The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 48:

The Maceration of the Soul

Moth went to bed early, strangely fatigued by the day that wasn’t full of labor, drained down to her bones.

She curled up under the blankets, staring listlessly at the walls of her cupboard bed – they were decorated with copied notes from the journals, full of information flower bed layouts or start certain plants from their seeds.

It was early still, so Moth grabbed one of the journals to glean through it again, but a heavy exhaustion began to weigh her down, and she let the journal slip from her hand and closed her eyes – but couldn’t sleep.

She felt dizzy and nauseous, as if she’d drunk too much wine, but couldn’t get comfortable enough. She tossed her blankets off and felt too cold. She grabbed another one from the foot of her bed but felt too hot. Sweat began to pool at her collar.

After two hours of this, she angrily got out of bed to go to her water pitcher, but the act of standing spun her head; she stumbled and crashed into a chair.

Oh god, please, I don’t want to be sick. Moth thought angrily. She waited for her dizziness to recede, and then pulled herself up to drink water. She still felt too hot.

Moth crawled back into her bed.

Eventually, sometime past midnight, she fell into a fragmented sleep and dreamed about the hen. Each blister popped and oozed, and the smell in the dream

was like a butcher shop, reeking red, and the hen kept saying something to her in a voice like the welkworm.

Moth startled awake from the dream.

She groaned when she realized she’d only slept a few hours. She stared at the shadowy ceiling of her cupboard bed, increasingly frustrated as the glow of a new day shone through her window, the glare of it – even behind the perpetually overcast sky – was mocking.

Moth tried to get out of bed but felt so tired from her hours-long wrestling match with sleep that she gave up and laid back down. Her head throbbed and she didn’t want to fall down again.

She nodded off. She wasn’t sure for how long, but awoke when someone knocked on her door.

“Mere?” called Lander, letting herself in. “Oh, you’re still asleep, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, what is it?” asked Moth, forcing herself to sit up. The room spun, and she clutched onto her blanket to steady herself.

“Just about lunch, but that’s not important – are you sick?”

Moth wasn’t sure if people could get sick in the marches, but she supposed illness existed everywhere. “I think I might have a fever. I feel hot.”

“I’ll ask Dueluck to make you some soup – I can bring it to you.”

Moth nodded.

After Lander left, Moth sunk under the blankets and tried to fall asleep. She hated being sick away from home – she hated it when she’d been sick in Magden, even if she had Tully. The marches were so much further away from her mother’s house. She missed the feel of Vade’s cool hand pressed against her forehead, and her comforting murmurs.

She barely noticed a few hours later when Lander brought her soup – she didn’t have the energy to say thank you, and none to sit up and eat. Lander hovered over her nervously for a few minutes but left.

Though finally tired enough to sleep, she didn’t feel better when she woke up. The misted sun was well across the sky, and it was getting dark. She wondered if Lord Correb had seen the cleaned pool, she wondered how the hen was doing and if Oliver had been able to help it.

The overwhelming exhaustion swallowed her up again, and she was in a fitful sleep – half aware of her small empty room, half dreaming of her home.

“Moth.”

Moth’s eyes flitted open. “Grandpa?”

It was past midnight. Clement sat next to her and took her hand. He said something she couldn’t understand, and carefully began pulling red thread out of her arms that had burrowed into her skin like leeches.

“Am I sick?” Moth asked.

“Only cursed.”

His voice did not sound like Clement. His hand did not feel like Clement either.

“Correb?” she asked feverishly, trying to sit up, but he pressed a hand to her shoulder and pushed her back down.

“Sleep,” the ferryman said, and she was hit by such a delirious exhaustion she fell asleep, though distantly she felt the eerie sensation of the red threads being pulled carefully from her arms.

Her dreams were much sweeter. She was in the forest with Ama, exploring a stream to see where it led, catching frogs and drawing them in her journal, Ama shooting every bird that flew too close; her smile like a crescent moon.

It was painful to wake up from it. Moth half hoped to see her little sister in the corner with the morning light glowing on her face, but instead she found the ferryman sitting next to her.

It was dawn.

He had started a fire in the stove and was re-heating the soup Lander had brought.

“I thought you were my grandpa,” Moth said tiredly, blearily, sitting up in bed.

“Clement and I are similar.”

Her head was clear – a little groggy, but able to think again.

Correb brought her a bowl of soup with a spoon, pressing it into her hands. He looked far more exhausted than Moth felt, and said, “Eat.”

Moth reluctantly sipped at the soup, but the moment the flavorful broth was in her mouth she became ravenous.

She was aware of Correb watching her intently, and she self-consciously stirred her soup.

     “Are you feeling better?” he asked quietly.

    Moth nodded.

“I would’ve helped you sooner had I known. I hadn’t seen you that day and thought it was a purposeful distance on your part. It wasn’t until the evening that

Oliver told me of the hen - he mentioned how you had helped him lance its diseased legs. Then I knew you’d been cursed.”

The horrid feet. Moth couldn’t get the image out of her mind. “What was wrong with the hen?”

Correb paused, thinking. “It may take a moment to explain, there is much about the marches you do not know. I can always explain later when you are better rested.”

“No, please, I can listen now.”

Correb, filling up the crooked cramped room, laid down like a dog beside the cupboard bed. He arranged his wings and superfluous legs for a few minutes, but his expression suggested he was thinking over his next words. “You, I assume, remember the welkworm?”

