Page 41 of Katabasis

“You don’t reincarnate if you die in Hell.

Hell already operates on another metaphysical plane.

We’re all soul stuff here. When you die in Hell, it’s not just your mortal body that disintegrates—it’s your soul stuff, too.

” She smacked her chest. “All this, it dissipates. If you die down here, that’s it for you. Total annihilation of the self.”

“But nobody said,” said Alice.

“Because nobody knows. All the sojourners’ accounts are by people who made it back, aren’t they?

Survivorship bias, and all that. But I’ve seen it.

The death of the soul. I’ve seen the Kripkes murder a soul, in fact.

They do it to Shades, too. They’ve figured out how.

It’s a horrible process. The screams alone.

It’s always a small explosion, when a soul destructs. ”

Peter was silent.

Alice, still gazing over the dunes, thought to the creatures in the Weaver Girl’s web. Those contorted figures. She hadn’t let any of her lovers move on, either. Just kept stringing them along, wringing them for shreds of entertainment, until. Until.

“Anyway,” Elspeth said brightly. “Who’s hungry?”

They stared blankly at her.

“Starving, aren’t you?” Elspeth was pushing their boat toward the shore.

Alice had not paid attention to the direction of their sailing; she knew only that they had skirted round the perilous cliffs and were back on flat, monotonous banks.

“You’ve got to be. I assume you’re living on Lembas Bread; nothing else keeps.

But that’s no way to get your nutrients. ”

“True,” said Alice. “But what—”

“Splendid! Let’s have dinner.”

“I thought you didn’t need to eat,” said Peter.

“Course not.” Elspeth scratched the back of Archimedes’s head. “But I do need to feed this one. How do you feel about rats?”

Neither Peter nor Alice knew how to respond to this.

Elspeth laughed. “The traps are just across the bank. I won’t be five. Don’t unmoor the boat and don’t wander off.” She slung her perfume-spritzer staff over her back, then clambered up onto the railing. “More spray bottles under the deck if you need them. Stay dry!”

In one graceful movement she sprang off the side of the boat and landed clean on the shore. She turned, tossed them a wave, and then vanished at a sprint over the dunes.

For a moment Alice and Peter stood side by side, watching the empty shore. The silence was excruciating.

“Well.” She glanced over at him. “Gosh. What a day.”

He said nothing.

He was furious; that was clear.

Alice had never known Peter’s anger before.

For most of their career she hadn’t known it was possible for Peter Murdoch to get angry.

Always he wore that affable smile in lab; when undergraduates made a mess of his pentagrams, he only cheered them up and then slowly, patiently instructed them on how to do things right.

Everyone else in the department kept grudges, snapped occasionally when they were running low on sleep.

There were always apologies going on at their department— I’m sorry I said you were a ninny, I didn’t mean it, I don’t think you’re a ninny . But never Peter.

So she did not know what to do with his stonewalling. She wished he would shout, rage, curse at her, or beat his fists. Anything was better than this stony sulk.

“Can we talk?” Her voice came out very small. “Murdoch?”

He would not turn to look at her. “Can’t stop you, can I?”

“I’m sorry for back there.”

“Oh, you are?”

A lump formed in her throat. “I didn’t mean to—I just looked down , and—”

“And the apple jumped into your hand?” Peter snorted. “We had a plan, Law. It was so easy.”

“I know, I just—”

“Just condemned me? For fun?”

“I didn’t want—I didn’t know...”

Peter watched her, arms crossed and waiting, eyebrow arched as if to say, Go on .

But what explanation could she give? That was her hand.

That was the green apple. “Sometimes...” She could barely speak.

She did not know how to describe what had happened.

She had never articulated this to anyone; she had tried for so long to pretend it was not a problem, because admitting the problem would make it real, and this could not be.

My mind is broken and I cannot fix it, I cannot sort reality from dreams —that was not true.

She could not live if it were true. “Sometimes, I try to think, and everything blares at once, and I don’t know where I am, or what I’m doing—”

“What are you trying to tell me, Law?” He scoffed. “Your tattoo makes you stupid?”

She flinched.

“That you can’t follow simple instructions? Or that you just wanted me dead?”

