 
LETHE

A. Sparrow

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 by A. Sparrow

To Tucker, of Yorkshire

Prologue: Paxson Seeks

Emerging from long torpor, Victoria heaves her bloated bulk against the chamber walls, sending ripples and reverberations through the corpus of Elysium. It is sure to send her worried and harried attendants scurrying but she has no need of their doting. She takes her daily inventory of her souls, the ascending, the ascended, those in transit to Lethe after death, and a fourth category, unspoken and taboo: living souls. Harvesting souls before their time was a practice unsanctioned by the Seraphim, but thus far, none have dared to stop her.

Two million strong, her people. All their souls belonging to her, the alpha matron of her line. Siblings. Cousins. Uncles. Aunts. Nephews and nieces, many times removed. Every iteration of great and grand going back centuries before her time on Earth.

Always, she longs for more. In numbers, there is power. Her category fours are a precious resource that could be claimed by another filial line if she did not claim them first. And besides, fishing for souls was her only recreation, her sole pleasure.

She marshals her termite-queen-like corpulence. Sapient tendrils spool out, reaching like spokes for the afterlands' farthest seas. Filaments swoop to kiss the water, skimming ripples like living light. At the outermost edge of the ring of seas, strands plunge and pierce the interface, emerging unto the light of the land where souls are born.

In world of the living, tentacles soar from the earthly ocean to split overhead like inverse lightning. Threads diverge to chase the spoor of filial memory, seeking the homelands of every branch of Paxson and Tompkins, smelling for blood of kin, candidates for harvest.

Most souls she rejects on contact. Too far from death. Too pure. Too tainted. But the reverberations from one, only one, tell of a soul warped just right and ripe for the plucking.

Daniel. He slumbers all cozy in a nest of cotton and poly-fill within the four porous walls of this false haven—his own bedroom.

Victoria abandons all other tendrils, concentrating her attention on the one that probes this Tompkins, three mothers removed from her line. Her tendrils slip into his corporeal form, frisking every organ for mortal defects or flaws that could be rendered fatal.

In his brain she finds no weak vessels, no emboli, no dysplasias. Tendrils slide through marrow and vein finding not a cell leukemic, not a plaque worth ripping, nothing within her powers to sway.

The boy is twenty-two and vibrant with youth and health. What does she expect?

She squirms in her chamber, boiling with frustration, wishing she could just squeeze his aorta shut and be done with it. Two tendrils blindly obey her whim, pinching together like scorpion claws. They push against the artery, dimpling it, but fail to overcome the vital pressure pulsing within. She has not the power—not yet. She is not Seraphim material—yet.

The tips slide off and go limp. She settles her bulk and drifts towards slumber, watching, waiting. With time, the opportunity would come for her subtle influences to decide his fate. Patience.

666

Months of failed attempts. Whispers in his brain. Reckless impulses. Suicidal suggestions. Nothing works.

But now serendipity has placed the boy in the path of a dangerous storm. Its power and potential please her.

When heavy rain forces him off the road, she bides her time, tendrils measuring, testing every aspect of his surroundings.

The storm evolves at its own pace and volition. Like a river, it follows a course decided by the contours of the atmosphere. Victoria can only spike the odds of it spinning off a whirlwind or discharging a bolt at an opportune moment.

Her tendrils slip through thunderheads, flipping charges in the clouds, ionizing their vapors. But ion clouds are tetchy things and it makes for frustrating work. Bolts crack free before she is ready to release them, and follow paths of their choosing.

Besides, Daniel is cushioned and insulated in that metal cocoon. Not even a direct strike could reach him.

Her distraction causes several of her most distant tendrils to lose their purpose and abandon their cargo, retracting towards Elysium unburdened. Furious, she sends them speeding back through the interface to finish their tasks.

She tenses in her chamber. It has been a long day, and her target remains elusive. The attention she has paid him goes far beyond his significance. He is a pesky gnat buzzing just out of reach that needs to die, for spite if nothing else.

Victoria slips a tendril down the familiar ratchet of his spine, gauging his mood like a machinist checking oil. Her presence agitates him. Adrenalin pulses from the glands astride his kidneys.

Good. She hopes it will cause him to flee from the safety of his vehicle or resume driving. He writhes and panics. But he stays put.

Another tendril explores the landscape around him, finding fish in the creek, cows reclining in the fields, a groundhog and pups snug in a burrow, a sodden rabbit under a clump of grass.

The trees. Of course! How could she miss them? Big, old oaks swaying wildly in the wind above his car. Huge limbs, large and thick enough to be trees unto themselves cantilever out over the road, meeting to form a green tunnel.

She diverts her attention from Daniel to the trees, devoid of souls, but sufficiently replete with life's presence for Victoria to gain intimacy with their condition.

These oaks are solid and healthy creatures, for the most part. But a behemoth a short ways upwind from the car dangles a huge bough with a half-rotted knot in its joint. It is an old injury, healed over, but if stresses could be brought to bear on the right spot, perhaps something could be encouraged to happen.

Victoria shifts in her chamber, relaxing her bulk, clearing her mind of petty annoyances. She marshals spare tendrils, focusing their attention on this one tree, this one limb.

She reads the pulse of the wind, the flex of the wood, nudging each twist a few degrees farther than nature intends, and when it rebounds the other way, making it rotate a few degrees more, straining, severing fibers in the xylem.

Another tendril reaches up and seduces the clouds, stroking their electrons, urging them towards the orgasmic discharge that would help her claim this pesky gnat.

The boy has hardly time enough to flinch at the bomb going off in the treetops. The massive limb sweeps through the periphery of his visual field and crushes the windshield. Tons of wood hammer into his chest, cracking ribs, crushing his lungs. His eyes bulge. His severed heart skitters like a frog trapped under a rock and stops. The world fades before he can wish it farewell.
Chapter 1: The Farthest Shore

He hath awakened from the dream of life. – Shelley (Adonais)

Tangled in seaweed and grief, I bob ten feet under an alien ocean. I am half-corpse, half-ghost, my bones clad in something not quite flesh.

My face tilts up towards the light. The sky taunts me. My hand drifts up, reaching, grasping, but the surface remains beyond the curl of my fingertips.

Days pass like packets of eternity. Somehow, I break loose and rise to the surface, emerging into the open air. Immersed so long, I forget to breathe.

More days pass, drifting. The sky blackens. I ride swells until undercurrents latch and drag me deep. I pitch and yaw beneath the waves.

The storm passes. Again I rise and surface and float face-down, owned by death, no longer yearning.

I pass over a reef. The sea floor rises. My chin scrapes sand. A wave shuttles me up a pebbled incline, wrapped in a sheet of sizzling foam.

I face the sea. The horizon looms close, opaque as burnished nickel. Sheets and shreds peel from rotting cumulonimbi.

I lay paralyzed and numb, conscious but inert. Flotsam so long, I forget how to be human.

Breakers crash and shove me up against a lip of puffy, black sand at the tide line. Limbs splayed, spattered with grit, I drape the sand like a stranded jellyfish. Tiny crabs traverse me. Wavelets nose me about.

Fluid trickles from my nostrils. Droplets grow on my skin until they can bulge no more and then dribble down my torso like shooting stars, etching a trail of pale skin through my algal fur. The wind peels my wet skin dry.

My nerves spark. A shudder erupts. My torso heaves. Arms sally forth without purpose, gouging shallow trenches—sand angels.

I lick salty grit from my teeth. Cracked lips draw back. I spit.

Turn rigid and shake. Tremors dash my head against pebbles. Droplets spray from the tips of my short shorn locks.

The chaos subsides. The convulsions ease to a fine tremble. My lips form words but I can gather no breath to speak. My jaw falls slack. I vomit salty water.

I can feel my hands now. My arms and legs respond to my intentions. I swipe my hand over my hip. Something strange here. I am naked, but this is not my body. Hairless. Swellings over my ribs. I reach for my groin.

"What the fuck?" My name is Dan Tompkins, but somehow, I'm a girl now. A dead girl.
Chapter 2: Sabonis

The waves subside, fading like sobs. Fog swirls in and consumes the beach. I see only feet—wrinkled, white, woven with seaweed. These are not the feet I carried into the world twenty-two years ago. Delicate toes. Elegant insteps. Slender ankles and a graceful swell of calf. My new body beguiles me. I find myself attracted to my own curves.

I move my head towards the opacity to my right. A still, dark hulk crouches on stout haunches behind me. It is inanimate, but its regular iteration of curves suggests something more animal than mineral.

The remains of a whale? I see ribs but no head or tail. They look too dark, too soft to be bone.

The thinning mist exposes the beast as a boat. Its ribs are timbers, splayed and shattered, splinters weathered smooth. It is thrown topsy-turvy, propped prow to the sky on the stub of its mast and the branchless bole of a tree impaling its deck.

Below the boat's gap-toothed rail, lumpy things lounge in piles that heave and shift.

Seals?

No—people. Sharing the sorry shelter of a broken hull. Clothed in bits of rag and seaweed sashes. Some sit like monkeys picking and grooming each other's matted hair. Others slumber in tangles of heads and limbs on laps.

Out of the fog, a man walks the surf line. He carries a stick over one shoulder—an oar—jagged where the blade had broken off.

The man diverts his gaze, spots me and veers away from the breaking surf. I play dead, but it's no use. He comes straight for me and stands, leering down his prominent nose. A purple scar curves up one cheekbone. Clumps of dried sea foam fleck his beard.

I draw my knees up. Cross my arms over my chest.

"My, you're a pretty little thing," he says with an accent that suggests Tri-state, New York Metro.

"Fuck off," I say, my voice distorted by the liquid in my throat.

"Oh my God! She speaks American! About time one showed up. What happened? Someone over there find a cure for death?"

I vomit up another liter of water.

He squints and leers at me as if I'm a photo in a girlie mag.

"Where you from?"

"I said, fuck off."

"Man, you're slimy. Must be brand new. You just float in?"

"Where are we?"

"Lethe," he says, squinting at me so hard, his upper lip puckers, exposing a toothy grimace. "Gosh, but you're pretty. I don't mean to stare."

"I'm not a girl ... just so you know."

"Could have fooled me."

"My name's Dan. Dan Tompkins."

He blinks at me, and blinks some more. "Who cares? You're still pretty." He smirks and bites his lower lip. "Hah! I bet you're one of their screw-ups."

"What do you mean?"

"Your body. Sometimes they mess up and give people the wrong one. I bet they've gone and turned you into you a tranny."

A pressure wells in me and builds till I feel like I might burst. "What the hell is this place?" I say, sputtering. My unintentional but apt choice of words resonates sickly.

"You're dead, kid. But you knew that, didn't you?"

I remember driving in a rain so strong my wipers can't clear it. I pull off the road. What came next is a blur—smashing glass, cracking skull, crushed chest, stifled breath.

"Of course, it's normal to deny it. Folks need time to adjust to the idea."

"No. I'm dead. I know I'm dead."

I'm way past denial. It's tough to deny your own death when you were tangled in seaweed, ten feet below the surface for weeks on end. Still, it's a horse kick in the gut every time I affirm it.

"Atta girl! Er ... boy." Most Floaters are clueless when they wash up here. Looking for rides back home. Wanting to borrow a phone. Some never snap out of it."

"And who are you?"

"Marco Sabonis. Which you would already know if you weren't such fresh meat."

"Oh? Why's that?" I say, though I'm not so sure I care.

"Everybody know me. I'm famous here. Word on the beach is that I've been to Hell and back, 'cept that's not exactly true."

"Back? But I thought this was Hell."

"Hell?" Sabonis laughs long and deep. "No way, kid. First of all, there ain't no such place. Avernus might suck, but I wouldn't exactly call it Hell."

"So this place is ... Avernus?" I say, confused.

"No, kid. I told you. This is Lethe. And it's a good place to be ... relatively speaking."

Something drags itself around a large heap of seaweed. I take it for a giant crab, but it's a man.

He has no legs. He spots Sabonis and rises up on his arms, squinting through a scabby mass obscuring his eyes. His posture relaxes and he continues on, swimming through the drier sand with a breast stroke, thick arms exploding into the sand, trailing shredded thighs like twin rudders behind him.

Rattles in the fog. A shape atop a dune. Another man appears, naked besides a bandolier of little, black boxes. His gaze slides over me and lingers on the legless man.

"Uh-oh," says Sabonis.
Chapter 3: The Collector

The mist peels away to reveal a man standing atop the dunes. He is naked but for a bandolier of black boxes flung over one shoulder. He carries a long, knotty walking stick with a dull blade curving down like the beak of a raptor.

"What's going on?" I say. "Who is that guy?"

"A Collector," says Sabonis.

The man strides purposefully down the dune.

The legless man panics. He veers towards the boat shelter, arms thundering down like pistons. The Collector swoops in gracefully, swings his stick in a great arc and takes the legless man down at the arms, gouges him open sternum to shoulder.

The legless man goes limp. The collector scoops something from his carcass into one of the many little black baskets that are slung over his shoulder.

"Jesus!" I say, cringing. "What exactly is this guy ... collecting?"

"Shades," says Sabonis.

"You're sure this isn't Hell?"

"Yup," says Sabonis.

The Collector looks at us. I crawl away, crab-like.

"Don't worry," says Sabonis. "He won't touch you, you're too pretty. They never go after fresh meat."

The Collector smiles at me with warm and kindly eyes, like a friendly gap-toothed grandpa, like a farmer tipping his hat to the little neighbor girl while out doing his chores. He winks and turns away. The throng beneath the boat clambers into its dark recesses as the Collector strides past them and into the fog.

Sabonis looks at me. He reaches down and smudges the algae on my arm. "Dang are you gooey. How long had you been floating?"

"Don't know," I say. "Can't remember."

"Yeah. I guess Floaters never do," says Sabonis, "They just float in, with never a clue as to how they got there."

"Oh, I remember how I got here, alright," I say. "It's the floating part that's kind of fuzzy."

Sabonis looks skeptical. "Okay. So how did you get here?"

"Well. I was carried up high ... by these ... like ... ropes. Just my soul, I guess. My body stayed behind. It was a long, long ways. Over houses and highways and trees, lots of trees. There was a big river. The Hudson, I think. And then lights. The edge of the city. Then blackness. Complete and utter blackness. I went into the water, but I didn't get wet. Breathing didn't matter. And I came out and there was something in the sky, looked like a giant ... sewing machine, or a ... jellyfish, spilling thread and tentacles everywhere. I floated ... like in a dream ... till I woke up here."

"You're shitting me," he says. "You remember all that?"

"Kinda."

"Giant jellyfish, huh? I suppose that could be Elysium. Just ... never heard it described that way before. Still, I'm impressed. Everyone comes in from the sea, but no one remembers that stuff. I mean, no one."

"I must be special," I say sarcastically. "That's why God gave me titties."

"You are special, hon," says Sabonis. "No Floater ever remembers ... floating."

"So what do we do now?" I say. "Make sand castles?"

Sabonis looks into the fog. There is a faint glow moving down from a height.

"She'll tell you."
Chapter 4: Bianca

Seams in the fog drift across an acute, rocky slope backing the dunes. The glow descends, weaving through mottled patches of brown and beige whose borders undulate around the passing glow, separating, re-annealing, clumping in its wake. These patches, I realize, are people.

The wind flaps Sabonis' trousers wildly, billows out his overcoat, and pulls his long, frizzled hair horizontal.

"I know this one," says Sabonis.

"What is it?" I say.

"She, not it," says Sabonis. "You're lucky, kid. You got a good one, as far as Guides go. This one won't mess with your head the way some do."

He is right. The glow is a woman. She glides down a cliff of sand fronting the dunes. She is translucent, like a deep sea fish. I can see her heart beating. Light seeps through her creases, highlighting her naked form against the volcanic sands like jewels on black velvet.

"Marco? Fancy meeting you here." Her accent is an odd blend of British and Irish. "Last I heard, the Facilitators were after your head. Bit risky, no? Going out and about on foot in the day like this?"

"I'll take my chances," said Sabonis.

"What are you doing windward? It's not your usual haunt."

"Thought I had a meeting ... with Delgado," said Sabonis, his expression dour.

"What happened? If you don't mind me asking."

"It ... didn't work out," says Sabonis.

"Oh?"she says, cocking her head, looking quite pleased.

"He swiped my cat," Sabonis mutters.

"Your ... cat?" I say. The woman giggles, her laugh as liquid as any I had ever heard.

"He means his boat," says the woman.

"My catamaran," says Sabonis. "Fucking Delgado stole it right from under my security detail. Slaughtered one guy, bribed the others."

"A ... boat? I say.

"Not just any boat," he says. "The best on Lethe's shores. Not one of those piece of shit dinghies and coracles everyone else uses. This damn thing is seaworthy."

"Why ... a boat?"

"You're absolutely right," says the woman. "Boats are a ridiculous trifle here, a complete distraction from the mission of the soul." She studies her palm and looks at me, squinting, looks back to her palm. "Wait a minute, here. You're ... Daniel? Daniel Tompkins?"

"Yes," I say.

Sabonis sniggers.

"Is this supposed to be a joke?" says the woman. She glares at Sabonis.

"I got nothing to do with it," says Sabonis.

"This is how I came," I say.

"Alright," she says, collecting herself. "Perhaps there's a good reason for this." Her eyes roll heavenward. She takes a deep breath. "Daniel. How do you do? I am Bianca. I've come to guide you through your process of Clearing."

"Excuse me?" I stare at her hand, but I don't dare touch it. Bianca frowns and pulls it back.

"Your Clearing. For your eventual Ascension. It's what you're here for. Now follow me."

Bianca turns and heads back for the dunes. I stand up. My legs wobble. I cover my naked female bits with my hand and arm. I feel all dangly in the wrong places.

Bianca stops. "What's wrong?"

"Feels all weird. I'm not used to going naked. And this female business ...."

Sabonis pulls off his overcoat and hands it to me.

"Why, Marco," says Bianca. "Bravo for you! What a gentleman you've become."

I pull it on. Button every button.

"This is nice. A little big, but that's good. Where did you get it?" I say.

"Stuff washes up," says Sabonis, shrugging. "Whole containers, sometimes."

"From where? How?" I say.

"Don't exactly know," says Sabonis.

"Clothes are a crutch," says Bianca. "They interfere with a proper Clearing. But it's your first day. I see little harm." She goes up to Sabonis and turns his shoulders, pointing him down the beach. "Now run off. On your way, Marco. It's good to see you but I have work."

"Um ... I'm going to tag along with this one for a while," says Sabonis.

"No, Marco," says Bianca. "It's not appropriate."

"It's just ... she's ... he's American. I just want to chat and get some news."

"But Marco!"

"Just for a little bit. I promise."

Bianca inhales through her teeth. Her lungs inflate behind translucent ribs.

"Come, Daniel. I'm sure we'll leave him in our lurch as soon as we start our climb."

"Think so, eh?" says Sabonis, skipping alongside, as we go up a dune. "I might surprise you."
Chapter 5: The Slopes of Abdiel

I wobble after Bianca and Sabonis. My new geometry disturbs me. My legs swivel on unfamiliar hinge points. I sway now when I walk. And all the motion on my chest disconcerts me. I'm grateful for the tattered overcoat.

Bianca has no qualms about her nakedness. Her breasts are but puffs, her hips narrow, boyish, like a prepubescent girl's. I suspect she is older than she seems. Her eyes carry an adult intensity and wisdom.

"You're an angel, aren't you?" I say.

Sabonis sniggers. Bianca shoots a glare at him.

"If it helps you to think of me as such, then yes, why not?"

The dunes transition to a firmer slope of ledge and soil, thinly fuzzed with grass and heather. It looks like ordinary rock and dirt and plants. Nothing supernatural about it. I feel cheated, somehow.

As this new aspect of my present reality registers, a pang of self-grieving blind-sides me. I've gone through waves of such grieving, out in the ocean; agonized, yearnings for the life I lost, facing the horror of never seeing Gina again, leaving without saying good bye. Baseball season was just starting. And I had just planted tomatoes in the back yard. Gone. All of it.

"I was only twenty-two," I say. "Why ... so young?"

"Don't be silly," says Bianca. "Death happens at all ages. It's not the domain of the elderly. I was quite young when I died, in fact, younger than you. In some places, it's the babies who are most intimate with death.

We cross a well-worn path cutting across the slope. The grade steepens. We pass people, lots of them, most naked, many scared, some placid and hopeful.

"I'm not ready for this," I say.

"Don't worry," says Bianca. "I'll help you."

She takes my hand. I feel, not flesh, but something less substantial. Her touch tingles and imparts more warmth than I expect.

I look to Sabonis. He is laboring, out of breath.

"My how the mighty have fallen," says Bianca.

"I'm fine," says Sabonis, huffing. "Just a little out of shape."

"I'm amazed that you still walk the beaches, Marco. I thought for sure you would have been Collected by now."

"Collectors know better than to go after me," says Sabonis. "It's the Facilitators I worry about."

Bianca smirks. "Why are you so interested in this one, Marco? She's doesn't seem your usual choice of lap toy."

Sabonis shrugs. "She's ... American, for one."

"Excuse me," I say. "I'm a he, remember?" My insides churn at the prospect of Sabonis as suitor—insides that feel all rearranged and alien.

"Just wanted to chat," says Sabonis. "He's got a good memory."

"For what ... news from home?"

"Yeah. News," says Sabonis.

I note that he has yet to ask me a single question about current events.

"Stick with us, if you can," says Bianca. "It's never too late to Clear."

"Me? Clear?" says Sabonis sputtering. "Again?"

"Why not?"

"Once was enough," says Sabonis.

"You can't just expect to just roam the beaches for all eternity," says Bianca. "Eventually, your body will give out."

"Who says I'm stickin' around?" says Sabonis.

"Oh, stop with that nonsense," says Bianca. "Haven't you learned your lesson?"

"Delgado might have crossed me, but I copped his game," says Sabonis. "I know how he does it. I know how he goes back."

"Goes back ... where?" I say.

"Go, then," says Bianca. "Be off with you and leave us be. Let me attend to Miss ... eh ...."

"Name's Dan," I say.

Bianca sighs. "Sorry. I forgot."

"Where's he going?" I say.

"Never mind," says Bianca. "Let him go and we can attend to our business."

"I'm coming along," says Sabonis, following us to an indentation in the slope that seemed to have collected a particularly dense collection of people, as if people could puddle.

"You think so?" says Bianca. "I suspect ... Dan's ... stratum will be far above whatever you could muster on your best day."

"Oh, don't worry about me," says Sabonis, as we clamber up a steep chute piercing a line of low cliffs. "I'll do just fine."

We emerge into another crowd; clots of adults of every ethnicity stretching off into the fog. Many seem to be in pain. Strain etches their faces. They groan and shift endlessly.

"You'll fare better than these poor souls my dear," says Bianca. She looks at Sabonis. "At least they try."

The grade steepens. Scrubby soil gives way to solid stone. Plants root solely in fissures.

I can no longer smell the sea. A relentless wind wraps around the slopes and drowns the crash of the surf.

The low clouds above tear open and tumble, revealing a promontory high above us. It barely registers on my retinas before the clouds swoop back in and consume it.

"That was the summit of Mt. Abdiel," says Bianca, smiling. "You're lucky. Most never catch a glimpse."

"Lucky?" I say. I don't feel lucky.

"That summit is our goal, Daniel," says Bianca.

My stomach retracts. The peak looked impossibly high. Unreachable.

"Why?" I say. "What's up there?"

"You'll see, when you Clear," says Bianca.

"But ... how long will it take?"

"That's up to you," says Bianca. "Your journey begins once we find your stratum."

"Isn't it ... cold?"

"No colder than here," says Bianca. "Do you feel cold now?"

"Well ... yes ... but..."

My skin—or at least the skin of whatever lovely being I inhabited—is goose-pimpled. Yet I don't shiver. I can shut out the discomfort as easily as closing my eyes.

"It's not the cold you gotta worry about," says Sabonis, catching up after falling behind.

"What do you mean?" I say.

"You'll see. Once you hit your ceiling."

"He may not have a stratum, Marco," says Bianca.

"Everybody's got a stratum," says Sabonis, wheezing.

"You seem to be finding yours," says Bianca. "So soon. Tsk, tsk."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I say.

Sabonis pierces me with his glare.

"She's looking for the place of maximum misery where you can sit and suffer with the rest of these suckers."

"There's no more suffering once you're Clear," says Bianca. "The Clearer you get, the better you feel, the higher you're able to climb."

"Clear?" I say.

"Freeing yourself from all ties with the life you lived," says Bianca. "But let's not fret about that now. Let's concentrate on finding your stratum. You'll have plenty of time to work on Clearing."

"Heaven," I say, my eyes riveted to the heights hidden behind curtains of mist. "That's it ... up there. Isn't it?"

Sabonis sniggers and coughs.

"You should only concern yourself with your Clearing," says Bianca. "Discussion of broader issues is not helpful at this point in your journey."

"In other words ... you don't wanna know, kid," says Sabonis, wheezing.

We need our hands now to climb over slanted slabs. Halfway up the second pitch, it hits me. My innards knot with pain. It reminds me of the time I got food poisoning from a steak house salad bar. But my gut is empty. My only symptom is pain.

Sabonis slumps and crumples in a crevice atop the first slab. He unfolds and tries to resume climbing, straining like a rat in a sticky trap.

Bianca, meanwhile, glides up the mountainside. Her steps fall silently and precisely on the vaguest of footholds. She holds my hand, steadying me when I lose my balance, pulling me with startling strength over tricky spots.

Sabonis' tousled head falls farther behind us, but he continues to drag himself onwards and upwards.

"So much for Marco," says Bianca. "Come."

Cramps knot my calves, my head aches, my heart clenches under a mounting pressure. "I have to stop."

"Keep pushing," says Bianca. "It helps if you empty your mind. Be one with the mountain. Flow with the wind."

I try, but if it wasn't for her firm grip on my wrist I would have crumpled.

Aggregations of people grow larger and denser. They part for Bianca. We squeeze past. Bianca ignores their entreaties. Deftly, she evades their grasp, coos sweet encouragements to them.

We pass through yet another layer of cloud, emerging into a clear space.

My lungs feel like a squeezed dishrag. My muscles go limp. I can go no further. I hang my head between my knees and vomit yet more seawater.

"Just a little bit farther?" says Bianca. "Come on!"

"No," I say. "This is... as far as I go." I lie on the rocks, panting. The pain overwhelms me in waves, ebbing when I let my mind drift, waxing when I think.

"Not bad," says Bianca. "Quite good for a first climb. Don't you agree, Abigail?" A frail black woman watches us from a boulder studded with glassy inclusions.

"Oh yes, ma'am. The girl's real lucky to start this high," says the woman. "Took me ages to get this far."

Every joint and organ continues to throb. Rest brings no relief.

"Clear your head," says Bianca, softly. "You'll feel better. Flee from all thoughts. Be a stone. Be a tree."

I would ask someone to club me with a stone, put me out of this misery, if I wasn't already dead.

"Don't think I can handle this," I say, my voice shrill.

"Of course you can," says Bianca. "You're fine. We're lucky to land you next to Abigail. She's my charge as well and she knows all about getting clear. She's left a lot more behind than you. Seven children. Thirteen grands. Seven greats."

"How do I get this to stop?" I say.

"I told you. Leave yourself behind. Come to Lethe. Get Clear."

"Not sure ... I want to."

"Shush! Of course you do. We all do. Millions of souls here would be giddy to attain half your stratum. Isn't that right, Abigail?"

"Oh, yes ma'am. That girl, she's lucky."

"I'm not a girl! My name's Dan!" I shout.

My insides have calmed somewhat, but I still feel like I did when I had the swine flu and could only lay on a couch and suffer, unable to focus on even the most mindless sitcom.

Bianca leans over, studies my face, and frowns.

"Actually, you look rather well," she says. "Too well. Let's see if we can eke a little bit more out of you. A few more steps. Abigail won't mind if you pass her, will you Abigail?"

"No ma'am. Not at all."

"I'm not moving," I say.

Bianca flashes her translucent teeth. "Come on, just one little step."

"Fuck off," I say, almost growling.

"No reason to get testy," says Bianca. "I suppose we'll just let you rest and be pleased with your gains." She looks down at the shifting clouds below.

"I'm off, then. But I'll be back soon. Remember, be like the stone. We're expecting big things from you, Daniel."

Her eyes seek some sort of affirmation from me, but I can only grunt. In life, I had never felt so sick. My initial inclination that this place is not Purgatory, but someplace much lower, seems confirmed.

Bianca glides off, weaving up the mountain into the next layer of mists, until all I can see is her faintest glow.
Chapter 6: Misgivings

Shock. Denial. Anger. I am well acquainted with the phases of grief—from both sides of the coffin.

My first encounter with tragedy, or at least the first I truly grieved, happened when my beagle Lucky was taken by a truck on Port Watson Street. Plenty of pets had died before Lucky. I had cried for my goldfish, Sam, for Christ's sake. But Lucky's was the first death I denied, the first that bewildered and angered me, that no Popsicle or toy could make me feel better.

It happened again in middle school when my best friend Artie was felled by leukemia. I got violent then, vandalizing the playground up the street, starting brush fires in the woods. And then I crashed into full-blown grief, retreating into my room with Artie's old Pokémon cards, taking all my meals alone for four days straight.

Unlike some kids, I was blessed with robust grandparents (apart from Mom's Dad, Grandpa John, killed in Vietnam before I was born). So I never had to deal personally with a death in my immediate family—until my own. Death doesn't get any more immediate than that.

Shock hit me hard the first day I found myself floating in that Sargasso-like sea off Lethe. My denial was necessarily brief. It's hard to divert one's mind from one's demise when one is tangled in seaweed ten feet under.

Anger got me free of that seaweed and bobbing to the surface. I stayed angry, when I was awake, but as the weeks went on, I fell out of consciousness more often than not, settling into something that truly felt like death, or what I thought death should feel like. I am angry right now, but that anger does me no good on the mountain. It just turns the screws tighter.

Grief. Denial. Anger. Been there, done that. Acceptance?

Never.

I sit on the rocks huddled in Sabonis' overcoat. Why did I drive home through the storm instead of waiting at the lab? What was the rush? The pain in my gut sharpens. Yes, I was meeting Gina for dinner, but she could have waited. Five minutes, and the storm would have blown over. My head pounds as if my brain is ready to burst out my ears. Trees would have fallen, but without me under them. I convulse. Sciatica-like jolts zip down my limbs.

I punch a lichened stone and bloody my knuckle. It stings like a bugger, and the more I dwell on it, the more my nerves twang, fading only when I cut my thoughts adrift.

I can't obsess here, not on this mountain. Harping on my hurts brings only agony. Forget, and the pain goes away.

My neighbor, Abigail, watches me and tut-tuts.

"I know that look," she says. "That's the look of someone who's not doing such a good job of Clearing out their little heads."

"Oh, shut up!" I rise and stumble and stub my unshod toe.

"Honey, don't think I don't know what you're goin' through. The quicker you accept your fate the better off you'll be. Trust me. I learned these things the hard way."

I descend, careening off ledges like a pinball through bumpers. The pain eases. The queasiness dissipates.

"Don't you go and do that child! Don't you backslide on me now!"

I glare back at her. She looks at me all smug with her chin tight, lips scrunched. Apart from her race, she was a dead ringer for the late Mrs. Bagdiak, my seventh grade math teacher, who for all I know might be her sitting on one of these boulders herself.

"Miss Bianca ain't gonna stand for such nonsense. Uh-uh. No."

I slide a little farther down a smooth slab of stone on my butt.

"Oh, come now," says Abigail. "Get back up here. You got to feel a little bad to do a little good."

I ignore her, inching even farther down. I keep descending, seeking a place where I don't have to listen to her.

There are other folks about, but their attentions are dissipated, faces blank as coma victims. Some glance my way, but they all keep their mouths shut. I don't know how Abigail ever expects to Clear, being such a busybody.

I reach a spot just above an undulant layer of cloud. Mist laps at my bare feet, scuffed and bloody, but oddly numb.

Something solid swirls through the fog. Sabonis pops out, looking, sounding and moving truly like something that has just stepped out of a grave. His face contorts in a mask of agony, his breaths rattle and rasp. His legs quiver and jerk with St. Vitus's Dance.

"Lower," he gasps as the clouds billow up and obscure him.

"Please?"

I glance over my shoulder, take a breath, and plunge into the mists. I catch up with Sabonis just below the cloud layer. Already, he looks more human, less zombie, and I'm feeling immensely more comfortable myself.

"All of this ... it's bullshit, all of it," he says, voice as croaky as a five pack a day smoker. "Maybe Lethe used to make sense, but it's all broken now. It's ... all bullshit."

I don't know what to say. Lethe still confuses me. Not Hell. Not Heaven. What else could it be, some kind of Purgatory?

"I guess we got no other choice, right?" I say. "I mean, we're dead."

Sabonis' eyes gleam like anthracite on the verge of bursting into flame.

"Life," he says.

"But ... we're dead."

"So?"

"We can't ... un-die."

"Who says?" Sabonis gazes through a gap in the cloud bank at the ocean, opaque and dull as tarnished silver. "Delgado goes back."

"Who?"

"The guy who stole my cat."

"Oh. Right."

I sit on a ledge and cup the fine bones of my smooth little chin in my delicate girlie hands. At least I won't have to shave anymore. No more stubble. No more nicks.

"I want my overcoat back," says Sabonis.

"You gave it to me."

"I want it back."

"Only after I get some other clothes."

"Scarce commodity in this place."

"I'm not going around bare-assed."

"It's cute enough."

"Don't even ...." I say, my face warping in disgust.

"You wanna go back?" he asks.

"To live?"

"Not sure about the living part. But ... would you go back. Live or not."

"Hell, yeah," I say.

"I got another boat," says Sabonis. "Piece of crap. But it floats."

"Why ... do you need a boat?"

"Because the way back is out there in the ocean. Makes sense. Everyone comes in as a Floater. Delgado brings stuff in from out there. Reason he stole my cat is because the Collectors trashed his boat. The bastard was supposed to take me with him. But who needs him? I mean, you remember floating in, right? You remember where you crossed. Right?"

I didn't, really. But I felt it was in my best interest to pretend I did.

"Yeah. Sure," I say. "I do. I remember."

Sabonis' eyes get that twinkle again. "What are we waiting for? Let's get off this miserable heap."
Chapter 7: Descent

I angle down the mountainside with Sabonis, feeling like I'm skipping class. Somehow, I suspect there's more at stake regarding this particular truancy.

Can I be blamed for not wanting to sit and suffer on a mountain just yet? For not wanting to abandon all my connections to life? Twenty-two years might not be a long time to some, but it's all I know. If getting Clear is the only way to achieve in the afterlands, I'd rather stay murky.

Seems like yesterday, I walked down a sidewalk with Gina on an anomalous and sultry May evening. Elixirs of lilac wafted everywhere. Life budded and burst and leafed out in every patch of woods. That night was the last I spent with Gina, a night when the future seemed infinite and potent, and rivers of life poured through every capillary. Why would I ever want to Clear this sensation, this culmination of my existence?

I wonder how Gina would handle seeing me as a girl. Laugh her ass off, probably. Would she love me as a woman? Maybe, but it could never be the same. Gina liked herself some man.

I do discover some advantages to this new body. As we pass through a complex jumble of stacked and tippy boulders, I am not the stumblebum I knew. I am nimble. I have balance.

"So ... where exactly are we going?" I say.

"A place called Dilmun," says Sabonis. "It's a bit of a haul.

"You have a boat there?"

"Yup. My 'rigger. Outrigger. Needs patching," says Sabonis. "But as long as we bail it, it should get us out to where we need to go. Right?"

"Right," I say, though I have no clue where it is we need to go. Does he believe me? Do I care? I'm just happy to be headed down the mountain.

