Katabasis — Chapter no 18

Chapter Eighteen

It was still dark out when Alice awoke. Peter was gone, his blanket folded and tucked neatly beneath a shelf. She picked herself up and tiptoed up to the top deck, where she found, with some relief, Elspeth and Peter sitting across from each other on the prow. They were not speaking; they both sat with their knees drawn up to their chests, staring out over the water.

Archimedes perched atop the railing, tail swishing back and forth like a pendulum. He, too, had his gaze fixed upon the water, one paw slightly lifted, as if in remembrance of swiping goldfish.

Alice approached, clutching the blanket around her shoulders. Peter ignored her. But Elspeth met her eyes and tilted her head as if to say, Come join.

Alice crossed the deck as quietly as she could and slid down beside Elspeth. The Neurath cut silent across the night, gliding over still waters without so much as a ripple. They might have been sailing through space, floating over nothing at all.

Alice had not grown up around large bodies of water. As a child she’d meant to go river-tubing with her parents in San Antonio. They’d gotten lost, and whiled away most of the afternoon turning round and round on highways. By the time they reached the river the sun was setting and most families had packed up their things to go. They were debating whether to stay or go when suddenly they heard a sharp cry. The families at the bank were scurrying frantically about, and eventually it transpired that a little girl had been swept downriver. The river was shallow, only waist-deep, but moving fast, and it was hard to spot anything in the dimming light. The shouting grew louder. Alice heard splashes; adults jumping into the water.

Alice’s mother herded them all back to the car. They never did find out if that little girl had drowned; Alice remembered only driving away with her face pressed to the glass, squinting at the bank, hoping to see a little head emerge.

She had been terrified of swimming since. She never joined her friends on trips to the beach. At Cambridge, she lived along the river Cam, which

was as tame as a river could be. Still she feared it; how dark it seemed when she crossed the bridge past midnight, how easily it might swallow anything that came close. Often of late her mind wandered to the prospect of jumping. Whether she might splash around. Whether she might just slip to the bottom and disappear. There was something compelling about water; its ability to absorb, and make nothing and whole both at once.

And the Lethe, by comparison—oh, the great, enveloping Lethe. Less a river than a wound in space. She realized she had no grasp on how wide the Lethe was, or indeed if its thickness was regular at any point. None of the maps really knew what to do with the Lethe, its inverted geography. How far had they drifted into Hell’s uncharted domain? Without the moon above or any banks in sight they were only three figures on a little boat, sailing on an eternal black plane with no end and no beginning. Alice felt disembodied. Anything could happen to them. They might sail along forever. They might vanish without a trace.

“Look.” Peter was peering over the side of the boat, arms outstretched, fingers so close to skimming the water.

“Careful,” said Alice, but he shook his head and insisted, “Look.”

She joined him over the railing, and her breath caught at the sight—a glimmering current of light, palimpsestic beneath the black.

People swam in the water. Well—not people, precisely, but flashes of them; faces laughing, crying, arguing, weeping; faint phosphorescent outlines in glowing green ripples. People and things and places from other lives—a sunny cliff by the seaside, a crooked beach umbrella, a dog barking happily as it bounced closer, ever closer, tongue pink and bright, the fluff atop its head so downy soft that Alice could almost feel it in her palm.

“Memories,” said Elspeth. “Every forgotten thing from every life lived.

The fresh ones form a little current, sometimes—you can see them in detail before they dissolve.”

The boat lurched to the left. Suddenly the waters around them began to churn. Over the railing, Alice saw a fomenting black mass—something with too many eyes and too many teeth. She shrank away, but Elspeth leaned over the edge and jammed her punting pole in the middle of the mass.

“Back! Back, you. Silly things.”

The waters stilled; the boat righted.

“Don’t you worry,” Elspeth assured them. “Just a rogue nightmare.

They dissipate easily enough. They’re not coming for us. Sometimes they

coalesce, and you get these little whorls of terror. Boltzmann brains, I like

to call them.”

“Very funny,” said Peter.

