The River of Souls

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The man was as big as a mountain. His shoulders were like boulders perched upon cliffs. His face was a sunbrowned patch of flesh above a wild growth of jetblack beard that hung halfway down a tobacco-stained shirt. In deference to the room he had removed his battered gray tricorn. His black hair was a bear-greased mop of a madman’s mane. From it issued a stink of dead ursines, and therefore had attracted the half-dozen big green flies that flitted and swooned about his glistening zenith.

A moment after he had come through the curtains from the garden beyond, where the lights glowed in candlepots and cicadas chirred sweetly in the pear trees, the music that charged the dancing ceased. Violin, cello, harpsichord and clacker of the clacksticks stopped their rotes and rhythms, and thus the dancers upon the shining plank floor in the candlelit chamber also stopped their series of roundabouts. All eyes turned toward the massive black-garbed man who had just stomped his hard dirty boots upon the selfsame planks, and those who knew what was likely to happen drew breath to whisper and point. They pointed toward a young man named Matthew Corbett, who stood nearly at the center of the room next to the most beautiful woman who had ever lived.

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