In a town where the river whispered secrets to the trees and the wind carried stories in its breath, there existed a rule — one that was known, feared, and never broken.
“Do not go beyond the White Bridge after sunset.”
It was more than a warning. It was stitched into lullabies, etched into stone at the entrance of the bridge, and passed down through generations like a sacred inheritance.
I never questioned it. No one really did.
Until I had to.
My name is Arjun. I was 28, a literature professor, a son to a father who rarely smiled, and a brother to a girl who hadn’t spoken a word in twelve years.
Her name was Ira.
We grew up hearing the tale of the White Bridge — how the last person who crossed it after sunset vanished, leaving behind only a pair of worn-out slippers and a lantern that kept burning for three days.
“They say the bridge doesn’t just cross the river,” my grandmother once whispered when we were kids, “it crosses into something else. A memory. A regret. A second chance that comes at a price.”
We thought she was just telling ghost stories.
But when Ira was eight, she crossed it.
We don’t know how. Or why.
We only know she came back…silent.
No words. No sounds. Just wide, terrified eyes and a hand that trembled endlessly. Doctors called it trauma-induced selective mutism. But no therapy worked. No medicine cured her silence.
And in some cruel way, the bridge took both my sister and my mother — because a year later, my mother died in a car accident while driving Ira to a new therapist across town. After that, Papa stopped talking much, too.
We were a house full of silence.
Until one day, twelve years later, Ira left a note on the table. Her first communication in over a decade.
It read: “I have to go back.”
I found it at 6:03 PM.
It was winter. Sunset was at 6:12 PM.
I sprinted like a madman, past the old bakery, down the slope by the banyan tree, my lungs burning as the sky turned from orange to crimson. The bridge was just ahead, its pale wooden planks glowing eerily in the fading light.
And there she was. Standing right at the edge.
“Ira!” I yelled, panting. “Don’t! It’s almost dark!”
She turned to me, eyes calm — too calm.
Then, for the first time in twelve years, she spoke.
“Arjun,” she said softly, “I left something on the other side.”
My blood froze. “No, no. Come back. Whatever it is—”
“I have to.”
She turned and stepped onto the bridge.
I don’t know what took over me. Fear? Love? Desperation?
Maybe all three.
Because I broke the one unbreakable rule.
I followed her.
They say the bridge is only a few hundred feet long.
But as I stepped on it, time felt like it twisted. The air grew thick, heavy. My steps slowed, not physically, but like the world was being rewound.
And when we reached the end, the landscape had changed.
Gone was the forest. Gone was the modern world.
I was standing in the past.
In front of me was a little girl — eight years old — with flowers in her hand. Ira. The day she had first crossed the bridge.
And next to her, alive and vibrant, was my mother.
I staggered backward. My knees buckled.
What was this?
Ira — the adult Ira — walked up to the child version of herself and knelt beside her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears spilling. “I left you here.”
The child looked at her, confused. “Who are you?”
“I’m…you. From the future.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I was scared,” Ira continued. “I saw something that day. Something that made me forget how to speak.”
My mother watched silently. Then she looked straight at me.
“Arjun,” she said, like it was the most natural thing. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
My heart shattered. “Ma?”
She smiled. God, that smile. The one I hadn’t seen in twelve years.
“I waited for you both.”
“What is this place?”
She looked at the river flowing beside the bridge. “This is the place where regrets live.”
Ira’s younger self vanished like mist. My mother turned to adult Ira.
“You saw my death that day, didn’t you?”
Ira nodded slowly. “The accident. I saw it. I tried to scream, to tell you… but after I came back, it was like my voice stayed on the other side.”
My mother pulled her into an embrace. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“But I saw it! I didn’t stop it.”
“You were just a child.”
“I still hear the crash every night.”
“I know.”
They wept. And something shifted in the air. The bridge behind us started creaking, glowing faintly.
Time was asking us to choose.
“Ira,” I said cautiously, “if we go back… maybe things will be different now. Maybe this is closure.”
But my mother was watching me with a different look. A deeper pain.
“You broke the rule, Arjun,” she said gently. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Why?”
“Because now you have to choose.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t go back and take everything with you.”
Ira looked between us, terrified. “No…”
“You broke the rule to save her,” Ma said, “but the bridge demands a price.”
I shook my head. “No. No way. We both came. We both go back.”
“There’s only room for one soul.”
My world cracked open.
“So either…” I swallowed hard. “Either I go back… or she does?”
She nodded.
I turned to Ira.
“No!” she cried. “You have a life, Arjun! A job, friends, a future!”
“And you don’t? You’ve been surviving in silence. That’s not living!”
She gripped my arms. “Please…”
I looked at my mother. “There’s no other way?”
“If there was,” she said, “no one would fear the bridge.”
We sat in silence by the river. The stars blinked into the sky. I held my sister’s hand, the way I did when she was small and afraid of the dark.
“I wanted to bring you back,” I whispered.
“You did,” she smiled faintly. “More than you know.”
A breeze rustled through. The bridge creaked louder now, like it was losing patience.
Then she looked at me, suddenly calm.
“What if I never left this side?” she asked.
I frowned. “What?”
“What if… I stay here. Where I was left. And you go back.”
“You’ll vanish.”
She nodded. “But the part of me that’s been stuck here will finally rest.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “I think I’ve already started fading. My voice came back only when I reached here. Maybe that means… my silence was never me. It was the echo of this place.”
My hands trembled. “Ira—”
“I’m tired, bhai.”
The bridge glowed. A wind swept through, lifting leaves into a golden spiral.
She leaned forward, kissed my forehead.
“You remember how you used to read me stories at night?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Well, it’s time for your story now.”
I blinked.
She was gone.
I woke up at the foot of the bridge.
Alone.
I staggered home, numb. Empty.
But something had changed.
In my pocket was a drawing — childish and messy. A girl and a boy holding hands, a river in the background, and a woman in the sky smiling.
I found it the next day in her old box of crayons. The last drawing she made as a child. The one she took with her the day she crossed the bridge.
But now… it was finished.
A week later, I stood at the classroom podium, words caught in my throat.
Then, for the first time, I shared the story.
About the bridge.
About rules.
And about love that travels beyond time, beyond reason — to bring someone home.
And somewhere deep in the back of the classroom, I heard a laugh.
A laugh that sounded just like hers.
React
