The Ferryman

`My name is Charon. You may know me from tales of long ago, in which I am the mythical ferryman of the dead. Newly departed souls step onto my boat, and I guide it across the river Styx, leading them into the kingdom of Hades, god and supreme ruler of the Underworld.

`When I was first created, long, long ago, at the convergence of Erebus and Nyx, I was mindless and blank. My thoughts - if they could be called that - had a singular focus.

Take their coins and guide the boat across the river.

Guide the boat across the river.

Boat. River.

But as time passed, first centuries, then millennia, the world began to evolve, and I with it. I had been guiding the same boat down the same river since my creation, and I was beginning to be influenced by my passengers. They carried with them magical tales and beautiful memories from their lives on Earth, and with each one I heard, I became a bit more human.

I was no longer mindless. In fact, I was starting to feel bored with my duties. Starting to long for something more. The souls I transported would whisper amongst themselves, speaking to one another in hushed tones about their fears and anticipations. But most often, they would speak to each other of one thing - the lives they had left behind.

At first, I kept to myself. I let them worry and wonder and regret for the span of the ride, which could sometimes feel like hours. Finally, one day, I broke away from my purpose. I decided to speak to the souls.

The very first I interacted with was the great hero Achilles. His story captured my attention, riveted me. He had many regrets, of course. I found myself consoling him, advising him, pointing out the things he had done that would cement him forever into history as a hero of old. When he stepped off my boat, he was free of the worries he had arrived with. And he was grateful to me.

Helping the departed was satisfying. It lit a spark inside of me, something I’d never felt before. Purpose. It gave me something to do with myself, other than guiding a boat across a river and back for eternity. I listened to my passenger's struggles, their sorrows, their loose ends that they hadn’t been able to tie up before they left the world of the living.

In the short time that they were on my boat, I helped the souls come to terms with what they had lost, what they had left. I showed them how to leave their old lives, their old selves, behind. I was not just a ferryman anymore.

This is the story of one of those interactions, one of those conversations, which removed a fragment of immortality from my being and made me a tiny bit more human.

***

The group of souls that stood huddled together on the shores of the river watched curiously as his boat approached.

“Stand back,” the ferryman called to them as the vessel neared. A ramp extended from the side of the deck, halting once it made contact with solid ground. 

“Arrange yourselves in a single file line, please,” the figure on the boat commanded, moving to stand at the top of the ramp. “And have your coins prepared.”

One by one, the souls reached the top of the ramp and drew the coins from their mouths, handing them to him. “Welcome,” he said pleasantly to each in turn. “My name is Charon, and I’ll be your guide as we cross the river Styx today. Please do not lean over the railings of the ship, for if you fall, you will be swallowed by the frothing black waters of the river, never having stepped foot in Hades or experienced the eternal afterlife which awaits you. Enjoy your trip.” 

Once his passengers were all collected on board, Charon withdrew the ramp and turned to observe them. None of them looked particularly troubled. As the boat, with a slight jolt, began to move, the group stayed huddled together, tens of pairs of cautious eyes still lingering on him.

“You are free to move around and talk amongst yourselves, if you’d like.”

After a heartbeat, the souls broke into speech and began bustling around to try and find those they knew. It was then Charon noticed one particular young girl lingering behind the rest of the crowd. She stood at the rail, looking lost and confused.

Charon made his way over to her, nodding and smiling at his other passengers as he weaved through them. At this point in time, guiding the boat was no longer a series of physical actions he needed to go through. After millennia of doing it again and again, it had simply become a part of him. He was guiding the boat even as he was focused on something entirely different. 

The girl didn’t take her eyes off the water as he settled beside her at the railing. Her blond hair was tied into a loose knot at her neck, some strands having come loose. They hung limply around her face, which was unusually clean and free of blood or dirt. This was uncommon for the typical departed soul.

The deceased boarded Charon’s boat in the exact condition they had been in at their moment of death. Their appearances were unalterable until after they had been judged by Hades and the Council and sent to their eternal fate. Usually, the souls had bloodied skin or disheveled hair as a result of the manner in which they had died. But not this one. 

