Katabasis — Chapter no 12

Chapter Twelve

Alice dreamed.

This was horrible, because in the last year dreaming had become a threat to coherent subjectivity. Dreams were flying-carpet rides through loosely associated memories and Alice simply had too many of them; the routes multiplied infinite, all wish and no repression; in a split second her mind could go from innocent childhood memories to three-headed serpents writhing over crypts, angelic choirs with faces melting away. Freud had argued dreams were the language of the unconscious, and Alice’s dreams were written in fine print. She did not float oblivious through vague images; she saw and felt everything, in harsh minute detail; even as those chunks of memory spliced and layered on each other in dreadful combinations. Not only did she remember every dream with exact detail, she remembered all her daydreams and fantasies too, and so the visions compounded, and new dreams built on previous mad fantasies, and each time she entered a dream the pandemonium had expanded, the demons had copulated and multiplied, and each time upon waking it was harder and harder to reconstitute the real.

That night in Hell she imagined that Professor Grimes, with a horse’s face, abducted her into a series of underground tunnels that he promised led to the lost archives of the Library of Alexandria. She imagined crawling on her hands and knees, scooping up a silvery-white substance that might have been liquid chalk. She imagined wielding a pair of scissors; stabbing fiercely at a horse’s neck until black blood coated her face, and licking at the blood like it was licorice.

She woke to Peter prodding her shoulder. She jolted.

“Shit—sorry.” She was supposed to have been keeping watch. “I don’t know how—must’ve—”

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I woke up early. We’d better get going. Cat’s

back, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

She blinked around with bleary eyes. Archimedes sat by the fire looking very satisfied with himself, curled chummily against Peter as if he had

never abandoned the two of them to probable death.

“Judas,” Alice muttered. “Suppose you wanted breakfast.”

Archimedes mewed and licked the crumbs off his whiskers.

Peter had already warmed up some Lembas Bread over the fire, and even heated water in two collapsible tin cups for tea. Alice pulled herself to a sitting position and accepted a cup of Darjeeling. “I didn’t know you’d brought tea.”

“Just a few bags,” he said. “It’s not so heavy, after all. I was going to save it until the second week, but I thought we deserved a treat.”

“Well, thank you.” She blew on the surface. “Darjeeling’s my favorite.”

“I know. You’re always snapping at people not to touch your tea bags.”

“Well if it’s clearly not marked as department tea, then it’s not communal property.”

“No, that’s perfectly reasonable. For what it’s worth, I always thought it was Michele swiping them. Too many Fortnum bags in his office bin.”

She laughed despite herself, and then her mind caught up and she remembered what she’d seen and what she now knew Peter was. A bitter taste seeped through her mouth. She dropped her gaze.

“You all right there?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and hastily rearranged her face into a neutral calm.

“Just tired.”

She kept stealing glances at Peter as they ate. Observing his smile, watching for the cracks.

Part of her wished she’d never seen his notes, for now every interaction with Peter meant filtering through a façade. Was his affable demeanor just a front? Some calculated jester’s affect to trick everyone around him into lowering their guard? Deep down, was he just as competitive and insecure as the rest of them? Or worse: was Peter the most dangerous kind of rival, the charming sociopath who never let you suspect for a moment until they slid the blade into your back?

But how did one keep that up for years without slipping? Peter was flaky, yes, but Alice had never once heard rumor of him acting maliciously toward anyone. If anything, he was famously, unnecessarily kind. Everyone adored him, despite having every reason to hate him. Bless Murdoch, everyone said. Annoying as all hell, but his heart’s in the right place.

Was it all a grand performance? Had Peter been playing them since the day they’d met?

Alice had spent hours that night staring at his sleeping skull, wondering what thoughts swirled around in that mind. Who was he? For all her ambition, Alice could not imagine bringing a friend, or even a colleague, into the pits of Hell like a lamb to the slaughter. She could not fathom Peter’s intentions, and this scared her more than anything else: the possibility that, despite years of trying, she did not know who Peter Murdoch was at all.

She felt like an idiot for sharing all that she had last night. She cringed to recall how he’d nodded along, humming in sympathy, his hand on her shoulder. And all the while he must have been cackling inside. Poor Alice, dear Alice, what an idiot.

It was no accident he had found her in the lab. She realized this now— he must have known she was going. He needed her to go, needed her soul intact for the exchange.

How long had he been awaiting his chance?

Oh, dear God. Now she was trapped in Hell with him.

“Are you doing all right?” Peter asked.

She blinked. “Sorry?”

He nodded to her elbow. “It looks like the swelling’s gone down a bit.”

She peered at her arm. “Huh. Guess so.”

“Fine to keep going?”

She did a quick inventory of her body. Her limbs ached, and her cuts still stung, but it was all superficial. The only thing that really pained her was the anxiety gnawing in her gut, but this she had no choice but to endure. “I think so.”

“Let’s be on then.” He smiled, stood up, and extended his hand.

Archimedes stood further ahead, tail swishing impatiently.

“Yes, all right.”

Pretend, she told herself as she grasped his hand. Pretend for your life.

AS DESIRE FADED BEHIND THEM, THE terrain changed rapidly beneath their feet.

