Chapter 26: Dante - Where Light Cannot Follow

Virgil and I wander on through the hell he claims doesn't exist. I'm starting to think our definitions of "exist" differ considerably, because as we traverse this landscape—ash blowing off the river in pale clouds that coat my lungs, the screeching cries of creatures I can't name and don't want to see, the ground itself seeming to pulse beneath my feet like something buried and breathing—it feels distinctly real to me.

Despite that, somehow I feel lighter than I have in years.

Perhaps lighter than I ever have.

There's a strange sensation within me. That Virgil is right and this is all constructed from my own mind and I need only realize it deeply enough so I could cease to be in this wretched place. To simply dissolve into that light, the way the child did in the field.

The problem is, Virgil remains firmly convinced he will never reach that light.

And I cannot abandon him.

So we continue our journey, discussing matters serious—the nature of guilt, whether harm done in ignorance carries the same weight as harm done with intent. Philosophical—whether free will exists if our choices are shaped by wounds we didn't choose to receive. And, occasionally, lighthearted.

"I have a confession," I say as we navigate a ridge overlooking a valley of smoldering stone.

I’m not sure why I offer this. In my life, I would have dismissed the impulse as a waste of conversational energy. But something has shifted in me. The walls I built so meticulously, brick by brick over decades, have developed cracks I no longer feel compelled to repair. And I find myself wanting Virgil to know these small, hidden pieces of me. Not because they matter strategically. Simply because he might find them interesting.

And maybe simply because I want him to know me. The real me. Whoever that is.

"Oh?" Virgil glances at me with that curious tilt of his head.

"I watch films. Watched, I suppose. It was my single indulgence. Every Sunday evening, alone in my apartment, I'd select something, usually old, usually considered a classic by modern standards.” I glance at him. “Though I suppose to you, anything with moving pictures qualifies as shockingly contemporary.”

We share a smile at that.

“Anyway, I’d pour a glass of wine and watch. An hour and a half, sometimes two, with absolutely no intention of productivity. No analysis for professional application. No networking value. Just…” I search for the word. “Enjoyment. Pure indulgence.”

Virgil's smile is slow and genuine. "Why do you say this as though confessing a crime?"

"Lingering guilt, I suppose, from a life I thought I could run with the efficiency of a trading floor."

I smile a bit self-consciously at how foolish this indulgence felt. But that life, that perspective, is behind me now. Its rigid metrics, its relentless productivity, its insistence that every moment justify itself in measurable returns. I walk at Virgil's side instead, through a realm that defies measurement, and I find I don't miss the efficiency at all.

"What was your favorite film?” he asks.

I consider the question. "Casablanca, perhaps. Something about watching people ruin themselves for love or art. I found it—" I pause, searching for honesty. “Bizarre. Comforting, even, maybe. To know that even fictional people made catastrophic choices."

Virgil laughs, and the sound carries across the desolate terrain like something that doesn't belong here. Something alive.

I spend the next hour recounting the entire plot of Casablanca in meticulous detail. Virgil listens with the rapt attention of a scholar discovering a new text, interrupting only to ask clarifying questions about airplanes and Nazis. By the time I reach the ending, he looks genuinely mournful that Rick lets Ilsa go.

With each conversation, I find myself returning to what I told him on the hill. That I don’t fear the light—maybe even long for it—but I wish for more time with him first.

We make our way down toward the river, the path narrowing as we descend into a valley. Virgil grows quiet, that careful mask sliding onto his face like armor being fastened into place.

It makes me aware again. Alert. I'd nearly forgotten that we wander not through some unpleasant neighborhood best avoided after dark, but through a realm with real consequences. Gods and power. Demons eager to prove themselves.

At the river's edge, a small dark boat bobs against the muck of the shore. The water itself is wrong—too thick, too still, carrying with it the faint sound of whispers I can't quite parse.

"Charon." Virgil speaks the name with weight and intention, the way he does when wielding it as an anchor, a summoning.

The figure in the boat turns. His black robes shift, catching some sourceless light, and his face becomes visible.

It takes all my fortitude not to step back.

His face is destroyed—ragged strips of flesh clinging to an ivory skull gone dry and ancient. The eye sockets are empty, absolute darkness pooling where sight should be. He regards Virgil first, then turns that ruined visage toward me. It's impossible to read a creature with no expressions, no features save that bone mask and the void behind it.

Then he turns back to Virgil. "It hath been long since last thou crossed, Virgil." His voice is the creak of old wood, of coffin lids, of things that should stay closed.

