As I stepped inside the Doorwell, the known world gave way to the unknown world more quickly
than I expected. Even in the Otherworld, there are some places that are noticeably more other than
others.
The river was one of them. This wasn’t any kind of river I’d seen in the Mortal Gatlin County.
Like the Great Barrier, this was a seam. Something that held worlds together without being in any
one of them.
I was in totally uncharted territory.
Luckily, Uncle Abner’s crow seemed to know the way. Exu flapped overhead, gliding and
hanging in circles above me, sometimes landing on high branches to wait for me if I fell too far
behind. He didn’t seem to mind the job either; he tolerated our quest with only the occasional
squawk. Maybe he enjoyed getting out for a change. He reminded me of Lucille that way, except I
didn’t catch her eating little mice carcasses when she was hungry.
And when I caught him looking at me, he was really looking at me. Every time I started to feel
normal again, he would catch my eye and send shivers down my spine, like he was doing it on
purpose. Like he knew he could.
I wondered if Exu was a real bird. I knew he could cross between worlds, but did that make
him supernatural? According to Uncle Abner, it only made him a crow.
Maybe all crows were just creepy.
As I walked farther, the swamp weeds and cypress trees jutting out of the murky water led to
greener grass beyond the bank, grass so tall I could barely see over it in places.
I wove through the grass, following the black bird in the sky, trying not to remember too much
about where I was going or what I was leaving behind. It was hard enough not to imagine the look
on my mother’s face when I walked out the door.
I tried desperately not to think about her eyes, about the way they lit up when she saw me. Or
her hands, the way she waved them in the air as she talked, as if she thought she could pull words
out of the sky with her fingers. And her arms, wrapping around me like my own house, because
she was the place where I was from.
I tried not to think about the moment the door closed. It would never open again, not for me.
Not like that.
It’s what I wanted. I said it to myself as I walked. It’s what she wanted for me. To have a life.
To live.
To leave.
Exu squawked, and I beat back the tall brush and the grass.
Leaving was harder than I ever could’ve imagined, and part of me still couldn’t believe I had
done it. But as much as I tried not to think about my mom, I tried to keep Lena’s face in my mind,
a constant reminder of why I was doing this—risking everything.
I wondered what she was doing right now…. Writing in her notebook? Practicing the viola?
Reading her battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?
I was still thinking about it when I heard music in the distance. It sounded like… the Rolling
Stones?
Part of me expected to push through the grass and see Link standing there. But as I edged
closer to the chorus of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” I realized it was the Stones, but it
definitely wasn’t Link.
The voice wasn’t bad enough, and too many of the notes were right.
It was a big guy, wearing a faded bandanna tied around his head, and a Harley-Davidson Tshirt
with scaly wings across the back. He was sitting at a plastic folding table like the ones the
bridge club used back in Gatlin. With his black shades and long beard, he looked like he should be
riding an old chopper instead of sitting next to a riverbank.
Except for his lunch. He was spooning something out of a plastic Tupperware container. From
where I was, it looked like intestines or human remains. Or…
The biker belched. “Best chili-ghetti this side a the Mississippi.” He shook his head.
Exu cawed and landed on the edge of the folding table. An enormous black dog lying on the
ground next to it barked but didn’t bother to get up.
“What’re you doing around here, bird? Unless you’re looking to make a deal, there’s nothing
for you here. An’ don’t even think I’m letting you get into my whiskey this time.” The biker shooed
Exu off the table. “Go on. Shoo. You tell Abner I’m ready to deal when he’s ready to play.”
As he waved the crow off the table, and Exu disappeared into the blue sky, the biker noticed
me standing at the edge of the grass. “You out sightseeing, or are you looking for something?” He
tossed the remains of his lunch into a small white Styrofoam cooler and picked up a deck of playing
cards. He nodded my way, shuffling the cards from hand to hand.
I swallowed hard and stepped closer as “Hand of Fate” started playing on the old transistor
radio sitting in the dust. I wondered if he listened to anything besides the Rolling Stones, but I
wasn’t about to ask. “I’m looking for the River Master.”
The biker laughed, dealing a hand as if someone was sitting on the other side of the table.
“River Master. I haven’t heard that one in a while. River Master, Ferryman, Water Runner—I go by
a lot of names, kid. But you can call me Charlie. It’s the one I answer to when I feel like
answering.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone getting this guy to do anything he didn’t feel like doing. If we were
in the Mortal realm, he would probably be a bouncer at a biker bar or a pool hall where people were
dragged out for breaking bottles over one another’s heads.
“Nice to meet you… Charlie,” I choked. “I’m Ethan.”
He waved me over. “So what can I do for you, Ethan?”
I walked over to the table, careful to give the giant creature on the ground a wide berth. It
looked like a mastiff, with its square face and wrinkled skin. Its tail was bandaged with white gauze.
“Don’t mind old Drag,” he said. “He won’t get up unless you’re carrying some raw meat.”
Charlie grinned. “Or unless you are raw meat. Dead meat like you, kid—you’re off the hook.”
Why didn’t that surprise me?
“Drag? What kind of name is that?” I reached out toward the dog.
“Dragon. The kind that breathes fire and chews your hand off if you try to pet him.”
Drag looked at me, growling. I moved my hand back to my pocket.
“I need to cross the river. I brought you these.” I laid the river eyes on the padded card table. It
really did look like the ones at the bridge club.
Charlie glanced at the stones, unimpressed. “Good for you. One for the way there, one for the
way back. That’s like showin’ a bus driver your bus ticket. Still don’t make me want to get on no
bus.”
“It doesn’t?” I swallowed. So much for my plans. Somehow I had thought this was all
working out too easily.
Charlie looked me over. “You play blackjack, Ethan? You know, twenty-one?”
I knew what he meant. “Um, not really.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I used to play with
Thelma, until she started cheating as badly as the Sisters did at Rummikub.
He pushed my cards toward me, flipping a nine of diamonds on top of the first one. My hand.
“You’re a smart boy—I bet you can figure it out.”
I checked my card, a seven. “Hit me.” That’s what Thelma would have said.
Charlie seemed like a risk-taker. If I was right, he probably respected other people who did the
same. And what did I have to lose?
He nodded approvingly, flipping a king. “Sorry, kid, that’s twenty-six. You’re over. But I
would’ve taken the hit, too.”
Charlie shuffled the deck and dealt us each another hand.
This time I had a four and an eight. “Hit me.”
He flipped a seven. I had nineteen, which was hard to beat. Charlie had a king and a five sitting
in front of him. He had to take a hit, or I would win for sure. He pulled a card from the top of the
deck. A six of hearts.
“Twenty-one. That’s blackjack,” he said, shuffling again.
I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test or if he was just bored out here, but he didn’t seem
anxious to get rid of me anytime soon. “I really need to get across the river, si—” I stopped myself
before I called him “sir.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, Charlie. See, there’s a girl—”
Charlie nodded, interrupting. “There’s always a girl.” The Rolling Stones started crooning
“2,000 Light Years from Home.” Funny.
“I need to get back to her—”
“I had a girl once. Penelope was her name. Penny.” He leaned back in his chair, smoothing his
scraggly beard. “Eventually she got tired of hanging around here, so she took off.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?” The second I asked the question, I realized it was probably too
personal. But he answered anyway.
“I can’t leave.” He said it matter-of-factly, flipping cards for both of us. “I’m the River Master.
It’s part of the gig. Can’t run out on the house.”
“You could quit.”
“This isn’t a job, kid. It’s a sentence.” He laughed, but there was a bitterness that made me feel
sorry for him. That and the folding card table and the lazy dog with the messed-up tail.
Then “2,000 Light Years from Home” faded out, replaced by “Plundered My Soul.”
I didn’t want to know who was powerful enough to sentence him to sit by what, for the most
part, looked like a pretty unimpressive river. It was slow and calm. If he wasn’t hanging out here, I
probably could’ve swum across.
