The rules of the river are simple. Before the tour begins, the guide stands near the rafts and recites them. No loud music. No illegal drugs. No cliff jumping. She moves from person to person, handing out headlamps and lemon-yellow life vests. No glass, no kegs, no Styrofoam coolers. There are muttered complaints from the assembled group. Things like, “Can you tell us what is allowed?” and “We should’ve gone to Cancun.” The guide ignores these complaints. The rules are for their own protection. Anyway, they signed waivers.

Just before dawn, they push the rafts into the water. No swimming. The river smells of mud and tree rot and dead fish, so the guide finds this rule a little redundant.

The first half of the day is uneventful. The guide points out a heron, a river otter, a herd of white-tailed deer. It’s not what the rafters paid for, but she does it anyway. They beach on isles of black sediment to rest and eat cooler-damp sandwiches for lunch.

They travel by the light of the sun until, shortly after 1 p.m., it dips below the treeline and doesn’t return. Then, they travel by the lights of their headlamps. Shadows gather near the bulbs, searching for warmth. They grow corporeal, mouths and eyes and limbs emerging from the darkness. Don’t acknowledge the lost souls. This is one of the more difficult rules to follow. Once the shadows begin to speak, they never stop, and they promise everything. When one of the rafters jumps into the water, the guide ushers the rest on without them. This happens sometimes. Most wish only to see the dead, but some seek to join them.

Soon, shadows gather at the shore. First a few, then so many they press together like spectators at a parade, watching the rafts float by. With the current flowing swiftly, the sound of rushing water is loud enough to drown out their pleas and their promises. The guide sweeps the beam of her headlamp over the shadows, then gives the others the go-ahead to do the same. Cold spotlights illuminate unearthly shores. A sea of unfortunate souls, all laid to rest without silver under their tongues. Perhaps they went missing, or burned to death, or met some other gruesome end. Perhaps they simply didn’t include, “Bury me with silver under my tongue” in their end-of-life directives. The guide recognizes her lost rafter among the legions of the dead, which she chooses not to share with the rest of the group.

They row onward until, at last, there is light. Torches. So far away they’re little more than candles flickering in the dark. 

“Don’t they usually tell you not to go toward the light?” someone asks. Another rafter promptly shushes them. They’ve come this far. Besides, it’s not as if they can row back upstream.

Soon, the rafts draw near enough to the torches to see they’re not torches at all. A man wearing a dirty cloak is standing on a pier. Beneath his hood, twin jets of flame writhe and hiss like angry serpents. The guide, unphased, pulls ashore. Behind her, the rafters linger, wary of the man on the pier. She waves them on. This is, after all, what they paid for.

They trek up the beach toward the pier, bearing bullion coins and pre-1964 quarters. One of them managed to procure an authentic Greek obol, though it’s not as if the ferryman awards brownie points to try-hards. The guide herself deposits a 1953 Franklin half-dollar into his skeletal hand. With each clink! of metal on bone, a toll is paid, and at last the group boards the ferry. It’s a rickety thing—all graying planks and acorn barnacles—but the guide assures them it was recently inspected and found seaworthy (or in this case, riverworthy). Still. No leaning on the rails. Hands inside the boat at all times. 

The ferry launches with a groan, pushing further downstream, where the current is too fast, too strong, for the rafts. They’ll be towed back via bus at the end of the tour, though not even the guide knows exactly where the bus comes from, or what sort of entity drives it. She pitches her voice to be heard over the roar of rushing water. FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, PLEASE KEEP A FIRM GRIP ON THE RAILING. There’s a sudden sensation of weightlessness. Then, of falling. With a whoosh the boat glides into still water, spraying their faces with a fine mist, cold as the grave. From the endless dark above, a thousand tributaries pour into the black water.

“That was like taking the American Plunge at Silver Dollar City,” exclaims one of the rafters. The guide has never been to Silver Dollar City, but a few others pipe up to agree, so it must be true. 

Here, every river in the world converges. Rivers of all kinds. The inviolable waters of the river of hatred. The healing ones of the river of woe. The river of forgetfulness. Of wailing. Of blazing fire. 

“What about the Buffalo River?” someone asks. 

“Every river,” the guide says. 

The ferryman steers the boat, now traveling at a leisurely, even pace, forward. Here, the dark is so complete the headlamps may as well be the blinking of lightning bugs. Eventually, the current slows, then ebbs completely. Only momentum guides the boat as it beaches on a second shore, one with sand fine and white as bonemeal. Beyond that, a meadow of flowers—tall and delicate, but slyly barbed—sways in a phantom breeze.

