Page 6 of Katabasis

As the Shades approached, Alice observed with horror that their appearances seemed locked onto their bodies in the moment of death.

One of them seemed mostly intact—she had just a few scratches on her face and arms. One student died of smoke inhalation, said the report.

The flames never touched her. She’d crawled into a corner and hidden under a fireproof tarp, and according to the firefighters this was why no one had found her until nearly an hour after the fire was put out.

She might have been alive a long time—no one knew for sure, and no one pressed the issue.

Her parents held an open-casket funeral in Ely and invited the entire department.

This was before Alice’s time, but she was fairly sure Professor Grimes wouldn’t have gone.

The others were burned beyond recognition.

It turned Alice’s stomach to look at them.

It was one thing to read theories of the dead; witnessing them was quite another.

Charred limbs, petrified faces; jawbones stripped clean of flesh, teeth stretched, rictus-like, in unwilling smiles.

Only the eyes were uniformly unscarred; staring, pleading, plaintive, curious eyes.

Did they spend all eternity like that? Or had they only chosen to present themselves as such for now?

The literature on Shades and corporeality was scant and undecided.

Some scholars thought Shades were preserved unwillingly as they were in the moment of their death.

Others argued Shades had the agency to manifest however they liked. Either way Alice felt it rude to ask.

“Hello,” she said cautiously. “We’re from Cambridge.”

The Shades shuffled closer. They seemed quite excited. Alice could not read the faces of the burnt three—they could never stop smiling—but the more intact girl’s expression was open, delighted.

“We’re looking for a soul who’s only recently passed over,” said Peter. “Professor Jacob Grimes.”

The more intact girl gasped, and the sound spread across the Shades like wind across rocks.

“Professor Grimes?”

“Professor Grimes is here?”

“Grimes!”

So they could speak. Their voices were each an echo of the others’; one statement repeated four times in slightly different registers.

Alice could not tell if Shades could speak no other way, or if, after decades clustered together and facing down infinity, their personalities had blended and congealed so that they no longer knew themselves as distinct from the others.

They descended into excited chatter, communing among themselves in unintelligible clacks and whistles.

All Alice could make out was, “Grimes,” “No way,” and “Mother of God!”

“Do you have any idea where he might be?” Peter cut in.

“Should still be a Shade,” said a girl with braids.

“Yes, a Shade, unless—”

“Unless!”

“But we wouldn’t know.”

“Doesn’t talk to us.”

“Too important,” huffed a boy with glasses. “Would have just sailed by.”

“Sailed.”

“Without speaking.”

“He did come by,” said the more intact girl. “So quickly I thought it was a dream. But now you say it—I did see. I saw. I waved. He said hello.”

The other three floated up and down in agitation.

“You saw him?”

“He said hello ?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Oh, my God!” The more intact Shade flared for a moment; ever so briefly, her form took a more solid, distinct shape, and Alice glimpsed a flash of red in her hair.

“Do you know how annoying it is to spend eternity with you lot? It was a memory all my own, something that happened , and I didn’t want to share. ”

The other Shades looked miffed. Alice could actually see the shape of their irritation, spiky wisps of gray miasma drifting about their shoulders.

“Could have told us.”

“Could have.”

“No point keeping secrets.”

“There’s an eternity for secrets.”

“Hold on,” Alice said desperately, before she lost them to their chatter. “When did this happen?”

“Don’t know,” said the boy with glasses. “There is no time here.”

This was demonstrably metaphysically false, but Alice chose to ignore this. “What did he say to you?”

“Wanted directions,” sniffed the more intact girl. “Couldn’t stand the fields. Couldn’t wait to get out of here.”

“And where would we go?” asked Peter. “If we also wanted to get out of here?”

The undergraduates pointed. Alice and Peter turned, and there it was, a line of white in the distance—a wall or building, she could not tell for sure, but it was at least some structure that promised an end to the silt monotony.

Alice did not think it had been there before.

She squinted, and saw what from this distance reminded her of teeming ants around their anthill.

Shades, thousands of them, lining up for whatever release lay behind the white.

The undergraduates sighed, deflating, all at once.

“The lines—”

“So long!”

“Never make it to the end—”

“Worse than concert tickets—”

“I only ever got to see one,” declared the boy with glasses. “I got to see the Chordettes. I stood in line for four hours to see the Chordettes.”

This set off another excited shuffle. “You saw the Chordettes ?”

“Focus,” said Peter. “Please. Is that the only way into the next court?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Everyone has to stand in line.”

“Even Professor Grimes.”

“Wait their turn.”

“No exceptions.”

The more intact girl cocked her head. “Will you save him?”

At this question, all the undergraduates surged forth and flocked eagerly around Alice and Peter.

“Will you scoop him out of here?”

“Is this for your research ?”

“Is it for a paper ?”

Alice felt a pang of sympathy. She’d always been fond of undergraduates, no matter how much she enjoyed complaining about them.

In truth, Cambridge students were a pleasure to teach.