The campus path became bumpy and riddled with potholes. Then the bricks gave way to unpaved dirt. Soon it became clear they were descending a yawning slope, the ground crumbly and treacherous. They had to pause with each step, carefully testing their purchase before they put their weight on the ground. At least Alice had some practice with this—one summer

there had been construction on Mill Road between Magdalene College and the department, and the whole sidewalk was torn up. It was a season of twisted ankles. In time they came upon a rift in the ground, a wide abyss cleaving the space between Desire and beyond. Their path thinned into a perilous strand of stairs that wound down to the bottom and crawled up the other side. Below on their left, level with the base of the abyss, churned the Lethe; no longer still now, but a foaming, vicious rush.

“Oh, dear.” Peter halted.

But Archimedes proceeded with confidence. Alice examined the path, and saw footholds. They weren’t very good, or visible, but they were there.

“Keep your knees bent and your arms out for balance,” she said. “It’ll be fine.” In Ithaca she had hiked the slippery paths near the gorges, and even on rainy days it looked worse than it was. You only fell if you were trying.

Alas—in Ithaca, they were so often trying.

She supposed it made sense that such a barrier separated the first two courts from the third. Petty pride, insatiable desire—these were self- centered things, and their harms turned inward. But from covetousness sprang plotting; sprang malice toward others. Here, however, to get what you wanted meant making sure others did not get it. Bhishma said in the Mahabharata that from covetousness proceeded sin. Saint Paul warned the church that money was the root of all evil. So here now were the proper schemers; the ones who knew what they were doing, and deserved to pay.

She wished she had thought to bring hiking sticks. She kept tripping against the rocks, and Peter kept catching her, which irked her, because she hated to still find comfort in his presence. It was a horrible paradox; the fact of his intended betrayal on one hand, and the empirical evidence that he was still Peter, the Peter she remembered, the Peter she liked.

Worse was the fact that Peter would not stop talking. He had decided riddles would be a fun way to pass the time. So far they had done the burnt ropes (you have two ropes that burn down within an hour; armed with a match, how do you measure forty-five minutes?), the Ping-Pong ball (how do you get a Ping-Pong ball out of a pipe?), and the nine weighted balls (using a balancing scale only twice, how do you identify which one of nine balls is slightly heavier than the rest?). Now he kept going on about some story involving fairy worlds. “What goes through the glass green door,

Alice?”

“Um. I don’t know. Elves? Children?”

“The moon can pass. The earth cannot. Kittens can pass. Cats cannot.

What goes through the glass green door?”

Shut up, Alice wanted to screech.

She could handle all sorts of cruelty. But she would not be made an idiot. Professor Grimes had instilled in her a deep horror of ever being made an idiot.

“Fools can pass,” Peter went on. “But wise men cannot. Geese can pass, but ducks cannot.”

“I don’t—oh, hell, is it something about plurals?”

He shook his head. “A stool can pass. But a table cannot.”

“Just tell me the answer.”

“It’s the double letters.” He looked put out. “Simple. Thought you did languages.”

Alice did not have a diplomatic reply to this, so she trudged on in silence.

THREE WEEKS INTO ALICE’S FIRST SEMESTER, Professor Grimes had taken her to the faculty club for tea. Alice was very nervous and excited about this. She had stayed up late the night before preparing talking points about what classes she’d enjoyed and what she’d struggled with so far, and a seven- point proposal for new projects. She had never gone out socially with Professor Grimes and she wanted reassurance that he liked her.

But the first question he asked, after he’d ordered them two sultana scones and a pot of Darjeeling, was, “You see that kid?”

Alice glanced out the window, and with a start glimpsed Peter Murdoch wandering past. He wasn’t paying them any attention. He was just doddering around on the sidewalk, blinking at a sheet of paper. Alice’s chest tightened. She didn’t have any classes with Peter that term, and she hadn’t spoken to him since that orientation tea, though her heart always beat oddly when she saw him in passing around campus. He looked lost. He kept glancing up at street signs, then turning round in a circle, like a dog chasing its own tail.

“That’s your competition,” said Professor Grimes. “Your yardstick. The only thought in your head these next five years should be whether you are keeping pace with him.”

Alice glanced back outside at Peter, who now waved apologetically at a honking car as he darted across the street.

Keeping pace, he’d said. Not beating him.

“The world will be much easier for him,” Professor Grimes continued.

“He looks, acts, and speaks like a magician. He does the classical sort of research the Royal Academy favors. His parents are famous. Everyone in our field already knows his name. When he goes in for job interviews, he will know to ask about his colleagues’ children, because firstly he might already know them and secondly he will remind his interviewers of them.

You, on the other hand. You don’t talk like them, you don’t look like them, and your research doesn’t fit what they’re looking for. You will always have to perform twice as well for half the acclaim. You have no room for mistakes.”

Alice had suspected all this for a while. She’d just never expected anyone to lay it out so bluntly, and she wasn’t prepared for how much it hurt. She stared back into Professor Grimes’s impassive face, and wondered why he’d brought her here at all.

“I don’t say this to discourage you,” said Professor Grimes. “I say this because I’ve been where you are. You and I—we were not so blessed. We have to climb our way up. You’re doing good work, Law. But that’s just it.

