Katabasis — Chapter no 7

Chapter Seven

The Lethe. A great expanse, fathomless and immeasurably wide. From the shore all one could see was endless darkness stretching toward the dim horizon. Whatever waited across—King Yama’s throne, the gates back to the living—lay out of sight. The Lethe was a visual paradox, two things at once. At first glance, eyes unfocused, the waters were still and silent, a glassy obsidian surface reflecting glimmers of the ever-dying sun. But then one looked closer, and the Lethe became an agitated churn, all whorls and eddies in currents without direction, and the longer one gazed the louder those waters sounded in one’s ears, bone-deep rumbles from waves roiling beneath the surface.

Alice stepped closer, entranced. As a child she had learned that white was all the colors wrapped in one, and she found this profoundly unfair; that one could have seen rainbows everywhere but instead, with weak mortal eyes, saw only plain light. The Lethe seemed an inverse of this principle. It was all darkness. But the moment you fixed your eyes on any one point it began to disambiguate, until you saw that what seemed like sheets of obsidian were in fact waves of color, and those waves of color formed memories. You could just catch fragments if you squinted. Here a faded teddy bear; there a pouring stream of red wine; and there a ringed, wrinkled, reaching hand . . . all fragments teasing richer memories, specific details, all the detritus of human experience swirling, condensed into one unending wash.

Oh, great Lethe. Hell was always bound by a river. All the sources confirmed this, regardless of period, geography, or religion. You didn’t have to call it the Lethe. You could call it the Apanohuaya, or the Vaitanya. You could call it the river of Meng Po. The domain of Neti. But you could not deny there was the river, delineating boundaries between worlds, severing the cord between this life and whatever came after. On this side, the courts of punishment. On the other, Lord Yama’s domain—and the promised golden circle where souls returned to the world of the living. There were many rivers of power in this world—there were rivers of death, and rivers

of love; rivers that could grant immortality, and rivers that could take it away. Some washed away sin; some merely washed away the guilt. But only the Lethe washed memory.

Western Tartarologists preferred the name Lethe for its etymology.

Lethe comes from the Greek lēthē (λήθη), meaning “forgetfulness,”

“oblivion.” Lethe also has connections to the Greek alētheia (ἀλήθεια), meaning “truth.” Though what connection truth had to forgetfulness, Alice was not sure. By some accounts, stripping all memories was a way to reveal the most fundamental truth—some ineffable element of the soul that was eternal. By other accounts, the causation was flipped. Truth was the necessary condition to deserving forgetfulness, and therefore reincarnation.

Only when one acknowledged the truth about themselves could they wash away the burden of past lives to begin anew.

Dominant theories linked the memory powers of the Lethe to Heraclitus’s theory of flux. In most respects Heraclitus was a complete ass, and he was famous for bizarre proclamations like “Everything is its own opposite” and “All things in the universe are manifestations of an ever- living fire.” Despite this, Heraclitus had made the profound observation that one could never step in the same river twice, because it wouldn’t be the same river, and one wouldn’t be the same person. The Lethe, then, equated forgetting with rebirth. The continuity of one’s soul was tied inextricably to the persistence of one’s memories. When memories were gone, a new soul was born. The Lethe was forgetting was death was change.

“Suppose this is another way to go.” Peter was rifling through his notebook, thinking out loud. “Around the courts, I mean. Jesse Hagen had these theories—well, I don’t know if you read Hagen, I did take out the only copy. But we might move a lot faster if we traveled over water. The Lethe must pass by every court, so theoretically . . . hm.” Peter tapped his fingers against his chin. “But we’ve nothing to build a raft with.”

Alice had considered the same problem. Get on a boat. Sail across; either to successive courts or even to King Yama’s Land across the way.

Yes, Alice had found a footnote citing Hagen’s theory. But where would they get a boat? It was hard enough to take one’s mortal soul to Hell.

Pentagrams only stretched so large. No one had ever managed more than a bit of luggage, much less a vehicle. And the boat would have to be airtight, waterproof; they could not risk even one drop spilling onto their skin. On this subject, the literature was very clear. The waters of the Lethe ate

memory. Even trailing your fingers across the surface could strip you of truths you’d known your whole life.

