The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 54:

Generations of Offerings

Moth feared going into the mansion over the next few days – every time she did, she was plucked by Agate out of the greenhouse and made to try on clothes for hours – an activity Moth did not realize was so exhausting. She had no strength afterwards to do anything much but stare at the lilypads in the pool, her head so full of teal silk and pearl beadwork she could barely focus to answer Vincent’s many questions.

The day before Correb returned, Moth endured a seven-hour dress-up session. She did not understand how Agate could care so much about the pattern of the trim as paired with hem shape of the apron, or the importance of a lapel shape – but Agate treated each detail as though Moth’s success was tethered to it.

“I’d been reading up on the different places in Hiren,” said Agate to Moth, who lay collapsed on the bed while she waited for Agate to pull out another outfit. “Apparently a record amount of ammonite fossils was gotten out of the foothills in the south-east of the Wylle-Wastes two centuries ago. I knew I’d seen some ammonite-shaped buttons on a men’s coat – I pulled them off last night and put them on this vest – isn’t it breathtaking?”

Agate held up the vest. Everything looked like cloth now, great wrinkled waves of fabric that ceased to mean anything to Moth. But she nodded and pulled herself up to try it on.

“I’ll have someone take in the waist a smidge, and it’ll be perfect.”

By the time Agate released Moth from that session, it had turned to night. Moth flung herself into bed and slept, hours late into the morning.

She slept well and woke fully refreshed. She pulled on simple clothes for the greenhouse, made herself a bowl of porridge, and only when her foot was taking a step out of the gatehouse did she realize:

Tomorrow I will leave the House of Spring.

Tomorrow I will be in Hiren.

She stood, stunned, on the threshold of the gatehouse. She looked at the path she had worn through the ivy that led around a copse of trees. She followed it, as she had for the weeks previously, and stopped to look at the mansion that loomed up out of the sea of ivy on the flattened crown of the mountain.

It looked less ugly to her now. She understood each mismatched part of it had been added at different times by different friends of the ferrier – each one with a vision that boldly dismissed the previous architect’s vision. It was unified only by the building materials and colors. She now found it charming.

A painting of a house Description automatically generated with low confidence

She followed her own trail, that wove around swallowed-up statues, and around to the greenhouse. This was her path, and she hadn’t realized how much of a groove she had made in such a short time.

Moth found the side door of the greenhouse and entered quietly, heading to the cabinets, where she had journals and notes and instructions for Vincent – as she picked up her journal, she heard voices.

Correb was on his couch talking to someone.

“There is nothing more you can do for her – she must face it herself. You have provided for her as best you could, with the skillset you have, and she will be dressed in the splendor you’ve chosen.”

“I just…” – it was Agate. Her voice was cracked and weak, as though she’d been stifling tears – “I worry I chose wrong. In the courts you can be killed by a thousand tongues for wearing the wrong sash, the wrong color. I’ve thought every hour over every thread about the wardrobe – but I had so little time to prepare, and now...”

Her voice trailed off.

Moth tiptoed around the cabinets and peeked through the fruit trees.

Agate was sitting next to Correb on the couch, tucked up under his wing, her face buried in his chest. He hugged her closely, and after she had a moment to compose herself, Correb carefully lifted her head with his claw and said earnestly to her, “Little Akatti, you do not bear the weight of the world anymore, Lady Mere is not like your mother. I’m proud of your work, and grateful; you have done above what I could’ve hoped for her, and I would have trusted no one else with the task. All that’s left is to hope.”

Agate sighed, pressed her cheek to Correb’s hand, and nodded. She fanned at her face to dry her glowing dead eyes, adjusted her chatelaine, and stood up.

“I’ll finish packing Lady Mere’s things.” She curtsied to Correb and left.

Correb watched Agate leave, and after a few moments glanced towards the fruit trees. “Lady Mere.”

Moth cringed, and slowly emerged from her hiding place and crept over towards his couch.

“I shouldn’t have listened,” Moth muttered, embarrassed.

“I allowed it. I wanted you to know a section of Agate’s heart – she told me that she altered the journals and deceived you, and I did not want that to be your only impression of my friend. I love her, you understand.” Lord Correb was earnest as he spoke. “She did not do these dress-ups for her own amusement, and I understand how much it has taxed you.”

Moth’s toes curled in mortification. If dressing up was too taxing, how would she endure Hiren? “It…it wasn’t…I very much appreciate what she’s done,” Moth said, struggling to sound sincere.

Correb tilted his head slightly but dropped that vein of conversation. He stood up from the couch and crossed to his teapot, while Moth stood feeling disquieted, her mind replaying Agate’s words.

Finishing a cup of tea, Correb said, “Lady Mere, if you have a moment, I would like to show you the sunstones you will be bringing tomorrow.”

Moth nodded mutely, and Correb began walking out of the greenhouse into the unused mansion. Moth tried to follow behind him, but his massive trailing tail threatened to trip her, and so she walked alongside him, watching him bow his head under doors and around sconces until they were in the impressive foyer of the mansion – the first place she had entered weeks ago.

In the corner of the room, under the tall thin windows, were dozens of jewelry cabinets.

