WHERE I THOUGHT TO FIND A BRIDGE spanning a mighty, rushing river, there is nothing but an expanse of dark water eeling between two grey shores. The water moves sluggishly as Willow’s light flits over its surface, but she giggles delightedly all the same. She tosses the flashlight onto the beach, where it sticks up from the sand like a miniature lighthouse. I hear her laughter bound away into the dark and then I hear the splash of river water.
I slide down the same dune more cautiously and I stoop to pick up the light where she let it fall. The shore’s grit is cool against my bare soles, but stings as it probes fresh blisters. Despite my sore feet and Willow’s exuberance, I’m reluctant to touch the water.
Flaxen crabgrass cracks into shards against my toes, the water below apparently too far or too anoxic to sustain it. I shine my light down the beach, and watch Willow emerge from the water, only to plop down amidst a copse of the pale weeds. She begins plucking them from the sand like “I love you nots” on a daisy.
“Come on,” I say, though I don’t know where we’re going.
Willow sticks out her tongue and continues to pluck the grass. The dry stalks around her rustle as she plucks them from the earth, though I don’t feel any wind. Willow begins to sing, “Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has lost her shoe....”
I leave the ghost to her nursery rhyme, cautiously approach the water. The sand underfoot turns tacky and pastes itself to my soles. I uproot footprint-shaped patches of shoreline with every step.
When I stand on the river’s lip, perched on the line that separates earth from water, I stop. The river swirls darkly beneath me, inky currents outlined only by white eddies swirling around rocks. I pick up a pebble from the beach and arc it into the river, but it does not skip—it just sinks without a sound.
The water’s turgid swirl reminds me of tar or ink being sucked down a drain. I briefly consider swimming the expanse, but even the gentle kiss of this dark shoreline makes me shiver. I don’t want to tread those waters.
“Do we cross the water or continue down the shore? I thought there was a bridge.”
“My master’s lost his fiddle stick, he knows not what to do.”
“I—is that your nursery rhyme or your weird way of mocking me?”
Willow laughs and skips a few steps down the beach. I switch topics.
“So, these ghostly powers of yours. You can stick your arm through me, but you can also hold my hand. You can pick bouquets of beach grass, but you don’t leave any footprints. Explain to me how this works.”
Willow looks back at our single row of footprints in the sand. She shrugs. “Maybe you stopped to carry me?” she says, before returning to her rhyme.
Willow’s cheerful chanting is incongruous with how anxious the river makes me. The rhymes are weirdly out of place in this silent, black landscape.
I look around and spot a tree, barely deserving of the name, jutting sideways from the bank. Its cancerous trunk stretches out over the river to trail its single, gnarled branch into the water. I walk over to it, the parched grass tickling my soles.
The tree trunk is bleached and pallid, no hint of green or brown left on it. Two single bronze leaves cling steadfastly to the otherwise naked branch, and they whisper against each other as they brave the river’s tide.
I put a foot on the trunk, less from a desire to cross the river—the tree doesn’t extend nearly far enough—so much as idle curiosity as to its stability. I barely apply any weight before the entire thing gently pulls from the earth and falls down into the dark water. There’s no splash to be heard. I watch it drift languidly downstream, its skeletal branch uplifted like fingers reaching for help.
I put my windbreaker back on, suddenly cold. Willow rejoins me, a bouquet of crabgrass clenched in her hand.
“Willow,” I say and I’m surprised to hear my voice is hoarse. “Willow, where is the bridge? Who is the boatman?”
Willow puts a finger to her lips as if she wants silence, but she still sings, “Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has found her shoe and master’s found his fiddling stick—”
Then she points down the beach, and I swing the beam of light around to follow.
There, I see a slightly darker grey against the grey sand—a small dock hunching over the water. I cannot see anyone standing on the dock, but I imagine I can make out the outline of a white raft bobbing in the water.
Willow marches back through the sand to me, and puts a finger to her lips again. Her palm closes over the flashlight, and standing inches in front of me, she flips it off. I’m blind.
From the darkness I hear her voice, disembodied, sing, “She’ll now dance with her shoe. Cock-a-doodle-doo. My dame will dance for you—”
A laugh goes up from the direction of the dock, and a creaking voice responds, “—While master fiddles his fiddling stick, for dame and doodle doo.”