"It wasn't just any boat Delgado took," says Sabonis. "That was my cat. Most people here don't bother to do more than strap a few logs together to make a raft. That boat was a work of art. My islander buddy Andali built it. Life and death. He was a master craftsman. I'd cross the Pacific in that hull."

Sabonis looks out over the steely water.

"But I've still got the 'rigger. Been reluctant to take that thing out in this stuff. But if you know where we're going ..."

We knife through a gaggle of men and women tucked in a little hollow surrounding a muddy spring. All vegetation had been stripped except for a few patches of trampled and tattered moss. I study their faces, but they avoid my gaze.

"You ever run into any dead relatives here?" I say.

"Nah," says Sabonis.

"What about all those long-lost relatives that are supposed to greet you when you follow the light through the tunnel?"

"What tunnel?" says Sabonis.

"Figuratively," I say.

"Not everybody gets to come here," says Sabonis. "Some people ... when they die. That's it."

"What's so special about us?"

"Dunno," says Sabonis.

This notion disturbs me. I think of Gina, my mom, my dad, my sister Diane. What if they're not special? If they never come here, I will never see them again? I hope Sabonis is mistaken.

I wonder how they're all taking my death. How long did Gina wait for me to show at that restaurant? Had she gone out to look for me in the rain? Is she okay?

Sabonis leads us away from the beach where we began. We walk through tier after tier of people of all races and sizes and shapes. They sprawl like sea lions over every flat ledge.

In places, we jostle our way through densely packed bodies. I bump into a taut-skinned skeleton of a man and almost knock him off his ledge. Sabonis catches him before he falls. "Sorry!" His frailness makes my bones ache.

He ignores us, like most we pass, lost in trance, Clearing. It is rare that anyone shows displeasure. Most ignore us. An incorrigible few, Midwesterners I suppose, mutter polite niceties as we pass.

Everywhere on these lower slopes, people gather into clusters. No one wants to be alone.
Chapter 8: Squatters

We climb down ledges into a gully choked with thickets of thorny shrubs with fuzzy, gray leaves. I stay close enough to Sabonis' heels to keep from being slapped as they spring back. We emerge onto another set of ledges clothed in low, thick scrub. After picking our way through crowd after crowd of floundering bodies, the place becomes abruptly and eerily vacant.

"Where is everybody?" I say.

"Cliffs block 'em," says Sabonis. "Keeps 'em from coming up from the beach. Most folks go up the windward side. Where you came ashore."

I crouch next to a small pool in a divot of bedrock, cup some water in my hands to drink. My reflection startles me. My hair is short and sticking up in places where dried algae crusts it like overdone hair gel. But my face looks like my sister Diane; maybe even prettier in chin and cheekbone, though Dan keeps the edge in the eye department. She really has dreamy eyes. Here I am, competing with my own sister over femininity.

"You're a looker, alright," says Sabonis, as though he's telepathic, but anyone with a shred of intuition could tell what I was doing. "A little butch more my taste, but ... I'd do you."

"Pull anything funny, I'll kick your ass." I pull the overcoat tighter around myself.

"No worries," says Sabonis. "Strictly business. You and me."

We come over the top of a rise. The land plunges into a valley that cuts deeply into the massif. Two buttresses bracket the valley like the paws of a sphinx. The headwall soars through cloud to heights I can only imagine.

"I love this part of the mountain," says Sabonis. "Smell that heather. Like sinsemilla and tea."

I don't smell a thing. Senses detach too easily from this new body of mine. I concentrate, tune my nose like it's a short wave radio, and I can summon it. And just like that, like a distant station, it fades away.

We enter the valley, zigging around washes and zagging around cliffs, passing down through thicker and taller groves of trees. The opposite ridge looms higher as we plunge deep into the belly of the gulf.

On the way down, we come to a well-worn path that follows the same level contour.

"This way?" I say.

"Nu-uh," says Sabonis, shaking his head. "That path is trouble."

"Why?"

He ignores me, keeping his eyes fixed down the track, marring the pristine hillside like a scar. He scampers across and continues on down.

A creek races through the gulf in a series of cascades. Truck-sized boulders clog its bed. We cross, hopping stone to stone, and push our way through the dwarf willows lining the other side.

"Are we there yet?" I say.

"Told ya it was gonna be a haul."

We climb the next ridge like ants up driftwood, following the grain of the mountain, going vertical only where the thorniest outcrops force us upward. We come again to a path, a shallow groove in the solid stone, polished by wear. I trace it around the indentation of the valley.

"Is this the same one?"

"Yup," says Sabonis. He looks both ways before crossing as if he expects a bullet train.

"Where does this path go?" I asked.

"Circles the island," says Sabonis. "Keep it movin'"

I notice brown mounds like muddy haystacks in the lower part of the valley. Smoke seeps through their tops.

"Houses?" I say.

"Squatters," says Sabonis. "Folks who want no part of the mountain."

"Like us?"

"Like half of Lethe," says Sabonis.

"Really?"

Something large, black and bipedal scurries across a ledge. Sabonis stops abruptly. I back away.

"What was that?"

"Monkey, I think," says Sabonis. "They're fine by themselves. But watch out for the troops. They're pretty aggressive."

The black thing spots us, and flees into a crevice.

"That's no monkey," says Sabonis.

"What is it?"

"Shade."

"What?"

"Ghost of a ghost. What you get when you grind a soul down to its nub, when you singe everything away but the core."
Chapter 9: Mentor

The excitement of a long journey continuing stirs the bright air and fills Bianca's belly with butterflies. "McClellan Ferries, Holyhead to Dún Laoghaire," reads the ticket she holds. Constrained to London all her young life, she puzzles over the Welsh signage: "Tá failte romhat."

Her family is returning to Ireland after a generation removed to claim a homestead, the inheritance of a spinster aunt. Not quite rural, Mum says it's a healthier place to raise a family than a tenement in Mile End. Daddy's not thrilled, but at least her nagging will cease or at least, shift to a spot less sore from the rubbing.

Daddy will be keeping the books for a poplin mill in Dublin, thanks to an old school friend of Uncle Matthew's. It was all quite fine with Bianca, whose fingers ached, armored with callous from months of piecework in the London mills.

Bianca would need to learn how to be Irish again, but Mum gave her a pretty good idea of what that meant. Could be worse, she told herself. I could be stuck learning how to read and write Welsh.

Mum with sinking face and sagging eyes tends to little brother Devon on the brow. Daddy, bearing his vaguest smile, is the last to board the schooner. His precious, leather-bound ledgers, their interiors as blank as the family's future, are tucked under his arm. Only the olio of fishy smells from dead and rotting things on the pier sour Bianca's joy in spying. All else is perfect, from the swooping, pealing gulls to the billows of sun-laundered cloud.

Underway, in their third-class compartment, the odor of decay still lingers faintly. She stands by the porthole, puzzling over how quickly the sun had vanished and how such shining, silvery-blue seas could take on the pall and texture of a dead and scaly beast. Dad lies swaying in a hammock. Mum sits clutching Devon with one arm, her stomach with the other, worrying a half-eaten cross bun. She shuts her eyes.

A crunch and jolt of cataclysmic proportions rolls Dad onto the floor with a tremendous thump. Luggage scatters. Mum's sleepy eyes widen with alarm as she braces her feet against the tilting floor, struggling to hang onto Devon. The floor buckles and becomes a ramp. Daddy snatches a ledger as it slides down to the back of the compartment.

"On deck. Everybody out. Chop-chop!"

He herds us out to a bulkhead bottle-necked with panicked passengers. The floor steepens. The once vertical ladder lies at a gentle grade in comparison, and confounds her attempts to climb it. The world has become as warped as Alice's Wonderland.

She exits a hatch into a bizarrely bright fog, catching a brief glimpse of a dark and frightening hulk astern. People struggle to deploy lifeboats from the acutely tilted deck, as the winch lines twist and tangle. She grips the rail, afraid to let go but people are pushing behind her. Somehow, Mum and Daddy and Devon are still below decks.

The ferry lurches and swings her out of the way. People fall and slide down the deck. Waves splash over the bow and work their way up, as the ferry rolls slowly, till she dangles from a rail surrounding the hatch.

Something massive and bulky barrels into her, knocks her breath away, and plucks her off the rail like a cherry from a twig. She plunges like a stone into the cold, cold water, knifing in feet-first, surrounded by bubbles, deeper than any air-breathing creature has a right to go.

She kicks and bobs up to tumultuous seas. The ferry twists and rolls overhead. She gasps for air as a wave crashes. Stinging water reaches deep into passages where the air should have gone.

Her desperate imagination grasps for some kind of hope. That Mum or Daddy will save her. That they will wash ashore with the stores and luggage of the ferry. Build a new life on a deserted isle.

She sinks. The last thing she sees is the dark hull of the ferry jutting out of the water like a breaching whale.

666

Her only natural dream, this remembrance. The only one she has left. Proof that her soul remains less than clear.

Bianca rouses herself from a shallow but numbing slumber. She has advanced far up the queue during her somnolence. Mother Ebbani is but several layers removed now, her master cell bathes the other cells in an amber glow, their inhabitants suspended like embryonic tadpoles in an egg mass.

A membrane tenses and pulses. Peristalsis squirms Bianca's cell forward. Fluids gurgle and jet between cells adjacent, rippling the soft walls, supporting Bianca's head.

One more tick of the cycle. Her cell would nudge her Mentor's. The membranes would fuse. The lambasting would commence.

She basks as she waits in the sweet and bitter afterglow of her lonely dream. Few souls are perfect. Not even a Mentor's. Perhaps not even the Primentor's.

At least she retains the capacity to assemble artifices of imagination. Day dreams of beaches and bungalows, quiet lagoons and would-be lovers. They ease the pain of waiting.

The susurrus of a trillion thought-voices fills the foreground, rebounding and replicating like as if through an array of audio mirrors. Her cell compresses left and right. She has shuttled forward in the queue, squeezing between two adjacent cells. Her cell continues to slither and spin, passing those ahead of her. She has been noticed, selected, prioritized over other Guides and unassigned Ascendants—not a good sign.

Bianca braces for what is to come as her cell abuts and blends with the cell of her mentor. The membrane fuses and separates like soap bubbles merging. Bianca smooths back hair that resists her strokes, clears a throat already clear.

"Eleven charges, four Ascendants," says Mother Ebbani, slow and assured, almost bored.

"It's insufficient, I know," says Bianca.

"What are you doing about it?"

"I visit each of them, almost every day," she says. "Some of them are salvageable, but the rest are lost causes. Squatters. I need some new assignees."

"We just gave you one."

"Daniel, yes."

"And how is he doing?"

"Fine," Bianca shrugged. "Bit of a mishap regarding his gender, but he's taking it well."

"That was no mishap."

"Oh no?"

"He is a special selection. The Primentor chose him, and apparently ... she requires a female."

"Odd, that you would choose me to handle such a case."

"I didn't," says Mother Ebbani. "It was the Primentor."

Bianca had the words stunned out of her momentarily.

"No kidding?" she says, finally.

"And where _is_ your Daniel now?"

"On the windward slope. Where I left him."

"Is he?"

"Don't tell me! Marco?"

"They've descended," says Mother Ebbani. "And passed through Gihon. On their way to Dilmun, no doubt."

"How? Why? Do they seek—?"

"The Passage? Quite likely. The mere promise of it has lured many an Ascendee off the slopes, and shall continue to do so as long as they arrive on our beaches still feeling the shock of death. But this is for you to find out and reverse. This lapse will not be tolerated."

"I can barely tolerate it myself," says Bianca. "How dare he?"

"The Collectors and Facilitators should have been called off," says Mother Ebbani. "But one never knows if they listen anymore. So beware."

"They've been called off ... Marco, as well?"

"Not him," says Mother Ebbani. "At least not those he hasn't already influenced, however he manages."

"But he's still salvageable, Mother."

"How many chances has he already spoiled or rejected? He's hopeless."

"I remain hopeful," says Bianca.

"This is not hope. This is infatuation. Your coddling of him is more likely to lead to your Fall than his Ascendance."

"I happen to be encouraged by his progress of late," says Bianca, standing her ground.

"Progress? Absconding with your newest charge, a charge our Primentor has marked for special Guidance ... is progress?"

"He hasn't tangled with Cato. He's stayed away from Mammon."

"Consider this a chance to test your mettle," says Mother Ebbani. "Prove your competence here, and perhaps we can overlook your previous misfires."

Amoeboid flanges swoop in and restore the membrane. The barrier goes opaque, and Bianca's cell tumbles away to the outer capsule of the corpus.
Chapter 10: Gihon

We climb down shattered cliffs to reach another beach. Clots of catatonic people interrupt a seamless stretch of black sand. If not for Sabonis' intervention, I see myself among them. Bianca left me with little reason to strive for Elysium, as if its loftiness alone should suffice.

In life, I had never hiked so far, but I feel no fatigue. In Lethe, it seems I can walk forever, as long as I'm not climbing.

"This beach is where they stole my cat," says Sabonis.

"Who's they?"

"Delgado and company," says Sabonis. "I know it was them, because they left a calling card."

Sabonis reaches under his shirt and pulls a crumpled magazine from his pants. TV Guide, the old version when it was the size of a trade paperback. Jean-Luc Picard graces the cover.

"Wow," I say.

"There were monkey tracks in the sand, too," says Sabonis.

"Monkey tracks?"

"Two men, one monkey," says Sabonis. "One man wore shoes. Had to be Delgado. A Collector came after and tracked over the other tracks. The poor fools I left to watch it ... both Collected. Signs of a scuffle. Carcasses slashed open and left on the beach."

"Jeez."

"I tell you, it's a rough place ... Lethe."

He stops to pluck some berries from a bush growing at the edge of the dunes. "Have some of these, even if you're not hungry. You've got to feed that body of yours, no matter what that stomach tells you."

The berries are dry and seedy and sour. I spit them out. Sabonis looks at me and shakes his head.

"You want to last here, kid, you'd better eat."

"I'll pass, for now."

The sand peters out against a jumble of boulders collapsed from a promontory. We pick our way over rocks slick with algae. Limpets, their shells as fragile as bone china, crunch under our heels.

Halfway up the rock pile a strange humming materializes and grows louder. A slab of seamless granite bars our way. We work around it and step onto a broad ledge. The humming turns into a roar.

A valley, sprawling with people, spreads before us.

"My God, a city!" I say.

"Don't know if I'd go that far," says Sabonis.

It fills the bottom of the U-shaped valley that slashes into the island, tapering to a point at the mouth of a ravine. The opposite ridge jutted far into the ocean in a chaos of cliffs and spires.

Mud huts speckle the valley floor. Few dwellings have roofs. Some are hardly more than windbreaks. The tallest structures are a pair of stone towers looming over all by the river.

People swarm the open spaces, which are trampled and brown, devoid of vegetation. Crowds spill over the banks of a muddy river. Clouds of small birds hover over them like gnats.

A buffer of scrub separates the brown valley from a stately rank of ancient conifers rearing along a sharp contour along the valley walls. The slopes above them are so green they almost glow. People mass against this border, constrained as if by an invisible fence.

"Welcome to Gihon," says Sabonis. "We'll go around the edge. That way we miss most of the bad stuff."

"What bad stuff?"

"Gihon's a trap," says Sabonis. "A trapped coyote'll chew off a paw to free itself from a snare. That's all you need to know to understand Gihon."

"Certainly looks like a shit hole," I say.

"You'd look like a shit hole too if you had half a million people squatting on you."

"Squatters?"

"That's what I said."

Without further explanation he scrapes through bushes down to a rock shelf that angles down like a ramp. It skirts the upper bounds of the brown bowl.

We come within shouting distance of a seething, shoving crowd at the interface of vegetation and desolation. A woman scrambles up onto the shelf and lunges at a dead branch.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Total Squatter, like the rest of them," says Sabonis. "Got no tolerance for heights."

Suddenly, I feel privileged. Lower middle class all my twenty-two years and now I am part of the afterworld elite.

"Don't get all uppity," says Sabonis, as if reading my mind. "That could be you some day."

"Except ... I can climb. Higher than you, even."

"Don't use it ... you lose it," says Sabonis. "I've been to the top. Now look at me."

The woman slides back to the valley floor with an armload of firewood. People help her to her feet and she maneuvers through the masses. The others just stand and stare at me and Sabonis.

I feel like I'm at a zoo looking down on an exhibit of giraffes tormented by lush grazing just out of their reach. People of every race and mixture are represented without discernible bias. Death, I suppose, is an equal opportunity employer.

A man curses at me in a language I've never heard. I only know he's cursing from his murderous eyes and the spittle flecking his rictus of a mouth.

Sabonis sees me shrink away. "Don't worry. He can't come up here. Bastard's lucky he can stand."

"This must be hell," I say.

"No. Just Lethe," says Sabonis.

"What's the point of it?"

"I told you. It's a trap. Fringers get in here. They stick around, until they can't get out. Makes it easy for the Collectors to have them all corralled like this. Like picking up the apples that fall from a tree."

"Fringers?"

"Folks who're a little bit clear. Just enough to get off the beach."

"But why are they being punished?"

"Punished? No one's being punished. They're just stuck. All it takes is a couple days. Lose twenty-thirty feet of stratum and wham, you're stuck. They can't swim out because that bay's built like a fucking meat grinder. Anybody tries, the riptides suck 'em out, and the reef tears 'em apart. So they trickle in, one's and two's. Gihon's like a bucket under a dripping faucet. Eventually it's gonna fill up."

"Am I ... is this gonna happen to me?" I panic.

"Not for a while," says Sabonis. "You climbed pretty damned high for a first try. Seems you got a knack for Clearing."

"Why would they even come here in the first place?"

"Sitting on a beach gets old," says Sabonis. "People get restless. Hear rumors about places like Zion and Dilmun and Sixwing—places on the other side where there ain't any fog and folks manage a decent existence. But this place ain't those places. Like you said, it's a shit hole. "I never come here unless I have to."

"Seems so ... random," I say.

"Welcome to Lethe, kid. Don't go thinking there's a plan to everything here 'cause there ain't none."
Chapter 11: Passing Through

We come across a dead pine standing with branches bereft of needles. It reminds me of the desiccated Christmas trees my dad would drag into the woods behind our house, year after year accumulating like the victims of a serial killer.

Sabonis wrests it out of the ground and slides it down into the crowd. They descend on it like piranhas, stripping the branches, dragging away the trunk.

"Why'd you do that?" I say.

"They wanted it," says Sabonis, with a grunt and a shrug.

"What for?"

Sabonis just snorts and looks up at the sky. The mist has thinned, revealing a sky more silver than blue.

"It's gonna get dark soon," says Sabonis. "Believe me, you don't want to be here after dark."

All the hours we had been walking, the sun should have already set or at least be sitting lower in the sky, but there is something funny about this 'sun.' It never budges from its apex, sitting perpetually at an equatorial twelve noon, high over Mt. Abdiel. Shadows didn't lengthen, they only darkened.

I squint up at the glow and the shape startles me. A pair of dark crescents bracket a central glare like parentheses, as if the sun is squishing flat on two sides. Was this thing even a sun?

Sabonis grins. "Finally ... she notices the orb."

"I'm a he," I say, abruptly. Orb, he calls it?

"Creepy, huh?"

"Not really," I say. "Just different."

"Wait till you see what happens at night," says Sabonis. "Come on, we gotta truck."

We continue along the rocky shelf, heading towards the mouth of a canyon. The crowd flows along with us like a shadow, calling to us in a baffling mélange of languages. English is the rare song in this flock.

Sabonis sniggers. "They think we're special—Elysial. Get real, people."

I feel like a celebrity. It feels stupid. All this attention because I can step out of a hole and they can't?

"Do these people have Guides?"

"Not no more," says Sabonis. "No Guide's gonna go near these folks. He guffaws. "They're Squatters, kiddo. Lowest of the low."

It never occurs to me that a Guide could be lost; that Bianca could ditch me. It sheds a new light on my impulsive excursion, and not a very flattering one.

The rock shelf tapers and runs into an unclimbable face. We have no choice but to descend and join the crowd.

"Hold onto your tush, sweetheart. We're about to mingle with the masses."

"Is that ... safe?"

"No," says Sabonis. "Walk fast, and pretend you know where you're going."

Sabonis hops off the ledge. The masses peel back from him like water from oil. I jump down and the mob closes in. Grimy hands finger and caress me. Something rough, like broken bone, scrapes me. I jerk away and push after Sabonis.

Sabonis bowls over whoever dares impede him. "We get separated, don't stop," he says. "Keep moving, head for the other side and climb out of this mess."

"So plump," someone says. "Such skin! So clear!"

I veer away from a man with a huge hole in his chest. Behind his rib cage, light filters in through the skin on his back—like a lampshade. The cavity holds no heart, no lungs, no stomach. His skin is pale and waxy. He doesn't appear to possess any blood.

What is left of another man—head, torso, stump of one arm—drags himself through the dirt before us, trailing leathery, sun-cured entrails behind him.

"Jeezus!" I say, skipping around him.

"Don't stare now. Be polite," says Sabonis.

"How can they live this way?"

"Live?" says Sabonis. "Who's living?"

"Exist. Whatever. You know what I mean."

"Beat's being a Shade," says Sabonis. "Least they have senses. Shades can't feel, can't smell, can't taste."

A tiny black bird with a long yellow beak lands on my shoulder. Sabonis crushes it with the heel of his hand. It drops to the ground.

"My God! Why'd you do that?" I say. "It was just a little bird."

Another bird latches onto my collar and rams its beak into my neck. I smack it away. Flocks circle overhead. Now and again a group of them vector off into the crowd.

"Blood sparrows," says Sabonis. "They're like big ass mosquitoes."

I hold up my arms, ready to fend off more birds when I trip over something soft. A woman with one arm and no legs, slaps at me with her only intact appendage.

"So sorry," I say. She shrieks at me in some staccato tongue like Arabic. Sabonis grabs my arm and hauls me along.

"Keep it moving," he says.

A pitted carcass of a man sits on a mound of dirt. A long tuft of white hair drifts forward, obscuring his face. The back of his head has a large chunk missing. His brain is mostly gone.

"How do people get so ... fucked up here?"

"Time, numbness," says Sabonis. "Damage comes easy when you can shut off pain. The key is to hang on to your blood. Lose your blood and you lose your ability to heal. You rot, basically."

A small person runs between two dwellings and halts in the clay staring at me.

"Oh my God. That's ... a little girl!"

"Midget," says Sabonis.

"No way," I say. I study her round features, her delicate chin. "That's a little kid." So many withered faces, but she's the first child I've seen here. "How come there's hardly any kids here?"

"This is Lethe," says Sabonis, grim-faced as he shoves away a man who comes beseeching. "Ain't supposed to be no kids here."

"Why not? Kids die too."

"Dunno. If you don't pass puberty, maybe you get sent to the trash bin. Only old souls allowed here."

"Seems rather ... un-Christian, don't you think? You know, 'Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world.'"

"I don't know," says Sabonis. "Souls need time to ripen. You don't send green fruit to market."

"Sure you do? Have you never bought bananas? It just seems barbaric, leaving all the kids out. But ... wait. If it's not supposed to happen ... how did she get here?"

"This is Lethe," says Sabonis. "Mistakes happen. I mean, look at you."

The girl runs into the arms of the white-haired man with the hole in his head. Like a broken doll, one of her porcelain hands is missing two fingers. The man scoops her onto his lap, and presses his scruffy cheek against hers as they watch Sabonis and I pass.

Down by the muddy river, a scuffle breaks out. People rush to the fray, jostle and squabble over something on the ground. We reach the river bank, Sabonis glances and blinks and leads me away by the elbow.

"What the heck is going on?" I ask, craning to see. Sabonis yanks me along.

"Someone gave up their Shade," he says.

"Why are they fighting?"

"You don't wanna know."

"Yeah, I do."

"Sweet meat," he says.

"What?"

"Do I have to explain everything for Christ's sake? They're after the poor fuck's meat."

Lightning jolts jigger my spine. I look at the green line on the ridge across the settlement and wish I could will myself there instantly. I quicken my pace. Sabonis jogs to keep up with me.

"The bridge," says Sabonis.

The stone towers supporting the bridge loom before us. Their permanence seems incongruous with the ad hoc construction everywhere else.

"Who built this?" I ask,

"Who knows?" says Sabonis. "Who cares?"

We cross. The walls on either side are partly collapsed. The road bed is pitted. The river runs brown beneath us. We pick our way past a grunting carpet of prostrate forms.

A fluttering startles me. A flock of bloodsparrows boils up from pale bodies sprawling on the opposite bank.

"Hang on to your pecker," says Sabonis.

"What pecker?"

I bat away birds, and they fly off to regroup, unaccustomed to our defenses. I emerge with minor punctures on the back of my knees and behind my ears. Blood beads and clots into hard bumps.

We turn upriver. The land rises gently here. The river quickens. The huts turn sturdier, the crowds sparser. Some huts have tiled roofs, and mangled shrubs that pass for gardens.

"Welcome to the 'burbs," says Sabonis. "This is where the Fringers go when they realize they're stuck. Most'll get pulled down into the belly of Gihon. It's inevitable."

A brown man squats beside a pile of wrinkled leather strips still clothed with fur. He sees us. His eyes widen and he snatches the pile up to his belly.

The valley narrows as it rises. More scrub clothes the clay. The people here have their limbs and no major injuries, just the ubiquitous peck marks.

A woman's face brightens when she sees us. "Excuse me sir, ma'am, is that the road to Jerusalem?" She points up the stepped cascades that cut into the mountainside.

"Yep. Sure is," says Sabonis.

I narrow my eyes at him.

"She's a Fringer," he whispers. "She's still got a chance to get out of this mess."

The cascades lead up to a thirty foot waterfall, falling from a narrow, suspended valley. Mists rise from the rocks. The river collects itself in a swirling pool before rushing off to scour the wastes of Gihon.

Another gaggle of healthy-looking people collect here. They gasp for breath. Their faces warp with pain. One man, blonde and balding, has a purple face. The veins in his neck twitch like worms trying to break through his skin. He hacks away like a cat with fur balls.

Sabonis looks up at the orb, which has narrowed to resemble the aperture of a squinting eye.

"We're gonna make it," he says. "I was afraid the damn orb would blink out with us still in Gihon."

I see movement above the waterfall.

"There's someone up there," I say

Sabonis squints. Shouts peal through the din of rushing water. People drag themselves up along the riverbanks. We stop at the edge of a throng beside the pool.

A woman appears, wearing leather leggings and a homespun shift. She drags a dead goat to the edge of the cliff and tosses it down to the waiting people. Some people stare with puzzlement. Others descend on the goat and parcel out the meat.

Sabonis sidles behind a boulder.

"What's wrong?"

"That's Alecto," whispers Sabonis. "She's a Collector. But I seen her take Fringers ... Climbers even."

"You're afraid of her?"

"No," says Sabonis, taking umbrage.

Alecto stands at the brink of the falls, surveying the scene like a raptor. Long, sleek black hair billows out with the wind.

"Why is she feeding people ... if she's a Collector?"

"How the fuck should I know?" says Sabonis, slinking down.

"She's looking this way," I say. "She's looking down at us."

"Shit."

I notice a gleam on her hip—an obsidian blade curved like a velociraptor's talon.

"She gone away?" says Sabonis.

"Not yet," I say.

Alecto extends her arms and stretches, arching and flexing her back. She spreads long fingers like tip feathers. She tilts her head back. Her lips part, revealing a glint of teeth. A piercing screech echoes down the valley walls. She turns away from the cliff edge and with a skip and a leap she is gone.
Chapter 12: Shadows of Doubt

We climb out of Gihon into the hanging gulch. The ease of our departure astounds the Fringers and brings me guilt. I feel like someone touring a slum wearing a designer suit (my skin), driving a Mercedes (my legs). Even though all I possess are two intact eyes and all my limbs, that suffices to make any Squatter envy my riches.

The orb slims to a snake's pupil but the light it sheds is still plenty bright. Shadows would have consumed the gulch in darkness in a normal world, but Lethe's orb, perpetually twelve o'clock high, sends its light straight into the depths of the gulch.

Alecto is gone. Goat blood smeared on a ledge is the only sign she was ever here. Feathery locust trees shake their leaflets in a gentle breeze. Sabonis acts wary, as if Alecto may leap out at him at any moment. But I'm not one bit scared. Given her act of charity, I sense she is a person of character.

Sabonis leads us deeper into the gulch. It widens as we climb; shoulders growing less severe. It levels into a shelf of marshy meadow, through which the river meanders. Farther on, I see more uplands and cascades.

The orb's sphincter clenches tighter. Its light turns orange and brownish and drenches the landscape in sepia.

Sabonis is looking fidgety. "We better find some shelter," he frets. "I had hoped we would be further along. We'd be home by now if we had my boat."

"Do you actually have a house?"

"I do," says Sabonis, striding away from the marsh to a stone slab that juts out of the hillside. "This'll do," he says. "This looks defensible"

"Defensible? Against what?"

"Don't worry about it. We'll be fine," he says, unconvincingly. He starts piling up stones to make a little wall.

"Not that I'm cold," I say. "But ... is it possible we could maybe make a fire?"

"No," he says. "No fires. It'll just attract attention."

I help him pile stones. We stack chunks of flat shale. Some have fossils of little scallop shells etched into them. I don't feel very strong, but I can work and not get winded.

"This Delgado person," I say. "Can he ... climb?"

"Never seen him try," says Sabonis. "For that matter ... I never seen him. Only people who see him are some whores in Sixwing, his cronies, and the Pope."

"Pope?"

"Yeah. We have a Pope. In Zion. But Delgado lays low. He needs to, 'cause the Elysians are after his butt."

"For going back?" I say.

"Not just for going back but for fucking with things when he does. I heard he told his brother who was going to win some big horse race in Argentina. They say he even killed a man on one of his trips back – killed him for something the guy did when he was alive."

"Question," I say. "If you've never seen him, how do you know he stole your boat?"

"Who else would do it?" says Sabonis, flabbergasted. "Who else has use for a damn catamaran?"

"Dunno," I say. I have no clue how this place works or why it even exists, never mind interpreting some stranger's motivations.

It had been a long day, a day that felt more like a week, though I couldn't prove it without my watch. I'm not one bit tired, though, and I'm only hungry if I think about food.

I sit and think, while Sabonis continues building a wall. I am still in my angry phase. A knot of righteous bile rises up in the pit of my stomach. How dare they take me so young, so abruptly, without as much as a chance to say goodbye to Gina, to my mom, to everyone I loved. Why not go back, just to spite them?

I hope it's true, what Sabonis is saying about Delgado. But it sounds like a tall tale. But what choice do I have but to follow this hope?

I admire a constellation of forget-me-nots peeking out of the tall grass. The wind is gentle, the air warm. But a sour smell wafts by: the fetid perfume of a not-so-fresh road kill. I gag.

"Oh shit," says Sabonis. He picks up a stone and retreats into the deepest part of the overhang. There is just enough room for the two of us to sit.

"What is it?"

"Quiet!" he snaps.

Somewhere above us, a yelping squabble breaks out. It sounds like a dog fight, but one of the voices—the losing party—sounds almost human. The source drifts closer. I hear something crash through the brush and disappear into the reeds below. A score of small brown animals swarms down the hillside after it. There is a final piercing yelp and the brown shapes converge.

"They got him," says Sabonis.

"What got who?" I say, as an inverted brown head pops around the overhand baring canine teeth long enough to puncture a skull. Sabonis heaves the stone at it. It hoots and disappears. Pebbles rain down the front of our shelter. Brown shapes straggle down to the marsh to join a squabble that has broken out anew.

"Monkeys," says Sabonis.

"I gather," I say. "What did they get?"

"Fringer, I suppose."

I feel sick. Everything about this place sickens me. I think Sabonis is terribly deluded. Only a pathological optimist could think this is not Hell.

The orb pinches shut, and Lethe vanishes into black. But then a cool, blue glow seeps over the landscape. I lean out of the shelter to look up at the orb. It is fully open again, but glows softly now, with none of the glare. It simulates a moon. But it is one dull moon, a bland and featureless thing, no craters, no seas. I feel homesick looking at it.

I feel Sabonis' arm brush mine. His knee bumps mine and stays put. I retreat an inch or two against the ledge. Sabonis' elbow seeks and nudges mine.

"You sure you're not just a pretty girl?" says Sabonis. "You're not just shitting me?"

"For Christ's Sake, I am a Goddamn man!" I insist with as much testosterone as I can muster, which isn't much. It sounds ridiculous in my girly voice. Sabonis sniggers.

"Get the fuck away," I say, "Or I'll lay open your cranium with one of these rocks."

I wonder how much strength my new body can muster. My hands feel so small, my forearms so slender.

I can only hope that Lethe's nights are not as long as its days. I pull the overcoat around myself and close my eyes, and try to think of pleasant things like Cortland apples and pepperoni pizza.

Something large and dark prowls below our shelter. It slants across the slope, silently. Stones clink together as Sabonis gathers them.

It slides past us, out of view. Sabonis exhales. In a blink it is back, standing before our wall, occluding our view, blacker than black, darker than the darkness, silhouetted against what little light still falls on the marshes.

Sabonis knocks his head against the slab roofing our shelter and scrambles back. "Get away! Scram!"

"Sir, Madam, welcome to my home." The voice sounds tinny and distant. "I am Haurvil, Jean-Francois. My meestress Alecto seeks to make your acquaintance."

"How does she know... we're here?" says Sabonis.

"I am hare watcher," says Haurvil. "I see. I report."

"Go away," says Sabonis.

"It ees safe. You will not be harmed."

"Tell Alecto, we're just passing through," says Sabonis. "We'll be gone at first light."

"Come now. I will escort you through ze darkness. Come," says Haurvil.

Chapter 13: Alecto's Invitation

"Nuh-uh," says Sabonis. "We ain't going out there."

I gape at the utter blackness of the creature outside our cave. Haurvil has no substance, no surfaces for light to play on, just a dark void with a human outline. Eyes and mouth lost in a pool of blackness make it impossible to gauge his expressions.

"You are Hector Delgado are you not?" says the Shade.

"Delgado? Hell, no. I ain't Delgado." Sabonis turns to me and chuckles. "The bitch thought I was Delgado!"

"I think you are ze Delgado," says Haurvil, "And I tell her so."

"No. I told you. I'm not Delgado. You got it all wrong, see? Now go away. We'll be out of her hair tomorrow."

"Who are you, if not ze Delgado?" says Haurvil.

"Scram," says Sabonis, flipping his hand at the Shade. "Vamoose!"

"You are a friend of ze Delgado, perhaps?"

"Bastard's no friend of mine," says Sabonis. "Never even met him."

"Interesting," says Haurvil. "I sense you feel some hatred for him."

"Enough of this crap. Go away!"

"Perhaps you would want for hees Shade to be freed like mine?"

"I wouldn't wish that on anybody," says Sabonis. "No offense."

"Oooh ... I sink I know who you are," says Haurvil. "You are ze man who makes ze boats. You are ze Marco."

"So what if I am?" says Sabonis.

"Every Shade knows you, of course. You were a Shade yourself once, yes? You came back from Avernus. No?"

"Never mind about that," says Sabonis.

"Come," he says. "My lady awaits. She makes ze hospitality for you. In her domicile. Unequaled in Lethe."

"No thanks," says Sabonis.

"What? You will make her have to come here to greet you?" says Haurvil. "Zis will not make her happy."

"Bug off. Before I sic a Collector on you."

"Heh-heh," says Haurvil. "My mistress ees a Facilitator. I am immune to Collection."
Chapter 14: The Rift

Haurvil hovers outside our shelter for hours, alternately, pestering, threatening, persuading, inviting, driving Sabonis nuts until in a blink he simply vanishes. In the utter darkness I do not see him leave but I can sense his absence in my gut. I hadn't minded his company. He had kept Sabonis too flustered and distracted to flirt with me.

The night is mercifully shorter than I expected. The light of dawn comes on almost like flipping a switch. The orb expands much more abruptly than it contracts. One moment there is night and the next the landscape glows golden. Dark shapes scurry through the reeds and bushes to their occult lairs.

Sabonis looks at me and nods. We continue on our way. We climb away from the marsh up a gradual slope. Where the stream bed forks, we take the left tine and veer up a ridge. Sabonis strains and even I feel winded and fluttery in my innards. I hope my tolerance for heights is not changing so soon. I can't remember how high I had climbed before and if anything has changed.

The caretaker's road plunges all the way into the gulch and all the way out the other side. We cross it again and surmount a shallow pass. A massive gulf opens before us. A long, thin ribbon of water glistens far below. I think it might be a river or a fjord or a strait, but I can see marshes and mudflats separating both ends from the sea. It is a long lake. Like Seneca. Like Cayuga. Like Skaneateles. The sight makes me homesick. Lifesick?

Sabonis motions towards the scorched-looking uplands and barrens rising behind the lake. "We're going there." He points out to a barely discernible curve of land in the sea, swallowed by mists. "That's what they call Dilmun, but I call the Cape. That's my home."

I can barely make out a rocky outcrop projecting from the sea at the end of a strip of dunes.

"That's so far," I say.

"Nah," says Sabonis. "We're more than halfway there already."

"We'll get there today?"

"Of course," he says. "Barring any interruptions."

We descend through widely spaced conifers. We cross the caretaker's ubiquitous path yet again as it slashes its way across this leeward side of the ridge.

The slopes are devoid of Climbers. The dry and dusty ground radiates back the warmth it absorbs from the orb. There is no wind.

Sabonis reaches into his vest pocket. "Want some breakfast?" he says. He hands me something that looks like a thick chunk of tree bark.

"What is it?" I flip it over in my hand.

"Fish jerky," he says. He passes me his knife.

I cut off a shred. It smells like bait, tastes of rot. I spit it out.

Sabonis wags his head at me. "Sooner or later you're going to have to eat," he says. "You'll keep on going whether you do or don't, but your body is gonna wither till it's worthless."

"I'll eat," I say. "Soon as I find something edible."

The land lays open before us below a slope of rock and knee-high scrub. We enter a deep rift with mismatched ridges. Our side steps down a series of weathered, metamorphic ledges while the landscape ahead looks like it had recently disgorged from the gullet of a volcano. This entire half of the island before us looks like it has been plastered onto the rest of Lethe. Fumaroles steam atop the summit cones.

We approach Loch Belial, its cobalt waters contrasting with the gray-green slate of the sea. The floor of the rift is mostly flat, except for patches of jagged outcrops that made me think of shark fins.

I study the scorched terrain, the smoking mountain. "Sure is ugly on this side," I say.

Sabonis sniggers. "Yeah."

"Hellish, even," I say.

"You might say that."

"But not really, because there is no Hell, right?"

"Nope."

"So what's this Avernus place that Shade was talking about?"

Muscles shift and tense in Sabonis' face. "Never mind about that."

I am curious, but don't press.

"Kind of ... kind of reminds me of Hawaii," I say. "Like maybe parts of the big island."

"Oh? You been there?"

"Not yet. But me and Gina plan ... well, planned ... to go, after she graduated. It was gonna be our dream trip. Like a honeymoon without the wedding. I researched airfares, resorts. It ain't cheap."

"I used to live there," says Sabonis. "Had a free ticket. Free room and board."

"Really? How'd you manage that?"

"Marines. Kaneohe. 3rd LSB. I was a red patcher."

"You lost me."

"Landing logistics. We made sure Marines and things coming ashore got where they were supposed to go."

"Is that where you learned to sail?"

"Fuck no. I'm no sailor."

"Well ... yeah. I know ... you're a Marine, but—"

"I'm no good at sailing. I mean, I manage, but ... I depended on Andali to get us around. When he disappeared ... I was up shit's creek. That's why I tried to link up with Delgado."

"Then why are we looking for your boat?"

"I mean, I do fine close to shore, when things are calm. Any idiot can handle a sailboat in those conditions. But when things get rough. In big seas. I have a hard time. Not Andali. He could deal with anything an ocean could throw at him."

"Is ... that a problem?"

"Why is it a problem?"

"The interface. The place where I came into this world. It was ... pretty far out."

"How far?"

"Pretty damn far. I was floating for days. Weeks, maybe?"

Sabonis took in a long, deep breath. "Well, let's worry about one thing at a time. Let's first find my damn boat."

The dark blue waters of the Loch dominate our foreground. I see now that whatever tints the waters is far from wholesome. The blueness is no trick of refraction, but is intrinsic to the water itself.

"I think it's the molybdenum leaching out that turns it blue," says Sabonis. "Reminds me of some tailing ponds in Colorado. There's fish living in it, believe it or not."

We skitter down a final decline of loose stones onto a cracked and dry mudflat beside the Loch. Not a ripple mars the Loch's surface. It looks dead.

The floor of the Rift, too, looks like it has been aerial-sprayed with herbicides. Every shrub is thorny and leafless and brown. The one tree visible in the whole expanse has only one bough with any leaves.

We cross the flats heading seaward away from the Loch. Sabonis steers us towards a solitary butte of columnar basalt, separate from uplands. It overlooks a deep cove flanked on the Lethe side by a similar butte of knobby granite.

At the edge of the flats, we walk along a low bank of gravel that isolates the flats from a broad, rocky beach pounded by swells marching unhindered through the mouth of the inlet. Slabs of bubble-ridden lava rise up here and there to meet the waves with explosions of spray.

The mound affords a view down the length of the Loch. The marshes fringing its shore rippled like cilia in the wind, as if the Loch were a giant Paramecium.

"Sixwing's down that way," says Sabonis.

"Sixwing?"

"A town of sorts," says Sabonis. "That's the good side of Lethe. Where a Squatter can have a decent existence if he wants. If you're going to settle on the flats, leeward is the place to be."

"Settle?" The idea grates at me. "I ain't settling here. I ain't settling for this."

"Oh no?"

"If there's a way back. I'm going back."

Sabonis grins. "That's my girl. That's what I want to hear. We're a team now. I got the means and you got the intel. If Delgado thinks he's got the market cornered on returns, he's got another thing coming."

"Boy," I say.

"Ah, whatever," says Sabonis.

I feel a thrill go though me whenever Sabonis mentions going back. I feel like someone in the first plunge of an addiction, fearful of the dealer but captured in the rapture of his drug. I just hope I can deliver on the intel part. I figure getting the hell off this island would be a start and the rest would come to me. I hope.

My eyes follow gullies that etch the Loch's cindered shore, the curves of the volcanic slopes that leapt from the Rift, and across the smooth skin of the Loch and wind-scraped flats to the soaring, snaggle-toothed ridge that screens Mt. Abdiel from these wastes.

Back down into the Rift, my gaze hooks on one of the outcrops that jut from the Rift floor like twisted shark fins. At the peak, forty feet up, a figure stands, diaphanous cloak flowing. She swoops down at us like a harpy.
Chapter 15: The Scolding

"Confound you Marco!" says Bianca, her voice ringing across the wastes. "This is the lowest thing you've ever done—taking an innocent soul, new here, disoriented, and my own charge no less, and involving him in your ... hopeless scheme. What are you trying to do to me? You know how delicate my situation has become."

"Whoa, slow down," says Sabonis. "I didn't ask him to follow me. He's tagging along on his own accord. It's not my fault he didn't buy your pitch."

"Pitch? What pitch?" says Bianca. "I just told him the truth about the one, true path."

"Whatever you said ..." says Sabonis. "He didn't buy it. Stop looking at me like that! I tell you it wasn't my doing."

"Oh no," says Bianca. "You had nothing to do with it. I've watched you troll those shores, interrogating any poor soul that washes up. You told me yourself: the fresher they are, the more they remember."

"Honestly, I didn't push him," says Sabonis. "He wanted to come. But go ahead, take him back."

"Come along then," says Bianca.

"Nuh-uh," I say.

"What?"

"I'm not going," I say.

"Why not?" says Bianca, hurt bending her voice.

"I don't want to be clear," I say. "I want to remember my life. And frankly, I'm not done yet."

Bianca swings around to face Sabonis. "Look what you've done Marco! He's brainwashed. And not only is he one of my charges, he's one the Primentor herself has designs on."

"What's a Primentor?" I ask. They both ignore me. Instead, Bianca's gaping, pellucid eyes penetrate, absorb me.

"Daniel, are you telling me that for the vaguest opportunity to commit a blatantly perverse, decidedly unnatural act, you have given up any chance at Ascendance? Do you realize how this hurts you? How it hurts Marco? How it hurts all of us? We are dealing with eternity here. There will come a point when this mistake is not correctable."

Apathy emboldens me. "I don't care," I say.

Her glowing chest heaves. She quivers, almost imperceptibly at first, then in a full blown tremor. I have the impression she is going to literally explode.

"I demand that you return to your stratum, immediately."

"I ... can't," I say.

"Why can't you?"

I gaze down at my borrowed feet. "I don't belong there."

"You think you're better off, rotting on the beaches?"

"No, I mean, I wasn't supposed to die. This is wrong. Me being here. A mistake. Just like my body is a mistake."

"Who are you to decide such a thing?"

I shrug. "It's ... how I feel."

"Doesn't matter how you feel," says Bianca. "You are dead. Souls once dead do not return. It is not meant to be. It is not right, and most importantly it is not allowed."

"But it's possible?" I say.

"What?"

"You're implying that it's possible."

"I've said no such thing," says Bianca.

"You implied it."

"Listen, Daniel. There is an entity in Elysium, a relative of yours, someone of considerable influence and power, who is very interested in your prompt Ascension. This is no ordinary soul. Not by any means, oh no. This is a Primentor."

"A pre-what?"

"Someone who can force her will upon you. Someone who speaks to Seraphim. I am simply trying to spare you the trauma of what that would entail. Now, take my hand and come along. We can go and re-establish your stratum before night falls."

"She's bluffing," says Sabonis.

"Marco!"

"It's true," he says. "They got no power down in Lethe. They're using bows and arrows for Chrissakes."

"This ... Primentor. You say he's my relative," I say. "What's his name?"

"Her name ..." says Bianca, "... is Paxson."

I know that name. They are distant cousins on my mother's side. Most of them live out in the Midwest somewhere. Iowa or Arkansas. They're not particularly close to us.

Sabonis sidles up. "Dan, you want no part of this."

"Marco, you have no right to interfere."

"I've already decided," I say. "I'm not going."

Bianca took a deep breath, out of habit more than need, her glassine lungs having no use for oxygen.

"So you would rather pursue Hector with this rogue? As if defying a Primentor's will were not bad enough? I've already warned Marco of danger of even being in Hector's vicinity, never mind following in his footsteps.

"Somehow, your threats don't impress me," says Sabonis. "How long has Delgado been pulling his routine? And he's still going strong. They haven't touched a hair on his head. I don't think you've got the means anymore to take him out. I think you've all gone flabby up there."

"You wait," says Bianca. "You wait and see. If you were smart. If you cared for my feelings ... you would stay away from him."

"Bianca!"

The glow of her eyes intensified. "You're taking him to Dilmun, aren't you?"

"Yeah. So?" says Sabonis.

"It's off limits. They won't tolerate your presence there much longer."

"Fuck, if I care. I'm hardly ever there. And when I am, my being there don't hurt nobody."

"Don't say I haven't warned you." She turns to me. "Daniel, are you coming?" Her eyes beckon like water in a deep well.

"No," I say without thinking or blinking.

"Fine," says Bianca. "But just to be clear. No one says no to a Primentor." She lopes off back towards the massif, gliding as much as stepping away from us, her bare feet like moonstone against the dirty gravel. She tosses back a glance, her scowl sculpted in ice.
Chapter 16: The Great Authority

The wind scours us with grit. Sabonis' eyes go wide.

"Well, that was awkward," he says. "I don't think I've ever seen her that mad before.

We stand and stare until Bianca is just a pale smudge high on the ridge.

Doubt and guilt arise in me for the first time. It's apparent now that I will not just slip through the cracks here—that I will be held accountable for this excursion.

"Come on. Let's go," says Sabonis.

We head across the gravel flats towards a bank of pumice and consolidated ash. Boulders of black volcanic glass mark the way, like mileposts.

Bianca lingers in my mind. Not her threats or remonstrations as much as her jellyfish looks. I still can't get beyond it. I have trouble thinking of her as human. Would I turn into something similar if I Ascended? Would I shed this preposterous female body at least and have my true male self re-emerge? Or would I be a girl jellyfish like Bianca?

But maybe that's how angels were supposed to look. Sabonis won't let me call her an angel. But that's what she is. What else could she be?

I remember my early childhood impressions of angels, stoked by the fake frescoes on the vaulted ceiling of my old church. With their flabby Ruben-esque flesh, it was truly a miracle they could hover as they did. That made no sense to me. I had no such trouble imagining Bianca with wings.

I wonder how much my abandonment or organized religion contributed to my current predicament. I never took to catechism or church-going. I wonder if my fate here would have been different if I had. Was there such a thing as an express passage into Elysium?

My atheism started young. Every Sunday my father would slicken my hair with Brylcreem and make me put on a scratchy black wool suit to go to church. Oh, how I hated that suit. The jacket had an unlined collar that felt like a porcupine stole against my neck. It was so excruciatingly uncomfortable and distracting that I couldn't even fade off into the dream worlds that made school bearable. I couldn't even pay attention to mass. If I prayed, it was only for a fire; anything to get us out of mass and get me out of those prickly pants.

I certainly never paid much attention to the guy in the red bathrobe behind the altar. If the Catholic Church had reverted back to the Latin Mass in those days, I wouldn't have noticed. I used the missal as a timepiece, thumbing the psalms and homilies in sequence sort of like a prisoner carving notches in his bunk to count the days.

My eyes would wander to pass the time, which is how I became familiar with those chunky angels. I would stare at the ceilings and walls, losing myself into the statues, the windows, the murals; anything to take my mind off the itching. My visual catechism included Satan tempting Jesus right above our heads on the inside of the biggest vault. The King of the Jews lay on some kind of shaved-off peak watching as two of his Apostles dangled in midair, reaching out their hands to him.

Everywhere you looked there were stories. Up and down the walls on both sides were statues graphically depicting Jesus' crucifixion in all eight Stations of the Cross, from the Roman soldiers spurring Him on with their lances to the men pounding nails through His palms.

On a sunny day the Heaven framed by the stained glass windows looked like a South Pacific island, and its residents all wore hundred-watt halos. When it rained it might as well have been New Jersey from what you could make out of the mud-colored panes.

And there was even horror to be found! Over the vestibule were painted the most grotesque cherubs looking like limbless mutant beach balls with wings. And demons! All over the place. Lurking in corners, peering around window frames.

If it weren't for the suit, and the fact that everyone was acting so quiet and serious, I might have actually enjoyed it. All that grim sobriety on people's faces disturbed me, though. Obviously these people were being careful not to upset the Great Authority Himself. And if they were worried, what about poor little me who just about peed his pants with fear waiting at the confessional, making up imaginary sins so I wouldn't disappoint the priest with my goodness?

I never had any doubts He existed back then. Every nook of the church was filled with a mark of this Greater Authority. What fool would spend so much time sculpting and painting all this stuff if it were all just a hoax? And it wasn't just this one church, there were thousands of them. I saw them on TV, in movies, in every little town my parents ever drove me through. A good half of the world was Christian. How could nine hundred million people be wrong?

It wasn't till later, high school and especially college that the facade began to crack for me. There were many reasons: inconsistencies, a billion people who believed in something entirely different, disease, disasters, the two thousand years of bickering and confusion over what He meant by what He said. All of it chipped away until I was convinced nobody could be in charge of this mess, and the only traveling you did after death was to the bottom of a six-foot hole. It was hard to say which human religion made out the best. As far as I could see, we were all wrong.

In the absence of church, away from the symbols of Their power I found it ever easier to dismiss the existence of any Great Authority. But then I died. And there Bianca was—like a glistening angelic ghost, sans wings and halo but no less Heavenly.

So far, it turns out that I was correct in rejecting all earthly religions, but it also happens that my vision of the cosmos was just as misguided as theirs. But Someone or Something was up there. I couldn't deny that anymore. Someone knew about me, and they had sent someone down specifically to fetch me. Were they simply looking out for my welfare?

We top the bank of pumice and keep climbing a slant of lava smoothed by millennia of sand blasting. Good thing, or my bare feet would have been all torn up.

"Nice to know ... I've got connections here."

"Huh? What the fuck you talking about?" says Sabonis.

"This Pre ... whatever ... Paxson."

Sabonis expels a puff of air. "Kid, this Paxson isn't some nice auntie asking you over for tea and crumpets," says Sabonis. "This is a beast that feeds on souls. No shit. It just wants to add you to its collection."

"It? How do you know this?" I say.

"I've had beasts of my own after me," says Sabonis. "I've been. I've seen."

"Been?"

"Trust me," he says. "I've been."

Been what? Been where? But I'm almost afraid to ask. Too much information too fast might make my head explode. So I just accept his words and trudge along the lava ledges behind him.

A screech rents the air, piercing, inhuman. My spine freezes. Sabonis trips over a rock and lands on his knees.

"W-what was that?" I say. It sounded like someone or something had just been murdered. Sabonis' eyes are wide and serious. He scans the air as if the scream had come right out of the sky.
Chapter 17: Unexpected Conjunction

Bianca pads lightly up the ellipsoid tunnel that pierces the heart of her gallery. A soft orange light highlights dimples and welts on the honeycombed walls: a mosaic of hexagonal cells, many with blurry forms darkly visible behind translucent membranes. Unoccupied cells, though sparse, shine like windows in a skyscraper at night.

The tunnel is alive, flexing and twisting from the movements of the countless Ascendants jostling like corpuscles through capillaries. Through the mob, Bianca spots her own empty cell and glides over to it, anxious to be alone, to meditate and perchance to dream.

Bianca slides in feet-first through a flaccid, spindle-shaped slit. Folds collapse and conform to her shape. She reclines on the stretchy membrane that spans its center like a hammock.

Before she can settle in and receive her cell's consolation and nurturing and consolation, the membrane snaps shut and the cell shuttles rapidly away from the corridor, bumping and sliding through layer after layer, slithering past a queue of other cells waiting to mingle with their Mentors.

Bianca is alarmed, never having experienced such a rapid and unexpected transport. Panic-stricken at the unplanned encounter it portends, she scrambles for a way to explain why she has come back from Lethe so soon. Would it suffice to say she felt lost and confused and needed to collect herself?

Her cell's emanations fill her soul with gentle warmth, the essence of clannish communion. But Bianca's anxiety overrides its influence. She rubs her face nervously, a vestigial habit with no physical effect. She awaits the inevitable.

Bianca senses the proximity of Mother Ebbani's cell. Other cells already crowd around it, but none are yet locked into conjunction. They are waiting for her.

"Our daughter ... close ... yes," Bianca feels her Mentor think, though the thoughts are muffled by the insulating effect of her membranes. Bianca feels a strong but indistinct mind reply.

Bianca sees something filamentous pull away from her Mentor's cell. It whips over to Bianca, lingers a moment, then retracts.

Bianca's cell seals against Mother Ebbani's. Conjunction achieved, opacity becomes translucence and the petite shape of her fetally folded Mentor becomes visible.

"Mother Ebbani, that strand ... was that our Primentor?"

"Yes, my child."

"I was being discussed. I felt it."

"I'll be frank," says Mother Ebbani. "She is losing patience. Luckily for you... she doesn't yet grasp how far you are from resolving this situation. You have another chance to correct your errors, but you're running out of time."

"I tried to convince him but ... he is being stubborn. Even without Marco's influence, I'm not sure this one would Ascend. I don't know how to handle this."

"Surely not by hiding in your cell."

"But ... I needed to think."

"You need to think on your feet, child. A Guide should never flee simply because she encounters some resistance. You have tools. Use them."

"Tools?"

"You know full well your resources."

"I'd still rather rely on persuasion."

Mother Ebbani shifts in her cell and sniffs. "We've seen where that has gotten you. If the situation deteriorates any further, others may be forced to intervene, and I have to warn you, it may not be gentle."

"I assure you, there'll be no need for force, Mother. Daniel is reachable. I can see it in his eyes. He just needs the right approach."

"Remove the Unfettered One and you won't have to worry about a right or wrong approach. You will have only to reach out your hand. Marco is what's dragging him down."

"I don't believe that to be the case Mother. This stubbornness, it comes from Daniel himself. He believes his death to be in error."

"Don't we all?" Mother Ebbani mutters.

Bianca tries to brush her hair back with her fingers. It doesn't budge.

"You will find yourself...." Bianca leans in. Mother Ebbani speaks so softly, her words are barely perceptible above the background hum. "Assisted ... next time you visit Daniel."

"H-how do you mean? I ... I don't need assistance."

"You obviously do. Your feelings for the Unfettered One get in your way."

"Don't hurt him! I can fetch Daniel. I can still turn him around. He'll see his error once his stratum begins to shift."

"We don't have time, Bianca. You saw the Primentor visiting with me. Next time she won't be so merciful ... with any of us."

"Mother, I ... I plan on trying again, soon. But first I shall need some time to rest and to think."

"No," says Mother Ebbani. "No thinking. Now is the time for doing. Go back now. Our dear Primentor will soon be inquiring of this Daniel's progress. This I guarantee you."

Membranes spiral in like a camera shutter.

"Mother Ebbani, wait! This assistance you mentioned. What—?"

But the membranes seal and darken. She is whisked back to her corridor, her cell wide open to the passing traffic, and no amount of willpower can force her cell to seal.
Chapter 18: Hunted

The shriek touches off some deep trigger, rooted in instinct, urging me to run. But I stay put, staring into the hills, feeling naked and vulnerable.

"What was that?" I say, adrenalin pumping.

"Settle down," says Sabonis, though he too looks nervous. "I'm not sure ... but it sounded like a monkey."

Two figures race across the slopes. I point.

"Up there," I say.

One man carries a dead monkey, dangling limp. They chase the rest of a small troop of monkeys across the ash and scrub,

"Hunters," says Sabonis. "Keep walking. Just ignore them."

"Squatters?"

"Not in those heights. Fringers maybe," says Sabonis. "Don't stare! Just keep on walking."

But I keep glancing back. And I see one of the hunters lay a hand on his companion's arm. They break off their pursuit of the monkeys and keep pace with us over a parallel track.

"Told you not to stare!" says Sabonis, staring. The men are swaddled in baggy, brown clothes that disguise their shape. They pull long, curved sticks from bundles on their back, split up and trot down the hill, not directly at us, but angling off to either flank.

"Shit," says Sabonis. "They got long bows, and they're stringing them up. Look at 'em stalk us. Like we're a couple of monkeys."

"Who are they?" An odd little ripple squirms out of my stomach and into my chest.

Sabonis veers towards the sea. "Come on!"

The men in brown, instantly pick up their pace. Sabonis trots like an old bear, waddling from side to side. I jog alongside him, startled anew by the width of my hips; the unfamiliar geometry of my female legs.

I glance back and see one of our pursuers crouch and draw his bow.

"He's gonna shoot!" I say.

"We're out of range," says Sabonis. "No way can he reach us."

A feathered shaft nearly three feet long comes whistling past and cracks against a rock. Shards of obsidian prick my shins.

My legs pummel the lava with renewed purpose, leaving Sabonis behind. I hear him puffing beside me as he too reaches a new level of locomotion.

One pursuer takes an angle that threatens to cut us off. Sabonis sees this and turns, angling back towards the Loch. The other pursuer is on track to head us off before we can reach the Rift.

Something hard and heavy thuds against my back and knocks me down. I skid across the ledge into a pocket of soft ash. Sabonis yanks me back to my feet.

A rock the size of a clementine ricochets off the ground and bounces high over our heads.

"Keep running!"

One of the men whirls a sling over his head, sending projectiles out way with alarming accuracy. Another arrow misses us high.

We reach a saddle where a little vale opens up, cutting shoreward through the cliffs onto a narrow strip of beach. Sabonis heads straight for the beach. We enjoy a brief respite from the barrage as we move down slope and out of our pursuers' line of sight.

Brick-sized chunks of pumice pave the floor of the vale. They clink when they knock together. I notice stickiness on my right foot. I am leaving a tell-tale connect-the-dot trail of blood with every other stride. I try not to think about it. I feel no pain.

"Can you swim?" says Sabonis as we hit sand and pound across the beach. It strikes me as an odd question to ask someone who had just floated across an ocean.

Sabonis points across a wide bay to a hazy peninsula of golden dunes and green hills. The seas look rough. A series of mountainous swells are preparing to roll in.

A rock comes hurtling overhead, signaling that our intermission was over. We turn and see the man with the sling on the cliff above the vale.

An arrow slashes through my wind-billowed cloak and impales the black sand. I see the bow man standing in the vale.

"Scratch that," says Sabonis. "Let's get under the cliffs"

He snatches the shaft out of the sand as he double back towards the rocks. The arrowhead is hooked and barbed, with an x-shaped cross-section. As we run, another arrow skips off the top of a dune and spatters us with sand.

We reach a mass of stony rubble and turn away from the vale. Waves have undercut the basalt. Columns have collapsed, creating a tangle of catwalks. The overhang screens us from view from the sling wielder above us. The bow man has yet to reach the beach.

Marco picks his way through the collapsed basalt with the surety of one who had gone this way a thousand times before. The swells we spotted earlier crash ashore and consume the beach. Rank after rank over larger swells are about to follow. A wave explodes on the dunes and drenches us.

"Man, this isn't right," says Sabonis. "Tides don't come in this fast. We're going to have to take the high road."

He leaps at a shoulder-high shelf of limpet-encrusted basalt, throws one leg over the top and hauls himself up. He leans over to help me and his sturdy grip on my wrist is the only thing that keeps the breaking surf from sweeping me away.

We clamber along fractures on the side of the bluffs, out of reach of the waves. The stone is slick with slime. We choose our footfalls carefully.

"Least they can't follow along the beach," says Sabonis. "Must be storm waves. There's a pounder brewing somewhere out there."

I see only fog beyond the bay. I concentrate my wits on keeping my feet on the face of the cliff. I peek back. The sling-wielder has climbed the wall of the wall of the vale and is clambering after us, but his precarious position prevents him from using his sling for the time being. I bump into Sabonis' backside.

"Quickly!" I say. "We're being followed."

"Hold your horses," says Sabonis. "I'm going as fast I can without dumping us in the drink." The face of the bluff curves ahead of us taking us out of our pursuer's line of sight. There's no sign of the bow man.

Progress is slow, hindered by the rugged, pocked surface—a messy layer cake of lava and pumice and basalt. Rotten pumice crumbles like Styrofoam under our feet. Waves meet rock twenty yards below us, smothering us with splash and spray. The water has risen and swallowed the beaches. The sea below is a dizzying blur of whirlpools and clashing currents.

Our path is as tortuous as a stock market chart. We move up and down the face, never forcing the issue, letting the mountain decide which way it wants us to go.

We remain under overhangs, but I am more anxious now than when we were under fire, with no idea of where or when our pursuers might spring out. A shower of pebbles and dust sifts down just ahead of us, answering my fears.

"Step careful," says Sabonis. "Don't knock any shit off the ledge. We want to keep them guessing."

But that proves impossible. The cliff only gets trickier to traverse as we go along. The stone is so friable and loose, we inevitably trigger slides that send masses of rubble splashing into the ocean.

My adrenalin is in full surge, but why? No sea could drown me. No arrow could slay me. Why should I care? What did I fear? I couldn't be death. How worse could it be, becoming a Shade? How many times did a person have to die before they were out of the game?

"Tricky spot ahead," says Sabonis.

A booming sound increases in volume as we pick our way along. It has the brittle resonance of thunder, but rounder at the edges. The roar reverberates. The stone trembles beneath my fingers.

We edge around a protruding, refrigerator-sized knob of lava and the source of this liquid thunder comes into view. A narrow chasm slices deeply into the flank of the volcano. Huge waves barrel far up the crevasse and explode into a huge bowl undercutting the walls. Between swells the water churns and swirls like a whirlpool before gushing back out.

"The tide shouldn't be in this far," says Sabonis. "This time of day we should be able to walk across."

"What do we do?" I say.

The noise is so bad, Sabonis doesn't hear me. He just gawks at the scene below us.

Voices filter down from the bluff top directly above us.

"Either Mr. Slingshot went back up to his friend," says Sabonis. "Or we got more company." He hugs the cliff face, inches his way around and enters the chasm. "Follow me."

The ledges are narrow and dripping with spray. The walls of the chasm shake like an earthquake with every blast of wave. My stomach churns nearly as much as the waters below. My head nearly swims off my shoulders.

The chasm cuts deeply, a quarter mile or more, but the space between the walls narrows, the deeper we penetrate. A hundred yards in, a boulder is wedged like a bridge, but it barely touches either wall. It looks precarious.

Seeing that boulder makes me feel better about our chances, until a brown-hooded figure comes rappelling down beside it.

I point. "There ... th-there!"

"I see him," says Sabonis, calmly.

"What do we do?"

Directly across from us a table-sized ledge juts out from the opposite wall of the crevasse, cutting the gap to about six feet. Without a word, Sabonis plants one foot on a knob of basalt and leaps, landing on both feet just inches in from the lip of the table. He skitters on some loose stones and falls on his butt, barely catching himself from rolling into the crevasse.

As the brown-hooded man swings closer to the boulder bridge, I stare at Sabonis across the chasm.

"I ... I can't do that," I shout.

"Course you can," says Sabonis, ducking around a protruding ledge. "And you'd better do it quick."

The hooded man reaches the bridge. He kneels, extricating himself from the rope twisting around one thigh. A bow and quiver rides high on his back.

"Come on!" says Sabonis.

I look down at the confusion of water and foam.

"You go ahead without me," I say. "I'm not a good jumper."

"Get your ass over here now!"

I figure, would I rather drown or have two Klansmen wannabes butcher me like a monkey? Yes, I am already dead, but that detail doesn't seem to matter to my gut.

I look at the knob that Sabonis used, look at the shelf and I jump, closing my eyes midway across the chasm. I land, as light-footed as a cat well onto the shelf, just in time to see Sabonis impaled in the collarbone by an arrow.

"Aah, fuck!" he screams, clutching the feathered shaft in his neck. Another arrow comes for me and careens off the wall where my chest had been a moment before. I scramble along the ledge behind Sabonis. He's trying to work his way out of the chasm toward the sea. He takes his bloody hand away from his neck and a crimson stain spreads down his muslin shirt trumping all the other stains that cover it like marbled paper. I help him along, supporting him when he falters.

The arrow scrapes against the bluff. Sabonis groans. Sabonis braces his feet and frees both hands to snap the shaft. He tries to back out the obsidian head but it won't budge.

He continues on. For the moment, the protruding ledge protects us, but the brown shirts will get back their line of sight as we move out from behind it.

The tumult below is all chaos and foam, like a mad washing machine. Another arrow skips harmlessly off the chasm wall and out to sea. We are exposed again. Sabonis clambers frantically along the wall like a terrified crab. He keeps picking at the arrow.

"Leave it in for now," I say. "It'll bleed too much."

"Fuck you," he says, his face scrunching in pain.

The hooded man crosses the boulder bridge and follows after us.

Sabonis stops fussing with the arrow. He fishes a blade out of his waistband. It is clear and crystalline and splits the light like a prism.

"Step around me," he says.

"Just go!" I say, pushing at his chest.

"Let go of me. I can take him."

"We don't need to," I say. "We can just run."

He tries to climb around me. I grab his arm to restrain him. He shrugs me off, grunts and jabs me with his elbow, knocking me off my foothold. I slide into the chasm.

"Shit!"

He tries to reach for me and loses his balance. I slip until my foot wedges in a crack. Sabonis falls past me. His stunned eyes lock onto mine as he plunges into the sea and disappears into the white churn.

I dangle and watch the brown shirt approach me. Do I want to be carved into sweet meat or drown? I choose to join Sabonis. As I let go, the wind blows the brown hood back. Long black hair spills out. A hand reaches out to me. I recognize that face. It is Alecto. Her eyes seem as startled as Sabonis' as I fall. My feet knife into the water and the world disappears in a mass of bubbles and froth.
Chapter 19: Submerged

I bob to the surface. A swell surges into the chasm and dashes me against the wall. I flail, fingernails scraping for purchase on the slick stone. Alecto crouches on the ledge from which I fell, bowstring tensed, a glint of obsidian poised and pointed at the thrashing surf.

She relaxes when she spots me and lowers her bow. She reaches for a loop of rope on her hip, tosses me a line with her free hand. It slaps the water right in front of me and splashes my face.

Do I want to be rescued by her? Before I can react, an undertow sucks me down and plunges me deep. A torrent shunted down by the chasm wall pins me against the rocky bed as if I am under Niagara.

I can't budge. The odd thing is, the sad thing: I don't care. I've been through this already. This ocean is no threat, it is my womb.

For many long seconds I hug the sea floor, sand blasted with swirling grit, until the current breaks and shifts. Back flow from the chasm rips me off the rocks and into the open sea.

I rocket to the surface and skim over an outgoing wave, wind milling my arms frantically, fighting to stay on top of the surf. My buoyancy is negligible. I have swallowed lots of water and I feel it heavy in my lungs. It has been minutes since I had taken a breath, but that doesn't seem to matter.

The chasm has emptied. The entire waterline has receded from the cliffs and re-exposed the thin beaches that the tsunami-like surge had immersed as Sabonis and I traversed the cliff face, almost as if the sea were sentient and had reached out its mighty pseudopod to get us.

I circle about, but see no sign of Sabonis. Alecto is gone. To my left towers a dark pillar of stone almost human in shape—hooded and caped like a pitying monk or an angel of death. I kick out and swim for it, fighting against a current that consumes most of my progress. I inch closer until a swell thrusts me against the pillar.

I dig my fingers into stone pocked like Swiss cheese. I cling like a crab as the sea pries at my grip trying to peel me off. I jam my fist into a crack and twist, securing an unbreakable hold.

I wonder to myself why I fight, why I don't just let the sea take me where it wants to take me. And I know it's because I want to control my fate. I always had, until the moment of my death. Why should things change?

I can't remove my fist or the sea will take me. I shut my eyes and try to think of nice, calm things: cricket song and iced tea on a summer night, watching videos and cuddling with Gina on the couch—anything but those terrible waves barreling into me.

I take advantage of any respite, however brief, to reposition my hand in the crevice. I creep up the pillar, with less and less of my body exposed to the full force of the swells. And the sea continues to recede. I can climb freely now. I move to the backside of the pillar where a natural bridge connects it to the bluff. I scan the heights for Alecto and her companion. I see nothing but scraggly shrubs bending with the wind.

I reach the bridge and cross to a ledge that breaks the shoulder of the bluff like a giant step. I walk in the direction Sabonis had intended us to go, but I walk now with diffidence. His sodden, shredded cloak clings to me like wet fur on a cat. My head hangs as I become aware of my utter alone-ness. I have little motivation to continue. I look back at Mt. Abdiel and consider returning to the place that Bianca brought me.

But I do continue on, plodding along the step as it descends to a wide strip of beach. Black sand backed with grass-anchored dunes, all of it soaked by the now receded tsunami, leaving behind lagoons in every low spot. I wobble to the tallest dune I can find, and drop down into the sand and lie flat.

The wind has already begun to dry the sand. I roll my head to one side and vomit seawater. For many minutes I lay still, my head empty of all but my most basic senses. When I lift my head, I am struck by a disturbing sense of déjà vu as if I am back on that other beach again.

But this beach differs. It is thinner, backed by sheer cliffs, not a mountainside, and completely vacant.