“It would be hard for me to ever forget,” Moth said wryly.

“The welkworm had stolen a human soul. A human soul is an unending source of energy, it can never be depleted.” Correb stopped. He looked as if he was deciding what he was willing to explain, and he once again searched Moth’s face. After a minute, he made some internal decision, and continued: “The energy from a soul can be turned into a physical substance – through a process called ‘maceration’. When the energy is turned to substance, it is called helra.”

Moth glanced at him. “Is helra what was in the pustules?”

Correb nodded. “Most creatures in the marches live off helra – it’s why they want a soul, as the soul will give them an unending source of helra. Welkworm’s know how to macerate a soul to produce helra, and so was bloated with it – so bloated it began to secrete it. It’d been in the forests for weeks before you killed it, leaving a trail of helra, which that escaped hen stepped in.”

Moth remembered being drenched in that strange substance when she stabbed the welkworm – the idea of it being secreted soul made her stomach clench, and she

put a hand on her abdomen. “What was the helra doing to the hen? Why did it look like that?”

“Helra is the liquid image, energy, and memories of a human. Extremely useful to the creatures that live in the marches, as you saw with the face and voice of welkworm, which used the memory of the soul to mimic her. But, the bodies of creatures here are malleable, they are made to borrow and steal images. The flesh of a creature from earth is not – helra corrupts its flesh, turning it into some poor semblance of a human. The ‘feet’ you saw on the hen was the flesh’s confused attempt to reshape itself into human feet.”

Moth stared at Correb, reeling from that news. She tried to imagine what the hen would end up looking like, but her mind couldn’t grasp such a hideous idea.

“Was…that why I was sick? Was that what it was doing to me?” Moth demanded hoarsely.

“No, no.” Correb was quick to reassure her. “The problem wasn’t the helra, but the fresh blood and the helra mixed together attracted kirose to the hen. Neither you nor Oliver could see the kirose – it’s a nearly invisible parasite. When you touched the hen, it chose to transfer to you, as a human is a better host than an animal.”

Memories of last night came back to Moth. “Was that what you pulled from my arms?”

“Yes. Though kirose seem frail, looking like nothing more than a red thread, they are dangerous. They sit on the edges of the marches, looking into the earth, and wait for a human to secrete helra and blood; this mix weakens the wall between our worlds and lets the kirose burrow through, where it incubates in a human until its born. They become invisible spirits with great powers and a need for more blood. Many shamans purposely use their own helra and blood to host the kirose, and in return the spirit provides the host with power.”

Moth reflexively looked down at her arms. There was no mark to suggest anything had been dug from her flesh.

“The average kirose does not kill its host. You would’ve been exhausted for a few days as they fed on you, but eventually – with your blood and the helra from the hen’s pustules – they would be strong enough to burrow through the caul of the marches and into your world.”

“Is it…is it normal for a soul to secrete helra? You said it’s a process called maceration?” Moth asked, bewildered. Every question she asked – and Correb answered – made her feel further from understanding.

“It is not uncommon for a soul to produce helra, but it is not desirable. If you twist someone’s nose, it will produce blood – if you twist a soul, it will produce helra. That is maceration – the crushing of the soul.” Correb met Moth’s alarmed gaze. “A child witnessing the rage of a drunken parent has a violence done against their soul – it crushes it, producing the helra. If the child is also harmed by the parent – or in their own self-loathing hurt themselves – the blood and helra together open the gates for the kirose to infest them. Some people drip helra and blood their entire life, becoming a breeding ground for the kirose. That is what it means to be cursed.”

Moth braced herself as she asked: “And people…macerate their soul on purpose? How?”

At the question, a muscle in Correb’s jaw tensed. “That is not a skill I will educate you on. That knowledge has been the downfall of great leaders, though I’m sure you are familiar with the practices of the cawlers.”

Moth nodded stiffly.

She still remembered when she first found a cawler sleeping in the storehouse. Moth had been eleven and sent to fetch dried garlic. She found a woman naked and covered in self-inflicted cuts and burns – she had ripped out half of her own hair and lay curled up behind the sacks of barley, sleeping off a night of revelry.

“I saw one…once, after she was done,” whispered Moth, and Correb leaned closer to hear. “Just the sight of her…I was so young, and she wasn’t much older than I am now. Mom tried to help her to an inn where we’d find her a doctor, but she only took the offered clothes and left barefoot. After that I was too afraid to go back to the storehouse again.” She looked at Correb. “Did that macerate my soul?”

“Yes,” said the ferryman, but he asked in a warm tone, “but who patched you up?”

Thinking back, Moth remembered a long chat she had with Grandpa Clement on the back porch. The sun had been setting, and they were peeling apples together, and Clement had gently, slowly, gotten her to talk about what she saw and felt – he had guided her out of her own contorted mind, with the painful image finally fading, and the fear with it.

“The magpies sang to me that night, every word he said to you.”

Moth fingers tightened over her blanket.

“I did not know you then, but I have watched and loved Clement for a very long time – as I watched and loved his father. I sent him a thank you that year for the many things he does. The magpies brought purple clematis seeds, he found them volunteering under his porch, and it’s grown there ever since. It was the least I could do – its people like Clement, and like Nehem and Vade, with their compassion and patience and gentle words, who prevent Hiren from being cursed,” the ferryman said. His claw went up to his own red threads puncturing the flesh along his face.

Author ramblings: