The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  “How did you get back?”

  “I walked out. Followed the river.”

  “Matthew might still be alive,” Magnus said, mostly to himself. “Maybe pulled himself to shore, but he’s too hurt to travel.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, “but I stayed there awhile, and I didn’t see him.”

  “Goin’ to Sarah’s funeral this afternoon,” he told her. “Important that I be there, I think.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead with the palm of an oversized hand, trying to figure out what he ought to do. He’d scrubbed himself at his house, but he could still smell the rank mud of the quicksand pit up his nostrils and he thought it would be a very long time before that memory went away.

  “Did everything turn out all right?” Quinn asked. “About the slaves?”

  Magnus nodded. “Pardoned, one and all. Tobey’s not able to be up and about yet, but he’ll live. Damn,” he said softly. “I should’ve stayed with you and Matthew. Maybe I should never have let him go out there, in the first place. Maybe I should’ve run him off, when he came to my house. Maybe…” He was overcome by the choices that had been made, and what had resulted. “I don’t know,” he said, which was as close to the truth as he could get.

  “Or maybe,” Quinn said, her swollen eyes fixed upon the mountainous man, “things that were supposed to happen…have happened. Nothin’ can change ’em, just like the flow of the river can’t be changed. And nobody ever knows how a journey’s going to end, Mr. Muldoon. Happiness or sadness…right or wrong…justice or injustice…even life or death. Nobody knows, but it seems to me everybody has to take their own journey, and square up for it.” She paused, searching the troubled, black-bearded face. “Matthew took it on himself to go, as I understand it. I’m sorry for what happened…you know I am…heartsick at it…but I think if Matthew was really so much like my Daniel—if he was my Daniel, deep in his soul—then he knew he was doin’ what he had to do.”

  Magnus considered that for a moment, as the summer sun shone down through the canopy of trees, birds sang up in the branches, dogs barked across Rotbottom and in the distance children laughed at their game of rolling-hoop. Life, like the River of Souls, moved on.

  “Need to be at Sarah’s funeral this afternoon,” he said. Then he added, with determination in his voice, “Goin’ upriver tomorrow mornin’, though. If he’s there, I’ll find him. Seems like…if I can…I ought to bring him back.”

  “I hope you can,” Quinn said.

  “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

  “No, but thank you.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’m squared up, too.”

  “Nobody’ll be botherin’ you,” Magnus promised. “The Kincannons have the body of the man who killed their daughter. They have the how and the why of it. That’s all they want.”

  Quinn stared into space for a few seconds, and then she seemed to recover herself. “I’m forgettin’ my manners. I’ve got soup in a kettle and a little tea, if you’d like. Corncake’s bakin’.”

  “Oh…no, I’d best be on my way, with Sarah’s funeral comin’ so soon.”

  “Well…good fortune to you, sir,” she told him, and then: “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, ma’am,” Magnus replied. He waited for her to close the door. He heard the latch fall again, and the creak of the floorboards as she walked away. It was a lonely sound. He thought he might come here again someday soon and bring Quinn a colorful glass bottle or two, something to bring light into the house. At that point he might tell her about the Soul Cryer, and that it was simply a very large, burned and agonized panther…or not, for there was some value in letting a mystery remain a mystery, For now, though, he had to be going, and whether or not his involvement in the solving of Sarah’s murder and the safe return of the runaways had any bearing on if he was fated to spend time in Hell, he didn’t know. He did know he felt he’d done the right thing…both he and Matthew had…and maybe that ought to be enough, for he was certain he had much more life yet to be lived and a body could step into any number of Hell’s suckpits before it was over.

