I had never had much time for the Shaman and his talk of Gaia, the mother of all creatures and of this world. His imagined world of the spirits and after-life with its care of the dead had never appealed to me. To me it was all the drug-induced ramblings of a deranged man, who decorated himself with bones and feathers and stayed inside the cave. He never joined the hunt and instead drew pictures on the walls by torch-light. The tribe fed him, looked after his needs almost to the level of our leader and could not see through his ranting, at a man who had successfully invented a position we did not need!
It was at his insistence that we buried our dead with provisions for the after-world. My protestations that it was sheer idiocy to waste a good spear and choice cuts of fresh meat on a corpse had nearly got me thrown out of the tribe. The others just couldn’t see it from my point of view and they preferred the Shaman’s explanations to mine!
One night, the elders took me aside and warned me that Grad’s entries into the spirit world provided the tribe with directions to hunt and the surety, that those who died trying to feed the tribe would be rewarded in the spirit world. All of the tribe believed in him and the other tribes looked upon our gathering of humanity as greatly fortunate to have such a holy man amongst us! ‘Holy’ was a new word that had found its way into our language. To me it meant a shyster had found a way to tap into the gullibility of my friends and live off their endeavours. At threat of spear-point and expulsion into the wilderness, I agreed to keep my feelings to myself.
The years passed by and Grad took under his ‘wing’ an acolyte whose imagination was even greater than the old man’s and once Grad had died, he took over the position of Shaman to my tribe. Never once did the new follower of Gaia need to hurl a spear at a charging mammoth, or do anything close to extending the survival of my tribe. He was allocated the best meat, while the women cooked and gathered food for him from nature’s bounty. They gladly bore his children, who were also trained into the new function we had managed to live without from the dawn of time.
As I grew older, I fumed at the injustice of this system that had started when I was a young man. The parasite grew fat on the attendance of the tribe, while I seethed with increasing anger. Finally, after a bad hunt, when a woolly mammoth had stomped on two of our members and another man hurled onto the very stakes we had placed to impale the creature on, we returned empty-handed. Grad’s ‘son’ stood and railed at the tribe for not bringing back fresh meat for his hearth. He promised that Gaia would turn her face from us and leave us to starve if we did not go back and hunt again towards the West. We had circled round and made our way back to our cave from that direction and the land was empty of game. He was sending us into certain hardship and maybe death.
I stood in front of the hunters and seethed as the Shaman cursed our empty handedness. Without thinking, I let my anger get the better of me and hurled my flint-tipped spear straight into his fat chest. He died in front of me, clutching the hardened shaft of the spear as he dropped to his knees.
His eldest son cradled his father in his arms and cried out, “Gaia requires this man’s life in exchange! Kill him where he stands.”
I felt the sharpness of several flint tipped spears as they penetrated my back and the pain spread into blackness as I fell. The tribe fell upon my body and carried it outside into the night. There they hurled it down the cliff to lie where the beasts of darkness could feast upon me. By morning there would be very little left. What amazed me was that although I was dead, I could see all of this as clearly as though I was still alive. I was somewhere else and yet the mortal world was still visible to me, but I was not alone.
The mortal world retreated and I found myself in a great cave of some kind, stood in front of a presence. Whatever this thing was, He was not human and He was larger than five woolly mammoths. It was definitely male, as he sat naked on a carved stone and made no effort to hide that fact. He was far stranger than anything that the Shaman had described to his faithful. Smaller versions of his type scuttled here and there building something around Him. I looked around and was amazed to see such activity going on. My tribe was a large and important one amongst the gatherings, but there were many thousands of these creatures all busy, busy! I would later learn to call them Imps.
The creature that sat upon the carved block of stone reached down to me and held out His hand for me to step onto. I walked forwards and stood upon it, avoiding the clawed fingertips and He raised me up level with his chin.
“You have courage,” he said, conjuring up a table of stone and placing my naked form upon it.
I stood staring into a face as bright red as the flames of the cave fire, with sharp horns sprouting from his forehead. His eyes were yellow and slit like a cat’s. They were full of curiosity and without malice.
“Who and what are you?” I asked.
He laughed gently to himself and answered, “I’m not quite sure of that myself, small human soul called Rotan. This is almost as new to me as it must be to you. It would appear that I am the Lord of Darkness, the Lord of Punishment to those who have lived in your world and have failed to be able to qualify to travel directly to Gaia’s realm. Those who kill their fellow man for gain or pleasure come to me for judgement. There are those who hang in the balance and are worthy of saving. There are those who are my side of the balance and can be saved after punishment. You are one such as these.”
I stared at this powerful creature and asked, “Can you tell me where I am?”
“Your kind as yet, has no name for this place. It is a place of judgement that waits for all of humanity, at the end of your span,” the being answered. “It is a new place that has been called into being by those above Gaia that created the multiversity.
