Page 88 of Katabasis

W hen Alice came to, they were sitting at the prow of the Neurath , the shore a faint line behind them.

Archimedes sat contently in Elspeth’s lap.

His forelegs were neatly wrapped up, bandages tied with precise little bows.

She stroked the back of her index finger along his spine and he arched, purring, into her touch.

Alice straightened up. “Elspeth?”

“Yes.”

“How old is that cat?”

Elspeth blinked and cocked her head, as if the thought had only now crossed her mind. She tapped a finger against Archimedes’s nose, and Archimedes sneezed. “Are you still letting him drink out of that same water bowl?”

“What water bowl?” Alice thought hard. “That thing in the garden?”

“My God.” Elspeth was laughing. “We turned it into a Perpetual Flask, so we wouldn’t have to keep filling it. It’s still there?”

Archimedes rubbed his cheek against Elspeth’s elbow, drawing her hand back to his spine. Then he stretched himself out across Elspeth’s legs, nearly doubling in length, and stayed that way. He looked very pleased with himself.

“Look at you.” Elspeth leaned in toward Alice. “You’ve learned to dress just like them.”

Alice glanced down and ran her fingers over the cat’s rib cage, embarrassed. “I thought some armor would be nice.”

“Where did you get it?” Elspeth took in Alice’s wan face, the dried blood across her cheeks and arms, then shook her head. “Never mind. I can imagine.”

“It saved my life,” murmured Alice. She felt she had to give credit to the cat. “It stilled their blades.”

“They’re gone, then?” Elspeth asked urgently. “You saw them dissolve?”

“All three, one by one.” Alice thought of Theophrastus, still and obedient in Magnolia’s arms. “It’s finished.”

“But why didn’t the water affect you?”

Alice rolled up her sleeve. Her arm had turned a red and mottled mess, the site of a still-active chemical reaction.

The white lines were blurred, bubbling and frothing at their edges where oblivion battled against permanence.

Even Professor Grimes’s magick could not withstand the Lethe—the lines were fading, the water was winning.

Elspeth traced her finger over Alice’s arm, lips moving silently as she read. “Grimes did this to you?”

This time Alice did not contest the transitive. “Mm.”

“You let him?”

“He said it would make me a better magician.”

“Did it?”

“I’m sure he thought it would,” said Alice, because it seemed like the only honest answer. “I’m sure he hoped it would.”

She braced herself as she said this, but Elspeth only nodded.

There was no anger on her face. She held on to Alice’s arm, cool fingers stroking against the wet skin.

They were both silent, watching as the colors swirled on Alice’s arm, as white chalk and black water mixed and fought, until the white lines shimmered pale, and at last faded away.

“So are you...” Elspeth pointed to Alice’s temples. “You’re all right in the head, still? You know where you are?”

“I think so, yes.”

“You’ve still got it all?”

Alice prodded her memory. She knew enough that she was not confused about where she was or how she had gotten here, but beyond that, she really couldn’t say.

There were patches that she had, and patches she knew were gone, and even more patches whose loss she didn’t know to register at all.

For a moment she found this prospect terrifying—that memory was not a well-kept library, but rather a moth-eaten basement with dim, flickering lights—but remembered then that this was just how everyone lived all the time; how she herself had lived most of her life.

You groped around in the dark. You settled for stories, not recordings.

You made do with the bits you had and tried your best to fill in the rest.

“Not all,” she said. “But I’ve got enough.”

Elspeth cooked for her that night. She seemed very excited about the occasion; she spent nearly an hour clamoring around the little stove, digging up spice bottles and making exclamations like “The rats were fat this week, just crackling on the stove.” After an hour of effort she served up a stew of salt, congealed blood, and some thick, stringy meat that hurt Alice’s mouth to chew.

Alice wolfed it all down, swallowing stew in hot, satisfying gulps, then gnawed at the bones until her gums bled.

“Taste good?” asked Elspeth.

“Incredible,” Alice gasped.

Elspeth waited, beaming, as Alice drained the bowl and licked at its insides. Then she scooted closer so that they sat face-to-face, inches away. “I feel an apology is in order.”

Alice put down her bowl. “I’m so sorry—”

“I feel rotten about what happened,” said Elspeth. “I shouldn’t have left you two on that shore.”

“We betrayed you.” Stew trickled down the side of Alice’s mouth. She wiped her chin against her shoulder. “I’d be angry, too.”