Alice had concocted some half-baked ideas about forming a raft with the supplies in her sack. She might inflate the blanket, perhaps, and try enchanting it so it held the weight of two, and formed a protective barrier besides. But those waters looked impossible to fool with magick. Those eddies looked hungry. They exuded a vicious gravity. They were negative space, irresistible magnets, black holes of thought. Try me, the river seemed to say. I’ll eat your chalk.

Her arm twitched suddenly. She tugged her sleeve down. An old injury.

Peter was saying something else, but her mind drifted, lost in the river.

She simply could not stop staring at that shifting, swirling surface. She had the absurd urge to take a swim, and it was the same kind of thought that invaded her mind when she stood any place high up. What if she climbed out that window? Tumbled off the edge? The waters seemed so cool, so soothing, and she imagined herself dropping down through that glassy surface without so much as a ripple.

A blur marked her vision. Alice blinked, and when she opened her eyes she saw a woman standing by the shore, old and hunched, terra-cotta jugs arranged neatly on a table beside her. “Murdoch!”

“What?”

“Don’t you see her?”

“Who?”

“The woman.” Alice pointed. “The woman by the shore.”

Peter’s voice wavered. “I don’t . . .”

Why couldn’t he see? This was no hallucination. Alice was certain. She knew this deity. She’d seen her crop up over centuries of texts. Old Lady Meng Po, guardian of the river, mother of memory. Her task was to distill those violent waters into a fragrant herbal liquor. When souls crossed over it was the lady’s wine they drank; sweet and cooling, eternal relief. The forgetting of rebirth, not of obliteration. The lady met Alice’s eyes, and her mouth stretched into a slow, wrinkled smile. There was no malice in that smile; only a simple, guileless kindness. Drink, she said; and though no sound carried over the waves Alice understood perfectly what she meant.

Drink, and be at peace, and be gone.

Oh, how wonderful that would be! Alice had thought rescuing Professor Grimes from Hell was the solution to her problems—but why go to all that

effort? She almost laughed. Here was the real answer: to wash away the dregs upon her mind and come out the other side dewy clean; a mewling babe ready to start afresh. Memories rushed to the fore of her skull, hot and choking foul, and all she could think then was how nice it would be to offload them to the depths; to swirl away and then disseminate forever. She was so tired of the contents of her mind. Her thoughts were so loud; they pounded her skull, it never stopped, it was all too much. For a long time now it had been all too much. Everyone was so afraid of the Lethe—keep away, they said; stay dry—but why didn’t they understand it was mercy?

All the stories were wrong—no siren’s call was as alluring as the sea itself,

and the quiet dark beyond the shore.

Peter said sharply, “Law.”

She looked down, and saw she’d crossed halfway to the river. Peter stood yards away at the bank above. That was odd. She didn’t remember moving her feet. “How . . . ?”

Peter waved, the way one might at a misbehaving dog. “Why don’t you come back up here.”

Alice blinked at the river. “How very strange.” But she couldn’t move.

Peter waved again, more urgently this time. “Come on, Law. Please.”

“No.” Someone else’s voice came out of her; a musical tone, indifferent.

Alice liked it; she liked to be spoken for. The river decided for her. “I think I shall go for a swim.”

The river roared louder, drowning out whatever Peter said next.

Alice did not care. She could actually feel her mind deflating, like a pricked balloon, all that terrible pressure removed at last. The image of forceful waters rushing through every crevice, flushing out the debris, smoothing the contours of her mind, until the whole worm-eaten rot had vanished and left only smooth bone, baby clear. She felt that unanchoring again, which ought to have terrified her—she reached for her staircase but it was not there, the rush was too loud. But this time she had no fear. The tumble was a good thing; the fall was not further in, but toward the empty.

The baptism was upon her. Yes, she thought—yes, yes, we are almost there — Suddenly Peter was beside her. He gripped her arm, so hard it hurt.

“Ouch,” she said.

“Law, look at me.”

“Let me go.”

Hands clapped against her temples, forced her gaze from the river and upon Peter’s face. She had not looked into those eyes up close in so long.

What long lashes he has, she thought, miraculously long for a boy; what a lovely face, too, pity it makes me think of cruel laughter, slamming doors— “Breathe,” said Peter. “Just breathe.”

Don’t patronize, Alice wanted to say, but by instinct she obeyed, and the whooshing in her lungs dimmed the river’s roar, just a little bit. She felt again the edges of her mind. Tired grooves of being.

“What’s your name?” asked Peter.