“Where do they all go?” Alice asked. “Do they fade?”

“Far from it,” said Elspeth. “This is their repository. The Lethe is all the memories that ever were. The Lethe is infinite. The Lethe is all the colors on the palette mixed into black. The Lethe doesn’t erase, it only absorbs.”

“Eternal recurrence,” Peter murmured. “Everything that has happened will happen again.”

“Don’t quote Nietzsche on my boat,” said Elspeth.

“Mea culpa.”

Elspeth settled back, arms crossed. “It’s fun to watch, anyhow. Like the television channel of the underworld. It’s always the freshest memories that are clearest. Gives you a picture of what life is like above. Can’t believe how much things have changed. Did they really kill John Lennon?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “Sorry.”

“Oh, what a pity.”

Alice leaned over the deck, entranced.

A girl hopped on one foot over a wet sidewalk wriggling with worms. A man wobbled on a bike behind a bus turning into traffic. A woman juggled boiling pots on a stove. A boy walked alone by the river Cam, glancing up every now and then to watch the rowers training in the early morning.

Those were not her memories; those faces were not of her loved ones. They struck a deep nostalgia in her just the same, the nostalgia you got looking inside brightly lit windows along the street at night; peeking into lives you might just have had. Someone else’s comfort. A warm couch, an old movie humming along on the television. And then your wife or mother or friend joining you from the kitchen, steaming mugs of hot toddies in both hands.

She found its sight oddly calming. The insides of her head, tossed out onto water—except these images had no associations with her own, they did not spark the deluge, she could just watch them go by; instantiated, then

vanishing.

“Careful,” said Elspeth.

Alice realized she was leaning quite far over the railing. She shrank back.

“The Lethe will do that to you,” said Elspeth. “You’ve got to be on guard. Otherwise you dissolve quick, before you know it.”

Would she? Alice wondered. How much protection did Grimes’s tattoo afford?

“I thought the Lethe couldn’t hurt Shades,” said Peter.

“The draft doesn’t, only cleans your memory for rebirth. But unfiltered water, straight from the river—that can destroy you. I’m very careful. Stuck my pinkie in once. Just the tip. I wanted to see if it would hurt, you see.”

“And did you sense it?” asked Peter. “What you were forgetting?”

“Not at all,” said Elspeth. “That’s the most frightening part. You’d never know what you lost. You don’t get to choose.”

“You said that the Kripkes don’t fear the Lethe,” said Alice. “What did you mean by that?”

“They don’t,” said Elspeth. “No, they court it. I’ve even seen them drinking its waters. Just once. They stood at the bank in a line, taking tiny sips from a bowl. It seemed like a ritual for them. Like they’d done it

before.”

Peter looked aghast. “Why?”

“Because it hurts to be human, I’m sure,” said Elspeth. “Hurts to be reminded what you don’t have anymore. Better to erase yourself bit by bit, until you are only what you need in the present moment.” She shrugged.

“We all do it. Even the living. Only difference is the Kripkes care less about what they’re leaving behind.”

Peter shuddered. “But that’s not a life anymore.”

“They aren’t living lives,” said Elspeth. “They’re just rote functions.

Dedicated to a single end.”

Alice didn’t find this so awful. Why wouldn’t everyone strip away the parts of their selves that caused them pain? She’d like to learn that trick, she thought. If she could sift through that mess in her head, pull out the files that kept torturing her, and burn them. Every small humiliation, every shred of guilt—if only she could unclutter her mind so that all that was left was the elements she wanted to keep: the burning core, the hunger for knowledge, the skills to gain it. You could achieve so much without the burdens of personhood. Who wouldn’t wash away the rest?

AS THE SUN CLIMBED PONDEROUSLY ONTO its ever-low perch, Elspeth steered them toward the coast. “Better to be out deep at nighttime,” she explained.

“The Kripkes like to move under the cover of the dark. It gets choppy, though. Days, I prefer to be close to shore.”

“Where are we headed?” asked Peter.

