The Bridge

THE

BRIDGE

James Butler

(This is a work of fiction. Even though some of the places and/or people named in this book may exist, they are used here in a fictitious manner as are all of the dates, events and characters which are the product of the author’s imagination. Any character resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.)

DON’T EVER GO ACROSS THE BRIDGE.

IF THEY CATCH YOU ON THE OUTSIDE, THEY WILL KILL YOU

PROLOGUE

Dór ran through the forest as fast as he could, jumping from one tree to another
, trying to avoid the traps the outsiders had set for him. It was the last year of the great war and the outsiders were out in force. He could hear their dogs barking as they picked up his scent and the clattering of the snappers, the genetically altered bats, as they swarmed toward him. He wished he’d listened to his friend, Connor, but now it was too late. He was Huldufolk and had crossed the bridge from the village of Alfheim into the world of the outsiders.

A bullet grazed a tree only inches away from his head, forcing him to move even faster. He was winded and afraid, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t give up. He summoned every last bit of energy he had and jumped from behind the tree, running again. He had only taken a few steps when the ground gave way underneath him and he fell face down into a bear pit. One spike went through his leg and another through his chest. He lay there thinking he was going to die, but hoping the outsiders would show mercy and rescue him or at least shoot him. Being one of the Huldufolk, he had never experienced fear or pain and now, for the first time, he felt somehow disconnected from it, but the dark shadows were moving in on him and he knew death would come quickly if he didn’t receive help. He was struggling against the spikes, trying to loosen himself, when the outsiders’ dogs ran up to the pit, barking and snarling. The bats were close, their clattering getting louder, and then the outsiders appeared. The men came to the pit, cheering and laughing, as they looked down at him.

“We finally got one of you majic men!”

“He don’t look no different than us
, Pa,” a young boy said.

“Kill me,” Dór commanded them. “If there’s any kind of a man left among you, you won’t let the bats have me.”

“They got to eat too,” one of them laughed. “Why don’t you use your magic and get yourself outta there?”

“Why do you hate us so?” screamed Dór, as he watched dark cells spread through his body and felt the pain starting to set in.

The men stood around the pit relieving themselves on Dór until the swarm of bats came, then walked away, leaving Dór to be consumed by the snappers.

Chapter
1

Feona held her daughter’s hand as they walked across the old covered bridge. The bridge was the only thing that
separated the village of Alfheim and the world of the outsiders. It was hundreds of years old, yet looked as if it had just been built. Her daughter was Meva and today was her sixteenth birthday.

“When your grandmother was your age, no one could walk across this bridge and step into the forest without losing their way. Once they stepped off the bridge away from the village, something happened to their minds and they couldn’t find their way back. They were overwhelmed by the
dark shadows.”

The dark shadows covered the entire universe. They were in everything that existed, even the smallest particles of space. They carried with them evil, but in the village of Alfheim
, they were ineffective. Only when the Huldufolk crossed the bridge were they in danger.

Feona was the daughter of Shannon and Nia, elders of the Huldufolk -
The Hidden People, as they had been called by the outsiders. Feona had promised to spend the whole day with her daughter and they would do whatever Meva wanted. They stopped in the middle of the old bridge and looked down at the rocks and river below.

“What happened to them?” asked Meva. “
Those people who crossed the bridge? Didn’t they ever come back? Were they devoured by the dark shadows?”

They walked on across the bridge and stepped out into the forest.

Feona had been waiting until this day to tell her daughter the story of the Huldufolk. Meva would be studying for the Aeosta soon and Feona wanted to prepare her for it.

The Aeosta was the last step to spiritual freedom for the Huldufolk.

“You’re old enough now, so I’m going to tell you the story you’ve been begging me to tell since you were a little girl. One day you’ll have your own children and you’ll have to tell it to them, so you remember it now. It all started hundreds of years ago, according to the outsiders’ time. Before the great war. Do you remember what the war was about?”

