The Toll at the Copper Bridge

Script

[SCENE START] SETTING: The underside of the Copper Bridge. The air is a physical weight, saturated with humidity and the smell of oxidized metal and stagnant river water. A thick, yellowish mist clings to the muddy banks. The light is filtered, dim, and greenish. CHARACTER: THE TOLLKEEPER. A creature of stone and lichen. He is massive, though he spends most of the scene slumped against a pylon. His movements are heavy, lacking any predatory urgency. He speaks with the cadence of a clerk who has worked the same desk for four centuries. (The TOLLKEEPER is leaning against the bridge supports. He is partially submerged in grey silt. He does not move as the TRAVELER enters. He only opens one eye, a slow, wet blink that takes several seconds.) TOLLKEEPER: (Voice like grinding gravel) Stop. Right there. Don't step into the slurry; it takes weeks to get the scent of sulfur out of leather boots. (The TOLLKEEPER slowly raises a hand. The movement is glacial, accompanied by the sound of wet stone sliding against stone. He gestures vaguely toward the bridge deck above.) TOLLKEEPER: You want the crossing. I want the toll. Standard procedure. (The TRAVELER offers a heavy purse of gold coins. The TOLLKEEPER does not reach for it. He looks at the purse with an expression of profound exhaustion.) TOLLKEEPER: Put it back. Please. Just put it back in your pocket. Do you have any idea how much gold is currently lining the riverbed? I have deposits of bullion under the silt that would make a treasury look like a child's piggy bank. It is useless. It is heavy. It attracts the river-rats, and they are an absolute nuisance this time of year. (He shifts his weight. The movement causes a small landslide of mud from his shoulder. He sighs, a sound like a collapsing mine shaft.) TOLLKEEPER: I am bored. Truly, deeply bored. Gold is a predictable currency. It is a transactional void. I have no interest in your wealth. I am interested in the friction. The psychic itch. The thing you remember at three in the morning when the room is silent and you suddenly feel a hot flash of shame for something that happened fifteen years ago. (He leans forward slightly. The effort seems to cost him a great deal of energy.) TOLLKEEPER: Give me a memory. Not a tragedy, those are too heavy and they taste like salt. Not a secret, those are too common. I want your most embarrassing moment. The time you spoke too loudly in a quiet room. The letter you sent to the wrong recipient. The moment you realized your fly was open during the High Priest's sermon. I want the specific, acute sting of social failure. (He closes his eye again, returning to his slumped position.) TOLLKEEPER: I will take the memory from you entirely. You will forget it ever happened. You will walk across this bridge feeling lighter, marginally more confident, and entirely unaware of that one specific flaw in your history. In exchange, I get to experience a flicker of genuine human awkwardness to break up the monotony of the humidity. (A long silence follows. Only the sound of water dripping from the copper beams is audible.) TOLLKEEPER: (Without opening his eye) Well? Either produce the memory or find a different bridge. I am not in a hurry. I have been here since the copper was mined, and I can stay until it rusts into nothing. [SCENE END]