Charon thought perhaps the girl hadn’t noticed him, but he was wrong. After a few moments of silence she spoke. Her voice was soft, an amalgam of observance and disinterest.

“There’s no reflection.”

“Excuse me?” he said, taken aback by this peculiar statement.

She pointed down at the dangerously still black waters of the Styx. 

“In the water. I can’t see my reflection.”

“Ah, yes,” Charon replied, his interest piqued. “The liquid that fills the Styx is no normal substance. It possesses properties, both horrifying and fascinating, which are unique to only it.”

There was a brief pause. The ferryman thought for a moment that he had said something wrong. This happened often when he spoke to these mortals, with their sensitive hearts and their ever-shifting vernaculars and meanings. But before long, the girl spoke again. Charon was momentarily startled. Though he hadn’t noticed her move her head, she was now looking directly at him.

“Who are you?”

This was a question he received often.

“As I stated at our departure, I am Charon. The ferryman of the dead.”

Her eyes lit up as she seemed to make a connection. “Like from the myths?”

Charon allowed a smile onto his face. Smiling wasn’t a natural action for him, or any immortal, as there was no real use for it. Having spent as much time with mortals as he had, however, led him to learn that the action went a long way in making a passenger feel welcome.

“Indeed. You’ve heard of me?”

She nodded, eyebrows raised, expression briefly lightening. “Yeah. I know about you, and the Underworld, and Hades. And the other gods. I know all about mythology, really. It was actually my favorite thing to read about, before . . .” 

She trailed off.

“Before?” Charon prompted. The lost, confused expression had returned to her face. He noticed it was accompanied by a tinge of hurt. 

The girl returned her gaze to the waters. 

“Nothing.” she muttered.

The ferryman decided to take up a different approach. “Tell me your name, child.”  

“Why?” she said defensively, shooting him a side glance. When he held her gaze for what seemed to be an uncomfortable amount of time, she relented. “Olivia.”

“Olivia,” he repeated gently. “I can see that there is much troubling you. This boat ride may not be long, but when it is all one has ever experienced for all of eternity, it can become exhausting. Even for an immortal. I would like to do something useful with the time I spend guiding this boat. Something meaningful. 

As I said, our time on this boat will not be long. But perhaps, if you let yourself open up a bit to a stranger, if you let me help you, you may find that you step off of this vessel carrying a much lighter burden than you boarded with. Please, child, allow me to help you.”

The girl looked at him with a strange light in her eyes.

“Nice of you, I guess. Fine, let’s give it a go.”

“Start from where you left off,” Charon suggested.

The girl thought for a moment.

“Mythology was my favorite thing to read about before my, um."

She swallowed.

"Before my mom left. She was a literature professor at the university near our house, and mythology was her favorite thing to read about. She would spend hours poring over old books in her office. I got my love of it from her.

“Then stuff kind of got bad between my parents. At one point, they had argued so badly they were refusing to look at each other, forget speak to one another. One day, my mom said she was taking the car out for a drive to clear her mind, and reminded me that she loved me. She didn’t come back from that drive.”

Charon was silent. Through his relatively little experience, he’d learned that in certain cases it was better to listen than to talk. However, he needed to understand one thing if he was to help this girl step foot in the Underworld free of regrets.

“I’m sorry for what you went through,” he said slowly. “That must have been a terrible flood of pain and confusion that you experienced, yet you endured.” 

Charon glanced at the girl, who was watching him with a guarded expression on her face. She allowed herself a single nod. 

“I have one question for you, child,” he ventured, “if you’ll permit me asking."

"Go for it," she said, shrugging.

"How did you die?”

Olivia sighed and rubbed her hands along her arms as if she were cold. 

“Do you need to know?”

“No. But I’d like to help you, if you’ll allow me,” Charon reminded gently.

The shore had long fallen away, the only light coming from small lamps that hung from the boat’s railing. They bobbled now, in some nonexistent breeze, as unspeakable things watched from slick black waters below. The girl’s face was lit in shadows, her hair appearing more red than blond.

