Charon was the first god I met in the underworld.
Ada’s Vespa screeched to a halt on the Pier and I nearly slid right off the seat and onto the black marble. Ada caught me by the sleeve. “Mind yourself, now. On your feet.”
“My legs are atrophied, though.” I wondered when color had left the world.
“Maybe so, love, but that won’t matter here. Lack of muscle never stops the skeletons.”
The Pier was no Pleasure Beach. There weren’t Ferris wheels or chippy shops or arcades filled with aged automatons costing 20p each. Far away there was a single structure, from this distance small as a blipping pixel on a heart monitor.
“Can’t…can’t I just ride with you the rest of the way?”
Ada folded her arms over her leather jacket. “You’ve got to do this bit alone. Charon can see the unliving no matter where we are, but he’s blindsided by the living. Stick with me and he’ll probably mark you as an intruder and off you on principle. Walk alone, and he might admire your brass and spare you.”
“Chin up, Finley. I’ll be waiting at the boathouse. Just ahead.”
Ada leaned down and met my eyes, hoop earrings jangling. “You’ll know it when you see it, love. Now. Up you get.”
I stumbled to my feet, wishing I’d thought to wear socks to the underworld. Ada blew me a kiss and rode on ahead, calling back over the gentle purr of her Vespa’s spectral motor: “Keep going, Finley!”
There wasn’t any wind. I couldn’t understand where all the wailing was coming from. I wasn’t familiar with the Stygian tide, the whorls of souls and their cries which would later become my lullaby. I thought I might be tripping on painkillers. Maybe I’d finally snuffed it. I shuffled along the Pier’s surface, gazing at my hollowed out reflection in the reflective obsidian. My hair had stopped growing after the last round of chemo, and the hollows in my cheeks were deep enough to plant potatoes in. But against the colorless backdrop, my brown eyes and red freckles seemed far too bright. I looked away.
I walked for an hour, or a day, or ten years or something. I saw loads of strange, emaciated birds, perched on the pier’s railings. Some of them had human faces, the twisted faces of furious women. I trembled at the sight, but I didn’t stop.
Charon’s Deckhouse was a modest building, about as big as my Nan’s council flat. I suppose it did have a sort of mausoleum look to it, all pillars and stone. As promised, Ada waited on the step, biting her nails. She beamed like a spotlight when she saw me.
“See, love? I’m always right.”
The Deckhouse’s door eased open on its own. The reek of sea-rot and smoke was enough to make me gasp. Ada led the way inside. “Stay behind me.”
Charon sat in a driftwood armchair beside a strangely silent, glowing hearth. A dozen dogs lay at his feet, sprawled atop each other, their limbs entangled. I’m calling them dogs, but they can’t have been. They didn’t smell like dogs – they smelled like saline and bad sushi. Some of them had too many heads.
Charon had only one head, but he too smelled like the sea. Most of the unliving I’ve met since then – skeletal reapers like Post, eagle-faced blokes like my mate Mahaf, even the harpies – they don’t look remotely human, but they don’t feel half so wrong as Charon did.
By the flickering light, his face might almost belong to any grandfather. But his teeth were slate, his beard forged from curling steel wires, his eyes actual oil-spills. He harpooned us with his stare. On each of his shoulders sat a woman-faced bird: one was young and ginger-haired like me, but with the feathers of a red hawk. The other was older, grizzled and owl-bodied, with only one unblinking blue eye.
Ada didn’t buckle. She gestured for me to sit among the hounds, then placed herself firmly between me and the river god. Nodding at each of Charon’s harpies and then meeting Charon’s eyes, she cleared her throat and started pleading my case in a booming voice, like she was a goddess herself rather than a middle-aged reaper wearing purple denim overalls. I was too busy trying to avoid the not-dogs’ sea-slug tongues to listen properly.
Ada finished speaking. The quiet grew deep enough to drown in.