It’s merely good. I need you to be exceptional.”

“I can be exceptional,” Alice said, for it seemed the only reply she could make.

“Good girl.” Professor Grimes nodded at her untouched cup. “Drink your tea.”

He did this often over the next few years. Every failure of hers was cast in direct reference to Peter’s success. You’ve coauthored one paper.

Murdoch has coauthored three. You’ve won a thousand pounds in funding.

Murdoch’s won twice that. You can’t make the same mistakes as Murdoch, he told her. You don’t have as much room to fail. And she knew he was only being a good advisor, for a good advisor kept you aware of the reality of your situation. Professor Grimes had come up from humbler origins than she had; he’d come to magick late, he was the first in his family to graduate college, he didn’t know which fork to use either. From his perspective, surely, he was showing her the keys to the kingdom.

But she couldn’t help but feel a little sting every time he brought it up.

As if she’d disappointed him by being born to the wrong sort of parents,

with the wrong sort of face, without connections, without a cock. As if he were coaching her to run a race they both knew she’d already lost.

So perhaps she watched Peter more than was good for her. Her eyes lingered on his shadow every time they were in the same room. She studied his habits, his mannerisms, the cadence of his speech. She pondered which traits she could adopt. She couldn’t get away with his haplessness; no one would afford her that much grace. And she couldn’t study the way he did, or the way he claimed he did; she could not comprehend dense pages in a single glance. But maybe she could try to move with his lightness, or at least smile half as often.

She developed a hyperawareness of Peter. She knew the precise patter of his footsteps. She always knew if he was in the building—she could spot his scuffed shoes, his broken umbrella, the brown wool coat always hung on the third hook from the left. She could always tell when people were talking about him; it was comical, really, the way her ears perked at any mention of his name. She knew his laughter from across the hall. She would have known it from the other end of the world.

She would come to regret this later, the year everything went south, the year she lost the ability to forget things she should not have heard.

She was napping in the lab that day. She napped in the lab often; no one minded, they just walked around her. And Alice always had a habit of disappearing into the bench. She was slight, and she did not snore; if you didn’t look carefully, you might think she was a pile of coats. She had just awoken when the door opened and Peter walked in, chattering animatedly to someone she didn’t know.

She could have gotten up. It would have been the polite thing to do. But that old impulse, the need to observe Murdoch in every context, made her lie very still.

She tried to make out his interlocutor. It was hard to guess from voice alone; a table blocked her view. She was never sure thereafter of his identity. She could only guess, and the guessing was worse. The guest spoke with an American accent but seemed well-versed in the Cambridge way of magick. A visiting scholar, then. Someone here for a talk, or just passing through, catching up with colleagues. Possibly Princeton. Probably Harvard.

“—not so bad,” Peter was saying. “I mean he has his fits, everyone knows, but you just learn to read his mood. On the whole he’s been pretty

good. Nothing like the rumors.”

“What about the girl?” asked his guest.

Alice would always remember how easily the words slid out of Peter’s mouth. There were words you said to create an effect, words constructed to influence your interlocutor. Then there were words you really believed, had believed all along, words just waiting for the right prod to spill.

“Oh, her,” said Peter. “No, I wouldn’t say she has a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she’s like a bird,” said Murdoch. “Hopping where the seed is.

Eating right out of his hand.”

“Burrowing in for warmth,” said his guest.

“Warmth,” Peter drawled, the nastiest sound Alice had ever heard Peter make. There was the sound of fists against palms, some unquestionably vulgar gesture. They both laughed.

Peter suggested they go look at the glass suspensions in Helen Murray’s lab, and his guest agreed. The door clicked shut behind them. Their footsteps faded down the hall.

They probably did not remember this conversation. This was not cruelty for them. They had not decided, Now, since we are misogynists, let us make fun of a girl! These were just words like water; hear them, laugh, and move on. Probably. Peter was not trying to sabotage her then. He just really did not care.

But little impressions spread. Peter never had to think about this, but Alice did; the simmering mass of gossip that underwrote who got positions and power. Academia involved so many hairsplitting decisions between identical candidates, most made ultimately on a whim. The reach of someone’s advisor. A fragment of hearsay. She could never state this theory out loud, because it sounded crazy. But she was certain of it now: she could draw a straight line from that laughter in the lab to her failure to win the Cooke.

Harvard had thrown a Cooke reception in July. The selection committee would have gone. No decisions had been made yet. There would have been wine, and then gossip. Impressions would have solidified. It was very plausible. She was not crazy.

Of course she wanted to be wrong. For months and months she held on to the hope that she was wrong, that it was all in her head, and she was making it all up. Surely no one else lived like this—burdened by the tiniest

details they assumed had enormous consequences. Surely no one else was so anchored by anxiety. Other people could stumble and shake their heads and move on. How she envied their lightness.

This marked the difference between them. Alice fretted, and Peter danced on air.

If ever she brought it up, he truly would not remember. And if she tried ever to explain how he had hurt her, then he would think her mad. “You sabotaged my career,” she would tell him. And to this he would say, quite innocently, “What?”