She knew the answer! Yes, her catechism—she had practiced this, this was easy. It all came out in one breath. The staircase reappeared, and up she climbed. “I am Alice Law I am a postgraduate at Cambridge I study analytic magick—”

“Very good,” said Peter. “Now can you follow me?”

Alice wasn’t sure; she had forgotten how to make her limbs respond to her command.

“Just look at me,” said Peter. “Hold on to me. There you go.”

Step by step they started back up the bank. Alice’s legs moved like lead.

It seemed inordinately difficult to put one foot in front of the other.

“Almost there,” said Peter. “You’re so close. You’ve just got to finish out.”

She spoke as if in a dream, half-unaware of the words coming out her own mouth. “I feel sometimes it is so difficult to be conscious.”

“I know,” said Peter.

Such heavy feet. Like dragging rocks. “And I think anything would be easier. Anything at all.”

“There’s time for that.” Peter grasped her by the elbow; firm, but gentle.

His voice was soft. “It’ll always be waiting, Law. But we’ve got things to do.”

ON THEY TRUDGED, FOLLOWING THE PATH along the river. Peter strode ahead and Alice kept pace in silence, feeling embarrassed. The allure of the Lethe had diminished now that they were further off the bank, and Alice wished she had not made such a fuss. She was not sure now whether she’d seen the Lady Meng Po after all. Really, it was such a brief glimpse. She might have just been remembering a painting, or even a firm description become

imagination. Her memory did that sometimes; she confused memories and reality, her imagination was too vivid, she couldn’t help it. But Peter politely made no comment, and Alice made no defense, and gradually they sank into a thoughtless, plodding trance. Alice probed about her skull and found to her relief that the sloshing had settled, the rush faded. The catechism had worked, and she had a grip on her thoughts once again.

“Hey.” Peter paused. “Haven’t we been walking awhile?”

Alice had not been paying attention to the time. “Have we?”

“They didn’t look so far apart,” said Peter. “The library and the next building. But look—does that building look any closer to you?”

Alice summoned the picture from her memory. He was right. Before the gates, the campus had seemed as closely clustered as any typical campus, all its buildings no more than a five-minute walk apart. But the Second Court, Desire, remained just as far away as it had when they had started walking. Alice thought she could make it out in better detail now—it was a two-story building with ornate tiling all around the front and sides, and two bronze lions sitting guard at the front. But it had not grown any larger.

“I knew it,” said Peter. “We’re in hyperbolic space.”

“But that’s backward.” Alice did not remember much from geometry, but she did remember this. “With negative curvature, objects should be closer than they appear. Like with a convex mirror. Light spreads outward.

So we should be there—”

“No, no. What we saw from the wall was a clustering at infinity.

Haven’t you ever seen the Poincaré disk model? It’s like we’re walking on coral. Down here on this plane, things could be miles apart, and they would still look like a regular campus from a different plane.”

Alice did not know what the Poincaré disk model was, and did not wish to know. “So what’s the implication?”

“The implication is that we ought to go to the peak,” said Peter.

“Not your mythical peak again.”

“Now we have some idea of where it is, because we’ve seen the outer bounds.” Peter pointed to the Lethe. “So we know to track away from the river, and that will take us toward it—”

“If even that point exists! If it doesn’t, we just wander into infinity.”

“But just suppose it does. It would save us so much time!”

“The point isn’t to save time, Murdoch. The point is to find him. We can’t just randomly assume about his sins—”

“Why not?” Peter threw up his hands. “You think he’s too good for petty sins. You also won’t believe he’s done something really bad. So what, then, Law? What’s the Goldilocks mean of acceptable badness for dear Grimes? Where do you think he’s landed?”

Alice felt she was under attack, and for no good reason. “I don’t know,” she said, and hated how small her voice was. The question frightened her.

She did not want to open those floodgates. Behind lay a confused and guilty tangle she knew she could not sort out. Memories strained, always threatening to burst—but she had done so well at keeping those gates closed, at redirecting her thoughts, finding her planks. Better to keep it all locked away. Better to treat the whole matter purely as an experiment, and proceed methodically. All outcomes were possible. No biases. “There’s no way we can know. And that’s why we have to search in order.”

Peter must have noticed her shrinking, for his expression softened. “I understand that, I’m just—I’m just afraid we’ll be walking forever.”

“The Shades must get around,” Alice reasoned.

