Thirty Years Earlier:

Basil coughed weakly while his granddaughter wiped the sweat from his sallow forehead with a cool rag. Her eyes were red and puffy as she checked his blankets and then held a saucer filled with water up to his lips. The feverish old man took a sip before he coughed again and spilled most of it.

“I’m sorry, Papa, I’ll wipe that up.” the young woman whispered as she reached for the rag again.

“Sadie,” Basil breathed. He had things he wanted to tell her, but his thoughts kept slipping away from him. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and that it would be okay. He wanted to tell her how much their time together had meant to him, but he couldn’t put the words together, let alone find the strength to speak them. He moved his hand towards her, trembling at the effort. She reached down and took his hand, and he smiled briefly as he squeezed it with what little strength he still had. They both held on until he was gone.

Basil came to with a start and looked around. He was lying on his back in the sand, with patches of long grass here and there. A sound like a bird’s wings flapping drew his gaze, but he wasn’t quick enough, and whatever had made the noise disappeared into a fog bank behind the sand dune he was lying on top of.

He sat up and listened to the sound of waves lapping at the shore below him as a slight breeze buffeted his long, gray hair. The water stretched out to at least the horizon, which glowed with an orange light that promised daybreak wasn’t far away. He couldn’t say how he knew, but Basil was certain he was looking at a sunrise, not a sunset.

He didn’t know where he was, or how he had gotten there. He stood up, feeling stronger than he had in a very long time. Why was I weak? He couldn’t remember. He was standing on top of a short dune, with a beach of reddish sand stretching out as far as he could see in either direction. The low light of the early morning didn’t allow him to see very far. Further from the water were sand dunes like the one he stood on, and then a thick bank of fog at roughly the same distance from the water for what seemed to be the whole length of the beach. The only sign of other people he could make out was a lighthouse with its beacon lit. He assumed that’s what it was at least; it looked like a lighthouse beacon, but it was too far away to see a tower of any kind.

Without any other plan, Basil started trudging through the sand toward the lighthouse. The shore was strangely quiet. There were no birds calling; the only sounds were the waves breaking on the shore, occasional buffeting from the wind, and his own bare feet in the sand.

He put one foot in front of the other for hours, until finally he found himself at the foot of a dune with a lighthouse on the other side. Strangely, the sun still had not come up yet. Basil leaned forward, maintaining his balance as he scrambled up the steep dune by using both of his hands. At the top he straightened and stretched his back out of habit, though it blessedly wasn't bothering him today. He frowned as he realized that he wasn’t winded from the climb, either. He didn’t think he was athletic enough for that to be normal.

Below him, he could see a group of people gathered between the base of the lighthouse and the water. A long, narrow ship was anchored just off the shore. It’s prow overhung the water like a knife blade, as if the ship cut its way through the waves instead of floating atop them. Its masts were raked backwards, and it had lowered a couple of tenders to ferry people aboard from the shore. A flag from the taller aft mast billowed in the breeze, and Basil recognized the symbol on it as one for the goddess Kinisaltria. She was the patron of laborers, tradespeople, slaves, uprisings, and celebrations. He'd attended a few events organizd by her clergy over the years. He didn't consider himself devout by any means, but she was a good goddess for an innkeeper to pray to.

The same symbol was carved into the stone of the lighthouse, and there was something familiar about the whole scene. Basil scratched his head as he looked around and tried to place it. Maybe it was somewhere he'd heard about? He'd been down to the sea a couple of times, but this definitely wasn't one of those places. The sand was the wrong color, and the air had been filled with noisy seagulls. It was strange, he hadn't seen a single bird since he arrived. Also, what was the story with the ship? The only ships he'd heard of connected to the Lady of Labors were the ones that...

Basil reeled as he suddenly realized where he was. The goddess sent vessels to retrieve the faithful from the Twilight Shore, where they would be ferried across the Eternal Sea, so they could be with their loved ones in the Far Isles, where Malgero gathered the souls of the dead to find peace. This had to be the Twilight Shore, he'd been here for hours and dawn hadn't broken yet! He was dead, and this was his journey into the afterlife!

Basil sat down abruptly as his memories came flooding back to him. The last few years since Elsie had died in the flood. Selling off the inn when he’d been too old to keep it open himself. Arthritis. Moving in with Sadie. Coming down with the fever when it swept through the valley. He hadn’t enjoyed much of that time, except for what he’d spent with his granddaughter. Apart from that, it had mostly been loneliness and loss. He sniffed and held his shirt sleeve up against his eyes as they teared up.