“It was when the outsiders killed each other because of their religious beliefs. Grandma wrote about it in her books, but it sounded so stupid. People have always believed what they wanted to. I never understood what they were fighting about.”

“Control, they were fighting about control. They did more than kill each other. They killed entire generations of people, animals and forests. They destroyed books like your grandmother wrote to prevent others from learning and they almost destroyed this beautiful planet. If it hadn’t been for Alfheim, we wouldn’t be here now. If you forget everything else, there’s one thing you must always remember: When all attempts at communication fail, the weak-minded go to war. You must always communicate. Promise me you will remember that.”

Meva nodded.

“Those were dangerous times for The Hidden People. A war over religious beliefs. That’s what people were told, but the truth is it was a war over control. There was this poem we learned from the outsiders: Those who control have all the gold. The war was about money and slavery. The winner takes all, but no one ever thought about there not being a winner. What if everybody loses?”

She patted her hand on one of the bridge
’s old beams.

“This old bridge has been here since the very beginning.” They walked off the bridge and into the forest.

“Didn’t the Huldufolk have a religion or something?”

“Only if you call ‘knowing’ a religion. We depend on science and knowledge, but we don’t worship them. Religion can’t exist without fear and that’s one of the messages the dark shadows bring with them.”

They sat down and leaned back against the giant tree.

“This giant fir tree was where it happened. Your grandmother saw your grandfather right here from the entrance of this old bridge, but it really started long before then.”

Meva closed her eyes and listened.

“Once upon a time
, a long, long time ago, the Huldufolk came from Iceland where they believed that all clan members were equal whether they were male or female. Each member had an equal vote. No one member’s vote counted more than any of the others.

“
Agnar was one of the elders. He was very learned in the way of the Huldufolk and very powerful. He was in love with the most beautiful woman in the clan. Her name was Heidi and she was soon to be mother of his child. They had decided that if the baby was a girl, her name would be Hannah.”

“Our Hannah?” said Meva.

“Yes, it was my grandmother. Agnar was very learned as well in the way of the outsiders, how they were controlled by the dark shadows. His aim was to marry Heidi and become chieftain of the clan, something that had never been done before. He knew that with the power the Huldufolk held over the outsiders, they could take control of the whole of Iceland and the outsiders would become their slaves, but his intentions were rejected by the clan, and the beautiful Heidi, feeling the dark shadows had taken control of Agnar, chose another to be her husband even though she was pregnant with Agnar’s child.

“
The outsiders somehow learned of Agnar’s intentions and waged war against the clan. They claimed it was because of the Huldufolk refusal to worship the outsiders’ god and be ruled by the outsiders’ government, be the outsiders’ slaves, but when they went to destroy the Huldufolk village, the clan and the village had disappeared. Not a trace of them could be found anywhere. It was though they had never existed.

“
The clan left Iceland and set sail for the New World they had heard of which lay off to the west. They wanted a place where they would be left in peace. They settled here in the mountains, a place that would later be called Colorado, and built a utopian village, which they named Alfheim, after their old village in Iceland.

“
Tensions between Agnar and Heidi continued to grow after the village was built. Agnar knew Hannah was his daughter yet he was not allowed to see her and Heidi was so threatened by him that she feared for her life. One night, out of her hatred for Agnar, she left Hannah to be raised by another family, then took her husband and disappeared from Alfheim. Agnar, tried to become the clan’s chieftain once more and was rejected a second time. After having failed at becoming the clan’s chieftain and the husband of Heidi, he left the clan to become an outsider. Many thought he had left to find Heidi and kill her and her husband, but he was more angered by the refusal of the clan to make him chieftain. “If you refuse to make the outsiders your slaves,” he told the clan, “then you will become theirs.” He made a promise that no matter how long it took, he would destroy the Huldufolk.

