Beautiful Redemption (18 page)

I knew then that we would never have another Christmas together, no matter what happened. I would stay or I would go—but either way, I would move on to somewhere that wasn’t here. Things couldn’t be like this forever, not even in this Gatlin-that-wasn’t-Gatlin. Whether I was able to get my life back or not.

Things changed.

Then they changed again.

Life was like that, and even death, I guess.

I couldn’t be with both my mom and Lena, not in what was left of one lifetime. They would never meet, though I had already told them everything there was to tell about the other. Since I got here, my mom had me describe every charm on
Lena’s necklace. Every line of every poem she’d ever written. Every story about the smallest things that had happened to us, things I didn’t even know I remembered.

Still, it wasn’t the same as being a family, or whatever we could have been.

Lena and my mom and me.

They would never laugh about me or keep a secret from me or even fight about me. My mom and Lena were the two most important people in my life, or afterlife, and I could never have both of them together.

That’s what I was thinking when I closed my eyes. When I opened them, my mom was gone—as if she’d known I couldn’t leave her. As if she’d known I wouldn’t be able to walk away.

Truthfully, I didn’t know if I could have done it, myself.

Now I’d never find out.

Maybe it was better that way.

I pocketed the two stones and made my way down the front steps, closing the door carefully behind me. The smell of fried tomatoes came wafting out the door as it shut.

I didn’t say good-bye. I had a feeling we’d see each other again. Someday, somehow.

Aside from that, there wasn’t anything I could tell my mom that she didn’t already know. And no way to say it and still walk out the door.

She knew I loved her. She knew I had to go. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much more to say.

I don’t know if she watched me go.

I told myself she did.

I hoped she didn’t.

CHAPTER 15

The River Master

A
s I stepped inside the Doorwell, the known world gave way to the unknown world more quickly than I expected. Even in the Otherworld, there are some places that are noticeably more other than others.

The river was one of them. This wasn’t any kind of river I’d seen in the Mortal Gatlin County. Like the Great Barrier, this was a seam. Something that held worlds together without being in any one of them.

I was in totally uncharted territory.

Luckily, Uncle Abner’s crow seemed to know the way. Exu flapped overhead, gliding and hanging in circles above me, sometimes landing on high branches to wait for me if I fell too
far behind. He didn’t seem to mind the job either; he tolerated our quest with only the occasional squawk. Maybe he enjoyed getting out for a change. He reminded me of Lucille that way, except I didn’t catch her eating little mice carcasses when she was hungry.

And when I caught him looking at me, he was really looking at me. Every time I started to feel normal again, he would catch my eye and send shivers down my spine, like he was doing it on purpose. Like he knew he could.

I wondered if Exu was a real bird. I knew he could cross between worlds, but did that make him supernatural? According to Uncle Abner, it only made him a crow.

Maybe all crows were just creepy.

As I walked farther, the swamp weeds and cypress trees jutting out of the murky water led to greener grass beyond the bank, grass so tall I could barely see over it in places.

I wove through the grass, following the black bird in the sky, trying not to remember too much about where I was going or what I was leaving behind. It was hard enough not to imagine the look on my mother’s face when I walked out the door.

I tried desperately not to think about her eyes, about the way they lit up when she saw me. Or her hands, the way she waved them in the air as she talked, as if she thought she could pull words out of the sky with her fingers. And her arms, wrapping around me like my own house, because she was the place where I was from.

I tried not to think about the moment the door closed. It would never open again, not for me. Not like that.

It’s what I wanted. I said it to myself as I walked. It’s what she wanted for me. To have a life. To live.

To leave.

Exu squawked, and I beat back the tall brush and the grass.

Leaving was harder than I ever could’ve imagined, and part of me still couldn’t believe I had done it. But as much as I tried not to think about my mom, I tried to keep Lena’s face in my mind, a constant reminder of why I was doing this—risking everything.

I wondered what she was doing right now…. Writing in her notebook? Practicing the viola? Reading her battered copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
?

I was still thinking about it when I heard music in the distance. It sounded like… the Rolling Stones?

Part of me expected to push through the grass and see Link standing there. But as I edged closer to the chorus of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” I realized it was the Stones, but it definitely wasn’t Link.

The voice wasn’t bad enough, and too many of the notes were right.

It was a big guy, wearing a faded bandanna tied around his head, and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt with scaly wings across the back. He was sitting at a plastic folding table like the ones the bridge club used back in Gatlin. With his black shades and
long beard, he looked like he should be riding an old chopper instead of sitting next to a riverbank.

Except for his lunch. He was spooning something out of a plastic Tupperware container. From where I was, it looked like intestines or human remains. Or…

The biker belched. “Best chili-ghetti this side a the Mississippi.” He shook his head.

