then sighed. Standing in the bows of the boat, Ischade watched them, silent, her
eyes glittering with merriment or malice.
“… Never used to be that way in the old days. Live people stayed live and dead
people stayed dead. You look at my wife now!-” and the ferryman bounced the
skeleton against him. It rattled like an armful of castanets. “Wha’d’ye think of
her?”
Siveni opened her mouth, and closed it. Mriga opened her mouth, and considered,
and said, “I’ve never met anyone like her.”
The ferryman’s face softened a little, fangs and all. “There, then, you’re a
right-spoken young lady, even though you do be a goddess. Some people, they come
up here and try to get in this boat, and they say the most frightful rude things
about my wife.”
“The nerve,” Siveni said.
“True for you, young goddess,” said the ferryman, “and that’s it for them as
says such things, for they’re always hungry, as I say.” He glanced at the water.
“Never you mind, then, you just put your pretty selves in the boat, you and your
friend, and give me your hard money. She don’t really care what goes on out
here, just so you be nice and don’t tear things up, you hear? Speak her fair,
that’s the way. They do say she’s a soft heart for a pretty face, remembering
how she came to be down here; though we don’t talk about that in front of her,
if you take my meaning. In you get. Is that all of you?”
“One moment,” Mriga said, and whistled for Tyr; then, when there was no answer,
again. Tyr appeared after a moment, her gold piece still held in her teeth, and