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The Lake of Death was usually silent. The dead don't talk, which meant Mithra didn't have anyone to talk to.
So when someone showed up, and that someone wasn't Tiletta, Mithra met them at the shore.
It was another wizard with silver hair and red eyes, dressed in all white, like pure snow. He looked like a young man, but he felt like a boy. He was about half Mithra's own age or less, over a century old but not by much.
"It's so quiet here," the boy commented, in the same way Tiletta sometimes did when talking about the weather.
"There's a village at the other end of the lake,” Mithra told him. “They’ve been quiet these last few days though."
The boy pouted and complained: "Just came from there myself. Teeny tiny little place, boring, and nothing else for miles around."
That was all accurate enough, and not Mithra's problem. He shrugged. "There'll be a different village there in a few decades. Perhaps you'll like the next one more."
The boy didn't respond, so that was that. Mithra turned to leave, but then--
"Hey, did you know? The humans there told me the elders forbid them from talking to the ferryman. Verboten," he told Mithra. "Talking to the ferryman is verboten."
Those were a lot of words Mithra didn't know. Maybe Tiletta had used them before. He didn't remember if she had. Mithra frowned; he really couldn't remember if she had.
Then the boy smiled at him. It was like sunshine on a clear day, warmth in the winter when there ought to be none. (The humans never smiled at Mithra. They mostly wept.)
The boy chattered, though Mithra wasn’t quite listening anymore. "You're doing them an awfully big favor, but they treat you like janitorial staff, with a magic stone for a meager tip. Do they ever thank you for what you do for them? Taking away their dead? I bet they don’t. Are you okay with that? Don’t you ever want–"
"I don’t understand," Mithra said, confused.
"...What don't you understand?" the boy asked, perhaps just as confused at the response.
"You," Mithra answered. "What is--" he replayed the words spoken to him in his memory. "Ferryman?"
"It's what you are. Your boat is a ferry, and you are a ferryman.” The boy giggled. (It was a nice sound. Maybe if he squeezed the boy he would hear the nice sound again.) “Poor, poor ferryman, you, sailing the dead to the frozen north beyond."
"...I see." Mithra repeated the word in his mind. Ferryman, himself. "I also don’t understand why you’re talking to me."
“Because it’s…” The boy’s smile disappeared. That was something that often happened, when people spoke to Mithra. “It’s fun?”
“Is it? I see.”
The boy tilted his head in thought. He stared at Mithra for so long that Mithra started to wonder if there was something he was supposed to say.
Then:
"Hey, hey," the boy said. His lips curled. His eyes narrowed. "I wanna play."
"If you wish." The lake made for a terrible playground, but Mithra wasn't one to judge. "I hope you have fun."
"Nooo." The boy frowned, which didn't suit him, Mithra thought. He liked the smile much more. "You. With me. Play."
"Come again?"
"Play a game with me."
No one had wanted to play with Mithra before. Ever. No one else had ever had the opportunity, much less the interest.
"What kind of game?" Mithra asked.
That smile came back, like how the sun always did in the morning.
"Don't know any,” the boy admitted. “I was hoping you had ideas."
"...None, I'm sorry. What do you do for fun?"
"Read, sometimes, but that's not a game.” The boy swayed back and forth, lost in thought. He looked to the far shore. “I kill people?"
Mithra did too, but, "You can't kill me."
The smile brightened, almost blindingly. "Sure I can."
"You can't. It's not possible."
"You can't kill me either!" He made a face and mimicked Mithra's words and voice: "It's not possible."
Unless the boy was Oz in disguise, Mithra was pretty sure he could kill him, actually. Even at a few centuries old, the list of wizards that would give him trouble was already a very short one. He looked at the boy with skepticism, and he received a delighted giggle in response.
"I thought of a game," the boy said excitedly, like sharing a secret. "We try to kill each other. First to die loses."
"We can only play that game once."
"You really think so?" the boy asked, his eyes bright and innocent. "Then we just have to make it extra fun."
Mithra stepped closer, then closer again, and he leaned down to sniff the boy’s slender neck. For a moment, Mithra lingered at his collarbone, perceiving. The boy didn’t move, but it was patient, completely unlike how deer froze in place when Mithra went hunting. The boy was merely waiting.
