The Coins of the Styx by Kathryn Thornwood
Dragons & Wyverns Short Story Challenge
5th place
The Coins of the Styx
Ferrying the dead to the underworld requires powerful muscles, an empathetic ear, and a resilience to monotony. Milo, the apprentice to the ferryman, isn’t any of these things. When he witnesses the first soul disappear under the water of the Styx, his decision to uncover the mysteries of the river and its guardian by any means necessary drags him to his own doom, much to the chagrin of his master.
Trigger Warnings: Mild: death, war
There is a squish that tells the ferryman his pole has hit the bottom of the river. Precisely at this moment, the experienced will change their angle and thrust, propelling their boat forward with the least amount of strain on their muscles. The Styx is a slow-flowing river, so one might assume that minuscule save in energy is not worth the thought it takes to execute effectively. That is what Milo assumes when he becomes an apprentice. Unfortunately, the line waiting to cross is endless, and the burn to his biceps leaves his arms limp noodles by the end of the day. So he learns the proper technique.
Admittedly, he should have listened to his master. The hooded figure is an enigma, even to Milo. He never speaks, he merely carries out his duty, taking a coin and shepherding those who are waiting across to the gates to the underworld. The shades, they are rarely silent. They cry laments and they sing of the joys of lives well lived and of deepest regrets. This is the last time the shades are bound to the living world, and they just want someone to listen. Maybe that's why Charon keeps his vigil, to let them say all they need to say.
Milo doesn't listen; they don't seem to notice.
It doesn't take long for days to blend together. Coin, punt, confessionals. Coin, punt, confessionals. Over and over again. Milo wonders how Charon has done this since the day the black gates came to guard the entrance to the underworld. If he has been silent through all the things he has witnessed.
Then comes a fateful day. Most pay their coin, and some few wait their one hundred years. But once in a while, the penniless and impatient decide to cheat the ferryman. Milo will never forget the first time he witnesses someone splashing into the river.
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A bearded man wades into the water. Milo nearly calls out, but Charon's bony hand stops his voice. One subtle shake of Charon's head is enough. When Milo looks back to the water, the shade is gone, the ripples of his presence radiating outward into the river, two silver pinpricks of light at its focus, like eyes glaring up at him. Milo blinks; they are gone.
"The guardian does not take kindly to those who deprive it of its price," the ferry's passenger speaks— maybe to him, maybe to no one at all—they're an ancient wrinkled thing wrapped in holy cloth. They point toward the far edge of the Styx. "No one cheats the river." When Milo follows their finger, he catches a slice of the unearthly silver glow again, illuminating the rectangular edges of something, just off to the side of the gates that mark the ferry's destination.
"Can souls drown?" Milo asks the ferryman, who waves his hands emphatically to end the conversation.
And it's this day, this encounter, that wrests his days away from their excruciating monotony. His days are counted again, but this time, they're logged merely as the calms between the storm, waiting for those moments where an impatient shade determined not to tarry away their one hundred years decides to cross the River Styx.
It's often bearded men, warriors or criminals who take their chances. Milo watches so carefully for those types now, taking note of them when he sets his feet on the punt. Charon would certainly punish him if he encouraged those who looked the tensest to try their luck. But this entertainment is no longer enough to sate Milo's inquisitiveness. The silver light always emanates from the same spot next to the underworld gates when the guardian exacts its justice. The bolts of silver frame a door, one that is set into the stone that walls off the underworld.
Now that Milo knows it's there, he cannot look away. The eyes in the water, the disappearing souls, and a nondescript door that blends so carefully into its surroundings that it doesn't exist except in those instants between shade and river. Charon has noticed Milo's split attention too. The ferryman's silent pleas are growing more animated, but it's easy not to listen when your mentor does not speak.
Only once, Milo evades his master's sight. There is a war in the human world, crowding the Styx with the newly dead. The warriors, yes, but mothers and children and farmers too. War has always been a senseless competition between powerful men, but mostly it means that Milo gets overworked. But on this day, full of a new crop of angry men, there are more than Charon's ferry can hold and several bold enough to venture to swim to cut the line. The ferry takes longer to empty, and a thrashing across the river pulls Charon's focus. The silver flashes like lightning behind the door, and Milo cannot resist this rarest of chances. He steps off the ferry, disguised by the crowd and he tiptoes to the place he knows will flash silver.
There it is! Not two paces away from the black marble gates, a slab of shimmering obsidian, absent of decoration. It's as smooth and reflective as an undisturbed pool of blackwater. Milo reaches out his hand to touch. To finally solve this mystery when his arm is wrenched back with a violence that pulls him off his feet. Charon stands over him, hood pulled far enough back that his sunken and ancient face is in full view, and it is angry.
