The Eight Wilds Bestiary: The Ferryan

In the western wilds lies a boundless marsh called Xu. When the fog rises and the moon is dark, a gray old ferryman may be seen upon the shore, bearing a straw cape and a woven hat, his feet never touching the water, walking the waves as if on solid ground. The locals name him the Ferryan.

He looks like an aged boatman, yet his face is pale and his eyes are without pupils, his lips the blue of long-soaked wood. When a drowning soul sinks in the marsh, the Ferryan bends and carries it across to the reeds upon the far shore. All he ferries are the dead; should a living man call to be taken, the Ferryan only turns his empty gaze and vanishes into the mist.

Beside the ford stood a village, and in it an old ferryman named Zhou the Third. In his youth, lost in a great fog, he came upon the marsh shore and saw the Ferryan waiting at the crossing. Thinking him a common boatman, he called out to be taken. The Ferryan turned, and Zhou beheld the empty eyes; his hair stood on end, and he fled. The next day he asked the village elder, who paled and said: "That is no man, but the Ferryan spirit. His charge is to ferry the dead across the marsh, and never the living. Should a living man force his back, by the time they reach the far shore, years will have passed in the world, and kin and home will be no more."

From then on, Zhou barred his door on every foggy night. Yet often he heard water gurgling at his gate, as of one bearing a great weight past his threshold, ceaseless till dawn.

When Zhou reached eighty, he fell ill of no sickness. One night the fog was thick; the door hinge creaked open of itself, and the water sound entered, drawing near his bed. At dawn the villagers came and found the bed empty, save a straw cape and hat left upon the white stone at the crossing. The locals say the Ferryan came at last to ferry him — whether bearing the living to death, or leading the dead home, none can tell.