Page 7 of Katabasis

T he line of white was indeed a wall: a great, flat surface that disappeared into the sky and stretched infinitely into either direction. Below, a great mass of Shades shuffled impatiently about, their voices like wind rustling through dried leaves.

“Been here for ages —”

“Nothing’s moving—”

“Birth rate’s gone down, they said.”

“Has it?”

“Postwar boom’s over, everywhere’s developed, and all the girls are taking pills—”

“Oh, is that it?”

“My word.” Peter stood on the tips of his toes, trying to see over the crowd. “It’s worse than Fifth on a Friday.”

“You’ve been to Fifth?” Alice asked.

“I tried. Never got in.”

Alice did feel as if she were stuck outside a nightclub, only the doors were out of sight, and no one was enforcing the queue. “Do you think he’s still here?”

Perspective was not reliable here. It was impossible to tell how quickly the queue was moving, or how much distance separated them from the wall.

Professor Grimes might have passed through days ago.

He might have been stuck in line, several yards away.

Alice wished she had consulted some material about birth and death rates.

How many people in the world had died over the past two months?

How many had reincarnated since? She did not recall any archival information about queuing to depart Asphodel—Orpheus and all the rest seemed to just walk right into the courts—but then all the sojourner accounts were from a period when the world was smaller, when a more manageable number of souls came and went.

Possibly this wall was a recent development.

A sort of postwar chthonic immigration control.

“We could shout for him,” said Peter.

“Oh, let’s not do that.” Alice had seen no sign of guardian deities yet, but she knew as a general rule it was best when sojourners did not draw attention to themselves. She sized up the queue, then squared her shoulders. “We might just try and go through .”

The lines looked dense, but weren’t Shades immaterial?

Setiya and Penhaligon certainly thought so—Shades had only memories of their bodies, they were spirit stuff alone, and so they could not interact with the physical in any meaningful way.

Alice and Peter were flesh and bone, and matter trumped empty space.

So suppose she just pushed —but she wasn’t three steps in before she was swarmed by Shades. Irritation exploded around her.

“Cutting—”

“No cutting—”

“Get out—”

“Rude!”

Icy chill spread throughout her limbs. She felt a slimy pressure against her skin.

So she was wrong—it seemed Shades could indeed become something resembling the material when it suited them.

She recalled the more intact girl from before, how for an instant she had seemed more solid.

The crowd formed a frothy irascible mass, pushing and squeezing from all sides until she could hardly breathe.

The pressure sharpened. She yelped and jumped back out of line.

“All right,” she said. “Jesus—no cutting, all right.”

The pressure vanished; the chill eased. The mass subsided back into the queue.

“So that’s out.” Alice rubbed her arms. “Seems like they— ow !”

A Shade had bumped past her, elbowing her so hard she nearly fell to the ground. He seemed to have invested all his corporeal memory into that elbow. It hurt .

“Blasted magicians,” hissed the Shade. “No respect.”

The pain to her ribs was terrible, but Alice was too excited to mind. “How do you know we’re magicians?”

“Chalk all over your hands,” said the Shade. “Chalk on your kneecaps. What else are you, cokeheads?”

Here Alice began to suspect this Shade was a mathematician. Mathematicians hated magicians.

“Have you seen another magician?” Peter asked eagerly. “Here? Recently?”

“ Have I seen a magician ,” muttered the Shade. “Have I seen a magician, a snotty arrogant magician, striding about like he owned the place, like the rest of us don’t exist — ”

That sounded just like Professor Grimes. “When?” Alice demanded.

“A day,” said the Shade. “A week. A month. Who’s counting?”

“And he’s definitely crossed over?” Peter pressed. “He’s not queuing still?”

“The rate he was going?” The Shade snorted. “Marching on like he had somewhere to be. Would be surprised if he hasn’t reached the Eighth Court by now. They would have admitted him just to get him out of here. And good riddance.”

Alice wanted to sprint up to the gates right then.

But the Shades were all casting her dirty looks now, and she doubted they would part politely if she asked.

What to do, then? Wait their turn? But even if they got through, Alice didn’t know what deities guarded the end of the queue, or whether they were disposed to help the living.

And Professor Grimes was moving fast, with purpose.

