The Necromancer (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 3) (16 page)

That’s what the gypsy had called the waters beyond the Bleak Shore.

The River of Bone. A river of bones. Where was the line between physical place and metaphor? Would the river be made up of water, in the same way that the Dead Sea is devoid of any actual dead bodies? Or would little pieces of bone caress the shoreline as the solid “water” clicked and rattled along? Would there be blood on the bones? Meat? Who did they even belong to?

Or what did they belong to?

The thought was enough to send my mind running off into the dark wilds of the Underworld, until Frank reeled me back in with a firm tap on the shoulder.

“You okay there?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You didn’t get hurt or anything?”

“No. You?”

“Barely, but that’s only because I fell on my ass when I saw the spider for the first time.” Frank rubbed the sore spot on his right butt cheek. “I can’t remember the last time I was left without the ability to walk straight.”

“Oh I bet you do.”

“Careful, witch.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you enough times how happy I am that you’re here.”

“Guys,” Damien said. He was slightly ahead with Collette and Madame Aishe. “We’re here.”

They were standing on a ledge. Even in the dark of the Underworld I could make out the slight dip in the ground, that little incline that happens when land meets water. And it was water, not bones, only there was so much water. The shimmering darkness was vast, almost endless. And it was flowing! But how could a body of water this big be called a river?

“This is it?” I asked.

The gypsy nodded. “This is the Bleak Shore. The water you see is the River of Bone.”

My heart was starting to pound against my chest. “How are we supposed to cross this?”

“The ferryman,” Collette offered. “Zere has to be a ferryman.”

Madame Aishe gave Collette a soft nod. “You are right. He is not here, but he will be. He knows we are here. We must, now, simply wait.”

“Did I step on a call button and not know about it?” Frank asked, checking the area immediately around his feet.

I nudged him with my elbow again and he shut up. If nothing else, the wait gave us all time to take in a breath of strangely fresh air. The water brought with it an oddly refreshing sensation which I likened to standing at the edge of a pier on a sunny spring day. My eyes searched for Frank—he hadn’t finished telling me what he was about to tell me—but my gaze found Damien standing by the shore on his own. He, like me and, I guessed everyone else, was also lost in thought. His right hand was limp by his side, and the torch clutched between his fingers was throwing light onto the gently moving ocean at his feet.

I swallowed and approached. “Damien?” I said.

Damien took a deep breath, as if he had come up for air, and turned his head slightly toward me.

I remembered then how we had met—I mean really met—on the slope of a riverbank, and suddenly I knew what he was thinking about. Or, rather, who he was thinking about. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “You?”

“I’m fine. I just thought… I wanted to thank you. For what you did for me back there.”

He shrugged. “You would have done the same.”

“I know, but… I don’t want you to think that I took it for granted.”

“I didn’t think that. We’re friends, and I care about you.”

I believed him, too. Damien made me want to pull my hair out when I found out about him and Natalie, but after I calmed down about the whole thing I realized that we hadn’t been that close for that long to begin with. We had what most people would consider to have been a good run and that was it. Natalie was the one who had really been wronged, and that was hardly any of my business.

Looking at Damien now—as a friend—felt natural. We shared a memory about his sister. Not just a memory, either. We had both been through an ordeal together. We had a ghost story that we could tell our kids and that they could tell their kids. We had a story. No. We were the beginning of a story. The first chapter in the tale of my life as a True Witch. That’s what we shared. And that’s why I linked my arm around his and rested my head on his shoulder.

Damien’s breathing was hard. I could feel his heart beating heavily in his veins. But it wasn’t for me. It was for Lily. I wondered if he could see her face in the black water before us. I wondered if he was recalling happy memories, or reliving sad ones. I had done both, and I was starting to realize that it wasn’t a coincidence either. I was starting to think that, maybe, it was the water.

Bonk
.

The sound startled me. It was so close! That’s when I saw it. A wooden boat, maybe ten or twelve feet long, had sailed into the rock and used it to stop. The current was moving across, but the featureless boat was as stiff as a board; as was its pilot.

“Hello?” I asked, approaching. My heart was racing now too, but I kept myself calm and showed no fear. No surprise.

In a voice like a puff of dust, he said, “Need a ride?”

I noticed movement from the rest of the group. They were starting to get up, but it was the gypsy woman who came up beside me first. “We do,” she said, “We seek to cross your river.”

“A ghost and four breathers; this I have not seen in some time.”

“Will you let us cross?”

“If you pay the price.”

“Name it,” I said.

The figure extended a thin, bony hand wrapped in loose, pale flesh and clutching a chalice. It gleamed even in the darkness. Silver, maybe? “You must pay the blood toll, but it will cost you.” he said.

Damien stepped up and took the cup before I could speak. “Fine,” he said, and he flicked a pocket-knife open and went to cut his palm, but Frank stopped him.

“No,” Frank said, “Not you.” He looked at me. “Amber.”

CHAPTER 19

Sailing at the front of the ferryman’s boat across an endless dark sea was like something out of a Lovecraft book. The water lapped at the boat’s hull, gently licking the wood—kissing it—as the boat cut a path through the river of Bone. I still didn’t understand why it was called such. Maybe there was no meaning behind the name, but how could that be? To my logical mind, this inconsistency didn’t make any sense.

All I knew about the river of bone was that it appeared as an ocean and that Damien and I had reflected on the past; on something that hurt, and something that made us happy. I wondered if the others had, too. None of them were speaking. They, like me, were fixed with the strange stillness of the water. Mesmerized by the way its surface rippled and sparkled despite the lack of ambient light.