Or is it?

I see a body sprawling in the smooth, glistening sand at the limits of the surf, a limp, still form that looks quite dead.

Sabonis.
Chapter 20: Second Death

Half-embedded in sand, Sabonis lies like driftwood among dismembered crab claws and wave-tossed bits of shell. The broken arrow juts from the space between the collarbone and sinews of his neck. Pink liquid oozes from an otherwise bloodless wound. Sabonis' arms spread outward as if seeking an embrace, his legs frozen in mid-stride.

I approach Sabonis cautiously. His eyes, clouded like the fish one avoids at market, gaze blankly past me. How can I be squeamish of the dead when I am dead myself? But I am, I can't help it.

It strikes me as unfair and redundant, this second death. Wasn't dying once bad enough? Whatever happened to rest in peace? And how many levels of death could there be? Was eternity only a hall of mirrors, a series of diminished existences that lead us downward until we peter out into nothingness?

The buttons of Sabonis' shirt have burst, exposing the pale skin of his belly and the crest of black fur up the mid-line. His shirt tail sweeps up over his shoulder like a cape. Bedded in the black sand, he looks like a bas-relief of a floating prophet from a Raphael painting—the one where Jesus hovers over his cowering disciples on a hill top.

Facing Sabonis' pathetic remains, I find myself straining to feel something, to get beyond the numbness suffusing me. Is it because I am already once-dead myself? Is it because the twice-dead don't qualify for grieving? I haven't known Sabonis very long, but I should feel something more than 'least it wasn't me'.

Death still puzzles and repels me. I am unfamiliar with its face. That sounds odd coming from a dead person, but I had never attended a funeral (other than my own). My grandfather died just before I was born, and my other grandparents survive me. Sabonis is my first direct encounter with the sallow face of a dead man. I don't know how to feel.

I nudge him with my foot. He is soft and quivery like fresh meat, pre-rigor mortis. I kneel and brush sand off his face. I search for some emotion, for any strong feeling, but I find only disappointment, frustration over a quest truncated before it could even get started.

I feel bad about not feeling bad. What is wrong with me? Is Lethe as numbing emotionally as it is physically? I try to pierce through the numbness, but there is nothing behind it. I am empty of sentiment.

It seems proper to bury him rather than leave him for the gulls to peck. I find a stick and begin scratching a trench at the base of a dune. I drop to my knees and scoop handfuls of sand. The act takes me back to my childhood when my sister Diane would let me bury her up to her neck. How she would laugh if she could see me now with my tits and girlie ass. I catch myself. Yeah right. If she could see her little brother burying a corpse on some hellish beach in the afterlife. Ha ha. Funny. Not.

I look out at a gentler sea. An outer reef now restrains the larger swells. Gentle ripples lap at the beach. It hardly seems the same ocean.

I make a trench deep enough to hide a body; shallow enough to satisfy a serial killer, but I keep digging. My senses begin to click into place like the bars and stars of a slot machine. I contemplate my future.

I realize now how mindless my decision was to follow Sabonis down the mountain. Who was I to question the order of the afterlife? This rebellion must have been an aftershock of my dying, my rejection of the permanence of it, another phase of denial. I wonder how common such reactions are here. I wonder if Bianca will forgive my impetuous decision and take me back.

I glance up at the fractured cliffs and imagine eyes glaring down on me. I wonder what happened to Alecto and her hunting companion. Was it a sign that I am forgiven that she opted to throw me a line instead of impaling me with her arrow? Does that mean I could walk back to Mt. Abdiel unmolested? I don't know if I can handle a night alone in the hills or an unaccompanied passage through Gihon.

I wish Bianca would show up. I wonder if she can be summoned with a prayer. Whoever said the thing about there being no atheists in foxholes probably never realized that the same was true of the after world. The presence of a Higher Power is a no-brainer to me now. Based on what I've seen so far, though, They're not who we thought They were. None of us were right. Not the Buddhists, not the Jews and definitely not the Christians.

And this is when my gut seizes. If I go back to the mountain, I have no hope of seeing Gina. Not ever. Never. Unless she died and went to Heaven ... or Elysium, if the two even equated. But I can't wish such a thing on her. Have I sunk so low that my only resort is to hope for my lover's death?

I wonder, if instead of Ascending or Clearing, I should take a shot at finding this Delgado person, the one who stole Sabonis' cat. This possibility, however far-fetched, appeals to me far more than struggling up that mountain. I don't know what that implies about me. Perhaps I am doomed to become a Squatter.

When the trench I dig strikes the water table and its sides crumble as quickly as I can remove the collapsings, I give up and mosey over to Sabonis' body, straightening his legs and peeling his shirt out of the sand. I drag him over to the sorry grave I have dug for him.

I am dragging Sabonis when something rises from the surf draped in seaweed and dripping. The beast is as large as a man and blacker than black. I let go of Sabonis and back away. The creature comes straight for me, drifting like a shadow over the sand. I stumble up the dunes. My jaw trembles. My heart winds into overdrive. Now I can feel. Now I can fear.
Chapter 21: Disconnected.

The black thing emerges from the surf and advances across the beach, homing in on me like a predator. Chunks of seaweed drop away, revealing its human form.

I scramble up a steep dune, scanning the cliffs for an escape route, but the wall here looks un-climbable. The sand collapses and delivers me back to the bottom of the dune. I am cornered.

"What the fuck?" says the thing. "You dug a hole? You were gonna bury me?"

His voice sounds fuzzy and distant, as if transmitted through a string and a tin can.

"Marco?" I say, my voice quivering. "Are you a—?"

"Yeah. I'm a Shade," he says. "Deader than dead, as they say, thanks to you."

I try to gauge his expression, but I can't find his eyes. I can't even make out a face amidst the light-swallowing blackness perched between his shoulders.

"Look at you," he says. "Not a scratch on your butt." He glides over to his corpse. "Good. I was worried my head might be bashed in. Two arms, two legs, two nuts. Can't ask for much more. He bends over and tugs at the arrow stub stuck in his clavicle. It won't budge. "Better leave it, I guess. Don't want to mess myself up any worse."

"Worse?" I say.

"C'mon and help me out over here. We gotta get myself put back together. Don't got much time. This carcass isn't getting any fresher."

"How?"

He swoops down and lies on top of his body, matching his Shade up limb for limb.

"It's easy" he says. "You just gotta help push me back into myself."

I come forward, cautiously, afraid to come too close. His cold black hand zips out and snatches my ankle and tugs me closer. Fingers squish against my shin bone like tentacles. He has no bones.

"Okay," I say. "How do I do this?" My words tremble.

"I don't care," says Sabonis. "Stomp on me if you have to. But I've gotta get back in quick or I'm gonna lose it."

I step onto his Shade and sink in like he's made of memory foam.

"Don't just stand there, move around. We gotta get all the parts in."

"All the parts?"

"All the parts."

I do a sort of sideways, shuffling jig down the length of one arm and then the other. I repeat the process on his. I'm amazed to see flesh binding to Shade as a result of my actions. But his Shade still bulges out of his torso.

I hop onto his chest with both feet. It gives way and sinks down.

"Oof! I felt that," says Sabonis.

"Sorry," I say.

"No. That's good. That's what we want. Keep at it, kid."

"How did this happen to you?" I say.

"I don't know," he says. "Got battered around the rocks. Impact shook me loose, I guess. Happens. Don't got the tightest Shade in the joint. Chopping wood, I've had my fingers come out from the vibration. Shit, I'm coming undone ... keep stomping!"

I resume my dance, keeping pressure with one foot while slamming the other down like a piston.

"My head! Don't forget the head."

His Shade head rests on the other as if it's a pillow. I lift my foot, but hesitate.

"Do it! Do it, you goddamn son of a—"

I slam my heel onto his mouth and stifle his words. For a moment he looks like a Picasso, with a Shade ear protruding from his forehead and a Shade nose protruding from his ear, until it snaps into alignment.

Sabonis gurgles. A gush of water spews out of his mouth. He coughs and sputters and gasps for breath. But it's his corporeal jaw moving now, his tangible chest that is heaving. His face and limbs are mottled with blackness where the Shade part of him seeps out. But his corpse has been re-animated."

"Mah hahhht, iss nah beeteeh," he says laboring to control a slack jaw and unresponsive tongue. "Jah yoo noh shee pee aah?"

"What?"

"Shee ... pee ... aah," he repeats, trying to enunciate.

"CPR?"

Sabonis nods emphatically.

"How's that gonna help?"

Sabonis eyes bulge out of his skull. He grabs my ankle again, his grip still cold but firm with flesh and bone. I can tell he really wants me to do it even though the corpse he's attempting to possess seems much too far gone.

I sigh and kneel beside him. "Call nine one one," I say to a swooping gull.

"Cuh thuh shih!"

"It's part of the drill!" I tilt his head back, yank open his jaw and fish his wayward tongue clear of his throat. His mouth smells like a stagnant lagoon. I take a deep breath and bring my lips to his dead mouth which tastes of salt and grit and rot. I pinch his nostrils closed and deliver two long breaths, fighting off a wave of nausea.

I rear back, spit off to one side, cross my palms over his sternum and push down fifteen times, just like the Red Cross taught me. Two more breaths, two fingers on the jugular to check for pulse, and back to his chest.

Sabonis' body convulses before I finish the second set of compressions. I rock back onto the sand and rise. Sabonis lifts his head. A glimmer of life has returned to his fishy eyes.

"They gone?" he says, looking up at the cliffs.

I nod.

"Thanks," he says, his voice wheezy. He waggles his arms one at a time. "I'm ... not as bad off as I thought. The bones are good. Seem to have most of my blood. Just a little waterlogged."

"You don't look so good," I say.

"You're one to talk," says Sabonis. "You look a bit ratty yourself. Not to mention the wardrobe malfunction."

I look down. One of my boobs has slipped free of the raincoat. I quickly tuck it back in and button the coat back up. I come to appreciate the value of a bra.

Sabonis reaches out his hand. I haul him to his feet. He takes a step and wobbles precariously, but manages to stay up. A notice a third appendage oozing out below his left knee.

"Your leg," I say.

"No wonder I can't walk right," he says. He sits down, draws his knees up to this chest and hugs them together. With a wet pop, the black limb meshes with his flesh. He rises, bipedal once again, and lurches off down the beach.

"Where are you going?" I say.

"Where d'ya think?" he says. I follow behind, my eyes glued to the ten fingers of his left hand, five made of flesh drooping limp like a bird's broken wing. I decide not to say anything.
Chapter 22: Dilmun

We walk along the beach. Sabonis struggles to maintain dominion over his limbs. One arm hangs limp. The other flings out and whacks me. His Shade keeps leaking out, and when it does he loses control of the afflicted limb. We stop frequently so he can pull himself together.

Not all his problems are spiritual. He bleeds from the broken arrow protruding from his neck. His face is paler than pale and tinged with blue. I don't see how he can afford to lose any more blood. But this is Lethe, where health means something different than what it meant on Earth.

We keep close to the base of the cliff. Sabonis glances over his shoulder constantly to see if we are being followed. I am worried more for him than me. I feel invincible after emerging from the waves intact and after Alecto's act of mercy. I hope I'm right.

The bluff curves around to a channel separating us from the long mound of dune and scrubby hills Sabonis calls the Cape. It's not attached to Lethe so it's technically an island, though the strait separating it looks waist-deep at most. Sabonis says the Guides call the place Dilmun, but that name seems to irritate him.

Dilmun is not much to look at; a collection of spits and dunes and low hills covered with stubby conifers. Though not exactly verdant, it contrasts starkly with the barren wastes we have just crossed.

The tide, if that's what I can call the slosh of water in this strange sea, has ebbed as low as it gets. Sabonis leans on the sand-carved, salt-bleached pole he is using for a walking stick and stares across the channel. He shivers like a scolded dog.

"You okay?" I say.

He gives his head a brusque shake. "Gotta keep going," he says. "Don't cross now ... never will."

The channel looks shallow, but carries a current as swift as a river. A stew of flotsam hurtles by: mats of sheared off kelp, evergreen branches rusty with death and even a palm frond or two.

"Palms," I say.

Sabonis ignores me, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. He pushes off his staff and into the channel. An elbow comes undone and peels away from the flesh. He jabs his staff into the mud and whacks it back in place with his good palm. "Get back in, you bastard!" he says to his elbow. "I'm taking this body with me whether it wants me or not. It's mine. I earned it."

His staff topples over. I snatch it before the current can carry it away. Sabonis stumbles as I hand him back his staff. The current tugs at my legs. I stay within arm's length of Sabonis. I can picture him falling and being swept out to sea.

We emerge from the channel a good hundred yards from where we entered. Sabonis rises up a gravel bank and sways drunkenly. I put a hand on his side to brace him. His flesh is squishy from the bits of Shade that don't quite match up with his physical form. I yank my hand away as if I touched maggots.

Sabonis glares. "Stop looking at me like that," he says.

I look off across the channel. Away from the obstructing cliffs, I can see all the way up the lava slopes to a smoking cinder cone. Sabonis lumbers off.

We pass quickly over gravel banks onto a wide field of dunes ascending in ranks as we move in from the channel. Most of the dunes are overgrown with shrubs bearing waxy, blue berries, but some bare their gleaming sands framed delicately by encroaching lichens and mosses.

The dunes quickly transition to a series of rumpled and wrinkled hills. Small ponds hide deep in the hollows between. The stone underfoot is far different from the pumice and lava of the wastes. We tread mostly over crumbly shale and chunky conglomerates studded with shells and quartz.

Sabonis leads us down into a hollow undulant with tall grass and vetches, treeless but for a few venerable and scarred specimens, stout with broken and stubby limbs. Jagged splinters bleached grey crown ancient trunks whose canopies seemed to have been twisted off.

A vague crease in the greenery marks the trail. We pass a stone wall and a collapsed foundation with cracked timbers and piles of rotting thatch.

"A village?" I say.

"Prospers," says Sabonis. He squeezes his wayward elbow against his side to keep the Shade limb contained. "Quentin and Ruby. Before my time, but Andali knew them. They were a couple. Both died old, found each other here. Had a baby, even."

"A baby?"

"I know," says. "Bianca denies it ever happened. Says it's impossible. But like you and me both know ... mistakes happen."

"Was it ... alive? I mean ... not like us now. But how we were ... in life?"

"Not sure," says Sabonis. "But her name was Diamond. Guides wanted them to give her up. They refused. Andali says this monster storm came, a 'pounder' he called it. Tore the place apart. I mean, you see these trees. Strange thing ... it didn't touch any other part of Lethe. Only here. Sounds fishy to me."

"You mean—"

"I think They done it. Someone up there. I heard Guides talk about Cleansings. Don't think they were talking about bathtubs."

"You'd think there'd have been a tidier way of handling it."

"How?" says Sabonis. "Collectors?

"Just ... let her grow up and die like the rest of us. Why not?"

Sabonis' eyes alternately blacken and brighten. "Maybe they were afraid of what she might become."

My eyes drift to a little wooden box embedded in the clay, moss-covered and rotting. I flip it over. It's a little toy cart with a single cracked wheel.

Sabonis coughs and once he starts he can't stop. He hunches over, racked with paroxysms that rattle his Shade loose. His face loses what little pink had managed to overcome the gray. I expect his Shade to come busting out at any moment, leaving his body to collapse like a pile of meat.

But he keeps it together and moves on, past the remains of the Prospers' homestead, into the thick scrub on the side of a hill. We round the hill to find another hollow, this one with glinting at us with ponds for eyes and a lagoon for a mouth protected from the sea by two mandibular arcs of sand. A floating quay bobs in the lagoon.

We descend and Sabonis steps up the pace. He careens off trees, stumbles over their roots. The path veers towards a round mud-walled hut with a central post and a thick thatched roof. He pushes open a crude wooden door and stumbles in past a hanging partition that bisects the interior. He collapses on a lumpy mattress below a small curtained window.

"Didn't think I'd make it," says Sabonis.

"You gonna be okay?" I say.

"Yeah," he says. "I'll be fine." But his tone belies uncertainty.

It's dim inside. I can't see what's happening to his Shade. I stand at the partition, ogling his eclectic collection of detritus, each item weathered like they had spent months or years floating in the sea. There's an old Sony tube TV, plug-less, its wire frayed; a row of barnacled children's bath toys, a blue turtle, a red beaver, a yellow duck; chunks of yellowed Styrofoam, plastic bottles and poly bags.

"I need ... water," says Sabonis. "There's a spring ... out back."

I grab one of the least dingy bottles and head outside. Behind the hut, where the hills start to rise, there's a little sandy seep, dug out to create a clear pool. I fill the bottle and bring it in to Sabonis. He drinks noisily, like an old man slurping soup. Much of it runs down his face into his lap. I see that his Shade has come unmeshed at the lips. He has two noses again.

My fingers touch something crinkly. I look down. It's a magazine: a dog-eared and water-warped copy of the international version of Newsweek. March 12, 1974. Old news for me, but maybe not for Lethe.

"Where'd you get this?" I say.

Sabonis' eyes lift open a crack.

"Delgado."

"He gave this to you?"

"Took it," says Sabonis. "From his stash."

"Holy shit," I say. The address label reads: Hector Delgado, 1137 Puerta del Cielo Blvd., Santa Clara CA.

Sabonis grimaces and writhes on his mat. "Can you give me a hand with this arrow? It's killing me."

"Um ... I'm really not good at that kind of thing," I say. "I'm kind of squeamish."

"Fuck squeamish," he says. "You're dead. Get your ass over here."

I comply sheepishly.

"It's wedged in really tight, I think the barb's caught on bone. If you push it in and down, I think it'll come free."

"Why don't you do it?" I say.

"Because I haven't got any fucking fingers," he says, thrusting up a dangly fist, Shade fingers erect like a rooster crest.

I try to be gentle. I take the broken shaft daintily in my fingertips and twist slightly. Sabonis moans. I back off.

"Push the damn thing in!"

"I'm trying!" I wiggle the arrow again. He screams.

"Enough! Get away from me."

"Sorry," I say. "I tried."

Sabonis whimpers and squirms on his mattress. I retreat back behind the partition. The magazine tucked under my arm is a screw boring into my heart, a powerful sign that a passage to confound death might really exist. Something dark and heavy settles into my low points and smothers the little ember of hope I harbored for returning to Gina. Nothing's going to happen without Sabonis.

"Kid?" His voice is weary.

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna try and ... sleep this off. There's a spear under the eaves. Get it ... use it ... to keep the Collectors away. They know I'm weak. They'll be coming for me tonight. I just know it."

I duck outside and find the spear tucked behind a post. It's a head taller than me with one long, tapered point and a second point curving down like a hook. A surge of anxiety flushes away the heaviness in my heart. I grab the spear and retreat inside the hut.
Chapter 23: Keeping Watch

Sabonis struggles to force breath after breath into his reluctant flesh. I listen from across the hut on the other side of the partition. I can't bear to watch him suffer.

I face the door, my back propped against the central pillar: a tree trunk thicker and straighter than any I have yet seen in Lethe or Dilmun. The hooked spear is tucked under my arm, pointing towards the door opening. The axe I found by a wood pile out back rests at my feet. A crude machete fashioned from iron strapping sits on the rickety table beside me.

I whisper to myself: "They can't hurt me." That's my mantra. I say it over and over again, along with: "I'm invincible. I'm immune. I'm ... exempt." Repeating these things out loud makes them easier to believe. That's the theory anyway. In truth, it's not helping much.

Despite Alecto's act of mercy, I recall that several of the arrows that flew our way came awful close to striking me. Regardless of intentions, mistakes do happen in this place and far too often as far as I can tell.

I am wearing a dress now, the kind of thing an old peasant lady in Mexico might wear to church. It used to be white but now has concentric rings of brown as if it has been tie-dyed in tea. Some embroidery remains: flowers and ferns and little blue birds.

I found it among a pile of stained and worn out clothing on a shelf. At first I tossed it aside. No way was I going to put on a dress. But the only pants in the pile are ridiculously large. They would drag on the ground and fall down if I tried to wear them. At least the dress fits me. At least it covers my ass.

I'm finding that being a girl isn't a whole lot different than being a guy. Not as weird as I thought it would be anyhow. My arms and legs work pretty much the same. I'm a bit smaller, but still strong. Imagine that. Girls are people too.

It's not like I've been turned into an entirely different species. It seems that the state of being human outweighs most of the physical idiosyncrasies of gender.

So far, anyway. I'm waiting for the infamous menstrual cycle to assert itself, but maybe that doesn't happen in Lethe. Maybe dead women like me are post-menopausal.

The light is starting to fade outside, and just when I am starting to calm down about the Collectors and all. Night is going to take my fear to a whole new level.

I decide to go out and pee while I still dare. I will not be roaming around this compound in the dark, that's for sure. Sabonis has a slit toilet dug deep into the clay across a small orchard. There's no privacy, but I prefer it that way. I don't want anything sneaking up on me while I'm in a privy.

I pass a pretty little pond on the way—sandy-bottomed with a patch of pink water lilies at one end. Little, blue-bellied fish tend circular nests in the shallows. Dragonflies patrol the reeds. I pick a snail off a submerged leaf. I can't tell what kind it is, but it's no Lymneid.

I reach the toilet: two split logs over a pit. I've got the squatting down pretty well, with my dress scrunched up and one hand braced on the ground like a defensive end in a three-point stance. It helps that I'm not wearing any panties. I don't have to worry about peeing on them.

The hill behind me has overhanging ledges with dark holes beneath: caves. Makes me think of a skull with brow ridges and eye sockets; staring. Creeps me out.

When I'm finished peeing, I rub my hands in some clean sand and head back across the orchard. Most of the trees bear tiny green fruits, unidentifiable in their infancy, but one tree has some good-sized pears dangling from it. I use the hook of the spear to cut down some of the nicer ones on the upper branches. They're a bit warty and a little under-ripe but sweet enough to make me want more than one. Two pears and a hunk of dried fish constitute my entire intake in the two days I've been ashore. It's sure to do wonders for my figure, if nutrition really mattered in this place.

I wonder where Sabonis keeps the spare boat he mentioned. The simple quay bobbing in the lagoon was devoid of any craft. One lone dugout canoe sits upturned on the beach. It's barely large enough to seat two. This can't be the vessel he intended to take us out to sea.

I resume my mantra. "They can't hurt me. They're after him." The spell fades if I keep silent too long. My hands start to shake; my rate of breathing accelerates. It puzzles me why I fear death so much when I'm already dead. I have proof in Sabonis as Shade that existence persists. Maybe it's just fear of the new, at every step of the continuum. It makes me wonder what fears Shades harbor.

I wonder how I will respond if and when the Collectors come. Sabonis expects me to fight. Fat chance. I'm hoping that the weapon in my hands will suffice to deter them. Or I might try reason. But what if the sight of my spear provokes them into attacking? My brain reels with uncertainties.

I decide not to re-enter the hut, but to sit on a stump just outside the door. Out here I have two options: run or hide. Inside, I could only hide.

The orb squeezes tighter and puts on a piss-poor simulation of a sunset. The lagoon and sea beyond lose their gloss and darken. No red sky at night, sailor's delight here. Forget green flashes.

It's as if someone snapped their fingers and it is night again. The orb stays partly aglow, like a clouded moon and the feeble light helps give definition to the landscape. I'll be able to see silhouettes approach, whoever's they might be: Shades, Collectors or demons unknown. What I would give to see the real moon and some stars right now.

A smattering of tentative chirps and whirs and creaks evolves into a full blown symphony of susurration as the bugs and frogs come to life. Some say that insects will rule the earth after a global holocaust. From the sounds of it, they probably would take over the afterworld as well.

I speculate what I would do if they took Sabonis. Stay here in this hut? Comb beaches? Eat pears? Seems peaceful enough here. Lonely, but I could make a decent existence of it as a Squatter.

Some day Gina would have to die. I hoped not too soon, though another part of me wished it would be sooner rather than later. If she did die, would she join me in Lethe? Would it matter to her that I was a girl now?

But what if there were other places for souls to go? Hard to believe that Lethe was all there was to the afterlife, that Lethe was the only path to paradise. What if I could never find her? Ever?

Maybe that relative who Sabonis calls 'a beast' could help me. Maybe she's just some kindly old great-aunt who wants to tell me stories about my grandma and feed me sweets? Though, it would feel creepy meeting someone who died before I was born.

What about my other dead relatives, like Nana Tompkins, Uncle Bert—my mother's brother who died of leukemia when he was forty-two or Cousin Joe, who committed suicide when he was seventeen? Could any of them be here?

The night orb glazes the bushes and trees with a dull sheen that clings like slime and casts squat ugly shadows that never budge. Little creatures hop across the pale dirt, toads, I suppose. I pass the time counting them for lack of anything better to do.

I hear Sabonis breathing inside. I hear him mutter, and if I didn't know better, I would have sworn he was praying.

Hours pass. How many, I'm not sure. They all run together. I am sure though, that seventeen toads have crossed before my stump. They came in two sizes: large ones that hop along straight without delay and little ones that zigzag and puff out their necks every few hops to croak. I wonder if they are different species or genders.

But now, something new has slithered onto the dirt. It lingers at the edge of the vegetation, then darts across and snatches a toad in its jaws. It's a snake. A big snake. I grip the spear a little tighter.

The snake has an upturned nose, like a little pig. After it wolfs down the toad, it comes nosing about towards me and the hut. I pull my feet up off the ground onto the stump. All of the other toads, to their credit, have fled. I bang the end of the spear on the ground to discourage the snake. The vibrations make it coil and rear.

A glow appears on the shoulder of the hill, flickering like a torch. Someone or something is approaching. My insides tighten. Tingles jet through my skin.
Chapter 24: The Healing

The lights are coming over the hill, but I'm too scared to move. The snake is right there in front of me, coiled in the clay. I stand on the stump. It wobbles and I scrape my head against the eaves before I can steady myself with a fistful of thatch.

If I had that ax I could throw it. The door's only a few steps away, but I can't step down because of the damned snake. No creature in the known universe disturbs me more. My worst nightmares feature them by the hundreds.

The thick brush on the hillside has consumed most of the glow but I can still track its progress by the faint wash of light beneath the canopies. From what I can tell, there is only one torch, but whether that meant a single Collector or a torch bearer leading a band of Collectors remained to be seen.

If a solo Collector confronts me, I'm confident I can at least pretend to make a stand, as long as there are no projectile weapons involved. If he or she speaks English I might even be able to reason with them; tell them that Sabonis still has his Shade and no, they can't have it yet, tell them that I am special and not to be harmed.

If arrows start to fly, it's hard for me to see how I wouldn't hop off the stump and make a dash for the hills, snake or no snake.

The glow brightens and descends. By now they should have reached the path leading up from the spring. I hear no footsteps yet, and when the glow seeps through the scrub and into the clearing, I see why. It's Bianca.

I stare like a doe frozen in headlights. I relax my grip on the spear. The strictures gripping my lungs let loose.

"I' m so relieved it's you," I say. "You have no idea."

Bianca strides and glides across the compound.

"Careful, there's a ... a snake!" A hunk of thatch rips free in my hand and I almost wobble off the stump.

Bianca looks down and flips her fingers at the creature in a brushing off motion. "Shoo! Shoo!" The snake strikes at her, but skips off her impervious calf. She nudges it with her bare foot. It slithers off, back into the scrub.

Bianca's eyes gape wide. She smiles sadly. The night lends nuance to her inner light, conferring more contrast and definition to her pearly features and accentuating her facial contours. I am stunned by how much more human she seems in the dark.

"I presume you're not fond of vipers," she says.

"Nope," I say, descending off the stump.

"I don't mind them. When I was little, before we moved to London and we lived in the country, I kept a salamander as a pet."

"I don't mind salamanders," I say. "At least they have legs."

Bianca's expression turns serious. "How is he?"

"Sabonis? Not good and getting worse."

"He's inside?"

I nod.

She strides into the hut and around the partition. Sabonis lies half on, half off his bed. His mouth hangs slack with drool on his chin. A gurgling emanates from deep in his throat.

"He's damaged," Bianca says, feathering her fingers over the broken arrow shaft. She pinches the wick of a candle. It flares into life. She notices my amazement.

"Oh, it's nothing, just the excite of some electrons."

She peers into his throat, the glow of her face illuminating his tonsils.

"Did he drown as well?" says Bianca.

"Not sure," I say. "I mean, we were both in the water, but—"

"What about his Shade?" she says. "How loose did it get?"

"Loose?"

"Any limbs become detached or misaligned?"

"Limbs?" I say. "His whole damn Shade was out, walking around, talking to me."

"Oh my," says Bianca. "That's not good." She tilts her head skyward and her chest heaves with a sigh. "Oh Marco, what have you done this time?"

"Done? This wasn't his fault," I say.

"Wasn't his fault," Bianca repeats mockingly.

"Wasn't. It was those ... Collectors."

"Fa-ci-li-ta-tors," says Bianca, enunciating carefully. "And whose fault is it they came after him?"

"Um ... mine?"

My answer makes her pause. "True," she says. "In part. But Marco is always at risk, given who he is and what he does. To them he is one of the Unfettered Ones. Your descending with him certainly didn't help."

Bianca stoops over Sabonis' chest and studies the arrow shaft. Deftly, she grips the shaft with one hand and plunges her other hand deep into his shoulder. With a twist and a tug the arrowhead releases and she dashes it to the floor. A tap of her finger cauterizes the wound and stems any bleeding.

Bianca caresses Sabonis' face, and lifts each eyelid gently. "His Shade is present," she says. "But barely connecting."

I find my eyes lingering on Bianca's body in a way they hadn't before. I have gotten over the strangeness of her form, and can appreciate her femininity: nipples like etched glass, a pubic delta clothed in fine glass wool. Her curves are sleek and subtle, her breasts pert and perfect. I felt an oddly familiar stirring in my groin, although the tension had shifted to unfamiliar places.

My reaction embarrasses me. I move away, retreating behind the partition to compose myself. I have discovered yet another surprising and disturbing tidbit about Lethe and its conservation of bodily functions.

I peek back around the partition. Bianca has climbed on the mattress and is straddling Sabonis. After a frisson of voyeuristic shock, I see that her act is not sexual. Her fingers penetrate his skin, kneading and knitting his Shade back together with the flesh, working along the length of his arm, into his chest and down the other arm. Her body has lost its glow and taken on a muddier complexion, as if she has passed some of her light to him. She is healing him; restoring his spirit to his body.

She notices me watching and locks onto my gaze.

"Never mention to anyone that you saw me do this. Understand? It's not allowed."

"Who would I ...? I mean ... I won't."

I withdraw and settle into the chair by the post. The ax and machete are still there. I realize I left the spear outside, but with Bianca here, weapons are moot. I fear no evil in her presence. I hope my confidence is warranted.

I listen to Bianca coo to Sabonis like a lover. I can make out no words, but I know pillow talk when I hear it. An unexpected envy overcomes me. I'm not jealous of Bianca or Sabonis, but of what they have with each other: Bianca, someone to worry about; Sabonis someone to look out and care for him. I had that too with Gina, but Bianca and Sabonis have it in the here and now, not isolated across time and spectral planes.

I don't know how many days it had been since I had felt Gina's embrace. We'd been apart before, but now we had the threat of eternity separating us. We would have nothing but memories to sustain us. That realization, delayed by latent denial, just destroyed me.

I conjured her image across the sofa the night before I died, her laughing eyes with youthful crinkles in their corners, a delicate doll's chin, those silly bangs, and the sparse freckles across her cheekbones and bridge of her nose. I wondered how long it would take for this image to fade, for Gina to become but an abstract entity, an idea without a face. To lose the memory of how she looked would be like dying another death.

It hits me like a truck. I understand now all that I have lost. I slump off the chair and onto the floor in a weeping, blubbering mess.

"Daniel? Are you alright?"

I couldn't answer. I was shaking too much.

"Daniel!"

"I'm okay," I manage to squeeze out, as my teardrops make mini mud puddles on the dirt floor.
Chapter 25: Recovered

I awaken from the blankest sleep of my existence: an utter void with not a hint of a dream—an atheist's vision of death.

I lie scrunched against the center post of the hut, wrapped in a frayed and perforated quilt that I don't remember draping on myself. A rubber boot is my pillow.

A jolt zings me as I remember that snake and realize I'm on the ground, but I see the door pushed tight. A dim light seeps through gaps around the frame. I relax.

I hear a scraping and a rustling beyond the hanging partition. Sabonis starts humming something jazzy—Stella by Starlight, I think—his voice deep and toothy as a rip-saw. The curtain parts and he scuffs out, spikes of hair and beard jutting like a frightened porcupine. Flakes of dried vomit and spittle crust his beard.

I sit up. "Holy shit," I say. "You're looking great!"

"Oh yeah?" says Sabonis. "Then why do I feel like a heap of turds?"

"I mean you're all put together," I say. "Whatever Bianca did to you ... it worked wonders."

"Wonders," Sabonis mutters, running his fingers through his tangled hair. He squints into a chromed hub cap he has hung for a mirror. "It didn't come cheap."

"Oh?"

"Bianca says, if I don't bring you back to the mountain, they're coming after me big time."

I tap on the partition and whisper. "Is she—?"

"She left," says Sabonis.

"Well ... if they're threatening you ... I mean, if they really want me back on that mountain. Maybe I should go. I'm more ready now ... than I was ... I think."

Sabonis wheels around to face me. "What the fuck? You giving up that easy?"

"I didn't know that coming down here would cause you so much trouble."

"Trouble? You're no trouble," he says.

"Still ... maybe I should do what they want."

"Nu-uh," says Sabonis. "No deal. I ain't taking you back up till you show me the way."

"Show you ... what ... exactly?"

"The place where souls come in. Remember? That sewing machine in the sky you said you saw?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"You're taking me there," says Sabonis. "Afterwards, I don't give a shit. You do whatever the hell you want. But first, you take me. That's the deal."

I don't remember making any deal, but Sabonis' expression reminds me of a guy who stopped me once on Route 13: indignant; in the full bloom of road rage. So I stay mum.

I fudged the part about the giant sewing machine. I actually remember very little about coming here. But now didn't seem the most opportune time to break that news to him.

Sabonis stares and glares. Gradually, his eyes soften and the calm returns to his countenance.

"I'm starving," he says. "Want some breakfast?"

I squint as Sabonis pushes open the door to a yard reflecting the orb in full gleam. I rise slowly and follow him outside.

He's already knee-deep in the lagoon, picking things off the bottom. He holds a plastic garbage can lid upside down like a waiter with a platter.

He veers over to some thorny bushes and plucks something off the branches, and brings it all over to something that looks like a picnic table. It's bumpy and rickety and made of lashed together lengths of driftwood.

The platter is full of sea urchins and rose hips. We crack the urchins open and pick through their peach-colored roe with our fingers. The rose hips are dry and seedy but their tartness makes a nice counterpoint to the fatty roe.

Sabonis cleans up by tipping the table on its side. He strides off past the lagoon and over some dunes. I marvel at how strong he's looking. What a difference a day makes.

I follow him to a rocky cove where the ocean comes in deep. A hulking shape covered with reed mats lurks atop a stone ramp on rollers fashioned from straight, round lengths of sapling.

Sabonis peels off the mats, revealing a de-masted outrigger canoe, its main hull carved from a single massive tree trunk. It's decayed and ancient, like something one might find in a museum of Polynesian history. It looks far from seaworthy.

Sabonis wrestles its detached mast into position.

"Need your help to hoist this," he says.

I step in and help him lift the mast. I look like a Marine on Mt. Suribachi as he chinks it into place with wedges he bashes in with a mallet.

He unrolls a sail: a patchwork of rice sacks, blue tarps and windsurf sails, stitched and patched with fishing monofilament. It attaches to the mast and boom with bits of netting and nylon line of every color, knotted together.