“Wrath,” said Elspeth. “I need a lantern.”

A strip of land came into focus now. No buildings marked the horizon.

No—as they sailed closer, Alice saw that on the other side of the abyss that the Shades had labored so furiously to cross was nothing but sand and driftwood. It seemed a barren and hostile beach, the kind you got shipwrecked on; the kind where survivors went mad and devoured one another. Indeed the more she observed, the more the beach presented evidence of some ongoing struggle. Everywhere she saw confused prints in the sand; haphazard fortlike structures; broken spears made of driftwood and rocks; discarded firewood; proof of camps broken up in a hurry.

“The Third Court,” said Elspeth. “The deserts of Greed.”

“Where’s the campus?” Alice asked.

“Pardon?”

“Coming over the wall, we saw this campus,” said Alice. “And I just thought all the courts were like—buildings on a campus.”

“Oh.” Elspeth chuckled. “What’s the furthest you’ve ever wandered

from your department?”

“How do you mean?”

“I bet you always lived in college,” said Elspeth. “You never ventured further out, did you?”

Of course I did, Alice wanted to say; but she really couldn’t claim she had. The farthest she could point to was the walk south to Cambridge station, but that didn’t count. Downing and Pembroke were down there.

“Don’t you know it?” Elspeth gestured. “The dead space. Where the campus ends, but the rest of the world hasn’t started. Where faculty and no one else lives. Where the university’s bought up land but not built anything on it. Where construction continues, but nothing is ever built, where space is in becoming for ages. Haven’t you been there?”

“I did visit Berkeley once,” said Peter. “Horrible place.”

“Well, that’s where we are.” Elspeth dug her pole into the bank. “Things get freaky out here.”

Near the shoreline knelt a Shade, its head bobbing up and down in frantic movement. As they drew closer Alice saw the Shade was attempting

to eat something clutched in his hands. Something shiny, circular, hard.

Alice hoped it was only a rock.

“Professor Carpeaux,” said Elspeth. “He’s been there for a while.

Always hungry.”

The name rang a bell to Alice. “Wasn’t that the man who—”

“Who plagiarized his students’ papers for years and got away with it,” said Elspeth. “They said he died of a stomach virus, but I think one of his students laced his apples with cyanide. Good work if so.”

The barge drifted closer to shore. Here the waves grew perilous, crests smashing against the rocks. Further up shore Alice could see larger groups of Shades, though she could not speak to what they were doing. They seemed to be at war—certainly two groups kept charging one another in succession, weapons in tow—but what happened after was unclear, since no one could be injured in any way that mattered, which meant they could only settle for what looked like vigorous collective writhing on the sand.

Alice was reminded of a faculty volleyball tournament—a few years back, when the students lobbied to have the annual department retreat in Brighton instead of Inverness, and for three days everyone pretended to look natural outdoors, pale flabby bodies sweating under the hot sun.

Someone proposed a volleyball tournament, and all the faculty got competitive about it. Some instinct for physical dominance emerged in this new environment. Alice would have given anything for a potion that could selectively wipe the memory of the department administrator grunting as he lobbed a ball into the net, or Helen Murray shrieking with joy when she managed a good serve. The game broke up after an argument about refereeing, which culminated in Helen hurling her cup of water at the other team. Alice had been ever so grateful Professor Grimes did not play. She’d never have been able to look at him the same way again.

“What are they doing?” Peter looked aghast.

Two Shades were now slowly circling each other, arms extended at their sides like wrestlers, while the others gathered around them, chanting something illegible from shore.

“Hell if I know,” said Elspeth. “I’ve poked around before, tried to find out. But they won’t talk to me. They’re the only Shades that won’t talk to me. They’re very chatty in Pride, and even the folks in Desire will talk for an hour or two, if you wave a hand in front of their face. But they’re so paranoid on Greed. They sprint away every time you approach. And then

next thing you know they’re ambushing you with driftwood arrows. My theory is that it’s some sort of collective action problem, and they could all get out if they’d just hold some democratic forum, but I think they have more fun with their sticks and arrows—oh, watch out.” Elspeth tugged at the rudder strings. “They start pelting me with rocks whenever I get close.”