If he didn’t want to delay, then he was bent on reincarnation.

They couldn’t simply stand here. It was a race against time now, and Alice didn’t know how long the courts could hold a persona like Grimes.

“Say, Law.” Peter was eyeing the wall. From a distance it had seemed a smooth marble edifice, flawless and flat, but up close Alice saw now that the wall was constructed instead of thousands of little bones, stacked up on each other in a dense, ancient mass.

Accumulated detritus of millions of years of life.

A mountain of preserved time. Though horizontally it was endless, vertically it was not—it appeared to stretch forty, fifty meters before it topped out to a smooth straight line. No taller than the university library.

Peter asked, “How hard do you think that is to climb?”

They marched perpendicular to the queue until the crowds thinned away.

Now they could approach the base of the wall undisturbed.

The Shades, for whatever reason, seemed uninterested in climbing up—possibly because they had no incentive to rush, and possibly because their tenuous materiality could offer them no purchase against that surface.

A shame, thought Alice, because the wall really was ideal for climbing.

Large bits of bone stuck out all over the place—lovely handholds, easily grasped—and the wall was littered too with grooves, perfect for digging one’s toes in.

Alice was grateful that the wall was made of bone only—it seemed all the hair, fur, blood, and gristly bits had eroded long ago.

There was no smell nor gore. Texture-wise, they were grand.

Alice looked upon the wall and saw the Flatirons and Peak District; saw plentiful bottlenecks, chimneys, and cracks.

The only problem, she surmised, would be endurance. But perhaps they could rest at the top.

She took a deep breath, stretched out her shoulders, then dug into her bag.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked.

Alice was crumbling a stick of chalk between her fingers. “For the grip,” she explained. “It keeps you from slipping when your hands get sweaty.”

“How do you know that?”

She dusted the chalk across her palms. “I used to climb in Colorado. I climb sometimes still—there’s a mountaineering club on campus.”

“How very American.”

“Hush.” She reached for the nearest bits of protruding bone, found her footholds, and hoisted herself up. “Follow my lead. Don’t look down.”

Up they went. To her delight, Alice found the climb deliciously easy.

The grips were good, the wall full of friction.

She yanked at every hold out of caution before she placed her weight against it, but every inch of bone held firm.

Eons of accumulation had packed these materials so densely there was not a single loose bit.

For a while she climbed and climbed, relishing the sureness of her grip; how effortlessly she could swing herself from hold to hold.

The strain and repetition felt good. It was meditative; it took up all her concentration, so that the anxious radio in her head quieted down.

It also felt good to realize she could still do this.

She hadn’t taken care of herself these last few months; she had been afraid all her muscles had atrophied.

On the other hand, she was so much thinner now.

Less weight to pull—which did make a difference, though she wasn’t sure whether this lovely lightness came from actual agility or from starvation fuzzing up her head.

After a while she stopped to glance about.

She had loved doing this whenever she climbed in Colorado.

She loved to appreciate the sheer distance to the ground.

It never fazed her. At this height she was too far up to do anything about it but keep going, and this immovable fact helped to block out useless feelings like fear.

Hell stretched endless beneath her, plains of silt and rolling dunes. To her tired eyes, this side of Hell abstracted to two rippling blocks of color: silky gray below and an orange burning darkly above, punctuated by a sun that seemed perpetually on the verge of setting. It was quite beautiful.

“This is insane,” she said. “Lovely view, though. Are you doing all right?”

Peter did not answer.

“Murdoch?”

She glanced down. Peter was much further below her than she’d thought; he must have stopped moving some time ago. All four of his limbs trembled. His forehead shone slick with sweat. He blinked furiously at the wall, and he looked like he was trying not to vomit.

“Murdoch?”

For a moment Peter seemed not to register her voice. Then at last he replied, “I believe I am having a panic attack.”

It was wildly inappropriate, but Alice laughed. “Murdoch, are you afraid of heights?”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” he gasped. “Thought I could just—suck it up—”

“It was your idea to climb!”

“Yes, but I only meant it in theory ,” he whined. “Oh, God, Law—”

“You’re fine, you’re fine,” she said quickly. “Look, you made it this far—”

“But now my brain’s caught up, and I can’t move.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh God oh God—”