  Magnus returned to his boat. He mopped his brow with a cloth he’d brought, asked the old fisherman to release the mooring line, and then Magnus took up the oars and began steadily rowing toward the Green Sea. Before he got too distant from Rotbottom’s harbor he looked back, up the River of Souls as far as he could see before the river curved and the trees closed in. He hoped to see…what? Matthew Corbett rowing his own boat back the way he’d come? Matthew Corbett, alive and well and not now drowned and mostly stripped to the bone by alligators? Well, there was a lot to be done soon. He didn’t know if the families of the dead wanted the bodies back for Christian burial; if they did, he would volunteer to return into that damned swamp with a group of searchers and bring back whatever was left. It seemed to him that by coming out alive he’d beaten the cursed river and the haunted swamp, and he ought to be mighty pleased with that fact. He ought to…yes, he decided…he ought to.

  He had left his ride in the barn at the Green Sea, and mounting his black horse—named, not too imaginatively but rather more wishfully, Hero—he left the plantation. He didn’t know how often he would return here; it seemed very quiet and sad without Sarah’s presence. The Kincannons had been true to their word and yesterday paid him the twenty pounds that were supposed to be shared by himself and Matthew. He was suddenly in possession of the kind of riches his Pap had searched for all the man’s life—and had come to the New World to discover—but had never found. In other times Magnus might have stashed the gold under his thin mattress and defied the world to come take it, but on the day he’d received it, bright and shiny coinage in a brown leather bag, he had decided to return half of it to the Kincannons, for it was not his due. He suggested that Matthew might come back for it, but in his heart he had known something terrible had happened to the younger man. Before Magnus had left the Green Sea yesterday, he’d asked to make a purchase from the Kincannons with one of his coins, but they’d freely given him the three items he’d requested. So it was that now he was on his way home, with intent to make use of these items before returning for Sarah’s funeral.

  Upon arriving, Magnus drew water from his well into a wooden bowl. He took the bowl into his house, and placed it upon a table alongside one of the three items given to him by the Kincannons, a small mirror on a pedestal. He angled the mirror upward so that he might see his own face.

  How did I get to be who I am? he asked himself. And the better question: where does my river lead me, from here?

  He recalled what Matthew had said, about his situation: I say remake yourself, beginning with a bath and clean clothes. Wash and trim your hair and your beard, take your emeralds and bottles to town and see what can be done. You might find your craft much in demand, and yourself as well by several ladies who are worth much more attention than Pandora Prisskitt. But…if you prefer this solitary life way out here, then by all means sink your roots deeper. Sink them until you disappear, if you choose. It’s your life, isn’t it?

  “Yep,” Magnus said to the black-bearded face in the mirror. “My life.”

  Only…it didn’t seem like so much of a life anymore. It seemed like a place to hide from life. To curl up and count your woes and plan vengeance upon people who cared not if you lived or died, because you meant nothing to them. It seemed to Magnus that for a long time he’d been waiting to be ready.

  And now he was.

  Maybe it was the death of the beautiful and kind-spirited Sarah that had unlocked his dungeon. Maybe also the loss of Matthew Corbett had made Magnus decide to throw away the key. For Magnus thought life was too short and fragile to waste as a hermit, shunning all people and thinking all could be painted with the same tar brush. But now he thought that people might be more like the sand and powdered colors that went into his bottles; you never knew what they were going to become, until you woke them up by giving them a breath of opportunity.

  Magnus wished for a difference
. He wished for his own opportunity to be newly born, as if he were one of his own bottles. And maybe…he could recreate himself, just as Matthew had said, and find his own way in the world that lay beyond his house. He wouldn’t start too large or expect too much…but he intended to start.

  With a deep breath that indicated his resolve of purpose, he began to use the second implement he’d received from the Kincannons. The sharp scissors hacked away his thick black growth of beard, and maybe a flea or two did jump out. Goodbye, my brothers, Magnus thought. He continued to work the scissors until the beard was cut short enough to be handled by the third implement, a straight razor. By that time Magnus’ hand was sore; he’d had no idea how long and tangled and dirty he’d allowed his beard to become. He remembered telling Matthew that his Pap and Mam had said it made him handsome. No…it just made him appear more the wild and ragged beast that at heart he was not. And as Magnus soaped his face and began to scrape the razor over the contours of jaw, cheeks and chin—carefully, carefully, for this had long been forgotten territory to him—he saw the emergence of a new man, much younger-looking, and really—if he wished to be a little jaunty about it—somewhat kind of handsome.