They tugged away from the shore. Professor Carpeaux raised a hand toward them—plaintive, supplicating. Elspeth wiggled her fingers in return.

“Do you see a lot of people you know here?” Alice asked. She was trying to think of a subtle way to see if Elspeth had spotted Professor Grimes.

“Oh, yes. Far more magicians than you would expect, actually.”

“And do they get out pretty quick, in your experience?”

“Absolutely not.” Elspeth snorted. “Magicians are terrible at getting through Hell. They never think they did anything wrong, you see. They think they’re different. Everything’s justified if they were doing it for research. Only it’s never for the research, is it? It’s always about the ego, the bragging, the titles and bylines. A hierarchy of complete nonsense. And they can’t give it up. I think that’s why they muck about in the sand all those years. They could get up and walk away at any moment, but they won’t. They can’t give it up. And for what?” Elspeth gave a brittle laugh.

“Little parlor tricks? Magick is so flimsy. Pointless. There’s no one in the real world who cares about what we do. And these people lived like its simplest secrets were matters of life and death. And they’ll go at each other’s throats—for what? A fucking piece of chalk?”

This last sentence came out sounding rather pointed. Alice tossed Peter a nervous glance. But Elspeth was not looking at them. She was glaring hard at the writhing bodies back on shore.

Peter said, “Beats me why you’d want to go back then.”

Elspeth frowned, eyes narrowing. “Now, what do you mean by that?”

“It just—it seems you’d be better off, well, reincarnating. I dunno. If

you hate Cambridge so much.”

“I didn’t hate Cambridge.”

“The people, then.” Peter’s fingers worried at the frays of his sleeves.

“The institution, at least. Why spend so long searching for a True Contradiction when you could just pass on? Given there’s nothing you want to go back to?”

“I mean, I still have a family.” Elspeth’s voice grew sharp. “I had parents. Have parents. I have siblings. I still have a life.”

“No, right, I’m sure.” Peter nodded. “But if you’re done with research, then what’s the—I mean, have you ever thought through what you might do when you get back up there?”

“Of course,” Elspeth said scathingly. “I’m going to sit outside. I’m going to have a cup of tea, Assam, with lots of milk and a swirl of honey.

And a cinnamon bun. With raisins.”

THEY ROUNDED THE BEND PAST GREED and, after a long stretch of empty beach, came upon the Court of Wrath.

Dante had described Wrath as the swamp of the Styx, populated with furious naked souls in the bog, striking at each other and at themselves.

Souls simmering such that their rage made the surface bubble. Alice had quivered upon reading this description—“This hymn they gurgle in their gullets / For they cannot get a word out whole”—for it was the first time a poet seemed to understand that wrath was not merely external; was not just a screaming raving tornado of destruction. Sometimes you swallowed it down like a hot coal. Sometimes it only ever burned you, slowly, from the inside out, until you choked. She thought of nights she’d spent awake, tracing over the corners of memories and working herself up into a rage— but it never made her incandescent, righteous; she only stifled herself in her ineffectuality. All this has happened to me, she’d think, and the world is unfair, and still I can’t do a thing about it. I might as well drown.

“So what’s on Wrath?” Peter asked. “A rugby court?”

“Actually no,” said Elspeth. “The structured institutions start disintegrating after Greed, I think. Past Wrath, it all gets more classically infernal. Degeneration of the psyche, the flight from reason—something like that. We tread a bit more carefully here.”

Alice gazed at shore looking for her imagined bogs of souls, like fruit flies drowning in apple cider. But under the dim light of morning, she saw only dark and endless shore. The sand was pitch-black, though dotted with bright, glowing spots. Footprints, Alice realized; undeniably shaped by heel and ball. Though the being who’d created them must have been enormous, for as they drew closer she saw those footprints could span her entire height at least.