“Am I to be judged then for my actions in the world of my birth? Is it because I killed a fool, who would have sent more of my friends to their deaths, while sitting in safety?”
“You took another human being’s life,” he answered.
“I killed an idiot who had my tribe under his spell and cared nothing for them, except that they fed him,” I protested and folded my arms, continuing to stare the creature full into those lambent eyes.
“A moot point,” he agreed. “Yet the fact remains that you are my side of the balance due to the killing of another human being.”
We continued to look each other over and the being stood on great cloven hooves sweeping a barbed tail from side to side. The creature left me stood upon the high table of stone and stared through the cave walls to a place that only he could see.
“You do not fear me,” he said and smiled, showing many sharp teeth.
I answered simply, “I am already dead. I can see no malice in your eyes, great Lord. I cannot alter what must be, so must endure what this existence will throw my way. I did not believe in Gaia and you have proved me wrong. I still do not regret taking the life of that babbling fool who lived well off the backs of my friends. I find myself here with you instead of not existing at all, as I believed would happen, so whatever you decide to do with me. I accept!”
“You do have courage indeed. Your tribe could do with more such as you to protect it from the vagaries of your dangerous existence. Yet here you are exhibiting qualities that I could find quite useful! I can see into your mind and I can see nothing sinful that requires any form of real punishment. You are not a damned soul, but you are here to do my will! All too soon there will be cities built and with spare time will come wickedness. There will be much for you to do then, I fear!”
He reached down to the table-top for me and placed me on his shoulder where I could hold onto the mane of hair that hung to his waist.
“Come with me,” he said, “I have an idea that will enable you to make amends. There are many parallel dimensions to the world of the living where you have come from. I rule these Lands of Punishment that cross over to the Netherworld that many of the in-the-balance souls find themselves. These will need gathering and taking to their final destination. The Netherworld is a world of marshes, lakes and water channels where the journey will test them. I have had my Imps build a craft that is long and narrow to negotiate these canals. I did not realise it until now, but I have been waiting for such as you to reach me. I shall send such men as you into the Netherworld to collect those souls.”
I held tight to the hair by the being’s pointed ears and stared down at the busy Imps as they carved a strange wooden craft that was to be my new home. The Lord of Punishment called it a narrow-boat. There was a flat piece at the front followed by a roofed section that stretched along to the back. At the place that I would learn to call the stern was a flat area that had a moving bar fixed to the end. Here was where I would stand and guide the boat along the bends and twists of the water-ways. Slightly in front of this was an open hold that held benches inside with large sticks that projected into the water each side and were held by a collection of what I would also learn to call ‘the damned’. Knowledge flowed into my brain and much became apparent. I realised that the sticks were called oars and the bar at the end was called a tiller. This I began to find alarming, as the only time I had been afloat, was when I used a tree-trunk to get me to the other side of the river! I had never seen anything remotely like this vessel before, during my lifespan.
The Lord of Punishment laughed at my concern and said, “All you need to know is in your mind. I put it there! There will be many more of these boats as time goes on. You are now in service to ‘Me.’ Until the time that will come, you will be my Ferryman, a collector of souls. You will explore this Netherworld and seek out with the aid of the boat, the cargo that you will carry. Imps have been incorporated into the substance of the boat, so the boat will choose who will travel at the front and who will labour at the back.”
He snapped his fingers and a giant, black haired woolly mammoth appeared at the bow to pull the boat along. I gasped in awe at the beast as it trumpeted in impatience to be on its way.
“This is yours to travel with. See that he is well looked after and he will willingly work for you. Should a sinner come too near to him he will absorb him or her into his frame. Those that find they can only ride at the back will find that the hold will take only them. Do not interfere with either decision. You will find that you will change shape, depending on whom you confront. To those at the front you will be the Ferryman, a man much the same as the soul I see sat on my hand, but much larger. To those at the back you will become a daemon from hell to be feared and obeyed. You are now to all purposes immortal and cannot be harmed except by ME! Do your task for me and do it well. I will see you again from time to time, just to check that all is as it should be.”
With that he placed me on the deck of the black-hulled narrow boat and turned away. I found myself clothed in well tanned leather garments with a good pair of knee-length boots. There were assorted furs hung inside the shelter built for me to live. A long spear with a hook at the end lay along the roof in two y-shaped bollards. There were more possessions on this boat that were mine to care for than I had ever owned as a hunter- gatherer for the tribe. Now I was a Hunter-gatherer for the Dark Lord!
The Hell-mouth dockyards were already starting on the next boat, so I hurried along the boat to the mammoth and climbed onto its broad neck. I dug my heels into the harsh hair behind his ears and we began to strain against the harness.
“My name was Rotan,” I said into the cavernous ear, “I am now a Ferryman doing the Dark Lord’s bidding.”
The woolly mammoth trumpeted a raucous shriek into the air and we were on our journey of exploration, toiling out of Hell and into the Netherworld.