  He would wash his hair and wear his best and cleanest clothes to give his respects to Sarah. He would give his respects to Matthew Corbett by searching for him tomorrow, but he doubted the body would ever be found. It was a strange thing: he might have imagined that beyond the crack of the door Quinn Tate was hiding Matthew in that house, if the young madwoman had not invited him in for tea, soup and corncakes. But if Matthew had really been in the house, then why hadn’t he proclaimed himself?

  Going out on the river tomorrow, Magnus told the younger and handsome man in the mirror. Going out and look for Matthew, one last time.

  And then what? What about the day after tomorrow?

  That would be the day Magnus Muldoon would take his green stones and some of his bottles to Charles Town, and he would present himself where he needed to be presented along the shops of Front Street, and maybe he would never be a true gentleman like the problem-solver from New York because he would always have too many rough edges that resisted smoothing, but still…

  …it seemed to Magnus that any man who had come back alive from the River of Souls had somewhere else to go. Somewhere important, a destination not yet in sight, hidden around many further bends and twists. Like Quinn had said…everybody has to take their own journey, and square up for it.

  He was ready for the first step out into the world. And day after tomorrow, he reckoned his journey would begin.

  Twenty-One

  When Quinn Tate closed the door and latched it, she went to the hearth and ladled out a bowlful of corn soup. To this she added a small corncake. Then she opened the door to the second room, where the bed was, entered it and sat down on the bed beside her man.

  “Daniel?” she said quietly. “I’ve brought you some food.”

  He didn’t stir. He’d been sleeping a lot. He was badly injured, of course. A bandage was wrapped around his head, his swollen face a dark blue mottled bruise, his black stubble growing into a beard. That was as it should be, for Daniel had always worn a beard.

  “Can’t you eat anything?” she asked him.

  He’d been awake a short time earlier, if only for a few minutes, but now it seemed he had slipped back again into the heavy depths. He was breathing all right, though. She had removed his sodden clothes before helping him into bed, and yesterday morning had cleaned the arrow wound on his shoulder with wellwater and applied a dressing made from crushed onions and ginger to draw out infection. She would be very attentive to that wound for the next few days, as some yellow pus had collected there.

  As for the condition of his head and the regaining of his senses, she didn’t know. He had been mostly dazed and silent on their journey through the driving rain, and several times his legs had given way and they’d had to rest in the shelter of the trees.

  But her Daniel was going to be all right, Quinn thought. Yes. He hadn’t come all this way to leave her again.

  She set the bowl on a table beside the bed and stroked his unruly hair, which stuck up from the bandages like a black rooster’s tail. For awhile she sang a song to him in a quiet, clear voice, the verse being:

  “Black Is the Color of my True Love’s Hair,

  His face so soft and wondrous fair,

  The purest eyes and the strongest hands,

  I love the ground on which he stands.”

  Daniel would soon be standing. Quinn was sure of it. He would be up and about and back to himself. It would take time, and healing, but he had returned to her from the gates of Heaven and she would guide him with a gentle hand back to her heart on Earth.

  For the next few days she was patient. She went about her work of accepting clothes from her neighbors to darn and sew, for that was her way of bartering for food. No one need know about Daniel’s rebirth yet, she decided. No one had seen them return in the downpour of a dark night, and no one yet needed to know, for she feared someone might come and take him away from her again. She had feared so with the man named Magnus Muldoon. She had thought he sensed that Daniel was in the house, in that bed in the other room, and so she had decided to offer him entry and food thinking that if she did not do so, he might know for sure. But the man had politely declined and gone on his way, and that was the last she’d seen of him.

