The White Oak (8 page)

I take a deep breath and avoid looking my accomplice in the eye. “There is a soul who can be persuaded to give up his coin—a tall man with red spectacles and a scar on his left cheek.” I feel deeply ashamed of what I’m about to do. When I glance at Minotaur, he is staring at me intently, as though enjoying my inner struggle. “Sybil told me that he would give anything to see his wife one more time,” I almost whisper, looking down. “And tell her he’s sorry”.

When I look up, Minotaur is no longer next to me. He is moving through the crowd on deck, looking for our victim. I see the man a moment before Minotaur does, and I start toward him to warn him. But in less than an instant, Minotaur is at the man’s side in the form of a sailor. He whispers a proposition, and the man fights tears as he nods, solemnly, in assent. Minotaur steps away from him and transforms into a female persona. The man drops to his knees and begins to sob when he sees his “wife.” His stiff posture relaxes as he yields desperately, gratefully, to the emotions the persona evokes. Minotaur has rendered his wife perfectly. She kneels beside the man and takes both his hands in hers. She looks into his eyes and speaks to him earnestly. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I can tell every word is perfect. I can see the relief on the man’s face as the persona speaks the words he’s been longing to hear. I marvel at Minotaur’s skill, and wonder how a computer program understands emotion so well. Now the man is talking to the persona, pouring out a torrent of confession. His grief and guilt are as palpable as my own.

As thoughts of my losses drift into my mind, I suddenly remember that Sybil said I would find Lucas on my way to the City. If he died in the sinkhole, he might be on this very ship. I stand on tiptoe to look over the crowd, wondering how Lucas would seem to me in this realm. Would he be ghostly gray like the other shades? Would he understand what was happening? Would he recognize me in my living form? I climb on top of a crate to get a better look, but I don’t see him.

The ship is emptying out, and Minotaur is still talking with the weeping man. I start to worry that one of the sailors will notice. I walk over to them and put a hand on the persona’s shoulder to let Minotaur know we have to go.

“Darling, it’s time to give your coin to the girl,” the persona says sweetly.

The man turns to face me. His eyes are red and his cheeks are stained with tears, but he is smiling. As soon as he gives me the coin, the image of his wife disappears. But he doesn’t seem to mind, as though the conversation with Minotaur’s illusion has brought him peace. To me this seems like the worst kind of lie. No real healing has taken place, yet the man seems fully content with his bargain—happy enough with this false promise of forgiveness. I feel slightly queasy about the part I’ve played in the deception and the way I’ve profited from it.

“Put it under your tongue quickly,” Minotaur says as I stare at the golden coin. Its color radiates in my almost colorless hand. The grayness of this place feels as if it’s been seeping into me, dampening my spirits and my energy. When I see the gold glow, I feel some relief, a jolt of liveliness. I wipe the coin carefully on my dress and put it in my mouth.

As I walk down the ramp behind the soul I’ve just swindled, I scrape my bare feet against the wood to try to give myself a splinter. I want a physical token—pain to accompany every step—to remind me how easy it is to compromise your soul. But the wood underfoot is smooth and polished, and I reach the bottom with no cautionary wound to keep me honest.

I stand on the gangplank behind the scarred man. When he steps off the ramp and onto the black ash, his ghostly body is seized by the same violent shaking that destroyed the woman with no coin. I bite my tongue to keep from yelling a confession as I watch the man’s bereaved soul dissipate. Not the fate he deserved, I think, tasting the coin, hard and bitter, under my tongue. I step forward, and the sailor nods and lets me pass.

I stand at the bottom of the gangplank for a moment to watch the remaining souls leave the ship. The very last passenger is a nervous, coinless, man. He tries to stay on the ship, but the sailors escort him down the gangplank. He digs in his heels when he gets to the end of the ramp, but the sailors push him off without even asking about the coin. As his mortal body begins to shiver and melt away, the sailors pull up the gangplank and leave him to his fate without looking back. The man is screaming, resisting the transformation without success. As the winds from Asphodel blow in, he catches my eye and moves toward me. I can feel the cold heat he emanates as the winds engulf him, but unlike the other flames, he is not carried off.

