The View From Worldsbridge: A Road's Beloved Short Story: Road's Beloved, #3

By Erica Anoe

In the distance, a traveler approaches Worldsbridge, bringing secrets and change.

 

Etta, Queen of the Crossroads and ruler of the great city of Worldsbridge, wears her rank uncomfortably. Born in humble circumstances, consumed with loss, she fears she is not capable of becoming the queen the city needs and deserves.

 

Worldsbridge, the great city where all roads meet, is truly many cities in many worlds, and Etta is responsible for all of them. Neglected for a generation under the rule of a stagnant, mad king, the people of Worldsbridge will no longer stand for the rule of a useless leader. 

 

Etta's fate is bound to the fate of Worldsbridge, and now she must prove before it is too late that she is the true Queen of a mysterious, magical city whose rules she has yet to understand. 

 

"The View From Worldsbridge" is a Road's Beloved short story set in the legendary city of Worldsbridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lonely Robot Press
• Release date: Apr 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201220624

Book preview

The View From Worldsbridge

The View From Worldsbridge

A Road’s Beloved Short Story

Erica Anoe

Lonely Robot Press

Copyright © 2022 by Erica Anoe

Cover Design by Elizabeth Naone

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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For those of us with a lot to learn.

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

Barbara Kingsolver

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Erica Anoe

One

Each morning at dawn, Etta stepped out of bed, slipped on her robe – which even after a year still surprised her with its softness – walked to the window of her royal bedchamber and looked out at the view. The skyline of the City sloped gently downward from the high point of the palace, then rose again at the wall. No matter which version of Worldsbridge she looked at, that curving shape was the same, even if sometimes the palace was above the garment district while in this one the smoked meat vendors set up their stalls right outside the palace gates, the scents of their wares sending her stomach to confusion with both the promise of salt and savor and the offputting tang of unfamiliar game.

Beyond the wall was the Road, snaking a meandering route toward the City from somewhere beyond the horizon, its very shape communicating its eternal nature. A mortal being, aware of limited time, would choose a more direct path, but the Road chose interesting ways, paths that wound around haunted hills and through secret places where its chosen Beloved, its eternal travelers, would be sure to find adventure and influence.

Beyond the Road were the beginnings of the Wild. At first, the Wild only manifested in touches among an otherwise tame line of shrubbery along the path, spots where growth took on shapes that seemed more like beings than plants. Farther out, a line of fairly decorous trees sometimes grew fruit of unusually bright and strange colors. But beyond that, the trees crossed their branches like swords and concealed any further revelations from curious eyes.

In the farthest distance to the west, where the world became undefinable,