Page 43 of Katabasis

T he sun slipped under the horizon. The river turned black; in the absence of a moon all Alice could see was the light of Elspeth’s lanterns and endless dark around them.

They could have been floating in the middle of space; boundless, weightless.

Elspeth led them to the hold below deck, a cramped but homey room that she had filled mostly with books.

“My humble paradise,” she told them. “Behold.”

Alice held the lantern against the walls, squinting at the spines. Elspeth had acquired books of every style from every era, most waterlogged, tattered, and missing entire chunks; some mere pages strung together with twine. “You have quite a collection.”

“You’d be surprised how many books end up here down under,” said Elspeth. “Whenever I get bored I go fishing on the shores of Desire.”

“Why Desire?”

“Don’t know, really—but that’s where all the books from above end up.

Lots of romance novels. Really dirty stuff, I can’t get enough of it.

You can borrow some if you like. Though I try to spend my time educating myself on the classics.

Plato, Aristotle, you know. When I get really desperate I duck into the library in Pride, they have lots of wholesome pretentious material.

” Elspeth led them to a nook that must have been at the front, for the wall was slightly curved like the prow.

“Why don’t you sleep down here? I’ll be up top.

The Kripkes don’t generally bother me when I’m over water, but you can’t be too cautious. ”

“Sorry,” said Peter. “Could I, that is—where’s the best place to take a leak—?”

“Oh—sure.” Elspeth pointed behind her. “Just up that ladder and to your left. You can use one of the tins. Only empty it out when you’re done.”

“Thanks very much,” said Peter, and headed up the ladder.

“Nice boy.” Elspeth turned to Alice. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to date within your department?”

“We’re just colleagues,” said Alice.

“Oh, sure.”

“No, really.” Alice hugged her arms against her chest. “I don’t think he likes me all that much, actually.”

“Oh, he must. He followed you to Hell, didn’t he?”

Alice did not feel like explaining the tangled web of complications that had put her and Peter in Hell together. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Suit yourself.” Elspeth dug a little box out of her pocket. “Smoke?”

“Oh—no, thanks.” Alice had been trying to quit.

Elspeth shrugged and lit her own. Alice watched, fascinated, as smoke furled out the sides of Elspeth’s head. “Does that do anything for you?”

“Of course not,” said Elspeth. “Not physiologically, anyways. But the ritual’s nice. The soul remembers. It’s like—echoes of how it feels, which after a while seems close enough.” She took a deep, lusty suck, and a rich, woody scent filled the air. “ Ahh. ”

Alice caved. “Oh, all right.”

Smiling, Elspeth lit another cigarette and handed it over. Smoke hung in a cloud around her head like a veil.

Alice waved a hand in front of her face. “How do you do that?”

Elspeth looked flattered. “I’m so glad you noticed.”

“Can all Shades do that?”

“Only with a lot of practice,” said Elspeth. “Do you know what proprioception is?”

“Sure. Knowing where your body is without looking at it.” Alice knew this only because she had practice climbing.

Most people had some degree of proprioception—you needed it to walk without staring at your feet, to tie back your hair without craning into a mirror—but climbing made you exceptionally good at it.

You had to trust you could sustain the whole of your body weight on just two fingertips.

“Right,” said Elspeth. “Well, as a Shade, your default state is a gray cloud. You don’t cohere unconsciously anymore.

You have to hold an image of what you looked like and will your essence to assemble.

It takes immense concentration—as if you had to remember constantly to breathe.

I’m very good at it. I know exactly how I look.

” Elspeth sniffed. “When I try very hard, I can become butterflies.”

She shimmered and, as if to show off, briefly became even more solid. Her smoky veil vanished. Color returned to her cheeks. Her hair assumed a shine, and at her feet, a shadow solidified.

Alice blinked down. She tried to focus on her smoke, the push and pull of it.

She had a hard time looking straight at Elspeth.

She hated how deeply the resemblance struck her.

For no matter how she parsed it, she could not rid herself of the clear recognition that Elspeth looked like her .

What a cliché they made. Brittle brunettes, sad girl smokers. She wondered. What was the attraction?

“Could I ask you something?”

“Sure,” said Elspeth. “You want to know why I killed myself.”

“How did—I’m sorry, I’m being rude.”