Even in the low light, Moth could see the fiery glint of thousands of sunstones.

Moth approached in awe. She had never seen such a collection of wealth before.

Some gems were opaque, others clear as windowpanes. Some were uncut and large, still more small and carefully polished – most of them were from jewelry that had been yanked off of necklaces or smashed out of bracelets and rings.

Moth cast her eyes to the ferryman’s claws – they glinted with the glow of the sunstones, the sparkling dust of it caught in the grooves of his scales.

He looked like he was on fire again. At her gaze, he glanced down at his hands, noticing for the first time.

“I scoured the storehouses,” said the ferryman. “Generations of jewelry offerings, centuries of it – all that you see before you.”

It was hard for her to look directly at the glittering gems. Such riches made her uncomfortable. “Will it be enough?”

“With the addition of a few hundred more, it will be enough. Even a small gem is sufficient at creating a great deal of light.”

A few hundred more. Moth chewed on her lip.

“These gems will be packed up and ready for you by tomorrow. You will be given a horse – Oliver said you’ve taken an interest in one of the piebald horses; Aggo, I believe.”

The beautiful black and white gelding. “I can ride him?” she asked, delighted.

“You’ll certainly need a mount to leave here, walking would be too far with all you must carry.”

Moth had been wondering about that. She did not want to go through the water again. “How do I leave the marches?”

“There are many pathways between our halves of the world. At the crossroads down from the gatehouse, there is a signpost that directs you to Tural Tie – that is where many of the doors are located. My sister Davida had sealed them for my sake,

but a few chosen ones remain open. The door I’ll send you through will be to the Cride’s farm, who I understand helped you on your way up the mountain.” The ferryman reached next to a jewelry box, where there was an old, cracked leather folder.

“I wish you to bring this on your journey,” he said.

Moth gently opened it up, revealing a map marked in red ink. It was strange to look at; it was a series of elaborate tunnels that came to abrupt ends. When she turned the map to a new leaf, she saw a map of southern Hiren, with small red markers dotting the landscape.

“This is a map to pathways that go from here in the marches to places in Hiren. To most, it will not be recognized as anything understandable, but there are those who identify it and wish to steal it – keep it secret.”

Moth hesitated. “Should I even have it?”

The ferryman looked as if he had mulled over that question himself, and said at length, “I would risk it with you; if things become dangerous, it will help you escape.”

Though the words ‘difficult’ had crossed Moth’s mind often, and she worried the sunstones might get stolen if she wasn’t careful, ‘dangerous’ was still hard for her to associate with Hiren, and she searched his unemotive face. “Dangerous because of those people who hurt Mrs. Halig’s family?”

“That is a possibility, but I am referring to the king.”

Moth stared dumbfounded at the ferryman, and then down at her map. “The…king? Why…why would he care about this?”

“He is at enmity with me. He knows I am alive. My long illness has enabled him to violate the co dalmede and take the land, turning the hearts of the people against me by claiming I have died – for you to stand and claim I am alive, and you

have met me, and become my ambassador – an ambassador to the invisible – is a declaration of war. It will not go unnoticed.”

Moth was stunned into silence. The map she held was turning into a series of escape routes.

“That is why I suspect you will not be able to stay in Hiren for more than a year. By the time the government learns about your actions and processes its orders for an investigation, or an arrest, I hope you will have finished the sunstone burial and will be back here.” Correb looked tired from standing and bowed his head to Moth. In the cavernous, paneled foyer of the mansion, even he seemed small. “I will see you off tomorrow, but for now I must leave the mountain – I will call in every favor for your success.”

*

Moth stood in the greenhouse, blankly skimming over her journal.

The pages were full of instructions for Vincent on the maintenance of the plants, with helpful sketches she had made to illustrate her methods – but her eyes could not focus on them, and her mind was far off on the byways of Hiren. She had resigned herself to the reality that she would never be ready to return, so the feeling of being unprepared had grown dull, and the enormity of King Roan as a potential enemy felt so absurd and so far away that it meant nothing to her. King Roan to her was only a portrait on a gold coin, and his birthday a holiday.

The only thing that felt real was she might be able to, for a minute, see her family – and that was a hope worth worshipping.

“Mere?”

Moth broke from her revery and saw Lander standing awkwardly to the side, glancing around the greenhouse.

Moth squeezed out a smile and said, “Lander! It’s rare to see you in here.”

“You’re going back tomorrow?”

Lander’s face was somber.

Worried, Moth said, “Yes, tomorrow in the morning. Is something wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking, and…” Lander rubbed her neck, avoiding her eyes. “I just…I know you have so much you’re going to have to do, but maybe when you’re going from place to place you could deliver this.”

Lander pulled a letter from her breast pocket. Moth took it hesitantly, thrown off by Lander’s melancholic behavior.

“It’s to, ah,” Lander cleared her throat as it cracked. “It’s for my mom. Could you give it to her? Agate showed me on a map the places you’d be burying the sunstones, and it passes by where she lives. I know her – she’ll probably come to see you to thank you for the…for my funeral.”

Moth tucked the letter into her pocket and pulled Lander into a hug.

“I’ll get it to her.”