“I’m sorry.” What else could I say?
“It’s okay. I made my peace with it a long time ago.” He tapped on my cards. An ace and a
seven. “You want a hit?”
Eighteen again.
Charlie had an ace, too.
“Hit me.” I watched as he turned the card between his fingers.
A three of spades.
He took off his shades, ice blue staring back at me. His pupils were so light, they were barely
visible. “You gonna call it?”
“Blackjack.”
Charlie pushed back his chair and nodded toward the riverbank. There was a poor man’s ferry
waiting, a crude raft made of logs that were bound together with thick rope. It was just like the
ones that lined the swamp in Wader’s Creek. Dragon stretched and ambled after him. “Let’s go
before I change my mind.”
I followed him to the rickety platform and stepped onto the rotting logs.
Charlie held out his hand. “Time to pay the Ferryman.” He pointed toward the brown water.
“Come on. Hit me.”
I tossed the stone and it hit, without so much as a splash.
The moment he lowered the long pole to push against the river bottom, the water changed. A
putrid odor rose from the surface—swamp rot, spoiled meat—and something else.
I looked down into the shadowy depths beneath me. The water was clear enough to see all the
way to the bottom now, except I couldn’t, because there were bodies everywhere I looked, only
inches below the surface. And these weren’t the writhing forms from myths and movies. They
were corpses, bloated and waterlogged, still as death. Some faceup, some facedown—but what
faces I could see had the same blue lips and terrifyingly white skin. Their hair fanned out around
them in the water as they floated and bumped against one another.
“Everyone pays the Ferryman sooner or later.” Charlie shrugged. “Can’t change that.”
The taste of bile rose in my throat, and it took every ounce of energy I had to keep from
throwing up. The revulsion must have registered on my face, because Charlie’s tone was
sympathetic. “I know, kid. The smell’s hard to take. Why do you think I don’t make many trips
across?”
“Why did it change? The river.” I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the waterlogged bodies. “I
mean, it wasn’t like this before.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You just couldn’t see it. There are lots of things we choose not
to see. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, even if we wish they weren’t.”
“I’m tired of seeing everything. It was easier back when I didn’t know anything. I barely even
knew I was alive.”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. So I hear.”
The wooden platform smacked against the opposite bank. “Thanks, Charlie.”
He leaned on the pole, his unnaturally blue, pupil-less eyes staring right through me. “Don’t
mention it, kid. I hope you find that girl.”
I reached my hand out cautiously and scratched Dragon behind the ears. I was happy to see
my hand didn’t burn off.
The huge dog barked at me.
“Maybe Penny will come back,” I said. “You never know.”
“The odds are against it.”
I stepped onto the bank. “Yeah, well. If you’re going to look at it that way, I guess you could
say they’re against me, too.”
“You may be right. If you’re headed where I think.”
Did he know? Maybe this side of the river only led to one place, though I doubted it. The more
I learned about the world I thought I knew and all the ones I didn’t, the more everything threaded
together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“I’m going to the Far Keep.” I didn’t think he’d get the chance to tell any of the Keepers, since
he couldn’t leave this spot. Besides, there was something about Charlie I liked. And saying the
words only made me feel more like they were true.
“Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.” He pointed into the distance. “But you have to get past the
Gatekeeper.”
“I heard.” I had been thinking about it since my visit to Obidias’ house with Aunt Prue.
“Well, you tell him he owes me money,” Charlie said. “I won’t wait around forever.” I looked
at him, and he sighed. “Well, say it anyway.”
“You know him?”
He nodded. “We go way back. There’s no telling how long it’s been, but I’d guess a lifetime or
two.” “What’s he like?” Maybe if I knew more about this guy, I would have a better chance of
convincing him to let me into the Far Keep.
Charlie smiled, pushing off with the pole and sending the poor man’s ferry floating back into
the sea of corpses.
“Not like me.”
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