Page 65 of Katabasis
“Just condemned me? For fun?”
“I didn’t want—I didn’t know...”
Peter watched her, arms crossed and waiting, eyebrow arched as if to say,Go on.
But what explanation could she give? That was her hand. That was the green apple. “Sometimes...” She could barely speak. She did not know how to describe what had happened. She had never articulated this to anyone; she had tried for so long to pretend it was not a problem, because admitting the problem would make it real, and this could not be.My mind is broken and I cannot fix it, I cannot sort reality from dreams—that was not true. She could not live if it were true. “Sometimes, I try to think, and everything blares at once, and I don’t know where I am, or what I’m doing—”
“What are you trying to tell me, Law?” He scoffed. “Your tattoo makes you stupid?”
She flinched.
“That you can’t follow simple instructions? Or that you just wanted me dead?”
“That’s not what I—”
“But just think about what you’re saying,” Peter snapped. “Youtook the green.You would have left me trapped. And even if you changed your mind, you still considered that option. Youwanted me to die.”
“I didn’t—”
“Factually you did!”
“I didn’t want that,” she cried. “I didn’t know, I couldn’t determine—I just, I was afraid you’d do the same.”
He flung up his hands. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Your notebook,” she said helplessly. “I saw in your notebook, the spell for exchange—”
“Exchange?” His eyes went wide. “You thought I’d exchangeyou?”
“What else would that mean, Murdoch? How on earth would I interpret that?”
Peter shook his head. Alice could not make any sense of it. She would have preferred he looked guilty, because then at least her narrative would make sense, and then all their cards would be on the table. Then at least they would be definite enemies, and she would have cause to hate him. But if anything he seemed angrier than before. “You think I’m that sort of person? That I’m capable of—of trading your soul, like you’re nothing?”
“I don’t know.” She could hardly hear her own voice. “I guess I don’t know what I think of you. I don’t know what you could do.”
She knew as it left her mouth that it was the worst thing she could have said.
“Jesus Christ, Law.” He still would not look at her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Then tell me, she wanted to cry. If only supplication could shatter his shell; if only she could beg long and hard enough for him to be honest with her. But the gulf between them seemed so vast now, and all the words that came to mind utterly insufficient. Still she had to try, and she had just opened her mouth, was casting for the right things to say, when Peter spoke.
“You know, I thought—” He swallowed. “I don’t know. For whatever reason, I still thought you weren’t like him.”
She felt worse than if he’d socked her in the face.
Something thumped over the side of the boat. “Dinner!” Elspeth clambered up, then bent to hold up her spoils. “You’re in luck. They’re fresh!”
Alice blinked down. Three fat rats lay strung together by twine.
“Get a fire going in that stove.” Elspeth directed Peter with one hand; with the other, she drew out a butcher’s knife. “Matches under the lid.”
Wordlessly Peter went to obey. Alice remained where she was, arms hugged tight against her ribs. She felt a terrible whooshing between her ears. She was afraid to move; she was certain if she unfolded her arms, then she might shatter.
Elspeth was oblivious to their distress; she chattered happily along as she took a knife to the rats. “Rats are most of what you get down here. Rats and moles. They keep burrowing further underground to see where they can get. Stands to reason they end up in Hell. Spiders too, but you can’t eat those.” She jammed her thumbs into flesh and yanked at the skins, which came off with a terrible ripping noise. “Keep the bones for me. They’re so tiny, and come in all sorts of shapes... I usually toss the meat out. They’re fleshier than they look, anyways; they’ll fill you right up.”
In short order Elspeth had the rats roasting over the fire on a spit. While they blackened and crackled she made a great fuss over laying out plates and silverware on a rickety folding table that she hauled out from beneath the oars. “Found these beauties a few years ago off the shore of Desire. Usually plates come cracked and in pieces but these—these came whole, aren’t they lovely!” She paused; took in their anxious faces. “Oh, go on. It’s not Hell’s foodstuff, it’s safe.”
Alice was reminded of humble dinner parties in graduate apartments. It made no sense to cook at home instead of eating in hall, where the food was perhaps not better but certainly more plentiful. But still they loved hosting one another. It was pathetically charming, the way they showed off their charity shop acquisitions, the way Belinda insisted they all fuss over her slightly chipped porcelain milk pitcher with a kitten print when they assembled in her flat for tea. None of them could afford a matching dinnerware set or a proper table or even linens, but still they were proud to pass around the cheap bottles of port they’d found at Sainsbury’s because it was a luxury to have port at all. Once in her first year Alice had discovered an actual silver gravy bowl at Oxfam, and they all sat on her floor and ate mushroom gravy in April. It was nice to have company over and play homemaker, and pretend you were a real adult.
