The thirteen lads were taking turns to see who could walk across the old rowan that had fallen over the river.
Not one of the lads had made it, getting no further than halfway before slipping from the smooth bark into the water, while their friends heckled from the banks like a bother of birds.
The seventh lad was at the midway point, approaching the slippery middle.
He touched his front foot on the most treacherous part, determined to make it further than the others.
He would not fall in.
They hollered, telling him he would.
He would not fall in.
He would n—
The seventh lad’s foot slid out from beneath him, the tree trying to cartwheel him into the river.
Landing across the trunk, the seventh lad grabbed the tree before it could dunk him.
The other twelve lads were jubilant on the bank, certain that the seventh lad was done for.
The bark was slippery; his feet were dangling above the water.
He couldn’t hold on.
They told him he couldn’t.
He couldn’t—
He couldn’t hold on.
The seventh’s lad grip slipped and he fell from the fallen tree. But rather than plunge into the water, he found himself standing on the surface of the river like a Gerridae.
With a vertiginous ripple, he looked down at his feet. They were cushioned by the water as it continued to flow past him.
He was standing on the water.
The impossibility of it.
He was standing on the water, his shadow on the riverbed beneath him.
And that’s how the other twelve lads found out that their friend Cyril was the second coming of Christ, for which they took the piss out of him mercilessly.
vss #75
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