Hermes's Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

Hermes climbed back up the slope with a sack of unread Olympus messages thumping against his hip. Each one was a complaint. Zeus wanted answers. Apollo wanted news. Hera's seal glared red. He had run the route clean, but he was still the only one running it. He stopped at the dark river that marked the boundary between worlds. The skiff drifted near the bank, lanterns burning low. The old ferryman leaned on his long painted oar and watched him with quiet, tired eyes. "You look like a mule with two carts," the ferryman said. Hermes laughed once, sharp. "I am the mule. And the carts. And the road." Hermes set down the sack on a flat stone near the bronze and obsidian doors that loomed over the shore. He looked at the booth, the dog, the long slow walk. Then he looked at the boat. "You cross this water every hour," he said. "You already move souls. You just don't move them past the doors." The ferryman tapped his oar against the hull. "I row. I do not herd." Hermes lifted his winged staff. The snakes flexed. "What if the herding herded itself?" He uncoiled a length of laurel rope and tied one end to the skiff's prow, the other to the base of his staff. He drove the staff into the stone at the foot of the doors. The snakes wound down the rope like a banister. "They follow the rope," Hermes said. "You ferry them across. They climb the rope to the doors. You mark the count on your oar. I come back at dusk and walk them through." The ferryman tested the rope with one bony hand. He grunted, which Hermes took as yes. Hermes loaded a group of nineteen souls onto the boat himself, watched them shuffle aboard, watched the red sail lift. Then he kicked off the stone and shot upward, sandals shedding no feathers this time. By the time he reached Olympus, the sack felt lighter on his hip. He cracked Zeus's seal first and started answering. That night he came back down. Three uneven groups waited in the hollow, neat as stacked bowls, the ferryman's tally scratched along his oar in crooked marks. Hermes walked them through the doors in one long quiet line. The bottleneck was still there — the slow descent still ate its hours — but for the first time, it was not eating his whole day. He pulled out his map and drew a small boat beside the river. Then he frowned. The ferryman had not asked for anything yet. That, Hermes knew, was a bill that would come due.