Mothman's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

By dawn the villagers were already on the bridge with hammers and rope. Mothman crouched at the near bank and listened to the wood talk. Every step they took pulled a new sound out of the planks. A man knelt at the center span to drive a nail, and the beam under him dipped half an inch. Mothman spread his wings before he thought about it. Mothette caught his shoulder. If you fly out there now, she said, they scatter, and half of them go into the water. She was right, and it hurt. They worked out a system instead. Mothette walked the bridge with the carpenter and pointed where Mothman told her to point. He stayed low over the water beneath the span, close enough to see every crack from below, and he called up to her in the small voice he used only with her. She translated. Third beam from the post is splitting, don't stand there. The joint on the north side is loose, brace it before you load it. She never once said his name to the crew, but she kept turning back to the reeds to check his face. A boy dropped a bucket of nails through a gap and Mothman caught it against his chest above the water. Nobody saw him do it. Mothette saw. She pressed her palm flat to the rail where he'd been and kept walking. Something moved in him then that had nothing to do with the bridge. He watched her steady a stranger's hands and explain a load-bearing joint she had learned about an hour ago, and he understood, plainly, that he loved her. Not as gratitude. Not as need. He loved the way she kept correcting herself out loud until she got it right. He kept the thought to himself. There was still a bridge to hold up. By late afternoon the worst of the span was braced. The carpenter called the crew off and told them to cross one at a time, slow. They did. The wood groaned but held. Mothette came down the bank to where Mothman waited in the reeds. Her shawl was smudged and her hands were shaking. They're across, she said. All of them. He wanted to say the other thing and didn't. He said, the middle beam is still going to fail. Maybe not today. She nodded, because she had heard it groan too. Tomorrow we tell them it isn't finished, she said. Tonight let them think they won something. She leaned her forehead against his for one second and then stepped back. Mothman looked at the bridge in the low light. It was standing. It was not saved.