"I didn't touch!" Milo protests, but his words die in the air as his mentor drags him backward and thrusts him rump first back onto the ferry. Charon then frantically wipes all traces of dirt from Milo's sandals, before tearing them fully off his feet and tossing them onto that bank.
When he's through, he points to the water, and Milo sees them. The silver eyes of the guardian, brighter than he has ever seen them, and fixed upon him.
"I'm sorry, okay?" He finally says, aiming the words at both the ferryman and the creature under the water. "I won't do it again."
Charon does not move for a long time. It is only the crowd that has formed on the side of the living that finally returns them both to their work. Three more shades take to the water that day, and three more bolts of silver lightning flash behind the unopenable door. Milo avoids looking into the river, in case the guardian's eyes find him again instead of those wayward and impatient souls.
It's not long before he forgets the lessons of that day.
The soldiers have long since stopped arriving at the Styx. The bloodiest parts of the war are now over. Instead the banks are bloated with gaunt women and skeletal children, all sitting at the water's edge to wait their hundred years. War left them destitute, robbed even of the coin to ease their passage. It's unfair, to know that the whole of their short lives was suffering, and now they must also suffer in death. Milo wishes he had a coin of his own to sneak into their bony little hands, if just to let them finally rest.
But that is not the job of the ferryman, nor his apprentice. No, they are here to take the coin and shepherd the souls who can pay. Milo is starting to realize that no matter how many years he punts the river, he will never be a ferryman.
Milo turns his attention back to the edge of the river. There's a man in leather armor who paces the bank like a caged lion. The others shrink away from him too, maybe from memories of the war and maybe just from the fury evident in every stomp of his feet.
He's gives Milo an idea.
The unopenable door on the other side of the Styx beckons, and Milo is tired of ignoring its siren call. That soldier is going to wade into the water eventually anyway, and he's scaring all the others who are waiting.
Milo glances at his mentor. Charon is standing stock-still staring out over the river, and away from him. And Milo glances at the water; it's still.
"I am going for a walk," Milo says, and he hops off the boat. Charon doesn't even acknowledge him.
He pulls up his hood, and wanders along the bank. He does this occasionally—there's nothing strange about it. On all his previous walks, he was aimless. Today he is not. He makes his way along the path, ignoring everyone but his quarry. The shade is standing, hands on his hips, staring out at the water. He doesn't seem to notice Milo until they're nearly face to face.
"Can you swim?" Milo asks. The man nods. Milo doesn't say anything more, he simply turns around and ambles back to the punt. Anything beyond this will come down to luck.
It doesn't happen immediately, but fortune has always favored the well-prepared. The soldier's resentment for those who can afford to cross is potent. It will happen, Milo knows.
One day, a wealthy widow arrives at the bank, and she sets a gold bullion into Milo's hand. When she boards the ferry, she is all laughter. A life well lived, she boasts, and it reverberates down the river. Past all who are still stuck waiting. Past Milo's soldier. Milo isn't paying attention to her stories. He's pushing the silt at the bottom of the river as hard as he dares, delivering this shade across the Styx at the exact moment the angry shade has made up his mind. The widow is still chattering, delaying her departure. Charon is distracted. This truly is Milo's chance. He slips off the ferry, and he stalks to the outline of the door he knows is there, and he waits.
The angry soldier finally throws up his hands. He dives into the river, leaving barely a splash. Milo doesn't wait, he acts. He presses his hand against the stone, and he waits for the silver light. It might not work, it probably won't work, but it is worth a try. When the silver light slithers out from the
imperceptible cracks, Milo hears a click. Milo pushes, and the obsidian door gives way. The flash of silver light has gone, but Milo has taken his chance. Fortune truly has smiled upon him.
The chamber seems vaster than the river where it sits, and it is piled from floor to ceiling with glimmering silver coins, mountains and mountains of riches beyond measure. Coins that could pay for every shade to cross this river. Milo bends down and he chooses one from the pile at his feet. It's cold to the touch. Then his eyes adjust to the dark and he makes out the carvings upon it; he drops it and backs away.
It's the face of the man he'd "inspired'" to swim. Milo kneels on the floor and picks up another coin. Another face, this one of a frowning woman. He turns the coin over, and there on the back is one silver eye. The same silver eye that has stared back at Milo every time someone splashes into the water.
A snarl breaks him of this revelation, and Milo reels around just in time to see his own doom: jet black scales and slanted silver-eyes, dagger-like teeth filling a gaping mouth, and those teeth drip with silver ichor. The great dragon rears up on its hind feet and spreads its wings so wide that it dislodges avalanches of silver coins painted with a million faces.
"No one cheats the river," it bellows.
Onto the ground falls one more coin, a silver eye emblazoned on its back, and an apprentice's terrified face upon its front.
Charon watches the light behind the door fade. He picks up his pole and starts back across the river, unsure if he is disappointed or relieved at the fate of his apprentice.