Page 10 of Katabasis

Around the time the Cooke short list was supposed to be announced, she began checking her pidge three times a day.

Funny how when something enormous was at stake you refused to believe the evidence of your own eyes.

Every day she stared into that empty cubbyhole and tried to convince herself that all her perceptions were wrong; that if she only stared hard enough, a thick purple envelope would materialize amidst the dust. She jumped whenever the phone rang.

She eavesdropped on faculty meetings. She was triggered by the very mention of the word “Cooke,” which made conversations about food very difficult.

She felt so stupid now. Of course it hadn’t gone to her.

She wanted something to hurt him with then. Peter knew what he’d done, throwing that in her face. He ought to know how it felt.

“I thought about a new advisor too.” She tried to sound very casual.

“I mean, Grimes did introduce me to some colleagues while we were in Italy. I thought about reaching out after the accident, but Europe really isn’t my first choice for a degree.

They’re all so—postmodernist over there, don’t you think? ”

It worked. Peter went rigid—only subtly, but she could sense the shift. He took the bait. “When were you in Italy?”

“Last summer,” said Alice. “It was a very last-minute thing. I’m not sure what happened. But Professor Grimes called me to his office one morning and told me to have all my things packed by Friday.”

She knew full well what had happened. Everyone knew Peter was supposed to accompany Professor Grimes to Rome for the biannual Arcana conference.

But Peter, Professor Grimes grumbled, had not been feeling well as of late.

“Unreliable,” he’d muttered; which Alice delighted to hear, since she had been waiting for everyone else to catch on to this for years.

“Something’s going on with that kid. He’s out. It’s yours, Alice, if you want it.”

“I’ll pack tonight,” Alice had breathed.

She’d felt so lucky then that she didn’t even bother to wonder why he hadn’t picked her for the trip in the first place, or what was going on with Peter, or indeed whether perhaps someone should check up on Peter.

Professor Grimes had that effect. If he got you alone, if he said even a slightly flattering word, everything else melted away.

It was, indeed, a glorious summer in Italy.

Alice and Professor Grimes made not one crucial breakthrough in the field, but three.

She came home tanned, well-fed, and beaming with attention and praise.

It was the peak of her career at Cambridge, and she wanted Peter to know precisely what he’d missed.

She couldn’t tell if it worked. Peter’s expression was decidedly—calculatedly?—neutral.

“It sounds like it was a very nice trip.”

“Thank you,” Alice said primly. “It really was.”

“I just thought...” Peter coughed. “Never mind. I’m glad you got to go.”

Silence hung between them. Alice should have been satisfied, but she felt sillier and sillier as the seconds trickled past. It was very clear now what they’d both done, and she felt supremely childish about it.

They both broke the silence at once.

“Honestly, let’s just—”

“Look, Law, maybe we should—”

They stared at each other.

“I don’t want to make things awkward,” said Peter.

“Oh, were things awkward?”

He brushed this off. “Suppose we bracket all problems for the living. We can’t fight down here, Law, we’ve got to trust each other. We’re all we have.”

She sniffed. “Fair enough.”

“Look, I am sorry I brought up the Cooke.”

“And I’m sorry I brought up Italy.” Alice felt so tired then. To be alone, with Peter Murdoch, in Hell—she didn’t know how much more of this she could take. She unzipped her rucksack and dug around the bottom until she found her camping blanket. “Suppose we just shut up and go to sleep.”

“What’s that?” Peter asked.

“A hypothermia blanket.” Alice unfolded the aluminum squares and arranged it over her legs. “It insulates body heat. I borrowed it from one of the residents.”

One advantage Alice had in Hell was that she knew how to pack for long journeys; knew exactly which shoes and rucksacks she needed to last for days on her feet.

Cooking gear—no, she had Lembas Bread. Warm layers—yes.

Chalk and knives—absolutely, yes. She’d been quite outdoorsy before she came to England.

At Cornell, she’d spent most weekends doing gorge trails.

She’d grown up in the Rockies. She had hiked Yosemite and the Appalachian Trail without help.

This was what had convinced her she could make the trip.

She’d done the White Mountains. How much worse could Hell be?

Though in truth, it all felt like reaching into a previous life.

Alice had not been hiking in such a long time.

