The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 42:

Downpour

It was noon when Moth woke up.

She stared at the ornate, chipped crown molding on the ceiling, and felt the texture of embroidered magpies on the blankets that engulfed her – she was in a guest room in the mansion. For a confused second, she couldn’t remember why.

Moth jolted upright.

The ferryman was back.

She struggled out of the massive, goose-down blanket, using a pillar of the four-poster bed to pull her way out, and found a new set of clothes had been laid out for her.

It was a lace-trimmed ochre dress, with an emerald, green skirt to wear over it, and a matching fitted vest. Though the clothes were expensive and beautiful, with precise details that would’ve made Ursula gasp, they were half a century out of date. Something a nobleman’s grandma would wear.

The vest was extremely long, and the skirts less full. Even the ochre color was not much seen anymore, having died out of fashion. Regardless, Moth was amazed at the quality and eagerly put them on.

Agate had also provided a pair of pearl-buttoned boots with a slight, tapered heel, and pointed toes. Though fifty years old, they were never worn and looked fresh from the cobbler. Moth tugged them on, wincing – she felt the hundred tiny cuts on her feet, caused from running barefoot last night.

Though at the time she hadn’t felt it, now every scrape sang out in the tight shoes.

Moth sat on her bed staring down at her shoes.

I have to go and see the ferryman, she explained to herself, anxiously.

Breathing deeply, Moth smoothed her dress and left the room.

The quiet, unlit mansion felt even more lonely than usual, as she emerged from the guest room and looked down from the balcony at the foyer below, where only six hours ago she and the ferryman had stood.

Last night felt less real than a dream, less possible.

Though she stood in the abandoned house of the dead, she began to worry she had imagined last night entirely – but the pain of her feet convinced her it must’ve been true.

Moth did not need to ask anyone where the ferryman was – she hurried down the stairs, across the foyer, and through the corridor that led to the greenhouse. She stopped at the large stained glass door, took a deep breath, smoothed her dress a second time, and crept in.

Her heels clacked on the tile floor, but the sound was swallowed up by the lush plantlife, dipping their leaves with the cold, wet breeze that blew in – Moth knew she had not left the windows open last time she’d been there.

She crossed the small bridge over the dry, mold filled streamlet to the water feature. She had to round a massive veil of overgrown trees that took up the center of the greenhouse – there, the ferryman was hidden.

Lord Correb was laying on the large couch, looking as if he had collapsed onto it. There was a tile stove next to the couch that was stoked full of a fire that poured out heat. Next to him was a still-steaming tankard of some drink.

He was an indistinguishable mass of feathers until Moth cautiously approached him – when he heard her, he raised his head and turned around in his seat, his long body twisting as heavily as a serpent.

“Lady Mere,” he said, giving a slight bow of his head.

Even laying down, he towered far above her.

Moth bowed her head back. Her hands trembled, and she clasped them together to keep calm. “I thought to look for you here. I was told you like the greenhouse.”

“I have you to thank for your efforts to restore it.”

Moth felt chilled by the cold, wet breeze, and moved nearer the fire. She didn’t think the mountain had any weather besides ‘overcast’, and looked up at the glass roof to the sky – the sky she was used to being the same flat mist, was now beginning to clump up into clouds. She crossed to the window and pressed her fingers to the panes, her breath forming droplets on the glass. Soon – just another breath – the clouds coagulated into a dense mass of gray, and it began to rain.

Thunder bellowed and shook the greenhouse. Lightning lit up the sky – the shock of light revealed strange, many-legged silhouettes deep in the clouds, riding the stampeding wind over the mountaintops.

Moth wiped the pane she was staring out to remove her own foggy breath.

“It’s here,” she whispered. “You brought the rain.”

“It has already begun in Hiren. This will help the high places.”

The rainstorm was already moving out and down from the mountaintop, but the weather remained soaked and churning in its wake. The wind swept in and out through the windows Correb had opened, quivering the greenhouse.

Moth turned to look at him, forcing herself to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”

His pale eyes examined her face. “I wish I could have ended the drought sooner. Winter will be here soon, but I will send an early spring.” He reached a long arm over and set a kettle into the stove. “Tea?”

Moth nodded. Feeling invited to stay, she took a chair by the fire and watched the ferryman as he prepared a pot. Her eyes trailed over his jaw, where jagged, grayed teeth jutted out of his mouth, clung to by inflamed, purpled gums, with festering red stitches puncturing his mouth. His upper beak had aberrant teeth-shapes growing down. Due to these growths, the ferryman could not close his mouth fully – it was no wonder to Moth his breathing was labored. “Lord Correb?” she asked, struggling to find her voice. He tilted his head to listen. “May I know how this happened to you?”

He paused. After a moment’s deliberation, he said, “I was trying to protect someone I loved. I was not successful.”

Moth stared at him. Her heart tightened as a question formed on her lips, but the ferryman held up a talon. His next words were polite – very kindly spoken – but they left no mistake to Moth.