AS THEY PICKED THEIR WAY DOWN the ridge it became clear they were not alone. A caravan of other journeyers—all Shades, all souls who had passed or bypassed Desire—appeared on the rocks around them. The slope was funneling them all in the same direction. Alice peered round at the Shades’ faces, trying to imagine what they had done. It made sense that so many progressed from Lust to Greed, if one trusted Dante’s account of things.

They were both sins of incontinence and desire; only greed was the sin of desire turned against others, a sin committed when one realized that others, too, would do anything it took to get what they wanted.

Could Professor Grimes be here? It was possible, and she supposed she ought to be looking. But she simply didn’t feel Professor Grimes was motivated by riches. No one went into academia if they wanted to get rich.

Certainly some were there for the paychecks—and they were bottom-rung, bottom-feeder types who inevitably left for industry. But if what you wanted was money, then you’d just go become a banker or lawyer or something like that. Certainly all of Alice’s undergraduate classmates thought she was crazy, to keep studying at Cambridge when she could have gone and worked in minor magickal industries for six figures and a yearly bonus. At least two folks Alice knew who’d majored in magick were now vice presidents at regional banks. But Alice had never wanted money, she had wanted the truth.

She was certain this was true as well for Professor Grimes, who was always turning down lucrative speaking opportunities so as to focus on his research. No—despite his nice town house, his nice clothes, and his nice collection of scotch, Alice knew that Professor Grimes wasn’t in this field for money. He’d just gotten rich by accident. Maybe minor academics

squabbled with each other over funding, but Professor Grimes never had the need. He was simply too good for it all.

“I bet those are trustees.” Peter had made a game of guessing the sins of Shades they encountered, which would have been annoying if his observations weren’t quite so funny. “I bet that’s a serial plagiarizer. I bet those are assistant deans. There’s a special place in Hell for deans, don’t you think? Upping their own salaries when the rest of us are scraping by on digestives?”

Alice did not think Peter had ever scraped by on anything but did not have the energy to contest this.

In time they saw they would not have to trek to the bottom of the abyss after all. There was a bridge, hewn of the very same stone of the cliffs, camouflaged so they had not seen it from above. It was generous in span, wide enough they could walk across comfortably side by side, and ornately carved. Each step was made of a half dozen embellished tiles, each column and window lined with figurines. Alice wondered what deity had done this.

It seemed bizarre to construct a bridge down here, hidden against the rock.

Like plucking out a chunk of Venice and balancing it inside the Grand Canyon.

A Shade dithered at the center, as if unsure whether to cross. He kept taking a few steps forward, then a few steps back. When he saw them approaching he asked, “Stone seventeen?”

“Sorry?” said Peter.

The Shade waved his transcript at them. “There it says stepping stone seventeen, stone seventeen for three years or until I’ve learned my lesson, whichever comes first.”

Peter frowned at the transcript. “I still don’t—”

“Oh, here.” The Shade darted around them. Alice noticed an empty slot on the bridge, marked with the Roman numeral XVII. The Shade climbed down and assumed a kneeling position. The most extraordinary thing happened then. His features blurred; his extremities faded away; and his grayness deepened. In seconds he had become rock, and the softest sigh emitted from the gap where once had been his mouth; a low note that took several long seconds to fade, and even then, persisted in the wind.

“Gosh,” said Alice.

It was apparent now the entire bridge, and all its ornamentation, was formed of petrified Shades. Everywhere she could trace out clues of human

forms. Here, an extended leg; there, two arms wrapped over a head. But the footsteps held firm, and there were no other trails that got them across, so it seemed only reasonable to proceed forth. Archimedes darted across without hesitation. A chorus of moans echoed in his wake, and as Alice followed, all she could think of was the particular pitch of each moan on each step; how if you could just jump across five steps at once, you could play the opening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 25.

The path was thinner across the bridge, and more treacherous—this time, they had to haul themselves uphill. Further up, two Shades were tussling over a particularly bendy part of the path. The dispute seemed to be over who should have made way for the other, which struck Alice as rather pointless, since they were all going to the same destination in the end. But the Shades kept jostling one another, until one placed his hands on the other’s shoulders and pushed him clean off an overpass.

“Watch out!” Peter yanked Alice back.

Concerned, Alice peeked over the ledge. But the fallen Shade simply picked himself up and proceeded at an undignified crawl up toward the bank, none the worse for the wear. They were already dead, she supposed.

Anything that happened now was just an indignity.

The Shade who’d pushed the other peeked over the ledge as well, then huffed as if with satisfaction before continuing on his way. Alice and Peter

followed cautiously in his wake.

“What a dick,” muttered Alice.

“I wonder what he did.” Peter squinted at the Shade, then cried in a too- loud whisper, “Why, that’s Bill Cadeaux!”

Fortunately the Shade named Bill Cadeaux did not hear. The name rang only a faint bell for Alice. “Who’s that?”

“He and Hollis Galloway were up for the same job back in the sixties,” said Peter. “It was a terrible scandal.”

“Hollis Galloway the semiotician?”

Peter nodded. “They’re both semioticians. Were. So Cadeaux and Galloway were up for the same job at Chicago, and after the job talks they decided to make an offer to Galloway. Only Cadeaux got wind of it and started sending anonymous letters to Chicago pretending to be graduate

students alleging that she’d—you know—”

“Diddled them?” Alice supplied.