Nor climbing, to be honest. She’d had so many hobbies before she started at Cambridge.

She used to know what fresh air felt like.

All this time in Grimes’s lab had turned her into a ghoul that lived on canned soups and crackers.

And she’d been stunned, after digging through to the very bottom of her closet, that she still had the hiking bag at all.

“Very cool.” Peter settled back, resting his head on his rucksack. He folded his hands over his chest.

She stared at him. “You didn’t bring a blanket?”

“I guess I forgot.”

“Didn’t you consider sleeping?”

“Well, I’ve slept in the lab plenty before, remember? We didn’t need blankets then.”

“Murdoch, it’s freezing.” Alice sat up. A part of her already regretted this, but she felt she had to offer. He was too pathetic otherwise. “Do you want to share?”

“Ah—well, it looks rather small.”

“It folds out further.” She lifted up an edge. “See?”

He blinked, considering. “I’ll just slide my legs under.”

“You sure?”

“That’ll keep me warm enough.”

“Whatever suits you.”

Peter scooted toward her. There was the requisite awkward fumbling of limbs, of shuffling into a determination of boundaries both physical and emotional, but at last they settled into an arrangement that minimally covered Peter’s lower half but did not bring their bodies unbearably close.

“Well, good night,” said Peter.

“Good night,” Alice mumbled.

Alice had always struggled to sleep when camping.

She didn’t like being out in the open at night, without at least five solid walls separating her and the things that wanted to eat her.

And she should have been even more anxious out here; under Hell’s moonless, starless sky; with who-knows-what lurking in the dunes.

But exhaustion trumped all—and to be honest, so too did the even, steady rhythm of Peter’s breath, familiar as a lullaby.

Very soon she was fast asleep, and miraculously, for the first time in many months, she did not dream.

Everyone told magicians in training to at least consider careers in other fields before they went on the job market.

“Alt academia,” they called it, like it was some punk and rebellious lifestyle, like failing at the single thing you’d been trained to do made you cool.

But halfway into her degree, Alice felt that anything but magick was simply not an option.

She became a tenured magician, or she died.

She could envision no life worth living otherwise.

Besides, no one really meant it when they said alt academia was just as prestigious (or, more commonly, that there was no shame in it, really ).

They meant it even less when they emphasized that alt academia paid better, had kinder hours, was less stressful, gave you better job security, made you happier.

Oh, magicians do really well in consulting , they said.

Employers like critical thinking and problem-solving skills , they said.

Fewer people die in industry , they said.

These aphorisms were uttered by tenured professors who had already caught the golden goose, who could comfortably know they would never face the terrors their students now did.

“Oh, he took a job in industry,” they would say, as if “industry” here was a euphemism like a farm for old sick dogs.

And they said it with a kind, patronizing lilt that betrayed what they truly meant: alt academia meant failure.

The life of the mind, unfettered from commerce, was the only kind worth living.

Of course one could demand why anyone would put themselves through such nonsense in the first place.

But here most academics’ thought processes mirrored the logic of Pascal’s Wager, whether they realized it or not.

Pascal’s Wager said that you could choose to believe in God or not, but if you bet wrong on God and didn’t live as though he existed, you were missing out on the infinite wonder of Heaven.

Similarly, you could choose to believe the job market would work out for you or not, but if you bet wrong and opted out of the cycle, you were missing out on the infinite miracles of the Life of the Mind.

Now, like in the case of Heaven, no one in Alice’s generation had yet experienced this Miraculous Life of the Mind, but all their professors assured them it was possible and so they plodded along.

Alice had also known, before she matriculated to do a PhD in analytic magick at Cambridge, that Professor Jacob Grimes was perhaps not everyone’s first choice for an advisor.

Her undergraduate advisor at Cornell, a kindly junior scholar named Dr. Mills, had been doubtful when she first presented him her list.

“You seem very set on going abroad,” he had said.

“Well, here they’ve fired all the Communists.”

“Fair enough,” said Dr. Mills. “Still, I’d go to England over France. Everything seems a good fit except for Grimes.”

“He’s the best in the world at linguistic magick,” said Alice.

“Oh, his work is excellent,” said Dr. Mills. “No one’s questioning that. Only it’s rumored his graduate students aren’t very, ah, happy.”