"I wish to cross the river." Virgil is as unemotional as I've ever seen him. Not the performed boredom he displayed before the demons at the fire, this is something harder. Immovable.

"A soul hath clung to thee."

"I bring him with me."

Charon fixes that rotted face in my direction again, and I swear I feel the phantom pounding of my nonexistent heart.

I trust Virgil. Truly, I do.

Yet I'm hoping what he wants to show me isn't this boat on this river piloted by hands made of splintered bone and hanging flesh.

"I ferry not for souls." Charon's voice carries no negotiation, only fact. "The damned alone cross here."

"You can ferry whoever you choose," Virgil replies calmly. "I happen to know there are no rules restricting your passengers. And—" He hesitates, turning his face from me just enough to block my view of his expression. "As always, I am willing to pay."

"This boat ride costs?" I ask.

Charon shifts back toward me. “Is anything free, soul?"

Nothing is free.

That's what I would have said once. Before the loops, the genesis, the journey. Before the confrontation with my father. Before the near-drowning. Before being humbled in ways I didn't know I needed.

Before Virgil.

Before he held me with arms that cannot hold, listened to me like I was worth saving, saw something within me I didn't know existed.

I don't answer.

Virgil speaks instead. "I'll pay well."

The ferryman replies, shifting into what I assume is an ancient version of Greek, though it scarcely matters. I would have missed the words regardless.

Because something else has entered my mind.

Mr. Dante. Constance's voice slides through my consciousness. Virgil may attempt to ignore me, evade me, but I wonder if he knows our connection allows me to find you as well.

I shiver, and Virgil shoots me a look. I don't reply. I try not to think at all.

Constance's laughter echoes through my skull. You may both run. But there is no path in this realm that does not lead back to him eventually.

Suddenly, I sense her, her mind pressing against the edges of mine. The chaos of it. The hunger. Oh, the endless, gnawing hunger. For more. For food. For pleasure. For recognition. For power.

For us.

She's searching. Closing in. And for a specific purpose.

She searches on his behalf.

We have to cross this river. We can't stall here. I hadn't noticed during our descent, but the valley has narrowed around us, the only path back up through a single passage. If Constance planned to corner us, she couldn't have chosen better ground.

She'd known. She'd known we were heading this direction and waited for us to reach the bottleneck.

Her chilling laughter echoes through my mind again, triumphant and patient.

Virgil frowns, reacting to something in his own head, perhaps. Her voice in his mind as well.

"He would not look kindly upon me ferrying this soul." Charon switches back to English, speaking like a creaking door, each word reluctant. “All know he hunts for you both.”

Virgil glances back at me, desperation flickering in his gaze. "This was foolish," he whispers. "We should turn back, but⁠—"

He looks up the path.

No one is there. Yet.

But I understand what his silence implies. Constance waits above, ready to catch us like fish driven into a net.

A realization settles on me. Perhaps I regret the life I lived. But Virgil said no experience is truly wasted. And there is one skill I've mastered.

"If you had no interest in negotiating," I say, stepping toward Charon, "you wouldn't still be talking."

He turns that bone-and-shredded-flesh face toward me. I force myself not to react.

I continue, “You're drawing out this exchange to increase the perceived value. Standard tactic. We're already committed, and you know we need to cross. Name your price."

Charon goes very still.

For a moment, I think I've misjudged him. Mistaken silence for calculation, calculation for interest. The river laps against the hull of his boat, thick and sluggish, carrying bone fragments and debris past us like refuse in a current that has never known mercy.

Then the ferryman laughs.

"A unique soul, this one." He addresses Virgil, not me, though his empty sockets seem fixed in my direction. "Wherever didst thou find him?"

"Our time is limited," Virgil states.

"An interesting concept, time." Charon wraps those ragged, mostly-bone fingers around his oar. "Very well. Thou knowest what I desire."

"No." It's the first time I've heard Virgil sound entirely immovable. Whatever price Charon asks must be tremendous.

"Then ‘tis my reply as well."

Virgil's jaw tightens. His fingers curl into fists at his sides. I lean toward him and lower my voice. "What does he want?"

Virgil stares down at the pebble-littered mud beneath his stained sneakers. When he speaks, his voice is barely audible. "He wants Musa."

"I thought Musa wasn't here."

"He wants a memory of him." Virgil lifts his face, and the expression there is a knife slipped between ribs, precise and devastating. "My few good memories are all I have to survive this place, Dante. They're all that keeps me—" He stops. Shakes his head. "I cannot."

"I understand," I say.

