The Ferryman - Book 1

Arc 4 – The Marches

A Cruel Distortion

Chapter 32:

The Ivy that Binds

It had been seventy-five years since the Ferryman was last seen, and Moth woke up.

She lay in slowly rippling water, her head cradled on a mossy shore, and though the sound of wind-lapped leaves threatened to put her back to sleep, she forced her eyes open.

Sore and aching, she raised her head, her braids drenched with water, and sat up.

She was in a wide, shallow stream, with a pebbled floor and the clearest water – clear as the wing of a fly – running in a quiet rush down from her. In the water was an armoire.

Staring dazedly at it, Moth turned her attention from the armoire and saw a wingback-chair, a sword in its scabbard underneath the water, and an embroidered jacket snagged on a tree root and flapping in the stream.

Flanking the stream were massive trees, whose thick roots went deep underground, with only a few of their smaller roots stretched into the streamlet. All around, rustling in the trees but saying nothing, were masses of magpies peering at her from the leaves, hopping along a branch to jut one eye at her and then look at each other.

Moth held onto the armoire and pulled herself up. Her tiara and shoes were gone. The coat and the apron had been torn off in the sinkhole. The hem of her dress was tattered to threads so the train was gone, and it came up to her ankles, not a scrap of the lace left on it – it was soaked and heavy on her.

The water was chilly, but the air did not feel cold – it had a soft warm breeze. It did not feel like autumn, but the smell of dirt and dormant plants seemed sharply of spring.

Moth stumbled through the water, making it a few steps, and clutching onto the wingback chair, and then moving from that to a beautiful trunk with brass hardware and intricately tooled leather. Sitting on it to catch her breath, Moth looked to the shore on her left and right, but she instinctively unsafe getting out of the water and going into the empty dark forest.

She continued to follow the water down. As she went, there was more and more furniture and garments, until she came to a basin that the stream filled and overflowed into another sinkhole.

The basin had a large shore and was piled with fruit in baskets and barrels of cured meat, rows of furniture and piles of heavily embroidered clothes.

The fruit was beginning to rot, and the fabric frayed. Lichen and mold grew on the furniture where oil had worn off, and metal from weapons and armor rusted.

Moth felt hungry, but she did not dare touch the food. Several magpies were scraping around at fruit that had fallen and was rotting on the ground, and they eyed her and hopped away.

“This is where the Ofere leads,” said Moth, in disbelief.

“Yes.”

Moth gasped and stumbled backwards, staring up at the trees where the voice came from. She saw a magpie looking at her, and it nodded and said again, “Yes.”

Scared, Moth whispered, “Are you the ferryman?”

The magpie and several others jumped up and down, squawking, “No, no.”

Their voices were creaked and warbling.

“Is…is this where the Ferryman, Correb, lives?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

“Soon.”

They chirped among themselves, always moving and flapping. These magpies were bigger than the ones she was used to on her farm; they were clearly well fed, and their ability to mimic words were better than most magpies, but she wasn’t sure how smart they were; they acted just like birds, and Moth did not trust their sense of time.

She pointed up a worn path that led to the basin. “Is that the way to where the ferryman lives? To his house?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Thank you.” Moth clutched her bruised side, held onto a branch, and pulled herself out of the basin and onto the shore, her toes curling against the rough sandy shore, and she wished she had worn shoes that tied when she was offered.

She hesitated, looking around, and saw amongst the piles of beautiful offerings gathering dust and mold, a pair of leather slippers – they looked like they wear meant to slip over a nicer pair of shoes to protect them.

Borrowing them isn’t stealing, she thought, you can’t give food back after you take it, but I can return these.

As she reached for them the magpies stopped moving and watched her.

“I’m going to return these,” she said, earnestly, “I just need to borrow them so I can walk to the mansion, please.”

One of them bowed its head to her, and Moth hoped that was a yes, and pulled the slippers onto her feet, lacing up their leather straps, and stood. They were a size too big, but it felt much better to walk over the rocky shore with them, especially since she saw rings and jewelry had been mixed into the rocks. The thought of stepping on an emerald made her wince.

Moth looked down the dark path that led away from the basin and into a forest drenched in deep overcast green; a gentle wind stirred the branches every so often, and it looked like the shapes of creatures moving breathlessly in the dark.

Fearful, Moth hesitated on the edge. She pulled up the hem of her skirt, and felt along her thigh where she had tied her yellow ribbon, then looked up. “Magpies?”

“Hello?” they squawked.

Moth cut off the tip of the ribbon. It was the first thing she had bought with her own wage, an eternity ago in Magden’s shops. She held the cut, three inches of marigold-colored ribbon, and said, her voice shaking, “Would you give this to someone for me, so she knows I’m alright?”

They were quiet, staring with their light blue eyes.

“Her name is Vade Hevwed, she’s my mother, and I want her to know I’m alive. Do you know her? Do you know…” Moth trailed off, desperate, “Do you know the names of the people in Hiren, do you know where they live?”

There was a stir from among the magpies and a few hopped forward. One opened its beak and said in scratchy voice that had Vade’s cadence, “It’s getting dark, come in, come in.”

