WILLOW HOLDS MY HAND AGAIN and guides me blindly towards the dock. We clasp the flashlight, flicked off, between us. From the dock, the creaking voice laughs again, and chants, “Three blind mice, three blind mice, adrift on river’s edge. The miller and his merry old wife, seeking safe passage?”
The voice strikes me as sinister. Its words stick in my ears like the wet shoreline clinging to the sand. If the waves beneath us made a sound, they would sound like this voice.
Willow squeezes my hand, and I realize that I’m shuddering.
The sand beneath us is suddenly replaced by gravelly wood, hard and cool against my feet. The smell of stale water now rises from all sides. The voice is directly in front of me, and I feel a skeletally thin finger touch my collarbone. I shudder again.
The finger loiters on my neck, before dripping down my right arm. Willow lets go of my hand as the boatman’s probing finger reaches my palm. It lingers for a moment on the cut, tracing its jagged edge, before roaming down to touch my fingertips one by one.
“One, two, three, four, five,” his voice counts from the darkness. He is very tall, if the direction of his voice is any indicator, and his breath smells of fish and seashells. “Once I caught a fish alive.”
His hands let go of mine, and his voice moves a little to the side. I assume he’s performing a similar ritual with Willow, “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten: then I let it go again.”
“Why did you let it go?” Willow sings out. Despite myself, I jump at the sound of her voice, so clear and loud next to his reedy whispers.
She had fallen silent as we neared the dock and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Because it bit my finger so,” the voice creaks. A hint of laughter.
“Which finger did it bite?”
At this the boatman falls silent and it’s some minutes before he speaks again. His voice, now further down the dock, is joined by the sound of ropes uncoiling over sandy wood. “So,” he muses, “Two little dicky birds, seeking a crossing before the rain comes down?”
Willow does not respond verbally, but the boatman must be able to see her—his grunt sounds like agreement. “And of course, up front you’ll pay the fee,” his voice slithers. “My sailing ship’s a-laden with pretty things for thee.”
Pay? I don’t have any money. I haven’t agreed to this.
Willow pinches my arm and sings, “I saw four-and-twenty sailors, that stood between the decks, were four-and-twenty white mice with chains around their necks.”
Though her response makes maddeningly little sense to me, the boatman’s voice suddenly drips venomously as he shouts through the darkness, “A duck, am I? Little dicky birds, always chirping back! You’ll pay my fine or swim these frigid waters.”
Willow, too, drops the rhymes. She says, “I’ve already gone swimming, as you can plainly see. And, as always, money is earned for services rendered.”
The boatman is silent. I can almost feel the hatred peeling off him. Then the docks are lit ablaze and I’m struck blind.