“Basically, yes. Which wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that Cadeaux was pretending to be female students, which made Galloway out to be some sort of predatory lesbian. Now, Chicago doesn’t mind predators; lesbians, that’s another story. So Chicago launches this whole investigation into Galloway, who might actually have been a lesbian, just not the predatory kind, and so she gets so scared off that she rescinds her job application, and Cadeaux gets the job, and no one knew any better until word got out he was bragging about it to graduate students at the pub. He’d made the whole thing up. He’d got his mum and sisters to handwrite anonymous letters and everything. Galloway found out and swore she’d ruin his career, except she died in a car accident before anyone could get to the bottom of things.”

“Jesus,” Alice muttered. “I’d think he belongs in worse than Greed.”

“And then once the word spread, he insisted he was innocent. Swore to his dying day that none of the allegations were made up, that Galloway really had harassed all those students.” Peter stared after Bill Cadeaux, fascinated. “I just can’t understand it. How you could do that to someone else. How you could live with yourself after.”

Alice thought Peter was laying it on rather thick, considering. “I think some people are just that selfish.”

“I mean, but to sabotage a colleague! That’s demonic!”

“Oh, sure.” Alice could not restrain herself. “And you’re an absolute angel yourself.”

Immediately she regretted saying this. Peter slowed his pace. “What does that mean?”

“Sorry—nothing—I only meant, we’re all competitive, aren’t we?

There’s department politics everywhere.”

He seemed unconvinced. “Are you angry with me?”

“No.” She tried to speak calmly, and instead her voice came out a bright chirrup. “Why would I be?”

“You’ve been short with me all morning.”

“Sorry.” Alice hugged her arms across her chest. She might have done a better job acting the fool, she knew, but she simply wasn’t a very good actor. “I’m only very tired, and very hungry. It’s not you.”

“Okay.” They continued walking in silence for a moment. Then Peter

asked, “Is this about the Cooke?”

“What? No!”

“It’s just you’ve been a little weird ever since I mentioned it. And I know it was rude to brag, and I’m sorry . . .”

She was certain now he was fucking with her. How cruel, how unbelievably cruel this was. She felt like a small animal, trapped in a cage.

What if she laid it all out in the open? She had half a mind to do so.

Anything to put an end to this torture. I know what you’re doing, she could say—your puppy dog act won’t work on me, fuck you, Murdoch. But then what? Would he confess, apologize? Ludicrous. More likely he, too, would push her over the ledge. He didn’t need her whole, he only needed her alive.

The only relevant feature in that spell was the presence of a living soul. And Peter could do anything to her before he dragged her over the finish line.

She fought to keep her voice level. “It’s not the Cooke.”

“Then what is it? Have I done something?”

“It’s not you, honestly—”

“Was it about that one morning? Is it my—”

“God, Murdoch, no!”

“If you’re angry with me, just tell me.”

“It’s just—” She broke off. She could not shake the sudden conviction that someone was laughing at her. She was sure she’d heard a woman giggle. She glanced about but saw no one. Peter’s face set in familiar concern, and she felt the panic again that she was going mad. “I’m just—”

There it was again, a definite tinkling laugh.

Alice spun around. “Stop that!”

“Stop what?”

“Can’t you hear it?” She marched around the embankment. Someone was hiding, lurking, she knew it—only everywhere she turned she saw only rock. The nearest Shade was Bill Cadeaux, and he was well up the slope by now. Still the laughter intensified. It was so clear now; she couldn’t have imagined it. Archimedes, too, had sensed something. The cat froze in its steps, eyes like slits, tail stiff as a board.

“Alice, stop.” Peter grasped her arm. “Sit down, have some water—”

She wriggled away. “Stop, listen—”

Archimedes yowled.

A flurry of color emerged out of the rock—rippling skeins of reds and pinks and purples, truly, an attack on the senses, after all that endless gray and burning red. At first Alice thought they’d been swarmed by butterflies,

or sentient rosy clouds, until the silks stopped ballooning and settled against the form of a tall and slender woman.

“Hello, there.” She beckoned to them, waving. “Come closer.”

Alice froze, unsure whether that was the kind of “come closer” mermaids uttered before they dragged you underwater.

“I’m sorry I’ve been rude.” The woman lifted a sleeve to her lips and giggled in a way that was not sorry at all. “I get so nosy. Don’t run, dears.”

Her silks rippled, and suddenly she was right in front of them. “I don’t bite.”

She was terribly beautiful. A dimpled smile against a round, open face.

Black hair so shiny it was reflective, drifting weightless around her waist.

She floated within robes changing colors as quickly as water dappling under sunlight. She held skeins of thread in both hands; as she spoke, her fingers worked quickly, pulling them through some loom that floated on its own, and the cloth she produced seemed to disappear just as quickly into the rippling folds of her dress.

Alice racked her mind but could not match this woman to any of the descriptions of Hell’s deities. The woman lifted a sleeve to her brightly painted mouth and tittered. “Cat got your tongue?”

The silks at her waist arced back and forth in the air. Some bell rang faintly in Alice’s mind; some half-forgotten footnote, some arcane mention she hadn’t bothered chasing up. Not Arachne, not the Yellow Emperor’s wife. A deity of stars, feathers, and longing.

