Page 134 of Katabasis
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ablur, a gasp, a splash, and the shock.
The fall was not far, but the water was shallow and the rocks so hard. For a moment Alice could not see for the pain. All her limbs exploded white, an electric field that only gradually dimmed to throbbing red bursts. She lifted her head, then her arms. Her legs would not move. All she could manage was a dazed half-sit so she did not lie submerged while she processed which pieces were still attached to her body. She blinked at the sky. A pale circle hung straight above her, barely visible. It was less a defined shape than a ripple in the sky. If one looked askance, it disappeared back into the orange.Oh, she thought.The moon. So that’s where she’s been.
Several feet away Nick Kripke hauled himself upright. Water came up to his ankles.
He glanced down at his feet, head cocked, as if he could not comprehend where he stood. He blinked, then raised his head slightly, staring ahead at nothing. He seemed like an old man who’d come down to the kitchen for a glass of water and forgotten what he was doing.
He looked to Alice.
“Excuse me,” he rasped, and Alice was stunned to hear a voice wholly human from that armored throat. “I seem... I seem to have left...”
Then that gleaming intelligence came back to his eyes, and Nick Kripke realized where he was. With a shout he lifted one foot out of the water, then the other, then jumped pointlessly on alternating feet as simple physics caught up to him. Alas, he could not levitate. Alice watched, fascinated, as Nick danced a desperate jig toward the shore while memories streamed out of him, fast and urgent, a vast and building current. They flowed past her with frightening speed. A film sped up eight times, sixteen, thirty-two; too fast to make out anything distinct except the most glancing impressions. A campus in the dark, white chalk on a board. The current grew larger and Nick grew smaller.A Popsicle in a boiling pot, thought Alice.When he reaches the edge, how much will be left?He’d nearly made it, he was only several steps from shore. But the memories seemed to have an attractive force of their own. The current was too great; the memories lost clung to the memories remaining. The current swelled. Nick Kripke tipped forward, fingers clawing for the bank. Alice saw on his face a look of utter terror. He met her eyes, and his right hand twitched—begging? Supplication? By instinct she moved to help him. But her limbs hurt so; pain exploded when she tried to stand up. She could only stare back at Nick, mute. For what was there to say? At that moment her mind went to the Lewis Carroll story. “Balbus’s Essay.” Such a funny tale. An item submerged in liquid will displace liquid equivalent to its mass, but when the liquid is displaced, the water level must rise, but if the water level rises, the item is submerged further, and so the water must rise further, and on and on, until a man at the edge of the sea, who even just dips in his toes, must soon be drowned. Shouldn’t he?
In this case, yes. A wave of black water rumbled forth, and when it receded, Nick Kripke was gone.
Alice sat staring at the empty waves.
So that was all it took. She could not believe the waters could lie so still. The waves had ceased their churning; now the surface was glasslike, deceptive. Several seconds, and a lifetime of hurt just wiped clean, forgotten by the universe. No punishments, no redemption, just nonbeing. Like Nick Kripke had never happened to begin with.You ass, Alice thought.You lucky, lucky ass.
She heard footsteps padding on the sand, then the screech of a blade.
She turned and looked up. Magnolia stood looming above her, her knife drawn by her side. Theophrastus trailed in her wake. They’d broken free; she knew not how. Both gazed upon the waves, where the last traces of husband and father spiraled out into the black. Magnolia tilted her head back. From her throat emitted an awful, wordless moan. Theophrastus joined her. His high-pitched screech entwined with her low rasp, and for a moment it seemed like the whole world was howling.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said weakly, for indeed she was, though this was all her doing.
Theophrastus approached.
He was so very small. He must have been about ten when he died, so he was small even for his age. He barely reached his mother’s waist. Alice wondered if anyone called ever him Theo. He looked so much like a Theo. A lisp of a name for a wisp of a boy; soft, skinny limbs hidden behind all that borrowed bone. But still strong enough to wield a blade, and bring it down.
Alice shut her eyes, awaiting the blow. It would not be so bad, she told herself. A bit of pain, some pressure at her neck, and then it would be over. And then her soul would be free to fly off to wherever Peter was, and even if that place was nowhere, nowhere was good enough.
The blow never came. Alice glanced up. Magnolia’s hand lay upon Theophrastus’s shoulder. Mother and son regarded Alice, unmoving. Alice tried but could not read any emotion on those harrowed, alien faces.
Magnolia reached down and grasped Theophrastus under the shoulders. It was the most human movement Alice had ever seen Magnolia make; a swift, practiced mother’s hug. She hoisted Theophrastus up and balanced him against her waist. Then she trudged down the bank toward the waters.
“No.” Alice tried to prop herself up on her elbows, and a terrible pain shot through her back. She could not get up. “Stop, don’t—”
Magnolia ignored her. Her lips moved against Theophrastus’s ear. Theophrastus’s head bobbed. Magnolia continued toward the river, moving with singular purpose, one steady foot after the other. Theophrastus leaned against her neck.
“Wait,” Alice said again, but realized then she had nothing more to say.
What could she offer Magnolia now? A way back to humanity? This was not in her power.
She could only let them finish what she had started.
Mother and son trod forth step by step into the depths until the waves washed over their heads. Then their memories began to peel away. Little things at first, astonishingly vibrant in the black. A toy wagon. A box of colored chalk; a child’s chalkboard, covered in white and purple flowers. Then the memories swirled outward, the things that defined Magnolia the most, the things she’d held on to despite years of whittling away the rest. Theophrastus’s beaming face. He wore thin wire glasses—of course he’d worn glasses. Steps to a stage. Brilliant lights. The glossy wood paneling of a lectern. Lights so bright that all the faces blurred to nothing. Sweat pooling in your palms. Then applause, thunderous applause that shook the floor, shook your bones, shook you right out of your body. All those dinner-plate eyes, hungry gazes, trained upon you. Magnolia unspooled and Alice stared, entranced, at the life she had always thought she wanted.
She used to admire Magnolia so much.
Once, in her freshman year of college, she had snuck into a talk by the Kripkes. The colloquium was restricted to graduate students and faculty, but she’d snuck in through the door when the ticket checkers weren’t looking, and once she was in her seat nobody questioned her.
Then the talk began, and Alice was entranced. The research alone was brilliant. If Alice had merely read Magnolia’s papers, that would have been enough to make her fall in love. She had the loveliest prose style. Later the establishment would treat her lyricism as evidence that she lacked methodological rigor, but at the time Alice was amazed by how Magnolia could make the driest strings of logic sing.
But Magnolia was so much more than her proofs. Alice had never seen a woman scholar perform like this in public before. Oh, Magnolia Kripke, of the raven-black hair and creamy, ageless skin. Her voice was sonorous, melodic. She carried herself, and all the womanly parts of her—breasts, hips, curves—with a poised confidence. She did not shy from flaunting her beauty. She did not hide it under baggy clothes and bad posture, the way so many women did. She made herself the center of attention. She knew everyone’s eyes fell upon her, for the right reasons or wrong. She seized that attention. It was the subtle ways she moved—smoothed her skirt, flipped her hair over her shoulder. No one could look away.
Alice sat rapt, stunned by this living instantiation of the impossible type.
