The Complete Ferryman

V | Dialogue

V | Dialogue

Shekalane looked up from the book, which she had been about to reactivate, opening her mouth to speak, but hesitated. The truth was that she was speechless. At last, she managed, ‘‘‘And if, finding that the illusion outside also had a door ... would you seek to step through that as well?’”

The ferryman dipped his oar in and out of the black water. Finally, he said, “Montair ... I’ve hidden several copies of his works in the walls of the barracks ... but the Caveam Cristallum is the one I keep close at hand, always. At least while at home. We are not allowed such books, of course. But it’s a risk I am happy to take.”

Again she moved to speak but hesitated. Was this a dream? Had she consumed the wrong kind of mushrooms with her last meal so that now she fancied herself capable of communion with ferrymen as well as rocks and trees? Ferrymen who slept in barracks instead of the opulent villas everyone knew them to live in?

“I find that difficult to credit a high servant of the Lucitor,” she said at some length. “Surely your indoctrination began at a very young age ...”

His oar splashed gently in the water. “Before being chosen to serve, madam, I spent part of my life as a civilian, just as you. My mother introduced me to his children’s fables as a boy, and I moved onto his philosophical works as I matured.”

She shook her head. “But it is so incongruous. May it surprise you to know that the priests would have us believe you are undead men created by alchemy ...?” She smiled wanly. “And while I have taught my students to reject such superstition, I cannot believe you are simply chosen by Lottery the same as everyone else.”

“We have felt the black coin in our palms, madam, I assure you, most of us at a tender age. I was fortunate to be taken at thirteen by Asmodeus himself, then a young ferryman, after which I knew my parents no more.”

She stared at him intensely as a chill crept up her spine. “But ... your eyes. Your skin ...” She tried to look away from him but found she could not.

“The result of ritalimortis injection after becoming a brownie.” He turned to face her. “A ferryman’s apprentice. It ... has many effects, some intended and some not. All of them serve to alienate you from, and to intimidate, others.”

Again she felt as though she had entered a dream. Her eyes were fogged over with it. “May I ask ... there’s a reason. How old are you, ferryman? And do you have a name? A birth name, I mean?”

The ferryman faced forward, pushing his oar. “You must understand, madam, that we will not be able to continue this conversation once Sthulhu returns. Your veil, too, will have to be replaced before we become visible to others.”

Shekalane looked at the floorboards. “I understand.” She looked up at him. “It’s just that ... my son. He was chosen at about the same age.”

He rowed for a moment before turning to look at her. “I am thirty-four years old. And my name is Dravidian.”

She felt a rush of relief, but was uncertain why. “I am Shek—”

“Madam, please.” He pressed the grip of the oar during the return-stroke in such a way that the muscles of his arms seem to ripple, and it occurred to her that maneuvering such a boat to ensure it stayed on course was no simple task, but rather a delicate process requiring great strength and stamina, but also technique, style and experience. “It is no easy role, that of ferryman,” he continued. “I do not wish to know those I escort to their fates. I dare not, for my own survival. No one goes willingly, not at heart, and if I were to see them as individuals—”

“You would know my name,” she interrupted. “Or you wouldn’t have sent Sthulhu away or quoted Montair.”

He completed the return-stroke then pushed forward again, seeming to consider this. “I would know it, madam.”

“I am Shekalane,” she said. “I was a teacher ... before being handed the black coin. Now I don’t know what I’ll be. Dead, perhaps.” She laughed a little. “We shall look just alike.”

The ferryman drew on his oar and said nothing—but her intuition told her he was withholding something. Again the dream-like feeling stole over her, and she said, with a rush of realization, “You know—don’t you? You know how it is I’ve been selected to serve ...”

He pushed forward on his oar and drew it back. At last, he said, “We are sometimes given special instructions for the handling of a charge. You are to be unharmed, or, if force is required, no marks are to be left upon your person. Based on this, I suspect that you shall want for nothing; and that you are not destined for either of the Twin Houses.”

Shekalane looked at him a moment longer, then out over the gloomy river, turning this over in her mind, somehow knowing what it meant but not fully prepared to accept it. Being twenty-nine years of age, she had prayed to be spared indoctrination into the demidaines—the “brides” of the Lucitor. She began to speak but paused, having noticed a great structure materialize out of the fog—a door, of sorts, fully one quarter as high as the ceiling of Ursathrax itself. “Dravidian ... what is that?”