“You’re from above.” Alice remembered now. She hadn’t run across the Weaver Girl in any of her research on Hell, but rather in an undergraduate seminar on translated mythologies. The Weaver Girl, a daughter of the stars, fell in love with the mortal Cowherd, and their love was forbidden by the gods. Only on one day of the year were they permitted to reunite, and when they did, a flock of magpies formed a bridge beneath their feet. “You’re the goddess of lovers reuniting. Lovers long separated.”

The Weaver Girl beamed. “Very good!”

“But what are you doing here? Your sort don’t die.”

“Right again,” said the Weaver Girl. “But mortals do.”

“Your lover,” Alice realized.

“My Cowherd.” The Weaver Girl’s silks flashed blood-red, brown, then listless gray. “My star sisters warned me his hair would whiten, that his bones would crumble, that one day I would look into that face and feel no

passion at all. But it all happened so quickly. One day, the strapping man I adored. The next, a skeleton. Then one night his heart stopped. I followed him to the next world. But this was not enough!” Her silks turned pitch- black, heavy. “He wanted to reincarnate. I could not. Our souls are not like those of humans; to be washed clean and plopped into new bodies to try again. I begged him to stay here with me. But he grew bored by sands with no ocean and a sky without stars. We thought once we had conversation enough to last through eternity. It turns out we couldn’t even last the year.”

The Weaver Girl’s voice shook. “One day, I awoke and found he had abandoned me for the Lethe. Ever since I have roamed these fields alone. At the crossing from Desire to Greed, where desire runs dry, and lovers think only of themselves.”

A tear trickled glistening down her cheek. The effect was very tragic, though Alice thought she was rather hamming it up. Perhaps this was how immortal deities passed the time, perfecting their own mythologies.

The Weaver Girl pointed up, and the two ends of her sash did a spiraling dance toward the sky. “The next chance you have, look up at the night sky.

It’s missing a constellation. A bridge is broken.” Her sash collapsed.

“Darkness, now.”

“Haven’t you ever tried to find him?” asked Peter.

“We aren’t allowed, dear boy. And in any case, he would not know me.

He’s washed all memory of me out of his mind.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re so sweet.” The Weaver Girl reached out and tweaked his nose.

Peter’s entire face turned red.

Alice was not sure how she was supposed to react to all this. The Weaver Girl was talking quite a lot. But this at least offered her some respite—it gave her time to assess whether this deity wanted to play with them or kill them.

“But still I am a romantic!” The Weaver Girl spread her sleeves. A magnificent display of color. “It was never wise for a deity to wed a mortal, I see that now. One needs a shared perspective on time. Deities do not love so fleetingly, so hopelessly, with every ounce of their soul. But humans— you live for a breath, you die, and you spend your whole lives wondering how you might stay together in the afterlife, when you don’t even know if that’s what you truly want.”

She drifted closer—uncomfortably close—and her long fingers stretched out to dance over their shoulders. Alice had the absurd fear she might knock their heads together and make them start kissing like dolls.

“I see so many of you. Murder-suicides, that’s common. Or accidents.

Sometimes both parties die natural deaths, and one party waits years in the Fields of Asphodel until the other dies of old age.” The Weaver Girl sighed.

“Everyone thinks their love is eternal. I like to let them keep believing.”

“So let us through,” said Peter. “Love isn’t a crime.”

“Indeed it isn’t,” said the Weaver Girl. “I do not inflict punishment, dear boy. I offer a solution.” She clasped her hands together. “I offer you a test.

No arduous quest; only the answer to a question. I test your loyalty. If you pass, I build a bridge.” She brought her hands together. Her fingers moved quick, and threads spilled out between them, conjuring just for a moment a fabric that rippled and glittered; twinkling gold and silver against velvety black. A carpet made of stars. “My bridge will lead to any place you wish.

Any boundary, any court. The Rebel Citadel, if you wish. Or straight to Lord Yama’s throne. Pass, and I will let you walk this bridge just once, to

any place you wish to go.”

“What if we fail?” asked Peter.

“Then, into the Lethe you go.”

“But we’re not dead,” said Alice. “We aren’t Shades.”

“Oh, you’re sojourners!” The Weaver Girl’s hands flew to her mouth.

Her eyes shone huge. “But even better. Then you must really need safe passage.” Her fingers danced; the bridge rippled over the abyss. “These rocks are tricky, my loves. Prove your faith, and I’ll send you safely through.”

Alice did not like this. The Weaver Girl in her simpering giggles reminded her of the heroines from Chinese dramas her mother liked to play when she was a child—scheming, nefarious creatures who were always trying to shove their rivals down wells. And though she could not fit the Weaver Girl into her schema of Hell, she knew of every tale about bargains and wagers with the divine. Orpheus failed Hades’s challenge. Sisyphus tried to cheat Hades as well, and failed. There had to be a catch, there was always a catch.

“Can we consult?” she asked. “In private?”

The Weaver Girl flicked her sleeve. “Be quick.”

Alice tugged Peter by the arm until they were out of earshot. “I don’t trust her.”

“We don’t need to trust her,” he said. “We just need to play. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Well, amnesia, weren’t you listening?” Alice was not certain about the extent of her tattoo’s protection, but she did not want to test it against submersion.