I run my hand along the hull. Bits of wood break off, crumbly with dry rot. Cracks sealed with pitch run down its length.

"Does this thing even float?" I say.

"It'll be fine," says Sabonis. "Long as we keep bailing. Not like we need to be out there long, if you know where we need to go. Then there's no need to dawdle. I don't give a shit if it sinks once we reach the interface. I'm not like Delgado. Once I leave, I'm not coming back to this shit hole."

"Interface?"

"The place where souls cross over. That's what Bianca calls it," says Sabonis. "You still remember it, don't you?"

"I suppose."

"What do you mean, you suppose?" says Sabonis. "You said you saw it." He flashes me a worried look.

"Well, it's all a bit fuzzy now." I say, picking at the punky wood with my fingernails.

"But you said you knew."

Anxious to please him, I dredge my earliest post-mortem memories for details of my floating. "I remember bits and pieces. I was up in the air, looking down, and the sea ... it was curved."

"This place," says Sabonis. "Is it a single spot or does it circle the whole island?"

"I don't remember."

Sabonis grunts and shuffles his feet. "Let's get our ass out there and maybe it'll jog your memory. We gotta skedaddle anyhow. If Bianca says heat's coming, the heat is coming."

"I don't think I can get you where you want to go," I say.

"What do you mean?" says Sabonis.

"I mean I don't have a clue where this interface place is."

"Sure you do," says Sabonis. "You just gave me some clues."

"But that's about all I know," I say. "And honestly I'm not sure I want to go through with this."

Sabonis clenches his mallet and takes a long breath. "What do you mean? What is it you wanna do?"

"I don't know," I say, fidgeting. "I was confused, scared, when I was on that mountain. But now ... I think, maybe, I want to go back."

"You're shitting me," says Sabonis.

"No," I say. "I'm serious. I want to give it another shot." I'm not sure I believe my own words, but going back would relieve some of the worries bedeviling me and put me back in Bianca's good graces.

Sabonis looks out over the ocean, wistfully. "So where is it exactly that you want to go?" he says.

"I don't know. Maybe ... back to that first beach."

He scrunches his face. "There? Really?"

"Yeah. I think so," I say. "From there, I can go back up the mountain."

He stands, studying, pitying me.

"Fine," he says, bouncing the mallet in the hull. He kicks away the chocks that keep the outrigger from rolling. "C'mon. Help me push it in."

"But—"

"I'll take you there by boat," he says. "It's quicker. Safer."

I hesitate, before rushing over to help.

"Sorry ... I misled you."

"Forget about it," says Sabonis. "I'll find my own way."

He throws his shoulder against the prow. I push with both hands. The boat doesn't budge.

A storm rages in my stomach. Maybe it's that sketchy breakfast we just ate, or maybe it's my reaction to choosing a path that eliminates the prospect of returning to Gina.

But how much confidence did I have in this raggedy man and even more raggedy boat to bring me back to life? Particularly, since he was counting on me to show him the way. How much confidence do I have in myself?

I dread being set adrift in that ocean again. Something tells me that this time it won't be so gentle on my body.

"Push, goddamnit!" says Sabonis, straining.

I'm just standing there, mostly leaning against the thing, but now I press full weight against it. We strain and strain until one of the rollers snaps off a knot and the outrigger rattles down the stone ramp and splashes into the cove.

Sabonis climbs in and holds the boat against the ledge until I can join him. As I set myself down on a strut, he tosses me a broken plastic pail, the kind of beach toy a child would use to make sand castles.

"Here, make yourself useful," he says. "Get ready to bail."
Chapter 26: Delgado

Sabonis pushes off the ledge with an oar. I waddle aft of the mast and sit with the plastic bucket between my knees. Water is already seeping in through the cracks. It soaks my dress.

The sail is lashed and furled tight to a boom. Sabonis sets two oars into slots serving as oar locks and paddles into the cove. He knows the bottom well, pushing off sand bars to maneuver through the deeper channels. He's obviously done this before. Sabonis struggles to get us past a line of breakers. Things get bumpy, the outrigger bucks and rolls. We pass over a reef and the ride smoothes out. Sabonis unlashes and hauls up the sail.

Despite thick beads of pitch, water is squirting through the cracks at my feet. I scoop bucket after bucket and empty them over the side. My output barely keeps up with the influx.

"Keep it up," says Sabonis. "The leaks should slow once the wood swells. This boat's been high and dry too long."

Sabonis eases the sail open. It flaps once and fills, straining at its crude seams. Sabonis steers us out towards a fog bank, then swings us parallel to the shore, heading away from the channel we waded to get to Dilmun. But then he adjusts the boom and angles us back in towards a beach.

"Why are you going back?" I say.

"Dumbass," he says. "We gotta tack if we're gonna go against the wind."

He shifts the boom and the boat swings back around towards the fog. We zig and zag along Dilmun's shore, past graveled hills, beaches and cliffs undercut with sea caves. A butte stepped like a ziggurat commands Dilmun's far point. We swing in close, risking a collision with one of several jagged sea stacks.

I continue to bail but hold my breath as we surge past. Once by, it's open water before us, a great arc of a bay that sweeps from the backside of Dilmun to the volcanic cliffs and Rift we traversed to get to Sabonis' hut. I search for Mt. Abdiel but its shoulders are lost in the mist.

Above the wastes, the volcano lurks like an ugly bride behind a veil of mist: a squat, hulking peak, its upper slopes wrinkled with deep gullies. Its summit cone spews tendrils of smoke that trail like windblown wisps of hair.

"Beats hoofing it, eh?" says Sabonis.

We enter a stretch of larger swells. As we bounce along, the outrigger's supports and lashings flex and groan. The boat feels like it's going to come apart.

Pitch squeezes out of the cracks. Water continues to gush. We sit lower in the water. The sail strains to haul us along. Waves slosh over the rim.

"Bail faster," says Sabonis, his voice pitched with anxiety.

"I thought you said the leaking would slow."

"It will. Give it time," says Sabonis.

Out along the fog bank, a pale fleck catches my eye. At first, I mistake it for a gull, but it's too large and it's resting in the water.

"Is that another boat?" I say.

Sabonis stands and looks. He climbs partway up the mast.

"Oh my God!"

"What's wrong?"

"That's ... that's my cat. That's my fucking cat. That's ... Delgado."

He hops down and pulls a line to collapse the sail. He stabs an oar in the water as a rudder and noses the boat around.

"What are you doing?" I say.

"I'm gonna catch that fucker."

"But—" I catch myself before I can complain. I'm actually somewhat glad to be delaying my return to the mountain.

Sabonis resets the sail and we're moving with the wind now and picking up speed. The faster we go, the higher we ride in the water and the bailing eases considerably.

We sail back towards the ziggurat point. I'm appalled to realize that we are due for a repeat encounter with those scary sea stacks.

Head swiveling, Sabonis turns frantic. "What the hell? Where did he go? Do you still see him?"

"Nuh-uh," I say.

"Bastard ducked into the fog, must be," says Sabonis. "Must have seen us. Go forward and see if you can spot him. I gotta stay here and man this boom."

"Who's going to bail?"

"I'll spell ya for a while. Hand me that bucket."

I creep around him to get to the prow. The wind shifts, swinging the boom over my head perpendicular to the axis of the boat. If I had been standing I would have lost some teeth.

I stare at the fog, but fog is all I see. My attention keeps drifting to the worrisome sea stacks. At first it feels like we're going right at them again, but I'm relieved to see Sabonis swing the outrigger wider this time around.

"Keep your eye on the fucking fog bank!" says Sabonis. "I need a sighting if we wanna angle in on him right."

The prow springs high and hammers down onto swells. I fly up, managing to snag a brace before I am thrown out of the boat. I hunker down, wrapping my arms around the brace.

We zoom along Dilmun's shore, past Sabonis' digs and still I see nothing in the fog. I begin to wonder if the boat we saw was a mirage.

Directly ahead, some objects appear, but they're not boats, they're islands. They're like chips off the big island with lava cliffs and sharp promontories of their own. The largest even boasts a small cinder cone.

Through a thin stretch in the fog a double-hulled boat flashes into view, much closer than before. I see clearly a curving, blade-like prow, a forked mast and a bulging sail.

I'm tongue-tied and incoherent.

"Ubba ... ubba!"

"I see it!" says Sabonis. "Hot damn! Guessed right and cut him off at the pass."

The fog closes back in, but not before Sabonis adjusts his line of convergence.

"We got him beat, kiddo," says Sabonis. "What's he gonna do now? Turn around?"

"What if he does?" I say.

"Hah! He ain't half the sailor I am. If it comes down to tacking, I'll tack right up his butt." Sabonis glances down at the water sloshing around his ankles. "Hey, uh ... I need you to take over the bailing. Water's getting deep again back here. I don't like how she's sittin.'"

I splash my way back to the stern and resume my duties. The bilge sloshes even deeper than when I went aft. "So, what do we do we catch him?" I say.

"Do?" says Sabonis. "I'm gonna make him return my fucking cat. If he wants, I'll even trade him this piece of shit outrigger so he can get ashore."

"What if he says no?" I say.

"Says no?" Sabonis flips up the front of his shirt to reveal the strap-iron machete belted to his waist. "He better not make any fuss. I'll slice his damn throat."

The sight of that machete chills me. I had naïvely pictured the coming encounter as two neighbors squabbling over a loaned lawnmower. I hadn't considered that there might be bloodshed.

Now I wish I hadn't left Sabonis' spear back at the house. I spot a broken oar floating in the bilge and slide it closer with my foot. It's basically just a pointy stick, but it's better than nothing.

We track the catamaran one glimpse at a time through alternating layers of fog, thick and thin. Sabonis has the outrigger aimed at a spot directly in front of the catamaran's path. We are well ahead. It seems clear that we will arrive at the intersection point ahead of Delgado.

The catamaran emerges from the fog and stays in the clear.

"Hah!" says Sabonis. "He knows we got him dead to rights. He ain't even trying to hide now."

As we close in, however, our advantage decays. The catamaran dances across the heavy chop, slicing through waves that batter and stall us.

"Bail faster!" says Sabonis. "Get this damned hull emptied."

"I'm bailing as fast as I can."

The catamaran reaches the first islet just ahead of us. The interception now becomes a chase.

A man—Delgado?—stands watching us from the platform connecting the two hulls of the cat. He has at least two other men with him, one on each hull. He tosses something in the water, blows us a kiss and waves.

Sabonis grabs a landing net tucked behind a brace. He poises, leaning over the hull as we close in on the object. He jabs the net into the water and scoops it up.

"Got it!" he says.

The sail is drifting out of line, taking us wide of the cat.

"Here, you take it." He shoves the net into my lands and tackles the boom, wrestling it back into position.

I reach into the netting and pull out a mostly empty bottle of Havana Club rum. In it swims a penciled note.

"Whatcha got?" says Sabonis

"A message in a bottle."

"What's it say?"
Chapter 27: Dead in the Water

I pick a splinter off the broken oar and fish the note out of the bottle. The rolled paper is soaked in rum. I'm no alcoholic, but I glory in its vapors. I lick the drippings. I suppose I would have done the same if Delgado had sent a chocolate bar.

"I said read the damned thing ... not eat it," says Sabonis.

I peel the message apart to reveal flamboyant loops of penciled script.

"Dear Marco. Nothing personal. Is just business. I hope you understand. Love, Hector."

"Business?" says Sabonis. "I'll give him business."

He undoes more lashings to enlarge the sail and swings the boom to catch all of the wind. Something rips and rips again.

"Piece of shit boat! Sail's come apart at the seams."

Delgado and the catamaran pass between islets. I watch them get smaller and smaller.

"That ... cat of yours is quick," I say.

"No shit," says Sabonis, unlashing the sail from the boom. "Take the oars. I got mending to do."

I move forward, splashing through a thin film of water. The swelling is finally starting to seal the cracks as Sabonis predicted. I sit down between the oarlocks.

"Just keep us off the rocks," he says.

I'm clumsy with the oars, but it doesn't matter. Between the waves and current, there's not much an oar can do to alter our position in the water. We are being swept into the channel between two islets.

"Row, goddamnit!" says Sabonis. "Don't just sit there. Keep us in the middle of the flow."

I skip oars off the tops of waves to keep him happy. As we drift closer to the islets, I notice black smears swarming their ledges. Seals? Penguins?

As the islets grow, so do the objects. They are much larger than I thought.

"What the heck are all those black things?" I have to shout over the crashing of surf.

"Shades," says Sabonis without looking up. He's threading a long curved needle made of bone.

"All those are Shades?" I say. "Holy cow! What are they all doing there?"

"Beach blanket bingo. What the fuck you think they're doing?"

"I have no idea."

"It's a haven," says Sabonis. "Collectors don't bother them there. Don't know why. All they'd need is a boat. Be as easy as bagging dodos."

The ledges are dark and bleak and bathed in a perpetual spray. The Shades stand rigid, like ranks of mourners at a politician's funeral. When one of them moves concentric ripples propagate across the crowd.

"Doesn't look like they're having much fun," I say.

"Whattaya want? They're Shades," says Sabonis, his hands dipping and flicking deftly down the length of a tear. "They had their time. Now they're just hanging on." He sniggers. "There's some real old-timers there. Some so old, even their languages are dead."

The catamaran is just a speck now, soft in the mist.

"No way we can catch up with him now," I say, dipping each oar in the water to maintain the illusion of rowing and keep Sabonis off my back.

"Oh ... we'll catch him alright," says Sabonis. "He can't run forever. He's gotta come ashore and conduct his business."

"What ... business?"

"He does things for people back in the living world."

"Like what?"

"Message delivery, bringing stuff back ... hit jobs."

"Hit jobs?"

"That's the rumor."

"How does he get paid?"

"Don't know," says Sabonis. "Favors, I guess."

Hearing Sabonis speak so casually about Delgado's crossings sparks a thrill. Despite all overwhelming evidence surrounding me—that copy of Newsweek, the plethora of the same flotsam and jetsam that washed up on every earthly continent—I had trouble making the idea that these crossings were real, stick in my head.

But the lingering taste of Delgado's rum worked some kind of magic on my senses. It re-ignited my desire to do everything in my power to get back to the living world.

The outrigger swings close to a ledge cheek to jowl with blank, black faces. The hull vibrates as we scrape over a boulder. We wedge tight, dead in the water. I try to row away but we're stuck and the outrigger only rotates in place until a swell lifts us free.

"What the fuck were we doing so close?" says Sabonis, looking up from his mending.

"Wasn't me ... it was the current."

Sabonis drops the sail. "Give me the damned oars!"

We careen against more submerged stones. The cracks in the bottom of the outrigger flex and spurt. Another crunch and we're stuck again atop a ledge. A wave strikes us broadside and tips us. The outrigger float rises over my head. I look to Sabonis for reassurance but see only panic in his face.
Chapter 28: Victoria Enraged

The tendril worms into Mother Ebbani's cell like a larva through an apple. Its end curves into a hook and beckons. Dim with dread, Ebbani follows it out into the stromal ducts. It retracts into the favored reaches of Elysium, the chambers of the Cephalon where the clan matriarchs dwell and battle.

Ebbani passes through toothed tripartite valves and muscular squeeze ways designed to crush unwanted intruders. Membranes, impermeable to all but the summoned, melted out of her way.

She enters the low-ceilinged loft between the dome of the Cephalon and the inner cortex, its curving floor vast enough to pass for the surface of a modest moon.

Fellow visitors pass in the distance, too far to see faces, too far to hail. Their footsteps slap wetly against the springy floor.

The tendril recedes into a leathery brown bulge in the membrane of the cortex. Ebbani hesitates. She knows the routine, having been called to Primentor's chamber more times than she cares to recall. With reluctance, she kneels and drops face-first into the bulge like a baby to a bosom, wincing in anticipation of what is to come.

The bulge rises, enveloping her. Ebbani gasps for breath as if she's suffocating even though centuries have elapsed since she last drew breath. The brown turns milky white and clears. The flesh sets hard as chitin, clutching her like the pincers of a scorpion.

The Primentor is ensconced inside her chamber, dwarfed by its pulsing organelles and appendages. She looks like a mouse reposed on a mastiff's bed. This blasphemy flashes to Ebbani before she can strike it from her mind.

Luckily, today the Primentor is immune to insult. Larger concerns command her attention, as becomes obvious as her tendrils tap into Ebbani's synapses and her anxieties come flooding across the connections.

She worries of rival clans seeking to subsume her regime. Gwendolyn and Gwynneth, twin matriarchs of the Upjohn clan, are on the verge of merging several lesser stemmata to challenge Victoria.

Yet, this strategic threat shares equal billing with her obsession over a single Un-Ascended soul. She is like a lion ignoring a hunter to worry a flea. Perish the thought! But the Primentor again ignores Ebbani's disrespect.

"Where is my Tompkins?" Her focused sentiment gushes across the tendrils, drowning all other concerns.

"Not quite Ascended yet, my dear Primentor."

"I didn't bring you here to tell me what I already know. Incompetents! I dropped the child on your doorstep. All I ask is for you to nudge him over the threshold. Where is he?"

Such power she holds in Elysium and beyond, yet her tendrils shrivel on Lethe. Ebbani understands her frustration.

"I don't need your sympathy. I want to know, where is my Tompkins?"

"There have been complications."

"Complications, you call them? Your part is laughingly simple. Bring a child up a hill. I have handled the difficult part. What possible complications can there be?"

Tendrils slither and probe her aggressively.

"Hah. It's the Guide, is it? Make her Fall. Send another."

"Bianca deserves another chance. She is a rare, deep soul ... very good with problem cases. I counsel patience."

"Patience?"

"Yes, my dear Primentor, you will see results soon. I am certain."

The organs of the chamber ripple with what passes for a belly laugh.

"Of course I will. Because if you can't help me, I will help myself."

A sensation akin to tangled snakes swarms Ebbani's synapses. She cringes. "You're soft, aren't you?" More probes scrabble like a nest of vipers. "I see. You're one of Alexandria's line, come to us in the merging. How did one like you ever become a Mentor?

A lobe protrudes into the chamber, extending into a thick tendril that curls like a question mark to query its master. The Primentor ignores it, engrossed in the wordless belittling of Ebbani's roots. An ooze of condescension trickles over Ebbani. Ebbani stifles her pride and fights the urge to resist.

The lobe intrudes closer with every spasm of its master's emotion, like a lap dog responding to its master's distress.

"Dear Primentor, we can't afford to let Bianca Fall. She is too valuable."

"Keep her, then. What do I care? But she must be removed from the body of Guides. Find another ... or maybe you yourself would like an opportunity to re-sharpen your skills on the beaches?"

"That ... that won't be necessary. I promise you the Tompkins boy will Ascend and soon."

The tip of the querying lobe bulges like a raindrop dangling from a leaf, desperate to spill and soothe its master. The Primentor swats it away.

"Let me fume, you silly beast!"

The lobe shrivels back, but remains poised along the chamber wall. Paxson directs a bulge-eyed glare and an unvoiced shriek at it. The lobe drops limp and retreats into the wall.

Paxson turns to Ebbani. The probing of her tendrils eases.

"Get him here ... however you must. I'm going to give you something to lubricate the process."

Ebbani's soul clenches.

"There's no need, we have it under—"

A shoot, stout and barbed like etiolated asparagus, sprouts from the base of the Primentor's cushions.

"No!"

Ebbani wriggles and recoils, but the chamber wall holds her firm like an ant in amber. The shoot extends. Its pointed tip spirals towards her, finds her solar plexus and penetrates, impaling her core like a sword thrust up beneath ribs.

A bulge, like a rat in a python, traverses the length of the shaft. The barbs at the tip swell and bloom open like a primitive flower and the ovum representing the Primentor's pushes through, pulsing, squirming; filling and swelling Ebbani's middle with fiery pressure.

Ebbani gasps, partly in astonishment. It had been so long since she knew pain, she had forgotten how it felt, but she knows no earthly pain ever felt like this.

"There. You have it. To lose it ... you must use it or pass it on. How's that for incentive?"

Ebbani cannot respond. She can barely think. The pain fills her in toto, leaving no room in her soul for self.

The Primentor gives her a parting glare and the membrane turns cloudy as a cataract, and spits her out of the chamber onto the floor of the Cephalon.

"Bring me my boy."

Ebbani writhes beside the entry lobe to Paxson's chamber, once again as soft as a grandmother's tit. A passing soul pauses to gawk from across the domed floor, but makes no move to assist.

Ebbani crawls away and struggles to her feet, stumbling. She reaches the valves and slumps onto them, seeping through the floor and squeeze ways and into the galleries, glad to leave the bitter hags of the Cephalon to gum each other. To think that she once strove to be among them.

She is desperate to return to her cell and its soothing ministrations. It soothes lesser insults and injuries. She prays it can ease the effects of the parasite lurking inside her. If only she could rip herself open and be freed of it.

But Ebbani knows only one way to be rid of Paxson's proxy—the only way—and the effort to accomplish that consumes her existence.

She careens through the ducts. Sapient walls out-pocket to lift and nudge her along when she tumbles, recognizing the unbearable burden she bears.

She reaches her chamber, dazed and quivering. Dim blotches sweep cloud-like across her bulging form. She collapses into the cell's embrace and as soon as the buzz of the neural net engages, issues forth an urgent summons to the corpus and beyond.

"Bianca. Come."
Chapter 29: Suicide

Stuck on a ledge, we tilt. The outrigger's float rises out of the water, dripping. We spin about an axis formed by an apex of stone biting into wood like a fang.

Shades gather to gawk; silent, but I sense their excitement.

"Get out on that float!" says Sabonis, wedging an oar against the barely submerged ledge. "If we flip, we'll never right her."

I grip a brace so hard, my knuckles pale. I look between the float, the wildly turbulent surf and Sabonis.

"Get the fuck out there!" he says.

I scramble off my butt, ease myself over the side and straddle one of the thick struts supporting the float. It teeters like a see-saw. Encouraged, I inch up and out towards the float and my weight forces it down further.

Another swell surges into us and upsets the balance, but in a good way. The float slaps back down against the reef.

The collision knocks me off the strut. I grab on to the slick wood, wrap my arms around it. The boat swirls through the churn. My legs dangle and smack against rocks.

Thick, strong fingers seize my arm and pull me back into the hull. The outrigger spirals away from the islet into the channel. It sits heavy in the water. Every other wave breaks over the side.

One oar is missing. I snatch the plastic bucket before it too can float away. Sabonis helps me bail with cupped hands.

The current disgorges us from the channel, sweeping us free of the islets. The Shades all crowd together on the near-side ledges; watch us leave. I suspect they rooted for us to lose our struggle and join them. If the islets were ferryboats, and Shades had the weight of flesh, these would have capsized.

We drift, spinning with the whims of the wind, no sign of Delgado ahead of us.

"There's the other oar!" says Sabonis. It looks like any other driftwood, riding the peaks and valleys of the swell. Sabonis sidles us closer with the remaining oar. We swing near. I have one chance to seize it. I lean far over the side and paw it out of the water like a bear landing a salmon. It clatters into the hull.

"Attaboy!" says Sabonis. For once, he doesn't mistake me for a girl. I don't know whether to feel vindicated or insulted. I straighten my dress.

Sabonis sets an oar in each oar lock and sits down to row. He gets us pointed towards shore and closing in on a double bay, the first scooped out of the basalt by a collapsed caldera, the second hemmed by a broad arc of ashen beach backed by a scrubby plain that cuts completely across the island. I realize that this is the backside of the "Rift" we traversed a few days earlier.

I settle back into my spot, find a good rhythm for bailing and admire the view of these two vastly contrasting mountains. I always liked looking at mountains, though seeing Mt. Abdiel reminds me of my truancy, making me nervous. Not that I can even see much of it. Flanks and buttresses peek over lesser ridges, but the summit remains obscured by clouds.

The other mountain, the volcano, generates its own mists, wrapping itself in ropy contrails spilling from fumaroles. Its slope rises in one continuous arc from the broken teeth of the caldera to a steep walled cinder cone. I feel like a tiny child staring up the torso of a threatening stranger.

Sabonis struggles to haul the waterlogged boat along. With my bailing, I manage to maintain the status quo. Draining the hull dry is a hopeless cause. At least the wind and waves are less severe on this leeward side.

"I'm taking us ashore," says Sabonis.

"We have a choice?" I say.

"Yeah," says Sabonis. "Sink."

I notice an odd collection of rock piles on the pumice plain between the bay and the long, narrow lake that stretches across the Rift. As we creep closer I spot door openings and roofs.

"That a village?"

Sabonis nods. "Sixwing. Don't worry. Ain't nothing like Gihon. Least they got whores here."

"Whores? You mean prostitutes?"

"Not the nicest," says Sabonis. "You gotta go to Zion for that. Sixwing's kind of their farm system."

"Zion, huh?"

"Next settlement up the coast. Probably where Delgado went. I'd follow him there instead if I thought we could make it. But ... not without repairs."

"Is it ... a Jewish settlement?"

"Nah!" says Sabonis. "It's kind of like a gated community. It's where all the big shots—well, big shot Squatters—go."

I absently pick at a rough spot on the top of my foot. My fingers come back wet and smeared with red. I look.

"Holy shit!"

There's a gaping contusion on the top of my foot that I hadn't even felt. Only when the injury registers in my mind does the pain dare to bloom and it wavers with the intensity of my attention.

"You'd better take care of that," says Sabonis. "Little gashes tend to grow if you don't watch 'em."

"Man," I say. "I never thought I'd say I missed feeling pain."

"I sure as hell don't," says Sabonis. "Not real pain, cancer pain, the kind that turns morphine into kiddy aspirin."

"You died of cancer?"

"With ... not of ... malignant melanoma," says Sabonis. "Pretty name for a nasty disease, don't you think? Rolls off the tongue."

"Glad I went quick," I say. "I mean ... I'm not glad I died, just ... glad that I don't remember hurting. I sure don't envy you ... dying of cancer."

Gina's uncle died of rectal cancer. There was nothing pretty about the whole affair.

"With," says Sabonis. He had an odd look in his eyes: a mixture of mischief and shame, as if he had foiled himself as much as the reaper.

"You mean, you—?"

"I helped it along, you might say," says Sabonis, blanching and averting his gaze. "Ain't proud of it. I fought as long as I could. Got to the point ... wasn't worth fighting anymore. Morphine stopped working. Fucking cancer clamped down and started dragging me down its hole."

"How ... did you do it?" I say.

"Don't you think this conversation is getting a little too morbid?" says Sabonis.

"We're ... dead," I say. "What else are we supposed to talk about?"

Sabonis pauses between strokes, but keeps on rowing.

"Towards the end, my cousin Sarah sat with me ... hours every day. And she had a family at home. But Joanne ... my wife ... my ... separated ... she refused to come see me. I asked Sarah to give her a call, get her to come over, so I could fucking say goodbye. She would tell Sarah yeah, she would, but she never did."

"You didn't really give her a chance, though ... I mean, not if you killed yourself."

"No chance?" Sabonis exploded through his oar stroke. "Bullshit! I was in hospice for weeks and she never showed. Longest weeks of my life. A waking nightmare 24/7."

He pauses at the oars again and slumps. He looks like he's going to cry, but collects himself. His face stays dry.

"When the pain kicked in big time, they doped me up extra heavy. Still hurt, but ... one day I opened my eyes, looked up and saw ... Joanne sitting there."

"But ... I thought you said—"

"Let me finish!" Sabonis glares me down and resumes. "I was so goddamn happy to see her. I asked where she'd been. She said she'd been there all along. Held my hand while they changed my IV. I told her ... next remission, I'd take her up to Vermont ... leaf peeping ... Smuggler's Notch ... like she was always nagging me to go ... stay in one of those bed and breakfasts ... talk things out. But ... I was fuzzy-headed a lot ... but I would have these moments when things got clear. And I had one of those and realized ... there wasn't gonna be no more remissions. So I told Joanne that. Only problem was ..."

His eyes went blank. He stops rowing. This time the trickles come, running down the leathery folds along his nose into his beard.

"She wasn't Joanne. The whole time, it was Sarah sitting there, playing along with my delusions. Joanne never came. I sank into that rack like a sack of lead. I had enough of that shit. I had days and days of pills that I had pretended to take but tucked away in the back of a drawer. Don't even know what they were. I took 'em all and they took me down fast. Burned my gut, but not for long. This droning started up that drowned everything else out ... just blew everything away." His eyes are red. He stares at the remnants of the caldera rim. "And that was it."

Sabonis digs in with the oars, takes a deep, long stroke and stops; lets us drift.

"So what then?" I say. "You wash up on a beach?"

"Nope," says Sabonis.

"Then how'd you get here?"

Sabonis dips his head and his eyes roll up, revealing the whites beneath.

"The hard way," he says.
Chapter 30: Sixwing

The outrigger slides past spikes of broken caldera, over the black and bottomless hole of the first bay and the sandy bottom of the second harbor rises up to meet us. Slender fish dart through wafting beds of seaweed.

A smattering of canoes and rafts made from bundles of reeds bob in the waters ahead. Fishermen pick through sparse catches snared in raggedy nets. They stop and stare as we creep by them.

Sabonis steers us into a narrow, marshy inlet that splits the outer beaches, aligning us with the heart of the Rift—that void in the landscape separating mountains as cleanly as a sword through clay.

Stretches of salt marsh alternate with sand, and a shelf of pumice separates them both from interior scrub lands and grain fields as scraggly as an un-mowed lawn. Clumps of buoyant stone bob and swirl in the waves.

Sabonis rows hard, building momentum as we close perpendicular to a narrow beach heaped with rotting mats of seaweed and shellfish middens.

The crunch of bow against beach is a welcome sound after all we've been through. It means I can stop bailing. Good thing too, because the sun-brittled plastic bucket is ready to crack into so many plastic shards.

Sabonis hops out and drags the outrigger through the shallows. I help him wedge it securely onto the sand and he secures a line against a log almost large enough to carve out another outrigger hull.

Someone has carved the pumice shelf here into rows of squat, blocky figures of toads and owls and nameless monsters: like a horizontal totem pole. Racks display rows of drying fish like offerings to the orb.

There are few people about but huts dot the edges of the beach and marsh. More cluster just beyond a fringe of trees. A larger settlement sprawls down the strand where the estuary narrows to a stream carrying overflow from the Loch.

A man strides up to us, his posture stiff and confident. He holds a black and white monkey on a leash.

Sabonis sighs. "What's this clown want?"

The monkey strains at its harness and leash, hunkers down on all fours, hoots and snarls, baring its incisors.

"That's some set of teeth," I say, stepping back.

With a sharp tug, the man yanks the monkey out of its aggressive stance. He scolds it in a language of soft consonants, with words that burble like a brook.

"My monkey, she bites," he says.

I saw no reason to disagree. The monkey's fur is ruffled back and it looks ready to pounce.

"You let that monkey bite either of us, and I'm having monkey steaks for dinner."

"No worries," says the man. He peruses us with piercing brown eyes. "Fortuna and me, we go." He smiles at me, a bit too broadly. I pick self-consciously at my dress, covering up what I can. He walks away down the strand. His monkey keeps its eyes on us, trundling backwards.

"Weirdo," says Sabonis. He stretches his sail over the sand and surveys the damage. His mendings are already teasing apart.

"Crap," he says. "We need a new sail."

"Or a better seamstress," I say.

He folds the net back up and tucks it under his arm with the bottle of rum. "You watch the boat. I'm going to Sixwing."

"Isn't this—?"

"Nah," he says. "This is just a bunch of fishing huts. Sixwing's in a ways, by the Loch."

"How long will you be?" I say, with an eye on the already squinting orb.

"Long as it takes," he says, striding off.

"Can I come?"

"Someone's gotta watch the boat."

"Really?" I kick the outrigger and my foot leaves an impression in the soggy wood. "Who's going to steal this piece of...?"

Sabonis stops and turns. "Every fisherman here and his uncle, that's who," he says. "You seen their crappy boats. The reeds come apart every time a wave hits 'em crosswise."

Sabonis uncaps the bottle of Havana Club and takes a swig. He screws the cap back on. "Here, you keep the rest." He tosses it to me.

He plods off.

"So ... what time will you be back?" I say.

"When I'm done with my business," he says without looking back.

"Before ... nightfall?"

"Whenever," he says. "Mind the birds."

I sigh and limp up to the carvings in the ledge. I'm about to sit, but the blobby, one-eyed figure I'm about to sit on unnerves me. I move over a few places to a friendlier looking wolfish carving.

A break in the clouds reveals more of the lithe but massive lines of Mt. Abdiel. From a subordinate peak drops a long wall of cliffs, their flanks gleaming as if polished. Bright threads of waterfalls embroider its face.

Across the inlet, the volcano plays a different game with light and stone, displaying softer lines and warmer colors. Deep hollows indent its side, each absorbing all light like a black hole or a Shade.

I open the bottle of rum and take just enough in my mouth to swish around a bit and savor the taste. The bottle's only one third full now. I have to make it last. Who knows when or if I'd ever see a bottle of rum again?

I roll the bottle in my hands admiring the logo: a red ball with a lady bearing a scepter. I take another small sip, and recap it, studying the label for lack of anything else to read now that I've lost that Newsweek to the sea. "El ron de Cuba" is the company's slogan. The label was printed in 1973, same year as that Newsweek.

I see the fish drying on the racks. I wonder if I could bum some off the Squatters. That fish jerky Sabonis let me try was edible, but I'd prefer cooking something fresh. I've got nothing to start a fire with. Maybe someone would cook it for me.

I see people moving among the huts. Maybe they'll take pity and invite me to dinner, though I don't dare leaving the boat out of my sight. I can't imagine how Sabonis would react if he lost this boat, too.

As far as I'm concerned, it would be no big loss. I'm not thrilled about taking that thing deep out into the ocean like Sabonis is planning. But staying ashore means no more rum, no more Newsweeks, no chance of ever seeing Gina again.

I pick bits of sand and debris from the contusion on my foot. It looks worse than it is, just a shredded flap of skin. But it's no longer bleeding and the pain ebbs as soon as I look away from it.

A little blur of feathers alights on my foot and pecks at my wound.

"Hey!" I kick it away. Another bird flits past. They're quick and agile, hovering like hummingbirds.

I hear a snap and something slaps into the bird and smacks it out of the air. I turn. There's a man standing there with a slingshot strapped to his wrist. His face is splotched and leathery, his fingers scarred, gnarled like oak twigs. He's got a stringer of dead gulls slung behind his back. He looks at me sadly and continues on his way.

I cross my legs in a lotus position and cover my damaged foot with the hem of my dress to avoid attracting more such pests. I stare at the dead hummingbird. It's a pretty little thing, a tiny package of blue-green iridescence. If this is how the little birds act, I wonder what the vultures are like in this place.

I pass the hours with micro-sips of rum, not even enough to lighten my head much. Some people are building a fire outside their huts. It reminds me of a time—between girlfriends, alone on a Saturday night—when the neighbors threw a party and I was too shy to crash it. Now, like then, I hover, moving up onto the pumice shelf, closer to the fire, but in sight of the outrigger, hoping for an invite. I sit on the buttressed roots of a lone, old willow. The orb squeezes into twilight.

Columns of smoke rise from Sixwing about a mile down the strand and up the inlet. I picture Sabonis having a grand time in some whorehouse.

All is quiet but for the lapping of the sea. Tiny, shrew-like rodents scurry over mats of debris on the beach. A figure appears on the strand, a woman strolling along the pumice wall from the direction of Sixwing.

I expect her to turn towards the huts, but she comes right up to me. Her face seems both youthful and ancient, more worn than old. She has big, curious eyes; coppery skin. She wears a black derby like those Inca woman from the Andes.

She wrinkles her brow at me. "You Donny?"

"Um, Dan," I say.

"Marco send me," she says.

I assume she's a messenger. Maybe Sabonis wants me to come to Sixwing?

