then, peering into this face or that one. Following her, Mriga shuddered often
at the dry-leaf brush of naked, unbodied souls against her immortal’s skin. No
wonder the gods hate thinking about death, she thought, as the ground leveled
out. It’s an … undressing … that somehow shouldn’t happen. It embarrasses
them. Embarrasses us….
“Careful,” Ischade said. Mriga glanced down and saw that just a few steps would
take her into black water. Where they stood, and other souls milled, the sour
cold earth slanted down into a sort of muddy strand, good for a boat-landing.
The water lapping it smoked with cold, where it hadn’t rimed the bank with dirty
ice. Tyr loped down along the riverbank, pursuing some interesting scent. Mriga
looked out across the black river, and, through the curls of mist, saw the boat
coming.
It was in sorry shape. It rode low, as if it were shipping a great deal of
water-believable, since many of the clinker-boards along its sides were sprung.
Steering it along with the oar that is also a blade, was the ferryman of whom so
many songs circumspectly sing. He was old and gray and ragged, fierce-looking:
too huge to be entirely human, and fanged as humans rarely are. He was managing
the blade-oar one-handed. The other held a skeleton cuddled close, its dangling
bones barely held together by old, dried strings of sinew and rags of ancient
flesh. The ferryman sculled his craft to shore and ran it savagely aground. Ice
cracked and clinker-rivets popped, and Mriga and Siveni and Ischade were pushed