It was easier to think about that time now, on the solid basalt shores of the dead river, under the watchful thoughtful gaze of the celestial cow who claimed to have made the Milky Way; it was easier to believe in the magical cow than in his own capacity for happiness. Koschey the Deathless sat on the bank, cross-legged, teasing the soul of a criminal trapped in the portly smooth body of a white rook. Galina and the Tatar-Mongol argued about the nature of memory, and whether it was possible to forgive a trespass without having to forget it.

The water by the riverbank bubbled up, and a small scale-covered vodyanoy surfaced and swam ashore with an awkward breaststroke. Its seaweed hair fanned out in the water like a halo, and its webbed hands, green and speckled with large triangular scales, splashed the pitch-black water. It clambered up on the bank, and its large bug eyes searched their faces.

"Did Elena send you?” Galina said.

The little vodyanoy nodded shyly, and dug through the festoons of algae decorating its body to produce a crumpled and wet note covered in black swirls of river water, but otherwise undamaged. Galina thanked him and unrolled the note.

"What does it say?” Zemun asked and attempted to fit her large head under Galina's elbow to take a better look.

"That she is considering sending Fyodor, Viy, and Oksana to the surface. She also says to be careful."

"Oh, great idea,” Koschey said. “I'll bet you fleshbags didn't even think of that."

"You're not as invulnerable as you think,” the rook Sergey said. “I know where your death is."

"So do I,” Yakov said.

The rook gave him a haughty look. “Did you ever watch ‘Visiting the Fairytales'?"

"Yeah,” Yakov admitted. “Every Saturday morning… or was it Sunday?"

"Sunday,” Sergey said. “We had school Saturday. Didn't know cops fancied that sort of thing."

"I was ten,” Yakov said, but found himself smiling. “I think they mostly showed movies from the forties and fifties."

"Those fairytales were disguised Communist propaganda,” the rook said.

Yakov stopped smiling. “I don't think so."

"You're so naïve,” the rook said. “They brainwashed you, and you don't even know. This is why you're a cop."

Yakov just shrugged. He didn't like it when people he had just met somehow developed the illusion of knowing him better than he did.

"Where's that boatman?” he said to Zemun.

Instead of another vague answer enticing him to patience and waiting just a bit more, Zemun pointed silently with her hoof. Through the fog that for a change remained stationary like a curtain, Yakov saw a shadow and heard weak slurping sounds.

The little vodyanoy shrieked and dove into the river, disappearing like a stone.

"What got into him?” Galina asked, and a vertical wrinkle settled between her dark eyebrows.

"He's worried that the boatman will collect from him,” Koschey said. “Stupid thing. The boatman doesn't care about spirits and gods and those who've already paid. He only takes from fleshbags, and this one,” Koschey pointed at the rook perching sullenly on his shoulder, “this one is already dead. I guess that leaves you two."

Yakov and Galina traded an uncomfortable look. “What is it that he takes?” Yakov said. “And why didn't anyone tell us?"

"You'll find out soon enough,” Koschey answered and smirked. “Maybe that'll teach you to blab about where people might want to keep their death."

"I traveled across the river once,” Timur-Bey said. “He takes memories, nothing else."

Yakov wanted to know more-what sort of memories and why-but the narrow boat made of grey wood touched the bank. The old man looked over them, at the meadows and forests they left behind. “Come aboard,” he said in the indifferent sing-song voice of a merchant, “come aboard, one memory per party, buys a round-trip."

"What memories do you take?” Galina said.

"The precious ones, the ones you'll miss and wonder day and night what it is you have forgotten,” the boatman said. “You're paying?"

"I am,” Yakov said. “I don't think I'll miss any of mine."

The boatman's deeply set eyes looked at him out of his creased leathery face. Thin wisps of white hair blew in the wind and mingled with the fog, indistinguishable from it.

Yakov felt an uncomfortable presence inside, as though the boatman's bony hand reached into him and sifted through the contents of his soul panning for gold nuggets.

"This will do,” he finally said. Yakov felt a twinge when something in him tore loose. “You want to think it one last time?"

Yakov shook his head. “Just take it,” he said, and closed his eyes.

The boatman's vision teemed with so many memories, so many visions, but this new one was a welcome addition. It had a complex bouquet-a hint of habitual misery provided a weakly bitter background to red-hot rage and feeling of helplessness that buckled the boatman's knees and made him want to forget his immediate task. The pole dug into the silty bottom, pushed away, heaved up in a familiar movement that let him concentrate on savoring his new acquisition. Good choice, he thought, good choice. Not exactly original but nonetheless exciting. Intense. Sadness so profound, his dead heart felt crimson and heavy, like a Persian rose dripping with honey and dew.

Divorce, a slow melancholy regret, swirled milky-white, obscuring the pulsing black hole in the center of the memory. The boatman marveled that there were no names here, nothing was alluded to directly-just oblique hints and sideway glances that people used to hide the pain from themselves, to swathe it in many gauzy layers of circumstance and irrelevant detail. Shivering with anticipation, the boatman pulled them back, like bandages from a wound, cringing at the inevitable febrile blooming of a gangrenous flower.

And there it was. Swaddling cloth, blue blanket with yellow ducklings and red-and-green watermelons, a swirl of downy white hair, going clockwise around the summit of a tiny skull. Wonder, the same in every adult, at how small the fingers and toes were, how diminutive the nails like small pink shells one finds on the sandy beaches of the Baltic. How small and how human and how alive-the mind refused to believe it. And accepting it (him) as your own seemed beyond the realm of possibility.

The boatman marveled briefly at Yakov's skill at self-deception-this memory had been buried so deep under heaps of irrelevant debris that the boatman almost overlooked it. He never tired of the novelty, of these strange nuggets of pain and joy he extracted so carefully, so lovingly from the souls that came to the banks of his river; he could not understand why they tried so desperately to hide them.

He rolled the image of the baby, of its squeezed-shut eyes and balled-up fists, in his mind, like a child turning a piece of hard candy on his tongue, savoring its unique scent and texture. And then the infant disappeared, just like that, leaving in its place a balled-up blanket with red-and-green watermelons and yellow ducklings, and the boatman could not understand where it went. He rifled through the memory, turning bits and images over like wilting petals, looking, searching for answers but finding only one veil after another, one discarded wrapper after the next, and only ash, ash in between.

He finally looked outside of himself, at the people crouching at the bottom of the boat. Yakov, the light-haired man who footed the bill a few minutes ago, sat with his head cradled in his arms, and the woman sat next to him, patting his shoulder in a weak gesture of support. “Come on,” she kept repeating. “It can't be that bad. Can it?"

The man just shook his head and looked up with tormented eyes.

"I'm sorry,” the woman said. “Can I do anything?"