bargains with knights and knaves

There Chairon stands, who rules the dreary coast
A sordid god: down from his hairy chin
A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean;
His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire. (Virgil)

As Virgil described the ferryman so might I.  And like the tortured souls who must pay a price to cross the river Styx, from the world of the living to the world of the dead, I too had a price to pay.  My knight was in fact a knave whose heart was as dark as hades.  The waters shimmering before me had confirmed we were, after all, on an island, and any chance of reaching Moreton Bay depended on my heading south on the mainland.  His leering smile revealed his dark desire, his belief that my compliance was inevitable.  I was not about to bargain away my last shred of dignity so readily, though bargain indeed I must.

So what is the most exacting to endure, striking the bargain, enacting it, or living with the consequences.  I can tell you now that the nightmares that repossess you again and again are indeed more difficult to live with than the act itself.

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