American Gods

The boat came close to the shore. The pilot leaned on its pole. Its head turned slowly, until it was facing Shadow. “Hello,” it said, without moving its long beak. The voice was male, and, like everything else in Shadow’s afterlife so far, familiar. “Come on board. You’ll get your feet wet, I’m afraid, but there’s not a thing can be done about that. These are old boats, and if I come in closer I could rip out the bottom.”

Shadow took off the shoes he had not been aware he was wearing, and stepped out into the water. It came halfway up his calves, and was, after the initial shock of wetness, surprisingly warm. He reached the boat, and the pilot put down a hand, and pulled him aboard. The reed boat rocked a little, and water splashed over the low sides of it, and then it steadied.

The pilot poled off away from the shore. Shadow stood there and watched, his pants-legs dripping.

“I know you,” he said to the creature at the prow.

“You do indeed,” said the boatman. The oil lamp which hung at the front of the boat burned more fitfully, and the smoke from the lamp made Shadow cough. “You worked for me. I’m afraid we had to inter Lila Goodchild without you.” The voice was fussy and precise.

The smoke stung Shadow’s eyes. He wiped the tears away with his hand, and, through the smoke, he thought he saw a tall man, in a suit, with gold-rimmed spectacles. The smoke cleared and the boatman was once more a half-human creature with the head of a river-bird.

“Mister Ibis?”

“Good to see you, Shadow,” said the creature, with Mr. Ibis’s voice. “Do you know what a psychopomp is?”

Shadow thought he knew the word, but it had been a long time. He shook his head.

“It’s a fancy term for an escort,” said Mr. Ibis. “We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not ever have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead.”

“I thought this was the world of the dead,” said Shadow.

“No. Not per se. It’s more of a preliminary.”

The boat slipped and slid across the mirror-surface of the underground pool. The bird-head of the creature at the prow stared ahead. And then Mr. Ibis said, without moving its beak, “You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color.”

“You can’t,” said Shadow. “Can you?” The echoes whispered his words back at him from across the pool.

“What you have to remember,” said Mr. Ibis, testily, “is that life and death are different sides of the same coin. Like the heads and tails of a quarter.”

“And if I had a double-headed quarter?”

“You don’t. They only belong to fools, and gods.”

Shadow had a frisson, then, as they crossed the dark water. He imagined he could see the faces of children staring up at him reproachfully from beneath the water’s glassy surface: their faces were waterlogged and softened, their blind eyes clouded. There was no wind in that underground cavern to disturb the black surface of the lake.

“So I’m dead,” said Shadow. He was getting used to the idea. “Or I’m going to be dead.”

“We are on our way to the Hall of the Dead. I requested that I be the one to come for you.”

“Why?”

“I’m a psychopomp. I like you. You were a hard worker. Why not?”

“Because…” Shadow marshaled his thoughts. “Because I never believed in you. Because I don’t know much about Egyptian mythology. Because I didn’t expect this. What happened to Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates?”

The long-beaked white head shook from side to side, gravely. “It doesn’t matter that you didn’t believe in us,” said Mr. Ibis. “We believed in you.”

The boat touched bottom. Mr. Ibis stepped off the side, into the pool, and told Shadow to do the same. Mr. Ibis took a line from the prow of the boat, and passed Shadow the lantern to carry. It was in the shape of a crescent moon. They walked ashore, and Mr. Ibis tied the boat to a metal ring set in the rock floor. Then he took the lamp from Shadow and walked swiftly forward, holding the lamp high as he walked, throwing vast shadows across the rock floor and the high rock walls.

“Are you scared?” asked Mr. Ibis.

“Not really.”

“Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand.”

Shadow was not scared. He was interested, and apprehensive, but no more. He was not scared of the shifting darkness, nor of being dead, nor even of the dog-headed creature the size of a grain silo who stared at them as they approached. It growled, deep in its throat, and Shadow felt his neck-hairs prickle.

“Shadow,” it said. “Now is the time of judgment.”

Shadow looked up at the creature. “Mister Jacquel?” he said.