At the front of the boat Damien scanned the water with his torch. Meanwhile I was sitting across from Frank, Collette and Madame Aishe. They all seemed pensive, all except for Madame Aishe. I got the impression that she was nervous. Scared, even. If I hadn’t learned from her that the dead can die again, I wouldn’t have understood.

But I did.

I flexed my cut palm, felt the throb of pain, and looked over at Frank. “Why me?” I asked.

Frank tilted his tall neck down and met my eyes. “Why what?”

“Why me and not Damien?”

“His blood wouldn’t have cut it. No offence.”

Damien wasn’t listening, and if he was he hadn’t acknowledge what Frank had said.

“How did you know, though?” I asked, “How were you so sure?”

“Because of what you are.”

“Seriously? Because I’m a sorceress?”

Frank nodded. “Don’t you understand just how rare and powerful your magick is? I mean, it isn’t just your magick. It’s your blood too.”

Collette nodded in agreement. “A true sorceress does not come but once in a hundred years. The last sorceress I knew of was a German witch. She was a hunter of evil, a champion of light. Her magick was a beacon for European witches to live by.”

“She sounds awesome,” I said.

“She was, but she was soon overcome by enemies. Sorcerers make many of those.”

I pressed my lips together. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“It iz fine, I did not know her. Only of her.”

“Have there been any American sorcerers?”

Frank shook his head. “Not that I’ve read about. But if any sorcerer came to the States it would have been to escape whatever enemies he made across the pond.”

“Ah, but one sorcerer did come to the Americas,” Collette said. “A sorcerer’s magick is passed through the blood.”

“So you’re saying that my mom or my dad could be sorcerers?”

“A parent, yes, perhaps. But the Power can lay dormant for generations and suddenly awaken. Zere would be little way of knowing besides tracing back your family roots.”

“Remind me to hit the books when I get topside,” I said to Frank.

Frank nodded.

“So I guess that’s why your magick is on the fritz then, huh Frank?” I asked.

“It isn’t so much on the fritz as it’s… stunted. But there’s an element I could tap into if I wanted to sully myself with it.”

“What element is that?” I asked.

“Shadow,” Collette said.

“Shadow? That’s not an element I’ve ever heard of. Fire, water, earth, wind, and spirit, sure. But not Shadow.”

“Like the Goddess, Spirit has three faces,” Collette offered, “A light, a neutral, and a dark. We call the dark Shadow.”

“And the light?”

“Lunar.”

“Why am I only learning about this now? This isn’t in any of the books I’ve read.”

“There are some books you just can’t find on amazon, sweetheart,” Frank said. “Think about it. Wiccans call it calling the quarters—not the fifths. Humans don’t know the real truth.”

I had to think about that for a moment. When Damien first told me about True Witches he had mentioned that the religions of the day all took something from the truth about magick. Resurrections, Gods, miracles; everything came from one single truth about the world and the universe as we know it. Magick exists.

And if Magick exists, anything and everything is possible.

But it also meant that no single religion held all the cards. Wicca seemed to be the closest to the truth, at least to me, but how did that account for the miracles performed by Catholics? Or the truths the Abrahamian religions knew about the invisible dark forces that haunt humanity? Forces that I had come into contact with personally.

“I need to know more about this,” I said, “If I’m a sorceress I need to trace my line. I need to know who I am and what it means.”

“It means zat you’re rare, zat you’re powerful, and zat you must take special care to protect yourself,” Collette said. “I said before that zere are people who would take your power and exploit it. I meant it.”

“It also means that you’re like a sponge for magick, and that your power is as easy to mold as play doh,” Frank said.

“But… why? I mean, if we believe in fate, then why me?”

Frank shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me. All I know is that Damien and I are about as useful down here as fucking car ornaments. We’re counting on you to make sure we don’t get killed so that we can figure this out with you—isn’t that right, Damien?”

Damien barely managed to look back. He nodded, but I could tell he was still miles away. Madame Aishe sat next to him, but she wasn’t saying much either. She was staring into the water as we cut along its surface at a slow pace. The ferryman was masterful with his oar, swinging right along his left side and left along his right in a fluid motion to keep the ship sailing quietly forward. It was almost mesmerizing to watch his hands move with such precision. Though, strangely enough, the rest of him didn’t move at all.

I shuffled closer to Damien and Madame Aishe in my seat, ran my hands through my hair to tighten the pony tail on my head—my hair was sticking out all over the place, I was a mess—and rested my hands on my lap before directing my gaze at Madame Aishe. She turned, as if she knew I was looking, and faced me.

“Why do they call this the river of bone?” I asked.

Madame Aishe glanced at the surface of the water once more, then back at me.

“Bones are a symbol for memory, here,” she said, “Like bones, memories don’t ever truly decay. They may be buried, lost to time, and forgotten. But they can be excavated, cleaned, and picked up again. This river washes old memories and brings them to the fore, so that the dead cannot forget the living.”

And so that the living don’t forget the dead, I thought. I hadn’t said anything but my mind had drifted to the memory of my grandfather, Jacob, and my grandmother Violet. I was equally close to both of them, but I lost them one after the other—my grandfather to a heart attack, and my grandmother to a broken heart. I wasn’t sure why they had come to mind until now.

“There are many rivers in the Underworld,” Madame Aishe said, “Great rivers with strong currents and strange properties. Their main purpose is to carry lost souls from one place to the next, but they also connect large towns and serve as landmarks.”

They carry lost souls, I thought, and I blinked away the tears. Now I knew what Damien was looking for.