Page 81 of Katabasis
Together they huddled, pressed as close as they could against one another, unable to do anything but breathe.
“The ridge,” she whispered. She could see the narrowest strip of land—and beyond that, a ridge of rock above the bog. Stable land. “Can you make it?”
Peter nodded.
She stood and tiptoed forward. She nearly fell; Peter steadied her.
“Thanks,” she gasped, but he did not let her go. His fingers closed round her arm, viselike, and stayed there the entire time that, step by step, they made their way through Wrath.
The ridge widened into a thickerstrip of rock, just large enough for a human body to lie on with hands spread out. One by one they stumbled up the edge and collapsed. Alice rolled onto her stomach and lay there for a long while.
“We have to go back,” said Peter.
She sat up. “Go back where?”
“The Fields of Asphodel. Over the wall.”
“Are you mad? The wall isgone—”
“We’ll beg. We’ll find the guardians, we’ll tell them we’re alive, we’ll plead to be let back up—”
“What—why?”
“Look at us.” He flung up his arms. “My pack’s gone. Whatever’s in your pack is all waterlogged. Who knows how much of the chalk still works. Without food or water we have three days, if that. And how are we going to spend it, Law? Chasing down something we don’t know exists, or finding our way back home?”
“But then we’ll have wasted—”
“It’s wasted. It’s already wasted. But please, Alice.” Peter’s voice cracked. “I don’t want to die.”
“We could die anyways,” said Alice. “There’s no—I mean, we took the boat... I don’t even know how we’d get back to the wall, or the fields—”
“Then we find any deity along the way and beg,” said Peter. “We might even beg the Weaver Girl, she might take pity—”
“Or she’d trap us here forever! There’s no guarantee—”
“But the odds are still better than if we forge on ahead, don’t you think? At least the lower courts are predictable. We have no idea what we’ll find up ahead.”
“But we’ve already come this far.”
“You know,” Peter said, “the sunk cost fallacy is one of the most common failures of everyday logic.”
“Oh, fuck off, Murdoch—”
“Which is remarkable, since everyone knows what itis, they just won’t let it guide their reasoning.”
“Bugger the sunk cost fallacy,” said Alice, committing it all the same. “We’ve given up too much, Murdoch. Half our lifetimes.”
“Half is better than none.”
“But think of what they’llsay. The idiotic venture of Murdoch and Law. Went to Hell, and have nothing to show for it except mild amnesia.”
“At least we’ll beback,” said Peter. “I think I could put up with any amount of laughing if I were alive, don’t you?”
“Sure,” said Alice. “Fine. Then I don’t suppose you know a way back over that bog.”
They stood silent for a moment, staring over the hilltop. From this vantage point it did seem impossible to find a way back to where they’d come from. The bog stood between them and the shoreline, and there was no clear path through the mountains that ringed Wrath on all sides. Elspeth had brought them over Greed by boat; it was unclear where the path through led. The only stable patch in sight was the ground they were standing on, and this led deeper into Wrath.
“Let us go as far as Tyranny,” Alice proposed. “If we don’t stop to sleep, then we can cross two courts in one day. And the chances are better than not that we’ll find Professor Grimes there.”
