Bridging The Gap
written by: Adele Evershed
I believe a little, I believe a lot, I believe in God,
“Say hello to the fairies under the bridge,” Ceri said when visiting hours were over. It was a tic from our childhood—something passed down from Nain. She’d always call out, “Hello, fairies,” whenever we crossed a bridge. She said that if you didn’t, the fae would follow you home, and they wouldn’t be kind.
We’d laugh, but still—we always said it.
Against the water, against the fire,
The first time I visited my newborn niece, a bowl of milk sat by the doorstep.
Chris opened the door slower than usual. “Feeding the stray cats?” I asked. He hadn’t shaved, and he scratched his stubble, making a sound like a match being struck. “Something like that,” he said.
Inside the house was a collision of lavender and ash. I assumed Ceri had a fire going, and the lavender would be another thing passed down from Nain. She always had bunches of that dried flower in her drawers or hanging off door knobs, “It’s for protection,” she’d tell us with a wink. I took a deep breath, and it tasted of ritual and ruin. Ceri was breastfeeding on the sofa, her eyes hollow but fixed on Rhiannon, as if she felt like she might disappear if Ceri so much as blinked. The room was chilly; a fire had been laid but not lit. I asked Ceri if she wanted tea. “Not if you’re going to poison me,” she said flatly, then smirked. “Your face! Relax. You know Nain always said you make tea that tastes like dishwater.”
She tried to laugh, and I tried to smile.
Against the red, wide-headed serpent.
As I left, she called out, “Top up the milk on your way out.”
I hesitated at the door. “Ceri, what’s this all about, really?”
She shifted Rhiannon on her chest, not looking up. She said, “Just keeping the fae on side. I know it’s nonsense, but if Nain were here, she’d be muttering that old Welsh prayer of hers—I believe a little, I believe a lot—just to be safe. It can’t hurt, right?”
I should have known then, but Ceri was smiling, so I said, “Nain will be smiling down on you.”
“Or up,” she replied.
This time, we both managed to laugh, and it almost felt like old times.
I walked a mountain and from the mountain,
Chris called the following week. “She’s… a bit off,” he said quietly. “She keeps saying the baby’s not safe. Keeps talking about offerings, like if we don’t give the fairies what they want, they’ll take Rhiannon.” He paused. “Last night, I found her in the kitchen at midnight. She was baking fairy cakes. She said she needed to sweeten the deal. When I told her to come to bed, she smashed the mixing bowl.”
I said the usual salving words—’over-tired,’ ‘hormones,’ ‘it will pass,’ and then I offered to babysit that weekend and give them both a break.
I saw Mary and some of her Company,
That Friday, I went for drinks after work. It was late, almost midnight, when my phone rang. It was Ceri.
“JuJu…” she slurred. “I woke up—Rhiannon wasn’t here.” Then the phone went dead.
I called Chris. He picked up on the second ring.
“She woke me screaming,” he said. “But the baby’s fine. Fast asleep. Arms out like a starfish.”
A moment later, Ceri came back on the line. “Sorry—just a dream. See you tomorrow.” Her voice had the same flat quality as our Nain when she went into the care home—as if she’d been hollowed out.
And her angel, a faithful angel,
When I got home, I stood in my kitchen for a long time, the keys in my hand digging in, and I thought about Nain’s slow softening into dementia. How, towards the end, she insisted our mother had been a changeling—swopped at birth because she hadn’t given an offering to the fairies.
“I did everything to get my baby back,” she told me just days before she died. “You have to mistreat the changeling, you know, hit it and not feed it. I would have put it in the oven, but your Bampi stopped me—said I was mad and got the doctor to give me pills. But I always felt I should have tried harder to get my Bethan back.”
I’d put it down to folklore getting mixed up in the stew of her dementia. I couldn’t ask Mam or Bampi, as they’d died many years before, but I’d always thought my Mam and Nain had a loving relationship, and it depressed me to see what old wives’ tales were costing her.
I looked at the marks pressed on my palm, like a ragged sort of stigmata—marks left by something old, something I’d stopped believing in long ago. Then I went to the cupboard, found an old jar of honey, and left a spoonful by the windowsill. I was a bit drunk. But as Nain would have said—it was too little, too late.
And God Himself in Joy,
Chris didn’t answer the phone the next day. That afternoon, they arrested Ceri. Rhiannon was gone. The police found blood on the riverbank, an empty pram overturned a mile away. Ceri was found sitting on the bridge, barefoot, humming a lullaby from when we were small. Her hands were scratched and red. She was pulling petals off a rose and dropping them into the churning water.
She told them, “I gave it back. It wasn’t mine. The fae punish pride, but I’ve made amends.”
And the grey man in his white robe, forming a veil,
When I visited her in prison, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her hair was matted. Her eyes—wild. “She’s coming home,” she whispered. “It wasn’t Rhiannon. I gave it back. They’ll bring her home now. The real one. I heard them singing under the bridge.”
She smiled then like she’d done the right thing—like she was going to get a happy ending.
Between every soul and hell.
Of course, I blame myself—I should have seen the signs. Flicking through our old family photo albums, I noticed something I’d not seen before. Ceri, Nain, and I were on a wet beach in Porthcawl when we were kids. Ceri and Nain are clustered together like mussels clinging to a rock, their faces pearly in the drizzle, and sitting on Nain’s shoulder is a blurred shape. A shadow? A trick of the light? I couldn’t say, but it was snaking a smoky tentacle toward my sister.
What I can say for sure is Nain had it wrong—it wasn’t the fairies calling to Ceri from under the bridge.
It was the Devil, and I’m pretty sure he’s still there.
Amen.
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