“
Over the years, Agnar fed the fire of hatred he had built from his resentment of the clan to those outside the village until the Huldufolk were so hated and feared, they were hunted again. He married many times and watched each of his wives grow old and die, only to take another. With his last wife, he had two daughters, one of which reminded him of his first love. He named her Heidi. He had allowed his body to age so the outsiders didn’t notice he wasn’t one of them and moved from one village to another to help keep his secret. Once his children were grown and their mother was dead, he decided to return to Alfheim and take Heidi’s granddaughter, Nia, as his wife.”

“Your mother, Nia?”

“Yes, but nothing ever came of it. Mother said Agnar was killed in the forest by the people he had turned against us.

“
Your grandmother sat on the bridge and looked out through the mist at your grandfather while he sat right here and slept, leaning back against this tree. The mist covered the whole bridge back then and a lot of the river above the falls. Only The Hidden People knew the secret of the mist and the bridge. She had loved him for a long time, longer than she realized, but had never talked to him or touched him because of the bridge. She was afraid to leave it. Afraid she’d never find her way back.

“
He was not one of The Hidden People, but an outsider. When the elders built Alfheim, they put it in a time warp. Only a few seconds into the future. It was a different time from the outsiders’, so your grandfather couldn’t see her, but one day something happened, she saw it with her mind’s eye and crossed the bridge and went into the world of the outsiders to be with him at the old cemetery.”

“The cemetery where the outsiders kept dead people?”

“Yes
, I’ve taken you there. Your grandmother, Nia, was only a teenager, about your age, and her mother had warned her many times about going into the world of the outsiders, but her love for your grandfather was so strong she had to go. She moved fast, using the skills her mother had taught her, using energy beams to pull herself from one tree to another. Half running and half flying, hiding behind the trees and rocks, anything for protection. The outsiders were always in the forest watching, trying to catch sight of The Hidden People. ‘It may be possible for us to live forever,’ her mother had told her, ‘but never forget, we can be killed. The outsiders have always hated us even though we’ve never harmed them. They’re afraid of us. They can only see those of us who cross the bridge into their time and they don’t understand. They think it’s black magic. They are not like the Huldufolk. They know nothing of the truth. If they catch you on the outside, they will kill you.’”

Chapter 2

Hannah Fri scurried about starting breakfast before her husband, Connor, and daughter, Nia, woke up. She looked out the kitchen window through the haze at the covered bridge that crossed the river to see if there were any newcomers. No one was there. All she saw were the animals grazing on the lush green grass
. Beautiful flowers and trees grew everywhere and then there was the eye carved into the gable at the end of the bridge. It was winter time and the trees on the outside had dropped their leaves and the grass was mostly dead, but that was on the outside. In the village of Alfheim, it was different. Life was everywhere. The trees were green and flowers were blooming all the way to the edge of the river. In Alfheim, there was no time as the outsiders knew it.

Everyday Hannah looked for someone to come across
the bridge. Some outsider who had read her books.
As
each day goes by, the chances should be greater,
she thought
, but no one has ever come. Isn’t anyone reading my books?
“Oh, well. If I hurry, I can get a few more pages written
.”

Hannah was writing a new book and she was nearing the end. She hoped she could finish soon and get her manuscript down to the printer and add one more book to the hundreds of others she had written.
She stepped over an old robotic vacuum cleaner Connor had brought her from the outside and grabbed her broom. “You’re nice, but you always miss something.” She blew the dust from an old picture frame containing a quotation by her favorite author:
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end
:
Communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide
.
Ayn Rand
”

She swept
an old discarded cobweb, along with a little dust, out the kitchen door. The dust swirled in the wind as it flew off the end of her broom. She focused on one particle of dust.
There’s a whole universe in there just waiting to be be written about.
She laughed. She had the subject of her next book
.

Hannah had reached her full growth. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties and would never age as long as she stayed in
Alfheim. She was actually much older by outsider standards, but in Alfheim, time didn’t matter. Using their knowledge of science, the Huldufolk had learned to change the molecular structure of their bodies. They could change their DNA at will once they had completed the Aeosta and could have children as long as they wanted. They agreed that the mid-thirties was the perfect age.

