“It doesn’t?” I swallowed. So much for my plans. Somehow I had thought this was all working out too easily.
Charlie looked me over. “You play blackjack, Ethan? You know, twenty-one?” I knew what he meant. “Um, not really.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I used to play with Thelma, until she started cheating as badly as the Sisters did at Rummikub.
He pushed my cards toward me, flipping a nine of diamonds on top of the first one. My hand. “You’re a smart boy
—I bet you can figure it out.”
I checked my card, a seven. “Hit me.” That’s what Thelma would have said.
Charlie seemed like a risk-taker. If I was right, he probably respected other people who did the same. And what did I have to lose?
He nodded approvingly, flipping a king. “Sorry, kid, that’s twenty-six. You’re over. But I would’ve taken the hit, too.” Charlie shuffled the deck and dealt us each another hand.
This time I had a four and an eight. “Hit me.”
He flipped a seven. I had nineteen, which was hard to beat. Charlie had a king and a five sitting in front of him. He had to take a hit, or I would win for sure. He pulled a card from the top of the deck. A six of hearts.
“Twenty-one. That’s blackjack,” he said, shuffling again.
I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test or if he was just bored out here, but he didn’t seem anxious to get rid of me anytime soon. “I really need to get across the river, si—” I stopped myself before I called him “sir.” He lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, Charlie. See, there’s a girl—”
Charlie nodded, interrupting. “There’s always a girl.” The Rolling Stones started crooning “2,000 Light Years from Home.” Funny.
“I need to get back to her—”
“I had a girl once. Penelope was her name. Penny.” He leaned back in his chair, smoothing his scraggly beard.
“Eventually she got tired of hanging around here, so she took off.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?” The second I asked the question, I realized it was probably too personal. But he answered anyway.
“I can’t leave.” He said it matter-of-factly, flipping cards for both of us. “I’m the River Master. It’s part of the gig. Can’t run out on the house.”
“You could quit.”
“This isn’t a job, kid. It’s a sentence.” He laughed, but there was a bitterness that made me feel sorry for him. That and the folding card table and the lazy dog with the messed-up tail.
Then “2,000 Light Years from Home” faded out, replaced by “Plundered My Soul.” I didn’t want to know who was powerful enough to sentence him to sit by what, for the most part, looked like a pretty unimpressive river. It was slow and calm. If he wasn’t hanging out here, I probably could’ve swum across.
“I’m sorry.” What else could I say?
“It’s okay. I made my peace with it a long time ago.” He tapped on my cards. An ace and a seven. “You want a hit?” Eighteen again.
Charlie had an ace, too.
“Hit me.” I watched as he turned the card between his fingers.
A three of spades.
He took off his shades, ice blue staring back at me. His pupils were so light, they were barely visible. “You gonna call it?”
“Blackjack.”
Charlie pushed back his chair and nodded toward the riverbank. There was a poor man’s ferry waiting, a crude raft made of logs that were bound together with thick rope. It was just like the ones that lined the swamp in Wader’s Creek.
Dragon stretched and ambled after him. “Let’s go before I change my mind.” I followed him to the rickety platform and stepped onto the rotting logs.
Charlie held out his hand. “Time to pay the Ferryman.” He pointed toward the brown water. “Come on. Hit me.” I tossed the stone and it hit, without so much as a splash.
The moment he lowered the long pole to push against the river bottom, the water changed. A putrid odor rose from the surface—swamp rot, spoiled meat—and something else.
I looked down into the shadowy depths beneath me. The water was clear enough to see all the way to the bottom now, except I couldn’t, because there were bodies everywhere I looked, only inches below the surface. And these weren’t the writhing forms from myths and movies. They were corpses, bloated and waterlogged, still as death. Some faceup, some facedown—but what faces I could see had the same blue lips and terrifyingly white skin. Their hair fanned out around them in the water as they floated and bumped against one another.
“Everyone pays the Ferryman sooner or later.” Charlie shrugged. “Can’t change that.” The taste of bile rose in my throat, and it took every ounce of energy I had to keep from throwing up. The revulsion must have registered on my face, because Charlie’s tone was sympathetic. “I know, kid. The smell’s hard to take. Why do you think I don’t make many trips across?”
“Why did it change? The river.” I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the waterlogged bodies. “I mean, it wasn’t like this before.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You just couldn’t see it. There are lots of things we choose not to see. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, even if we wish they weren’t.”
“I’m tired of seeing everything. It was easier back when I didn’t know anything. I barely even knew I was alive.” Charlie nodded. “Yeah. So I hear.”
The wooden platform smacked against the opposite bank. “Thanks, Charlie.” He leaned on the pole, his unnaturally blue, pupil-less eyes staring right through me. “Don’t mention it, kid. I hope you find that girl.”
I reached my hand out cautiously and scratched Dragon behind the ears. I was happy to see my hand didn’t burn off.
The huge dog barked at me.
“Maybe Penny will come back,” I said. “You never know.”
“The odds are against it.”
I stepped onto the bank. “Yeah, well. If you’re going to look at it that way, I guess you could say they’re against me, too.”
“You may be right. If you’re headed where I think.”
Did he know? Maybe this side of the river only led to one place, though I doubted it. The more I learned about the world I thought I knew and all the ones I didn’t, the more everything threaded together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“I’m going to the Far Keep.” I didn’t think he’d get the chance to tell any of the Keepers, since he couldn’t leave this spot. Besides, there was something about Charlie I liked. And saying the words only made me feel more like they were true.
“Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.” He pointed into the distance. “But you have to get past the Gatekeeper.”
“I heard.” I had been thinking about it since my visit to Obidias’ house with Aunt Prue.
“Well, you tell him he owes me money,” Charlie said. “I won’t wait around forever.” I looked at him, and he sighed.
“Well, say it anyway.”
“You know him?”
He nodded. “We go way back. There’s no telling how long it’s been, but I’d guess a lifetime or two.”
“What’s he like?” Maybe if I knew more about this guy, I would have a better chance of convincing him to let me into the Far Keep.
Charlie smiled, pushing off with the pole and sending the poor man’s ferry floating back into the sea of corpses.
“Not like me.”
CHAPTER 16
A Rock and a Crow
Once I left the river behind, I realized the road to the Gates of the Far Keep wasn’t a road at all. It was more of a crude, winding path, hidden within the walls of two towering black mountains that stood side by side, creating a natural gate more ominous than anything that could’ve been made by Mortals—or Keepers. The mountains were slick, with razor-sharp corners that reflected the sun, as if they were made of obsidian. They looked like they were cutting black slits into the sky.