“Yes, but they have an eternity to get around, so that doesn’t matter.”

“But we haven’t seen any on the path.”

“So?”

“If it’s a long distance to the next court, we should see them,” Alice reasoned. “If it’s a shorter distance, then they’re already inside. We haven’t seen anyone, so it’s more likely that they are already inside.”

Peter considered this. “That is valid.”

“Thank you.”

“Then we just keep walking?”

“I don’t see a better option,” said Alice. “Do you?”

So they fell back into line, trudging toward a building that was probably —but not certainly—getting larger.

Somehow it was not unpleasant, this endless stroll. Alice was rather grateful for the reprieve. They could have been a Victorian couple, sojourning to the seaside for fresh air. The wash and lull of the Lethe was far preferable to the whining buzz of Pride, and if she closed her eyes Alice could imagine that wash sweeping over memories, sweeping them away, leaving a pure, clean slate behind. She knew that wasn’t how it worked.

Still she felt much calmer than she had over a long time; her head emptied of thought; her mind blissfully quiet. She felt that she could breathe.

Sometime around half past noon she heard the clicking.

Later she would come to dread the noise. This warning that began always as a faint whisper, so faint you thought or hoped you’d imagined it, but intensified until it could not be ignored. Later she would learn the whisper always turned into a clicking, until the sounds were disparate enough that the ear discerned it was not a single sound but a dozen constant clicks at once, echoing so you could not tell from which direction they came, and that by the time you could make out each one—vertebrae clacking, tibias and fibulas rubbing against their joints—it was too late.

“Do you hear that?” Alice stopped walking.

“Hear what?”

“It’s like—a snapping. Or clicking. Listen.”

“Might just be the river,” said Peter. “All sorts of stuff churning in

there.”

“Right, maybe . . .”

Alice could not shake the sensation that something was wrong. Every now and then she thought she heard something behind her. A footstep, a brush of sand. Every time she turned around, however, she saw nothing.

Only her neck kept prickling, now, with the conviction that something stalked behind her.

“Do you see something?” Peter asked after the third time she did this.

“I should like to,” said Alice. “Otherwise I’d really feel mad—oh!” She pointed upward of the bank. “There—look—”

Over the hill came a procession of three little animals. Malformed, twisted-looking things, empty sockets somehow more expressive than the eyes that should have lain inside them. Clicking and clacking they prodded around the sand, tails wagging, sniffing. They could have been dogs or foxes or wolves; it was impossible to tell.

Alice thought, at first, they were just malnourished things—poor creatures wandered down the wrong tunnel and now trapped in Hell. This happened sometimes, said the literature. All boundaries were porous. Cats crossed them on purpose, other creatures by accident, and then they got lost, and then they died. But as the things drew closer she saw there was no muscle on those creatures, no stretched sheet of skin. No eyes, only hollow sockets. No flesh, only clean white bone, alabaster bright, held together by some force unseen.

“Remarkable,” Peter whispered. “Do you know what they are?”

“No, do you?”

“I’ve read about Cerberus.” Peter did not look nearly as frightened as she felt. “And the Buddhist guards, sometimes, can take the shape of dogs.

But bones . . . I don’t know. They’re kind of cute, don’t you think?”

“It’s chalk,” Alice exclaimed. “Look at their joints.”

Those bones were, indeed, bonded together by gleaming, powdery chalk. Something or someone had stitched these bone creatures together by magick techniques too difficult to fathom—first because inscribing pentagrams on living things rather than a flat surface was still deemed impossible, and second because the inscriber, whoever they were, was not even present. No Magician alive could induce such effects outside a pentagram.

The creatures were very close now. The largest one crept forth past its peers, head tilted to the side as if curious. There was no flesh of nose over that skeletal maw, but the front of its skull twitched right and left in a manner that resembled snuffling. Peter was right. It was strangely cute.

Peter stepped forward. “Do you think they’re friendly?”

“Don’t—” Alice began, but Peter was already kneeling, stretching out

one hand at the leader.

“Hey there. Good boy—”

The bone-thing’s head snapped out. Peter yelped and jumped back, just as the bone-thing leapt for his face. Peter’s arm swung up to ward it off, and the bone-thing’s jaws clamped around his wrist. No, only his sleeve, thank God—Peter waved his arm twice through the air and at last flung the bone- thing away. It landed on its back, inches from the water. For a second its limbs waved like cockroach legs, then it rolled over, skittered to its feet, and raced back up the slope to join its comrades.