“It’s nothing interesting, I guess, compared to some of the death stories you’ve probably heard from people. After my mom left when I was younger, my dad and I kinda got distant. Eventually it just became too much to bear to live in a house that felt empty and alone, just going through the motions everyday. It was like I only had the haunting memories of my family’s happy past to keep me company.

So I ran away, met some kids in the city, and had a pretty good time with them. Probably the best time I’d had since my mom disappeared. We partied all night, laid around all day, and went to a bunch of concerts and movies and stuff. It’s a good thing, too, that I enjoyed it while it lasted, because one day we were doing drugs out in a hotel room, and I had too much, and before I knew it, it was over. Now I’m here. Really, I barely got to live before I died.”

The girl ended the sentence with a tired shrug.

Charon realized this was why the girl looked so kempt. She hadn’t died in blood or violence, like an alarming number of his passengers.

Clearly, she harbored sorrows from the life she had left behind, as well as longing for the many years she’d lost. He just had to figure out how to help lighten the weight a bit before they touched shore.

“Olivia,” he began. She glanced at him at the sound of her name.

“I am not a mortal, therefore I cannot pretend to know the atrocities of what you must have endured. However, I’d like to offer up a bit of advice if you’ll accept it.” 

The girl shrugged and nodded.

“You are in a boat, on your way to the underworld. Along with tens of other deceased souls,” Charon gestured around to them, “you are, very soon, to embark on a new journey. You will be able to start fresh there, Olivia. You can choose what you want to leave behind, whether that be the uglier parts of your life above, or simply the entirety of it. That is up to you. You may not have been able to control what the gods threw at you when you were alive, but now you, and only you, are in control. 

You feel that you were unable to experience much because of your early death. I’ll tell you what - to someone who has never stepped foot off of this boat, it sounds like you lived quite vicariously, more so than half these other people, and certainly more than myself. I plead of you, let go of the unwanted memories, and hang on to the myriad good ones. Because, if you look deep into yourself, they are there, waiting for you to remember them, to cherish them, to live them through again.”

Olivia watched him and listened to him more intently than before. The ferryman thought - though it may have just been the swinging lanterns - that there was a new twinkle in her eye. Perhaps it was a glisten.

“Furthermore, from my brief time speaking with you, I can ensure that you will most certainly not be sentenced to eternal punishment by Lord Hades. Wherever you do go, whether it be Asphodel, Elysium, or elsewhere, know that one day you will be joined by those you miss. By those you have been forced to leave behind. Perhaps even by those who left you behind. An afterlife is simply a second life, a second chance. And now is your chance to live again, to live in death. Before  long, you will see - though your life on Earth may have been cut short, your desires will not go unfulfilled. You have all eternity now, to fulfill them.”

There was a jolt. A new wave of whispers rolled through the crowd of passengers, who were now all collected at the railing. Charon glanced over it to see the boat had made contact with the rocks of shore, where the kingdom of Hades awaited in twinkling lights and jutting towers. He looked back at Olivia, unsure whether he’d had enough time to provide her succor.

To the ferryman’s surprise, the girl had tears in her eyes. 

“Are you alright, child?” Charon asked worriedly. He’d never elicited this reaction from those he’d helped in the past. He must have made things worse with this one. For a moment he felt impotent. But then, to further his surprise, she threw her arms around him, and, for a brief moment, the ferryman felt the warmth of mortal touch, of life, of love and friendship and thankfulness, engulfing him. 

“Thank you,” Olivia whispered, letting go and gazing at him with eyes of deepest brown.

Charon wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he smiled, a gesture not quite as forced this time, and nodded.

“I only hope I was able to provide some comfort to you, child.”

As Charon extended the ramp from the boat and declared the arrival instructions to his passengers, words he had said thousands of times, he felt something flicker inside of him. Something familiar. He had done something good. Something real. Something that had helped someone. He had guided another soul to leave her old life behind. 

As the departed souls exited the boat, speaking excitedly amongst themselves, one figure stood out to Charon in the crowd. A young girl, no longer looking lost and confused. She turned and waved at him, thankfulness in her eyes. 

And, as the boat pushed off the shore the way it had done a thousand times, the ferryman waved back.