Katabasis — Chapter no 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

When 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.”

Two contradictory statements came to Alice’s mind then, and she couldn’t decide which one seemed more plausible, so she uttered them both.

“That can’t be.” And then, “But I didn’t know.”

“Then you’re blind,” said Elspeth, “because it was written all over his face. Yours, too.”

Alice reasoned that Elspeth was probably right. If she thought about it, a small part of her suspected the same. Only she didn’t know what to do with this information. She wished she could carve it out of her chest; set it

flaming and quivering down somewhere else, maybe lock it in a box, if it would just leave her alone.

“But we were fighting when we met you,” said Alice. “He hated me.”

“All the same. If anything, that made it easier to tell.”

“But he never said.” Alice sniffled, pulling the blanket tighter around

her shoulders. “I wish he’d just said.”

Elspeth shook her head, smiling sadly.

“Magicians,” she sighed. “Fools, all of us.”

ALICE SLEPT. WHAT DELICIOUS SLEEP IT was; quick and dreamless, sleep that came easy and made time slip away. Elspeth was staring at her when she awoke, her face tight and pensive. She kept tapping her fingers against her leg. Her mouth twitched, like it couldn’t decide between a smile and a

frown.

Alice sat up. “What is it?”

“I am trying to decide whether to help you.”

“Oh. Well let me know if I can offer any input.”

Elspeth did not respond.

Alice set her hands on her lap and watched the water rippling. She felt like a naughty child in time-out. She felt she was being weighed, though she couldn’t say what for.

At last Elspeth sighed. “I haven’t been fully honest with you.”

“That’s more than fair.”

“No, look.” She drew a satchel out from beneath the paddles. She placed her hand inside, hesitated for a moment, then withdrew an item. She placed it in Alice’s hands. “Here.”

Alice understood immediately what she beheld.

A Dialetheia. She peeled the fabric back and found the most curious plant she had ever seen: a Janus-headed flower, one face with seven petals the red-orange hue of the rising sun, twinned at the back by a second face with seven petals of identical shape, these the bluish-white of a falling moon. Vibrant and deathly both at once; warm and cool. A pomegranate tree growing defiantly in the land of the dead. A True Contradiction, the thing that could not be.

“I found it just before we met,” said Elspeth. “The Kripkes weren’t after you. I should have told you. They were hot on my heels. They were after

me.”

Alice turned the True Contradiction over in her hands, marveling at the brilliant hues along the stems and stamens, at the delicate, tiny buds emerging from the tips of the branches. What a relief, to see such colors after weeks in grays and black. The only splash that had broken up the monotony was the brilliant red of blood—but here, finally, was green.

“Where was it?”

“In a crack between two boulders at the bank of the Lethe. Can you imagine? No fanfare, no fairy rings. Just growing there, impossibly, with nothing to announce itself. I would have passed by it entirely if I weren’t looking for a place to moor.”

Alice heard Peter’s voice in her head. The world is not a complete system; there is always an exception. No explanation for its existence; no reason why one might expect it to have existed before or ever exist again.

The world was simply unknowable; exceptions cropped up all the time, and all you had to do to beat the odds was just look.

“Hold it close,” said Elspeth. “Drop that and I’ll kill you.”

“My word.” Alice held it closer, marveling. The petals were so fine, thinner than paper, their translucence lined with patterns like lace. “A contradiction explosion . . .” Slowly the implications caught up to her. They wouldn’t just be able to leave Hell. They could change everything. With the True Contradiction on one side of a proof, they could write anything else into validity. They could end world hunger, end famine and wars, reshape reality’s boundaries however they liked. If they could just get the True Contradiction out of this place, they could do anything. “But then that makes you God, Elspeth. You could do anything you liked. Reality’s just putty in your hands . . .”

“You still need blood,” said Elspeth. “Where do you think I’d get all

that blood?”

“But still . . .”

“And the archives are quite clear on the limits,” said Elspeth. “The Dialetheia won’t work above. It’s only a miracle in Hell. Above, it’s just a tree.”

Elspeth leaned back, arms folded. “It seems to me that the only useful way to employ a True Contradiction is to take it back to the Lord of Hell.

That’s how Orpheus bargained for Eurydice. The Lady Persephone was so moved by his music that she gifted him the first Dialetheia as a favor, and

then Hades had to barter with him to retrieve it. The Dialetheia has too much power to let loose in the world, you see. It’s no use to us down here, but the Lord of Death needs it back. So you take it to the final court, to the throne on the island at the edge of the world, and you offer it up freely. You always get one boon, that’s what the stories say. And with that boon, you ask for your life.” Elspeth nodded to the Dialetheia. “So be careful what you say up there. You only get the one chance.”

It took Alice a long moment to realize she had just been given instructions.

