Tales from the Universe
Moral Dilemma: When two sides each have legitimate reasons to fear the other, how do you protect yourself without allowing inherited fear to decide who your enemy must be?
The people of Northbank warned Lio about Southbank before they showed him where he would sleep.
“Don’t cross the river.”
Lio put down his pack.
“Why?”
“They steal.”
“What?”
“Anything.”
The innkeeper counted on her fingers.
“Livestock. Tools. Grain. Boats.”
She leaned closer.
“Children.”
Lio stared.
“They steal children?”
“My grandfather’s brother.”
“What happened?”
“Southbank.”
That apparently explained everything.
Lio had been hired to repair the bridge.
This immediately seemed inconvenient.
The bridge connected Northbank and Southbank.
Technically.
In practice, a wooden barricade stood at the Northbank end.
Someone had painted:
CROSS AT YOUR OWN RISK
Underneath, someone else had added:
AND DON’T COME BACK CRYING
Lio admired the specificity.
The bridge was old.
Stone piers.
Timber deck.
Beautiful construction.
Terrible maintenance.
Several boards were missing.
One railing had collapsed.
The center sagged.
“Why hasn’t anyone repaired it?”
The innkeeper looked at him as though he’d asked why nobody repaired lightning.
“Southbank.”
“Did they damage it?”
“Probably.”
“Did anyone see them?”
“They’re Southbank.”
Lio was beginning to understand the local method of evidence.
The next morning he crossed.
Northbank residents watched from behind the barricade.
Nobody stopped him.
Several behaved as though attending a funeral.
Halfway across, Lio looked down.
The river was perhaps twelve feet deep.
Cold.
Fast.
Not impossible.
He continued.
At the Southbank end stood another barricade.
It read:
NORTHBANKERS TURN BACK
Someone had added:
SERIOUSLY
Lio stepped around it.
Three people immediately pointed crossbows at him.
“Bridge carpenter.”
He raised both hands.
One woman lowered her weapon.
“From Northbank?”
“From three days west.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Northbank.”
The crossbows rose again.
Lio sighed.
Eventually they let him enter.
Southbank looked almost identical to Northbank.
Same stone houses.
Same sheep.
Same muddy roads.
Same suspicious elderly people watching from windows.
A baker gave Lio coffee.
Then said:
“Don’t trust Northbank.”
Lio nearly choked.
“Why?”
“They steal.”
He put down the cup.
“What?”
“Livestock. Tools. Grain. Boats.”
Lio closed his eyes.
“Children?”
The baker looked surprised.
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Southbank had a story too.
A girl named Mara had disappeared seventy years earlier.
Northbank took her.
Everyone knew.
“How?”
The baker frowned.
“How what?”
“How do you know Northbank took her?”
“She disappeared near the river.”
“Was she found there?”
“No.”
“Did anyone see someone take her?”
“No.”
“Then—”
The baker’s expression hardened.
“You sound like them.”
Lio stopped.
There it was.
The border.
Not the river.
The sentence.
He inspected the bridge.
Both sides had damaged it.
This was obvious.
Northbank had removed boards near Southbank.
Southbank had weakened railing supports near Northbank.
Each side had made crossing more dangerous to keep the other side away.
Then each used the dangerous bridge as evidence that crossing was dangerous.
Lio found this almost impressive.
He returned to Northbank.
“They damaged the bridge,” the innkeeper said.
“Yes.”
She nodded triumphantly.
“So did you.”
Silence.
“What?”
“Northbank removed six deck boards.”
“Defensive measure.”
“Southbank said the same thing about the railing.”
“They would.”
Lio rubbed his face.
He began repairs.
Both villages objected.
Northbank wanted its half repaired.
Southbank wanted its half repaired.
Neither wanted the middle repaired.
“The middle is the part connecting you.”
“Exactly.”
Lio stared at the council.
“You hired a bridge carpenter.”
“We need a safe bridge.”
“That doesn’t connect.”
“Yes.”
“That is called a pier.”
Lio repaired the whole thing.
Mostly because nobody could agree who had authority to stop him in the middle.
This was the advantage of disputed territory.
Then tools disappeared.
His tools.
Three chisels.
A plane.
A small iron hammer.
Northbank immediately blamed Southbank.
Southbank blamed Northbank.
Lio blamed whoever stole his tools.
This position satisfied nobody.
He searched.
Found footprints near the river.
Small.
Probably a child.
The tracks crossed beneath the bridge.
Lio followed.
There was a hollow inside one of the old stone piers.
Someone had been using it.
Blankets.
Food.
Candles.
His tools.
And a girl.
She screamed.
Lio screamed because she screamed.
Then both stared at each other.
Her name was Tessa.
Northbank.
Fourteen.
“Why are my tools here?”
“I borrowed them.”
“That word is doing difficult work.”
She looked embarrassed.
Then another child crawled into the hollow.
Boy.
Southbank.
Also fourteen.
Lio closed his eyes.
“Oh, excellent.”
