Katabasis — Chapter no 34

Chapter Thirty-Four

Alice followed the golden braid up the bank, the Dialetheia sitting heavy in her rucksack. Behind her the Lethe lapped gently against the shore, producing a soothing, rhythmic wash. The sands were so soft beneath her feet, and her heels sank a little every time she took a step. She had the oddest sensation that rather than walking across an island, she was walking through a cloud.

She could give no reason for walking alongside the braid, except that it looked very much like a trail, and that she didn’t think anything so gold and bright could lead her somewhere bad. Of course bright and shiny things made up traps all the time, but in that case they winked and glittered with purpose, enticing you with every dash of glamour they could muster. The braid didn’t seem like it cared for her attention either way. Here it was minding its own business, but she could follow along if she liked. So follow she did. The braid took her up a shore, across the bank, and then up a steep hill growing steeper with every step. At last she reached the peak, and Alice saw that the braid had led her to a throne.

It was an unadorned, high-backed chair, sitting out in the open upon a raised dais. Beside the throne, three slim trees intertwined to form an arch, beyond which Alice could see nothing more than a gently turning wheel.

Atop the throne sat King Yama, Hades, Thanatos, the Lord of the Underworld, the Overseer of the Yellow Springs.

Alice saw now that the golden braid was a chain of souls; mere lights bobbing one after the other, blurs stripped of all individual features, uniform in their quivering, vibrant want. One by one they approached the arch. One by one the Lord of Death touched them lightly with his dark fingers, and they seemed to quiver with excitement before casting forth into the wheel.

The wheel shimmered each time a soul went past, and its spokes lifted them somewhere unknown, beyond.

She tiptoed as she drew closer, for she felt, as one did at christenings or baptisms, that she ought not disturb the process. She was near enough now to see every spoke of the wheel. Each was different: some were long, some

were short; some glimmered bright, some were dark with rust. A little waft of air floated across the throne as it turned; a bright sweet scent, of flowers in spring, herbs in a garden, and this was so refreshing that Alice could not help but gasp.

“Alice Law,” rumbled the Lord of Hell. “It is a thrill to watch new life being made, is it not?”

Alice struggled to gaze directly at him. He was brilliant; not with the harshness of the noon sun, but with the cosmic glittering of the night. He was, like the Weaver Girl, swathed in a fabric that seemed the same stuff that made the universe. Only his was infinitely darker; the color of a cloudless night when, lying flat on your back atop a hill, you might tip forward and disappear among the constellations. She could fall into that night, she thought. She could wrap his essence around her like a blanket and sleep forever, if only he would permit it.

“My—my lord.” Her voice sounded so tinny to her ears. “I—erm, how should I address you?”

“However you like,” said the darkness. “With whom do you wish to speak?”

Alice considered her options. The darkness took a succession of shapes before her, as if making clear her choices. Tall, bearded Hades, bearing bident and key; dark mother Kali, four-armed and beautiful; silent Anubis, his scale standing behind him.

“King Yama,” Alice decided. “Yanluo Wang.”

Best to keep to the familiar. Despite his bulging eyes and rage-filled grin, something about his image—scowling out at her from temples, behind incense sticks, on grocery store calendars—made her feel safe. She knew King Yama; her parents knew King Yama; all her ancestors knew, and feared, and prayed to, King Yama. She knew his long black beard, his ever- present scowl, his burning eyes and long robe. She had known him all her life.

King Yama was most fair and just. King Yama bore no grudges, and held no antipathy toward the living. Since her childhood she had understood that his scowl was only an appearance; that in truth King Yama was benevolent and compassionate, that he had indeed once been demoted to a lower rank of Hell for his leniency. He was dedicated only to fulfilling his duty, to acting as a judge—and his adherence to rules, she thought, could only count in her favor.

The Lord of the Nine Springs blurred, and then the darkness took on shapes more material. Now before her stood the great official; his skin a deep blue, his eyes glowing like twin blood moons. A tall, gold-rimmed official’s cap materialized atop his head. His thick, black brows organized his face in a rictus of fury. A dreadful deity, yes; but a deity she knew.

“Good choice.” He spoke to her in Chinese, and this too put her at ease.

She felt she was not so much tempting the unknown as she was sinking into childhood myth. So many heroes had bartered with King Yama. She could too. “What can I do for you, Alice Law?”

She tried to remember Elspeth’s script. “I seek an audience.”

“You are enjoying one. What next?”