Alfheim was a very special place. The people who lived there were never sick and never died. When they reached their mid-thirties by the outsiders’ time, they stopped aging.

There were only rumors of how the village had come about. No exact details. Nothing was written down other than what Hannah had put in her books and they were only notes. She was writing a book about the history of the Huldufolk, everything she could remember, but it was a long way from being complete.

Many stories were passed down from one generation to another.
She would write down some of what she knew in each book hoping that someone would read it and understand. She, like most of the others, was born there. After the village was built, most of the elders, including her mother, Heidi, and her father had moved on to other places to build more villages. Only a few of the original Huldufolk remained.

The river’s mist and the covered bridge with the eyes carved on each end had always been there, as long as she could remember.

The story was that the original settlers had come from Iceland in an effort to avoid war with the outsiders. It had all started over the annual clubbing of the whales. The Huldufolk were different. They didn’t believe in killing any living thing. The clubbing of the whales was a tradition with the outsiders, but the Huldufolk would not participate. That, along with their noncompliance with the outsiders’ religious beliefs and their refusal to pay taxes on their land, set them apart. The outsiders didn’t understand their ways and soon war was declared on the Huldufolk, but when they came to destroy the village of Alfheim, they found that the village and all of its people had disappeared.

****

“Wait a minute,” said Meva. “What do you mean ‘disappeared’? Was it like they were gone somewhere temporarily or vanished into thin air?”

“‘Vanished into thin air.’
The outsiders, knowing of the supposed magical powers of the Huldufolk, began to fear them more even in their absence, and soon stories were created about them. Legend has it the Huldufolk were little people like elves, but due to their magical powers, they could change their size. They could be large or small, even to the point of being invisible. This made the outsiders afraid, so they built small houses for the Huldufolk and set out food for them to eat, trying to appease them, afraid they had only disappeared temporarily and would come back some night and kill them in their sleep, but the Huldufolk were gone forever.

“
Some of the Huldufolk settled here in the mountains of Colorado. It was said that the elders who built the new village of Alfheim used their magic powers and covered it with a dome of dark matter which made it invisible to the outsiders, but that was only legend, a story the outsiders told. The truth was the elders used their knowledge of time, electrical flows and wavelengths and created a hologram in the shape of a dome. They set it in a future time only a few seconds ahead of the outsiders’ time which made it invisible.

“
In the center of Alfheim, they built the large, wooden tower with the electrical coil that we still use today. They called it a resonant transformer circuit and it produced and filled the air inside the dome with enough electricity to supply the whole village with all it needed.

“
The heavy mist from the river was attracted to and clung to the dome which added to its invisibility. When the elders left and went on to other places, they promised to come back, but it has been hundreds of years and they have never been seen again. They left the younger settlers to carry on with their teachings and expand the village.

“
The dome protected the village against any harsh weather, making it summertime year-round. It also protected them from the harsh rays of the sun, the outsiders’ war, their drones and the genetically altered bats. The Huldufolk called the bats snappers. They were developed to kill the Huldufolk.

“
The outsiders called the people of Alfheim The Hidden People.

“
The Huldufolk of Iceland had their own beliefs which conflicted with those of the outsiders. They didn’t believe in wars or governments or taxes. They didn’t kill the whales or anything else. They did believe in singing and dancing, love, and eating fruits and vegetables. They believed in knowledge. Most of all, they did not worship anything which the outsiders thought was sinful.

“
The people of Colorado were not like the outsiders of Iceland, but they were still afraid of The Hidden People due to the stories they’d heard from Agnar who wanted to kill them all.

“
The Huldufolk kept to themselves, knowing they would be contaminated by what lurked on the outside of their village: The dark shadows. These were cells that filled the air. They carried many messages with them, but the strongest were sex, force, failure and fear.”