Elevenbridge

A story. A lot of stories.

A pack of lies.

About a City with a river cutting through it, bridged by many Bridges… with many goings-on within the City…  and many more alongside on all sides of the River.

About how that River–the City cut to the quick– is the tongue that gives the lie and sings the lay of how things lie in the City.

About how the City lies measured by eleven of those Bridges. ‘Doomed’ some might have once said (or said at once… once).

About the many small denizens of that City; tracing their daily ley lines as they run back and forth across those Bridges, never quite knowing what is lying underfoot.

Some few know to be wary of the Bridges–to keep out of their Business, keep and shield their own.

A pack of lies dealt like cards and tallied ever so slowly.

Who am I, you may ask?

Yes, you may in deed (and in thought, as well… they’re both equally sinfully capricious). I’m a line, I’m a circle; a singer and a teller; a loner and a lover, a captive and captivating standing stone… standing on one foot and closing one eye, looking out over the river in hope of catching site of… oh, well never you mind that.… just think of me as a thing that stands under what he doesn’t much understand. I’ve been round and round without going much of anywhere…

But I’m not sure I’m the one to answer that, not the one who can answer that… at least for you, We will have to cross more than a few Bridges before we can get to that point in my tale.

I hear the clatter and batter, the trammel-and-go of the Passers Upon the Bridge. I sometimes sit and chat also with the Passers Under the Bridge, hearing much from them about their goings to and fro—and sometimes I meet with other denizens of this Bridge as we all have our parts to play and our places to keep… it all fits together.

Sitting here, under the Bridge out of the rain.

—–

It’s an urban fantasy along the same genre lines as some of China Miéville’s or Jeff Van Der Meer’s work. It’s set in Portland, Oregon… but a much larger & stranger Portland than most people know – a Portland also known to some as Elevenbridge.

The story starts in Old Town & gets interesting & fantastical from there. Guy gets shanghaied & forcibly tattooed & incidentally rescued from a truly ugly fate amongst slave traders of a sort, only to get swept up in a much larger adventure as he comes to realize that his new tattoo is quite a bit more than it seems.

The tattoos? They are a lot of things, and I suppose one might call them “magic” and “tattoos” but they seem to be something much more than that. They’re sentient. They are memory. They are sensation, companion and alter ego. They are part of a very ancient tradition. They are a mystery and in some cases a religion. For some they are a trophy and a commodity. And they form just one type of the many denizens of my City; a city that is criss-crossed, knitted together & measured by its Bridges; bridges which like most things in Elevenbridge are not at all what they seem.