His smile was like sunshine, but he smelled like blood. He smelled all over like blood, and in his core like death, though his clothes were perfectly clean.
Mithra blinked. His gaze went from clouded to focused. He looked at the boy, really looked, and he knew he’d never seen him before. He’d remember a face like that, that invoked a feeling like this.
"Alright then," Mithra agreed.
A skull appeared in Mithra's hand, and a briefcase (of all things) appeared in the boy's. A dark energy crackled in the air between them.
The boy giggled again. It was a pleasant, pretty sound, all soft around the edges. "Good luck!"
"I don't believe I'll need it, but thank you. You too."
It occurred to him only after he sent his first attack that he hadn't asked the boy for his name. It didn't really matter. He could just be the smiling boy. Mithra had a spot for him, next to the dragon bones, where the smiling boy could stay.
"< Arsim. >"
-
The first kill, if it could be called that, was a clean shot through the heart. Blood sprayed across the snow behind the boy. Bits of bone and lungs scattered like shrapnel.
The boy crumpled to the ground, a puppet with its strings cut. Mithra couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed that he died so easily--until he got back up again.
Usually, when wizards' insides ended up on their outsides, they turned into stone. Standing back up in one piece wasn't unheard of, but it was still unexpected.
Mithra felt his blood run a little warmer. His eyes gleamed, like a glint of light upon cut emeralds. The game wasn't over yet.
The second kill--and Mithra considered them kills because if it walks like a dog and barks like a dog--was face to face, barely an inch apart.
Mithra's hands wrapped around the boy's neck, a frail body pressed beneath him into the snowy ground. It was strange, he marveled, to see human anatomy up close like this, with the body still warm, all pulsing organs wrapped in supple skin. Such pale skin too, and blood red eyes where sunken hollows should have been.
It was intimate, close, in the way that only watching the life seep out of a person could be.
Mithra let go. He waited.
Mithra watched as the boy's face turned from pale blue back into porcelain white. He drew breath again, as Mithra thought he might.
"I think," Mithra said slowly, "this game is rigged."
"But--" the boy gasped for air, "is it fun?"
He thought about it. Mithra knew the word, fun, but he didn't have anything else truly fun to compare it to. He felt warm despite the cold, so he guessed it was fun. "I suppose so."
Mithra peered at the boy. The boy was smiling, but so far, he was almost always smiling. Maybe he was just a smiley sort of guy.
"But is it fun?" Mithra asked the boy, the same words asked to him. He gestured vaguely. He offered his best attempt at an explanation: "You. This."
"The fighting?" The boy's voice was thin and reedy, his windpipe still healing. (Mithra wanted to make him tea to soothe the throat, but he liked the brittle sound of it now too.) "Or the dying?"
"The dying,” Mithra answered. “I can tell you like the fighting."
"What do you care?"
"If it's not fun, we should pick a different game."
The smile thinned. "Is killing fun?"
Mithra thought about it. He liked hunting, and he liked fighting too. But killing? Death was the end of the parts that made his blood sing. After the killing, the fighting ended, and his blood ran cold again. Killing was just another part of living.
"Killing you, yes," Mithra answered, honestly.
“What? Don’t mock me.”
“But I’m not.”
Wheezing slightly, the boy scowled and said, "< Cuare Moritor. >"
A dog leapt out of the suitcase. Upon reflection, it had three heads, and one of the heads had latched onto Mithra's arm. Upon further reflection, it didn't seem correct for a giant dog to fit inside a suitcase.
“< Arsim. >” From out of the snow and the ice, Mithra called forth a small army’s worth of skeletons. There were more of them than necessary, scarier and shinier than he normally bothered. It was an impressive display. He thought they looked pretty cool.
He didn’t get much time to appreciate his handiwork. The dog tried to eat his arm, so Mithra tried to eat the dog, and one thing led to another, which was all very distracting.
The third kill was from a distance. Mithra was too busy wrestling his arm back from the dog to see it happen. Once his arm was free, he encased the dog in ice and dragged it back to its owner.