King Yama’s eyes twinkled. Alice recalled then that according to some Buddhist texts, King Yama himself was not a permanent fixture of Hell, but a being who sought reincarnation himself. King Yama, like any of them, was on the path of his journey of transmigration. He had not ruled over this domain since the beginning of time, but indeed hoped to be reborn as a human, so that he might seek true awakening. And if King Yama had been human once, and might be human again, then perhaps he might have sympathy for her situation. He might know how it felt to make all the wrong decisions, and have no option but to beg the gods for mercy.

“I have something that belongs to you.” Arms shaking, she reached into her rucksack and pulled out the Dialetheia. It shone even brighter now, in the shadow of the ever-turning wheel. It was heavier, too. Its leaves seemed to grow perceptibly by the minute; they were now the size of her palm.

“Where did you find that?”

“I didn’t,” said Alice. “It was a gift. From Elspeth Bayes. She found it— well, I don’t know, exactly. Between two rocks, she said. Close to the shore.”

“Where is Elspeth now?” asked King Yama.

“She’s moving through the courts now, I think.” Alice cleared her throat. “That is. The proper way. With her transcript.”

“I am glad. I feared she never would.” King Yama swept his long-robed arms forth. “I’ll have that back now.”

Alice clutched it to her chest. She didn’t mean to—it was a possessive instinct—and she felt immediately she had committed some great affront.

Who was she to defy the gods? But at least Lord Yama did not seem angered. He only waited from his throne, wearing that constant scowl.

“I—well, no.” She drew a shaky breath. “I was hoping we might—make a trade. I have some demands.”

He nodded, as though he had been expecting this. “What are your

demands?”

“I want—” Alice halted.

She thought she knew her answer. She had been so certain, sitting on the Neurath with the pomegranate tree beneath her legs. She had worked out the precise wording of her request; its constraints and logic. And yet here before the throne, at the end of all things, her mind went blank.

Gently King Yama asked, “What was your purpose in Hell?”

This question was easier. She answered like a child listing months of the year. “We came to find Professor Jacob Grimes.”

“Merely to find him?” King Yama raised both hands. “You need not barter for that.”

Darkness flew from his fingertips and moved in a spiral over the sand between them, swirling faster and faster until the circle took on a definite shape. It was something like a pentagram, but so much more potent.

Pentagrams were meticulously crafted, written in languages known to man, while this circle was wrought of ragged symbols Alice had never seen. King Yama snapped his fingers. The ground jolted. A slumped figure appeared inside the black not-pentagram, hunched and indeterminate. The darkness stilled. The figure stood.

“There,” said King Yama. “You’ve found him.”

Professor Grimes was not one of the Shades who had put much effort into preserving their appearance. The only part of him rendered in any clear detail was his head; his hawklike features somehow emphasized, both bolder and more elegant than they’d been in life. Below the neck he was a flowing, formless darkness; the same shape of ghosts hung on Halloween.

For a moment he turned in circles, taking in all that was around him.

The Shade of Professor Grimes did not walk; he drifted and swooped like a bat. He observed the wheel, the golden braid, and the throne. His head tilted all the way back as he took in King Yama’s form. He chuckled.

“So you are the architect of this realm? The mastermind of my suffering?” Professor Grimes stretched taller until he and Lord Yama were face-to-face. His feet did not touch the ground. His deathly form had no feet at all, only swirling gray. “Only a deity after all. It makes me wonder. What does it take to kill a god?”

“I warn you, Jacob Grimes.” King Yama spoke now in English. His voice never rose above its calm rumble; not a hair in his beard ruffled out of place. And yet Alice felt the warning thick in the air; a thunderstorm about to break. “You are a guest in my realm.”

“But what can you do?” On Professor Grimes’s lips, even the vilest insults took the form of mere inquiry. “You are bound by the laws of this place, as are we all. You are a guardian, a facilitator. Nothing more.” He gestured up to the sky. “No—the real big man is up top, isn’t he? Go on, tell me you’ve never tried to pierce his realm.” He turned to the wheel. “Fate, is that it? Suppose I choose a spoke for myself?”

“You have not passed your trials,” rumbled Lord Yama. “You have no right to pass. You are here at the mercy of the girl only, and the wish I have granted.”

“Of course.” Professor Grimes turned to Alice. His face split into a smile and, despite herself, Alice’s heart thrummed at the sight. “Dear Alice.

I did wonder how long it would take you. But here you are, all in one piece —and the Dialetheia!” He reached for the little tree. Alice shrank back, but he only flew closer. There was no getting away from him. He buried his face in the petals, breathed deep, and sighed. “More glorious than I could ever have imagined.” He lifted his gaze to her eyes. “Alice Law. You brilliant thing.”