Because I do. If I'd spent two thousand years in this decay and possessed only a handful of recollections filled with warmth and light, I would clutch them like a drowning man grips driftwood. He'd told me himself that he longed to live again solely to gather more memories, to carry more light into this darkness.

I won't ask him to surrender what little light remains.

I turn back to the ferryman, who watches us with those empty sockets. Impossible to read interest or disgust or anything at all in that absence.

Constance's presence pulses in my mind like a drumbeat growing closer. She's giddy now, certain of her success, so confident in Charon's stubbornness that she doesn't bother hiding her anticipation. She wants me to feel her closing in.

Virgil's lips part. He's about to speak. About to sacrifice something else for my sake.

He has given so much. And what have I offered? He plans to lead me to that light, that beauty and peace and joy, and leave me there. Asking nothing in return.

"Take one of my memories," I say before he can speak.

"Dante, no⁠—"

"It's all right." I meet Virgil’s eyes. "Truly."

The misery on his face etches deep lines across his brow, carves brackets around his frown. He looks older suddenly. More fragile.

Charon clacks those mostly-bone fingers against his oar. "Which memory dost thou offer, soul? I accept not the dull and faded ones, and I have dealt with enough minds through the ages that thou shalt not deceive me."

"I don't intend to deceive you. You may have any memory you choose."

Virgil starts to protest, but Charon's voice cuts over him. "Any memory I desire?"

I smile. "Yes. But I have stipulations."

Charon only stares, but something shifts in his posture. Interest, perhaps. Or amusement.

"Dante," Virgil warns.

I shake my head slightly and continue.

"The memory may be no longer than thirty minutes of mortal time, as perceived by me at the moment it was lived. One uninterrupted memory—no fragments, no stitching together of separate moments. It may not be a memory that formed a foundational belief, skill, or framework that shaped my personality. It must be from my mortal life, not any events that have transpired since my death. The memory will be extracted in full at the moment of crossing, no deferred collection. And the exchange concludes the transaction completely. You guarantee both of us passage across the entire span of this river, at this moment, until we have safely stepped onto the opposite shore."

The silence stretches.

The river whispers against the boat. Somewhere above us, I feel Constance drawing closer, her anticipation sharpening.

Then Charon chuckles, a dry, rattling sound like stones in a dead man's throat.

"Done."

He steps forward, extending a skeletal hand. Sealing the deal.

I hesitate for one heartbeat. Then I grasp it.

His touch is cold and wrong, slimy where flesh still clings, rough where bone protrudes, the texture of something that should be buried and isn't. At the contact, a sensation rises from somewhere deep within me. Powerful. Warm. There's perhaps a breath of laughter, a name whispered against skin, a scent, something clean and masculine, soap and cedar and⁠—

Then it's done.

Something is missing.

I can feel the absence in a way I can't describe. It’s not pain, not emptiness, just... a space where something used to be. Like a bubble that's popped. Like a word I've forgotten and will never remember I've forgotten.

Virgil has appeared at my side, so close I should be able to touch him.

Another second passes. The disorientation lingers, though. Whatever was taken is gone entirely. I'll never sense it again. Won't even know what to mourn.

Virgil is frowning at me, concern carved into every line of his face. But Charon has already shoved his boat toward the water.

When he turns back, I startle, my muscles seizing.

The ferryman has a face now. Fully formed. Bronze skin stretched over strong bones, a thick shock of raven-black hair, gleaming green eyes that hold temporary hunger satisfied for this day.

"Well?" His voice has changed, too. It’s richer, more resonant. "Dost thou wish to claim thy end of the bargain, or not?"

"Yes," Virgil says quietly. He must realize I'm too disoriented to speak. "Come, Dante. Let's not render your sacrifice one made in vain."

His eyes meet mine, and there's so much there—apology, gratitude, and something else. Something I'm too dizzy from loss to name.

"I'm well," I manage.

He only shakes his head and guides me toward the boat.

The vessel rocks as we step aboard, settling into the dark water. Charon pushes off from the shore with one smooth motion, and the bank begins to recede.

I glance back.

Constance runs down to the water's edge.

She watches us with her head slightly tilted, that polished composure firmly in place, and she's smiling.

Not the smile of someone who's lost her quarry.

The smile of someone who knows exactly where we're going.

"I'll see you soon, Mr. Dante," she calls across the water, her voice carrying clearly despite the distance. Then she breaks through into my mind again. Do enjoy Virgil's little sanctuary while you can.

The boat slides into the dark, and her figure shrinks against the shore, but her smile stays with me, patient, knowing, triumphant.