"He say you like girl. But I see you are girl. No?"

"No, I'm not a girl," I say. "I just look like one."

"But you like some girl, yes?"

"I said I look like one."

"You like how I look?" she says.

"You're a prostitute, aren't you?"

"I am whore," she says. "I am Lucrezia."

"Listen ... no offense, but I'm not interested."

"Marco, he pay," says Lucrezia.

"Pay? With what?"

"I no know. Promise, maybe? My keeper say he pay."

"Doesn't matter," I say. "I have no interest in ... what you have to offer."

"Is okay," she says. "I stay for you. Keep company. Yes? No fuck."

"Um, alright," I say. I don't mind having company, someone to help me fend off the nasty, little birds.

"When's Sabonis coming back? He's not spending the night is he?"

"Yes he pay. I stay all night," says Lucrezia.

"That's ... not what I asked. Oh, never mind."

She sits down beside me a little too close. I ooze away like a snail, trying to be subtle about it.

"When you die?" she says. "What is your year?"

"My year? This year," I say.

"What number is this year?"

"2010," I say.

"Oh! You fresh," she says, like I'm a cut of meat in a butcher's shop.

"When did you die?" I say.

"Two thousand one," she says. "I am from Cuzco. I die in bus."

"Bus?"

"Crash," she says. "I am going home for Easter. From my University in Lima."

"That's too bad," I say. "My condolences." It sounds awkward. I have yet to decipher a proper etiquette for the dead.

"How you die?"

I take a deep breath. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You fresh. It hurts," she pats my thigh, leaves her hand in place. I am tempted to peel it off, but it's just sitting there, not rubbing or anything. I let it stay.

"I no look so old, no?" says Lucrezia.

"Old? You're not old. Not if you were a student in 2001."

"No student. I am Professor. I am sixty when I die."

"Get out," I say.

"Is true."

"What did you teach?"

"Nipponese," she says.

This woman was born well before my mother. Makes me feel weirder about her sitting so close.

"I don't think you are a boy," says Lucrezia, forehead gathering in ripples.

"Why's that?"

"You no act ... no talk like boy."

"Take my word for it, I'm a boy. "I'm just ... liberated."

"Liberate?" She laughs. Her hand prowls. Her fingernails clink against the hard spot beneath my dress.

"What this you have?"

"Just ... a bottle."

She giggles.

I rise abruptly and hop down the pumice ledge onto the beach. I don't want to share the rum, not with a stranger. So shoot me. I am selfish. I scuff over to the boat and tuck the bottle under a strut.

I lean against the outrigger, and look up at Lucrezia sitting there with her chin cradled in her hands, at the bonfire in the village. I wonder if I can trust Lucrezia to watch the boat.

The carved figures are looking extra creepy; deep shadows accentuate their grotesqueries. I return to the ledge, sit a little farther from Lucrezia.

"You have boyfriend or girlfriend, Donny?" says Lucrezia.

"Yes, I do. A girlfriend."

"She dead?"

"No."

"I can be your girlfriend here, Donny, no?"

Something rustles behind us, the distinctive sound of branches scraping corduroy. Footsteps slap the path from the fishing settlement. I leap to my feet and wheel about.

Someone tall and hairy like Sabonis is approaching. His steps land unevenly as if drunk or injured. He's whistling some sort of bluegrass.

Lucrezia looks fearful. She scrambles to her feet and slips behind the willow.

Whoever's coming, he's not Sabonis.
Chapter 31: Mr. Corduroy

"Yoo-hoo, Mr. Delgado? Mr. Hector? Are you there?" The man's English is inflected with a slight German accent.

"Sorry. He's not here," I say.

The man steps around the willow tree and onto the head of a pumice carving. He is wearing corduroy pants, a khaki vest and a floppy-brimmed hat, one side chewed away. He has a blocky head with a scruffy beard. Maybe it's just the clothes, but he looks to me like a war correspondent.

"Do you expect him back soon?" says the man.

"Delgado? I don't know anything about Delgado," I say. "I'm here with Marco Sabonis."

"Sabonis is here?"

I bite my lip. I shouldn't have said anything. Sabonis might have people after him who wanted to harm him. "You know him?"

"I know of him," says the man. "Everybody here knows of him, the famous Marco, the Unfettered One. Ach, this must be his boat? The famous kitty cat?"

"No, this is an outrigger, not a catamaran," I say with authority, as if I'm the afterlife's expert in Polynesian seafaring.

"You are correct," says the man, hopping off the ledge. "This is not a very good boat at all. Es ist Scheisse."

"Delgado stole his good one, or so I'm told."

"Not surprising," says the man. "Delgado seems to have the run of this place. It makes one wonder what allies he has in high places."

Lucrezia dashes away from the willow tree, prompting a disinterested glance from the man.

"We did see him earlier," I say. "Sabonis wanted to ... uh ... talk to him."

"Yes. Me too," says the man, picking bits of wood off the outrigger with his fingernails. "And who are you?"

"Dan," I say. "Daniel Tompkins." I almost hold out my hand for him to shake, but decide I'd rather not be touched.

"Daniel? Did you mean Danielle?"

"No," I say, without explaining further.

"I see. Well ... they call me Mr. Corduroy, although that's not my true name, it's only ... the trousers I wear. But since I know you as Daniel, you may call me Kenneth."

"Nice ... to meet you," I say. My eyes follow Lucrezia lurking behind another tree, trying to motion for me to run away or something.

"You are travelers too, are you?" says Mr. Corduroy. "I know Mr. Marco had aspirations. Has he succeeded?"

I'm not really listening. Lucrezia seems desperate. Her antics distract me. "Um, yeah."

"How interesting," says Mr. Corduroy, checking out the bottle of Havana Club. "That makes three of us then ... or is it four?"

"Four?"

"Those who have gone back," says Mr. Corduroy. "And returned."

"Oh ... right," I say.

"Don't you think, then, it would make sense for us to start some sort of consortium," says Mr. Corduroy. "We have mutual interests, similar risks. If only Mr. Delgado wasn't so elusive, he could join us. Do you suppose you and Mr. Marco would be interested in such an arrangement?"

"I don't speak for ... Mr. Marco," I say. "You'd have to ask him."

"Then I shall," says Mr. Corduroy. "You expect him soon?"

I don't feel threatened by Mr. Corduroy at all, yet there is Lucrezia, dancing in the shadows, pantomiming danger, as if I'm chatting with an axe murderer.

"Where's your boat?" I say.

"What boat?" says Mr. Corduroy. "I don't need a boat. I go by land."

"Back to the living world? By land?"

"Yes," he says. "So you see how a consortium would be mutually beneficial. We can share trade secrets ... opportunities ... protection."

"By ... land?" I say.

"Yes, that is what I said. It seems that you might not believe me." He pulls something from a jacket pocket. "Do you like chocolat ... mit marzipan?" He breaks off a row of squares and tosses it to me.

It bounces off my fingertips and drops in the sand. I pounce on it.

"Wow," I say, savoring the aroma before breaking off a square and popping it into my mouth.

"Ritter Sport. Good, yes?"

The milk chocolate and almond paste suffuse my palate with flavors I thought I'd never enjoy again. It has the same effect on me as the rum. It makes me feel alive.

"It is good to be skeptical," says Mr. Corduroy. "Healthier that way."

He pulls a wad of paper from his back pocket, unfolds it and holds it up in front of me. It's warped from being waterlogged, but it's a German newspaper—Die Zeit.

"Wow."

"Ach, it's just old news now. It is the nature of our travel, yes? Another reason for us to make a consortium. We can complement each other's time frames. But I have to tell you ... by land is the way to go. It is much more efficient."

"Would you show us?" I say. "If ... we showed you our way?"

"If we have a consortium agreement, then of course. Though, I'm not interested in the sea route. Your willingness to travel and your time frames are more valuable to me, as mine may be for you, maybe."

"Time frames?"

"Of course you must know ... each of us returns to the time we left ... the living world. As if everyone has their own clock that stops and waits and only resumes ticking when we return."

"Oh, of course," I say, but this is news to me. Stunning news. If I understand correctly, this means that if and when I return, it will not be weeks and weeks after my death. Only seconds or minutes may have elapsed.

I could reach Gina even before she find out I'd been killed. I could be there to comfort and console her, if that would even be necessary?

Other questions arise, like what happens to my living body—the one that's already there? Would there be one dead Dan and one returned from the dead? Would I be a girl? A ghost? A ghost girl?

I don't dare ask Mr. Corduroy. To ask would reveal my white lie, show that I had never been back and neither had Sabonis. Then, what reason would there be for him to have us in his consortium?

"Still no Mr. Marco," says Mr. Corduroy. "You said you expected him soon?"

"I ... did. I do."

"Did he go to Sixwing?"

"Yes."

Mr. Corduroy huffs and pushes away from the boat. "If you don't mind ... I'm going back to my hut. Come fetch me when he returns and we will talk. It was good fortune to find you two. Catching up with Mr. Delgado I'm afraid may be ... more difficult. It was a pleasure to meet you." He extends his hand.

"Likewise," I say. I shake his hand. His grip is cold and firm.

He tips his tattered hat and turns back to the dwellings.

Lucrezia comes skulking back.

"That man ... you must be careful."

"He doesn't seem ... bad."

"Not him," says Lucrezia. "Is the angels he attracts."

"Angels?"

"Facilitators." She hisses the word like an angry cat.

666

Lucrezia sits with me in the boat. With the orb clenched and darkness all encompassing, it feels more secure in the outrigger than out in the open.

Lucrezia proves as chatty and inquisitive as a teeny bopper. She grills me on what my life was like, on every girlfriend I've ever had, particularly Gina. Yet, oddly, no matter what I say, she thinks I'm a lesbian. Nothing I can say convinces her I'm a male. It seems like it should be obvious from the way I carry myself—my attitudes, perspectives and personality. But in Lucrezia's mind, flesh trumps all.

Her presence calms me, so much so, that despite my intended vigilance, I doze off. The tap of a foot to my head wakens me from the blank sleep of the dead.

It's Sabonis, staring down his mangy beard at me.

"We gotta scram," he says. "This place is crawling with Facilitators."

Lucrezia is gone.

"Hell of a watchman you are. Queen Mary could have steamed by and you wouldn't a seen her."

"Sorry. I—"

"Man, those blood sparrows did a job on you. Looks like Sunday morning at the diner."

I scramble to check my limbs, scanning my skin for beak marks and blood.

Sabonis sniggers. "Hah! Just shitting ya. Though they are starting to roust out of their burrows."

Sabonis unfolds the sail, now fully mended, edges and seams reinforced with strips of cloth. He lashes it to the mast and boom.

"There was a man came to see you last night," I say. "Mr. Corduroy. He's in one of those huts. I promised we'd fetch him when you got back. He wants to ... chat."

"Chat?" says Sabonis. "No time for that. We gotta scram."

"But this man ... he says he goes back ... but by land, not by sea."

"Go back? You mean—?

"Yeah."

"Not possible," says Sabonis. "That's ... bullshit." He pauses and looks at me. "Who was this guy?"

"He calls himself Mr. Corduroy."

"Never heard of him," says Sabonis. He goes back to adjusting the sail.

"He gave me chocolate."

"Whoop de doo."

"Marco. I think he was telling the truth. He wants to join up with you and Delgado. Compare notes and stuff."

"I bet he does. By land. Pfft! You were conned. This guy was probably a Facilitator."

"I ... don't think so. He seemed sincere."

"Forget about it. Come help me push off."

With reluctance, I help him shove the outrigger back into the water. I keep glancing over to the fishing huts, hoping for Mr. Corduroy to come and straighten things out. But the orb is barely open and the village lies dead as a ghost town.

I don't think that I've been fooled. Even Lucrezia seems to think Mr. Corduroy is legit. Sabonis's dismissiveness miffs me.

But we slide into the bay, and the sail balloons, displaying the fine repair work Sabonis commissioned in Sixwing. The wind is changeable and keeps Sabonis busy with the oars and boom. The bucket splits in two and complicates my bailing.

"Fishermen tell me Delgado went to Zion," says Sabonis. "Ain't far. Just around that point."

I glance up at yet another headwall of jagged rocks and crashing surf and the attraction of Mr. Corduroy's land route seems ever clear. The taste of chocolate lingers on my palate.
Chapter 32: Symbiont

Bianca's cell fuses emphatically with Mother Ebbani's. The sound of ripping membranes mimics cracking pond ice. Meeting her again so soon can't be good news.

Her Mentor's chamber walls split Bianca's cell as wide as it will go, spilling her onto the spongy floor. The lack of decorum startles her. Bianca suspects it will be a rough meeting.

"Marco lied, didn't he," says Bianca, skipping the niceties. "He didn't bring Daniel back to the mountain."

"He did not," says Mother Ebbani, her voice constricted, as if a noose were pulled tight around her neck. She slumps on her cathedra behind membranes that ripple and sway like wind-blown curtains.

"This was absolutely his last chance," says Bianca. "No more benefit of the doubt. I take matters into my own hands from now on." She hopes she sounds convincing.

"Yes, you will," says Mother Ebbani.

"I'm sorry Mother. My judgment was poor. But Daniel seemed ready to return on his own and Marco seemed willing to take him. I don't know what happened but it won't happen again."

"No, it won't. Come to me, child. Come closer."

Ebbani is cooing. She never coos, certainly not in such circumstances. Bianca expected another scolding. The unexpected kindness puzzles her.

Bianca crawls over on her hands and knees. A flap of curtain curls and rolls up, revealing Mother Ebbani's bloated and warped form. She bulges in places she had never bulged before.

"Mother ... you look ...." Bianca wants to say 'misshapen', but that seemed harsh, too impolite. "You look ... different," she says, instead. "Your complexion is ... all ... mottled. Are you alright? What happened?"

"I'm fine, child," says Mother Ebbani, but her speech is weak and labored. "Come here. I have something for you ... something to show you ... to give you."

Bianca stays put, on her knees, hands clasped, frozen with uncertainty and fear. She wants to flee, to wrap herself in her cell and slip away somewhere deep into the Warrens.

"I said come closer! I need you near." Pain sprays from Mother Ebbani's words.

The chamber is sealed, spreading the membranes of Bianca's cell like an owl flaying a dormouse under talon. Bianca has no choice. She is captive.

"I have a secret to share," says Mother Ebbani.

"A secret?"

"Something that will help you, that will make things right again."

"But Mother, I know how to make things right. I don't need any help. I just need to take matters into my own hands. I can't rely on Marco. What he did, that was the last straw."

"And what I have for you will make that happen for sure," says Mother Ebbani.

"I don't understand," says Bianca.

"Come closer, and I will show you, child."

Bianca rises and takes a step. Mother Ebbani's curtain shrivels and retracts. Something knotted and tangled pulses within Mother Ebbani's belly. Patches of light and dark dapple her surface like the camouflage of a cuttlefish.

"What happened to you?" says Bianca. "You look ... pregnant."

"It's just a piece of the Primentor's will," says Mother Ebbani. "Nothing more. Nothing to fret about."

"Is that your secret?" says Bianca. "That you've been empowered to help me? Is that all?"

"Just about," says Mother Ebbani. "There's more to tell you, but you have to come close enough to hear me whisper."

Bianca's trepidation eases. She advances up the springy incline leading to the cathedra, on tippy-toes.

"Yes my child, come nearer."

Bianca moves one step closer, and tilts her head waiting for the promised whisper.

Mother Ebbani seizes her, pulls her head down. Her mouth opens wide and cover's Bianca's. Bianca recoils and tries to squirm away, but Ebbani's claw-like grip shackles her wrists. Her strength, augmented by the Primentor's will is insurmountable.

Something large and blunt surges out of Ebbani's mouth and into Bianca's. Bianca tries to scream but the attempt is swallowed with the bolus plunging down her throat. It flows into her belly, filling her abdomen with its thick coils.

The end of the creature snaps clear of Ebbani's teeth and waggles down Bianca's gullet like some foul thing spinning down a toilet. Bianca crumples and collapses. The thing inside twists and writhes, seeking its own comfort, nestling against her inner spaces.

A pain purer and brighter than any she has ever imagined shimmers through her form. Bianca gags, trying to purge herself of the thing, but it is firmly ensconced. It has settled in and become one with her.

Bianca trembles at Mother Ebbani's feet.

"Why?" she says.

Mother Ebbani slumps in her seat. She looks uniformly dim now, and almost as devoid as a Shade. It is Bianca's light that now mottles and drifts.

"Never mind, why. Just bring it to him," says Mother Ebbani, freed. This bitter extract of the Primentor's will has now become Bianca's sole reason to exist, its purpose her sole purpose.

Bianca lifts her body off the floor because she must. She crawls across the chamber to the wall of her cell, grabs a fistful of membrane and pulls herself up.

"I'm sorry child ... to have to do this to you," says Mother Ebbani. "But I had no choice ... and neither do you, now."

Bianca understands now. All is clear, because the thing inside her has shared some of its secrets. Victoria can't touch Daniel in Lethe. Not directly. She needs a vector.
Chapter 33: Zion

Full sail, seams holding, we creep around the point, heavy in the water, despite my tireless bailing.

"Shoulda fixed those cracks," says Sabonis. "Good thing we ain't got far to go."

"How far are we going?" I say.

Sabonis stands and points at an indentation in the hills, as if a giant thumb had descended and squashed the bedrock like dough. "That far," he says. The pocket valley, barely two stone throws wide, at first doesn't impress me, but its headwall abuts a mountain face that seems to climb straight to the summit of Mt. Abdiel: a stairway to heaven, if ever there was.

And then I notice the buildings. Not rude huts, but solid, orthogonal structures arranged in blocks. Some have spires like churches, and roofs both flat and peaked.

"Wow, it's actually a ... a city," I say.

"Nah, just a fancier version of Gihon," says Sabonis. "Too many poor bastards mistake it for Heaven's Gate. They beg to get in and once they're in, they Shade out just as quick as anywhere else."

I resist his derision. Zion seems tons nicer than Gihon. The town has a quaint, Scottish, Isle of Skye feel. The wind swirls the reeds lining the harbor. Swaths of red wildflowers spatter the heights behind.

My gawking interferes with my bailing. Water sloshes halfway up my calves. I get back to work.

The sail strains. Threads pop. One of the newly reinforced seams threatens to split. Sabonis drops it and takes up oars. He steers us towards a dock crowded with little papyrus dinghies surrounding a sleek, twin-hulled, twin-masted dugout.

"We got him now, kid," says Sabonis. "That fucker's here."

"Is that—?"

"Yup. That's my cat. The sooner we dump this piece of shit for it, the better."

I see now why Sabonis was so distraught to lose this boat. This cat is no mere canoe. Its hulls have the sleek lines of a dolphin, as if evolution, not a craftsman designed them. They're carved from what must have been ancient trees and connected by sturdy cross braces thick as trees themselves. The central platform supports a covered shelter that looks cozier than many of the huts I've seen here.

Twin masts angle forward and diverge from a confluence of braces in front of the platform. An upended rudder rests on the stern-most bracing, sticking up like a dorsal fin.

Sabonis struggles to pull us to the dock. Men bearing spears rush out to meet us. Another climbs out of the catamaran holding a machine pistol with a skeletal stock. One of them shouts at us in French, and the other in a language I can't discern.

"Speak American, you fuckers," says Sabonis.

"Can't dock here," says the man with the gun, an Aussie, from the sounds of it. "This landing is secured."

The outrigger bumps a piling and makes the man stumble.

Sabonis' face purples. "That's my boat, you bastard, and you know it."

"Pope's decree," says a man with a spear. "No one ties up until Mr. Delgado leaves."

"Fuck that shit," says Sabonis, reaching for a waterlogged line.

The machine pistol erupts. Bits of wood spray off the hull of the outrigger. "You heard him," says the man with the gun. "Bugger off."

Sabonis drops the line. "Fine. We'll beach her," he says, through gritted teeth.

He pushes off the dock and hauls us into the shallows. We hop out and lodge the outrigger against a graveled beach beside a creek that blends its muddy, murky waters into the pellucid harbor, like cream into coffee. Tiny orange crabs scurry across the hard mud of the bank.

People emerge from a line of closely-packed stone houses at the head of the beach and gather to stare at us. Unlike Gihon or Sixwing, most people here seem to be clothed.

Sabonis runs his hand over the bullet-riddled prow. The men with the spears run onto the beach and peer into the outrigger. The Aussie remains on the dock, guarding the cat.

"What you bring for us?" says a black man with a French accent.

"I bring you bupkis," says Sabonis, striding off across the gravel.

Another man, an Asian, lowers his spear. "You can't go that way. You must have authorization to enter."

"What is this bullshit?" says Sabonis. "Come on, the Pope knows me. You know me for Chrissakes."

"Tings change, Marco," says the man. "The registrar hasta clear you firse."

The Asian leads us to a little, round house like a walled gazebo at the head of the docks. Sabonis glares over his shoulder at the Aussie sitting on his precious cat. The Aussie glares back.

A small, rotund man reclines on a wicker chaise outside the gazebo. He watches us approach, looks me over from head to toe, but his eyes linger on my bosom. He makes no attempt to budge from his chaise.

"Schofield. How ya been?" says Sabonis.

"This one can enter, no problem," says the round man. He speaks like someone from Minnesota or the Dakotas. "But who's this lady with you?"

"His name is Dan Tompkins," says Sabonis.

The round man snickers.

"Yeah, I know," says Sabonis.

The round man swings his short legs off the chaise and enters the gazebo." T for Tompkins," he mutters in a languorous, breathy manner.

I follow him inside. Shelves on the walls are lined with spineless, raw-hide bound books with wooden covers. He pulls one down and drops it on the table that occupies most of the interior. He flips through pages of inked parchment.

"You ain't gonna find this little twerp in there," says Sabonis. "He just floated up a couple days ago."

The round man ignores him and continues to flip through the pages. He finds a page in back, mostly blank, with parchment thin as onion-skin.

"Full name?"

"Daniel Tompkins," I say.

"City, Province, Country?"

"Um, Cortland, USA. It's in ... Cortland County."

"Birthday?"

"April 1, 1988."

"A baby," says Sabonis. "You were just a little twerp when I passed."

"Death day?"

"Um, it was a Monday. May ... May 17, 2010."

"No shit, May 17?" says Sabonis.

"Yeah, why?"

"Joanne. That's her birthday. How weird."

"Sign here, and you can enter." The round man dips a beveled reed in a crock of sticky brown ink and hands it to me.

I look at Sabonis. "What am I signing?"

"It's only a registry," says the man. "Welcome to Zion."

"How do they even know me?" I whisper.

"Beats me," says Sabonis. "Somebody must have signed you up."

I sign my name. The round man takes the pen and hovers over the page, blowing on the ink to dry it, daubing with a scrap of ink-smudged chamois.

"Please check your weapons at the armory," says the round man.

"Don't have any ... worth checking," says Sabonis.

"You hear him," says an oriental man with a spear. "All weapons must be check."

Sabonis lifts his shirt and pulls a slender knife from his waistband. "Ah, screw the armory. Here. You can have it." He slams its point into the tabletop and turns to leave. "C'mon, Dan. Let's go find our friend Hector. Don't need no knife ... for what I plan to do to him."
Chapter 34: The Pope

Sabonis' eyes track the guard with the machine pistol as he lounges on the precious cat. "Get my hands on a long bow, that bastard's going down," he says.

"But that would be murder," I say, as if murder were immoral or even possible in the land of the dead.

"No shit, Sherlock," says Sabonis. "Bet it's not the first time for that punk."

We approach the throng of onlookers, not quite as damaged as the residents of Gihon, but they show plenty of wear and tear: missing fingers, teeth, eyes.

"Any one seen Hector Delgado?" Sabonis bellows.

The people murmur amongst themselves.

"Anybody?" says Sabonis.

"He vas vit da Pope," says a slender man, trouser-less, but wearing a shirt with long tails.

"Could of told you that myself," says Sabonis. "Thanks anyway."

The crowd parts. Some follow as we pass the first rank of houses lining the beachfront.

The houses behind them are embedded in the ground, clinging to a constant, level plane as the valley floor rises, as if a landslide struck and they never dug out. Soon the rooftops are only knee-high. Walkways plunge into trenches shored with timbers and walls of stone and brick. The town transforms into a subterranean network of alleys and catacombs.

"What if he's down there?" I say as we follow the rim of a trench.

"Ain't his style," says Sabonis. "Up here, no one can fuck with him ... 'cept us."

The rooftops become flush with the ground and turfed over. They remind me of pictures of the subterranean stone churches of Ethiopia—buildings carved out of bedrock.

We walk above the fray milling through a small plaza with market stalls displaying fish and fruit and nuts along some miscellaneous detritus of the living world combed from beaches—poly sacks, single sneakers and clear plastic bottles.

A few people venture above their roofs to tend gardens and orchards, growing cabbages, carrots and beets, among the trees—olives, filberts and plums.

The people stout enough to venture so high nevertheless wheeze and whinge as they work, backs slumped, feet dragging like Himalayan mountaineers. Some must retreat to the alley staircases to recuperate. Envious eyes track us as we stroll with ease among the groves.

I spot two of the spear wielders tracking our progress from the trench below. They have tailed us all the way from the beach, neither daring to surface.

Farther up, we come upon a row of stilted wooden platforms. I mistake them for drying racks but people lay atop many, some sprawl listless, others bob and pray to the orb. They moan and groan and cry as we pass. A woman carries a bucket of water from platform to platform, refilling bowls.

"What's all this?" I say.

"Penance," says Sabonis.

"For what? Who?"

"They just do it," says Sabonis. "Nobody's makin' em. Pope don't give a crap."

"This is going to sound stupid," I say. "But is the Pope Catholic?"

"Actually ... no," says Sabonis. "It's just a name. He's just some Fringer able to stick his nose a little higher than the rest. That's all it takes to go far in a place like this. Was a time folks like you and me'd be treated like Kings here. That's why all that bullshit on the docks sticks in my craw."

We lose the men tailing us when the trench narrows and disappears into a tunnel. For a good long stretch, the ground stays unbroken before opening up into another, deeper plaza with a massive, gnarled maple at its center.

"Pope's friend Yoshiko lives here," says Sabonis. "She's technically a Cardinal. But this Pope don't bother with formality."

Sabonis whistles into the pit. It echoes through the grottoes leading off the plaza. A woman in blue appears.

"Marco?"

She trots up a set of stairs cut into the wall of the trench and dashes into his arms.

"How ya been?" says Sabonis.

"Same old, same old. You know how it is." She looks Asian, but speaks like someone American-born and bred.

"Listen. I'm trying to find Delgado."

"He was just here," says Yoshiko.

"Where's he now?"

"Don't know. He may have gone."

"That rat fucker took my cat. I want it back."

"Why you telling me? Tell it to the Pope."

"Where is he? High chapel?"

"Where else?" she says.

"Delgado with him?" says Sabonis.

"I doubt it." Yoshiko smiles and puts her hand on Dan's hip, coaxes him to turn. Dan complies, reluctantly. "New girlfriend, I see? This one's pretty."

"Dan's ... just a friend," says Sabonis. He squints down towards the harbor. "So where the fuck's Delgado?" Trees and buildings block our view. "Dang. Can't see the docks from here. Do me a favor, Dan. Climb up and see if the cat's still there while I run up to the chapel and see the Pope." He points to a building near the headwall—the only structure away from the beach front that rises above the natural surface of the valley floor.

"Um ... sure," I say.

I cross through a patch of stumps to the valley wall. It's steep but walk-able. I climb through a mix of creeping willow, blueberry and heather. As I rise, more of the harbor creeps into view. I spot the dark indentation of the river, the gazebo. The catamaran sits snug and quiescent, bobbing against the pier.

Sabonis, halfway to the chapel, shouts up at me. "He there?"

"Yup." I give a thumbs-up.

As I start to descend, tightness grips my chest. It feels like the stirrings of an asthma attack or at least a deep cough ... or a heart attack? I wait for it to resolve, but the sensation remains. A pain like an ice cream headache crescendos deep behind my ears.

This discomfort resembles what I felt on Mt. Abdiel, except before it hadn't hit me until I had climbed hundreds of meters above the beach. Here, I'm barely fifty meters up. I climb a little higher. The symptoms worsen.

Something has changed. The realization sends my heart pounding. My palms begin to seep. I scramble back down.

I reach the valley floor. The urge to cough vanishes. The pressure eases in my head. I run to the chapel and enter. Inside, there is no ceiling, no floor. Columns support a ring of stone framing the orb like an eye in a monocle. The floor falls away into a vast circular pit, like a sinkhole or a well. Stone stairs spiral down the walls. Sabonis and Yoshiko have almost reached the bottom.

I descend after them, hugging the outer wall because the pit side has no rail. Rituals of greeting boom through the pit. Sabonis strains to be cordial but he's ready to burst.

My steps fall into a rhythmic trot. Entranced, I reach bottom before I expect, stumble and fall onto a floor checkered with squares of reddish slate. River stones, one per square, cover the floor in clumps and circles and amoeboid blotches. More stones lay sorted by color and piled around the wall.

Furnished alcoves pock the walls, some dark, some illuminated with oil lamps giving off the odor of burning pork fat. An arched tunnel connects to a trench system and the rest of the subterranean city.

Sabonis and Yoshiko are across the pit, speaking to a tall man standing in the shaft of light thrown down by the orb. The man—the Pope, I assume—wears a baggy tunic that drags on the floor. He holds a large, pink river stone and a small brown jar with a yellow lid.

"So what's the story?" says Sabonis, turning to me as I rise off the floor.

"He's still docked," I say.

"News to me," says the Pope. His accent is very British, very Oxford. "I thought he had left this morning. But I'm not the harbor master, am I? He seemed a bit worried about Facilitators. The orchard tenders have spotted a few roaming the heights these last few days."

"That bastard tell you he stole my boat?" says Sabonis.

"Stolen? Hector said he purchased it from you."

"Purchased, my ass," says Sabonis. "He stole it outright. Slaughtered the poor Squatters I left to watch it."

"Shameful, if true, says the Pope. "But that's between you and him. He's never wronged me."

"That's because Hector thinks you're Christian," says Sabonis.

"Well ... I am Christian. Anglican, in fact ... or ... was, anyway. It's quite charming. Inspiring, you might say. How some manage to stay loyal to their faith, in spite of all they see here."

"Cretins," says Sabonis.

"Now, now," says the Pope. His eyes turn to me. "And who's this lovely creature?"

"That's ... Dan," says Sabonis, looking sour.

"Dan, is it?" His eyes twinkle. "I see. How do you do? I am Howard Jenkins. Pope Jenkins, though I'm not actually a Pope, per se, but that's what some of the flock prefer to call me. Tradition, you see. Mayor, might be more fitting, but ... whatever keeps them happy."

He cradles the stone and jar in one arm and we shake hands. I notice the label on the jar. It reads "Marmite."

I try to make sense of all the river stones scattered across the floor. Were they some sort of census or map of the Pope's flock? Rune stones?

"What's with all the rocks?" I say.

"Go," says the Pope.

"Excuse me?" I say, taken aback.

"It's a game, called Go, or at least a variation of it. Six colors of stone allow us to employ up to six forces. Makes for more interesting strategy – alliances and defections and such. Only ... I wish I could find someone other than Yoshi willing to play. Our game's gone into the doldrums since Cohen and Ravi bowed out. Would you like to play? The rules are simple."

"No thanks, Pope," says Sabonis. "We gotta get back down to the harbor before Delgado ditches us."

A harsh clanging echoes through the tunnels and reverberates through the pit.

I flinch. "What the heck is that?"

"Someone's sighted the Caretaker," says Yoshiko. "But he's days early. We don't have an offering prepared."

"Well, you had better whip something together, quick," says the Pope.

I turn and whisper to Sabonis. "What's all this about?"

"Cato," says Sabonis. "Folks here call him the Caretaker. Not sure what he takes care of. All I seen him do is circle the damn island."

"Cato is the oldest soul on Lethe," says the Pope. "He has his own little cult formed around him here in Zion. I don't partake of it myself, but ... we do have to humor the masses, no?"

Yoshiko rummages through some baskets and crates in one of the alcoves.

"Find anything suitable, Yoshi?"

"Filberts," she says.

"Didn't we give him filberts last time?"

"It's either that or moldy fish," says Yoshi.

The Pope sighs. He smiles at us sheepishly. "Can one of you do us a favor and take a small offering up the slope? We usually recruit a volunteer from town, but we've been caught unprepared. I'd do it myself, but I'm afraid my stamina isn't what it used to be."

"Sorry Pope," says Sabonis. "We gotta go."

"It won't take long. It's just a short climb up to his path."

"I'll do it," I say.

Sabonis turns abruptly, narrows his eyes and shakes his head at me. "I don't think so," he says.

"I said ... I would do it," I repeat, with emphasis.

The discomfort I felt in my earlier climb still gnaws at me. I'm anxious to see if my sudden intolerance of altitude was imagined.

"Oh, don't fuss, Marco," says the Pope. "She'll be back in a jiff. Yoshi. Assemble those filberts, pronto!"
Chapter 35: Cato

We top the stairs and exit the chapel. People down-valley swarm out of their catacombs. They stagger through the orchards wheezing like emphysema victims, staring up at the hillside. I follow their eyes. I see no sign of the man they worship.

A herd of black-fringed white things scurry across the heather and stone. Goats? A pale slash bisects across the valley wall, curving around the headwall and back to the harbor. Like a contour line on a topo map, it maintains a constant elevation all the way across the visible landscape.

Yoshiko hands me the basket of filberts.

Sabonis pulls me aside. "You don't have to do this."

"I want to," I say.

"Just stick it on the path and get your ass out of there," he says. "Don't ever get in his way. Cato can get nasty. I mean dangerous nasty."

Yoshiko leads me to a jumble of boulders that forms a sort of rough stairway up the base of the headwall. I start up. A murmur reverberates through the mob gathered in the orchards. Heads turn my way. Fingers point.

The slopes above are devoid of souls. No resident of Zion seems to have to ability or inclination to Ascend. I climb alone.

I take long strides, gobbling long stretches of mountainside. The filberts rattle with every step. The wind whipsaws through the heather, plastering my dress against my legs.

As I feared, I don't climb far before the tightness in my lungs returns. My heart thuds at this confirmation of my diminished capacity. I try not to think about it, to see if that eases my way. But the pressure in my head builds as if my brain has swollen too big for my skull and is squeezing out my ears.

At only half the height I achieved on Mt. Abdiel, I feel twice the pain. I doubt that it's the mountain that has changed. I am a Fringer now, well on my way to becoming a Squatter. Pangs of regret clash with indignation. Should I have stayed on the mountain?

I pause to look down. Sabonis stands with the Pope and Yoshiko. He seems fidgety. I gaze out towards the harbor at the chevroned ranks of breakers advancing against the mudflats.

My head throbs as if my heart has taken up residence behind my eyes. Cato's path lies just a little bit higher. One more push should get me there. I gird myself with a breath and hop over a little brook bubbling through a chute. The heather gives way to slanted slabs of smooth, pale stone, stripped and lean as clean-picked carrion, interrupted only by pockets of scrub and patches of scree.

I reach the path before I expect. It is little more than a rut worn into the ledge, wide enough to place one foot in front of another. I wedge the basket of nuts against the groove.

The detritus of previous offerings litter its flanks: dead flowers, nut shells, fish bones and other bones, some disturbingly large and human—the remains of an offeror?

Pain riddles my every articulation. Nausea just as intense as that first day on the mountain wobbles my innards. I sit on the path and cradle my head in my hands.

A wind-muffled roar erupts in the mob below. I look up, presuming they are cheering for me but they're not even looking at me. They're watching the headwall.

I spot Cato. He doesn't look very dangerous from a distance. He is stout, but quite short. His belongings are bundled on his back. They rattle as he plants and swings his staff, hurtling down the path with a bouncy gait and strides long for his stubby legs. Eyes fixed ahead, he ignores the fawning crowd below.