By that time, the boy was already nursing his grievous wounds, surrounded by the blasted remains of the reanimated skeletons. He glanced at Mithra and kicked his suitcase open. The dog disappeared back into it.
“What’s your name?” Mithra asked.
“What?”
Slower, clearer, Mithra repeated, “What is your name?”
The boy frowned, brow furrowed, distinctly displeased. “What?” he said again.
Instead of repeating himself a third time, Mithra said, “< Arsim. >”
Maybe his ears had been put back together faulty, so Mithra smashed the boy’s skull in with a blast of ice. That made four kills.
In time, his head rebuilt itself. First, grey matter, then white bone, then pale skin and lastly silver hair. Good as new. The boy drew breath, and then his eyes flew open in an outrage.
“You–” he glared at Mithra, exasperated. “I was trying to remember!”
“Oh.” Mithra forgot things just about all the time, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that other people might have that problem too. He thought people were supposed to remember their names, but that wasn’t really an excuse for murder. “…I’m sorry. Please, take your time.”
The boy really did take his time. Mithra waited.
“Owen,” he answered finally. “I think I’m Owen.”
“You ‘think’? You don’t know?”
“Beats me. How would I know?” Owen looked away, then he looked back. “Do you have a name, ferryman?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Owen stared at him for a while, which was pleasant. He liked having his attention. He basked in it. Eventually, Owen asked, “Well, what’s your name then?”
“Mithra,” he answered, proudly because he remembered it so easily. That made him much better than Owen.
“Mithra,” Owen repeated softly, low in his throat.
“Yes. The ferryman, and also stronger than you.”
Annoyance flickered in Owen’s eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I am Mithra, and I am stronger than you,” Mithra explained patiently. This was important. If Mithra wasn’t strong, then he wasn’t anything. “See?”
To demonstrate, Mithra unceremoniously snapped Owen’s neck.
-
Mithra rowed his boat northward to the far shore. The boat was called a ferry, he had learned, and he was the ferryman. He’d learned a lot today.
Owen was in the boat too, in a place of honor atop a pile of corpses. Mithra had made him a makeshift pillow of bundled cloth, just in case he felt any discomfort while dead.
When Owen woke up, there was a short-lived moment where he looked sweet and harmless as he was slowly coming to. Then Mithra watched him try to flee, magic furling and unfurling around him, with the spirits called to attention.
Quietly, a bit like scolding a puppy, Mithra said, < Arsim. >
Owen froze still, not of his own volition. Mithra felt him struggle against his magic, to no avail.
He looked at Mithra in disbelief, and then he pouted. "Could you have done that the whole time?"
A little apologetically, Mithra replied, "Yes. Like I said, I’m stronger than you. You’re weak.”
“I’m not weak.” Owen’s magic thrashed harmlessly, but Mithra paid it no mind.
“You are very weak, but it was still a fun game. I think I’ve won this round."
“What? I’m still alive. You haven’t won anything yet.”
Mithra stopped rowing. The boat drifted forward harmlessly through the ice floes, while Mithra watched Owen struggle rather pitifully against the magic binding him.
He set down the oars neatly within the boat. With his hands free, he tore out Owen’s throat.
Gently, like holding a butterfly, Mithra touched the wounds as Owen’s flesh stitched itself back together under his fingertips. He traced the red skin and purple bruises as they faded from Owen’s neck. All that remained was pale, unblemished skin that reminded him of fresh snow. Owen didn’t stop him, though it wasn’t like he could.
Light returned to Owen’s eyes. It was his favorite magic, Mithra decided, besides for his own. He’d never met someone that came back after the light died from their eyes.
“I’ve won,” Mithra said firmly, “but I could kill you more times. I would kill you as many times as you’d like.”
“I…” Owen looked away, but Mithra grabbed him by the jaw to turn his face back to Mithra. His fingers left bloody streaks across Owen’s cheeks. The blood didn’t hide a pink flush that spread across Owen’s face. “Fine. You win, this time.”
Mithra smiled, then he laughed. It was a sweet, boyish sound. He sounded like he really had just spent all day playing a harmless game.
He lifted the magical restraints from Owen, who sat up gingerly. Owen massaged his throat. It’d been through a lot today: strangling, snapping, and ripping.
