Excerpt: Of the Garden by the River

There is a street where the city melts into itself, cobblestone blending into chrome with the smoothness of butter softening. Walking down this street, into the haze of history, the foot slips—

Between, then, the city Boston and the city Boston—old and new—lies Boston, a fragile gasp between exhalations, barely heard by anyone. In the unacknowledged silence, mirror-thick, the city grows—does not not echo so much as resonates with each urban event. Boston-meets-Boston, one city, a heavy façade with a discreet parlour.

In this Boston—this Other Boston—Arianhrod waited.

Where the Charles River seeps between the city and Cambridge, the Zakim Bridge looms, angry and silent; sinewy, white, cables like strings on a violently plucked war harp. Arianhrod stood on the bridge—forbidden to pedestrians—watching the city. Cold gathered around the pillars of buildings, sank into the streets, slowing the air. She watched a week, and carefully, the Charles froze, coagulating with ice, thick as guts.

If the story is true, once, long ago, when the trees were magicians and the trout fey maidens, Arianhrod had a son.