Page 48 of Katabasis

A strip of land came into focus now. No buildings marked the horizon.

No—as they sailed closer, Alice saw that on the other side of the abyss that the Shades had labored so furiously to cross was nothing but sand and driftwood.

It seemed a barren and hostile beach, the kind you got shipwrecked on; the kind where survivors went mad and devoured one another.

Indeed the more she observed, the more the beach presented evidence of some ongoing struggle.

Everywhere she saw confused prints in the sand; haphazard fortlike structures; broken spears made of driftwood and rocks; discarded firewood; proof of camps broken up in a hurry.

“The Third Court,” said Elspeth. “The deserts of Greed.”

“Where’s the campus?” Alice asked.

“Pardon?”

“Coming over the wall, we saw this campus,” said Alice. “And I just thought all the courts were like—buildings on a campus.”

“Oh.” Elspeth chuckled. “What’s the furthest you’ve ever wandered from your department?”

“How do you mean?”

“I bet you always lived in college,” said Elspeth. “You never ventured further out, did you?”

Of course I did , Alice wanted to say; but she really couldn’t claim she had. The farthest she could point to was the walk south to Cambridge station, but that didn’t count. Downing and Pembroke were down there.

“Don’t you know it?” Elspeth gestured. “The dead space. Where the campus ends, but the rest of the world hasn’t started.

Where faculty and no one else lives. Where the university’s bought up land but not built anything on it.

Where construction continues, but nothing is ever built, where space is in becoming for ages. Haven’t you been there?”

“I did visit Berkeley once,” said Peter. “Horrible place.”

“Well, that’s where we are.” Elspeth dug her pole into the bank. “Things get freaky out here.”

Near the shoreline knelt a Shade, its head bobbing up and down in frantic movement. As they drew closer Alice saw the Shade was attempting to eat something clutched in his hands. Something shiny, circular, hard. Alice hoped it was only a rock.

“Professor Carpeaux,” said Elspeth. “He’s been there for a while. Always hungry.”

The name rang a bell to Alice. “Wasn’t that the man who—”

“Who plagiarized his students’ papers for years and got away with it,” said Elspeth. “They said he died of a stomach virus, but I think one of his students laced his apples with cyanide. Good work if so.”

The barge drifted closer to shore. Here the waves grew perilous, crests smashing against the rocks.

Further up shore Alice could see larger groups of Shades, though she could not speak to what they were doing.

They seemed to be at war—certainly two groups kept charging one another in succession, weapons in tow—but what happened after was unclear, since no one could be injured in any way that mattered, which meant they could only settle for what looked like vigorous collective writhing on the sand.

Alice was reminded of a faculty volleyball tournament—a few years back, when the students lobbied to have the annual department retreat in Brighton instead of Inverness, and for three days everyone pretended to look natural outdoors, pale flabby bodies sweating under the hot sun.

Someone proposed a volleyball tournament, and all the faculty got competitive about it.

Some instinct for physical dominance emerged in this new environment.

Alice would have given anything for a potion that could selectively wipe the memory of the department administrator grunting as he lobbed a ball into the net, or Helen Murray shrieking with joy when she managed a good serve.

The game broke up after an argument about refereeing, which culminated in Helen hurling her cup of water at the other team.

Alice had been ever so grateful Professor Grimes did not play.

She’d never have been able to look at him the same way again.

“What are they doing?” Peter looked aghast.

Two Shades were now slowly circling each other, arms extended at their sides like wrestlers, while the others gathered around them, chanting something illegible from shore.

“Hell if I know,” said Elspeth. “I’ve poked around before, tried to find out.

But they won’t talk to me. They’re the only Shades that won’t talk to me.

They’re very chatty in Pride, and even the folks in Desire will talk for an hour or two, if you wave a hand in front of their face.

But they’re so paranoid on Greed. They sprint away every time you approach.

And then next thing you know they’re ambushing you with driftwood arrows.

My theory is that it’s some sort of collective action problem, and they could all get out if they’d just hold some democratic forum, but I think they have more fun with their sticks and arrows—oh, watch out.

” Elspeth tugged at the rudder strings. “They start pelting me with rocks whenever I get close.”