A theory clicked together in Alice’s head. “They don’t like the water.”

She shuffled to the shore, moving sideways so as not to turn her back on the creatures. “Murdoch—come on—”

He backtracked to her side. The bone-things did not follow. Her hunch was right—the Lethe water ate memory, and chalk worked by recalling memory, the echoes of millions of years of life. Indeed the closer they got to the water, the further back the bone-things fell. They crouched, shoulders hunched in agitation, like coyotes debating whether to pounce. But they drew not an inch closer.

“Back.” Alice made a shooing motion with both hands, the kind one used on persistent gulls. “Back, back—”

The bone-things ignored her. Still an invisible boundary seemed to separate them from the water. They could not come closer than ten or so yards from the Lethe, and indeed the more Alice inched toward the bank, the more agitated they grew. They kneaded their paws against the sand, shaking their heads in distress. Alice half-expected them to start yipping.

“Careful,” Peter warned.

Alice glanced over her shoulder. Her left heel had crept up to the water’s edge. She felt a wave of vertigo. Peter flung out his arm and she clutched it, bearing down against him for balance.

At last the bone-things had had enough. With a final clack of their jaws, they turned tail and scrambled back over the dunes.

“Are you all right?” Peter asked her.

“Fine. You?”

“Yeah, just a tiny scrape—Jesus.” He examined his sleeve. It was torn clean away, up to the elbow. Several angry red streaks ran up the length of his forearm. The bone-thing’s teeth had been sharp. Alice winced to imagine what would have happened had its teeth sunk two inches further.

“Not a good boy.”

Alice squinted, following the creatures down the dune as far as she could. In seconds they were over the horizon, hidden from sight.

Not a single sojourner’s account made mention of creatures of bone and chalk. Nothing on the record came close.

Her tranquility cratered. The beach was no longer a fantastical and lulling retreat but an anxious and overexposed plane. The sight of chalk meant the presence of another magician. A frightfully talented one at that, one capable of techniques not even Professor Grimes had ever dared attempt. Chalk meant a creator, another keen rational mind whose motives

were unknown, save for one thing.

He was watching.

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On Chalk

In all the myths and lore it is assumed that magicians use a variety of special implements: scepters, staffs, cauldrons, wands. But those in the learned sciences know that a proper magician needs only one tool, and that is a humble stick of chalk.

Chalk is the foundation of all analytic magick. Easy to write with, easy to fix mistakes. Chalk is made of limestone in turn made by compressed, tiny fragments of ancient sea creatures that died millions of years ago, and therefore possesses the curious, still-mysterious quality of manifesting magical statements. Chalk is, as wrote the magician-philosopher Aldous Huxley, a link to the abyss of the remote past, the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe. Some evidence indicates that the Cerne Abbas Giant, a massive chalk drawing of a naked man holding a club, is prehistoric evidence of a vast and terrifying work of magick. (Though in the absence of a recognizable paradox, any evidence of its intent is lost to history, and probably for the best.) The efficacy of chalk depends on where you dug it up. In England, the trusted standard for magick chalk is the Barkles brand, mined from closely guarded deneholes along the Thames. The most expensive chalk, used only in very important public demonstrations and dissertation defenses and the like, is Shropley’s Premium—produced by the Shropley’s company from deposits at Grime’s Graves in Norfolk. Shropley’s also issues a more affordable line of chalk mined in Hangman’s Wood—Shropley’s Standard— which carries a signature yellowish tint. Most English magicians bear

allegiance either to Barkles or to Shropley’s Standard, and debates over which is superior have ruined friendships.

Whatever your preference, what distinguishes everyday chalk and magical chalk is that magical chalk writes on almost every surface.

Magicians do not always enjoy the ideal conditions of blackboards in lab rooms. For practical effects, they must be able to draw pentagrams in all sorts of conditions—on concrete, grassy hills, plastic boards, wooden floors, and cobblestones. Magician’s chalk glides beautifully on every texture, no matter how wet or dry, crumbly or slick. The highest-quality Shropley’s can even activate successfully on sand.

This is perhaps why, in all their research, Alice and Peter had overlooked one crucial detail: nowhere in any records, mythical or scholarly, has there ever been evidence of chalk working in Hell.

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