Chapter 3- No Magic or Mortar Required

  For the first time in years, I didn’t wake up to a cold sweat or the creeping dread of emails marked “urgent.” There was no to-do list blinking on my phone, no panic over missed deadlines or overdue projects. Just the soft croak of frogs in the distance, the chirp of birds in the reeds, and the crisp morning sun spilling across the hills like a warm blanket.

  I stretched, joints cracking, and let out a sigh that felt like it had been stored in my soul for a decade.

  This is it, I thought. Day one of my new life. No emails. No HR. No goddess.

  *****

  "Hey, Sophia," I called out, spotting her near the town square, flanked by three very distinct men. "Who’re these guys?"

  Sophia waved, her smile bright and cheerful. “Good morning, Rend! These are some of the finest workers Peddler’s Village has to offer, and—”

  “We are the only workers Peddler’s Village has to offer,” interrupted the lean, scowling man beside her.

  “Quiet, Elva,” she snapped, voice switching instantly from sunny to steel.

  “But it’s true,” rumbled the man next to Elva—half-tree, half-human. He towered over all of us, broad-shouldered and cheerfully oblivious.

  Sophia sighed. “Fine. These fine gentlemen are the only laborers not tied up preparing for winter. Everyone else is either harvesting, preserving, or keeping the chickens from running amok.”

  “Hey, no complaints here,” I said, stepping forward with my hand outstretched. “I’m Rend. Thanks for helping out.”

  The giant grabbed my hand and shook it like it owed him money. My spine did something anatomically unapproved.

  “I’m Umbra, the village strongman. I lift things. Then I move them. Sometimes I lift them again just to be sure.”

  Elva rolled his eyes. “And I’m Elva. Carpenter. Rational human. Annoyed.”

  Sophia, ever the diplomat, cleared her throat. “And that’s Kallen,” she said, motioning to the older, quiet third man, who nodded once and said nothing. His presence radiated woodcutting energy. If trees feared anyone, it was this guy.

  “I just wanted to thank—”

  “Save it,” Elva interrupted. “Tell us what you want done so we can get back to actual village work.”

  Okay, asshole, I thought, feeling the first spark of annoyance bubble up.

  Yes, let it grow. Build a throne from his bones, hissed a shrill voice in the back of my mind.

  Was that a rhyme? I replied back in my mind.

  You piece of—

  Mute.

  “Our little Elva is impatient, ain’t ya Elva? Just itching to get to work.” Umbra said spiritedly, placing his strong, meaty hand on top of Elva’s head, making the smaller man buckle under the big man’s hefty frame.

  “I am not impatient, you ape. I am pissed—“, Elva stopped talking suddenly, buckling even further as Umbra pressed down on Elva’s head.

  “Sorry, not an ape. Please stop compressing my spine.” Elva grunted.

  “Should we head to the river, Sophia?” Kallen asked in a soft, undisturbed voice.

  “I think we should take Rend to the tool shed first,” Sophia suggested.

  “Oh wow, seriously, a tool shed. Yeah, that definitely needs to be our first stop,” I said, making a mental inventory of all the tools I might need.

  The tool shed, officially called the “village depository,” was a wooden building half-swallowed by ivy and optimism. Its walls were cob-plastered and bowed slightly, like it had been holding in a sneeze for years. The door creaked open with the kind of theatrical groan that screamed definitely not structurally sound, and inside, the scent of old straw and rusted ambition hit me like a history lesson.

  We were greeted by Hel, a stone-faced woman with a ledger under one arm and the presence of someone who’d once stabbed a thief with a trowel. “Don’t break anything. If you do, log it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said instinctively, years of retail trauma surfacing.

  Sophia gestured proudly. “This is where we keep extra goods—food stock, seeds, tools, spare rope, gopher deterrent powder—”

  “—the powders mostly just ash with a hint of mint, drives the little shits crazy,” Hel added flatly.

  Sophia led us to a back room, which might generously be called the Tool Room of Regret. Hanging neatly on wooden hooks were axes, chisels, mallets—and every single one was made of stone.

  “Stone tools?” I asked, holding up a flint-edged axe with a slight wobble. “This is…”

  “...a problem?” Sophia finished my sentiment, voice small, worried.

  “No! Not at all!” I lied, quickly. “Totally fine. I’ve built more with less.”

  "I mean it would be easier if we had iron or even bronze tools,” I muttered, more to myself.

  “Oh, we do have iron tools,” Sophia said offhandedly.

  My head snapped toward her. “Wait—you what?”

  “We have a few,” she said, brushing a curl behind her ear. “But the chief only allows them out for important jobs. We don’t have a way to make more.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we have no iron,” Elva chimed in as he inspected a chisel. “And even if we did, we couldn’t forge it. The village kilns can’t get hot enough to smelt iron properly.”

  “We even keep broken iron tools,” Kallen added, “because no one knows how to fix them.”

  “These were gifts from the kingdom to the original settlers,” Sophia said.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “The fur trappers,” I said, remembering my brief history lesson with Chief Durland. “Makes sense. Give the peasants some tools, abandon them in the wild, hope they don’t start worshiping pinecones.”

  Sophia laughed. Elva did not.

  “I’m guessing if the job is important enough, the chief might let us use the good stuff?” I asked.

  Sophia nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Then let’s go look at this bridge and figure out how important we need it to be.”

  We signed out our stone-age starter kit: two stone axes, three wooden mallets, two chisels that looked like angry teeth, and a small sack of stone wedges. Hel marked it in her ledger with the grim efficiency of someone who’d once requisitioned a sickle for a bar fight.

  We stepped outside, and the wind was brisk with the scent of harvest—earth, bark, crisp leaves, and someone baking something that was probably 70% root vegetable. Kids ran down the hill in packs, reenacting knights vs. zombies with sticks and alarming accuracy.

  “See that?” I said, gesturing at the kids. “That’s what happens when the village doesn’t have an after-school program.”

  “They’re doing fine,” Sophia said. “Except for last week when one of them tried to joust a chicken.”

  I smiled. For the first time in a long time, life was starting to feel… breathable.

  We crested the next ridge, and Sophia pointed.

  “There she is.”

  “Where?” I asked. “Behind that weird pile of dirt?”

  “That weird pile of dirt is the bridge, genius,” said Elva.

  I stared at it.

  It stared back—somehow sagging, cracked, and structurally offended by its own existence.

  Oh no. It’s worse than I imagined.

  I approached the sad heap masquerading as a bridge.

  Up close, it looked even worse. Logs of varying size jutted out at odd angles. Cracked clay patches covered earlier clay patches, which in turn clung to water-warped planks like the bridge was trying to cosplay as a sponge. Moss grew where support should have been. A few parts were… soft. Bridges should never be soft.

  “The original bridge has been slowly crumbling since the village was settled,” Sophia explained beside me, her voice almost apologetic. “Every few years, we patch it with hardened clay bricks and cob. I don’t even know how much of the original is still in there.”

  “We’ve got a full-blown Ship of Theseus situation,” I muttered, nudging a particularly questionable board with my foot.

  “A ship of what?” she asked.

  “It’s an old philosophical thought experiment,” I said. “If you replace every part of a thing over time, is it still the same original thing? Or just a lie you keep telling yourself so you don’t have to admit your bridge is completely—” CRACK

  “Mr. Rend, it’s cracking behind you,” Umbra said nonchalantly.

  I bolted off the bridge like a cat with a water balloon tied to its tail.

  “…boned,” I finished as a small piece of the bridge fell into the water below.

  “Boned?” Umbra repeated.

  “You are saying it is made of skeletal remains? Don’t be daft, outsider,” Elva said, looking disgusted at my stupidity.

  “No. Boned. As in: ‘completely and utterly ruined beyond repair,’” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Do people not have slang here?”

  “So you are saying we cannot unbone it?” Sophia asked, dead serious.

  “I mean… maybe?” I said. “We might be able to unbone it.”

  “This might prove to be a fool’s errand after all,” Kallen said as his eyes examined the wreckage of the bridge.