“It’s time to put your troubles behind you,” a woman said. Basil looked up to see a priestess trekking up the dune toward him. She was barefoot like him, and she held her cream-colored vestments up with each hand to keep herself from stepping on them. Basil watched her approach without speaking. She sat down next to him with a smile, her glossy, coal-black hair blowing in the sea-breeze. She tucked it behind an ear that was almost the color of ivory.

“I know I’m an old man, and I should be ready for this,” he said, “but I still feel like I had so much left undone.”

“We all have a life we didn’t live,” she replied with a wistful look on her face, “it’s the price we pay for the one we did.”

“I don’t regret my life, of course. I had a happy marriage to a wonderful woman. We had a beautiful daughter, and she and her husband gave us our granddaughter. I got to watch them both grow up in our family's inn. I had friends in the community, and I met all sorts of interesting people as they passed through. They all had such wonderful stories to tell. But...” He paused and stared at the waves as they crashed on the sand below.

“...but you always wanted to be one of the interesting people passing through somebody else’s inn, on your way from one great story to another?” She smiled warmly as Basil turned and gave her a sheepish grin.

“Isn’t it terrible for an old man to have such a childish wish?” he asked.

“Old men are as entitled to their dreams as anyone else. It would be far more terrible to stop dreaming, I think.”

“Well, it’s too late for dreams now, isn’t it?” Basil’s voice had a hint of bitterness to it. He sighed. “I have missed Elsie, and Adalni and Theo. I have so much to tell them about their daughter; they didn’t get enough time with her, but she grew into such a wonderful young woman.” He wiped his eyes again with the back of his hand.

The priestess looked at the horizon. “They will be happy to be with you again. They’re waiting for you, with your parents and your brother. All you have to do is walk down this dune and get in one of those boats.”

“Yeah...” Basil stayed where he was. They sat in silence for a moment.

“There will be another ship before long, if you just need a little time.”

“Thank you.” Basil cocked his head slightly and frowned. He glanced over at the priestess.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I’m not much of an expert on these things, but I couldn’t help noticing that your vestments don’t have any symbols of Kinisaltria on them. They don’t have any identifying symbols on them, actually.”

“That is true.”

“You’re not one of her priestesses, are you?”

“I’m not.” She was watching the people below row out to the ship, with the same kind smile on her face as when she’d sat down.

“Who are you?”

She laughed. “You were always ready to stop and listen to a tale, Basil Holladay, even when you had plenty of other things that needed attention. You've heard enough of them to recognize me, I think.”

He shivered slightly, although he hadn’t felt cold at all since he arrived on the shore. “You’re the Pale Lady. Hecate.”

She turned her head towards him slightly, and Basil broke out in a cold sweat as he felt the attention of something ancient and powerful beyond imagining bear down on him, and just for a moment he saw that the beautiful priestess was the tiniest manifestation of a being that was the night, and the moonlight, and the magic worked beneath it. She was everywhere the ways met, and in every door and gateway, and she heard when the restless dead called out. She turned her head away again, and the vision was gone, leaving Basil panting in terror next to a cheerful priestess on top of a sand dune.

At first, he was too afraid to move, but as his initial terror subsided, his thoughts began to race. I couldn’t outrun her, it would be pointless to even try! Why is she here?! Is there a reason for me to really be afraid of her?! I don’t think I ever did anything to make her angry with me... No, she would have swatted me like a bug by now if that was the case. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself. It seemed to help, though a part of him wondered how, as he was sure he didn’t need to breathe at all anymore.

“Respectfully, your... Highness? Holiness?” he asked, unsure of the etiquette for addressing a goddess in person, “why are you here?”

“I’m always here,” she smiled, “this place is a sort of crossroads between one world and another, and it's mine. You’re all my guests until you enter into Malgero’s purview.” She gestured at the permanently orange horizon beyond the ship below, where the dawn broke for the dead as they arrived at the Far Isles and began their afterlives. “That makes you my responsibility. But I suppose you’re wondering why I’m up here with you specifically, and not, for example, the people down there?” She pointed at the last group rowing out to the ship.

“Yes.”

"They're ready for what lies beyond this place. They have released their attachments to what was, and now accept what is. There is nothing holding them back. The same cannot be said of you."

He put his chin in his palm, then rested his elbow on his knee as he watched the last group of the faithful board Kinisaltria’s ship. “I'm not ready, am I?” he finally said.

“What is it that's troubling you?” she asked.