Tears stung Moth’s eyes and she nodded. “That’s her, that’s my mama. You know where she lives?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Would you give this to her?”

It nodded.

It hopped down onto a side table, and Moth tied the yellow ribbon to his leg, and he burst away into the trees.

“Thank you!” Moth called after him.

Distantly, it said, “Yes, baby.”

Clutching her arms to herself, Moth left the shore and started into the forest.

There was a faint trail. A wide flagstone path, a foot deep with ivy, led through a tunnel of overgrown branches, the crown of it so dense Moth could barely see ahead of her on the trail, and she felt around in the darkness until her eyes adjusted. She shuffled through the ivy and strained her eyes to see if there was an end to the massive tunnel. Her toe smacked against something and she stumbled to her knees. She felt in the ivy and pushed aside the vines, seeing an enormous, rotted carriage wheel abandoned on the road.

Moth hugged the side of the road and carefully felt in the dense ivy as she went, until at the far end of the tunnel glowed a faint light. She continued to follow the road until the forest canopy was thin enough to provide better light. She was at a crossroads.

There was a pillar of ivy in the center of the crossroads, and Moth pushed the vines away to see it was a metal signpost.

It was corroded and flaking, but Moth saw enough to read on it words she did not know.

N. Laid Neste

W. Aberan Es. E. Tural Tie

S. Offere Anta

She recognized Ofere, though it had another ‘f’. Is it the same word? She wondered. It must be.

The only other word she thought she might know was Laid Neste, an old word for Springhouse. She looked down the left and right path, and decided since it was the only word she knew she would head north.

As she went, Moth realized she was heading upwards. If she was heading up north towards the top of the mountain, then the Ofere had taken her to the south side of the mountain, the south side of Tiding Range – she had never seen it, as it was the north side that faced Hiren.

I went through the mountain.

That was an eerie thought, but it explained why she was covered with bruises and felt as though she had been scrubbed over a washboard. She gingerly touched her ribs and her neck, where some welts were forming, but she had no broken bones.

She marveled that anything could survive the trip through the Ofere, but Clem had told her the water had a will of its own – sometimes even a will apart from the ferryman.

Moth continued to climb the mountain and looked up the road. It led a few more yards and stopped at a massive gate

The gate, made of tin bronze, was heavy with intricate metalwork of flowers and birds, the images obscured by verdigris, and lichen, and choked with ivy. The gate was flanked on either side by a gatehouse, that was connected at the top by a covered stone walkway. Set in the middle of that walkway, was a round stained glass window, depicting a magpie.

Moth looked behind her, the crossroads now too far away to see, and then back at the towering gate in front of her.

She wondered if she could climb it, but felt so sore she doubted if she could pull her own weight – but if this is the gatehouse, I must be close to his home.

Taking a deep breath, Moth braced her foot on the gate and clutched onto the filigree, and as she did, the gate creaked on ancient hinges. It was not locked or chained.

Moth pushed on the gate, and ivy tendrils snapped off, ripping out of the ground, and the gate groaned open inch by inch until Moth could slide through onto the estate of the ferryman.

She was out of the forest. All the ground ahead of her was a sea of ivy, that grew and tangled over statues and walls, covering everything in its gentle green that clung like hoarfrost, leaving no shape exposed, hiding every detail and filament under its leaves.

The wall of ivy in front of her had a few tall trees growing behind it, and through the branches she saw the faint shape of a roof. Moth held her breath and rounded the wall, coming into a small ivy-obscured garden, and she could see it – the ferryman’s mansion.

A massive square slab of wood and stone, with steep wooden shingled roofs and jutting eaves, dense with ornate carved panels and braced with heavy logs, no part of itself sat comfortably with the rest, whole sections having been unnaturally added upon, like warts – a square tower here, that did not match the other, circular one. It wrapped itself in a semi-circle, there must have been a courtyard though Moth could not see it from her angle.

It was nothing beautiful to look at, and the ivy agreed as its one goal was to obscure the whole thing under a dense night of ivy.

A sweeping stone staircase – cracked and overgrown – led up to the wide double doors painted midnight blue. Two statues flanked the staircase, but they were so consumed by the ivy, only their outstretched hands broke free and rose out pleading from the patient plant-life.

Everything was quiet, and empty.

The sky overhead was overcast and unmoved by a light breeze. It rustled the ivy in waves, and it made a sound like an ocean as it blew through.

Moth rustled through the ivy. She picked up the hem of her coral dress so it would not get any more tattered into the ivy, and stepped over a fallen statue, whose face looked up at her sweetly from the green, and Moth trailed through the unkempt garden.

The windows were dark and dusty, and though she looked up at them in the hopes – or fear – she’d see someone, they were empty, tattered curtains half-drawn behind dirty panes.

Moth stepped out of the softly swaying ivy and up onto the solid ground of the stairs, glancing up at the obscured statues guarding the steps, and up to the front door.

The blue of it was so dark, she could see her tense face staring back with wide eyes. Straightening up and smoothing the front of her tattered dress, Moth pounded on the front entrance, and waited, but the only response was the echoing sound of her knock behind the doors.

Taking a deep breath, Moth turned the large handle and eased the door open.