“That’s not what I—”

“But just think about what you’re saying,” Peter snapped. “ You took the green. You would have left me trapped. And even if you changed your mind, you still considered that option. You wanted me to die .”

“I didn’t—”

“Factually you did!”

“I didn’t want that,” she cried. “I didn’t know, I couldn’t determine—I just, I was afraid you’d do the same.”

He flung up his hands. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Your notebook,” she said helplessly. “I saw in your notebook, the spell for exchange—”

“Exchange?” His eyes went wide. “You thought I’d exchange you ?”

“What else would that mean, Murdoch? How on earth would I interpret that?”

Peter shook his head. Alice could not make any sense of it.

She would have preferred he looked guilty, because then at least her narrative would make sense, and then all their cards would be on the table.

Then at least they would be definite enemies, and she would have cause to hate him.

But if anything he seemed angrier than before.

“You think I’m that sort of person? That I’m capable of—of trading your soul, like you’re nothing? ”

“I don’t know.” She could hardly hear her own voice. “I guess I don’t know what I think of you. I don’t know what you could do.”

She knew as it left her mouth that it was the worst thing she could have said.

“Jesus Christ, Law.” He still would not look at her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Then tell me , she wanted to cry. If only supplication could shatter his shell; if only she could beg long and hard enough for him to be honest with her.

But the gulf between them seemed so vast now, and all the words that came to mind utterly insufficient.

Still she had to try, and she had just opened her mouth, was casting for the right things to say, when Peter spoke.

“You know, I thought—” He swallowed. “I don’t know. For whatever reason, I still thought you weren’t like him.”

She felt worse than if he’d socked her in the face.

Something thumped over the side of the boat. “Dinner!” Elspeth clambered up, then bent to hold up her spoils. “You’re in luck. They’re fresh!”

Alice blinked down. Three fat rats lay strung together by twine.

“Get a fire going in that stove.” Elspeth directed Peter with one hand; with the other, she drew out a butcher’s knife. “Matches under the lid.”

Wordlessly Peter went to obey. Alice remained where she was, arms hugged tight against her ribs. She felt a terrible whooshing between her ears. She was afraid to move; she was certain if she unfolded her arms, then she might shatter.

Elspeth was oblivious to their distress; she chattered happily along as she took a knife to the rats.

“Rats are most of what you get down here. Rats and moles. They keep burrowing further underground to see where they can get. Stands to reason they end up in Hell. Spiders too, but you can’t eat those.

” She jammed her thumbs into flesh and yanked at the skins, which came off with a terrible ripping noise.

“Keep the bones for me. They’re so tiny, and come in all sorts of shapes.

.. I usually toss the meat out. They’re fleshier than they look, anyways; they’ll fill you right up. ”

In short order Elspeth had the rats roasting over the fire on a spit.

While they blackened and crackled she made a great fuss over laying out plates and silverware on a rickety folding table that she hauled out from beneath the oars.

“Found these beauties a few years ago off the shore of Desire. Usually plates come cracked and in pieces but these—these came whole, aren’t they lovely!

” She paused; took in their anxious faces.

“Oh, go on. It’s not Hell’s foodstuff, it’s safe. ”

Alice was reminded of humble dinner parties in graduate apartments.

It made no sense to cook at home instead of eating in hall, where the food was perhaps not better but certainly more plentiful.

But still they loved hosting one another.

It was pathetically charming, the way they showed off their charity shop acquisitions, the way Belinda insisted they all fuss over her slightly chipped porcelain milk pitcher with a kitten print when they assembled in her flat for tea.

None of them could afford a matching dinnerware set or a proper table or even linens, but still they were proud to pass around the cheap bottles of port they’d found at Sainsbury’s because it was a luxury to have port at all.

Once in her first year Alice had discovered an actual silver gravy bowl at Oxfam, and they all sat on her floor and ate mushroom gravy in April.

It was nice to have company over and play homemaker, and pretend you were a real adult.

She therefore accepted a smoking rat leg, if only to be polite. But then her stomach took over and she dispensed with the silverware entirely, ramming the corpse against her mouth so her teeth could get in between the bones.

“There you are.” Elspeth helped more onto Alice’s plate. “Don’t forget to hydrate. Isn’t that better?”