Page 32 of Katabasis
“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’dreallyfeel 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. Butbones... 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. “Nota good boy.”
