The Ferryman

The first time I found a body, it seemed a fluke. In among the rushes. So tragically discarded. I lifted the body of a young girl, bloated and forgotten.

The reeds... They are always full of mysteries and treasures. The grass growing on the river's edge was so alive and healthy it seemed to glow with its own inner green light. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of trees. It was the hour before sunset, when all the world is turned to gold. A small, young tree had captured the light in its leaves and turned it the innocent green of new life, shafts of sunlight were its crown.

It was there that I noticed the little foot, toes pointed like a fairy dancer, protruding from the grass. The river flowed gently on, shining like it was molten gold.

I felt betrayed, to find something so horrible. Haloed by the reeds like a gift.

In the village, I found her mother--a sullen woman with a forgotten face. Her bland, colorless features declared that she had left this life long ago. The yard behind her gave the same message--it was muddy with dung and scattered with broken crockery and other damaged things. The thatch on the house was ragged and moldy. Death seemed no stranger, and surely took many forms.

Perhaps that is why her face didn't change at first, when she heard the news--certainly it didn't seem to be from shock. But a second later, quick flickers of life played across her face--a momentary flash in the eyes, the corners of her mouth upturned ever so briefly, before settling into a classic mask of accusation: brow knitted, eyes slits, nostrils flared, lips curled. Such an easy target I was. Grim, lonesome, a resident of a shady floating world.

Her words amounted to gossip and suspicion, but the horror of finding the child--it haunted me, and my boat. To be a ferryman, no less. I was marked, inside and out, a courier of decay. People shrunk from me like wilting flowers, shadows passed over bright and smiling faces. Even to me, it seemed the grass shriveled beneath my feet. It became a rumbling resentment in my spirit.

Worse yet, it kept happening. Some poor drunk who'd stumbled or swooned into the marshy waters, losers of brawls, and always those discarded ladies. I began to sense where these bodies were hiding; it pulled at me, and filled me with dread. I was already tainted by suspicion, and wanted only peace. So I tried to ignore them, horrible as that sounds. But that only caused shadows to gather at their uneasy resting places--unnatural emanations of anger that sullied the brightness of the sun, blighted the growth of grass and trees. The buzz of cicadas, the playful clucking of birds--the encircling sounds of summer--turned to probing menaces, rather than sounds of life.

I learned to accept my role. I'd lift the fallen carefully onto my skiff, and ferry them ashore. We'd float silently on our ship of sorrow, mourned with the weeping of willows. At times, the sun hid itself in shame; other times, it honored the dead by setting the waters ablaze in its golden evening light.

I delivered these forgotten children back to their villages. And so, too, in the world's eyes, became an agent of death--a servant of each man's lurking end. Who would want such a specter treading their paths of life?

Yet to see a child floating in the reeds made me forget those curses. It was a duty--and an honor--to ferry the dead. The poor little one--how could I not do what I could to lift her from this place of forgetfulness? Place her, with whatever love such as me could conjure, on my skiff, and deliver her (hopefully) to those who could grieve her.

But these were the oubliettes and outcasts. I was meant to leave them where I'd found them. The shores decided I must pay.