Such praise. She could never forget how good his praise felt, like the whole sun turned upon her. She was reminded again that she mattered. She was like a desperately convoluted proof running down two sides of the paper, lines dwindling to cramped scribbles on the margins until, magically, it came out valid. Her heart hammered very fast in her chest, and a hot heady wash passed through her mind before she could sort her thoughts out and speak.

“I don’t—but you—what do you mean, how long?”

“I have been watching,” said Professor Grimes. “Clever girl. Following all the bread crumbs. But who do you think left them there?”

Alice felt rather like a broken toy, capable only of repetition. “Bread crumbs?”

“There’s quite a lot you can do from the Bridge of Sighs,” said Professor Grimes. “Dreams, images, that sort of thing. I like to think I got pretty good at haunting. Tell me, did you ever dream of Ramanujan’s

Summation? Of journeys into the cold, dark earth? That was me. But it takes initiative, to your credit. You put the pieces together.”

“But how—”

“I knew you’d come. You’ve too much on the line. You’ve always been so dogged about your degree. I never doubted once.”

Alice could not make sense of this. “But then—why didn’t you just wait

for us?”

“Why would I do that?”

“But you could have just stayed in the fields. We would have rescued you in minutes—”

“Oh, Alice.” He shook his head. “You’re always in such a rush, that’s your problem. We have talked about this. You always want to be finished, you just want the end result—results, paper, fellowship, job. Stop barreling toward the end point, start lingering in the process. There’s so much that will reveal itself to you if you just pause and have a look around. Smell the

roses!”

“But we’ve got to get back up—”

“No, we don’t,” said Professor Grimes.

“But what do you mean?” Alice felt so stupid then. She always felt so stupid in their advisee meetings, when her mind couldn’t keep up with his racing thoughts. Always she needed clarification; always she lagged three steps behind. He had all these visions that her mind was too dull to see; she had to beg him to show her. “I mean—where else would we go?”

“Wrong question, Law. The better question is this: what are that limits of that little tree? Oh, it’ll be difficult here in Hell—there’s precious little chalk, and dwindling materials to write on. But we’ll make do. We’ll memorize as much as we can. It’s a perfect research environment—no distractions, no bodily needs—”

“You have no bodily needs,” said Alice. “I will starve to death in short order.”

“Then starve to death and beg for your life back later,” Professor Grimes said impatiently. “We have the Dialetheia, Alice, we can do anything.”

“But—that’s insane.” She blinked dully at him. Oh, why was this so difficult—why could she never keep up? “Why would we stay?”

“The scholar does not fear death. Have you learned nothing from Socrates?” Professor Grimes laughed. “The life of a scholar is mere training

for dying, don’t you see? I never understood how right Socrates was until the moment of my death, when my soul was ripped free from my body, and I was cast violently from that mortal world of base appetites. The body is the enemy, is a hindrance in the soul’s quest for the truth. It is as the Zhuangzi claims: life is a swelling tumor, and death the bursting of a boil.

We are slaves to the body! All it provides is distractions—fantasies, desires, illnesses, fears. We are bounded, and death is the ultimate freedom. I never saw it until now.” Professor Grimes’s hands grasped her face, and though she felt nothing solid, the chill took her breath away. “Come on, Law. This

isn’t hard.”

Alice had been here before.

The Lethe had not washed this memory clean. Nothing could ever wash this memory clean. It was engraved in her skull, it constituted her very being, and she was doomed to repeat it, over and over; no matter where she ran, everything brought her right back to this moment. Details of that night rose to her mind’s eye, all superimposed over King Yama’s throne. They stood in the same positions—he too close, hands on her cheeks; her frozen in position, head tilted up, eyes wide. Now, this was a proper seduction, whispered that evil contrarian that lived always in Alice’s skull. This was how that moment in the office should have gone. Instead of offering up his body, that stinking solid thing, he should have offered to her the key to the hidden world, and an eternity to play around within it.

He seemed to recognize the resemblance, for his smile stretched, and he drew even closer. He knew what that night meant to her; he’d only ever been pretending it didn’t matter. Let us play it back, let us do this properly.

Here is the world, Alice Law. Here is a chance to be like me, to be me. You and I, spirits soaring, and rising close to meet the gods. Alice tried, but could not shake off the double vision. Suddenly she couldn’t be sure where she was. If she let her concentration slip for one second then she found herself back in his office, like no time had passed, like everything that had transpired in Hell had been a dream. She was a second-year at Cambridge, her future in the balance, and all she needed to do this time was give in.