“There is much you must wonder over, but some matters I will not confide to you – to anyone. I will not burden a human with the business of ferriers. But please, don’t hesitate to ask questions of me, just know some of them I will be unwilling to answer.”

There were so many questions that rampaged through Moth’s mind, all in a horrid jumble of anxiety and accusations, but the first thought that filtered up through her mind, she gasped out, “I have an aunt.”

Correb waited for her to continue and she arranged her thoughts.

“I have an Aunt Rena. She died, and her sister – my Aunt Violet – kept trying to talk to her through the water. Martinets were advising her.”

A flicker of anger crossed Correb’s eyes. “I’m familiar with the teaching and false hopes of the martinets, promising a voice beyond the grave.”

“But I saw her,” burst out Moth, gripping the arms of her seat. “I saw her. I could hear her, sometimes, calling to her sister. Then one night, as I was doing laundry, she came out of the water and grabbed me. She said I smelled like a ferryman. Oh god it was so awful, she was begging me to help, she thought I was Violet, she said she was trapped below, and he wouldn’t let her go and it was trying to drag her away and she just kept – kept crying, and I…I couldn’t do anything.”

Correb listened, and leaned close to Moth to ask, “And she died in this county? In Korraban?”

“Yes, she…” Moth paused. She felt cold. “No. No, I remember now – she died visiting her friends in another county, catching a sickness.”

The kettle began to whistle. Correb pulled it out from the stove and made a pot of tea, setting it aside to brew. He lay heavily on his couch and said to Moth, “I cannot ferry her soul if she did not die on my land. Her soul must have wandered to find her family, but she’ll be caught in the flow of the water and brought back to her ferrier, who’ll be able to bring her over. The very thing she is afraid of trying to grab her, is trying to bring her to her ferrier so she can move on.”

Moth clutched her knees. “How long will she haunt her sister until then?”

“It varies. Violet Sacherd is using martinet magic to keep her sister’s soul unnaturally drawn to that location, it is hindering Rena from moving on – but it won’t last, it can’t be kept up. At most it’ll be three years.”

“Aunt Violet…was hindering her by putting those potions and scents in the water?” Moth asked fearfully.

“The living often haunt the dead.”

Stunned, Moth fell silent for a while, sifting through every memory she had of what Aunt Violet had said to her, of what she was putting in her washbasin.

She was broken from her thoughts when the ferryman pressed a cup of tea into her hand.

“Please, drink,” he said.

She stared at it nervously. “Is it offered by Hiren?”

“It is safe. Tea grown on this mountain, and honey from our apiary.”

The aroma was inviting. Moth took a cautious sip, shocked by the nutty, chocolatey flavor that had the faintest hint of something like burning wood. It filled her with warmth. Finding strength in it, she said, “I have another question.”

“Please.”

“What is causing the fog?”

Though the ferryman was so inhuman, Moth was already beginning to recognize his expressions. His face grew thoughtful, and after some deliberation, he began to explain.

“You have heard it said that the earth of the county of Korraban is my body?”.

Moth nodded, though she didn’t understand it.

“A parasite had entered my body,” he said. “It has latched into me, and while it steals my waters, my blood, it emits that destroying fog. Tiding Range is as a heart to me – and so it travels in circles around it, leaving devastation through the surrounding regions. This parasite has been able to hook on because of my current illness – I cannot fight it off.”

“Can nothing be done?” Moth asked. She stood up to go back to the window, where the clouds were still swirling in the sky, and so she could have an excuse not to look at the ferryman when she said the following words, feeling embarrassed by them. “I know I’m just a farmer, but I want to help. I’ll do whatever I can – I want you to recover so you can defend Hiren again like in the stories I grew up hearing. I don’t want Hiren sliced up and sold in pieces to the KCAC. I’ve no influence or

power myself, but I can be a messenger for you – if there’s someone I can tell or warn or alert, I’ll go wherever you send me.”

Correb was silenced by her offer. Moth waited, still not looking at him.

The ferryman asked, quietly, “You would be willing to be an ambassador from the marches?”

His voice sounded almost desperate.

It felt weighty. Though a sudden anxiousness entered Moth’s heart, she tremulously said, “Yes. Yes of course.”

Correb continued to think. A single talon tapped out a steady beat on a table, and he stared off out the windows of the greenhouse, at the post-rainy day, when at last he said, “I will tell you – there is a way to spare Hiren from the fog.”

Moth felt dizzy.

She held onto the frame of the window and eased down to her knees. “Oh.”

Correb quickly grabbed her arm and supported her to sit down on the couch with him.

Moth felt miles away under water. The thought, the flicker of hope, that there could be a Hiren free of fog made her sick, made her giddy. Her head swirled and she clutched desperately to Correb’s talon.

But she managed to whisper to him, “tell me how. I’ll do it – I’ll do anything.”