I have not ferried a living soul across the straits since Orpheus and Eurydice. I think of her and how she clung to Orpheus and wept into his chest, and he crooned softly into her hair not daring to open his eyes. Orpheus smelled of sunshine and song. Eurydice smelled narcotic like a field of hyacinths, and smoke. Orpheus calmed her with his beautiful baritone warm as a patch of sunlight in the forest. His voice hummed in my chest while he sang to Eurydice, kissing her tears and staunching her sorrow. I can still hear his cries. He was too beautiful by far.

I am far up in the upper reaches of the river Styx, exploring an old tributary I have neglected some thousand years. The water is quiet this far upstream, and the channels narrow. I can hear the stalagmites dripping, the sound echoing through catacombs. This damp black stone effervesces the smell of calcium and carbonate and chalk. It is only in the upper reaches on these quiet and forgotten tributaries where the dead leave me be. These headwaters are quieter than the main channel, the arched stalagmite-knifed caverns do not echo the screams of the dead like the others. I am tired of listening to the dead, they speak at nauseum, lamentations for never having done such and such, never told so and so, how could they have been so blind they ask me. I hear their voices forever and ever. It has been a long time since a living soul sought passage over the river.

I know there is a cue back at the crossing. The dead can wait because they have no choice. These days no one brings a fare anymore, and I cast them into the river for ten-thousand years of waterlogged purgatory; only screams escape the water until I grant access to the distant shore. I have not given passage to flesh with hot blood, a beating heart, lithe limbs, and that particular human stench in many years.

The young woman, is face-down on the shore. I can smell her blood and now I know what called me to this place. She stirs on the black sand and peers up at me. Small waves lap at the hull of my ferry sounding hollow, flat slaps against the ancient wood. Perhaps she will have something to say, something worth listening to. It has been a long time since a living soul stepped into the wooden hull of my ferry, bringing scents of despair and lust. The dead don’t smell of anything other than death, and the smell is vile whether it be the corpse of noble-born or that of a pauper.

“Do you seek to cross?” I am bound to ask, as is the formality of the agreement and my mandate.

“What lies on the other shore?” She has not brushed the black sand from her cheek or from her torn dress.

“The Land of the Dead.”

“Am I dead?”

“No, you are not.”

“Are you Death?” She doesn’t blink her large, golden-rimmed brown eyes.

“No, I am not.”

“Who are you, if not Death?”

“I am the Ferryman. I carry souls from the realm of the living to the Land of the Dead. None may reach Purgatory, the Golden Shore, or the Rings of Hell but by my ferry across the river.

She thought for a long time after that. She drew lines in the sand with her fingers and tossed pebbles into the river. She cocked her head at the cries that rise from the river each time a black stone splashed down. Eventually, she rose and dusted herself off.

“Take me to see the Devil.”

“There are many devils in Hell.”

“I mean THE Devil, the worst of them.”

“He is imprisoned in the deepest part of Hell, within the ninth and final ring.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Yes, I can take you.”

“Ferryman, I would like to be ferried to the ninth ring of Hell. I wish to speak to the devil.”

Her comment seizes at my heart and my blood quickens. The ritual is nearly complete. “A single coin will suffice to cross, once across you can make your way down to the ninth ring.”

“I have no fare.”

My hopes plummet, and I can taste the copper and limestone in the air again. The quant pole seizes in the muck; silt and sediment offer poor purchase, and I struggle to shove off and leave the girl. A pale hand of the dead grips the pole lodged in the mud. She speaks before I can leave.

“Is this the spirit world?”

“No, I navigate the waters between the living and the dead.”

She does not acknowledge my response. Instead, she sits and crosses her legs, and her mouth moves but she does not speak. Her abdomen begins to glow. A yolk-yellow aura moves upward from her gut. The young woman retches and vomits river water and a radiant stone onto the black sand. She holds the glowing orb and beckons to me.

“You have heard my request, Ferryman, I do not wish to cross to the Land of the Dead, I wish to speak with the Devil. Will this be enough?”

I pole back to shore and the young woman with the torn and bloodied dress, black hair as smooth as silk, and bronze skin gone pale in the dim subterranean light, grabs my hand, and I help her into the boat. Her hands are firm and strong. The dead are not firm, most are not even corporeal, and those that are shed metatarsals, metacarpals, rib-bones, pelvic-bones, hair, and skin like leaves from a tree in autumn. Her hand is light in my own and the ferry bobs at her ingress, her heels thud on the wooden planks. I had not noticed when she stood on the shore, but she smells faintly of smoke, like Eurydice did when she returned from the pit with Orpheus. The girl offers me the gemstone.

I receive it and it is hot and heavy in my hand. The contract has been made. I feel joy and warmth for the first time since they left me down here. The offered gem carries voices within. Muddled whispers meld and join with the heat radiating from the orb and smear the air around me with rippling heat waves. “I will take the measure of this,” I tell her. I hold the gemstone to my eye and the voices grow louder.