“Join me,” said Professor Grimes. His cloak enveloped them both.

Made them the unit Alice had always longed for; he their champion, she his shadow. “Join me in the realm of the gods, and we will dance through the hidden world. We will live and die and live again, until these concepts hold

no meaning for us. We will go where no one has ever gone. We will return, and speak to dazzled crowds of all the wonderful things we saw.”

Alice could not speak so much as move her mouth into shapes and hope her breath gave them sound. “But I don’t want to die.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I just want to go home.”

Alice had seen what the sole pursuit of knowledge had done to the Kripkes. And she would not repeat that same mistake; to remain here, whittling away until all that mattered was puzzles and abstractions. She had outshone at puzzles and abstractions her entire life, and still she had not learned a single thing about how to live. She did not want to tilt into their world anymore, she only wanted to touch something solid.

Yes, this was right. Was that right?

She tried to conjure some of Elspeth’s resolve. She had been so sure of it on the Neurath. I want to be alive, she thought in Elspeth’s voice. I just want to sit on the banks of the Cam and kick my ankles over the water and eat a warm, sticky bun. I want to lick sugar off my fingers and feel the sun warm my skin. That is what I want.

“Focus, Law!” Professor Grimes snapped his fingers before her. He had done this a lot in Venice. He would snap and clap or flick her on the back of her head if he thought her tired or distracted. Somehow it had never occurred to her to be offended. “Don’t lose your nerve. It is frightening, I understand. But anything worth doing is frightening. The greatest mistake you will ever make is to back down now.”

“But I don’t want to stay down here.” It was so hard to speak up; every word out of her mouth sounded childish and stupid, and with every word she uttered, she could see his disappointment spread. “Not forever.”

“We won’t, sweetheart. Only until we’ve found out all we can, and our minds are satisfied—then we’ll go back to everything that’s familiar.”

“And then you’ll pass me?”

“Pass.” He laughed. “You will be richly rewarded, Alice Law. Jobs and prizes are handed out at my whim, you understand that. Everything else is water under the bridge. Let us forget about it.” He extended his hand. “I guarantee no doors will ever be closed to you again.”

He’d made these sorts of promises before. Professor Grimes so enjoyed making promises; he tossed them out without a thought. Of course you’ll

get that grant. Of course we’ll coauthor that paper. And he never lied; she trusted he never meant to deceive, he was just so busy that he simply forgot.

This time, however, she thought he might be telling the truth.

Sometimes he did mean it. He could be so generous when he got what he wanted.

But, Alice reminded herself, she had been through quite a lot in this past week. She had faced down the ends of time; had escaped from the Rebel Citadel; had vanquished the Kripkes; had ripped a cat open with her bare hands and eaten its heart and made its skull a shrine in the deserts of Dis.

These sorts of experiences were very transformative. They gave her a bit

more clarity on—well, everything.

“You know Peter’s dead.”

“One assumes. He came down, and here he’s not.”

“But don’t you care?”

“It’s tragic, obviously.” Professor Grimes waved a hand. “But let’s look forward. It’s opened up possibilities.”

He said something else, but Alice did not hear.

Something clicked shut in her then. It was the strangest feeling. Indeed it made her a little giddy. She had never before exercised the ability to

simply drown him out.

Coolly she looked him up and down.

She’d never looked upon Professor Grimes so frankly. She’d always felt like she was looking into the sun, somewhat; she felt that she couldn’t look him directly in the face, or she’d burn away. But she had witnessed divinity now. The mundane did not compare. Now, in the afterlife, she saw him more clearly than ever; in part because she was no longer so scared of looking, and in part because she saw only what he chose to show. Just an ordinary man, puffing himself up, darting around for any way out of his predicament. Cruel, callous—and so, so full of unjustified assumptions.

Truly, he had put so little effort into keeping himself together. All fierce expression and no substance. He was less a menacing shroud than unformed brushstrokes of gray. Even the newly dead Shades she’d encountered in Asphodel had better definition than that. Professor Grimes was not good at being dead, did not have the fortitude of mind, hadn’t come close to conquering Hell, and Alice found this deeply disappointing. It was all so unfair, she thought. You thought people were giants, and they devastated you by being so human.

This was the saddest thing. The loss of faith. If he really were a giant,

she would have followed him still.

“Was that all?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Was that everything you wanted to say?”

