Page 82 of Katabasis

M y, my, my.” The ground rumbled. “Aren’t you a sight.”

Alice propped herself up on her elbows. “Hello, Gradus.”

He drifted closer.

She nodded to her steaks. “Try some.”

She expected him to scoff. She was surprised when he said, “Smoke it for me.”

She obliged, dipping her makeshift skewer over the fire until the meat blackened.

Gradus leaned low over the flames. Gray tendrils furled into his essence, so that for a moment Gradus and the smoke seemed like the same entity, and he made low, satisfied noises.

Thurification , thought Alice. That was the English word.

She thought to little sacrifices her parents laid out during festivals; offerings to their ancestral dead alongside slow-burning incense.

So this was what happened on the other side, she realized.

Ghosts plunging their heads in thick, hot food.

Next time I’ll dispense with the incense , she told herself, and just toss the food in the flames .

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“What for?”

“I should have listened to you. I should never have gone with Gertrude.”

He raised his head. She giggled; his face was half blurred with smoke; half smeared and dripping, in imitation of a man at a barbecue with no bib. He’d surely put on this effect to amuse her, and this pleased her; it meant they were still something to one another.

“Bah.” He shrugged. “Of course you went. It sounds too good in theory; you always have to know.”

“You were at the citadel once.”

“Oh, sure. I helped build it. I have spent countless years at Gertrude’s side, planning our expanding skyline.

I have been a tree in that courtyard, still, and almost disappeared.

I have been a pacing soul in the gardens, treading the same steps over and over again.

” Gradus bent back over the fire and sucked in another long, satisfying drag.

He sighed. “And I have teetered over the rocks, watching the waves, daring myself to jump.”

“Why did you leave?” Alice asked.

“Because the temptation was too great. In those last few years, I... Every day, you know. Every second. So much time I spent teetering on that cliff. And finally I knew that if I stayed there a moment longer, then I really would jump.”

“But why didn’t you?”

“Isn’t that just the question.”

“Sorry.” Alice smiled. “I guess it is.”

“I just can’t figure it out.” Gradus spread his hands.

The whole of his self spread out too, a sad and confused billow.

“I don’t know how to move on, and I don’t want to die.

Time allows no exit, and it all boils down to one of two choices: end it for good or keep going.

Now, the former seems more elegant, and certainly it’s more rational.

A clean end compared to infinite suffering.

But then why aren’t we lining up to jump?

It can’t just be fear, you see. Fear expires.

Even the most acute terrors erode over time.

I used to cower from those crashing waves and now, I don’t even flinch.

I watch others jump, all the time, and their unraveling does not scare me, I do not look away.

But still I do not jump. I cannot. Something deep within me refuses.

Why is that? So now you understand the problem.

” His tone grew urgent. “I am searching for the reason. And if I fear anything at all, it is that this reason does not exist, and that I am trapped in existence by a delusion.”

“I’m not the first sojourner you’ve met,” Alice guessed.

“Far from it.”

“And you ask them all this same question. Why go on.”

“Yes.”

“Do they say anything helpful?”

“Never,” said Gradus. “Either they don’t think it’s worth it, and we have the same problem—very common among sojourners, by the way—or they do, but they can’t explain it; it comes as naturally as breathing to them; of course they go on, because isn’t life fun?

They’re delirious with good fortune. They’ve never even pondered why. ”

Alice could make sense of his frustration now; could understand perfectly why he’d thrown her into Dis, if only to witness its futility.

She forgave him for it. She would be frustrated too, if she’d wandered this wasteland trapped by two bad options, and along pranced some idiot who declared it didn’t all matter.

“I just wish,” said Gradus, “I could find some way out.”

Alice racked her mind for consolation, and couldn’t find it.

In the whole of chthonic literature there was nothing on this fundamental problem, there were only varied and detailed accounts of never-ending despair.

No one was much interested in how souls got out of Hell.

She could only settle on Dante’s answer, the only possibility of salvation in the entire Inferno .

Only one being could harrow Hell. “Suppose you’re rescued by an act of divine grace. ”

“Don’t be a cunt, Alice.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I wish I could give you an answer.”

“That’s all right,” said Gradus. “No one ever has.”