“Those will be left by Phlegyas,” said Elspeth. “A deity. Cast into the underworld for setting fire to Apollo’s temple after Apollo raped his daughter.”

“That seems reasonable,” said Alice. “I mean the fire, not the raping.”

“Well, Phlegyas thinks so too. Always howling about the injustice. Look —there he is, at the foot of those mountains. Can you spot him?”

Alice squinted over the plain. Far beneath the cliffs she saw a crimson pulsing light, moving ponderously through the rocks. And within, a dark silhouette—but what form it took, man or beast, she could not tell.

“Is he dangerous?”

“Oh, very. Could smite you with a mere glance. He does leave these wonderful little embers wherever he steps, though. Coals that don’t go out for weeks. That’s what I’m here for.” Elspeth nodded to her lamp—which, Alice noticed, burned a similar pulsing crimson. Grunting, she hauled a metal bucket out from beneath the pile of oars. “I’m off to collect. Can you two man the boat?”

“Oh—sure.” Alice perked up. She had been puzzling over how to trap Elspeth under her watch, and here the opportunity had just dropped into their laps. “What should we—”

“Just stay by the anchor.” Elspeth was already climbing atop the railing.

“And if the bone things approach, spritz them away. I do hate when they come aboard.”

One graceful leap, and she was ashore. Alice watched her dancing nimbly over the coals, jumping from rock to rock until she faded from sight.

She felt something against her back. She turned, then flinched. Peter stood very close behind her, eyes fixed ahead on Elspeth.

“Now’s the time,” he murmured. “Do you want to distract her? Or draw the pentagram?”

Those were the first words he’d spoken to her all morning. She tried to hide her relief. “Um—either, I guess. What do you—”

“I’m faster with pentagrams. I’ll draw it.”

Alice was not sure this was true but felt now was not the time to push back. “That’s fine. Where ought—I mean, where do you think we can get her?”

She had been struggling with this all morning. Wrangling information out of Elspeth was one thing; the harder was getting her into a pentagram at all. The problem with a blood-soaked pentagram was that it was very

difficult to hide. Theoretically the size of a pentagram did not affect its potency—and indeed, in Roman history the Celts had drawn great chalk structures around entire hills and forests to trap their enemies. But it would take time, and more blood than they had.

“Just get her by the stove,” said Peter. “There’s a mat—we can draw it now, have it there before she’s back. You think there’s time?”

Alice glanced back onto the beach, where Elspeth was shoveling embers into her bucket with gusto. “You’ll have to be quick.”

“Sure. Can I get a knife?”

“Why—oh.” She fished it out of her rucksack. “Here—be careful.”

“I’ll do my best,” muttered Peter, and headed for the stairs.

Alice took a shaky breath and turned back to the beach. Elspeth’s bucket was nearly full. She saw Alice looking at her, straightened up, and waved cheerily. Alice waved back, feeling rotten.

Have resolve, she thought. Professor Grimes had taught her this. The difference between greatness and mediocrity was only ever about following through. Anyhow, this was a good thing, the merciful thing. Elspeth had to be put out of her misery. One conversation—that was all it would take. And then they would be on their way, and Elspeth only ever an awkward memory.

“HELLO! TAKE THIS.” STANDING TIPTOE ON the shore, Elspeth swung the bucket of embers forward using the far end of her spear. Alice grasped it and hauled it into the middle of the deck. From the corner of her eye she saw Peter disappear toward the stairs, his arm clamped against his side.

She straightened up. “Hey, Elspeth?”

“Yes, love.”

“Tell me if it’s presuming, but I was wondering if we might—that is, I’d love some tea.” She cleared her throat. “If you have any. It’s been so long.”

“Magicians.” Elspeth chuckled. “Incorrigible. Is Earl Grey all right?

That’s all I have.”

“Earl Grey sounds perfect.”

“Come, I’ll show you how the stove works. Take those tongs, it’s out of coal—” Elspeth gestured, and Alice gingerly picked a glowing ember from the bucket.

