Chapter Text
Begging, arguing, and squandering with The Ferryman on the sandy bank of the Maw’s submerged chimney really does wonders for Six’s English but it gets her nowhere closer to her destination. He ignores her and comes and goes. The ship glides aimlessly through the ocean, and in consequence, Six glides aimlessly through the ocean.
Month after month, child after child. Nothing changes in the way she needs it to.
Today though, her tactics are changing.
She sits on the broken television tucked away near the small doorway. The sausage lazily being picked apart in her lap doesn’t satisfy her as much as souls do, but after her initial fun with the guests, Six has realized how gross their colossal corpses, rotting like beached whales in The Maw, end up after a day or two. Now she only drains their life when they’re resigned to odd little rooms away from her usual adventures.
She’s been putting up with this for years now.
After a while, the tiny wooden speck of The Ferryman’s boat appears on the horizon, slowly drifting closer.
The child he helps off this time is wearing a faded wool sweater, many sizes too large. Its hands are clenched into terrified fists as it shuffles forward in the sand.
Six stands up and The Ferryman ignores her. The child does not, it looks up to her with the hopeful solidarity that children even – and sometimes especially – at the worst of times, share.
She’s about to sink her teeth into it but hesitates once she has a good look at it, something reminds her of herself. Mayan eyes, thin black hair, and broad face built for joy but trained in the craft of sorrow; it must be younger than she was when she arrived here.
Six changes her plans and offers a sorry look in the split–second before she grabs the child by the hair and pulls it towards her with habitual violence.
It shrieks.
The Ferryman looks over at her
Six scowls at him. She doesn’t want to murder the child if she can help it, but if it means the difference between her staying on this ship and leaving, she’d kill a thousand. “If you do not take me with you, I take every child you bring here and drown them before they reach the doorway.”
The ferryman eyes her with something less like fear and more like a disappointment.
She snarls and digs a bloodstained shard of glass from her pocket that she’s been using as a knife and holds it up to the child’s neck.
Another helpless whimper from her bait helps this case.
“Six,” He uses her name in a convincing, fatherly tone; a voice that suffers and forgives and finds amusement. “You must understand I made a deal with the mistress. I must bring children here, but, no matter how many try to escape, not a single soul that enters the Maw is allowed to leave.”
“Then it is a good thing,” Six grips the child’s hair tighter. “That I have no soul.”
“Hah,” The ferryman has a way of smiling, or of producing a smile-like effect, where he lifts only the upper lip on the right side of his crooked, fleshy beak, and only for half a second, flashes one yellow incisor. It looks like someone has caught him by the lip on an invisible fishhook and is giving the line a sharp tug. “You haven’t changed.”
“No,”
“Still making quite the nuisance of yourself.”
“I have many things to do.” Six kicks the metal box behind her making the child flinch. “Mainly, solving this television infestation.”
“Ah,” The ferryman smoothes his grey–brown pea coat. “The boy.”
“You know him?”
“There were rumors that our poor, late Lady was secretly in love with her landlocked counterpart in the tower. Naturally, she was. I understand that they are the same person.”
Six nods. “She has terrible taste.”
“So do you, apparently.”
She flushes and shoots him a bone–corroding it's–not–the–same glare. “You know there are rumors that our poor, old ferryman is secretly in love with his sky–locked counterpart to the North.”
“I do not crumble under petty accusations. The North Wind has nothing to do with the Maw.”
“The North Wind has a beloved child here.”
“He has no beloved child.”
Six looks up at him menacingly through the lids of her eyes and tilts the triangular shard of glass up so it glints in the light and draws a thin line of blood at the child’s throat. “Then I am sure you wouldn’t mind it if I went back into the Maw and killed him right after I finish with this one.”
His black eye–sockets widen. Wonder mingles with horror as The Ferryman intensifies his study of Six, searching for some proof of this unlikely claim. Only the sound of waves and the child’s occasional whimper keeps the silence from cutting Six in two, prying into her brain with the scalpal of his judgment.
Finally, he lifts a great, gnarled hand and gestures to the small boat on the Maw’s shore. “Well then, I had better take you where you want to go." He says. “You know? Because there might still be one desk–drawer in the wretched city that doesn’t have a little monster in love with that boy and his mechanical contrivance inside.”
Six gives him a sardonic grin. “I will be right there.”
The Ferryman nods and lumbers to the boat, creaking like an old floorboard with each step.
She lets go of the child’s hair, and, for a split second, it starts to make a break for the door before she catches it by the shoulders. “I am sorry, do not abandon your trust in the Maw’s children because I used you as a bait. They will help you survive.”
It shivers silently for a second and it occurs to her that it might not be able to speak. Although, its quick nod stifles her concern.
“You have a name?”
A slow shake of the head.
“Alright, pick one soon, that will help you survive also.” Six unties the raincoat from her waist and drapes it over the child’s shoulders. She’s been in the Maw for almost five years and the raincoat is about two years too small. For now, she’s settled with tucking her old nightgown into a pair of pants.
The child slips the coat on and croaks out a small “thank you” In a voice that’s long been rusted from inactivity.
“The girl who helped me wore this raincoat. You will grow into it, but that means no dying. And that is a rule.”
“I not dead yet.” It attempts.
Six offers back a toothy grin and ruffles the kid's bangs. “Right. Hide your eyes and hide from the eyes — all of them, but especially the ones on the walls and the ones on the televisions. Eat what you have to when you have to. Do not underestimate the Maw itself. And, most importantly, if you meet a kid that will be doing the riffing and spinning and the contouring of the world for you, they are family, do not lose them.”
The child has stopped shivering so much and grabs her shirt. “Like you now?”
Six is surprised. She stands there for a second before peeling the child’s warm little hands away. “No, we do not get to pick who loves us but you do not want it to be me, another kid already made that mistake.”
A minute blue rectangle of light swims on the tear layer of the child’s dark brown eyes, which are almost completely visible through its bangs.
Six feels a tug of dread at her heart, the realization of how few children manage to survive their first night on this ship. She wants to take it with her, just this one, pathetic little thing.
The Ferryman clears his throat impatiently and she is snapped out of her idealistic reverie. “Alright,” She attempts a grown–up sounding confidence, a wise cruelty. “Stop bothering me before I rip your head off and spit down your throat.”
The child takes a step back and frowns at the change in demeanor as if gauging the magnitude of this situation. It gives her a frown as if to say, would you?
Six bears her teeth in a way that’s meant to reply something like stay and find out.
It stumbles backward a few steps and then turns around and disappears through the Maw’s little backdoor.