Alice watched his grayness undulating around the fire and wondered what it was like to exist so long that your practical identity was no longer hinged to a time or a place, but a question.

“So what are you going to do now?” Gradus asked.

“Oh.” She didn’t hesitate. She knew what she had been searching for. “I’m going to kill the Kripkes.”

They both looked to the cuckoo skull. All this time it had been blowing a low, constant coo; a signal carrying across dead air, alerting its creators to their spoils. Alice had not tried to destroy it. She had deliberately left it alone.

“It’ll take them a while,” said Gradus. “It always takes them a while. They don’t like coming this far down. But they will come.”

“How long do you think I have?”

“When did the trap spring?”

“Only a few hours ago.”

“They prefer the upper courts. Safer there. And they move over land; they never sail. So I’d say at least the night.”

“Good,” said Alice. “I have time to prepare.”

“Revenge?” asked Gradus.

No , she thought. More than that.

For the first time since she’d descended to this place she felt some clarity of purpose.

She knew what she was meant to do. She could not change the past, could not take back her murder, could not keep wallowing in her guilt, could not bring Peter back.

But she could make her death mean something—she might do something to end this terrible cycle, and even if this ended with her bloodless on the silt, that might be enough.

“I’m going to scour Hell,” she declared.

“My, my,” said Gradus. “Aren’t you confident.”

“The Kripkes have always done the hunting.” She felt a rush to her head as she said this. “They’ve never been hunted. They don’t know what they’re in for with me.”

It was the strangest thing. Here she was marching to her almost certain death, and it was the first time in a long time that she felt her life mattered.

This urgency, this rush—like all of her, body and soul, was pointed like an arrow, taut with purpose.

Something better than anger, despair, or vengeance.

She could feel her heart beating, the blood coursing through her veins, from her heart to her fingertips, clenched tight around her blades. When she spilled it, it would matter.

How much time had she wasted wandering around in a fog? Looking back now it made her want to scream. No, she did not want to fade into those churning depths. Refused to petrify into comatose forest. She wanted to crash brilliantly against something, and when she went she wanted to leave a mark.

“One question, Gradus.”

“Yes?”

“Which way is the river?”

Gradus hmmed.

“Things get a lot more interesting if you show me to the river,” said Alice. “I’ve lost the way.”

“You’re not far.” Gradus drew an angle in the sand. “Straight from here. You will see hills; keep them on your right. Continue until you hear the waves. And you’ll need some protection. Something sturdier than that rucksack.”

Alice blinked down at the cat’s mangled corpse.

“Seems appropriate,” said Gradus.

Alice dragged herself over to the cat and set about dismembering it.

You could do quite a lot with bones, it turned out.

Alice extracted all the spiky bits—claws, vertebrae, the end of its tail—and gathered them in a handkerchief.

She reasoned she could clutch them in her knuckles and, in a pinch, gouge at cheeks or eyes.

The cat’s femurs were long and hard. She bashed them against a rock and found herself with a set of makeshift daggers.

Delighted, she weighed them in her hands.

They were lighter than her knives and better fit her grip.

Now for armor. It took some finagling, but at last she managed to extract the cat’s rib cage intact and slide it on over her own torso.

It was surprisingly light. She tapped it a few times with her knife, and the bones felt sturdy enough.

It wouldn’t stop a blade piercing her heart, but it would ward off glancing blows.

“Ooh,” said Gradus. “Terrifying.”

Alice preened.

The only item she couldn’t use was the skull.

She spent nearly an hour digging the eyes and brains out with her fingers, though once she’d cleaned off the skull she couldn’t pry it unhinged or fit it in a way that made sense as a helmet.

Her head simply wouldn’t fit. Pity, she thought; it looked very cool.

Instead she made a little mound with the dirt, arranged some pebbles in a neat circle, and placed the skull on top.

She even inscribed a bit of magick to keep the mound intact.

Just a tiny ward that stilled change. It wouldn’t keep someone from kicking it over, but it would protect against the little erosions of time. Wind blowing, rodents scurrying.

She sat back, satisfied. There , she thought.

She’d made her own contribution to the map of madness.

Years might pass and the cat’s skull might still be here, those massive sockets leering at all those who passed.