“Then we’ll just win, it can’t be hard—”

“And that’s supposing she’s telling the truth,” said Alice. “Deities above don’t wander often in Hell, you know—she could be in disguise—”

“What else would she be?”

“I don’t know. Could be the sorcerer—”

“If she’s the sorcerer, we’re screwed anyways! Look, Law.” Peter spread his hands. “This is a godsend. We’re struggling enough as is, and she’s promising safe passage—”

“I don’t want to get dropped into the river,” said Alice. “Which is, by the way, exactly what will happen, since we are not in love.”

“But can’t you pretend?”

She stared into his face. Open, beguiling—how long had it taken him to master that hangdog look? How could he possibly look at her like this, intending what he did?

But maybe she could pretend too. Maybe she could beat him at his own game. She had one great advantage, after all, which was that Peter didn’t know that she knew the truth. “You want me to pretend that I love you.”

“It’s easy,” he said. “Just assume our wills are united.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, that we want all the same things. That we want what’s best for each other. That we take one another’s ends as our own, and that our ideal outcome is one in which we’re together. Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“No. Have you?”

“Well, no. But it can’t be all that hard to imagine, can it?”

“I think being in love might be the hardest thing to imagine.” She paused, considering. “I mean, the erotic complications alone. I haven’t even seen your penis.”

“Oh my God,” said Peter. “Law. We do not have time to articulate a philosophy of love.”

“How else do we decide our dominant strategy, then?”

“Just assume we are one person. Your ends are my ends and vice versa.

What hurts you hurts me. Our goals are staying together, and pursuing what is best for ourselves as a joint unit.”

Alice did not think this was how real relationships worked, at least not from the ones she’d witnessed, but it did sound nice in theory. “Where did

you learn that?”

“Immanuel Kant.”

“Wasn’t Kant a virgin?”

“He was a great philosopher! He revolutionized metaphysics!”

“I believe it was Kant who thought it immoral to masturbate,” said Alice. “Something about treating yourself as a means to an end.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Alice’s head hurt. To begin with, she did not in fact have an alternate account of love; but second, even if Peter’s account of love made sense, she could not disentangle it from his possible ulterior motives for offering it.

Deep down she suspected being in love just was two people lying to each other, concealing their violence, and so Peter’s proposal was thus misaligned with her priority to look out for herself.

“Come on.” Peter nudged her arm. “Law. Is it so hard to pretend you’re in love with me?”

The way he said this—it made her chest hurt. He knew exactly what he was doing, and the worst part was that it was working. She wanted so badly to trust him, to be the object of his love, if only for pretend. Stop it, she wanted to scream. Stop, can’t you see what you’re doing to me?

“Well, my lovers,” called the Weaver Girl. “What will it be?”

“You’re on,” Peter announced. “We’ll play.”

“Wait—”Alice began. But the Weaver Girl seized both their arms and, with startling force, dragged them up a rock until they stood facing each other, atop some hellish parody of a wedding altar. Swathes of silk shot up and made an opaque barrier between them. Peter yelled something, but his voice was muffled by the silk.

“No coordinating.” The Weaver Girl shimmered, then split into two translucent doubles. Each stepped to either side of the silk wall, and they spoke in unison.

“My Cowherd met me on the seventh day of the seventh month for eighty years without fail.” The silks created silhouettes in the sky: two figures running toward each other and embracing, becoming one. “Years

passed when I did not see his face. His entire village begged him to forget me and marry—for I could not give him children, you see, nor fulfill any of the duties a wife should. And if ever he did not come, the bridge would break. If ever we were unfaithful, the bridge would break. We were never unfaithful. Always, we chose each other, until the end of his life. Until he chose differently, and condemned me.”

The silks spread to create a fork; one red, one green. “I give you a choice, my lovers. The very same choice. You may choose to go on alone, or to go on together. If both of you choose to go together, I will build you a bridge of stars. If you both choose to go on alone, I will throw you both into the Lethe.”

“What if we choose differently?” asked Alice.

“Then the one who chooses to go on alone may walk this bridge as many times as they like. You will have safe passage throughout your sojourn. I will guard you against everything and everyone. Nothing will touch you.” The bridge danced, shimmered, split into a dozen forking paths.

“And the other—well, we might say merely that they will wish for oblivion.”

Alice blinked down. Suddenly before her stood a tray table, atop which sat two shiny, waxy apples. One was blood-red, the other deep green.

“What will it be?” asked the Weaver Girl. “Red to go on together. Green

to go on alone.”

“He has the same choice?”

“The very same.”

Oh, Alice thought; then this was just the prisoner’s dilemma.

They’d all done prisoner’s dilemmas in their first year. The obvious solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, if you trusted each other, was not to screw the other party over. The problem of course was that one’s dominant strategy was always to screw the other party over, no matter what they did.

But if you cooperated beforehand, then you could both get out of jail free.

And they had cooperated. Hadn’t they?

“Just to clarify,” she said. “What happens to him if I choose to go on alone?”