Exu cawed and landed on the edge of the folding table. An enormous black dog lying on the ground next to it barked but didn’t bother to get up.

“What’re you doing around here, bird? Unless you’re looking to make a deal, there’s nothing for you here. An’ don’t even think I’m letting you get into my whiskey this time.” The biker shooed Exu off the table. “Go on. Shoo. You tell Abner I’m ready to deal when he’s ready to play.”

As he waved the crow off the table, and Exu disappeared into the blue sky, the biker noticed me standing at the edge of the grass. “You out sightseeing, or are you looking for something?” He tossed the remains of his lunch into a small white Styrofoam cooler and picked up a deck of playing cards.

He nodded my way, shuffling the cards from hand to hand.

I swallowed hard and stepped closer as “Hand of Fate” started playing on the old transistor radio sitting in the dust. I wondered if he listened to anything besides the Rolling Stones, but I wasn’t about to ask. “I’m looking for the River Master.”

The biker laughed, dealing a hand as if someone was sitting on the other side of the table. “River Master. I haven’t
heard that one in a while. River Master, Ferryman, Water Runner—I go by a lot of names, kid. But you can call me Charlie. It’s the one I answer to
when
I feel like answering.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone getting this guy to do anything he didn’t feel like doing. If we were in the Mortal realm, he would probably be a bouncer at a biker bar or a pool hall where people were dragged out for breaking bottles over one another’s heads.

“Nice to meet you… Charlie,” I choked. “I’m Ethan.”

He waved me over. “So what can I do for you, Ethan?”

I walked over to the table, careful to give the giant creature on the ground a wide berth. It looked like a mastiff, with its square face and wrinkled skin. Its tail was bandaged with white gauze.

“Don’t mind old Drag,” he said. “He won’t get up unless you’re carrying some raw meat.” Charlie grinned. “Or unless you
are
raw meat. Dead meat like you, kid—you’re off the hook.”

Why didn’t that surprise me?

“Drag? What kind of name is that?” I reached out toward the dog.

“Dragon. The kind that breathes fire and chews your hand off if you try to pet him.”

Drag looked at me, growling. I moved my hand back to my pocket.

“I need to cross the river. I brought you these.” I laid the river eyes on the padded card table. It really did look like the ones at the bridge club.

Charlie glanced at the stones, unimpressed. “Good for you. One for the way there, one for the way back. That’s like showin’ a bus driver your bus ticket. Still don’t make me want to get on no bus.”

“It doesn’t?” I swallowed. So much for my plans. Somehow I had thought this was all working out too easily.

Charlie looked me over. “You play blackjack, Ethan? You know, twenty-one?”

I knew what he meant. “Um, not really.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I used to play with Thelma, until she started cheating as badly as the Sisters did at Rummikub.

He pushed my cards toward me, flipping a nine of diamonds on top of the first one. My hand. “You’re a smart boy—I bet you can figure it out.”

I checked my card, a seven. “Hit me.” That’s what Thelma would have said.

Charlie seemed like a risk-taker. If I was right, he probably respected other people who did the same. And what did I have to lose?

He nodded approvingly, flipping a king. “Sorry, kid, that’s twenty-six. You’re over. But I would’ve taken the hit, too.”

Charlie shuffled the deck and dealt us each another hand.

This time I had a four and an eight. “Hit me.”

He flipped a seven. I had nineteen, which was hard to beat. Charlie had a king and a five sitting in front of him. He had to take a hit, or I would win for sure. He pulled a card from the top of the deck. A six of hearts.

“Twenty-one. That’s blackjack,” he said, shuffling again.

I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test or if he was just bored out here, but he didn’t seem anxious to get rid of me anytime soon. “I really need to get across the river, si—” I stopped myself before I called him “sir.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, Charlie. See, there’s a girl—”

Charlie nodded, interrupting. “There’s always a girl.” The Rolling Stones started crooning “2,000 Light Years from Home.” Funny.

“I need to get back to her—”

“I had a girl once. Penelope was her name. Penny.” He leaned back in his chair, smoothing his scraggly beard. “Eventually she got tired of hanging around here, so she took off.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” The second I asked the question, I realized it was probably too personal. But he answered anyway.

“I can’t leave.” He said it matter-of-factly, flipping cards for both of us. “I’m the River Master. It’s part of the gig. Can’t run out on the house.”

“You could quit.”

“This isn’t a job, kid. It’s a sentence.” He laughed, but there was a bitterness that made me feel sorry for him. That and the folding card table and the lazy dog with the messed-up tail.

Then “2,000 Light Years from Home” faded out, replaced by “Plundered My Soul.”

I didn’t want to know who was powerful enough to sentence him to sit by what, for the most part, looked like a pretty
unimpressive river. It was slow and calm. If he wasn’t hanging out here, I probably could’ve swum across.