by Jeff Chapman
A young girl crouched behind a throng of blackberry brambles, ten strides from where the river lapped the cattails growing along its shore. She had followed her father unseen, ducking behind trees and cottages and mounds of hay, as he led the donkey and the creaking cart from the mill to the Ferrymen’s landing where two boats tied to a wooden pier rested in the water.
Asha peered through the stems and leaves and ripening fruit, watching her father—a hard-working ox of a man—negotiate with the master. Below them, the river’s pale blue water, heavy with minerals from the mountains to the north, meandered south, having gushed through narrow gorges and rapids before reaching the plains where it spread wide on its journey to the sea.
On the river’s western shore, the red tile roofs and gray stone towers of the market town glittered in the sunlight as if flecked with gold. Asha longed to go there, but the Ferrymen clan guarded their trade and only those who paid their weight in cargo could cross.
The air tasted of berries. Asha reached in among the thorns to pluck a dark purple fruit. The clustered drupelets felt firm between her fingers. Her father advised cooking fruit, as did everyone else, but Asha had no time or inclination to bake a pie. She popped the berry in her mouth, savoring the sweetness before grimacing at the tartness.
The men raised their voices, at least her father did. He gesticulated adamantly, pointing to his cart, laden with canvas bags of flour, then the village and the market town across the river. Caiphas, the old master of the Ferrymen, stood with his hands at his sides, his shoulders high, his gray hair swept back from his brow to the nape of his neck. He reminded Asha of a wolf. Children scattered at his approach while adults stepped aside. She thought her father very brave for arguing with him. The master said something. Her father shook his head, rejecting the offer. Caiphas walked away, then turned. The Miller hung his head, staring at the stone path, and nodded.
Asha crept up the riverbank toward the village, the taste of the blackberry still tingling on her tongue and the resentment at her father’s defeat weighing on her heart.
“Papa,” she had asked earlier while her father loaded the cart, “why don’t we take the flour to market?”
“The Ferrymen, of course.” He frowned at her. Sweat dampened his grizzled beard. “Don’t ask idle questions, Asha. It’s the way it is.”
From a time beyond living memory, the clan claimed exclusive rights to cross the river, charging for transport and a percentage of goods sold. Their fees gouged into the Miller’s profits. Everyday Asha observed her father work long and hard while the Ferrymen’s families grew rich and fat.
“We should take our own boat across the river.”
The Miller shook his head. “When I was young, I asked the same questions. Only the Ferrymen know the secrets of crossing the river and calming the Red-Tails. Those red devils will take you to the black depths, and that water may look calm but it conceals currents to snare you like a rabbit.” He stared at the river, something, Asha realized, he rarely did. His eyes lost their luster.
“Papa?”
“It’s been tried before, Asha. It’s no use. It can’t be done.” The widower blew a kiss to his daughter, the last and only surviving gift of his marriage, as he tugged the gray donkey’s rope.
Asha crested the riverbank then strolled through the village square, acknowledging greetings out of habit as she plotted and planned. Caiphus would tremble. Her father would be proud. Her confidence swept away all doubts as she hummed a joyful tune. When she climbed the knoll to their white cottage with thatched roof and dark beams outlining its frame, she gazed across the river. Three Ferrymen with barge poles pushed a boat, wide and flat and burdened with barrels and sacks, into deeper water where the single, square-rigged sail billowed as it caught a breeze.
From her hilltop vantage the river did not look very wide or forbidding at all, more like a narrow blue ribbon on a green dress. She smelled a stew simmering. Martha, their maid and cook, was preparing supper. No need to tell Martha, she decided. The woman meant well, but the Ferrymen would put a stop to any plan they scented.
For two weeks Asha scavenged the village, and when she discovered a collapsed shed amidst a grove of pines, she believed herself the apple of fortune’s eye, a certain sign of destined success. She gathered rope, wooden planks, and two sturdy beams. All of this she concealed in the root cellar, telling Martha, who complained of the mess, that it was a surprise. She said nothing to her father, who was too busy grinding the summer harvest to notice that Asha passed less and less time at the mill.
On the evening she tied the last knot, she resisted hauling the raft to the river and launching it forthwith. She left her creation behind the grassy mound that covered the root cellar.
The following day, Asha accompanied her father to the mill, only with studied effort concealing the giddy anticipation that roiled beneath her calm demeanor. She sang her father’s favorite song as they walked. As always, bittersweet tears dampened his eyes at the sound of his daughter’s voice, so like that of his late wife’s. He wished her well as he sent her to study with the Weaver, reminding her to tell her teacher that his rye flour would be ready that afternoon.
Asha set off toward the Weaver’s cottage but slipped into a grove of trees at the first opportunity. Concealing herself amongst the woods and underbrush, she snuck past the mill then doubled back along the river where she sprinted across patches of open ground and threaded through thickets of cottonwoods and sycamores. She arrived home winded but exhilarated.
Her heart pounding, she studied the river’s smooth surface which reflected the unblemished azure expanse overhead. The day was perfect, as she knew it would be. Near the river’s center and visible from the shore only as a dark shadow, a thick branch over three feet in length rode low in the water as it sped downstream in the relentless current. Nearer the shore, a crimson tail fin that faded to pink near its edges broke the surface and briefly created a wake before sinking out of sight. Asha saw none of this.