She could not find the words. She had no frame of reference to make sense of this, this impossible generosity. It defied every rule she’d been taught about moving within the world, in which favors were like the conservation of matter. A give always entailed a take. “You’re just giving it

to me?”

“Well, don’t look so put out about it.”

“But can you find another one?”

“It’s a Dialetheia, you fool. They don’t just grow on trees.”

Alice did not know what to do with this gift. She could think of no appropriate response. Just then the Dialetheia felt so heavy in her grasp; she was seized with the irrational fear she might fling it into the water.

Archimedes mewed in agitation. Elspeth scratched the back of his neck.

“Hush, you,” she murmured. “I know what I’m doing.”

A small part of Alice lit up with suspicion. Surely Elspeth wanted something. Everyone always wanted something. No magician ever did things out of kindness, or they wouldn’t have gotten where they were.

But there was no guile on Elspeth’s face. Just a sweet, open sympathy.

Just kindness.

“But I don’t deserve this.” She deserved none of the favors she had received. Peter’s sacrifice, Gradus’s sacrifice, now Elspeth. What am I to you, she wondered, that you would do this for me? Her mind cycled through the possible tropes: relations of dependence or charity; mother to child; elder sister to younger; mentor to mentee; lover to beloved. But none of them fit, none of them came close to approximating this singular,

inexplicable grace.

“Elspeth, why—”

“There’s no why,” said Elspeth. “You don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept.”

Alice pressed her face against the Dialetheia, brushing her cheeks against its petals. It smelled like another world; like a garden in spring, like fresh rain and birdsong. The world used to smell like this, she thought. I used to smell this all the time.

“In any case,” said Elspeth, “I don’t think they’re so difficult to find

after all.”

“No?”

“We don’t understand the gods very well,” said Elspeth. “But we should not assume they have the same constraints as mortal beings. King Yama theoretically has control over his entire domain. I don’t think he lets something like a True Contradiction hang around just out of sheer negligence. I don’t think the gods do negligence.”

“Then you think he left it here on purpose.”

“Rules are so boring,” said Elspeth. “So is infinity. You can’t knock about a closed system forever; the possibilities run out. I think, then, sometimes the gods like to play. Just for the hell of it.”

“Peter thought something similar,” said Alice. “It’s how he interpreted Gödel. There are always exceptions. There’s always something unexplainable, meaning at some level everything becomes possible.”

“That’s a good sentiment to hold on to,” said Elspeth. “Better than the

alternative.”

“So you’re going to find another one.”

“Eh.” Elspeth gave her a little smile. “Maybe.”

Realization dawned. “You’re not searching anymore.”

“I’ve held off the inevitable for so long.” Elspeth had a faraway look in her eyes. “And I don’t want to put it off any longer. I’m tired of the Neurath, understand? I’m tired of always bobbing out at sea. I want someone to ferry me over.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Alice. “The ship, the angels. They came for Gradus, and I watched . . .”

Elspeth pressed forward, eager. “Oh, yes?”

“And it was beautiful.” Alice was so glad she did not have to lie.

“Exactly like all the stories promised. They let you board. They let you drink. And then they take you over the horizon, to whatever lies beyond.”

Elspeth rapped her knuckles against her wooden seat. “Then let’s hope they’ll come for me eventually.”

“You’re way ahead of everyone in Dis,” said Alice. “You’ll do fine.”

Elspeth nodded. Alice saw her lips tighten with something—fear, perhaps—but they just as soon gave way to Elspeth’s typical resolve. “Any chance you could tell me how to get out of there quick?”

“You think I know?”

Elspeth chuckled. “Fair, that. Any advice, then?”

“Avoid the citadel.” Alice settled back, gripping the Dialetheia tight against her chest. “The citadel’s a waste of time.”

ELSPETH GUIDED THE NEURATH FORTH INTO waters unknown. They sailed without pitch or tumble, over waters so glassy smooth that Alice would have thought they were sitting still on dry land except for the rapid current of memories sliding away beneath them. Lower Hell shone dimly on the horizon, the fires of Dis growing fainter and fainter until it blinked out into darkness. Then they had only the low flickering light of Elspeth’s ember lamps, catching stray memories in the water. Eventually the memories stilled too, all vanished to inky black, and they were just two souls sitting in the dark, eyes locked on each other’s pale form.

“I don’t know what happens next.” Elspeth’s eyes were huge, frightened against her wan sliver of a face. “I’ve never been this far from shore.”

Alice noticed belatedly that she wasn’t doing anything with the rudder.

The punting pole lay still on the deck; the sails were down. The Neurath glided ahead on its own will, or on something greater’s will.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

“You don’t have to know,” said Elspeth. “Everywhere you sail leads to the same place. Like a bowl overflowing, like water spilling out the sides.

