I nodded and handed him the weapons. After tucking them into a gap by the bench, he gestured to the hammer. I gave him that, too, and he set it by his feet. He picked up the sticks and listened carefully, peering into the stars that surrounded us.
I thought I saw a flicker off to the side and I tapped his arm to show him the spot. He fixed his piercing eyes on the section of river I’d indicated but after a moment shook his head. It was a long time before he set the oars into the water again, and we soon moved forward without incident, a breeze picking up a few hours later.
When he settled behind the rudder again, I said, “I would imagine you stay very busy. Aren’t there like thousands of people who die every day? If it takes this long to get to the afterlife, how do you get all of it done?”
“Luckily the disembodied take up very little room; as long as a piece of them touches the ship, they go. If it’s crowded, the dead hang off the sides by their fingertips. Sad thing is, makes it real easy for Apep to swallow ’em.”
“So who or what is Apep? Or do I even want to know?”
“Even Amun-Ra don’t fool around with Apep. Seth made him. Of course, that was back before when he was actually makin’ things. He was just a child in those days, at least by the way you’d reckon it. Apep is a…well, I guess the closest thing you could compare him to would be a snake. Or a dragon, maybe. No. Snake is better. Giant snake. Like a monster anaconda. He makes his home in a certain place in the cosmos right on that piece of river we passed. His favorite snack is—you guessed it—the disembodied. Not much else to eat around these parts, I suppose.”
“Has he tried to eat you, too?”
“Would if he could catch me. I guess you could call him my archnemesis. There’s nothin’ he’d like better in the world than to sink Mesektet and enjoy the feeling of me in his hot little belly.”
“Does he, um…eat the living?”
“Oh, I’d imagine he’d enjoy gobbling up a tasty little treat such as you. I’d think you’d be real nourishin’ and scrumptious to one such as him. Might be able to feed off’n your flesh for a decade or two. He nabbed a right proper number of the disembodied on my last trip. Likely he’s still a bit gassy from that. Otherwise he would have been on us like a fly that found a capysaur turd.”
My nose crinkled up at the thought.
“First time I ever ferried a sphinx. Centaurs, unicorns, even a testy dragon, but not a sphinx.”
“Didn’t you take the other sphinx? The one Isis made?”
“Never met her. Happens sometimes. Especially if the dead are unhappy when they pass. They wander. Tryin’ ta find something to give their death meanin’. Probably what happened to her. They never make it ta my shores. The embalmin’ rituals Anubis created help guide them here, but even then there are those who get lost. Mortals, especially modern ones, don’t know too much about navigatin’ the Cosmic River. They mess it up. Some burn their dead and throw the ashes in the river. Some float bodies out to sea or down the Nile. They mistake their mortal rivers for mine, but the only way ta get ta the afterlife is ta cross here.” Cherty held out his hand, indicating the expanse around us.
A whirlpool of the stars in the river caught my attention and I shivered. “Will Apep chase us?”
The ferryman shrugged. “Anythin’s possible. But like I said, we got lucky. Not so sure that would happen on a return trip, assuming, of course, that I’d be willing to consider making an exception to my one-way rule and that you survived….”
“So do you fight him?”
“Can’t kill ’im. All I can do is drive ’im off and hope he don’t make off with too many of my passengers.”
“But he sticks to his territory?”
“Mostly. Every once in a while the devil surprises me. Though I’d think by now he’s exhausted all of his tricks. That’s the bad thing about immortality. Work gets monotonous. Apep keeps it interestin’.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “I guess that would be a problem.” Talking about immortality made me ponder my own. Was I truly immortal now, like the other sphinx, Baniti? Did I want to be? There was so much I