“Step away from him,” Minotaur instructs. “You are confusing the winds.”

I stand firm and say nothing, but I take the flame’s hand and liberate him from purgatory.

“You aren’t doing him any favors,” Minotaur grumbles.

“Leave me alone,” I say, walking toward the ferry and dragging the specter along with me. “I robbed one man of his destiny, but I can free another.”

Minotaur senses my distress and tries to reason with me “That shade who gave us the coin is better off in limbo. He killed his wife, you know—drunken driving accident. They give killers, even accidental ones, a bad deal in the City.”

I say nothing, marching forward, ashamed of what I’ve done.

“Trust me,” Minotaur says. “He’s better off here.”

But I don’t trust him. I’m not even sure I trust Sybil, who designed this deception and put us both up to it. Taking my place at the end of the long line of souls waiting to board the ferry, I’m quickly overcome with despair. I want to turn around and run across the plains, try to swim up the murderous river that brought me here, and somehow dig my way through the earth’s crust to get home. But I know that’s impossible, and who would be waiting for me there? I have to find Lucas. I don’t have any choice but to go forward.

As we stand in line for the ferry, Minotaur gives me the same instructions that Sybil did. “Don’t look the ferryman or the boatswain in the eye, and do not let them touch you,” he says, stressing the danger I’m in. “Try not to get too close to them. We don’t want them to find out you’re alive. If you get in real trouble, call the ferryman by his given name.”

I don’t respond. I’m still angry with Minotaur, and with myself, for our deception. The specter I rescued is clinging to my ankles, keeping low to the ground so the boatswain won’t see him. His cold touch sends a chill through my feet, and his aura of hopelessness seeps into me as I shuffle forward. I could shake him off, but having him near makes me feel a bit less guilty about the soul I swindled.

“Sybil told you his name, didn’t she?” Minotaur says—he has taken on the persona of a girl my age, hoping to make a friendship with me. I nod in answer to the question, but ignore the persona; I’m more interested in the souls in line with me, all of them colorless and slightly transparent. The man behind me cranes his neck to try to see what’s happening at the front of the line. There is no way to see that far ahead, but he tries anyway, sighing impatiently and shifting his weight from foot to foot. The woman ahead of me tries with little success to soothe her crying baby. The man scowls at her and mumbles something about inconsiderate people who travel with babies. Ahead of her are three old women in black; I can’t tell if they are Catholic nuns in habits, or Muslim women in burkas. When one of them turns back to help the woman with her baby, I see that they are neither. The old woman takes the baby in her arms, and it quiets immediately. The mother sighs with relief and thanks the old woman over and over.

Hours go by—my feet and back are aching from standing so long, and I’m getting hungry again. Minotaur finally gives up on trying to talk to me and hovers silently next to my shoulder. I am almost at the front of the line now. I can see the ferryman and the boatswain standing on opposite sides of the wide pier. The boatswain is a thin man with rotten teeth and pockmarked skin. He holds a metal rod with a cord on one end and a red laser on the other. He places the rod in each soul’s mouth to scan his or her coin. The scanner’s cord plugs into a black metal machine that sits at his feet. Next to it is a tattered cardboard box full of valuables he’s confiscated from the immigrants: wallets, engagement rings, watches, family photos, books, shoes, and items of clothing. The wealthy get a pat-down, and the poorer ghosts do too. As I watch him work, I realize he’s not looking for money. When he takes something, he studies the shade’s face. If he doesn’t see enough distress, he keeps searching until he finds the item that soul loves most. It’s usually a humble object that was slipped into the casket by a loved one—a special flower, a child’s drawing, or a favorite book. A young man ahead of me begins to sob when the boatswain confiscates a crumpled note that was clenched in his fist. It’s cruel and unfair, but the shades are too afraid of the ferryman to protest. I hide Sybil’s silver necklace inside my dress.