Elspeth crouched before the stove. The mat sat firmly where Peter had left it. It was a dirty, black-brown thing that might have once been yellow, synthetic fibers waterlogged and filled with sand. Under the legs of the stove Alice spied faded cursive that read: Home is where the heart is. She could imagine Elspeth finding it in the course of her scavenging, and carting it back delighted to her ship. Hello, my lovely bones! Look what I’ve found.

“In here.” Elspeth waved for Alice to place the ember in the middle, then fished a stained, cracked teapot from the proofing drawer. This she filled with Alice’s copied flask. Driblets streamed out the cracks, sizzling pleasantly against the stove. Together they stood over the flames, watching steam curl off the side of the teapot. Archimedes materialized from wherever he’d been off to and perched by Elspeth’s legs near the stove,

basking in the glow.

“Where’s Peter?” Elspeth asked.

“Oh—um, wanted to lie down, I guess.” Alice wondered if Peter had had time to activate the pentagram. She had not heard him speak on the deck—but pentagrams could be activated from a distance, especially if he were standing beneath them just now. She stalled. “I think he’s tired.”

“He’s a brooding type, isn’t he?”

“He can be, yeah.” Alice twisted her thumbs together, casting frantically about for how to proceed.

She had never been good at lying. Once Professor Grimes had sent her to Professor Stuart’s office to suss out whether he was pursuing the same strain of Curry subsets that Professor Grimes wanted to work on, and she had fumbled things so badly that ten minutes in, Professor Stuart began reminding her awkwardly but kindly that he had a wife and children. But all academics, she knew, relished being asked about their research. And it was not difficult to get Elspeth talking—after all, she had languished so long without anyone to listen.

“So who’s on Wrath, anyways?” She mustered the most casual tone she could. “Lab managers and registrars?”

“Nothing good. I don’t see a lot of folks go through Wrath, to be honest.

And the ones that do, I hear more than see them.” Elspeth shook their head.

“Dreadful place. I don’t ever go much further than the shore.”

“Do you understand the purpose of the courts?” Alice pressed. “We’ve been confused ourselves. It seems—it seems, at the end of the day, that

punishments are entirely random.”

“What’s so random about it?”

“Well, I can’t tell what the point of anything is,” said Alice. “Pride and Desire, maybe. You get over yourself and then you walk out. But Greed?

What are they doing there? What’s it all for?”

“Hell if I know. You stop asking questions, after a while.”

“But it’s so vexing,” said Alice. “All these scholars have these theories —about sin, karma, repentance—and then you come to Hell and realize it’s all up to the whims of deities. And I just think if any Tartarologists really came down here they’d burn their previous publications.”

“That’s because they would like to treat the Afterlife like a game,” said Elspeth. “All academia is shoving natural phenomena into boxes that won’t fit. They’d like to program it out because it makes them feel safe, because if they can point to all the sinners in Greed and Wrath and Tyranny and say Well at least I wasn’t as bad as him, then they don’t have much to worry about. And they get frustrated when Hell won’t play along.”

“But there should be some order,” said Alice. “It should be fair.”

“You want Hell to obey the rules of classical logic.”

“Not logic, necessarily,” said Alice. “I know there’s elements to the divine, and all that. But the cosmos should have some coherence, don’t you think?”

“You are such an incorrigible member of the Cambridge School,” said Elspeth. “All systems builders. Closed circuits. Bah. Never open to spontaneity.”

“I only like knowing what awaits,” said Alice. “That’s all.”

“Here, this might make you feel better. Do you want to hear my

theory?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, I think the biggest misconception about Buddhism is that karma functions as this grand tally that you count up at the end of the day.”

Elspeth waved a hand. “But it’s not like you get five hundred good points and eight hundred bad points, so that in Hell you have to account for a net three hundred deficit. It’s nowhere so neat. Karma is more like—hm. You might say karma is like a seed. Seeds grow into fruit. Karma is a natural consequence. Badness accrues. It affects the way you live your life, how you perceive the world. When you do evil things, you see the world as petty and selfish and cruel. And what you experience in Hell is just the final

ripple effect of your original evil. You get precisely what you asked for. And I think the whole point of Hell is to show you the full extent of what you wanted.”