He sighed. “I want to know what I missed. I want to go on adventures and be a hero, like in all the stories I heard. I don’t resent Elsie for getting pregnant, I was the one to blame for how things turned out, and Adalni was truly a blessing. Still, I’d lay awake at night and wonder what could have been. I guess I still will.”

“You could,” the Pale Lady allowed, “or you could go back.”

Basil blinked. “What would that look like? You bring me back from the dead? Reincarnation?”

Hecate laughed again. “I don’t do reincarnation, and you’ll definitely still be dead. If you play your cards right though, you can get what you’re looking for.”

“So I’ll have to go on adventures as some sort of ghost?” Basil asked with a frown.

“I didn’t say it would be easy. In fact, it will be almost anything but. Still, it’s an opportunity to be the hero in stories other people tell.”

“Speaking of stories, this sounds like one of those where a mysterious stranger offers some fool a deal that later turns out to be nothing like what he actually wanted.” He gave her a suspicious look.

“I’m not here to sell you anything, Basil. You’re free to get on the next ship out of here and meet your loved ones in the Far Isles. They will be genuinely happy to see you, and I’m sure you’ve missed them terribly. But the question of what could have been will follow you until you either answer it, or learn to let it go. I’m offering you the opportunity to do the former. The choice is yours though, it always has been.”

"So if I don't take it, then I have to just put it behind me and forget about it?"

"Death is about finding your peace. You have a couple of options, but you'll have to pick one. You can't just let it eat at you until the end of time."

The long, narrow ship began to weigh anchor, and sailors hauled at the lines to raise sail and begin tacking away from the shore. Basil watched them in silence, while the Pale Lady sat next to him on the sand dune, her hair wafting in the breeze. The helmsman on the ship below leaned against the tiller, and the ship turned away from the now-deserted lighthouse.

“What about my family?” Basil asked quietly.

“A couple of years, even a few decades isn’t much before the rest of eternity. You’ll still see them, in time.”

“Could you let them know I’m sorry for making them wait?”

The goddess smiled and nodded. “I can get your message to them.”

Basil put his face in his hands for a minute, then took a deep breath. “So, how does this work? Is there a different ship? Do you just take me back?”

“As I said before, it won’t be easy. There’s no ship, and I’m not taking you. Your passage here was a gift from Kinisaltria, it's not for me to take that from you. You’ll have to walk.” She stood up and brushed the sand from her vestments, though it didn’t seem to really stick. She held out her hand and help him up. “It’s that way,” she pointed, away from the waves, into the thick fog bank that ran parallel to the shore.

Basil looked, and though he couldn’t see anything, he still shivered slightly with a sense of dread and foreboding. “What’s in there?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“Any awful thing you can imagine, and things much too terrible for your imagination to conjure. An unending waste of gray sand and fog where those whose convictions fail them can wander until there's nothing left of them but madness and despair. A few souls like yourself, seeking answers that won't be found beyond that horizon," she waved a hand toward the distant light across the sea.

"The misty lands that lie between the world of the living and the lands of the dead are incredibly dangerous. If you succeed in crossing them, you will be forever changed by the journey.”

“IF?” hissed Basil. “What do you mean ‘IF’?!”

“You didn’t think coming back from the Twilight Shore would be an easy journey did you? The gods wouldn’t send psychopomps to carry the souls of the faithful here if the way was safe and easy.” She chuckled at the horrified look on Basil’s face. “Besides,” she grinned, “you’re going to have to get comfortable with a certain amount of danger, if you want to be some legendary adventurer.”

“Doesn’t that seem like a bit much to start?”

“You could always wait for the next boat.”

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “No, I’m doing this. What do I need to know?”

“You won’t find many friends in the mist, it’s usually best to avoid being seen. Believe in your journey, or you'll never reach your destination. Lastly, all of us are changed by the paths we walk, but we have a choice in how we are changed.”

“That’s well enough, I suppose, but I was hoping for something along the lines of ‘Such and such horrible creature nests in an area that looks like so, if you reach it, backtrack and go around.’ You see what I mean?”

“If you feel like someplace is dangerous, it probably is. You don’t need my help with that.” She shrugged.

“So I just start walking then?”

“Every great journey begins with the first step.”

Basil turned to face the goddess directly. “Thank you,” he said.

She gave him a smile that seemed to brighten the perpetual twilight of the place they stood, like a full moon on a cloudless evening. “You’re very welcome,” she replied, “and good luck!”

The old man turned, straightened his back, and strode down the back of the dune. He paused at the edge of the fog and turned to wave, but no one was there. He shook his head, then stepped forward and vanished into the mists.