He faltered. “Well, Alice—”

“May I speak, then?”

She clutched the Dialetheia tight with one arm. With the other, she reached around and dug her notebook out of her rucksack. She flipped several pages, then spun the notebook around and held it up before Professor Grimes. “You know what this does, surely.”

He bent over to read. “Erichtho?” He frowned. “What is this? Did you summon spirits from below to help you?”

“No,” said Alice. “It’s what I would have done to you. I only mean to show you my work.”

She tossed the notebook to the ground. She knew he could decipher her work at a glance. He had probably worked through something very similar already.

“I would have anchored your soul back to your body. I would have stitched your throat back to your lungs and suspended the muscles around them from electromagnetic wires. I would have tethered you as a talking head inside a wooden frame and not let you go, no matter how much you screamed, until I got everything I needed out of you.”

His smile faltered. She saw it falter—only for a moment, but this gave her an absurd burst of pride, the fact that after everything, she had managed

to shock him after all.

“So.” She swallowed. “There.”

Professor Grimes loomed over the sheets, reading in silence.

She was so familiar with this silence. She had sat so many times in his office, fingers twisting nervously in her lap while he read through pages of her work. She knew he liked to let the silence linger. It was an intimidation tactic. He’d told her as much, he did it all the time to journalists, to colleagues he disliked. Once his silence had terrified her. Now she felt a fierce, hot pleasure, knowing he was silent only because he was scrambling for a way to respond.

At last he said, “That won’t possibly work.”

“It does,” she assured him. “It’s how I vanquished Nick Kripke.”

How dare he, she thought. Making impingements, implying failure, when he had no grounds to do so except for being a dick. The Erichtho spell was some of the best work she’d ever done. Cracking the portal to Hell, uncovering Erichtho’s footsteps, making sense of the rotted archives, all of it. Truly this was top-notch scholarship. When Alice really thought about it, this was the worst thing that Professor Grimes had ever done to her—made her doubt she was a good scholar. He’d destroyed her faith in her own ability to think, and to judge the results of her thought, instead of turning to him at every step for confirmation. And it was just so unfortunate that it took his death for her to conceive, research, and carry out an entire project on her own.

“I can’t believe you thought it wouldn’t work,” she said. “I mean—you absolute clown—how would you even know?”

He’d lost her. He knew it. “Now look, Law—”

She dropped to her knees and smoothed her fingers across the ground.

The sand here felt different from the sand in the Eight Courts; different even from the islands’ shores. Grittier, the grains larger, more like the grains in the world above. Not nearly so silky, dreamlike, smooth.

“Don’t.” A note of fear crept into Professor Grimes’s voice. “Alice.

Let’s not be so drastic.”

“I won’t,” said Alice. “I thought I wanted that, once. It’s all I dreamed about. But now I think—I’d just like an exchange.”

She drew a little stick from her pocket. It was Elspeth’s chalk—Alice’s last stick had turned to a useless clump in the Lethe. Shropley’s Standard, alas, but Peter had also preferred Shropley’s, and since this work was all his, Alice figured she stood a better chance. Magicians had theories about that. The best chalk for a spell was the chalk the originator used. A superstition, probably, but still this made her feel safe; made Peter’s memory more vivid. She traced a little line against the sand and held her breath, watching, waiting.

The line remained. The sands did not eat her chalk.

Alice glanced at King Yama. She thought she saw the slightest nod of his head.

She drew a large arc then, covering as much ground as she could.

“What’s that?” Professor Grimes hovered over Alice’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“You won’t have seen this work,” said Alice. “He wouldn’t have shown you. Not after that set theory paper—I mean really, how low can you go?”

“Stop this.”

“Move a bit that way, would you? I need some more space.”

“Alice Law—I command you, stop this at once.”

She ignored him. She had to focus. She had so little chalk left; just a tiny nub, not nearly enough for redos. She had to get this right, and if she didn’t—she couldn’t let herself imagine what would happen if she didn’t.

It was so hard to remember. She’d forgotten so much. She couldn’t rely on that automatic facility anymore—what she’d gained in healing, she’d given up in skill. She’d grown reliant on picture-perfect captures appearing in her mind’s eye; until this point, all her work had been mere tracing. How much harder it was to reach for memories she wasn’t sure were there.

Blurred now were the lines between memory and imagination. She could not trust her mind not to invent what she wished she’d seen. The best thing she could do was to try to turn off that part of her brain that thought too much. Sink into the movement of the chalk, and let the memory of Peter guide her work.