“I just couldn’t understand it,” said Elspeth. “Why you’d ever want to go back to him.”

“Right.”

“He is simply monstrous.” Elspeth’s hand moved up and down in a staccato, as if she were lecturing to an undergraduate.

Basic principles. “You must know this. He leeches the life from you. So when you said the name Grimes—I don’t know, something just came over me, and then I couldn’t think straight—”

“Please don’t apologize,” said Alice. “It’s my fault.

You took us in, you sheltered us, and we.

..” She swallowed. “I can’t justify it.

We knew what we wanted and how to get it and everything else was—I don’t know, just collateral.

I wasn’t thinking about you at all. All I could think was, What would he do? How I could make him proud.”

“Well.” Elspeth sniffed. “He has that effect.”

They sat a moment in silence. Once again they regarded one another, two bruised girls with too much in common. But this time there was no measuring up, no guesswork, only a tired recognition. I know how you got here. I know what it took.

“It’s all so stupid.” Alice rubbed her palm against her temple. “I just can’t figure out why—I mean, he has everything , you know? And I don’t know what he needs, or if he’s hurting—”

“Stop trying to justify him.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were. Listen, Alice, I’ve been there.

I’ve spent years trying to justify him. Everything you just said, I’ve been down that road.

I’ve considered it all. So please trust me when I tell you there’s nothing more to it.

Some people just are that cruel. There is no design.

They are not giants. They don’t do it for any reason, they just like it.

And the rest of us just have to survive them. ”

“I know that,” Alice said tiredly. “I only mean—”

“We weren’t special for it. We weren’t—worthy of it, or handpicked for it, or anything like that, can’t you understand?” Elspeth’s hand moved again in that lecturing staccato. Harsher this time. “He did not care. It was completely random. We were just there .”

“But can’t you see,” said Alice, “why I’d choose to believe anything different?”

“Oh, love.” Elspeth placed her hand over Alice’s. “You don’t have to believe anything about him at all.”

Alice supposed this was reasonable. The stakes of this debate were suddenly opaque to her.

Whether Grimes had ever cared, whether she deserved it all—suddenly she couldn’t see why these propositions ever mattered to her in the first place.

The name Jacob Grimes hung empty in her mind, a symbol with no referent.

No flood of memory attended the call. The whole issue seemed shorn of significance, as if she had spent so much time working through its implications that the threads had snapped altogether, and now it was just crumpled paper. It simply did not matter.

“Thanks,” she said. Suddenly it felt very difficult to put words together. Her lids felt very heavy. “I think—I think that’s right.”

“Forgive me. You’re exhausted.” Elspeth rummaged beneath the seat and dug out a thick, ratty blanket that might have once adorned some grandmother’s couch. “Go on, you’re safe. I’ll be right here.”

Alice took the blanket and draped it around her shoulders.

It smelled rank, somehow of mothballs and mildew both, but still this was the most comforting thing she had smelled in ages.

She wrapped it snug and held the edges close to her face.

It reminded her of guest rooms and grandparents. She couldn’t get enough of it.

Elspeth watched her settle back against the boards. Then she asked, very lightly, “By the way, where’s Peter?”

Alice hesitated, wondering how best to explain. Then she burst into tears.

“Oh, dear.” Elspeth fished around in her pocket and handed her a handkerchief, oily and stained.

Alice took it and mopped it around her eyes.

She was horrified; the tears simply would not stop.

She hadn’t meant to cry. She hadn’t even planned to feel sad.

But just then it was like a switch flipped and that veneer of dazed indifference shattered, and all the grief she’d been carrying broke through the floodgates.

“My apologies,” said Elspeth.

“It’s fine.”

“What happened?”

Alice wanted to answer but felt an overwhelming fatigue the moment she tried to open her mouth.

She did not want to recount it. She could not put it into words.

She felt fragile to the point of breaking, and to rearticulate those last moments in the trap might shatter her. All she could do was shake her head.

“I see,” said Elspeth.

There was nothing to do but let the weeping run its course, to succumb to the racks and shudders until the flood subsided, and all the phlegm and snot was run out, and finally Alice could take a breath without howling.

“He decided it should be me.” Her fingers curled into balls. “He didn’t even ask—he just decided —and then I was out, and he was gone.”

“Of course he did.”

“What does that mean?”

“But surely you knew.” Elspeth gave her a look of deep pity. “He was in love with you.”