Fog and frogs

It was a foggy night unlike others, it was ‘the’ night. The blackness of the new moon made the night more intense then one could expect. This unlit night, Maurits the ferryman knew he had to wait for the familiar tolling of the bell. It was always like that. The bell would toll in the middle of the night, and Maurits would get to his ferry, and as he waited, the ferry became heavier and heavier until the water nearly flowed into the boat. Then he rowed away in the fog, alone on the water.
After what seemed hours, he would reach the other side of the stream and his invisible load would make landfall and leave the ferry. Maurits would row back to his house and find a bag of gold on his table. It was every time like that. People considered him a rich man.
And so he waited.
And the bell did toll.
And Maurits left his house and walked to his ferry. He sat there and waited, and the invisible things got in the ferry as well. Maurits heard Cunera say it were the souls of the dead he had to row across Lokkia, the river of Death. Maybe it was. At least it was rewarded with lots of gold, so he rowed across the river and back, once a year, every year again. He wasn’t afraid, why should he?

And so he didn’t notice the light on the river, coming closer in the fog. Another light, to his left, stayed where it was. Maurits looked up, a little surprised. There shouldn’t be any lights on the river. Could it be the stream had taken him to the city of Rotta? Or another place where lights shone in the night, to direct the boatmen to the right side of sandbanks and shallow places in the water?
As he thought about it, Maurits didn’t notice he had left his regular path across the river. He noticed that as he hit the sandbank. Something splashed in the water, but nothing was visible - it sounded like a frog, could have been something else too.
What to do? Maurits considered this for a while. He should get his load to the other side of the river, and quick, if possible before dawn. Then he heard a voice calling out to him in the fog.
“Hail, ferryman! Stay where you are! I can save you!”
“Who are you?” Maurits shouted to the fog.
“It’s me, Geert! Stay where you are, now you’re stranded!”
”Geert?” asked Maurits, “Geert the Shipwrecker from Rotta? Rotta Geert?”
“Yes, the same indeed,” Geert smiled as he reached the ferry. “So tell me, ferryman, what are you doing late at night on the river without someone to take across?”
Maurits didn’t answer.
“Where are you going then? Are you going to take the gold you have hidden? You must have lots of it. Where do you bury it then? Under cover of the fog, you thought you were invisible, but I noticed you; I heard your rowing far across the water and I thought, hey, what the heck, I’ll just make him row on the sandbank, and then rob him of all his gold. What do you say about that?”
Maurits still didn’t answer. He watched as Geert climbed in the ferry.
“It’s cold this night,” Geert noticed. He sat himself on one of the banks. “You better start rowing before you catch a cold, ferryman.”
And Maurits started rowing into the fog to the other side that would be quite different that night. He knew the invisible were still on the ferry, and he wanted to bring them where they belonged: to the other side. He rowed and rowed and it might have gotten him to the edge of the world, but finally he hit the shore.
The ferry got lighter, the invisible disappeared. It was still dark and foggy.

“So, where are we now? Is this where you bury your gold? Come on, ferryman, show me where the gold is.”
“There is no gold here,” Maurits told him.
Geert just laughed and his voice filled the silence of the place. He got out of the ferry and looked a bit around in the light of the ferrylamp. He noticed some footprints in the mud and started to follow them. Then, he looked over his shoulder and called to Maurits again.
“Hey you, Maurits, come on, show me the gold. I have a knife and I’m not afraid to use it - I’ve used it many times before.” He showed the large dagger to Maurits and did a few steps towards the ferry. The dagger glimmered in the gloomy orange lamplight. Maurits was afraid to get out of the ferry, but he was more afraid of the blade and so he walked in front of Geert into the unknown lands, the ferrylamp in his trembling hands. It was still dark, and foggy, and the footprints faded soon.
“I’m telling you,” said Maurits to the infamous shipwrecker, “There is no gold here. I have never been here before. Just look at these moors, they are empty and dangerous, and I-”
They heard a noise, not far away.
“A frog,” Geert said, “Walk on to the treasure you have so cleverly hidden in these moors.”
The frog roared again, like a warning sign. Other frogs were to be heard in the distance.
“It would be better to go back now,” Maurits said. “I can take you here in the morning. Picking our way may be easier in the sunlight, don’t you think?”
“No! We will stay until your gold shows up.” Geert was stubborn as a rock if he wanted to be. He was infamous for that too. He sat down on something that once was a tree. The air was filled with an awful smell of rotting.
Maurits sighed and waited. He didn’t know where to go and he couldn’t stop or go back without being stabbed.