The ferryman stands opposite the boatswain. He is at least seven feet tall, with a body so muscular it looks deformed. In his left hand, he holds a black bullwhip as thick as the ropes used to moor the boat, and almost as long. Its coils are piled on the pier like a python that’s ready to strike. As I stare at the monstrous ferryman, his skin seems to heat up and he’s suddenly as red as a lobster. “Minotaur,” I whisper, “do you see that?”

“I have to go,” he replies, disappearing.

When I look again, the ferryman’s brilliant color is gone and he is sooty gray again.

The shades shuffle along with their heads down, stopping in front of the boatswain to open their mouths and submit to the scanning.

I step up in the queue. Behind me the nervous man is now muttering to himself and weeping. Ahead of me the quiet old women in black maintain an implacable demeanor as they pause before the boatswain, who says “What’s in your pockets?” They silently turn their empty pockets out. “What do you carry with you into the underworld?” he asks.

“Memories,” one of the crones says evenly.

The boatswain gives them a hard look. “Those will be taken from you soon enough,” he mutters, scanning their coins and waving them on. I try to move closer to them, hoping to seem like part of their group so I can slip by the boatswain without incident.

The soul I rescued from Asphodel is curled around my ankles like a blue mist. He sees his chance and darts toward the ferry while the boatswain harasses the woman with the baby. He flattens himself against the ground and seeps along the pier like a stream of blue water. But the boatswain sees him out of the corner of his eye. “Fare dodger!” he yells, pointing at the specter. The ferryman raises his massive arm and the whip uncoils and flies through the air. It arcs up and descends on the specter like a serpent striking, picking him off the dock as if he were a wet rag. The ferryman snaps the whip and sends the soul screaming into the river, where his watery body immediately dissolves into the muck.

While the ferryman is busy with the specter, the boatswain tries to steal the baby from the woman in line ahead of me. “Take my money instead,” the mother pleads, trying to give her purse to the boatswain. He ignores it and pulls at the baby’s foot. The child screams. “Look sir,” the woman says, prying the child’s mouth open. “He has a coin of his own. He is a passenger like all the others.”

“What’s holding up the line?” the ferryman calls out, pointing his whip at the boatswain.

The boatswain quickly scans the baby’s coin. “Go on then,” he says, giving the mother a shove that sends her stumbling toward the ferry.

I am next in line. I lift my tongue and keep my eyes down, but the boatswain pauses to look at me closely. I wait for him to scan the coin and let me through, but he is studying me instead.

“What have we here?” he says, drawing out his words. “Pretty little lady in white? Let’s see your face, sweetheart.”

He smells of rotten eggs and whiskey. I keep my head down, and I stay silent. He leans in close and whispers, “Unfriendly, eh? What did you do to get down here?” He puts his finger under my chin and tips my head up. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” he says, snickering.

Just then the air crackles and the ferryman’s whip connects with the boatswain’s body, cutting a deep gash in his shoulder. He screams and jumps back.

“Keep the line moving,” the ferryman growls.

The boatswain takes a moment to recover. He grabs my chin and tips my head up to scan the coin, but in spite of the ferryman’s rebuke, he won’t let go of me. He forces me to look into his eyes, then laughs wickedly. “Amazing! Never thought I’d see this. Ferryman!” he yells. “I think we’ve got a live one!”

The ferryman looks genuinely surprised. Using his whip like a lasso, he grabs me around the waist and lifts me up like he did the shade. But instead of tossing me into the river, he pulls me to him and grabs me in one of his massive hands.

“Look me in the eye,” he commands. I silently refuse, keeping my eyes downcast. “Look at me or be torn to shreds!” he threatens, raising the whip above his head. I have no choice. My gaze travels up, along his massive body, blackened with soot and stinking of tar and sulfur, the same stench that emanates from the river. His face is as square as his body. His mouth turns down at the edges, locked in a grimace. A low growling sound escapes from between his teeth as he studies me for several moments, finally recognizing that aspect of me that he can’t abide.