“Hey… ferryman, you. Mithra.”
“Yes?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” he answered as he sat back down and took up his oars again.
“What?” Owen asked. He was still smiling, so Mithra figured his mood was alright. “But I don’t wanna.”
“Is that so?” Mithra shrugged. He wasn’t used to having people tell him what they wanted or didn’t want. It didn’t seem like relevant information. “I see. Well, you’re coming with me regardless.”
“Why would I do that? It’s cold, and I’m hungry, and I don’t even see a house over there.” Owen scowled and made one salient point: “Are you at all prepared to entertain a guest? Do you have food?”
“I…” Mithra needed to eat too, so of course he had food. He had charcoal.
“For example, I want candied apples,” Owen said. “Do you have apples?”
He didn’t have apples, but there were villages with orchards scattered across the Northern country. “I can go anywhere. I can get apples,” Mithra answered, but that admittedly wasn’t the same as already having apples.
“Candied apples,” Owen specified.
“Candied apples,” Mithra promised, whatever that meant. He’d have to ask Tiletta next time she visited. “What else do you want?”
Owen made a face at him. “How would I know? I like… tea, and sweet cake, the gooey kind that’s filled with sticky blood and pus.”
“If you want cake, there were people that make cake in the village on the other side of the lake.” It was an old village on the verge of failing the test of time, but they did make food. “So you shouldn’t have killed everyone in the village.”
Owen fell quiet. Mithra raised an eyebrow at him expectantly, but the silence continued.
Finally, Owen said, “I didn’t kill anyone.” Owen smiled innocently, as if Mithra hadn’t smelled the blood and death on him already. “That was all the work of humans.”
Mithra sighed. “Well, if it weren’t for this ‘work of humans,’ there would be cake on the other side of the lake.”
“Well, maybe. Hmph.” Owen sulked, then he peered curiously at Mithra. “Hey… Mithra? Didn’t you say you could go anywhere? Could you go somewhere where there’s cake?”
“What? Why? I’m not an errand boy,” Mithra answered.
“Oh. So you can’t go anywhere.”
“I can go anywhere. I can go anywhere in an instant.” Mithra’s mouth thinned, his brow furrowed. “Owen. Stay.”
“No. I’m not a dog–”
Mithra tore a hole through Owen’s chest, and Owen crumpled to the floor of the boat, alongside all the other corpses. Sometimes the bodies got leaky, so Mithra picked Owen up and laid him gently on top of the corpse pile. It was a more suitable place.
With a quiet < Arsim >, his door appeared, and Mithra left in search of cake.
-
He went through all the local villages, but they didn’t have any cakes that looked strong or cool enough to be worth his time. He expanded his search to other countries, ones with cities that had bakeries and cafes.
Mithra returned with candy and apples and someone else’s three-tiered wedding cake. He tossed them at Owen. They candy landed with a pitter patter, the apples with thunks, and the cake plopped into Owen’s lap, losing its artfully crafted shape.
He threw a teapot at Owen too, who drew his breath of life just in time to catch the pot with magic. Gingerly, Owen sat up. The hole in his chest was healed, his porcelain skin perfectly intact.
Muttering something about the state of his clothes (nothing magic couldn’t clean), Owen grabbed a handful of the cake and had a taste. A slow smile spread across his face, like the first rays of dawn.
“Are you an idiot? I said I wanted cake with blood and pus,” Owen complained, but he scooped up a second more generous handful to eat. A sunny smile spread across his face. “Well, it’s not the worst I’ve ever had.”
Mithra stared at the smile. He didn't know what to make of it. It was radiant and lively, even though Owen had been cold and motionless, nothing more than a corpse just moments ago. Now, he was happily eating cake out of his hands.
The dead had never really come back for him, not even with his best efforts.
“What?” Owen asked. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Mithra answered. “Nothing at all.”
He sat down in the boat and picked up the oars again. He returned to rowing them to the far shore, the place where the dead go. It was usually a task he handled alone, but this time, he watched Owen smile happily, eating cake by the handful from atop a pile of dead bodies.
It was, he decided, a nice change of pace.