They tugged away from the shore. Professor Carpeaux raised a hand toward them—plaintive, supplicating. Elspeth wiggled her fingers in return.

“Do you see a lot of people you know here?” Alice asked. She was trying to think of a subtle way to see if Elspeth had spotted Professor Grimes.

“Oh, yes. Far more magicians than you would expect, actually.”

“And do they get out pretty quick, in your experience?”

“Absolutely not.” Elspeth snorted. “Magicians are terrible at getting through Hell. They never think they did anything wrong, you see. They think they’re different.

Everything’s justified if they were doing it for research.

Only it’s never for the research, is it?

It’s always about the ego, the bragging, the titles and bylines.

A hierarchy of complete nonsense. And they can’t give it up.

I think that’s why they muck about in the sand all those years.

They could get up and walk away at any moment, but they won’t.

They can’t give it up. And for what?” Elspeth gave a brittle laugh.

“Little parlor tricks? Magick is so flimsy. Pointless. There’s no one in the real world who cares about what we do.

And these people lived like its simplest secrets were matters of life and death.

And they’ll go at each other’s throats—for what? A fucking piece of chalk?”

This last sentence came out sounding rather pointed. Alice tossed Peter a nervous glance. But Elspeth was not looking at them. She was glaring hard at the writhing bodies back on shore.

Peter said, “Beats me why you’d want to go back then.”

Elspeth frowned, eyes narrowing. “Now, what do you mean by that?”

“It just—it seems you’d be better off, well, reincarnating. I dunno. If you hate Cambridge so much.”

“I didn’t hate Cambridge.”

“The people, then.” Peter’s fingers worried at the frays of his sleeves. “The institution, at least. Why spend so long searching for a True Contradiction when you could just pass on? Given there’s nothing you want to go back to?”

“I mean, I still have a family.” Elspeth’s voice grew sharp. “I had parents. Have parents. I have siblings. I still have a life .”

“No, right, I’m sure.” Peter nodded. “But if you’re done with research, then what’s the—I mean, have you ever thought through what you might do when you get back up there?”

“Of course,” Elspeth said scathingly. “I’m going to sit outside. I’m going to have a cup of tea, Assam, with lots of milk and a swirl of honey. And a cinnamon bun. With raisins.”

They rounded the bend past Greed and, after a long stretch of empty beach, came upon the Court of Wrath.

Dante had described Wrath as the swamp of the Styx, populated with furious naked souls in the bog, striking at each other and at themselves.

Souls simmering such that their rage made the surface bubble.

Alice had quivered upon reading this description—“This hymn they gurgle in their gullets / For they cannot get a word out whole”—for it was the first time a poet seemed to understand that wrath was not merely external; was not just a screaming raving tornado of destruction.

Sometimes you swallowed it down like a hot coal.

Sometimes it only ever burned you, slowly, from the inside out, until you choked.

She thought of nights she’d spent awake, tracing over the corners of memories and working herself up into a rage—but it never made her incandescent, righteous; she only stifled herself in her ineffectuality.

All this has happened to me , she’d think, and the world is unfair, and still I can’t do a thing about it. I might as well drown.

“So what’s on Wrath?” Peter asked. “A rugby court?”

“Actually no,” said Elspeth. “The structured institutions start disintegrating after Greed, I think. Past Wrath, it all gets more classically infernal. Degeneration of the psyche, the flight from reason—something like that. We tread a bit more carefully here.”

Alice gazed at shore looking for her imagined bogs of souls, like fruit flies drowning in apple cider.

But under the dim light of morning, she saw only dark and endless shore.

The sand was pitch-black, though dotted with bright, glowing spots.

Footprints, Alice realized; undeniably shaped by heel and ball.

Though the being who’d created them must have been enormous, for as they drew closer she saw those footprints could span her entire height at least.

“Those will be left by Phlegyas,” said Elspeth. “A deity. Cast into the underworld for setting fire to Apollo’s temple after Apollo raped his daughter.”

“That seems reasonable,” said Alice. “I mean the fire, not the raping.”

“Well, Phlegyas thinks so too. Always howling about the injustice. Look—there he is, at the foot of those mountains. Can you spot him?”