“Huh.” Alice turned this over in her mind. This theory was appealing, she thought, but there was still so much it couldn’t explain. “And the Shades in Greed—that’s what they wanted all along? Building spears on the beach?”

“What they wanted was to be better than everyone else,” said Elspeth.

“And now they’ve got the chance to prove it. They get to go wrestling in the muck. Proving their might and vanquishing weaker minds. Every single day. They’re probably in paradise. The upshot is, Hell’s not so bad for the people who are in it. They’re exactly where they wanted to be.”

The kettle began to whistle. Elspeth took it off the stove, tipped water carefully into two teacups, and handed one to Alice. “Here you are.”

“Thanks.” Alice lowered her head to sip, but a foul stench hit her nose.

She blinked down; thick, black pellets floated at the surface of the water.

This was decidedly not Earl Grey. Elspeth was watching her, so she put on a

wincing smile and feigned a sip.

“Sugar?” Elspeth asked.

“Go on, then.”

Elspeth reached behind the stove and plinked something tiny into Alice’s cup. Alice stirred, and pretended not to notice it was a pebble. “So then, um—if you don’t mind my asking, what court are you due in for?”

Elspeth blinked at her.

“Sorry,” said Alice. “I suppose that’s rude.”

“Incredibly,” said Elspeth.

“I only think, sometimes, it would be so nice to just pass on and start over.” Alice took another pretend sip of her tea. “I mean, if you didn’t do anything terrible, you might as well stomach it and move on, don’t you think?”

Elspeth’s eyes narrowed. “You two seem very invested in persuading me to give up and die.”

“No, no, I’m just—I’m trying to understand.” Alice’s mouth had gone dry. She swallowed, which did not help. “Seems strange to keep chasing after something that doesn’t exist, when you could just—I mean, when it would be so easy to just go on.”

“I deny the premise, but sure.” Elspeth leaned against the stove.

“Something wrong with the tea?”

“No, no, it’s fine—um.” Alice curled her fingers around her cup. She felt dizzy. Oh, she was terrible at this. “So are you—are you close, then? Do you know where it is?”

Elspeth sipped from her own tea, unspeaking.

“What’s stopping you?” Alice pressed. “Is it the Kripkes?”

A strange look came over Elspeth’s face.

Was this the pentagram working? Alice could not tell. She had not played around with the Liar Paradox since her first year, and could not remember acutely what it did to its victims. Was that a glaze over Elspeth’s eyes? Was she dazed?

“We could help,” said Alice. “Me and Peter. If it were the three of us against the Kripkes, they’d never stand a chance. Only you’d have to share with us what you know. If we could just see your notes, I mean . . .”

Elspeth did not answer. She appeared frozen in place. Her fingers clenched unmoving around her cup of tea, which was pitched forward, dripping, but she did not seem to notice. Her eyes were fixed downward at Archimedes, who now stood, hackles raised, spine curved, glaring up at

Alice.

“Baby,” said Elspeth. “What’s wrong?”

Archimedes batted at the mat. Alice’s gut dropped. Archimedes went at the mat like a thing possessed, hissing and scratching at its surface. At last he succeeded in nudging the corner of the mat to the side, revealing a smudge of chalk and several red, glistening drops of blood.

For a long moment Alice and Elspeth blinked at one another. Ever so slowly Elspeth set her cup down on the stove.

A number of possible excuses crossed Alice’s mind. None of them seemed worth the effort.

“Peter, darling.” Elspeth raised her voice. “Why don’t you come up here.”

An excruciating silence. Alice briefly considered running, or fighting— but to where? And with what? She could only clutch her teacup and stand there like a fool. Peter appeared atop the stairs, arm dripping, face pale. He met Alice’s eyes; frantically she shook her head.

