Every dawn, the dead lined Rowan's shore with empty hands. He poled his lantern-lit boat close and waited for the fare no one carried anymore. There had once been a coin, one each soul pressed into his palm before boarding. Now they came with nothing. Rowan meant to bring that coin back, so no spirit would board his boat ashamed. But he could not remember what the old coins were made of. Bronze burned green in the water. Iron sank and rusted. He had tried both, and the ferry refused them, drifting from the dock as if the metal offended it. So Rowan left the river. He walked inland until warm light spilled from a stone cottage window. A lantern hung by its door, and its glow never wavered, not even when the wind pushed at it. He knew this house. The old herbalist inside had lived at the edge of the living world longer than anyone. If a fact was lost, she might still hold it. Dara Glynn opened the door before he knocked. Ash stained her fingers. She looked at his robe, his pale face, and did not step back. "The ferryman," she said. "You never come to me. The dead come to you." "I need a memory," Rowan said. "The coins. The old fare. What were they made of?" She studied him. Then she waved him inside, past drying herbs and the steady flame of that stolen lantern. "Not metal," she said. "That's your mistake. The first fares were bone. Small discs carved from the bone of the newly dead, given back to you as payment. The river only takes what once lived." Rowan stood still. Bone. Not bronze, not iron. The water had refused his coins because they had never breathed. "Why keep this?" he asked. "I keep everything the gods want forgotten." She glanced at her lantern. "They forget nothing about me. Fair trade." Rowan thanked her and turned to go. At the door, a small light bobbed near the frame. A firefly, its body glowing gold, wings thin as glass. It drifted after him into the dark, lighting the path his lantern could not reach. He returned to his shore. The dead still waited, hands open. Now he knew the fare. But knowing it opened a worse door. To carve a coin of bone, he needed the bone of the newly dead. He would have to ask a waiting soul to give up a piece of itself before it could pay. He would have to take from the very people he wanted to spare. Rowan looked down the long line of pale, empty hands. The firefly settled on his shoulder. He gripped his pole and understood the true cost of the coin he meant to restore.