The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 40:

In the Gatehouse

Moth dreamed she was a child, asleep in her mother’s arms.

Clem was there. She could feel him nearby but couldn’t see him. He was speaking with Vade.

“When will she wake up?” he asked. He sounded far away – Moth felt as though she were underwater, straining to hear through the ripples.

“She needs to wake up soon,” said Vade. “It’s in the gatehouse.”

*

Smashed glass hit the floor – the crash ripped Moth from her dream.

Moth flung herself out of bed, whirling towards her window. It was unbroken; the tin bars were in place.

Wood beams groaned and splintered. She looked up. Far above her, she could hear something in the attic. The gatehouse trembled with the weight.

Moth snatched up her shawl and ran to the wooden walkway outside her room.

The ceiling quaked as something enormous moved across it.

Clinging to the railing, Moth watched as the large door that led to the attic bucked outwards, straining on its old hinges, and shattered open.

The welkworm looked out of the door. The old, stolen face blinked dully as dirt and splinters showered down. It turned its head and looked out the window that faced the property, and its mouth flapped open, and it breathed when it saw the mansion lit up by foggy moonlight.

Moth was too stunned to move. Her heart was in her throat, it pounded painfully, filling her head with noise.

Run. Run, find someone.

Her mind screamed at her, but she couldn’t get her trembling legs to move.

The welkworm began to wriggle through the door. Its body was one long length, like a snake, covered in stringy brown hair. It stretched and stretched itself through, and reaching towards the window, when its bumped its head against the glass.

It huffed, extending its tongue to taste what was blocking it.

It reared back and smashed its head through the window, exploding the glass out, raining glinting light down. The welkworm wriggled through the window, its body supple and easily compressed, looking towards the House of Springs.

“Hey,” Moth choked, her voice strangled with fear. “Hey! Stop!”

The welkworm did stop. Through the stack of windows, it ducked its head down to look through a lower window at Moth, tried once again to enter, was stopped, and smashed its head through the window.

Moth covered her head with her shawl as the glass exploded out over the gatehouse.

The welkworm, looping though the door, out one window, and down through another, stretched back into the gatehouse. It was so long, Moth couldn’t see the end of it – the rest was still in the attic.

She had the welkworm’s attention. It looked around, blinking and huffing the air until it could smell her.

They were face to face. Moth pressed her back to the wall as it sniffed her, tasting the air with its tongue. It huffed again and withdrew, deterred by her solid body.

It’s nostrils flared, catching an odor on the wind. It withdrew its head and looked towards the mansion again. A slow, steady breeze was drifting down towards them from the building, ruffling the long stringy hair on the welkworm’s body.

“No,” pleaded Moth.

The welkworm slithered out the window, and miles of its body followed after it, thicker and thicker until it would barely fit through the window. Then, its long thin stretch of tail followed after it, and it was out of the gatehouse and crawling, inch by slow inch, towards the mansion.

Moth sprinted up the broken stairs to the topmost landing and looked out the window. “Stop it!” Moth screamed from the window. The welkworm did not listen to her, as it oozed through the ivy, leaving a massive, flattened trail behind it.

She could outrun it. She could get to the mansion and warn everyone – but they could do nothing but run into the forest where a thousand more dangers were waiting.

Moth gasped for breath, grasped for ideas. It was no longer afraid of the shawl.

Tin, said a voice in her head. The tin sword.

Moth ran into the attic.

She could see the beautiful magpie stained glass window had been broken – the tin bars that latched over it had been left open.

I left it open, Moth realized, horrified shame beginning to overtake her, to freeze her, until she saw something glinting near the window. In a broken pool of colored glass was the tin-mixed sword.

I can’t do this. She staggered over and picked it up. What am I doing?

She ran down the stairs, out of the gatehouse, the cold spring air blasting through her nightgown and chilling her sweat-soaked body.

Choking, she pounded bare foot across the lawn, the massive welkworm hungrily thrusting itself along towards the mansion. It panted excitedly, forcing its bloated form along.

Moth ran past its tail, up next to its body, and along the length of its unending neck. She got to its face, and it gave her a disinterested glance.

“Stop,” Moth gasped out, lungs burning, her body thrumming with adrenaline.

It kept crawling along. Moth ran in front of its head and shook her shawl in its face.