  “Don’t worry. I know we’ll manage.” Sophia said, her voice upbeat.

  Damn, she’s cute, I thought as Sophia brushed her wind-tossed hair from her eyes.

  Speaking of boning… came the goddess’ voice, practically purring.

  Why? I sighed internally. Why must you ruin things the second I enjoy them?

  Because I’m bored, she sang. And I want to know, does she give you the same special tingles the pool jets used to—

  “Shut up! Go Away!” I blurted aloud.

  Umbra froze mid-step. “Oh. You want us to leave?”

  “No, sorry. Not you. I was talking to a very persistent… bug.”

  “You need to smack those,” Umbra advised, slapping the air for emphasis.

  “Oh, believe me,” I muttered, “I’d love to smack this ugly little pest.”

  Ugly little pes—

  Mute.

  Blessed silence.

  I crouched down to pick up a smooth, oval-shaped stone from the riverbank. It was cool and damp in my palm, the grit of fine silt clinging to the edges. “There’s plenty of good stone around here, believe me, I felt them,” I said, rubbing the nearly healed wounds on my shoulders.

  Sophia tilted her head. “I don't understand.”

  “I mean, we build a dry stone bridge. No mortar. Just shape and fit the stones so they hold together through compression.”

  “You’re saying we just stack rocks and then what, hope?” Elva said, ignoring Umbra’s enthusiasm.

  “A little, yeah,” I replied. “But we build with science and purpose, not hope. The dry stone arch works because of compression. The shape transfers the load down into the abutment supports—”

  “Layman’s terms, please, Mr. Rend,” Umbra said, arms crossed and brow deeply furrowed as if he was physically struggling to follow.

  “It won’t fall,” I said, standing and holding the rock aloft like it was proof of divinity. “If we pick each stone precisely, shape the ones that need shaping, and place them with care, they’ll hold each other up without needing mortar. Like a puzzle.”

  “Except puzzles don’t kill you when you mess up,” Elva muttered.

  I shot him a grin. “That’s why you’re here, Elva. You’re our best carpenter. Which means you’ve got the most precise hands and the best eye for form.”

  His brows rose. For once, he didn’t have a sarcastic comeback.

  Sophia beamed. Kallen gave a small nod. Umbra looked like he was ready to tear a tree out of the ground and use it as scaffolding just to get started.

  “Alright, first thing we need is a basic wooden form—think of it like a mold—for the arch,” I said, gesturing with my hands. “Then we shape the stones into wedge-like pieces, stack them over the wooden frame, lock them into place with a keystone, and voilà. Arch bridge. Mortar’s optional when the stones are snug enough.”

  “Is the magic optional too?” Elva scoffed sarcastically.

  “No magic,” I said. “Just an ancient and humble ally of engineering: gravity.”

  Umbra squinted. “Gravity sounds like a wizard.”

  “Not a wizard,” I said. “Just an invisible force that holds the universe together.”

  Elva threw his arms up in a huff. “So now he’s working with invisible forces. Fantastic.”

  I glanced down at the river rock still in my hand. “If we had limestone, I could teach you how to make mortar, but as far as I can tell we don’t. So we make do. If we shape the stones right, they’ll hold.”

  “Fine, no mortar or magic. But you’re still asking us to trust a bridge held together by, what did you call it ‘gravity’? You have to admit that sounds far-fetched.” Elva sneered.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said. “But the ancient Romans trusted it. And if it’s good enough for toga-wearing aqueduct builders, it’s good enough for us.”

  A long silence followed my obviously obscure references.

  Then Umbra clapped. Loudly.

  “I don’t know what a Roman or a toga is, but I’m in,” he said with a wide grin.

  “You just want to move heavy rocks, don’t you?” Kallen asked.

  Umbra shrugged. “That too.”

  I took a long breath, the scent of river mud and dewy grass filling my lungs. It was going to be a ridiculous amount of work. But for the first time in what felt like forever, I was excited. Not for battle or for conquest like the goddess would have preferred—but for blueprints. For sweat. For results.

  “Alright,” I said, spinning the rock in my hand. “Let’s build a damn bridge.”