

The span ended in a barbican. The one tunnel going in split off into two beyond the portcullis, each with its own turnstile. A single guard regulated all traffic through the barbican, between Valdemir and the two other spans that met there. He did a comfortable business collecting bribes from those who wanted to cross for reasons they couldn't have named: Two spans ensured that he did very well indeed. He had grown lazy and corpulent from the easy pickings. His breakfast of beer and egg soup could last sometimes two hours or more. Meersh shot into the tunnel and dove over the turnstile so quickly that the guard, looking up from his bowl, glimpsed a blur that might have been a trick of light. It might have been a fluttering gull. He didn't feel like getting up for a blur.

Meersh had arbitrarily picked the right-hand tunnel. He emerged out the other side upon a span called Lukhan, where he had never been before. Lukhan was older than Valdemir and not so pleasant. Its stones were worn and uneven, the center avenue unswept and unwholesome. The tattered-awning fronted shops might have sold the secrets of dead empires. More likely they sold lies. The houses were narrow and not very high. A seedy crowd milled about, hawking and buying, cajoling and thieving. Looming above them were two great towers, linked by a narrow wall and topped with crumbling turrets. Meersh wove toward them through the crowd, putting as many people as possible between him and the gatehouse. His sorry state raised any number of scornful looks, even from those most shabbily dressed. People stepped aside to let him pass. The essence of goat manure could not have helped.

Almost beneath the towers, he entered a smaller, tighter throng that seemed as ragged as he was. A few men in tidy black uniforms hemmed them together. He slipped deep among them to hide himself. The beggarly throng moved slowly but steadily away from the barbican and toward the twin towers, for which he gave thanks.

A moment later his pursuer emerged.

The iron monster had reverted. She'd become her own beautiful self again. Crouching low, Meersh was well hidden among the beggars, and they behind the looser crowd. Yet Sun-Through-Clouds stared straight at him across the plaza. To his amazement she smiled. Her smile flew to him and whispered in his ear, "A poor fate you've picked, dear Meersh. I won't set foot in there to retrieve you. My punishment would have been quicker than death in Lukhan." Her fingers pressed and moved as if snapping a wishbone.

She turned on her heel and walked back into the tunnel.

Meersh cheered. He had won. Sun-Through-Clouds was giving up. Now he could slip away, start over somewhere else where she would never find him. He straightened, straightened his ripped tunic, pushed his mane of hair into some kind of order, and tried to depart from the shuffling throng.

A large hand fell upon his shoulder.

"Where you think you're going, louse?" asked a voice as large as the hand.

"Hey? I, ahm, forgot something, cousin," he said.

The hand spun him around. "I'll bet you forgot to bathe." The hand belonged to one of the uniformed men. He'd closed in from the side. His sleeves sported lightning bolt patches. "And what an appalling pong. Taken a goat lover, have you?"

"No, I forgot something important."

"Didn't we all? Else we'd be off somewhere with the living. Maybe on that span over there, heh?" He pointed to the bridge span Meersh had not chosen. Brightly festooned with banners and flags and pastel spires, it receded sharply into the mists, much more inviting than the dark towers looming overhead. The hand on his shoulder turned him again.

In front of him lay a black hole cut in the wall between the towers. As he looked on, the beggar at the head of the line stepped into and was swallowed by the blackness.

"No," Meersh protested fearfully. "I am living. I mean, I should be somewhere else than this, cousin."

"Sure you should." The hand slid from his shoulder to the back of his neck, where it clamped tightly. "If you want to be excused, cousin, at least come up with something original." The guard hauled him around the others ahead of him. "Special acknowledgment, louse, of your special stink. You move to the head of the line. Bye now." He propelled him into the blackness.

Meersh dropped like an anchor, straight to the center of the world....

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Read the complete story in ATTACK OF THE JAZZ GIANTS & OTHER STORIES

All images and text © 1998 Gregory Frost