He followed her gaze to where the Cyclopean door was coming into view off the port bow. “One of the vetitum portas, surely you have heard of them. They are the entry points to the f*******n Channels.”

She suddenly recalled Valdus’ note: Watch the gateways to the f*******n Channels. This she did, peering at the willowed delta around the door and seeking for any sign of activity. The emerald in this ring is a homing beacon ... you will know what to do. But in fact she did not know what to do, other than to keep Dravidian engaged, and thus distracted. Nor did she did activate the ring, although she could have done so easily. The ferryman is already dead ...

She pushed the thought from her mind.

“I don’t believe in the Lucitor’s religion,” she said at length, referring to Dravidian’s words regarding the Twin Houses. She glanced at him sidelong. “Sacrilege, he thinks. Blaspheming His great and terrible name like that.”

To her surprise, Dravidian didn’t say anything, just continued to row.

“Well, I don’t. I remember a trip a friend took to the end of Ursathrax when I was a child—part of her indoctrination into the Sisterhood of Trappers. They travelled there on a big riverboat, like the kind you ferrymen use to tow your gondolas upriver. She was taken through the Tunnels of Light and Darkness, and given sweet things to eat at tunnel’s end by the priests and priestesses. They lectured her on the Unholy Tabernacle, about how the faithful would enter the House of Peace, and it would look like the Tunnel of Light, only a thousand times more beautiful. Then they told her how the unfaithful would be put to pain in the House of Torment, which would look like the Tunnel of Darkness but a thousand times more horrible. And there they would suffer. Not just for the rest of their lives but for all eternity.”

Something glinted in the shallows near the door and her eyes darted to it, but it was just water glistening on the back of a duck.

Shekalane laughed. “My friend didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. Even the sight of the Twin Houses themselves was not enough to convince her. They seemed fake to her, like mere facades.”

Dravidian shook his head. “The House of Torment is real, Shekalane. I have stood in my boat outside its gates and listened to the cries of the Damned.”

“But you have not been inside it,” she said.

“No.”

There was a brief silence. After a time she said, “Did you know there are some who believe the Lucitor to be dead?”

He turned to look at her sharply—disapprovingly, it seemed, although that may only have been her imagination, then slowly looked away.

“Others say he lives on as a great computatrum grown sentient. Do you know what that is? A computatrum?”

“No. Although it would seem to indicate a person, or, since you mention the development of sentience, a thing, that performs computations.”

“That is correct. Still others say that He is human but has learned the secret to immortality, and that it has driven Him mad. They believe He established the Lottery hundreds of years ago to curb over-population, but that it has long since outlived its usefulness toward that end, and only goes on because He has forgotten what it was for, only that it was necessary.”

“I’m afraid you confuse folk tales with serious conjecture, madam.”

“Few folk tales begin as folk tales, Dravidian. Behind these, I suspect, lies a kernel of truth. How else would they grow? These are not imaginative times. And tell me, who but a madman would orchestrate the kind of grim pageantry represented by you ferrymen?”

His oar creaked as he worked it, as did his black leather gloves, which were laced to the elbows. “Who but a madman, indeed.”

She looked at him and felt a sudden blush of conflicting emotions, as well as an unwelcome sense of nostalgia—most of which manifested as imagery: her son turning to look at her one final time before stepping into the smoke, little Lat showing up with not a friend or family in the world, Dravidian himself as a boy, with a shock of brown hair and rosy-red skin, perhaps turning to look at his own mother—before vanishing forever into the void. And something dissolved inside her, just melted away, not her anger and hatred for the Lucitor and His Lottery, but for this individual man, whom she now realized was as much a victim as anyone, even more so because he had been turned into a focal point for everyone’s pain and outrage.

This beautifully-formed, ropey-limbed living-dead man with a headful of Montair, like little Lat all grown up ...

“What are the brides like, Dravidian? Are they happy? Are they sad?”

“They want for nothing, as I’ve said.” He turned his head briefly to study her before refocusing on the river ahead. “I, too, saw being chosen as a curse in the beginning. But it is—you’re aware of how Montair put it. A black hole which becomes a white fountain. You will emerge as something new.”

“Once ... it is done ... I wonder ... will we ever see each other again?”

He shook his head. “Not like this, Shekalane.”

And then everything turned white, and the world was split in two.