As he barrels towards me, I drag myself down into a patch of creeping willow. I stare transfixed like a deer at a truck. Strands of white whisker screen a face as brown as over-baked bread and speckled with black moles. Patches of skull glisten gold from metal plates partially overgrown with skin.

The arm that wields the staff bulges with muscle but the other dangles withered and mummified in a harness. What first appeared to be shoes are calluses grown so thick they obscure the gaps between his toes.

Cato's white-less eyes fix me with twin beams of hate. "Meretrix! Ex meus via." He glances at the basket. "Hei! Eu! Nux coryli. Pro pudor fie." He bats it away with his staff. Filberts spill, bouncing and tumbling down the slabs.

The cords of muscle in Cato's good arm tighten like hawsers. He raises his staff up to strike me. I scurry out of reach. He grimaces as he breezes past, revealing teeth as black and dull as his eyes.

The wind carries faint cries from below. The crowd swirls as if stirred with a ladle, scattering here, bunching there. Two men flee. Others chase. One man falls, dropped by an arrow.

Sabonis is running back to the chapel. Yoshiko and the Pope stay put.

The chased man passes between stone houses, and emerges on the graveled flats leading to the docks. The catamaran's sail billows open. It pulls away from the pier. A gun flashes. Staccato stutters follow. The pursuers halt before the beach and the chased man leaps onto the boat.

Cato motors on, barely glancing at the scene below. Wary of descending into the chaos I have just witnessed, I collapse onto a bed of springy willow, enmeshed in aches that seem to emanate from the marrow of my bones. The pain eases somewhat if I keep my mind blank, so I zone out.

It would make things so simple to stay where I am and rebuild my tolerance for heights. Then, if I wanted, I could climb. Why return to all the horror and confusion of the flats? For Gina? Who was I kidding?

I could stay here and watch the sea, listen to the wind, climb a little higher every day. Clearing doesn't strike as so awful now, considering the alternatives. Maybe I could learn how to forget life.
Chapter 36: Grotto

On a bed of wind-flattened willow, I strain to forget my existence. For a while, my agony dulls, but I can't sustain this null state for long. Images of my lost life keep intruding into my mental viewfinder, invoking pain as potent and relentless as the wind screaming over the ridges. I lay as limp as a worm in a puddle. I can't stand it anymore. I rise. I descend.

In Cato's face, I saw my future: withered, weathered, scarred—and that would be the best case scenario. I can't Ascend. I don't have the strength or the will. I am destined to Squat.

As I stumble down ledges, raucous cries rip through the air. A dozen gray and white monkeys with frilly tails and bushy manes spread out and pick through the heather, salvaging the spilled filberts. They glare at me with eyes as bitter as Cato's.

I try running at them and shooing them off with the empty basket, but they counter my bluff with a rush of their own, and by the looks of their fangs, they're not bluffing. I back away, keeping them at bay with shouts and well-placed stones. I maneuver around them, giving them plenty of leeway.

The stitches in my side ease. My brain no longer rattles its cage.

When I reach the valley floor, the inhabitants have trickled back to their trenches and catacombs. Only Yoshiko waits for me.

"Thank you so much," she says. "Did he speak to you?"

"Yeah," I say. "But I didn't understand a word."

"You missed ... some excitement," she says.

"What happened?"

"Some Facilitators tried to take Hector. He managed to evade them."

"Is Marco—?"

"He's safe ... and in my home. Come."

She leads me down into the cave where she dwells, lighted by wells and mirrored panels. Sabonis huddles in a dark corner, paranoiac eyes fixed on the entrance, an ax cradled in his lap.

"That fucker Delgado got away," he says. "At least, if the Facilitator's had gotten him, we would have gotten back my boat."

"If they caught him, what makes you think they wouldn't have caught you?" I say.

"Only thing they'd catch is this fucking ax in back of their skull."

"I have a problem," I say. "I can't climb as high anymore. I'm losing my breath."

"No shit," says Sabonis. "What'd you expect? If you don't climb and clear, you Fall. That's how it works here. Where do you think all these Squatters come from?"

"I didn't think it would happen so quickly."

"Not everyone's ... like me," he says.

"What do you mean, like you?" I say. "Are you special or something?"

Yoshiko laughs. "She doesn't know?"

"Know what?" I say.

"Marco is Unfettered," says Yoshiko. "Elysium has no grip on him."

"Well ... I wouldn't say no grip," says Sabonis. "They found a way to sink their claws into me. I can't climb like I used to, either."

"Unfettered? What does that mean?"

"Means I ain't intended to be here."

"Where ... are you intended to be?"

"Not here," he says.

"Well, you're always welcome here in Zion, Marco," says Yoshiko.

"Who isn't?" says Sabonis. "You guys even let in Delgado."

"Yes, well ... I don't suppose he'll be back anytime soon," says Yoshiko. "I bet he blames the Facilitator's attacking him on us."

"It wasn't?" says Sabonis.

"Marco. You know better than that. The Pope would never jeopardize his supply of Marmite."

"He wants Marmite? I'll get him Marmite."

"Then the Facilitators will be after you," says Yoshiko. "Best leave the traveling to Hector."

"They're already after me," says Sabonis.

"Why are you so dead set on going back?" says Yoshiko. "Hector, I can understand. He ran a drug cartel. Smuggling is in his blood."

Sabonis stroked the handle of his ax. His eyes went blank. A faint smile crept.

"I gotta go back," says Sabonis. "I gotta see Joanne."

"Because ... you miss her," I say, projecting my feelings for Gina.

"Miss her?" He guffaws. "Fuck no. I'm going back to kill that bitch. No one deserves to die the way I did. All I wanted was a simple goodbye. I didn't ask her to kiss and make up. Just a goodbye. Bitch refused to respect my stupid little last wish. She deserves to die. I'm going back to smother that bitch in her sleep, put this axe through her head ... whatever. I want her dead like me. I want her to know how it feels to die alone like I did."

Yoshi sidles close and whispers. "There's a reason his soul was sent to Avernus."

Footsteps pitter-patter down the stairs leading into Yoshiko's courtyard. Sabonis fumbles with the axe, hefts it over his shoulder.

A glow precedes the approaching figure. Bianca enters the grotto.
Chapter 37: Vector

Sabonis lowers the ax. "Oh great," he says. "Here comes the guilt patrol."

But something's wrong with Bianca. Her body bulges in the wrong places, like a gas-bloated drowning victim dragged from the bottom of a lake. Dark nodules mar her usual translucence.

"What the fuck?" says Sabonis.

Bianca moves slowly and stiffly. She grimaces, her eyes drawn up into slits like cuts. Her face looks tight enough to crack.

"What the heck happened to you? You look like shit."

She ignores Sabonis. She looks straight at me, stumbling forward, reaching. I back away and stand beside Yoshiko.

"What are you doing?" I say.

"I have something for you," she says. Her words are barely audible and carry a liquid warble.

There's something squirming in her gut, trying to get out. Her eyes look like they don't belong to her, as if she's not connected to them.

"That's okay," I say. "I don't need anything."

"Are you ... preggers?" says Sabonis. "Is that possible?"

"I carry a message," she says. "From ... Victoria."

"Who the fuck's Victoria?" says Sabonis.

"The ... Primentor," she says, wobbling as if about to collapse.

Yoshiko sidles away, leaving me one-on-one with Bianca, who lurches towards me.

I look to Sabonis. Should I run? Should I stay?

I don't even have to voice my words. He discerns exactly what I'm feeling.

"Don't know, kid. This is a new one on me. Never saw this happen to a Guide before."

Bianca's steps fall heavily and clumsily. One of her eyelids droops. Her lip goes stiff on one side and twitches. I see the thing inside her rotate and tense as she nears me.

"That's ... close enough ... I say.

Bianca gasps and grimaces. Her fingers reach for me slowly, trembling, waggling in the air like larval hookworms sensing body heat.

I am backed against the wall of Yoshiko's grotto.

"Marco?" I say. My voice quavers.

Sabonis steps in and shoves Bianca backward. She shrieks.

"Jeezus Bi, let's ditch the weirdness and talk this out. What the hell's going on? What's that ... wormy thing?"

Bianca's features ripple. Her eyes blink rapidly. Her chin quakes as if she's exerting every bit of force she can muster. She slips her hands around Sabonis' shoulder. She lifts her face to him and kisses him on the mouth. Sabonis, momentarily stunned, recovers his wits and kisses her back.

The Pope enters the courtyard through the tunnel and stops, startled.

"Oh my," he says. "What's all this about?"

"I have no idea, Howard," says Yoshiko, staring with mouth agape.

The presence in Bianca's belly recoils and flattens. Bianca's dark spots darken; her light patches shrivel to pinpoints. She slumps. Sabonis catches her before she falls. She hunches over gasping and clutching her belly and looks up at me.

"This message ... is for you ... and you alone." She breaks out of Sabonis' grasp and lunges, knocking me off my feet. I land on my bottom. She pushes me flat on my back and slides over me, hungry mouth gaping. Her lips seal against mine.

Sabonis leaps in and tries to haul her off but her fingers hook into my back like claws. Her legs entwine me.

Something thick and powerful slides up Bianca's gullet and punches into my throat. Instantly, I go limp, at the total mercy of the thing moving into me.
Chapter 38: Possession

As Sabonis and the others look on, aghast, Bianca peels her mouth from mine, rolls off of me and onto the floor. She goes limp and stares into space, eyelids quivering.

"Dan! You okay?" says Sabonis. "What'd she do to you?"

The thing that Bianca has transferred to me dissolves and disperses to every cranny and pore of my being. A crystalline, amphetamine-like alertness expands through my head and thrums my body. I lay flat on the ground, but feel like I am hovering. I feel more hale and whole than I have ever felt before.

Bianca looks like a deflated balloon; her form all warped and blotched with dim patches. Slowly her stretched parts contract, bits of wayward anatomy slide back into place, and she recovers her former shape.

One by one, doors slam shut in the closets and back rooms of my mind. Anxieties fall silent under the garrote of a stealthy murderer. I remember worrying about some girl, but I can't remember who or where. My own name eludes me until the guy with the beard—Sabonis—reminds me.

"Dan!" he says. "Say something. You okay?"

"I'm fine," I say. "I'm doing great."

My soul was a palimpsest, not clear, but retaining only faint traces of what came before.

"Your eyes look funny," says Sabonis. "Like there's something missing. What the fuck did you do to him, Bi?"

Bianca's chin droops. Her eyes evade Sabonis'. "I had to do it," she says. "I had no choice."

"Do what? What was that thing you gave him?"

"A piece ... a tiny piece ... of the Primentor's will," says Bianca. "She couldn't reach him on her own. Not on Lethe. She needed a vector."

"Jesus Christ. Why'd you go and do that to the poor kid?"

"I had no choice," says Bianca. "Now, neither does he."

I rise to my feet. It feels like the momentum carries vertically and I have the perception of flying, but I look down and see that my feet still touch the ground.

There is no question of what I want to do next. I want to climb that mountain. I want to Ascend. There was no other possibility anymore.

"Are you ready?" asks Bianca.

"Ready? For what?" says Sabonis. "Aw, you ain't making off with him, are you?"

"Yes I am. Daniel wants to Ascend now, don't you Daniel?"

I look at her as if her question was moot and nod.

"That's it kid?" says Sabonis. "You're giving up?"

"Oohh yeah! I'm done," I say. It comes out sounding all giddy and loopy.

Sabonis looks grim. His eyes flit my way but don't linger.

"I truly had no choice," says Bianca. "I was on the verge of Falling."

"Whatever," says Sabonis. "Take him. He's no use to me now."

"I'm so sorry, Marco. Take care," says Bianca as she takes my hand. Her touch feels light and firm and surprisingly warm.

"Come," she says and we head for the stairs.

666

We have climbed well above Cato's path overlooking Zion. My head is blissfully free of pain and pressure. I sense not a hint of what had crippled me before.

For the first time since my death, I fear not what lies before me. I am going where I am meant to be and I long to reach it. It feels like the first day at college, or getting my first job offer. All upside, no downside yet in view.

Figures dash through the orchards in pursuit of another. The man with the beard is knocked down and set upon with coils of rope. The presence modulating my emotions quenches the kernel of sympathy that arises. I turn to climb. I don't look back.

Bianca leads me diagonally up the headwall, into the wind. We surmount one ridge and traverse another to reach the windward face of Abdiel and the main body of Ascenders.

My thoughts muddle. Every time my synapses attempt to aggregate, something swoops in and blows them apart, like dust. Something, someone doesn't want me to think. It wants me clear, and for the most part I comply.

But I find a work-around, a way to carve out bits of consciousness for my own. When thoughts float free, forming and dissipating like fog, the presence remains at bay. It lets me think in pieces.

We enter the first ragged ranks of naked Ascenders. We have already gone higher than what I achieved the first day. The people on these slopes are well along into the clearing process.

I can tell, just from people's eyes who died young and who died old. The old souls seem more human, less abstract. They have more to forget.

"What's Elysium like?" The question slips out without premeditation.

My internal censor makes no attempt to nip this thought.

"It's probably not what you expect," says Bianca.

"I don't ... expect ... anything," I say.

"I'm sure you don't expect that Elysium is alive, anyway. That it is a living creature."

The idea troubles me, but not for long. Soon I am blank again and returned to bliss.

There is nothing but lichen and stone surrounding us now. The orb ends another cycle. The mountainside dims.

"We will walk all through the night, yes?" says Bianca.

"Of course," one part of me says, even though the larger part wants to rest.

666

We meander through the darkness passing rank after rank of Ascenders. I stay close to Bianca. She sheds a soft glow, enough to show me where to step. She seems to see just fine in the dark, commenting on things even beyond the reach of her glow.

Holding Bianca's hand is like grasping a blast of pressurized air—I feel more force than substance. My fingers can close only so far, though, before being met by a firm resistance.

My new found stamina astounds me. I can climb forever without needing to stop. I breathe like a locomotive, my heart chugs, but my body shows no signs of quitting.

Bianca tells me of the Seraphim, painting a picture by describing what they are not. They are not angels in any familiar sense. She implies that they've always been Seraphim, never alive, not really human like us, though I get the impression that she doesn't really know for sure. Thoughts of Elysium, apparently, escape redaction by my internal censor.

"What about God? Who is God?" I want to say but my symbiont aborts the words before my lips can form them.

Bianca tells me of the repositories of human knowledge in Elysium, where all creative works performed or unperformed, published or unpublished reside, those accessible to billions as well as those squirreled away in attics. The scrolls of the library of Alexandria are there, she says, the ones that Omar, the Third Caliph of Islam, ordered burned to fuel public baths.

"You will learn the true story of humanity. Why we are here. You will see history in a new light."

I don't care. Bianca is trying to sell me on Elysium, but I am already sold, and have been ever since she shared that potent kiss on the floor of Yoshiko's courtyard.

There are those called Transcendents, she says—souls who continue the arts they excelled at in life beside other unearthly arts too abstruse for her to describe. She says I will likely become a Somnite at first—a cell in the Elysial organism, placing my soul in the service of my clan.

I smile and listen and nod. All that matters to me is getting up this mountain.

When the light returns, we find ourselves on a narrow hogback ridge. It soars like a flying buttress against the windward face of Mt. Abdiel. To my left, below, I can see the chalky lines of breakers and the beaches where I came ashore.

The wind tries to blast us off the ridge crest. Crystals of hoar frost crack and tinkle against the stones. My fingers are stiff, my hair frosted, but I don't feel the cold. Something deep inside me keeps me warm.

Fingers of mist poke down from the unbroken bank above us. We climb into the thick of the mist, and I'm blind again, with only Bianca's glow and the stone at me feet to ground me.

The ceiling brightens. We break into the clear with a wash of orb light and a cottony sea of cloud tops. The glistening trapezoid of Abdiel's summit causes my heart to surge. My symbiont approves. Its claws ease off my mind.

The hogback merges with Abiel's face. We join the main body of Ascenders coming up the windward slopes. Ascendants have funneled together onto these upper slopes such that it's difficult to pass among them without stepping on fingers, toes and faces.

Guides are thick in these parts, working hard to coax their charges onward.

Though most maintain an air of serenity on the brink of coma, one woman seems distressed. She clutches a ragged strip of cloth against her breast.

"I've told you, no possessions," says her Guide.

"Please," says the woman. "I found it on the beach."

"I can't believe you would let that dirty old rag hold you back."

"But it's all I have. I'll have nothing," says the woman.

The encounter makes me wonder. I whisper to Bianca. "I have a dress."

"I've noticed," says Bianca. "Not for long, you won't."

Unlike the woman, I am not bothered by the prospect of losing the only thing I own. I am ready to shed it now.

The essence of my existence whittles down to reaching the top of that mountain, but the last pitch separating us from the top is as exposed and treacherous a slope as I have ever climbed. In life, I would have been too chicken to climb it without belay and pitons.

Ascenders cling to the slick face of the mountain like cockroaches to a wall. My symbiont twinges at the image, but lets me process the experience as I wish, un-throttled, so long as the joy of Ascending continues to fill me.

We climb steadily, one foot after the other. Billions of footsteps have worn shallow depressions in the stone. Ice clogs every crack and crevice. I plant each step with care. My excitement rises.

"We're almost there," says Bianca. She's looking quite well now, almost as pristine as before.

We punch through a cornice into the thigh deep snow of the summit ridge. The wind-scoured, bare stone of the ultimate peak lies up a gentle slope through heavily trampled snow. I see something dark mounded there beside some squat, squarish structures.

I let out a whoop, expecting it to echo down the slopes, but the wind smothers it.

I stare across the sea of clouds to the dark cone of the volcano above the Rift. Hundreds of grey wisps trail across its slopes like an army of wraiths. Farther out, I spy the tiny pyramid of a promontory at the terminus of Dilmun.

"Come," says Bianca. "We're on the threshold of Elysium. There is just one more step ... one small step."
Chapter 39: The Table of Accession

We follow a well-trampled path through the snow. Shed possessions litter the way—prayers scratched into scraps of bark, walking sticks with knots polished down to smooth nubs, wave-worn worry pebbles taken from the beach.

But not a single flake dares cling to the wind-blasted summit of Mt. Abdiel—a mass of red-brown stone creased with cracks and gullies filled with queues of waiting souls.

My extremities tingle in anticipation of the coming passage. The goal of all who flee the beaches of Lethe lays only steps away.

For the Ascendants we pass it represents the reward for weeks and months of penitential suffering. For me, it is just the terminus of a day hike. I feel like a pampered recruit arriving at a war zone after an armistice, passing veterans who have just endured a long and brutal conflict.

My symbiont relaxes. Bianca finds a bounce in her stride and a care-free smile.

We come to a queue of people with eyes almost uniformly glossy and opaque. Like one-way mirrors, they shed more light than they take in. I line up behind them, but Bianca drags me away.

"You're special," she says. "Come along."

None complain as we pass them.

Up ahead, out of sight, the steady roar of the wind is punctuated by screams. Like clockwork, every minute or so, we hear a shout or a shriek, sometimes ululant, sometimes a mere squeak. On the verge of asking Bianca to explain, the symbiont suppresses my curiosity.

"Take off your dress," says Bianca.

I begin to comply without thinking and slip one arm out of a sleeve. But some part of me that had been muffled breaks free and lets me slip the dress back over my shoulder.

"Take it off!" says Bianca.

"Um ... why?" I say.

"Where you're going, you won't be needing it," says Bianca. "Same goes for your body as well."

Further disturbances roil the euphoria that had underlain my disposition ever since we left Zion.

"My ... body?"

"Come," says Bianca, grabbing my hand and dragging me along.

We squeeze up a gully and emerge onto the flat of the summit, which is as large as a couple of tennis courts and tilts slightly upward. Ledges peel like layers of onion forming steps.

My dress flaps wildly in the wind. A line of people files slowly towards a walled area. They block my view; I can't see what lies beyond.

Again someone screams. Seconds later a man clambers over the wall. Two Guides intercept him and lead him back, cooing to him softly in Portuguese. His legs go limp. He collapses, sobbing.

"What's going on?" I say.

"Oh, it happens all the time," says Bianca. "Some souls find the Table of Accession ... troubling. Perhaps this one wasn't entirely Clear."

"What's so ... troubling?" I say.

"Nothing," says Bianca. "I don't find it troubling at all. But some souls are ... shy."

"What if ... I'm one of the shy ones?" I say.

Bianca sticks her face inches before mine.

"You do want to Ascend, don't you?"

"Of course," I say, and my symbiont thrills to my prompt response.

"Then just keep that goal forefront in your mind," says Bianca. "Remember, the end justifies the means."

But a fear too vigorous for the symbiont to quell sprouts in the free part of me.

Guides help the Portuguese man to his feet. He hangs his head low and whimpers softly. The Guides console him. I notice one hand clasping the other. A steady stream of blood trickles between them.

"What happened to him?" I see.

"Soon you will see and you will understand," says Bianca, patting my back.

We pass around the last of the queue to reach a gap in a stone wall enclosing three sides of a roughly rectangular space. The fourth side slopes down to a precipice that spills over the cloud bank and an unspeakable drop.

The ledges inside are slick and gooey. The sensory fog imposed by the symbiont delays my ability to interpret what I'm seeing. Pools of blood back up in gutters carved into the stone behind dams of human offal. Cadavers litter the base of an altar-like table. They look as if they have exploded apart—bodies turned inside out, skin peeled away, skulls cracked in two.

My symbiont works overtime to calm me, dulling my emotions, slowing my breathing, calming my nausea.

Four Guides lead the Portuguese man to the table. Each wields a hooked blade made of some glassy substance that flares with the brilliance of burning magnesium.

The man closes his teary eyes and stands with arms and legs extended, head back, chin poking into the air. The Guides, if that's what they were, move in with the bored confidence of butchers in a packing plant.

He bellows as they slice him open with quick, brutal slashes, blades moving through him like feathers parting air. They split his chest from belly to gullet and separate the halves of his rib cage, peeling his body away from the Shade within.

The meat collapses wetly, and turns the Table into a bloody fountain. The man's Shade reaches up to meet a writhing, salmon-pink tendril like a neon snake spiraling down from a high layer of cloud. It wraps around him like a vine and a pulse of light surges down. His body mottles with brown and transitions from chestnut to a milky ivory before igniting into a luminous translucence. The tendril retracts and takes him with it into the clouds.

The butchers flick the blood off their blades and turn to face me. Bianca nudges my elbow.
Chapter 40: Flight

"You're next, Daniel," says Bianca. "Go on. This is where I leave you. Good luck."

I can't speak. My terror clashes with the symbiont's optimism. Bianca nudges me forward. A storm of panic and dread smothers the symbiont's urges. I dig in my feet and try pulling my arm free. Bianca clings to me like hot taffy.

Two of the butchers set down their blades and come for me. I start to back away. My symbiont sinks it claws into my leg muscles, negating my impulse to flee, paralyzing me to the spot.

"It's alright, Daniel," says Bianca. "It's only flesh. All flesh is fleeting."

"This is horrible," I say. "It's ... murder."

"No, it's not murder, silly," says Bianca. "It's the most efficient way to separate a soul from its corpus. What? You'd rather they wait for your body to rot off your Shade? You don't know how sticky a soul can be."

The symbiont forces my leg up. I lift it and take an awkward step. "No! I ... I can't do this."

"Oh, come, don't be shy," says Bianca. "Cleaving's not as bad as it looks. The returns are worth the momentary discomfort. You'll only feel a pinch."

"A pinch?" I say. "This ain't a fucking flu shot we're talking about."

My body is quaking, my teeth are chattering.

"You can't quit now, Daniel," says Bianca. "You're one step away from Elysium."

"I'm sorry," I say. "That step's too big." I tense my muscles, pushing against my symbiont's control like an isometric exercise.

The butchers rush me. A surge of terror overwhelms my symbiont. I wrench my arm away and bull into Bianca, sliding past her. Other Guides converge to stop me, but now I'm sprinting full out past the queue weaving through my pursuers like a punt returner.

The symbiont tries to trip me, seizing a muscle here and there, but this little girlie body of mine is equipped with a balance I never had as a man. I keep on running.

The queued Ascendants never looked more like meek and mindless cattle to me – chewing their cuds contentedly before a slaughter.

A Guide cuts me off, I barrel into him. We both tumble. I spring back up, bump and squeeze and push past the queue down the gully and onto the snowy ridge below the summit.

Guides on the ridge see me running and peel away from their flock to cut me off. The symbiont has now regained its purchase and is making me stumble and lurch.

I stagger through drifts to the brink of a vast bowl of a ravine—a nearly vertical cirque filled with windblown snow. Guides close in from all directions.

Steps before they can seize me, I force my will over the symbiont's and plunge into the gulf.
Chapter 41: Tumble

I slide on my back like a human luge, accelerating down a slope steeper than any black diamond run. The speed of my plunge shocks me. The gauntlet of jagged ledges flying up will have the same result as those Cleavers when I strike them, only with more pain, more mess. I close my eyes, regretting my impulse to leap.

Something hard scrapes my shoulder. I should have hit the ledges by now. My rate of descent slows. The ground levels out. I tumble to a halt.

When I open my eyes I'm in the bottom of the bowl, with my dress torn and a hump of snow wedged up my back. Balls of decapitated mist roll across the gulf.

I stand up and shake out the snow. My backside is all scraped and raw. I feel nauseous. I wheeze and cough and something bubbles up out of my lungs. Grey goo, like liquid graphite, sieves through my teeth, past my lips and splats onto the snow. It seems almost sentient as it tries to slither away. Its surface bubbles and cracks and it withers to a crisp and the wind carries it away.

The walls of the cirque press in on me and make me dizzy. I stumble through the bowl in knee deep snow. My skin feels like fire ants are tunneling beneath it. Little bits of grey blob ooze through my pores and leave a trail in the snow. They trail down my limbs like drops of quicksilver. I leave a trail of them behind me, sizzling and sublimating.

The more gray goo I shed, the worse I feel. I run downhill, racing the pain that is beginning to build in my joints, chest, head. I stumble and fall, rise, run some more and fall again.

The cirque curls around to the base of the sheer precipice below Abdiel's summit. Blood seeping from the Table of Accession in a slow cascade stains the chalky cliffs brown. A massive and disgusting heap of discarded human flesh forms a subsidiary peak below—skulls and bones and freeze-dried fresh, piling up like sand grains in an hour glass.

Hordes of brown monkeys roam the pile of human tailings, picking marrow from cracked femurs, squabbling over skulls. I veer away and pick up the pace, hoping they don't spot me.

More bits of symbiont leak from my nose and ears. Pain and pressure mount inside me. I sprint across a glacier, leaping over small crevasses, desperate to lose as much altitude as I can before my last bit of symbiont protection disappears.

I slither down a crack to the base of the glacier. Milky water tinged with pink flows from beneath the ice. I cross to a moraine and follow its base, jogging through the loose stone, barely keeping my feet as the footing collapses beneath me.

I stop and hunch over, and hack my guts out. The last globs of symbiont leave my every orifice and when they're gone, a hundred jolts of sciatica zap down my limbs. My lungs turn to stone. My heart skitters and jerks. I drop like a felled tree. I writhe in the scree, convulsing, drooling, spitting flecks of foam—helpless as a rat in a snap trap. The party is over. My Elysial privileges have been revoked.

I somehow marshal enough of my wits to get myself moving again. My limbs feel flabby and uncooperative, but I am able to lurch along, using gravity to assist me, rolling down grassy slopes, sliding down moss-slickened slabs, seeking lower ground however I can.

Each ledge descended is a small victory, rewarded by a quantal improvement in my condition. The ravine broadens to a flat and boggy shelf. I spot the sea beyond the stripped and barren territory of Gihon. The prospect of heading straight for Gihon does not dissuade me. I need lowlands to ease my pain and any sort will do.

But the marshy terrace looks familiar. I remember all the little waterfalls stepping down the creek like crystals on a string. This is where I spent my first night in Gihon with Sabonis in that cave.

I'm not feeling great, but recognizing this scenery sparks my mood and alters my ambition. I decide to make my stand here. I can try to clear myself enough to ease my discomfort to a sustainable ache. No need to resort to Gihon just yet.

I wander the sides of the ravine slopes looking for the cave, but every nook in the ravine wall looks like the next. So I give up and sit down, thinking maybe I can rough it out in the open like every other soul on this mountain.

For an hour or so, I make my peace, and the blankness eases the pounding inside my head.

Hoots and shrieks disturb my reverie. A troop of those ghastly brown monkeys bursts over the crest of the opposite ridge. I look about for a decent stick but anything in reach is spindly or rotten. I make do with a hefty stone.

The orb's sphincter is well into its daily contraction and the light turns jaundiced. Gihon's sounding better than a night fending off flesh-eating monkeys, so I rise again, meandering inevitably closer to Gihon like a river to the sea.

As I walk along, my eye traces a curve in the edge of the marsh. It leads my eye to a shiny boulder embedded in the reeds that I remember from that first night. I stop when I'm about even with it and rotate in place.

The arc of shadow marking the cave entrance stares at me like a one-eyed troll. The low wall Sabonis and I built to guard the opening is still intact. I drag my butt up the slope and crawl inside, collapsing into the coarse sand that lines its floor. I never thought a humble cave could feel so much like home.
Chapter 42: House

My dress hangs in shreds. I am sodden, nipples taut, skin goose-bumped. If this faux flesh of mine had the physiology of a living person, I would have been delirious with hypothermia. I should be grateful that I'm dead.

I make myself comfortable inside the cave, shifting stones out of the way, digging my toes into the sand, hugging my knees against my body.

The cave is shallow. I can reach behind me and touch solid bedrock. Yet, I can't shake the feeling that the cave is deeper than it looks, that it recedes far behind me, and that something might lurk in its depths. I touch the back wall to reassure myself. Again, I find it solid. I clear this stubborn notion from my head.

Once I catch my breath, I push all conscious thoughts from my head—Sabonis, Zion, Bianca, Elysium, even Gina. I shove them all aside and hover in the space between daydream and sleep. My wounds, external and internal, fade from perception.

Maintaining an empty head is an acquired skill, but Clearing is much easier for me now than it had been a few days ago. Life seems so distant now, unreachable, receding like the tail of a comet.

Time compresses in this null state. I stare out the cave, barely aware of the transition from daylight to twilight until the night is well-entrenched.

I let some of my consciousness creep back—enough to make me aware of my surroundings while keeping my agonies at bay.

A piercing scream draws me further than I wanted out of my trance. Across the dim marsh, monkeys scurry across a talus heap. Two troops face each other, squabbling. Battle lines form. Lumps of fur converge, biting and tumbling. More screams. One band disperses and retreats. The victorious troop hoots and postures.

I pry a sharp wedge of stone loose from the wall, just in case the fighting spills over to this side of the hollow.

The cave feels a lot less cozy and secure than it did that night with Sabonis—perhaps, because I am alone. I can't see staying here more than one night. Give me a day to rebuild some of my tolerance and I might be able to cross over the ridge to Sixwing, or make my way back to that beach where this all started.

Those options don't give me much to look forward to, but they're all I have, at the moment. Any ambitions I might have harbored for attaining Elysium have been snuffed.

I keep glancing at the back wall of the cave. Certain shadows look darker and shiftier. Drafts tickle my back when I face forward, as if a hole keeps opening up behind me when I'm not looking. Obsessively, compulsively, I keep touching the back wall to reassure myself.

This time, instead of stone, my finger touches something cold and squishy.

"No touch me!"

Jolts zap through my body. I scramble and knock into the makeshift front wall. Stones tumble off the top.

"Who's there?" I say.

"Haurvil, Jean-Francois," says the voice, hollow and tinny, the voice of a Shade. Its tone is familiar. It's the Shade who tried to get Sabonis to go see Alecto.

"What are you doing here?"

"Zees ees my house," says Haurvil.

"Since when?"

"It has always been my house ... before you and the Unfettered One invade and block it up with stone."

"Were you here all along?" My fear transforms into anger. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I did not weesh to talk to you," says Haurvil. "I was hoping for you to go away.

"I was just going to spend the night," I say. "Those monkeys, they bother me."

"Zees monkeys, zey vill not bother you," says Haurvil. "Not in ze night. In ze night time zey sleep."

"I'm not going out there in the dark," I say.

"Why not? For you ... ees safe. Nussing vill harm you. My mistress, her people, zey vill not harm you."

"Your mistress? You mean Alecto?"

"Oui. She and hers has no reason to harm one who climbs. It is ze Unfettered Ones zat concern her. And now zey has all been gathered."

"Gathered?"

"The campaign ... it was successful. All sree has been captured. But surely, you must know zis. Your friend—"

"Sabonis ...?"

"Yes. He ees among them."

I remember being on the heights above Zion, deep in the narcotic thrall of the symbiont, watching a scuffle on the beach. From afar and in my daze it looked like dancing. That had probably been Sabonis being nabbed by Alecto and her crew.

"What did they do to him?" I feel guilty for leaving Sabonis to fend for himself.

"My mistress, she brought zem to her home," says Haurvil. "She says it ees for learning zare ways, but I sink she ees like a cat. She likes to make play with her prey."

"Where?" I say. "Where is this place?" I doubt there is much I can do. But I need to know what happened. I need to see Sabonis.

"You vill leave my house eef I tell you?" says Haurvil. "Leave my house ... and not come back?"

"Tell me where she lives and I'll leave," I say.

"I vill show you," says Haurvil.

"No need," I say. "Just point me in the right direction."

"It ees night. Zees ees my time," says Haurvil. "I vill show you."

Something silky, like spider web, brushes against my bare arm. A deep pool of shadow stands beside me outside the cave.

"Follow me," says Haurvil.
Chapter 43: Alecto's Lair

"Where are you?" I say. The orb glows soft amber, shedding barely enough light to distinguish land from sky.

"Follow my voice," says Haurvil. "I vill speak."

I spot him. His outline blocks the weak reflections coming off the marsh. He walks to the marshes edge.

"I can't cross that. I'll sink," I say.

"Ees not deep," says Haurvil. "My mistress, she crosses all ze time."

I step and my foot catches on a floating mat of tangled moss. It bears my weight. I feel my way barefoot, step by step, retracting my foot when it slips through holes.

I lose sight of Haurvil, but he is singing softly in French, and he doesn't change direction, crossing directly to the other side.

With relief, I step onto solid ground. Haurvil's voice lifts up the hillside, like tiny speakers on an ancient phonograph.

I am climbing again and I feel it with every upward step. Nothing severe, just a headache and soreness beneath my ribs. Like a junkie for heroin, I long for the feeling that symbiont brought me.

Gentle hooting emanates from a brush patch. The brown monkeys have bedded down for the night.

I surmount the ridge. A hollow dimples its back side. I see lights below—a bonfire within a cluster of huts and smaller, guttering flames along a walkway. Upslope from them, a ring of bulbous structures like giant puffball mushrooms sheds a soft glow.

"You see now?" says Haurvil.

"What am I looking at?"

"My mistress's house stands alone. Her people stay in their village. You will stay out of my house now, yes?"

"No problem. Marco's there? She has Marco?"

"He came today with the others," says Haurvil. "Maybe he is no more."

I look down at the lights, and descend without hesitation.

I reach the path connecting Alecto's bizarre abode to the collection of smaller, more conventional huts. Haurvil's singing trails off in another direction. I am glad to be rid of him.

The huts to my left are nothing special—mud wattle walls, roofed with layered sheets of bark. The fire in the middle of the compound has burned down to orange-red embers, the sort one might use to toast marshmallows.

People sit around the fire, or amble about the compound with a smattering of goats. If these are Alecto's infamous "Facilitators," their domestic life certainly belies their fierce reputation.

I step out onto the path. A shape emerges out of the darkness.

"Lost, sweetie?"