Across rounded rocks and sand and through the mire of a creek, she dragged her raft to the river’s edge where the warm smell of rotting leaves and a fish carcass abuzz with flies assaulted her nose. The water lapping the shore licked the beams clean of mud. She knotted the rope she had used to pull the raft, intending to grip the excess length for balance. She did not christen her vessel nor ask for a blessing but leapt aboard, planted her barge pole among some rocks and leaned with all her strength against the pole.
The raft slid into the water at a steep angle then lurched upward as the buoyant wood leveled itself. To every wave or ripple, the raft responded tenfold, and each time she shifted her weight to compensate, the raft rolled beneath her like a leaf bandied about in the updraft from a bonfire. She clung to the rope as she struggled to propel the raft out of the shallows, but with each thrust her pole sank into the muck and only with great effort could she extract it.
As her pole descended further and further beneath the surface to find the bottom, the reeds on the near shore merged, no longer a tangle of individuals but a wavering wall of green. Her house and village diminished to an amorphous smudge of white stucco and brown thatch. Behind her, the market town acquired new details. Thin lines of blue encircled the towers beneath each window. The trees that from her side of the river appeared an unbridled park formed neat rows whose crowns interlaced.
The current whisked the raft toward the river’s center, into the swiftest flow where even a skilled bargeman would face difficulties. Asha stabbed the pole into the river bottom. Water piled up before slipping around on either side to form a short, deep trough. The current clawed at the raft’s corners until the force of the oncoming water caught hold and spun the raft around the pole, which held fast in the ancient sludge against Asha’s frantic efforts to free it.
The raft jerked, sending her sprawling across the planks with one hand still grasping the pole. Around her opposite wrist the rope tightened. Her upper body, from belly to head, extended over the water like a flying buttress. As never before, she saw the river. Its blue water, stained with chains of white bubbles, churned in the wake of the current rushing past the pole. The cold water licked her face and arms, tasting of chalk and clinging to her skin like the drippings from roast meat. She spat to rid her mouth of the sour water. The coarse rope formed a tourniquet, clenching the soft skin of her wrist. As her muscles and tendons threatened to tear asunder, she understood the rack’s terror, but without the pole she was nothing more than driftwood.
Her spirits lifted as the pole moved. Then she saw it, a bump in the water growing to an accelerating wave. A spiked fin, jagged, speckled pink and red, slashed the surface, bearing directly for her arm. She screamed, releasing her hold on the pole, surrendering all hope of success.
Caiphus stood in the stern of a ferry boat. Three men worked with poles in unison, singing to synchronize their labor, while a forth manned the rudder. The currents gave them no bother. In Caiphus’s presence, the river calmed. He stroked his gray beard as he watched a makeshift raft spinning round and round in the center of the river. A young woman, her hair drenched, clung to the raft. The river firmly held her hips and legs beneath the water. Red and pink fins sliced the surface then disappeared beneath the blue, leaving white, fleeting strings of bubbles.
Caiphus followed the raft’s demise with his left eye alone for cataracts clouded his right pupil, nothing more than an indistinct grayness. A low chuckle escaped his lips when the cords that held the raft loosened, and in quick succession the boards separated as an ice shelf shatters in the sea. With his faith in the river renewed, he plotted the course of the planks floating downstream. The remnants of the raft belonged to no one now. He ordered the men to slow their pace and prepare to collect some errant timbers.
The planks arrived first, gray wood shot with knotholes and rent with cracks. Caiphus cursed the poor quality of his find which he cried was little better than firewood. They next hauled in one of the beams, a sturdy length of timber that Caiphus found to his liking.
“There’s a girl on this one,” said one of the men.
Caiphus peered at a shivering Asha who clung to her beam as if the pair had been sculpted from a single source. Strong arms lifted her from the water’s clutches. Her hair, soaked to the roots, stuck to her face and neck as her clothes stuck to her body. Her once rosy cheeks were pallid. A Ferryman plopped her on the deck with all the grace reserved for a sack of oats. Another man placed a tarpaulin around her shoulders.
“You’re Asha, the Miller’s daughter,” said Caiphus.
She clutched the tarpaulin tight across her chest. She nodded, mouthing thanks through shuddering lips tinted with blue.
The old man leaned toward her, cocking his head to see her squarely with his good eye. “Did he put you up to this? He ought to know better. But they all get greedy when they get old.” He stood up straight. “Lucky for you I wanted the timber.”
Caiphus left to inspect the remaining boards. When he looked at her again, she was scrunched into a tight ball, twitching with cold. He wondered why the fish didn’t pull her under, why that rough beam became her ark. When they reached the docks, he led her down the gang plank with one of his men holding her arm.
Caiphus surveyed the assembly of those waiting to pick up goods. He spotted the Miller pushing his way through the crowd. “Miller,” Caiphus called, “is this yours?”
Asha fell into her father’s arms. They wept together, hugging tightly as never before, while the Miller repeated Asha’s name over and over again. When his emotion had spent itself, the Miller turned to Caiphus. “Thank you, Master Caiphus. You have restored my life.”
“I don’t make a habit of picking up flotsam. I say she’s worth a couple bags of flour.”
“I will bring you five.”
[Editor's Note: This story continues in Issue 4.10 - October, 2010.]
© 2010 Jeff Chapman
Original fiction debuting in Residential Aliens.
Tags: fantasy, Jeff Chapman, serial, spiritual fantasy