But once Jacob had dropped the gold sovereign into his palm, the ferryman reached into his baggy pockets, handing him and Valiant each a pair of wax earplugs, which looked distinctly as if they had been used before.
"Just to be on the safe side," he said. "You never know."
He flashed Clara a sly grin.
"You won't need them. The Lorelei are only after us men."
Fox came running down the jetty as they led the horses onto the ferry. She licked a few feathers from her fur before jumping aboard the shallow boat. The horses were restless, but the ferryman pushed the gold coins into his pocket and untied the ropes.
The ferry drifted out onto the river. Behind them the houses of Blenheim dissolved into the twilight, and the only sound was the lapping of the water against the metal-clad hull. The opposite shore was slowly coming closer, and the ferryman gave Jacob a wink. But the horses were still restless, and Fox was standing with pricked ears.
A voice wafted across the water.
At first it sounded like a bird singing, but then more and more like a woman's voice. The voice coming from the direction of the rocks that protruded from the water to their left, gray boulders that made it seem as if the twilight itself had been turned to stone. A shape moved on the rock and slid into the water. A second followed. And then they were everywhere.
Valiant uttered a curse. "What did I tell you?" he hissed at Jacob. "Faster!" he shouted at the ferryman. "Come on!"
The man seemed to hear neither the Dwarf nor the voices that drifted ever more enticingly across the water. It was only when Jacob put a hand on his shoulder that he spun around.
"He can't hear!" Valiant screamed, already stuffing the wax into his ears. "That cunning dog is nearly as deaf as a dead fish!"
The ferryman just shrugged and clutched his oar more tightly. Jacob, pushing the grimy earplugs into his ears, wondered how often the ferryman had come back without his passengers.
The horses shied. Jacob could barely control them. The last daylight was fading, and the shore inched toward them so painfully slowly, as if the water was dragging them back again. Clara stood close by Jacob's side, and Fox posted herself protectively in front of him, though he could see that her fur was bristling with fear. The voices grew so loud that Jacob could hear them through the earplugs, luring him into the water. Clara pulled him back from the guardrail, but the singing seeped through his skin like sweet venom. Heads emerged from the waves, hair drifting on the water like spun gold, and as Clara let go of him for one second to press her hands over her own aching ears, Jacob felt his fingers reaching for the protective wax, pulling it out of his ears and throwing it overboard.
The singing ran through his brain like honey-coated knives. Clara tried to hold him back as he staggered toward the edge of the ferry, but Jacob shoved her away so hard that she stumbled against the ferryman.
Where were they? Jacob leaned over the water, and at first he saw only his own reflection, but then it melted into a face. It looked like the face of a woman except it didn't have a nose. The eyes were silver, and fangs pushed over the pale green lips. Arms reached out of the river, and fingers closed around Jacob's wrist. Another hand grabbed his hair. Water lapped into the ferry. The were everywhere, reaching out for him, their scaly bodies pushed halfway out of the water, their teeth bared. Lorelei. Much worse than the song. Reality always was so much worse.
Fox dug her teeth into one of the scaly arms that had grabbed him, but the other Lorelei were already pulling Jacob over the guardrail. He struggled against them, but finally he lost his footing. Then he heard a shot, and the mermaid sank back into the murky water, a gaping hole in her head.
Clara was standing behind him, holding the pistol he had given her. She shot another Lorelei who tried to pull the Dwarf into the water. The ferryman got two with a knife, and Jacob himself killed one that had struck her claws into Fox's hide. As the dead bodies drifted through the water, the other Lorelei backed off and set about devouring their dead kin.
The sight made Clara drop the pistol. She buried her face in her hands while Jacob and Valiant calmed the panicked horses and helped the ferryman steer the wildly pitching boat toward the jetty. The Lorelei screamed after them, but now their voices merely sounded like a swarm of shrieking gulls.
They were still howling as Jacob led the horses ashore. The ferryman stepped in his way and held out his hand. Valiant shoved him so hard that the man nearly stumbled into the river.
"Oh, so did you hear the bit about the second sovereign, did you?" the Dwarf yelled at him. "How about you give us back the first one, or do you always get paid for delivering dinner to the Lorelei?"
"What do you want? I took you across!" the ferryman merely retorted. "That damn Fairy put them in the river. Am I supposed to let her ruin my business? A deal's a deal."
"All right, then." Jacob produced another gold sovereign from his pocket. They were on the other side, and that was all that mattered. "But is there anything else we should be on the lookout for?"
Valiant's eyes followed the coin until it disappeared in the ferryman's grimy pocket.
"Did the Dwarf tell you about the Dragons? They're as red as the fire they spit. Whenever they fly over the mountains, you can see the fires they leave behind on the slopes for days."
"I did hear about that." Valiant gave Jacob a knowing look. "Don't you also tell your children that there are Giants on this side of the river? Superstitious twaddle." The Dwarf lowered his voice. "But should I tell you where there really are Dragons?"
The ferryman reflexively leaned down closer to the Dwarf.
"Saw it with my own eyes!" Valiant shouted into his deaf ear. "Sitting on its nest of bones, just two miles upriver from here. But it was a green one, and it had a leg as scrawny as yours dangling from its ugly mouth. And I said to myself, ‘By the Devil and all his golden hairs,’ I said, ‘I wouldn't like to be in Blenheim the day that beast decides to fly downstream.’"
The ferryman's eyes grew as big as one of Jacob's gold sovereigns. "Two miles?" He cast a worried glance up the river.
"Yep, maybe even a little less." Valiant dropped the grimy earplugs into his hands. "Good luck on the return journey!"
"Not a bad story!" Jacob whispered as the Dwarf swung himself onto his donkey. "But what would you say if I told you that I really did see a Dragon once?"