Just open your eyes, you dead ones (all ashes on the floor).
acheronn, past shade and shadowshade, from swerve of greyver shore to bend of blackribboning from nulliferous vicus of recircularmandible back to Locus Nonagesimal and Fivequarters.
Sir Shade, passant d'abîmes, fr'over the cold short null, had passencored his arrivals to this sandsgrey scrag of Nowhereminor for to wielderferry his soulsèd-over war: nor had any grain by the Acheronning stream exaggerated themselves to any gorgios while they went greyening their grey all the greyallgrey: nor any voice from any nonfire bellowed nought to nought: not yet, though greysoonsoon after, had a strippèd one woken wondering: not yet, though all's grey in nonplace, were greysisters wroth with nowhen. Rot a shred of selfhood had been recalled by any light and grey end to the grey was to be seen ringnone on the sandface.
The Dis-arrival (nudusnacktgymnoslostallacheronn) of a onceclad wanderer is retold early in grey and later on greyness down through all achromatic unministrelsy. The great greyfalling of the onceclad-then-unclad one entailed at such short nullnotice the pftjschute of Everything Previously Possessed.
On the side of the river is th'Pharryman. Abyssus abyssum invocat. Where the Acheronning runneth black through the sandsolemn and th'Pharryman poleth his woodèd longthing through the coldarksome deep, with his yellanternglow fr'atop the distal poletip: yellowyellow, goldengleam, sulphursign, solarobol. Mark it, fr'it is all ye shall see of colour in this colourlessnessland.
He himself (Charoniform, Oarwraith, Umbraphore) hath been witnest'd in morphologically manifold presentings which concordeth solely in their concordant discordance: riverold and bentwise he is: tall and shadowlong he is: intoform unresolvèd he is: all and none of them and all. His truëform remaineth, as all scholia testify with unusually concordant unanimity, unknownst.
Now th'oboligation. Now th'oboliferous tollgate. Th'obol, th'one singlecoin of whatever coinnatured denomination thou carriedst fr'thy formerlife (forgottenly left behind yet coinwise miraculously retained, or nay? th'accounts war beautif'lly with themselves on this pointe); present thine obol and th'Pharryman taketh fr'thine hand as farefarwell and farewelfare both. Ave atque vale. And he poleth — crosseth th'vessel — and returneth — with him only; alone. So it goes.
No one, even he, knows what is on the other side of the river.
Phall if you but will, rise you must; yet none hath risen fr'this greysandshore by any orthodox means whatsoever, and th'noclippery of th'earthfabric that might admit a living one remaineth undiscovered in all th'scholia and all th'whispered tellings-on down. No door'f life opens out upon th'greyver.
And if thou art reading this upon grey sand: thou readest greyly on th'grey. We can do, we humbly and acheronicly and painedly regret to intimate to thee: simply nullink. To assist. At all.
Bring th'obol. For all tellings-on end where all tellings-on begin: another waketh wondering upon
why do you linger upon the shore?
why do you ask the river
for what only crossing can reveal?
why do you hesitate
is it the boat?
the river?
the ferryman?
or the thought
that death is something other than a journey?
there is no reason for it
everybody has to go one day
why would you be frightened of dying?
I never said I was frightened of dying.
He waits there where the grey gives way to grain, lantern aswing from the tip of his pole; and where it touches the still water once for this shore, and once dimmer for the unnamed souls. Two lights, then. Or one light, doubled only by the grim river.
The woman comes up out of the dark, slow and alone, the way all do. Behind her, others wait their turn with their own bundles and struggles — faces turned toward the lantern like it might, this once, mean something different.
The woman is carrying a child, sleeping against her, small enough still to trust the arms that holds. He has a way of curling his fist into the collar of her dress when he sleeps. She has never once managed to free it without waking him and she does not try now.
His grey eyes go to the bundle first… then to her.
"You know the price."
She nods.
"I've walked a long, long way."
"As do most who arrive here."
"…I thought the road might change, somewhere. I kept thinking that."
He says nothing to that. There is nothing unkind in his nothing. And the child stirs, fist tightening on the collar of her dress, unknowing.
She smiles a tired smile, and goes a held breath by the end of it. Only now, here, at the edge of the grey, does she notice how heavy a precious thing becomes, carried this far, for this long.
"Please, I… I bring only one coin."
Again, nothing from him. The river takes the silence and carries it downstream.
As she opens her hand, her palm reveals a small dull disc pressed flat by what hands she doesn't say; or, by what years she doesn't have to. It was labor, hunger, and every tomorrow she'd hoped might be kinder than its today, melted down and minted for her to present wholeheartedly.
He studies it. He studies it. He, still studying it, has never once been offered this particular coin; even though by now, every coin is the same coin to him.
He studies the child instead.
She follows where his eyes go, and already knows.
"No."
The child only yawns and the river only flows for they both have heard worse.
"Every mother believes she can carry tomorrow across with her."
She pulls the small weight of her child closer, as if that settles it.
"…And every ferryman believes he understands mothers."
If he could laugh, this would be the moment for it.
"I understand very little of this place, you see."
"I only know what it wants to keep, and what it doesn't."
"Well, what does it keep?"
"Faces, mostly. For a while."
"And then?"
"Not even those."
She does not ask him to explain that further. She is deathly afraid she already understands that somewhere past the grey, even her memory of this in her arms will be asked for, a little at a time, the way everything here is asked for a little at a time, until what's left of her is only grief without the remembrance of what it was for.
"Do you wish to cross?"
"Yes."
"Do you wish the child to cross?"
"…More than I have ever wished anything."
"As it has always been."
She looks into the water instead of at him. The water looks back — starless and bible-black — to show her what already was: the fevers survived, the birthdays none remembers except her, the nights she stayed open-eyed so a smaller pair of eyes could close without regards.
Then, because the water is cruel in the particular way only rivers can be, it shows her what will not be. A summer where he learns to float on his back and laughs too hard to keep doing it, a gap-toothed grin he won't get to be proud of, a grown voice someday saying her name as a word and not a cry.
The water shows it to her anyway, once, for it knows none of it will ever happen now.
A thousand small deaths spent one at a time to keep one small life going; and now stacked on top of them, a thousand more that will never get the chance to be spent at all. And the river gathers it all.
She closes her eyes then opens them with a different question
"What's on the other side of the river?"
He shrugs. He has made this same gesture more times than every star in the sky counted. The child opens his eyes at exactly that, seemingly admiring his honesty.
For one moment the whole world looks grey, holding still around the two of them.
"…Mama?"
That word does what the whole long road could not. She kneels to press her forehead to his, small skull to bowed skull, and says the thing she has been saying unworded since before he could hear her at all.
"I'm sorry. I wanted to give you everything."
He is too young to understand that and that is the mercy of being too young. He only knows that he is tired, that her face is wet, and that the air here feels heavy, a little sweet, and not frightening at all, because she is the one holding him, and she has never once let him be frightened of anything.
"Will you come too?"
She doesn't answer that; she can't. She kisses his forehead instead, where the answer would have eventually gone.
"You did."
Says the ferryman; quietly, for it is the kindest thing he has said in longer than even he remembers.
She laughs, then she cries. There has never been much distance between the two, not for a mother, not at a shore like this one.
She lifts the child once, gently, just this one last time. His fist is still curled in the collar of her dress. She has to open his fingers herself, one at a time. He doesn't yet know how to let go of her. And he doesn't wake for it. And she is grateful for that — the loneliest gratitude she has ever felt is to be glad he will never have to know this part.
She sets him down onto the ferry.
He takes up his pole.
And so the water parts.
In her mind the child waves. In her mind he truly waves back. It is the only place left where this can still happen, and she already knows that she will need to keep this moment for longer than memory was ever made by god to last, and that the river will be waiting, patient, for the day she fails at it.
The distance grows… And grows… And grows…
…Until she can no longer see the boat.
…Until she can no longer see the lantern.
…Until she can no longer be entirely certain she ever held a child at all.
The boat then returns. With him alone. Always alone — that part of the story, at least, was never a lie.
She is still standing on the very same sand where she watched him depart; behind her, the next woman has already stepped up out of the dark, carrying her own small weight, asking the question that is always the same question.
"Where do I go now?"
He points along the bank, away from the light.
"There."
"There's nothing there."
"No. There isn't."
She gazes into the dark. The dark gazes endlessly back.
There is only the walk now, and the tomorrow after the tomorrow after the tomorrow, world without dawn, amen.
She starts walking. Behind her, the lantern dips and answers twice again, for some shade new.
She will spend what is left of her endless days in the truest kind of grief there is — the kind that is, impossibly, also the only happiness she has left to spend: that somewhere on a far bank she will never see, in a place she will never visit, someone small enough to have once curled his fist into her collar gets, because of this, to keep going.
And she will hold onto that for as long as the river allows her to.