“No, I don’t mind. Lots of Shades have asked. Why do you want to know?” Elspeth cocked her head. “Think much about killing yourself?”

Alice found her bluntness astonishing. Elspeth watched her earnestly, waiting for her answer.

Oh, what was the point of pretending? Of course she was wondering.

Did death make you better off? Alice often thought it might, but she had only circumstantial evidence for believing so, and most people who had done it were unavailable for comment.

“I have, a bit. Once or twice. I guess—it occupies my thoughts more than I’d like.

Obviously I didn’t—well, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m asking. ”

“You’d like to find out where the boundary is,” said Elspeth, not unkindly. “You’d like to know when it goes from feeling pretty blue, to thinking you wouldn’t mind if a bus ran you over, to actively stringing a rope together and kicking off a chair. Is that right?”

“I—I guess, yeah.” Alice had never said as much out loud before, and it scared her to hear her own thoughts reflected back to her. It scared her that someone else had had those same exact thoughts about the bus. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s fine,” said Elspeth. “Lots of people want to know. I used to hear them from the Pavilion. It was all anyone ever talked about— why’d she do it , blah blah blah.” She tapped some ash from her cigarette, then cut Alice a sideways look. “Who’s your advisor?”

Alice found it prudent to lie. “Helen Murray.”

“And she makes your life hard, does she?”

“Some.”

“Hm. Well, see, my advisor was Jacob Grimes. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Haven’t we all.” Alice asked, in a fit of boldness, “And he drove you to do it?”

“Please, no.” Elspeth snorted. “I hate to give him that much credit for anything.”

“Then why ?”

“Well, let’s start with why not. I imagine they told you I gave up because I’m dull. Is that what you heard?”

Alice had indeed formed the impression that perhaps Elspeth had simply lacked talent.

It made the rest easier to stomach. For Alice was not talentless, so the same thing couldn’t possibly happen to her.

Suicidal depression was just an extreme form of failure, which was a symptom of inadequacy.

If you had sufficient force of will, then obviously you wouldn’t be suicidal. She did not admit this out loud.

“They... well, they didn’t say much,” she said. “It was more... um... hush-hush.”

“Figures.” Elspeth huffed. “I’m a genius, you know. I won all the maths and logic medals my first and second years. No one’s ever done that before. I was as poised to succeed as anyone. You must understand.”

It seemed very important to Elspeth that Alice acknowledged she was clever. She nodded vigorously. “Sure.”

“It was the absolute farce of it all,” said Elspeth.

“One day it all seemed so silly to me, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it.

The symbolic system collapsed. You write a good paper, and it’s rejected because your reviewer was having a bad day.

You’re a perfect fit for a job, and you lose to the committee chair’s godson.

Once you have a job it doesn’t get better—do you know how many people are passed over for tenure because someone somewhere once felt they were rude at a party?

I mean, what’s the fucking point? I couldn’t keep up the charade, but also I didn’t see the value in anything else, so I just put a stop to it all.

I could not care anymore. Meanwhile, he .

..” Her face darkened. “I mean. He was not the reason why. He was not. I refuse to give him that credit. He was just the symptom, you see. It took me many years to realize this. Every time he yelled at me, or picked me apart, or humiliated me in front of other students—this was just the whole symbolic order coming to a head. This is an arbitrary game of egos and narcissists and bullying perceived as strength. And he was the perfect incarnation of the system’s nonsense. ”

“He treated you badly, you mean.”

“He treated me like a dog.” Elspeth’s tone turned brittle.

“It seemed a game to him to see how much I would take, before I stopped crawling back. I invested every fiber of my being in his stupid games. And I used to play along, because I thought, Well, at least the rewards are so great. Persistence pays off. And then I realized there were no rewards coming. That it was too late, and there was no way out.”

Aha , thought Alice. Here was the line between them.

There was a way out. Alice knew, because she’d perfected the game herself.

You learned to read his moods. You fawned when he turned on you; groveled when he demanded an apology.

It wasn’t so hard, as long as you sacrificed your dignity.

Realizing this gave her tremendous relief.

She didn’t have to follow down Elspeth’s path. She was tougher. She wanted it more.

“He’s not even that great a magician,” Elspeth went on, waving her cigarette about. “That’s the worst part. It might have been worth something, you know, if he actually was the greatest magician of our time. But he’s just some hack like all the rest.”

“What do you mean?”