The Winter Bridge
Bast and his family make a daring escape across a frozen river while chased by monsters, but the ice beneath their feet is far from safe.
Crick.
Bast came to a sudden stop, and his foot almost slid out from under him.
“Bast?” Mom asked. “C’mon, sweetie. You forgot a place.”
He moved his foot again.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down!
The two fuzzy balls dangling from Rania’s hoodie swayed from side to side over Mom’s left shoulder as she walked ahead.
He couldn’t remember what letter they were on.
“Where does your uncle Simeon live?” Mom prompted.
Ah, F. “Fragas.”
Crick.
The cold wind picked up, howling past him to throw the pom-poms into a fit. When it changed directions, screams rode in its wake.
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Trivia
The game Bast and his mother are playing in this story is a game I often played when I was younger, known as adedonha in the northeast of Brazil. Players will put out a number of fingers to determine which letter of the alphabet they'll use, and then they take turns naming specific things they'd agreed on before, like place, name, animal, object, etc.