Na?ve, eager things. With few exceptions they were never lazy, never insolent.

Quite the opposite. They were generally cheerful, unformed minds who still asked for permission to use the restroom during section, who regularly forgot the order of operations when switching from maths to logic, who stuttered from nerves during office hours and opened their papers with inane declarations like “THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY DEFINES VALIDITY AS...” and “SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, MANKIND HAS BEEN TROUBLED BY THE PROBLEM OF RATIONALITY.” She used to see them bundling into the Pick together after lecture, pink cheeked from the cold, chattering happily over cheap beer and soggy chips.

She liked to watch them chatting animatedly about their classes, hands waving about in the air, their vowels just a bit forced, their jargon heavy-handed.

They made her wonder, envious, if ignorance was truly the secret to bliss.

“Shall we go in together, then?” Peter asked gently. “Isn’t it about time you lot moved on, anyways?”

This was apparently the wrong question to ask. The undergraduates shrank back into a tight, glutinous mass of psychic distress. The air suddenly sharpened with cold. Alice’s arms prickled. She made a mental note of this. Shades can affect atmosphere, if upset.

“Scared,” said the more intact girl at last.

The others nodded.

“Of what, though?” Peter asked. “You’re all such—I mean, I’m sure you have nothing much to atone for.”

Violently they shook their heads. “That’s not it.”

“No, no...”

“We are scared to pass .”

“Scared to not be—”

“Scared of the Lethe—”

“Scared to forget—”

“To become—”

“Scared to be other.”

“It’s only reincarnation,” Peter said. “You won’t remember a thing.”

“Precisely. We were magicians,” said the boy with glasses. “If we go...”

“We won’t be magicians.”

“You’re joking,” said Peter, with his classic lack of tact.

Alice thought he was being a bit daft. Of course these Shades were scared.

Souls often lingered in Asphodel for years—decades—before trying for reincarnation.

Loss of identity was a terrifying prospect.

Who were you without your memories, your background, your relationships, your station?

What if your lot in the next life was far worse than the life you’d just lived?

It didn’t matter that in theory souls enjoyed infinite lives, and infinite chances to experience things good and bad.

From the subjective perspective of the soul, reincarnation was no different from death.

What’s more, reincarnation was always a lottery. Alice could understand not wanting to try their chances.

“You’ve barely lived,” said Peter. “There’s so much more to life—wouldn’t you like to try again?”

The undergraduates quivered.

“But magick—”

“But Cambridge—”

“The throne of the intellectual world,” said the more intact girl. “Privileged beyond belief.”

“It is the only rational choice,” declared the boy with glasses.

He spoke with such authority, the other undergraduates seemed momentarily to shrink behind him, as if giving him permission to speak for the group.

His voice deepened. He gestured as he spoke, in imitation of a professor.

“You see, given the population on Earth it is overwhelmingly likely we will be reincarnated into lives under the poverty level. Most of the world population never go to school, let alone come to Cambridge. An unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates tells us. Therefore to seek reincarnation is to gamble with overwhelmingly bad odds on a life not worth living. For instance, once reincarnated, we could end up doing something like—I don’t know, working rice paddies in China. ”

“Milking cows in Arkansas,” agreed the more intact girl.

“Mining diamonds in Africa.”

“Now, look here,” said Alice. “That’s rather prejudiced—”

“Being an idiot.”

“Being an idiot!” All four Shades shuddered; a quivering mass of jelly. “Oh, the horror! Oh, to not be clever!” And one of them wailed, “What if you never learn to read !”

“But you’re dead.” This had gone too far; Alice had to intervene.

Undergraduates did this often—they worked each other up over the wrong ideas, compared problem sets and confused themselves so much that untangling their thoughts took twice the work.

Undergraduates were five blind men and an elephant; were three blind mice leading one another in a circle.

“You’re in Hell. That seems the worst state to be in. ”

“We’re dead magicians ,” said the boy with glasses. “That’s different.”

“It’s not different at all,” said Peter. “You’re still stuck here.”

“But why are you here?” asked the more intact girl. “Why’d you come?”

They seized on this line of interrogation with glee.

“Why?”

“Why indeed?”

“Half a lifetime—”

“The price—”

“The price!”

“That’s different,” said Alice. “We could still be magicians. That’s worth it.”

“Oh,” said the more intact girl. And then she employed that most annoying of argumentative tactics, which was to agree, while making it clear they thought her reasoning was stupid. “ All right then.”

The other undergraduates said nothing. What rejoinder need they make? They only watched her, bearing identical expressions of silent reproach; until their forms began to fade, until their burns became glimmers, until they disappeared into still air.

“Wow,” said Peter. “I think we’ve been told to fuck off.”

“Oh, leave them to it,” Alice muttered. She felt a spasm of irritation, a lurking unease, and she did not want to think about these undergraduates anymore. Hell was full of minor tragedies. There was no point fretting over this one. “They have eternity to figure it out.”