Page 147 of Katabasis
“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.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Alice made a noise between a cry and a yelp. Peter did not seem to hear. He seemed lost in a daze. He stood stock-still, peering around at the sands, at the dais, at King Yama smiling atop his throne. His mouth hung open. He looked so heartbreakingly confused, and he kept nervously smoothing his palms across his arms.
Then his eyes fell upon her, and his face split into that bent, beautiful grin.
“Alice?”
“Peter.”
He stepped cautiously across the frame. One step, then two, and then he broke into a run. Alice darted forth. They collided. Peter’s arms wrapped around her, and hers around him. He was so radiantly warm, so alive and solid. She burst into tears.
Oh, howthinhe was! This was a revelation. Alice knew Peter was a twig, but only visually. She had never grasped on a material level what a reed he was. She could wrap her arms all around his waist and still come round again to clutch his sides. Clutch she did indeed, very tightly, for if she pressed hard enough, then she could make herself his shield and protect him from everything in the universe. What a miracle a person was, she thought. They took up so little space. The difference between presence and absence was not even a square meter of matter. Yet now that Peter was here, the whole world shone brighter.
At last she pulled back, but he did not; his fingers curled into her hair, his other hand against her back, and pulled her close again; fierce, unrelenting. He held her like an anchor, like without her he would dissolve. He kissed her, and even when their lips parted his forehead stayed pressed against hers, as if any distance between them was unforgivable.
“I died,” he breathed. He blinked down at his arms. Alice looked as well, and saw great arching scars. “I died, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“How—”
“Exchange.” A laugh escaped her. She felt so light, giddy. She clenched his shirt in her fingers. “Your notes, your work.”
“You only saw it once.”
“But, Peter.” She could not stop laughing. “I have a very good memory.”
“Oh, Alice.” His hands moved all over her, as if he had to convince himself she was real. His eyes were huge with wonder. “Alice,Alice—you’rebrilliant—”
“It worked,” she cried. She couldn’t make her fingers unclench from around his shirt. She had him now; she couldn’t let him go, she would never. “I can’t believe it worked.”
Peter too burst into laughter, and it was the loveliest sound she had ever heard, was so much brighter than in her memory. She rocked into him; listening to his laughter in his chest, shaking even as she pressed closer and closer. So warm he was! How good he smelled. Like fresh pages. Like pencil shavings. Like reading in springtime under a weeping willow, sunlight on her face, grass between her toes. Had she always known how good he smelled? Maybe she had once—maybe she had forgotten—but now that he was alive she could learn it over and over again, now she could delight in the constant discovery of everything about him. She felt a lightness spread from her chest through her limbs. She could not breathe. She felt any moment now she might split into a million glimmering stars, that this lightness would overwhelm her. She did not know what to do with this feeling. She had never felt joy like this in her entire life.
Peter drew back. His smile dimmed. “Then—Grimes?”
“He was,” she said, “the other part of the exchange.”
She saw the thought passing through him, splintering into all its consequences and implications. Peter was very clever; surely, he saw the whole decision tree.