They were friends.
Secretly.
For two years.
They met beneath the bridge.
“What do you do?”
Tessa shrugged.
“Talk.”
“About what?”
“Things.”
The boy added:
“Mostly how stupid everyone is.”
Lio nodded.
“Promising generation.”
They had been carving something.
Into the stone.
Names.
Not theirs.
Old names.
Dozens.
Lio touched them.
“What is this?”
Tessa said:
“People who crossed.”
“When?”
“Always.”
The children had been collecting stories.
Not the official ones.
Marriage records.
Trade records.
Letters.
People from Northbank and Southbank had crossed the river constantly for centuries.
Sometimes secretly.
Sometimes openly.
Sometimes during periods when the feud relaxed.
Then something happened.
Another theft.
Another fight.
Another disappearance.
The border hardened again.
Lio saw two names.
One caught his attention.
ARLEN VALE
The innkeeper’s grandfather’s brother.
The stolen child.
Beside it:
MARA SEN
The missing Southbank girl.
Lio stared.
“When were these carved?”
Tessa shrugged.
“Long time ago.”
“Who were they?”
The boy smiled.
“We think they ran away together.”
Records confirmed part of it.
An old marriage register in a town eighty miles south listed:
Arlen Vale of Northbank
and
Mara Sen of Southbank.
Married.
Same year both disappeared.
Lio laughed until his stomach hurt.
He brought copies to both councils.
Nobody laughed.
Northbank said Southbank had seduced Arlen.
Southbank said Northbank had abducted Mara.
Lio stared at them.
“They married.”
Northbank:
“Under what circumstances?”
Southbank:
“Exactly.”
Lio discovered evidence had limits when identity was at stake.
Then something worse happened.
A Northbank barn burned.
Three Southbank boys had been seen nearby.
Northbank men armed themselves.
Southbank did the same.
For the first time, Lio understood that the feud was not merely ridiculous.
People could die.
Old stories could become instructions.
He investigated the fire.
Not because he was qualified.
Because everyone qualified had chosen a side.
The three boys had been nearby.
That was true.
They had also been fishing.
Lio found the cause inside the barn.
A broken lantern.
The owner admitted he’d left it hanging.
Quietly.
“Tell the council.”
The man looked toward the armed crowd.
“They already know Southbank did it.”
“No. They think Southbank did it.”
“Same thing now.”
Lio felt cold.
He dragged the broken lantern into the town square.
Literally.
He threw it onto the council table.
“This burned the barn.”
People shouted.
He shouted louder.
“You are about to kill people because a lantern fell over.”
Someone yelled:
“How do we know they didn’t knock it over?”
Lio stopped.
There was always another possibility.
That was the problem.
Certainty could manufacture itself forever.
Southbank arrived at the bridge.
Armed.
Northbank waited.
Armed.
Lio stood in the middle.
This was not bravery.
He had simply become extremely angry.
Tessa and her friend stood behind him.
He told them to leave.
They refused.
Naturally.
Lio held up the marriage record.
“Nobody cares about this.”
That confused everyone.
Good.
He continued.
“This proves almost nothing.”
More confusion.
“It doesn’t prove Northbank is good.”
He pointed south.
“Or Southbank.”
He pointed north.
“It doesn’t prove nobody ever stole anything. Doesn’t prove nobody ever murdered anyone. Doesn’t prove your grandparents were fools.”
He paused.
“It proves one thing.”
He pointed at the bridge.
“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
Nobody lowered their weapons.
So Tessa did something much more effective.
She walked across.
From Northbank toward Southbank.
Her friend walked the opposite direction.
Parents screamed.
Neither stopped.
They passed each other in the center.
Nothing happened.
Of course.
That was all.
Two children crossed a bridge.
Sometimes history needs embarrassingly simple demonstrations.
The feud did not end.
That would have been ridiculous.
People still argued.
There were still thefts.
Real ones.
A Southbank farmer stole three Northbank sheep five years later.
He was caught.
For several days everyone said:
“See?”
Then a Northbank merchant cheated Southbank buyers on grain weights.
Southbank said:
“See?”
Lio, unfortunately still living nearby, said:
“Yes. I see two criminals.”
Nobody found this satisfying.
But the bridge stayed open.
That mattered.
Trade returned.
Then marriages.
Then arguments about trade and marriages.
People discovered new reasons to dislike one another.
Some were even based on current events.
Progress.
Years later, Lio walked across the bridge with his granddaughter.
She pointed at the two old signs hanging in the carpenter’s workshop.
CROSS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
NORTHBANKERS TURN BACK.
“Why did they hate each other?”
Lio thought for a long time.
“They had reasons.”
“Good ones?”
“Some.”
“Bad ones?”
“Many.”
“Which was which?”
Lio looked across the river.
“I still don’t know all of them.”
His granddaughter frowned.
“That isn’t very helpful.”
“No.”
He smiled.
“But it’s considerably safer than pretending I do.”
They crossed.
Nobody stopped them.
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