The welkworm stopped. It reared its head and neck straight into the air, stretching up and up and up into the night sky, filling it – then slammed its neck down like a falling tree.

Moth flung herself out of the way. The earth rumbled with the impact.

The welkworm snuffled and kept crawling towards the mansion, eyes wide with hunger, mouth dribbling saliva.

Detangling herself from the ivy, Moth grabbed up her tin sword and shouted towards the mansion, “Agate! Agate, wake up!

The night seemed to suck up her voice, shrill and weak against a wind that swept it away.

“Oh god,” said Moth, clutching the sword in her hands. “Oh please, I don’t want to do this.”

It felt heavy and useless in her hands. She ran up to the welkworm, it’s wide flank exposed to her.

She raised her sword, bracing the pommel with her palm. Gritting her teeth, she lunged forward, burying the blade into it.

The welkworm screamed.

It screamed like an old woman, and its body spasmed and writhed, smashing Moth away. She slammed into a patch of ivy, narrowly missing a marble statue.

It would not stop screaming. It filled the mountain with the sound, filled Moth’s head with the wail.

The welkworm slammed its tail into a crumbling wall and smashed it to rubble. Its neck flailed and snapped a statue in half. It rolled on its side, wriggling to remove the blade that was plunged deep in its swollen flesh.

It bled. Clear blue blood, gushing out like sky-tinted water.

Gasping, Moth dashed forward and yanked out the blade, reeling back, avoiding another flail from the welkworm. It sprayed her with blood.

Moth wiped its blood from her eyes, struggling to see, when she heard it – cawing.

She looked up to see dozens of magpies swarming up into the air from the forest, gathering in a dark cloud overhead.

The welkworm, exhausted, lowered its head form the sky to avoid the magpies and writhed forward, determined to reach the mansion full of unprotected souls.

Running up to its face, Moth hefted the saber again, heaving for breath. It turned to look at her, about to rear its head again –

But it was slow. Moth plunged the sword into the old, wrinkled face, puncturing its left cheek.

A geyser of blue blood exploded from the welkworm, drenching Moth – but it was not dead. It pulled its head up into the air, shrieking.

Magpies swirled around the welkworm’s head, picking at its hair but only distracted it. Moth hurried out of range; it looked ready to slam it’s neck down again, when she saw something coming over the mountain, down out of the night.

A feathered, snake-like thing, with massive wings.

It was jet-black – Moth could barely see it. It landed on the welkworm’s head and yanked out the tin sword from it’s cheek.

Before the welkworm could thrash, the bird-snake stabbed it in the eyes, raining buckets of blood from the lofty height, soaking the ivy in blue rivulets.

Slowly, the welkworm’s screams stopped – so garbled and choked, its throat full of its own blood – it shuddered one last time and fell to the earth with a final, resounding earthquake.

Exhausted, Moth blearily stared up at the creature that held her sword. The magpies swarmed around it in a cloud.

It landed on four legs – massive bird legs – and furled it’s wings along it’s back.

Rising from its long body was a torso like a man’s, covered in fine feathers, and it rose to a human throat and jaw. Its mouth was full of oversized, crooked teeth, curving up into a beak an upper head like a magpie.

Strange, festering red stitches stretched from the human jaw to the bird-like head. It’s eyes – his eyes – were milky and foggy-blue, heavy with thought and tense with pain.

She had never seen a more distorted creature, so twisted with grief.

Moth had wondered, for the longest time, whether she would be able to recognize the ferryman if she saw him.

If no one had told her, would she feel in in the air that he was something else?

At once she knew that this creature – this thing – had been born before the sun was lit, before humans walked along the highways and farmed the earth; she knew at once. He felt like eternity.

It was the Ferryman.

He went to the head of the welkworm, and touched the stretched, bloated face of the old woman. Her head slid out from the welkworm, revealing a shrunken, shriveled body attached to the engorged head.

The ferryman picked her up gently, and soon – like Lander – the body dissolved away, and all that was left was a tiny, grooved spiral.

Holding it carefully in his hand – a talon – the ferryman turned to look at Moth.

He did not say anything as he watched her.

Moth, her nightgown soaked in blood, her feet torn up, could say nothing at all. She bowed her head to him, staring at the ground.

He approached her, slowly, and bowed his head as well. He spoke, finally – his voice was deep, and had a guttural accent like the Tiding Farmers.

“Are you my bride?”

Author ramblings: