Hermes's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

By the next dusk Hermes stood at the bronze and obsidian arch above the landing, counting heads. The line of shades was short. The river was calm. But the ferryman had not raised his pole in an hour. Ever since the gold rings changed hands, the old man's moods came and went like weather Hermes could no longer predict. One sour shift and the landing would clog again, hundreds of souls pressed against the gates with nowhere to go. Hermes lifted his staff close to his face. The two snakes along the laurel wood were his old trick for reading a room. When the ferryman's temper was steady, the snakes lay still. When it was about to turn, they tightened, scale against scale. Tonight they coiled slow, then loose, then slow again. Useless. The signal he had trusted for a hundred crossings had gone quiet since the payment. He pressed his winged sandals to the rock and dropped down the cliff path to the water. The skiff sat dark against the fog, its red lanterns low. The ferryman was not in it. He had gone back to the small shack on the far bank where he kept his mood to himself between trips. Hermes could see only the shape of a wide hat through the doorway, bent over something Hermes could not name. Hermes made a choice. He would stop guessing. He uncoiled the snakes from his staff and sent them across the water on the laurel rope, one to each of the ferryman's wrists. Not a binding. A line. "Tell me when he sours," he whispered into the wood. "Before he stands up. Before he sets down the oar." The snakes slid into the shack and settled against the old man's pulse like bracelets he had not asked for. The ferryman came out a moment later. He did not look up at the cliff. He stepped into the skiff, lifted the long painted oar, and pushed off. The snakes lay quiet against his wrists. Hermes felt their stillness through the staff like a hand on his own chest. For the first time in days, he knew the man was steady. The shades moved down the path. The skiff filled, crossed, emptied, returned. The landing stayed clear. Hermes climbed back to the arch with his staff lighter in his hand and a knot loosened in his chest. He had bought himself a warning system, not a friendship. The snakes would tell him when to come down with rings, or words, or whatever the next mood demanded. The route was steady tonight. But he had spent two of his snakes to buy that steadiness, and the staff above his sandals felt thinner without them.