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Charon wordlessly shook his head and just as slowly extended his arm straight out, pointing a sharp-nailed gray finger toward the path at their backs, telling them they should return from whence they came.
Bollocks!
“What else do we have?” Ere hissed, his eyes darting between Divina and Sorin.
Sorin unslung the sword he carried and pulled off his breastplate. Stripped to his tunic, leather belt and boots.
Ere handed the items Charon, who examined them just as slowly as he did Divina’s jewelry, and same as before, discarded them one by one into the river.
More frantically, racing against time, all three of them searched their bodies for anything else that might be of value. But nothing worked. Charon rejected all of their forms of payment.
Until finally, the shadowy figure pointed down at Divina’s feet.
“What? You want my sandals?”
She was just about to take them off when Charon shook his head slowly from side to side.
“No, I think he’s pointing to Chewie,” Ere whispered.
“You can’t have him!” Divina hissed vehemently.
The ferryman shook his head again, continuing to point.
“He wants the bows,” Ere said, flummoxed. “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ve never been so grateful for the hours we spent braiding these into the beast’s fur.”
Quickly, Divina unraveled the few remaining bows left in Chewie’s hair and handed them over to the awaiting ferryman.
He closed his palm over them and tucked his hand into his overlong sleeve. With one slow nod, he indicated that they could board his boat.
The moment they scrambled into it, the conveyance started moving down stream, not making any splashing sounds as it navigated the water.
It was as if they were floating. As if they were leaving everything real and solid behind. Until minutes or hours later, Divina couldn’t be sure, they arrived at the end of the line, where the stream suddenly stopped, pooling against a wider shore.
Had they arrived at the Gates of Hades? Divina wondered. But there were no “gates.” Beyond the shore, there was only nebulous blackness.
Charon pointed again with his long, gray finger, indicating that they should disembark. They did so, and when Divina looked back, the ferryman and the boat were gone, as if they were never there.
“Well,” Ere said, straightening his shoulders, “I guess we head into that…thing.”
He gestured at the general vicinity with a twirl of his hand.
“There’s nowhere else to go.”
But before they could take three steps, a resounding, deep, ground-shaking growl came from within the darkness.
Three pairs of blood-red, glowing eyes blazed like hot coals before the rest of the creature’s visage came slowly into focus.
It looked like a feral, primitive cross between a Doberman and a Black German Shepherd without fur. Three heads with three massive, snarling jaws. Gigantic. Far taller than even Sorin on its four-pronged claws. Sharp spikes radiated from the top of its heads along the entire length of its spine, ending with a thorned, javelin-like tail.
The growling grew louder as the creature moved steadily closer, making Divina back up a step.
“Careful,” Ere warned softly, taking hold of her elbow in a firm grasp.
“You don’t want to fall into the river and disappear too.”
The lips of the three-headed beast curled back to reveal rows of dagger-like teeth dripping with saliva as it flattened its ears at the sound of Ere’s speech.
Divina thought fast.
