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ONCE, THERE WAS A FERRY ON A LONELY GRAY lake on a lonely gray shore It creaked in the storms and the wind, and its tether stretched A man with a hunch on his back poled it back and forth, clothed all in rags

Once, there was a lonely island in a lonely lake, and on that lonely island was a wo on her skin, and she walked the shore, and the eyes that blinked on the gray lakeside wept for her But the woers and looked into the s, for herman with red skin like fine wood careen-black hair But she could not be consoled, and finally stepped onto the cracked boards of the dock and opened her throat to call the ferry She called until her voice died on the wind, dry as a molted skin Please, she called Please come back

It did not concern the ferryman if the lake folk needed him But he could not help but hear the snake-wo his bones wet and his lizards irritable, he let the ferry drift as it wanted to—for sometimes in his loneliness the man believed the ferry as alive as he, and he spoke to it, and listened to its troubles, which had ae But the ferry now spoke of a voice pulling at it like a pole, and it longed to go toward that voice, that snake-song which flicked its tongue at the poor ferry in the fog They floated out to the island with the beach of eyes, and there was the wo hair wet and plastered to her hips, her eyes dark and needful

“I want to see her,” she said, before the ferry

“That is impossible”

“No, it is not You ferry anyone, if they pay the toll I will pay In the world, in the Sun, in the blood-riddled world, olden fork and laughing at a joke the cook has told her I want to see her” The wo “Just once”

“And what do you think you can pay?”

“You took the huldra’s tail”

“I did”

“Will you take my hair?”

The ferryht, and not his habit But he should, perhaps, have refused the child in the first place, and to becoish now seee, and he had seen ht perhaps he had tired of therotesque amputations

“I will take it,” he said slowly, his voice echoing not at all in the thick fog, “but you ree to my terms”

The woray

“I will take your hair as two tolls—across, and back You oose-woman went, into the world to live and eat bread and dance You must come back You are not like her Go to your child, just once, and return to me, to the lonely lake and the lonely shore This is all that is right and proper”

The woreen-black hair into her hand With the sharp edge of the ferry-bones, she severed it at her neck, and stepped on board the ferry It sighed under her, glad in ays nails and wood can be glad They drifted into the lake, and Z men with red skin like a ship’s hull stared after the dwindling raft She raised her hand, and the mist closed over her