This is as far as the ferryman takes them, and as far as the tour goes. There’s more to see, certainly, but some parts of the river aren’t meant for the living. Not that the expedition service hadn’t looked into it. They had, but finding tour guides deemed worthy of the Fortunate Isles’s winterless paradise was next to impossible. As for the lower levels, the insurance costs were astronomically high, and who wanted to risk life and limb to visit oath-breakers and kin-killers anyway? No one, that’s who (this was according to their marketing director). No, the dead here in the meadow are of a more practical sort—truck drivers and housewives and project managers, and the like.

From the depths of her waterproof bag, the guide produces a box of single-use sterile lancets and distributes them to the group. Then, vials, sterile wipes, gauze, bandages—all supplies included in the cost of their tickets. Trash goes in the yellow bag when you’re done. She demonstrates, drawing a bead of wine-red blood from the tip of her left index finger and tipping it into the vial. She completed OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogens training course for this very purpose. 

The rafters prick their fingers and the guide walks among them, instructing a select few to stick their hands under their armpits. Too little blood and the dead won’t smell it, too much and the spirits will swarm like mosquitoes on putrid water. Anyway, they prefer it warm. The scent of blood mingles dizzyingly with the heady, almondine sillage of the flower meadow, and soon-after, the deceased come to dine.

They appear exactly the way they did when they died. The guide warned the group about this before the tour even began, and now she does so again. It can be jarring, frightening, even. There are bruises and bedsores. Broken limbs and twisted torsos. A few gasps, but the dead don’t mind. They’re free of the sometimes slow, sometimes fast march of time, and have been since the moment their souls vacated their earthly bodies.

This is where most of the rafters get what they paid for—saying goodbye. Or, for those who aren’t ready, saying hello. The guide counts herself among the latter. Her revenant ambles toward her listlessly, drawn not by her presence, but by the scent of blood. He looks the same as he always does, thin—too thin, thin as the asphodel shoots in the meadow, straining toward a sun that will never rise. The only difference is the smell. He smells like flowers, nectarous and green, instead of an acrid hospital.

When the guide passes him the vial, his withered fingers curl around it like the legs of a dying spider. With a colorless tongue, he laps up the liquid, then tilts his head back, rapturous, eyes clearing, as the soft inertia of death sloughs away.

“Issy,” her brother says breathlessly. “Hi.” 

“Hi, Nico,” says the guide.

She hugs him tightly. 

“How long has it been?”

“Just a week.”

“A week.” He rubs his jawline, as if giving the fact great consideration. “I remember now. Did you go see Deadpool & Wolverine like we talked about?” 

“I did,” says the guide. “You would’ve loved it. Wesley Snipes made a Blade cameo.”

Nico grimaces. “I can’t believe I died before the last movie.”

“In your defense, it took them six years to make it.”

“So, what else happened?”

A drop of blood is good for no more than a few minutes, and the guide uses every second to summarize the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine with as much speed and enthusiasm as she can muster. Thankfully, the other rafters are too wrapped up in their own reunions to pay attention to hers. She’s just introduced Charles Xavier’s estranged twin, Cassandra Nova, when Nico’s head starts to loll. 

The guide hugs him again. “I’ll tell you the rest next time.”

“Next time,” he echoes. His bony arms tighten around her for just a moment, then fall slack.

There are no tears. Not from the guide, at least. She’s done this dozens of times, and, gods-willing, will do it dozens more. Once her brother is gone, she sits on the beach, drawing in the white sand with a stick that’s either bone or driftwood. It’s peaceful here. Someday, she’ll return to these dark shores for good. But for now, there is work to be done.

When the group gathers around her again, pink-eyed and sniffling, the guide moves from person to person, collecting used blood vials in the designated yellow bag. She reminds them that although they survived the land of the dead, there are still mosquitos, ticks, snakes, and falling rocks to worry about. The rafters nod numbly. They make plans to visit Cancun the following summer. They take note to add, “Bury me with silver under my tongue” to their end-of-life directives. They’ve been a good group. No casualties, except for the lone straggler earlier in the trip. She’ll need to write an incident report when they get back to the office.

At last, the Delphic bus arrives, materializing out of the baneful night and creaking to a standstill on the beach. One by one, they file on. Inside, the driver’s seat appears empty, though the guide knows it isn’t. She folds her arms over the back of her seat and faces the group to relay the final rules of the tour. No food or drink on the bus. Make sure you have your belongings before you get off. Once that’s done, she nods to the empty driver’s seat, and the bus begins its slow ascent out of the land of dreams and back to the land of the living. 

As the man behind her sobs quietly into his Kleenex, she offers one last word of advice.

“Annual passes are available for purchase at the office,” the guide tells him.