The Weaver Girl’s smile seemed to stretch over her entire face. Any further, Alice feared, and her head would split in two. “Hell gets so lonely. I enjoy companions.” Great white skeins of fabric emerged from her back and hung poised behind her. A spider’s web. If she squinted, Alice could see

human remnants in that web; the detritus of centuries of lovers leeched from and discarded. Some of those victims had been alive once. Sojourners.

Shades did not leave bones.

Alice shuddered.

This shouldn’t be difficult. Their dominant strategy was obvious. Peter had said to pretend they were in love, and if they were in love, they would both choose the red. If they cooperated, they got through, easy as that. She reached for the red apple—but then why wouldn’t her fingers close?

She could not help but wonder. Suppose Peter chose the green?

He couldn’t do that. It was not in his interest. Peter would not betray her here, Peter still needed her—at least, he needed her soul— And what, would she simply give it to him? Serve it up on a platter, trot along like a lamb to the slaughter? What silly logic was this?

Her hand drew back.

What then? Should she choose the green?

She would not need him then. She would have free rein of Hell, easy access to every court, and Professor Grimes’s soul at her fingertips. She could find him in a day, she could be back home by tomorrow. She would have everything she had ever wanted, and all it would cost was leaving

Peter behind.

But that was murder.

But then, to go with him, and speed along her own demise—how was that better? How was that smart?

You cannot do exchange on yourself. You cannot do exchange on yourself, we know this for a certainty, so where does that leave us? What can we possibly conclude except— And all this assuming he needed her at all. He might have another plan, he might not even need exchange; he might decide that safe passage was worth it, he might condemn her . . .

She felt a stabbing in her temples; twin forces, pressing in. There was too much information, too many memories, and she didn’t know how to sort through it, she didn’t know what they meant. She had gotten this far on a single-minded narrative etched into her brain—I am Alice Law I am going to Hell I will find Professor Grimes and everything will be all right—and now that catechism gave her no guidance, the way forth was not clear. The entirety of the past rose vivid in her mind’s eye, a thousand television screens playing all at once, and none of them told her the truth, all they

gave were snapshots, a useless deluge of detail. An empty glass of beer, an empty chair. The Pick, quiet before closing, and a bitter taste in her mouth.

Belinda’s airy sighs. Have you met Peter Murdoch? The shape of him; the length of his lashes; chalk on her fingertips, chalk on his shirt. Look outside, said Professor Grimes; you see that kid? Darjeeling tea, brewed too long, tasting like acid. Dry scones like cement in her throat. She could not swallow it down. Grimes at a blackboard, Grimes at a chessboard. Fortune favors the bold, magick rewards the decisive. The first mover wins; the losers play catch-up. Are you a born loser? Do you have the guts?

Laughter in the lab. I would have found a new advisor after the Cooke.

A slapping sound, open palms against buttocks, and laughter reprised, louder and louder, footsteps fading away. Eating right out of his hand. Big, bold handwriting—there was no hesitation in this writing, this was the scrawl of a mind made up, a mind moving faster than a hand could keep up with, this was not wondering, this was a declaration. IF ALICE—???

She felt a whooshing in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to assemble the staircase. What is relevant here? What is strategic? What evidence do I have to build premises, so that I may reason to a conclusion?

What would Grimes do? But this was so difficult. All information was a scramble, she didn’t know where to start, she couldn’t even seize on

foundational premises—

My name is Alice Law—

IF ALICE—?

I am a postgraduate at Cambridge—

IF ALICE—?

I study analytic magick— If ALICE—?

The planks scattered. She could not latch on to building blocks, she could only cling to a feeling, a sharp panic, ringing in her ears like a dozen fire alarms. Her arm hurt; the pain was back, pinpricks again, but it spread all over. Not again, she thought, though she could not even place what again meant; it was only a sensation. A needle flashing down. Chalk beneath her skin. Pigment blooming and pain blinding, so many bursts of white—Not again, please, I’ll give anything, but I don’t want to feel like this again— Vertigo hit. She swayed. Where was this? Where was she? Was Hell the memory, was Hell the dream? She raised her hands to her face and could

not see them; where her fingers should have been stood figures in miniature, tiny copies of Peter and Grimes all dancing in a procession. You see that kid? Green and red circles pulsed behind them, grew larger, drifted against each other until all she saw was a Venn diagram, and in the center, a needle and chalk, the thin blade bobbing, agony up her arm. An imagined conversation from the future: Peter and Grimes, safely returned, sipping tea in the office—What happened to Alice? Oh, you don’t want to know. And that handwriting again; massive, dancing letters. If Alice—? She watched them laughing, watched them rolling their eyes, and felt such a stifling, shameful rage she almost screamed. Pathetic Alice. Everybody’s fool.

Peter glanced up, caught her gaze, and grinned.

I hate you, she thought; faintly at first, just testing out the idea. And found, to her surprise, that it latched. It fit. She had not dared to think it before, but it was right, it was just—she was not a dog, she would not be kicked. I hate you, I HATE YOU— “Very good!” The Weaver Girl clapped. Her doubles merged back into one. The curtains shimmered, like a magician drumming up a crowd, and then lifted.

There stood Peter, grasping a red apple.

“Alice?” He glanced down at her hands. His brow furrowed. “What did you do?”

OceanofPDF.com

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE HarperCollins Publishers …………………………………………………………