Let it bedevil the next sojourner who came through, demanding interpretation.

She bowed low to the little shrine, since she felt the cat deserved some of her gratitude, and then tapped it on the forehead.

“Remember me, won’t you? Even if they gut me like a pig. ”

“You don’t have to fight them,” said Gradus.

“What’s that?”

His voice was hardly a mumble. “You have a head start. You could hide out in Dis.”

“Oh, Gradus.” She smiled. “Are you trying to get me to run?”

Gradus would not meet her eye. His face was faded halfway into mist, and the miasma around his legs curled in and darkened, as if he were hiding within himself. Alice found this adorable. “Your odds are terrible.”

“I know.”

“The Kripkes are practiced killers. You are a mouse. They will drain your blood and kick your bones into the Lethe.” Gradus paused. “I do not wish that for you.”

Alice knew better than to imagine he cared. Probably he regarded her the way one regarded a toy kitten. Oh, please don’t run into the street. We still have games to play. Still, this was the first time in a while that anyone had expressed concern over her demise, and she was dearly touched.

“I wish I could give you a hundred years of memories, John Gradus.” She made a gesture toward the mist. He shrank away; shy, or startled, or both. “But that would take no sand out of the hourglass. We’d only be delaying the inevitable.”

He sounded peevish. “But at least you’d still be here.”

“If I die, I die,” said Alice. “But there’s no life otherwise, I think. Life is an activity that’s got to be sustained. You have to fight for it. Otherwise it’s no life at all. That’s just it. It’s just an impulse. And we’ve both determined that’s not enough. You know that.”

Gradus hovered silent for a while. Then he said, “Snort some chalk.”

“What?”

“It will help. Just trust me.”

“I’m not going to snort chalk!”

It was a long-running joke at Cambridge that snorting chalk imbued you with all the magical potential energy of long-dead sea creatures.

But magick chalk was also an academy-restricted substance shown to deteriorate human tissue upon ingestion, and improper use could get you a lifetime ban from practicing magick, so despite all the jokes at the pub, no one had ever tried it.

“I am not joking,” Gradus said. “Snort the chalk.”

Alice pressed the nib of a stick to the back cover of her notebook. It broke off into chunks. Too bad, she thought. She’d always prized Barkles’ inability to crumble.

“Where I’m from they cut it with a penknife,” said Gradus.

Alice was trying to crush it with the base of her palm, but all that did was leave dents in her flesh. “Stop mocking me.”

“Just try it.”

Alice had lost the penknife, so she tried the dagger instead.

It took a bit of experimenting but she did manage by alternating the dull and sharp sides to cut the chalk into pieces that wouldn’t choke her.

When it seemed sufficiently pulverized, she gathered it into a neat little pile in her palm. Then she leaned over and huffed.

The effect was immediate. She felt like she’d stuffed wasabi up her nostrils.

Sharp stabs of pain spread through her nose into her skull.

Tears welled at her eyes. She reeled back, clutching her temples, just as spots of color exploded in her mind.

A cacophony of memories, memories she didn’t even know she had—memories she still couldn’t place, entirely foreign except for their intensity.

A woman laughing. A deer startling. A giant’s stride.

A midnight streak into the lake, and the plunging cold.

All the axioms in the world swirling and dancing above her.

Here was the hidden world revealed and written clear; no shadows, no veils.

She stretched her arms above her head in some primal bearlike stance, and in that moment Alice felt capable of devouring the universe.

“Jesus.” An icy burn spread through her limbs. I’m burning , she thought; I’m on a pyre, and it feels delicious . “Jesus Christ .”

Gradus howled with laughter. “I told you.”

She took a step and reeled. Each movement sent the universe spinning sideways on its axis, sent ripples across Hell. She was afraid to breathe, for she did not want to cause the apocalypse.

The cuckoo skull cooed once more. Alice seized it, hurled it down, and crushed it beneath her foot.

She thought she could hear the alarm—the invisible signal now a humming perceptible to her ears. She felt from across the dunes a sharp, hostile awareness turned suddenly toward her, and this exhilarated her. At last, a challenge.

“Come on,” she shrieked to the desert. “Come get me, I’m right here.”