Page 127 of Katabasis
For the first time in a long while, she had a sense of her body. She felt its wants and pangs. She felt its strength. She turned her right hand over before her eyes and stared, astonished, at its ridges and veins. So many little grinding pieces composed this heaving lump of a machine. And miracle of all miracles, it worked.
She felt something else: a thrumming roar deep in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t quite describe it. It was not a sensation she had ever felt before; indeed the intensity of it rather scared her. But that moment, all Alice knew was that she desperately wanted to kill something.
Chapter Thirty
My, my, my.” The ground rumbled. “Aren’t you a sight.”
Alice propped herself up on her elbows. “Hello, Gradus.”
He drifted closer.
She nodded to her steaks. “Try some.”
She expected him to scoff. She was surprised when he said, “Smoke it for me.”
She obliged, dipping her makeshift skewer over the fire until the meat blackened. Gradus leaned low over the flames. Gray tendrils furled into his essence, so that for a moment Gradus and the smoke seemed like the same entity, and he made low, satisfied noises.Thurification, thought Alice. That was the English word. She thought to little sacrifices her parents laid out during festivals; offerings to their ancestral dead alongside slow-burning incense. So this was what happened on the other side, she realized. Ghosts plunging their heads in thick, hot food.Next time I’ll dispense with the incense, she told herself,and just toss the food in the flames.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“What for?”
“I should have listened to you. I should never have gone with Gertrude.”
He raised his head. She giggled; his face was half blurred with smoke; half smeared and dripping, in imitation of a man at a barbecue with no bib. He’d surely put on this effect to amuse her, and this pleased her; it meant they were still something to one another.
“Bah.” He shrugged. “Of course you went. It sounds too good in theory; you always have to know.”
“You were at the citadel once.”
“Oh, sure. I helped build it. I have spent countless years at Gertrude’s side, planning our expanding skyline. I have been a tree in that courtyard, still, and almost disappeared. I have been a pacing soul in the gardens, treading the same steps over and over again.” Gradus bent back over the fire and sucked in another long, satisfying drag. He sighed. “And I have teetered over the rocks, watching the waves, daring myself to jump.”
“Why did you leave?” Alice asked.
“Because the temptation was too great. In those last few years, I... Every day, you know. Every second. So much time I spent teetering on that cliff. And finally I knew that if I stayed there a moment longer, then I really would jump.”
“But why didn’t you?”
“Isn’t that just the question.”
“Sorry.” Alice smiled. “I guess it is.”
“I just can’t figure it out.” Gradus spread his hands. The whole of his self spread out too, a sad and confused billow. “I don’t know how to move on, and I don’t want to die. Time allows no exit, and it all boils down to one of two choices: end it for good or keep going. Now, the former seems more elegant, and certainly it’s more rational. A clean end compared to infinite suffering. But then why aren’t we lining up to jump? It can’t just be fear, you see. Fear expires. Even the most acute terrors erode over time. I used to cower from those crashing waves and now, I don’t even flinch. I watch others jump, all the time, and their unraveling does not scare me, I do not look away. But still I do not jump. I cannot. Something deep within me refuses. Why is that? So now you understand the problem.” His tone grew urgent. “I am searching for the reason. And if I fear anything at all, it is that this reason does not exist, and that I am trapped in existence by a delusion.”
“I’m not the first sojourner you’ve met,” Alice guessed.
“Far from it.”
“And you ask them all this same question. Why go on.”
“Yes.”
“Do they say anything helpful?”
“Never,” said Gradus. “Either they don’t think it’s worth it, and we have the same problem—very common among sojourners, by the way—or they do, but they can’t explain it; it comes as naturally as breathing to them; of course they go on, because isn’t life fun? They’re delirious with good fortune. They’ve never even pondered why.”
Alice could make sense of his frustration now; could understand perfectly why he’d thrown her into Dis, if only to witness its futility. She forgave him for it. She would be frustrated too, if she’d wandered this wasteland trapped by two bad options, and along pranced some idiot who declared it didn’t all matter.
“I just wish,” said Gradus, “I could find some way out.”