“That’s not a valid pentagram,” said Professor Grimes.

“Hush,” she said.

“Those algorithms aren’t in conversation. You’re just making things

up.”

“Like you would know.”

He slapped her across the face. He tried, anyhow. His hand passed clean through her head, and Alice felt nothing more than the tiniest waft of air.

She glanced up at him, unimpressed. “Seems bodies are good for some things.”

He swiped again; a batty, pointless movement. He growled, glaring at his hand, but glare as he might he could not make the smoke materialize into a solid.

“You’ve got to have fantastic proprioception,” Alice informed him.

“That’s when you know where all parts of your body are without looking. It takes years of practice, but then you can become anything. Elspeth was very good at that. She could even become butterflies.”

Professor Grimes was starting to realize his defeat. He floated back, and his essence condensed around his form; a form that was not so tall as Alice had remembered. Indeed, she’d never noticed how he’d started to develop a

hunch, how his shoulders were not so broad, his demeanor not so

intimidating as she’d thought.

“Alice, please. Let’s talk about this.”

“Please, Professor. I’m working.”

“Bah.” He drifted to the circle’s edge. Alice glanced up sharply. She had not considered this—she needed him inside the pentagram. But Professor Grimes seemed unable to leave. He ran up against the edge of the pentagram, but something invisible kept him from going further.

“What is this?” Professor Grimes whirled on King Yama. “Let me out.”

“You were summoned for an audience,” said King Yama. “Alice Law,

are you finished with your audience?”

“No,” said Alice.

“Then it would be impolite to leave.”

“You can’t do this,” said Professor Grimes. “You’re supposed to be impartial, you can’t just—arbitrarily—it’s against the rules.”

“Haven’t you learned, Jacob Grimes?” King Yama’s smile looked demonic beneath his furrowed brows. “Hell has no rules.”

Professor Grimes wilted then. Finally, he had nothing to say.

Alice was fascinated by this. She had never seen Professor Grimes look desperate. For that matter she’d never seen him need anything. She wondered then if he might beg—but then, Professor Grimes didn’t know how to beg. He had spent so much of his life in a position of power; he was used to granting mercies, not receiving them, and it had been so long since anyone told him no. This much was obvious, for his desperation quickly turned to indignant fury.

“I made you,” he told her. “I molded you from inchoate dream. I gave shape to your clay. I lit your fire and gave you a mind. I made you.”

“Be that as it may.” Alice did not care to contest this. “You should be

kinder to your creations.”

“Alice Law—”

“Shush.”

Alice drew the circle closed and began to chant.

Oh, he howled then. He screamed at her all the invectives that could possibly apply, something about whores and tarts and stupid, stupid brats.

She didn’t make out the specifics; she let it all fade into a vicious homogenous wash. She’d heard it all before. He leaned over her, came so close that his aura was superimposed over hers, as if he could settle into her

body by sheer force of will. He leaned round and screamed into her ear. He forced his ghostly head into hers and screamed into her mind. You are a child you are useless you are stupid— Alice however was very good at incantations. Indeed, she could thank Professor Grimes for that. Concentration was so important for magicians, and he had spent much of her first year pacing around her in a circle, barking distractions while she knelt and flinched and scrawled with shaky hands. You’ll never succeed unless you can draw a perfect, steady circle in a hurricane, he told her. Make your mind an iron house. Make the mundane disappear. Everything is irrelevant but the circle. Everything fades into the back, until you are standing alone on a plane with the idea—and then the work begins.

So now Alice found it astonishingly easy to just close her eyes, pretend he wasn’t there, and finish what she was saying.

A wind whipped up within the pentagram. Only a mild breeze at first, but it quickly grew stronger and stronger until Alice’s hair blew all around her face, and she could not hear anything but the roar. Professor Grimes jerked up as if yanked by a hook. He flipped upside down, arms flailing, and when he revolved to meet her gaze his face was slack and helpless. He might have shouted something, but the wind drowned him out.

They had been here before. This too was a repetition, this violent disintegration. She was watching now a mere replay of that first death. But this time Alice knew what she had done, and how this would end. This time she did not cower, but watched unflinching. Professor Grimes spun slowly, and with each revolution his essence spiraled away like smoke from a fire, disappearing somewhere Alice could not know. At last he was just a miserable howling head, then a bag of a face, and that too peeled away, until the pentagram was empty. The wind died. Silence fell.

The air cleaved apart, cut through by the outline of a door. A crack had opened in the world. The door swung open, and Peter Murdoch stumbled out.

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