  At night she lay close against her Daniel and listened to him breathing. Sometimes he awakened with a jolt and tried to sit up, but always he gasped with pain and put a hand to his bandaged head where the oar had struck, and then he slipped away once more. Quinn believed he was not ready yet to rejoin the world, but it would be soon. Until then, she changed his bandages, tended to him, drove the infection out of the arrow wound and sang to his sleeping form at night, by the light of a single white taper.

  Then came the morning, four days after their return from the River of Souls, when she brought a cup of apple cider into the room and found her Daniel sitting up on the pillow with his eyes open. They were hazy and unfocused, his face still mottled with bruises and burdened with pain.

  But he had spoken to her, in a raspy voice, and the words were: “Who are you?”

  Quinn had thought this might be. That her Daniel, newly born in the body of another man, might not know her at first. It was like the fresh awakening of a new soul. And, after all, it was her task to guide him back to her heart.

  “I am your wife, Quinn.” she told him. “And you are my husband, Daniel.”

  “Daniel?” he asked. When he frowned, something hurt his head and he touched the place where the oar had struck. “Daniel who?”

  “Tate.”

  “Daniel Tate,” he repeated, and stared at her with his hazy gray eyes that held hints of twilight blue. He looked around the room as if searching for something familiar. “Why don’t I remember anything?” he asked.

  She was ready for this question, and if it had to be a falsehood at first then so be it. “We were both harmed in an accident. On the river.” Not quite a falsehood, but not exactly the truth.

  “What river? And what was the accident?”

  “The River of Souls,” she said. “It runs not far from here. Your head’s been hurt. We were in a boat that turned over, and you struck your head on a rock. It’s goin’ to take you time to remember me. To remember us,” she corrected.

  He lifted up his hands and examined them, like a child might. “I don’t work with my hands,” he said. “What do I do?”

  “You teach the children readin’ and writin’. Oh, Daniel!” she said, and putting the cup of cider aside she got into bed with him and pressed herself close and felt both his heart beating and her own, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. She wasn’t sure they were tears of joy or tears of sadness, because though Daniel had returned to her as he’d promised she had so much to tell him and teach him and make him understand, and was it wrong that the man named Matthew Corbett had had to
die so that her Daniel might live again?

  She must have sobbed, because he put an arm around her and held her tighter, and he said, “Don’t cry. Please. I want to remember, but…I can’t, just yet. Everything is dark. Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Oh yes, I will.” And she kissed him on the cheek and then on the lips, and he returned her kiss but it was like the shadow of the kisses she had known from Daniel before, and she knew he was still far away and wandering on his journey from death back to life.

  But there was time. There would be much time for the burning of white tapers in the night, and much time for two souls to cleave together once more.

  Daniel Tate awakened in a cold sweat from the occasional nightmare. In them, a masked figure wearing a white suit with gold trim and a white tricorn also trimmed with gold reached out for him with a hand concealed in a flesh-colored fabric glove. In his nightmare Daniel shrank away but his movement was slowed as if mired in mud, and the masked figure of a man turned into an octopus whose tentacles also reached for him in horrific but determined slow-motion.

  Quinn listened to these nightmares, but could never help him understand why he was having them. She just held him close and whispered “I love you, Daniel,” into his ear until he fell again to sleep.

  Came the day he stood up from the bed and walked shakily across the room. Came the day he dressed in clothes he did not remember ever wearing, the clean white shirt just a little too big for him, and came the day Quinn opened the front door and he stepped out onto the porch and drew in the faintly-decomposed scent of Rotbottom. By this time he knew all about the alligators and that he was in the Carolina colony, that he was a teacher and would get back to teaching when he had fully recovered. His appetite had returned, the bandages were removed from his head and the bruises were nearly gone yet he felt deeply bruised within his brain, and things were floating in there like thorns that caught and snagged and left the brief quick flash of images he could not decipher.