Free Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey

bridge. It was a modest construction, yet remarkably sturdy. Two arced wooden planks spanned the river with more planks laid across them to form the walkway. But this bridge had been completely shattered, much of the wood ripped free altogether and long since borne away by the lazy current, leaving only the two ends stretching out hopelessly from opposite shores.
    Samuel inspected the other bridges in the colony and found that all five had indeed been broken in much the same manner. But on the fourth bridge he visited, he discovered a small scrap of paper caught between two of the broken planks. There was a picture drawn on it by some rough black implement, and it was torn on one side.

    Samuel picked up the scrap of paper, studied it for a moment, then folded it and placed it in the pocket of his tunic. He did not see how it could help him solve the problem at hand, but he resolved to examine it more closely later. He went to bed that night looking forward to the next morning when he would find a way to repair the bridges.
    * * *
    When the sun rose, Samuel scampered out of bed and waded into the center of the river. He managed to lift the fractured ends of one bridge over his head, but the two halves no longer even met in the middle. He would need to replace the missing middle section entirely. He climbed back ashore and examined one of the broken halves from the river bank. He had never noticed the well-worn nail heads that lined the edges of the cross planks before now. Samuel turned one of the little metal spikes over in his hand. Many of them had been ripped out when the bridge was destroyed and he had no idea where to find more of them, nor how to affix them to the bridge. As such, the task before him was more than daunting, but no more so than the problem of the missing meal hall furniture. And in this instance, he at least had some idea of how to proceed. He decided to ignore his lack of nails and tools for the time being and focus on finding wood.
    He was drawn immediately to the few trees in the meadow, noting the similarities between their stubby, twisted limbs and the material that made up the bridges right away. But he was not strong enough on his own to break off any branches of sufficient size to both connect the two ends of the bridge and withstand any substantial weight.
    A handful of colonists drifted about nearby. “Hello,” Samuel called to them. “Can you help me?”
    They returned his words with blank stares. He gestured to a nearby tree and made a breaking motion with his hands. They turned their backs and shied away. Samuel started to go after them but stopped, knowing he could never reach them.
    He resigned himself to looking for other sources of wood. Starting along the river, Samuel moved outward through the colony, searching along a path of concentric circles. By the time the bells sounded for the evening meal, he had come to the fence that marked the outer boundary of the colony. The fence consisted of rough cylindrical poles driven into the ground a meter or so apart. Two cylindrical cross poles joined adjacent fence posts and were fitted into holes on each support post. This fence surrounded the entire colony. Beyond it, several kilometers in the distance, the dark mountains rudely interrupted the verdant landscape. As far as Samuel knew, no colonist had ever crossed beyond this border.
    He had found the wood supply to repair the bridges. Yet Samuel hesitated for a moment before disassembling the fence and harvesting the poles. Someone must have built the fence for a reason. The thought of so callously tearing it down inspired some faint tug in his stomach. He wondered if he should not frustrate that mysterious purpose, whatever it was. But what use could such a fence possibly serve? Anything it was meant to keep in or out could surely pass over, under or through such a basic construction. He rested a hand on one of the support posts and gave it a tentative push. The post shifted sideways. The