Then, they heard the noise again. It sounded like people talking to each other, in the distance. However, there was nothing to see outside the light circle of the lamp.
Geert got up. “Let’s go. Someone is out there. Let’s see who they are.”
Maurits nodded and followed the shipwrecker whose dagger was still visible under his cloak. The ferryman hoped to find help if other people showed up, so he followed Geert quickly.
Soon, the voices were all around them. They spoke in a strange manner, not like the people from Blato, nor those from Fryslân, or the foreign raiders for that matter. The sound was deep and dark, like something from ancient, unremembered times. The words were hollow and somewhat barking. There were hundreds of voices, and Maurits remembered Cunera’s words. Did he hear the voices of the dead now?
“Where are they?” Geert asked and he snatched the lamp out of Maurits hands. He shone around them, held the lamp high, but the night stayed dark and empty. The plants around them were pale or black, and very dry, with a rotten smell like dead. Nothing moved. No animals showed up, not even insects. The dark muddy pools stared hollow at them without seeing anything, without life in them. Yes, this was the place where Death was at home, Maurits thought. And yes, if humans had a soul, the soul might be taken to this place if it wasn’t allowed to go into Valhalla - or the heaven from the new priests.

It was a building they saw just a couple of paces later. It was not like the willowwood-reed-and-mud houses they knew so well, but a large stone building, somewhat like a temple. Big, heavy stones formed high walls and the roof was not to be seen, it was too high. There were no windows in the building, but many stairs helixed their ways up and down. The space in the building looked somewhat deformed, Maurits noticed as he followed Geert into it. It was as if space was twisted inside. His mind couldn’t cope with the view, so he looked at the floor instead. The stone floor was made of a mosaic of small pebbles, but the picture was to large to overview, could probably only be overviewed from somewhere high upstairs.
The voices came from around the building. Whispering and barking alike rose up from unseen places. It was frightening and Maurits felt all the hairs on his body rise. He was scared - he wanted to run away from that place. His wooden shoes sounded loud on the pebbles and the echoes filled the rotten air.
“Let’s get away from here,” Maurits whispered to Geert.
“Not until you show me the gold.”
“There is no gold in here! I keep my gold at home, not in a place like this! If you hadn’t forced me, I wouldn’t be here! Let us flee now we still can, this place gives me the creeps!”
Maurits sounded so scared, Geert was a bit surprised and tasted some truth in the words. He didn’t feel comfortable in the building either. There was something to the place...

They left the building, as quick as they could without running. It sounded as if the echoes of their wooden shoes followed them, and haunted them into the damp surroundings. They didn’t turn to look back at the giant building - a building so big and heavy it should have sunk into the mud, and maybe it was sunken, and only the upper part of the building was to be seen. Who knows? There was nobody around to ask.
And then the fog parted like curtains all around the shipwrecker and the ferryman. At first they thought the morning had come, but it didn’t get any lighter. And by what they saw then, they ran away as fast as they could, leaving their shoes behind in the mud, stumbling across the puddles and plants, running back to the boat, too scared to scream.
As by miracle they reached the boat and jumped in. Maurits took the oars and Geert pushed the boat into the river as fast as he could. He jumped in as Maurits started rowing, faster than ever before.
The ferry almost flew over the water, and the oars splattered around. Ducks flew up as the ferry nearly hit them. It took only a short while to reach the safe side of the river. The ferry hit the shore and with a loud crack the oars broke as Maurits continued rowing on the land. They jumped out of the boat and ran to the ferryman's house. Inside, they closed the door and checked the windows. On the table was a bag, filled with gold. Without a word, Maurits gave the bag to Geert. Geert looked at it, and then threw the bag into the hearth, made a fire and made it so hot the gold itself burned away into worthless ashes.
Outside, the bell tolled, but Maurits didn’t get out to see who needed his services now. He just sat at his table, and panted. He looked up at Geert, who sat down next to him. The shipwrecker had this strange look on his fog-pale face.

“You’ve seen it too?” Geert finally asked.
“I don’t know what I’ve seen,” Maurits replied.
“Your hair turned all grey,” Geert said. “You must have seen it. How’s mine? I felt like my heart would crawl from my body. It was as if it tore-”
“I’ve seen it. It was not from this earth. I’ve rowed to the realms of Death. No matter how much gold is offered, I’ll never go back there.”
“I don’t want to die if in those realms creatures like that roam,” Geert said, shivering as the memory returned clear into his mind, as if he saw the creature once again in front of him.
“First, I thought it was human,” Maurits said. “Until I saw the bulking eyes, like a pair of frog eyes.”
“First, I thought it were just big frogs,” Geert added, “But as I saw the fangs, it scared the shit out of me. I could remember every time I hurt or killed a frog and I thought this monster wanted revenge for all those times.”
“It was big, it was taller than you and me. It was slimy too, like it just crawled out of the mud. Do you think it lived in that building?”
“Might be...”

And outside, the bell tolled over and over again, and no one was to be seen on the riverbanks... The sounds of frogs filled the air as dawn finally laid its golden rays on Blato.
Grey-haired Maurits sat on a chair next to his table and looked at the lifeless body of the shipwrecker. At the first sound of the frogs, his life had left his scared body.

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