“Over there,” Elspeth barked. Peter obeyed, and took a place next to Alice. Side by side they were like chastened children, waiting for

punishment. Archimedes perched up on the stove beside Elspeth, glaring righteously through pinprick pupils. Wretched thing, thought Alice; after all we fed you.

Elspeth tapped her spear against the ground. “I think you ought to tell me who you’re here for.”

“We told you,” said Alice. “We’re sojourning—”

“Liars.”

Something black seeped into Elspeth’s eyes. They seemed to rot in her head, whites turning green, then black, years of decay squeezed into seconds. Suddenly butterflies flew out the sockets; a horde of them, awful rustling violet. Alice and Peter skittered back, but Elspeth approached, butterflies doubling with every step, until she was not a person but a rustling mass of velvet, dark and reproachful. Her spear whipped out; the

point rested just beneath Peter’s chin.

“Step inside.”

Peter’s neck bobbed. “Why don’t—”

“Step inside, love.”

Peter obeyed.

“You know, it’s not the cruelty that gets me.” Elspeth pulled out a stick of chalk, dipped it in a pouch at her belt, and fixed it to the end of her staff.

“It’s the disrespect. I’m a Grimes student, you might recall.” She kicked the mat away and began etching alterations into Peter’s work. She wrote with furious speed, muttering in Greek as she went along. This was terrifically impressive magick—very few magicians could inscribe and incant simultaneously. She is good, Alice thought; she is worthy of Grimes. “You think I have been down here for decades, dancing with the Kripkes, and I don’t know my way around the goddamn Liar Paradox?” She closed the circle with a final, vicious stroke. “The Liar Paradox is child’s play. But advanced magick, kids—that’s making one tell the truth.”

She banged her staff against the deck. Alice choked. Two invisible hands gripped the sides of her face, wrenching her jaw open.

Elspeth demanded, “What is your purpose?”

The invisible hands pressed harder. Alice gurgled an answer and tried to

choke it down.

“Grimes,” Peter gasped.

“Excuse me?”

“Professor Grimes—our advisor, he died, we have to bring him back—”

“You’re here for Grimes?”

Elspeth howled then, a howl that doubled, tripled, multiplied into an impossible chorus, a thousand Elspeths shrieking from nowhere. Tiny black lines spread rapidly across her skin, and then the top layer of her skin seemed to peel away. Dark fragments coalesced, whirled—but Elspeth was not gone, only shielded now by a horde of butterflies, which swirled agitated around her, whipping up winds, whirling faster and faster until the force of the gale seemed about to rip the ship apart. She-the-chorus screamed, resounding over the winds. “You gave up half your lives, and journeyed to the underworld”—the butterflies enveloped her like a shield, encasing her in a semihuman form until she was not a human Shade but some singular-plural god, speaking with a voice like thunder—“for that miserable, godforsaken clown?”

Elspeth pointed her staff. All at once the butterflies stormed outward.

Alice flung her arms over her head, but it did not matter; the creatures were like a velvet wall, pushing until she and Peter were forced against the prow, bent at the knee, for the circling winds were too strong for them to lift their

heads.

“Get off my boat,” said Elspeth.

“Please,” said Peter. “Please don’t—”

“You dare to beg?”

“What would you do?” Alice cried. “If your advisor died? If you were in our position?”

The butterflies parted. Elspeth’s face was again revealed, pale and terrible. “I’d quit, you moron. I’d find another one.” For just a moment her voice was human. Alice thought she heard it break. “I’d do literally anything else.”

“But there is nothing else,” Alice croaked. “Can’t you understand?”

Butterflies closed over Elspeth’s face like a helmet.

The mass surged. Alice writhed, but it was pointless. She reached for Peter, but the mass pulled them apart. All she could see or hear was beating black wings and beneath that, a hissing cloud of wrath. A million bursts of wind carried her up and flung her out. She flailed suspended in the air, blind and disoriented, before crashing hard against the ground. By the time the butterflies released her, spiraling away in formation, Elspeth and Archimedes and the Neurath were a dot against the horizon, shooting spitefully out of sight.

OceanofPDF.com

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