The younger harpy shifted on Charon’s shoulder; the older one whispered in his ear.
“You are requesting no small thing, ankou.” Charon’s voice fluctuated from high to low, the groaning of a ship’s hull. “You say this mortal is a thing of twilight, caught between life and death. And, you say, because I am a patron of these twilight shores, I should be sympathetic to his plight. That I should let him remain among the unliving?”
“That’s the measure of it, old one.”
“I am a transporter of souls, not of their vessels. The living are not my jurisdiction; nor are the half-alive. Even the dead are not, once they pass over the dunes. The twilight shores are a waypoint, not a destination. I cannot be responsible for him.”
“That’s fine,” Ada said, eyes flashing. “I’ll be responsible for him.”
The dogs growled as Charon raised his eyebrows. The blue-eyed harpy tittered like Nan used to whenever I insisted on wearing sock with holes in them.
Ada glared at each of them and they fell silent, cowed by the sudden sharpness of her teeth, the silver that took root in her eyes. I looked away from her, hands shaking. From the moment she’d rolled into my hospital room on Heelys, I’d fooled myself into thinking Ada was an eccentric Welsh Auntie. That she was…you know. Human.
“Tell me, reaper.” Charon’s face creaked as his expression shifted. “Why haven’t you done your job? Why haven’t you cut his soul from his body? It is not too late, even now. Throw the mortal from the Pier and into the soulsurf. Why deny him your gift of death?”
“As you’ve said, his life is not your jurisdiction. And if you toss this lad into your bloody river, old man, I’ll tear the Pier down piece by piece, and do the same to you and your hounds and harpies. Bone by bone, whisker by whisker, feather by feather, gaffer.”
Charon clicked his tongue against his teeth. The dogs clambered to their spidery feet – they all had far too many joints and ankles. They surrounded Ada and me, raising their stinking hackles, drooling river sludge through sharkish rows of teeth. The harpies did not move, but their stillness was galling.
I should have been petrified, but I still thought I might be tripping. And thing is, there was one two-headed mutt that reminded me of Joanna’s peppery little schnauzer, Jaws.
I tapped the hellbeast on the nose. “Enough of that. Play dead.”
The hound blinked at me through dumbfounded human eyes – definitely, actually human eyes, ye gods – and started spitting like a serpent.
Charon clicked his tongue again; the hounds stilled. His expression was unreadable, but the older harpy looked livid. Ada looked like she wanted to throw me into the Styx after all.
“Sozz,” I said. “I’m really more of a cat person.”
Charon’s ribs expanded and shifted like a splintering bow beneath his sealskin Mackintosh. A wheezing emanated from his throat. “Mortal. Do you think yourself amusing?”
“Yeah, a bit. But no one else does, really.”
“He’s not amusing,” Ada said. “And he’s not special, not to anyone apart from me. Charon, I’ll ask again – as a personal favor – please, let him stay here.”
“If the Furies discover this deceit, I will be reprimanded. The boy will be obliterated.”
“And still you request this, for a nothing child.”
Charon stroked his beard, letting the silver whorls bend and squeak against his fingernails. “You will owe me a favor of equal weight. And you will not refuse this favor, no matter how distasteful it may seem to you. Your loyalty to me must be greater than your loyalty to any other being, godly or otherwise.”
“Fine by me.” Heat rose in my cheeks – Ada agreed so quickly.
Charon leaned back in his chair. One hound pressed an icy snout against my palm and I knew: I wasn’t tripping, I wasn’t dead, and I was in for a weird time. “If he is discovered, I shall feign ignorance.” He tilted his head. “Tell me, mortal, where do you hope to hide, where even the Furies will not find you?”
“Um. I don’t suppose there’s a B&B nearby?”
Charon made the creaking sound again – was he laughing?
“Don’t worry about that.” Ada grinned, revealing syringe-pointed teeth. “You’re not the only one who’s fond of mongrels, gaffer.”
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