The forces push you outward, to the end of the world, and there’s nothing to

do but follow.”

“The pizza anus,” murmured Alice.

“The what now?”

Alice drew a circle in the air, though she wasn’t sure how much it helped. “We had disagreed over our maps of Hell. Peter and I. I liked the linear map. He liked this wonky pseudosphere thing, something that only worked in hyperbolic space. He thought you could track away from the river, access the peak of Hell through the center. Two-dimensionally, it looked like a pizza anus. And now you’re telling me we’re in a pizza anus.”

“You’re both right.” Elspeth laughed. “Well, Peter was more right.

We’re indeed in hyperbolic space, love. Bounded by the river on the outside and infinity on the inside. When you’re right next to the Lethe, it does look linear. But once you start sailing across—well, then it’s out of your hands.”

“What happens at the end?”

“I don’t know.” Elspeth said again, “I’ve never been this far from shore.”

They were gliding faster and faster now. Alice felt cold air on her cheeks; not wind, but speed. They couldn’t turn back now even if they tried; the attractive force was too great. There was an urgency to their movement; that of a boat by a waterfall, hurtling toward the edge. Archimedes sat utterly still at the prow, pupils narrowed into pinpricks.

“There,” Elspeth whispered.

Alice sat up straight, peering over the prow.

Her mind could not make sense of what she saw. There was the island.

But when her eyes alighted on that plane, and followed it outward, she registered a curvature that made her stomach twist. Somehow, when she followed that curve, up and up and around, she found her gaze right back on the Neurath, floating still in their little patch of river. It was like tracing an Escher staircase. There was no beyond.

She had to look away; the looping made her head hurt.

And yet this made perfect sense. Lewis Carroll had theorized this—how else did you conceptualize life and death, the membrane of passage, except as continuity?—but no one believed him. Take a strip of paper, twist it in the middle, and connect the ends. Very good. Now you have a ring, a three- dimensional object you can hold in your hand. But it only has one side. The inside is continuous with the outside. Now do the same thing with a four- sided handkerchief. Twist the edges, line them up, and stitch it all together so that the inside is continuous with the outside. All is external to the bag, which means all is also internal to the bag, and so the bag holds the world.

Impossible to draw, impossible to even conceive. But here Alice was looking right at it.

“The projective plane,” Elspeth murmured. “Astonishing.”

The black sands were so close now. All Alice could see on that shore was a single golden braid of light, stretching from the bank to the unknown beyond.

Alice’s fingers curled around the True Contradiction, and she pulled it close against her chest. Now that the moment approached, she was suddenly afraid. She felt that same drop in her stomach before an interview, when she promptly forgot how to walk or breathe or talk, and feared that when she walked through the conference room’s doors she might burst out singing, or slam against a wall. She had struggled mightily to get here. Yet now at the end she realized she had no clue what awaited her, and no clue what to do.

“It’s all right,” said Elspeth. “The Lord of Death is kind. He’ll know

what you want.”

“What if I fudge it?”

“You won’t fudge it. Just keep your wits about you, and stay the course, and—oh.”

The Neurath struck land. They jolted in their seats.

Elspeth rose. “Time to go.”

Alice stood and, with Elspeth’s help, stepped gingerly off the boat.

“Alice.” Elspeth’s grip tightened round her fingers. “Kiss me, would

you?”

“What?”

“It’s been so long.” Elspeth turned her cheek, so pale in the throne’s reflected light. “I haven’t felt—another touch, I can’t even remember . . .”

“Oh,” said Alice. “Of course.”

Elspeth closed her eyes. Alice leaned forth and pressed her lips to Elspeth’s skin. The gesture felt foreign at first. She, too, couldn’t remember the last time she’d kissed anyone. She expected Elspeth to be icy cold, but though Elspeth could contain no warmth, all Alice perceived was a delicate softness. Satin skin over hard bone. Human bodies were so singular, astonishing. There was no texture in the world like this.

Elspeth sighed, and it seemed something was restored to them both.

“Thank you.” Elspeth let go, and Alice took her first wobbly steps onto

King Yama’s domain.

“Come with me,” Alice said suddenly.

Elspeth was bent down. When she straightened, she had her punting pole in hand.

“It can’t only be for one,” said Alice. “We can figure something out, just come with me—”

“Not my time.” Elspeth pushed the pole into the sand. The Neurath inched backward. “Still have some things to figure out.”

“Please don’t leave me—”

“Go on. Be brave, love.”

The Neurath broke free of the shore. Archimedes sat solemn on the prow, swishing his tail as the waves bore them back into the current. Alice tried to watch them go, but the light on the shore was so bright, and the water so dark. In seconds, Elspeth’s face sank back into the shadow. She thought she saw Elspeth wave a hand in farewell, but she could not tell for sure.

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