He is no Shade. He is a man.

"I'm looking for Alecto." I can barely make out his features in the reflected fire light.

He peruses my tattered dress, sizing me up.

"Fringer," he says. "What business do you have with her?"

"I don't know. She ... she summoned me," I say. "Jean-Francois ... Haurvil ... said she wants to see me."

"Haurvil, eh?" says the man. "I thought I had heard his blasted singing. Well, you'd better get up there quick. She's settling in for the night. And her house doesn't like her disturbed in her sleep."

"Thank you," I say, wondering if he misspoke.

"Good luck to you," says the man. He passes by me and continues down the path. I stout longbow with many laminations is slung on his back beside a quiver of massive arrows, their shafts as long as my arm and as thick as my thumb. I wait till he puts some space between us before continuing on.

The path climbs to a flat area scooped out of the hillside. It does not look like a natural contour. A stone fence arcs around the gulch-side of the compound. Monoliths several times my height bracket an unguarded gateway.

I pause to rest, uncomfortable, but the discomfort is at a level I can bear. I enter a broad compound. Fatty candles sputter atop of posts. They smell like pork fat.

A ring of bulging huts, roofs indistinguishable from walls, connect by membranous tubes to form a ring. Some of the units harbor a bluish glow that seems to pulse through the walls.

Above the compound, on the side of a hill, three crossed posts form a triple X. Two of the crosses appear to have bodies strapped to them.

I stay clear of the huts and head for the crosses. I have a bad feeling about who might be strapped to them.

As I approach, I see that one X is unoccupied, and that bodies hang motionless on the other. I step closer, tensing with dread.

Eyes open and a head turns. It is not Sabonis. And neither is the figure on the next post over.

The man looking at me has no hands or feet of flesh, only blackness where his flesh should be. His legs are broken and bent at unnatural angles.

His face is striking, with bony cheekbones and elongated chin accentuated by a dark mustache and goatee, like an El Greco Jesus. Intelligent eyes follow me with weary amusement.

"Que pasa?" he says.

"Fine," I say. "I guess."

"What new torture is this she sends my way?"

"Are you okay?" I say.

He looks at me as if I am a cretin. "Do I look okay?" he says. "My heart does not beat. My Shade is ready for the picking ... like a ripe plum."

"I can cut you down," I say.

"Why?" says the man. "I have no blood. No hands, no feet. She fed them to the monkeys and made me watch. I did not give her the pleasure of a reaction."

A dark pool glistens beneath his cross. The hollow canes that drained it still jut from the major arteries in his thighs, upper arms and throat. They drip slowly.

"Who are you?" I say, even though I'm pretty sure I know.

"I am Hector Delgado," says the man. "Or at least I was. Hector may be no more ... again."

"Why did they torture you?" I say. "Because you go back ... to life?"

"This is all from Alecto," says Delgado. "She loves the drama ... the playing. For me, this torture is pointless. I was doomed to be a Shade from the moment they captured me."

"But what they say is true? You go back ... to life?"

"It ... was ... true," says Delgado.

"One thing I don't understand," I say. "If you can return to life ... why do you keep coming back to Lethe?"

"Pah!" he says. "This is a better place to be ... for the dead."

Black patches ooze out of his skin and seep back in, pulsing like a moth in a chrysalis.

"Why is that? I don't understand."

"You would ... if you returned," says Delgado.

"But how? How do you do it?"

"Any fool can find their way back," says Delgado. "All it takes is a good boat. Like the one I took from Marco. That was a damned fine boat. He was wasting it, keeping to the shoals."

"Have you seen him? Sabonis?"

"He is here," says Delgado.

"Where?"

"She is saving him for play, feeding him to her house, perhaps. Come back tomorrow and he'll be on that cross beside us."

My skin tingles as I stare at the unoccupied cross and its tethered hooks. A basket bearing a neat bundle of hollowed, blood-letting canes rests at its base.

I recognize the body dangling silent from the second cross—Mr. Corduroy—and feel yet another unvoiced hope die within me.

I slink back towards the complex of huts.

"Take care, senorita," says Delgado. "That woman is a slithering demon. She's a Shade maker."

I hear humming, its melody matching the little ditty that Haurvil likes to sing.

666

An ancient rosebush spreads its gnarled branches in the center of Alecto's compound. It looks more like a tree, its main stem as thick as my thigh.

I stand between two huts, listening to footsteps patter away from me. The wall looks like some sort of fibrous, extruded stucco. I place my hand on it, and quickly draw my hand back as if stung. It feels warm but prickly, soft as mushroom, but alive like an animal. I look up into the eaves and see gills beneath the overhangs.

I find no door, only slits that melt away at my touch. The walls glow a faint blue in response to my warmth. I leave glowing hand prints that fade after a few seconds. A puff of breath is enough to conjure a gentle glow.

The first hut I enter is barren and dusty. Crusts and abandoned swallow nests and spider webs clog its creases. I pass through another slit and the next hut is much the same, except dirtier, with a pile of dark pellets on the floor—goat droppings.

I continue around the ring, entering a hut that is piled with miscellaneous debris like a hoarder's closet—hunks of bleached driftwood with swooping curves, bottles encrusted with barnacles.

Finally, I find a living space with a floor that looks like it has been swept, stacks of wooden bowls, mats woven from the reeds growing in the marsh I crossed with Haurvil.

I pause at the next junction. About three huts down the chain I see a glow seeping through the walls. A fainter glow moves away and into the adjoining hut.

I move on along the ring, but the contents of the next compartment arrest me. It is packed with stacks of clothing, folded neatly and sorted by item. There are firefighter's coats, military uniforms and coveralls; polyester tops, little black cocktail dresses and dungarees. I rifle through the piles. Much of it is torn and stained and worn through.

I can't resist. I peel off the shreds of my peasant dress and slip into a pair of sweat pants, an oversized flannel shirt and a cotton hoodie. I feel the warmth already building in my skin.

At the next junction I study the patterns of glow ahead. The brightest patch illuminates an entire wall two huts away in the chain. Two huts further on, a fainter glow paints a horizontal slash near the floor.

I move on to an empty hut with blood spots on the floor and walls that squirm like tangles of thin, pale worms. A blue glow emanating one hut down illuminates the next juncture.

I hear a noise—something like a wheezy snore. I stop, look and listen before I move on. I pass through the slit.

Sabonis hangs embedded in the wall. Squirming whitish-blue strands entwine his limbs and fill his nostrils and mouth. They glow purplish where the pink of Sabonis' blood blends with the blue.

From the width of his eyes, he's excited to see me, but he can't say a word because a thick rope of bluish-white coils jams his throat. I try pulling at them. The strands resist and start attacking me, the points of the tendrils turning hard and jabbing me like blunt little hypodermics.

I look around for some way to cut him free. I spot a lance on the floor. A foot-long shard of obsidian is mounted on a stout shaft that appears to have grown around the stone while the sapling was alive. I grab it near the base of the blade and try wielding it like a knife.

My hands shake. Sabonis cringes as I wiggle the blade close to the strands winding up his neck. Some of strands gather to sting my arm. I slash at them. The obsidian parts the white filaments cleanly and they curl away from the blade. A thousand slender worms disentangle and trickle down Sabonis' chin, dangling like a beard before they tumble to the floor, writhing like baby-blue nematodes.

Sabonis hacks and coughs and spits up blood. "My ears! Get 'em outa my ears! They're coming in everywhere."

I slash at either side of his head, and at the ropy tangles restraining his arms. He falls forward, thighs still embedded. I peel his legs free and he rips himself out of the wall, leaving a Sabonis-shaped impression behind. He collapses on the floor, clawing at the coils penetrating every orifice, scrape or contusion.

The slit opening to the next room begins to glow. A dark-eyed woman with tidy eyebrows and a waist-length braided ponytail peers into the chamber.

"My, my," says Alecto. "Look who's been a very bad boy."
Chapter 44: Facilitator

The door slit anticipates Alecto's movements. Edges curl and retract before she even takes a step. As she glides into the chamber, the wall behind her brightens like an inverse shadow, responding to the proximity of her flesh.

Alecto wears a hooded robe spun from the sapient fibers that comprise her house, although the ones she wears seem calmer and duller than the aggressive worms swarming her walls.

She looks young, mid-20s at most, with little sign of the weathering I have noticed in other, otherwise young looking denizens of Lethe. She is slender at the torso, her calves are wiry, her thighs muscular.

"Bad. Very bad," says Alecto. "Both of you. I wish I had room enough on my crosses for two."

I wield the obsidian spear in a fighting position. The fibers on the wall prickle with agitation.

Alecto wheels to face me. Her sharp, intelligent eyes seize and hold my gaze. "Put that down," she says. "Go. Save yourself while you can."

Instead, I step between her and Sabonis. He is still on the floor, too weak to rise.

"You're making a big mistake," she says. "You may think you're Fallen, but you can easily retrieve what you've lost."

"You know? Where I've been?" I say.

"Of course I know," says Alecto. "My house tells me everything that happens on this mountain." She pets the wall like it was a cat. "Don't you, house? A girl has to keep her house happy, no? I have a happy house today."

She turns to the door slot and makes it dilate fully. She steps aside. "Go on and go," she says. "We won't harm you if you leave right now. Get back on that mountain. Take your time this time, when you climb. You'll find there are much better ways to spend eternity than what your current path will bring."

She scowls down at Sabonis. "Not much left to this one, anyhow. We've drained him out pretty good, the pest. Three pests in two days. Not a bad haul. Now, go, before you make a pest out of yourself."

"He's coming with me," I say, poking the spear towards her spear.

She smirks. "But why? You're not like him," says Alecto. "You're Fettered. You won't get far, even if you are a Primentor's pet."

"He's my ... friend," I say. Sabonis rolls back on his haunches. I can see he's gathering his strength.

"Fool. This man has no friends. He's a parasite. He exploits souls to his own ends. Just like Delgado and Schneider and Andali before him. There will be more Unfettered Ones crawling out of Avernus. That's inevitable. But that's why we have Facilitators like me, no?"

"Don't move, or I'll gut you like a fish," I say. "We're leaving. Marco, can you stand?"

Sabonis lumbers to his feet. He wobbles towards a wall. Strands loop out and attempt to snag him, but he is out of their reach.

Alecto speaks to her robe. It bunches and slithers off her sleek form, configuring itself into a squid-like creature, with a tapered body and tentacles in front. It squirms across the floor and latches onto Sabonis' leg. I jab it with the obsidian spear. It hisses, loses its grip. Sabonis kicks out his leg and flings it against the wall. Threads slither out to knead and caress the creature's wound.

Alecto screeches and charges Sabonis, long fingernails flashing like stilettos. I spin towards her. The spear catches her beneath the ribs and keeps penetrating. She gasps but does not scream. I use her momentum to push her against the wall, pinning her against the writhing threads.

The wall flares bright. Turquoise threads spin out and engulf Alecto's body. Some enter her wound and tug at the spear, pushing it out of her. Others sop up her blood and knit closed her damaged skin.

Alecto, her face contorted in a rictus of rage, tries to come after us, but the strands restrain her. Ropy tendrils slither down her throat, squelching her voice.

The aperture seals to a thin slit and pulls taut as a drum head. I slash an opening diagonally with the ultra-sharp obsidian. The membrane curls away, shriveling like a leaf touched by fire.

I grab Sabonis by the wrist and haul him outside. The entire complex writhes. Paroxysms of light emanate from Alecto and pulse around the ring.

I drag Sabonis through the scrubby shelf to the crosses on the hillside. Sabonis looks foggy but at least he can move.

"Where ya goin'?" says Sabonis, slurring the words like a drunk.

"Delgado's here," I say. "Maybe you might like a word with him."

"That ... rat ... fucker," says Sabonis.

We reach the crosses, and find Delgado inert. The shadow limbs that had protruded from him are gone. Only dead flesh remains, waxy and stiff.

"I had just spoken to him," I say.

"This one's still got some juice," says Sabonis, looking up at the next cross.

"But ...."

"Cut him down," says Sabonis. "This one's moving."

I slash at the thongs securing Mr. Corduroy spread-eagled across the limbs of the X, and he drops. He tries to speak. No sounds emerge from his mouth.

Sabonis reaches up and fishes through Delgado's coat pockets. He pulls out a golf ball, a cigarette lighter, half a pack of cigarillos.

"Let's get out of here," says Sabonis.

Foot beats pound down the path.
Chapter 45: Avernus

Figures converge on Alecto's abode as waves of peristalsis cycle around the ring of huts, their contractions inducing bands of blue radiance.

We flee head-long into the dark, chasing our shadows down a blue-tinged hillside. The blueness makes me think of police cruisers. It feels like we're running from the scene of an accident or a crime.

We stumble through the scrub, cross a brook and curl around the blunt end of the ridge separating us from the vale harboring the marshes and Haurvil's cave.

The random zing of raspy trousers marks Mr. Corduroy's herky-jerky. Sabonis collapses into a bush, but quickly extricates himself to rejoin us. I lead this parade of cripples with Alecto's obsidian spear as my baton.

I stop to look back. The spasms contorting Alecto's dwelling have eased. The flashing has quieted and dimmed.

I had expected a chase, a battle, but see no sign, hear no voices of pursuers. Only the occasional monkey hoot punctures the silence.

The orb leaks enough light to highlight the topography in sepia tones. We cross into the vale and swing wide around the marshes, heading for the narrow neck marking their outlet to the cliffs above Gihon.

Something large passes along the marshy edge of the stream. The smell of rotting flesh wafts over us. Mr. Corduroy, wobbly on his feet, cringes back and almost falls. I ready my spear.

Sabonis peers ahead. "Ah, it's just a fucking Collector," he says and brushes past.

I follow close behind him. Mr. Corduroy gives the Collector a wider berth.

The Collector stands stiff and silent, watching us pass; a long pike with a hooked blade propped by his side. His stench makes me gasp.

A dark cube dangles from the man's waist, jiggling and rustling as if a trapped rodent is scratching to get out.

"Say hi to Hector," says Sabonis.

"He's in that box?"

"It's a good bet," says Sabonis.

I keep my eyes on the Collector as we cross the stream just above the spot where it dives over the escarpment into Gihon's gulch. A group of Fringers have set up a rude camp on the other side. They huddle together in lean-tos behind a stockade of sharpened sticks. A sentry steps forward to challenge us, but one look at Sabonis halts him in his tracks.

We climb past, Sabonis straining to stay upright. A feather blow might have been enough to knock him down. We're halfway up the ridge before he stops to rest, settling slowly down onto a fallen tree.

A series of monkey hoots in the distance unnerves me. I scan the vale for any signs of movement.

"Remember this place?" says Sabonis.

"I was just here," I say. "I stayed in that cave again. That damned Shade nearly creeped me out of my skin ... again."

"Why'd you come back?" says Sabonis. "I thought you had a one-way ticket to Elysium."

"Wasn't me who wanted to go there," I say. "It was that ... thing."

"This guy's awful quiet," says Sabonis. "What's the matter, buddy? Cat got your tongue?"

Mr. Corduroy pantomimes cryptically. Sabonis looks at me, as if for clarification. I have no clue what he's trying to convey.

"Maybe he can't talk?" I say. I see nothing obvious wrong with him – no crushed throat, no missing tongue—but who knew what harms lurked unseen inside him.

"I wonder why Alecto went after this schlemiel," says Sabonis.

"He's ... Unfettered," I say. "This is Mr. Corduroy."

"This that same guy you saw in Sixwing?"

"Yeah."

"Huh," says Sabonis. "Guess I should have known from the pants."

"You okay to go on?" I say, nervous. There's no sign anymore of the blue light, but ordinary fire glow silhouettes the hill from which we came.

"Yup," says Sabonis, groaning as he pushes himself up off the log. "Gotta keep moving. They'll be after us, as soon as that hell house of Alecto's gets her patched."

I let my cripples walk ahead of me at their own pace. Mr. Corduroy moves like a puppet, flinging his limbs farther than necessary, struggling to regain his balance after every step.

Sabonis, at least, retains some coordination, but even his steps are tentative and shaky, his knees ever on the verge of buckling.

And the higher we climb, the more my own motor impairment kicks in, bringing with it the pressure and pain of Ascent. We must make a pitiful sight to anyone watching.

We surmount the ridge and begin to descend. I am glad to have yet another spur of mountain between us and Alecto. The Loch reflects softly below against the black emptiness of the volcanic uplands beyond. Constellations of campfire outline the estuary of Sixwing and its satellite villages.

"Where're we going?" I say. "Dilmun?"

"Got a better idea?" says Sabonis.

Mr. Corduroy hustles ahead of us to get our attention. He traces the shape of a mountain with his hand and waggles his finger at the uplands across the Loch.

"The volcano?" says Sabonis. "Fuck that. Who the hell would wanna go there?"

An ember flares in me. "Maybe that's his land route ... back to life."

"You believed that bull crap?" says Sabonis.

"He gave me chocolate."

"So? We got a bottle of rum. Most likely from the same source."

"Delgado?"

"Who else?"

But I can't shake this tingly feeling. "Why not give it a shot?" I say. "What else are we going to do?" I say.

"Build another boat?" says Sabonis.

"Could we?"

"Not like Andali's," says Sabonis. "Not like my cat."

"So let him show us his way. What could it hurt?"

Sabonis looks at me like I'm a buffoon. But as he thinks about it, the hard edges erode from his expression. He grimaces and inhales through his teeth. He looks Mr. Corduroy in the eye. "Okay, fancy pants. Show us your land route."

666

The orb has begun to brighten by the time we cross to the other side of the Loch. We pass halfway down its length towards Sixwing when Mr. Corduroy abruptly veers up into the hills.

Sabonis pauses and sighs, but follows after him. "Never liked coming here much," he says.

"This place have a name?"

"Akron," says Sabonis.

"As in ... Ohio?"

"S'got lots of names," says Sabonis. "Guides call it somethin' sounds like Akron or Acorn. The old farts call it Sheol. There's Avernus, too, but ... that's a whole 'nother thing."

The slope is paved with brick-sized, jagged stones mottled pink and gray. They tinkle when they knock together and are half as light as they look, like movie props.

Yellow wildflowers poke from trapped patches of dirt. Little, rust-furred rodents pop out to chitter and scold us as we disturb the tidy piles of grass they have spread out to dry.

The afflictions that throttled me on Mt. Abdiel are absent here. Nothing punishes my climbing but my own bodily limitations. I could have been hiking in the Adirondacks.

Mr. Corduroy has picked up the pace. His movements have gotten better coordinated, as if he has re-learned how to use his body. Sabonis is stepping stronger as well.

"Notice anything strange about this guy?" says Sabonis, whispering.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. He seems a bit off."

"You're asking the wrong person," I say. "Everyone in Lethe seems a bit off to me. I'm a bit off."

Mr. Corduroy is all smiles as he pauses to let us catch up. Sabonis' comment leads me to examine him more closely.

In the burgeoning light, I see what Sabonis means. There is an uncanny vacancy behind Mr. Corduroy's eyes. He's missing that bit of sparkle that every living, breathing creature should possess.

We plod on up the tinkling ramps of stone, and into a bowl floored with volcanic ash packed and set like concrete. Rotten egg smells spill down the slope. Fumaroles near the rim spew vapors that the wind catches and spills over us.

Mr. Corduroy plows on ahead, humming.

Sabonis stops. His posture stiffens. "Oh Lord, I should have known."

"What's wrong?" I say.

"Can't believe I let this fucker bring us here."

Pale globes, like ostrich eggs, lie half-buried in the ash. I tap at one with the base of the spear. It sounds hollow, but its walls are thick.

"Stay away from those!" says Sabonis.

Mr. Corduroy continues up the ash slope, humming an oddly familiar melody.

"That song!" says Sabonis. His pale cheek bones flush pink. He seizes the spear from me and dashes after Mr. Corduroy.

"Hey!"

Sabonis slashes him behind the knees before he can react. He cries out, collapsed and rolls.

"What the hell?" I run up and try to grab the spear back, but Sabonis wrenches it away from me.

"Look at him!" he says.

"Marco—"

"I said, look at him!"

A Shade has jarred loose from Mr. Corduroy, peeling away at the legs, seeping out of his head and torso.

"Shades don't come loose that easy, unless they've glommed onto the wrong body. Your Mr. Corduroy has left the premises. This is Alecto's pet we got here."

"Haurvil?" I say.

Sabonis jabs him with the spear point. "Why'd you bring us here? Speak, you fuck!"

"I know not why you baw-thare wis zat spear," says Haurvil. "I can feel nussing." He slithers free of Mr. Corduroy's corpse.

"Who told you to bring us here?"

"I volunteer," says Haurvil. "Avernoos is where you belonk."

"You got some balls there buster, a Shade like you, taking us to the pits."

"Ees no problem ... for me," he says. "I am immune."

"Yeah, well I've got half a mind to cram your ass down one of these holes to see how immune you really are."

"What are you talking about?" I say, perplexed.

"This place is a dumping ground for Shades and wannabes. Where Collectors empty their little black boxes."

666

We rest among the ash heaps. Sabonis is really dragging now, depleted by our jaunt. I feel aimless and dispirited, perhaps even suicidal, if such a fate was possible in Lethe.

Haurvil roams free of Mr. Corduroy's corpse, flitting around us like a fly. "My meestress, she will find you," he says. "You are doomed, no matter where you go, no matter what you do."

"How did a pest like you ever manage to finagle immunity?" says Sabonis.

"Alecto ... she like me," says Haurvil.

"Why?"

"Een life, I was singer," says Haurvil. "Famous ... in Burundi and Belgium. Alecto, she remember, she feels sorry when she sees me here. She make sure, I never be Collect."

I get up and wander across the bowl. The ash field is studded with glassy hunks of obsidian as big as my head. Dark pits, elliptical and regularly spaced like spiracles on a maggot, slant down the rim of the bowl. Curious, I head for the closest.

"Stay away from those," says Sabonis, his voice rising in pitch.

I ignore him, drawn by a vacant curiosity. A fluttery feeling envelops me, like a shroud of silk has dropped over my head. I smell bagels baking, Szechuan pork, diesel exhaust. A soft rumbling emanates deep within – a subway.

I move closer. Summer in Cortland wafts up to greet me – lighter fluid on charcoal, barbecued chicken. A thunderstorm rumbles in the distance, promising a changeover of cool air to make for easy sleeping.

Hands seize me and pull me away from the pit.

"Get your ass away from there!"

"But ... I smell ... burnt marshmallows. This might be the way back."

"It's not," says Sabonis.

"How do you know?"

"Because I've been to Avernus. And you wanna know what I smell right now? I smell the sea. Rockaway Beach. Coconut tanning oil. Chanel No. 5. Joanne's perfume."

"How?"

"Same reason you catch rats with peanut butter and sardines."

"Huh?"

"It's bait. This place is a fucking trap. Like I said, Mr. Haurvil's got him some balls bringing us here. This place is a black hole for Shades and fools who can't hang on to their flesh."

666

The orb has come full on, having gone through the rapid transition that passes for dawn in Lethe. We rest again, having climbed down out of the bowl, away from the temptations of the pits.

Haurvil stands out on a promontory, basking like a pterodactyl in the orb light.

"I thought Shades didn't like daylight," I say.

"They usually don't want to be seen," says Sabonis. "Apparently this guy doesn't worry about that shit."

My Avernus-triggered delusions linger. I sense gritty salt and heirloom tomato on my tongue. A hint of crumpled basil hovers in the air.

"How'd you get out ... of Avernus?"

"Got kicked out," says Sabonis. "Didn't have to do shit. Must be because I'm what they call 'Unfettered'. I'm the lump in the gravy that won't dissolve, the scum that rises to the top."

"So ... Avernus is basically ... Hell?

"No such thing," says Sabonis, sneering. "Avernus is just a mixing pot. It rips apart the bits that make up your soul – memories, ideas, likes, quirks. Mashes and mixes them up with all the bits of every other soul."

"But not yours."

"Nope. Fucking place didn't want me. I drifted farther from the swirl until I just kind of budded off, pinched out into Lethe."

"So how come you're not a Shade?"

"Not a clue," says Sabonis. "Don't know why, don't know how. When I came to my senses, I had flesh."

Haurvil, standing on the ledge, spreads his arms wide and flaps them like he's about to take wing.

"What's this doofus up to?" says Sabonis. He stands and looks out over the Loch. His face ripples and freezes in a scowl. "The bastard!" He bounds over and bats Haurvil off his perch, arms trundling like a maid clearing cobwebs.

I scramble over and see five figures sprinting along the Loch's shore, weapons bouncing in rhythm with their strides. "Alecto?"

"We gotta run," says Sabonis. "We got the edge on them, if we cut over the top to Dilmun."

But something catches my eye in the other direction, towards Sixwing. A familiar sail has blossomed in the harbor with the sunken caldera.

"Hey, isn't that your boat?"
Chapter 46: Limbo

Strands convey Bianca into the hectic antechambers of Elysium. Discouraged, humiliated, she is desperate to climb into her cell and escape into dream. She heads straight for the inner core, searching the shuffling, jostling column of cells for her own.

But none of these wriggling corpuscles are hers. For the first time since her Ascension, her cell fails to meet her. It feels like returning home after a hard day at work to find that the landlord has changed the locks.

Bianca fears the worst. Her little chamber was more than a home. It was family—healing, soothing, nurturing, loving her. Its absence means that it has likely been assimilated and exists no more.

She scowls at every passing Guide who tries to express condolences. She storms away, scraping her nails against the villous walls, furious at her failure to help Daniel Ascend. He was so close!

She can't abide loitering and making a spectacle, so she passes down into the Warren, the labyrinthine casbah at the base of Elysium, lair of the rootless, branchless masses of unaffiliated souls; deposed clans and the half-Fallen.

Bianca had once pitied those who dwelled here, but now she is one of their number. She can't blame the Powers for casting her out. Daniel posed a challenge, certainly, but how often does a Guide receive direct assistance from a Primentor? It had been Bianca's job to bring the boy home and she has failed.

She passes along the very bottom of Elysium. Transparent blotches on the basement membrane reveal Lethe spinning miles below, edges smudged with mist.

She reaches the Ocelli, the bright domains of the soul tenders, surrounding the Orb. Here, bundles of spectral fiber, invisible outside, shimmer into perception within the body of Elysium.

Bianca wends her way to the work chamber of Eisling, her cousin, twice removed. Eisling hails from Greystones and Bray, along the coast south of Dublin. Bianca never knew her in life, even though they were contemporaries, living at times only miles apart. In death, she had become Bianca's dearest contact in an Elysium disturbingly devoid of close kin.

Bianca finds Eisling stroking and twisting the glowing strings, their colors displaying the status and strivings of Lethe's unfinished souls. Her hands flutter like caged songbirds over the spectral loom. She slides a finger down a strand deep within a skein, plunging it down the spectrum from ultraviolet to blue, plinking it to gauge its tone. She unsnarls tangles, brings together disparate threads and weaves together that call to be woven.

With thumb and forefinger, Eisling dampens the dark fibers contaminating her sheaths of light and slashes them free with her nails. They fall away and disintegrate, Squatters all.

Bianca hovers, reluctant to disturb her cousin's delicate work. Eisling's fingers continue to dance on the strands as her gaze shifts softly to Bianca. Eisling wears the dreamy, drugged expression of someone only half-engaged. Her smile is tempered with a knowing sadness.

"Eisling, I—"

"I heard," says Eisling.

"Have they given you my string?"

"Not yet," says Eisling, reaching, plinking, damping.

"You'll let me know—"

"Of course."

Bianca knows she can't linger. The fate of too many souls depends on Eisling's focus. One mistake can turn an Ascendant to a Squatter.

She backs out of Eisling's chamber, and strides off to find some vacant cubicle in the Warren's depths where she can curl up as she awaits her fate.

Bianca collides with a tiny figure standing in the corridor. She tries to pass but a petite soul latches onto her wrists. Recognition snatches her out of her trance.

"Mother Ebbani!" says Bianca. "What are you doing down here?"

"You couldn't very well come to see me, could you?"

"No," says Bianca. Her head dips and then whips back up. "What happened down there ... I didn't ... I thought ... I am so sorry.

"Me too," says Ebbani.

"I ... tried."

"I know you did, child."

"I am pathetically hopeless."

"Hush, child. You're not the first to lose a charge at the Table of Accession. You won't be the last." Ebbani sighs. "Though few arrive pumped full of the Primentor's essence."

Bianca studies her Mentor's face for clues. She finds little to guide her, apart from sympathy.

"What's to become of me?" says Bianca.

"That's not yet clear," says Mother Ebbani. "There will be deliberations. For now you will stay in the Warren."

"Is there something I can do to restore my status?" Bianca trembles like an opium addict in the early throes of withdrawal. "My cell, I miss it."

"It's out of our hands," says Mother Ebbani. "I'm sorry you were caught up in this. It was a terrible choice on my part to assign you to Daniel. But I never expected the Unfettered One to become entangled."

"But I'll do anything to fix what happened. Just tell me what."

"There's nothing we can do, child. What's done is done. I want you to know that ... in the worst case ... if you Fall ... I'll be looking out for you. If there are second chances to be gotten, I'll make sure you get one."

"Daniel ... and Marco?" says Bianca. "What's to become of them?"

"They're lost, child," says Ebbani. "The Primentor has surrendered claim on Daniel. Marco's days are numbered. The Facilitators are cracking down."

A clamp tightens around Bianca's heart.

Ebbani narrows her eyes. "I sense what you're thinking, child. If you do Fall, do not seek him out. Understand? If you do, I will lose all patience and sympathy for you. Do you understand?"

"I intend not to Fall," says Bianca, gazing through the membrane at her feet to the island far below, its black beaches fringed with breakers, its heights bulging with bony arêtes and muscular buttresses. "I worked too hard to get here. I hope ... I don't Fall."

"As do I, child," says Ebbani. "As do I."
Chapter 47: Commandeered

Sighting the catamaran lights a fire under Sabonis. He careens down the ashen slopes to the pumice-strewn shore of the Loch. I can barely keep up.

Haurvil glides behind us like an unhitched shadow, impervious to our efforts to send him packing. Freed of flesh, he trots like a man on the moon, Lethe's gravity equivocal against his sketchy mass.

Alecto's crew is probably trailing us, although we can see no sign of them from the flats. Given our head start and pace, it seems unlikely they'll beat us to the harbor. I hope.

We spook the tiny fish skimming over pebbled shallows all the way to Sixwing's outer limits, studded with the impromptu shacks of the newly-arrived. These rude shelters give way to the sturdier huts of longer term residents. Their design and composition are as diverse as humanity: tepees, yurts, mud wattle, brick and sod.

People mingle in courtyards, sharing tea with friends from countries that, in life, they never knew existed. Here, every Squatter is a citizen of Lethe.

We pause before a lane with a clear view down to the salt marshes fringing the estuary. A pair of angled masts, sails lashed, drifts past the reeds.

"They're comin' in," says Sabonis, trotting off down an eroded alley way, dodging puddles of offal and flocks of turkey-like fowl.

"Careful," I say. "Remember, one of them had a gun."

"Not no more," says Sabonis. "Alecto's bunch put that one down in Zion, along with the rest of Delgado's crew."

"Then who's got the boat?"

"Beats me," says Sabonis. "That's what I aim to find out."

The lane dead ends at a dusty lot with a wobbly dock made of lashed-together saplings. Dugouts and reed canoes line a slant of grey beach. We wait and watch from behind a cluster of birches. Haurvil climbs onto the roof of a hut, staring in the opposite direction towards the Loch.

The cat drifts in to the dock, manned by a quartet of bearded, long-haired men of diverse race and ethnicity.

Sabonis waits for them to tie up, and then bursts out from behind the birches. "Off my boat, you fucks." He brandishes the obsidian spear.

Three of the men, bearing baskets of fish, mill about, startled. The fourth throws down an armload of nets and picks up an oar.

"What makes you tink dis your boat, mon?" says a wiry man in dreadlocks.

"Did you help carve these hulls?" says Sabonis. "I did, and I got the scars to prove it."

"If dis boat is really yours, mon, you not be taking very good care of your property. We found dis boat wushed up on a sandbar."

"Finders-keepers. The law of the beach," says a man with greasy, blonde hair, circling behind Sabonis.

"You stay put," says Sabonis. "In fact, all of you are gonna walk away from my boat or I'm going to carve you some new assholes."

The fishermen set down their baskets, but they don't retreat. Various knives and sharpened staves slip out of waist bands.

I sidle behind Sabonis. "Um, Marco," I whisper. "You might want to tone it down a bit. There's four of them. All we got's this one spear."

"Shut up and let me handle this!" says Sabonis, wheeling to track the fishermen as they fan around us, with a bounce in their stances, blades loose in their grips. "These guys don't scare me. They're all bluster. They ain't got the balls to come after us."

"Cute girl," says the greasy man, leering. He wields a long shard of green glass from a shattered fishing float, mounted in driftwood. "I call first dibs. After we gut the boyfriend."

"Oo-rah! Gang bang!" says a toothless man.

An arrow whizzes past Sabonis' head and thunks into the chest of the greasy man.

"Facilitators!" says the dreadlocked man.

One of the fishermen kicks over a basket, spilling fish over the ground, and darts into an alley. The toothless one slips into the copse of birches. Arrows sprout from their peeling trunks.

Sabonis dashes for the boat, and I'm right behind him. He snatches up an oar, unties the lead and pushes out into the estuary. I duck into a shelter in the platform between the hulls.

As Sabonis drops sail, the dreadlocked man leaps on board and scrambles up to the bow. He grabs an oar and pushes off, nosing the cat around.

Arrows fly our way from archers yet unseen, all missing their mark, as Sabonis stays behind the masts and Mr. Dreadlocks stays low. Two Facilitators burst into the clearing, converge on the birches. They haul out the toothless man and force him face down in the dirt.

The sail billows open. The cat lifts and surges down the channel. The archers emerge and pursue us along the estuary shore until the marshy fringes bog them down. They send their parting shots. One barely misses me, zipping into the shelter's opening and out through the front wall.

Another arrow catches in Mr. Dreadlocks' hair, clipping off a twisted skein. He looks surprised at first, but then rips it out and waves it at the receding archers, mocking them.

Mr. Dreadlocks hops onto the platform, dark eyes glaring. I cringe deeper into the shelter, but he's merely crossing over to the other hull to secure a line dangling free from the bottom corner of the sail.

Back up the estuary, a lithe figure appears on the rooftop besides the black smudge that is Haurvil. Alecto lifts her bow. The cat is well beyond her range, but she lets fly anyhow. Her arrow skips in our wake and drifts like a viper.
Chapter 48: Seaward

The cat's twin bows cleave through gentle swells as our tack carries us out of the estuary and into the harbor. We leave Alecto and her gang stranded on the other side of the marshes, except for one persistent soul who breaks through the reeds and pursues us along the beach.

The guy with the dreadlocks sits in back of one hull, one arm draped around the dual rudder assembly, guiding us through the center of the channel.

Sabonis hops down off the mast onto the center board. "Can you believe this guy? Steals my boat, and now he thinks he's crew."

"Or vice-versa," I say.

Sabonis looks stricken for a moment, but then his face relaxes. "Nah, he's just being pragmatic. Knows what side his bread's buttered. You gotta admire that. He's a quick thinker." Sabonis looks to the stern. "Yo, rasta man, what's your name?"

Dark eyes study us from the nest of dreadlocks. "Name is Roddie," he says. "Roddie Harris."

"Where you from?"

"Ladyville. It is in Belize. You know Belize?"

"Course we know Belize, don't we, Dan?"

I nod. "Sure."

"You like my boat, Roddie?"

Roddie stares at Sabonis, wheels clicking behind his eyes.

"This ain't your boat, mister," he says. "Any more than it is mine."

"Well, Roddie my man, stick with us and maybe this boat will be yours."

"You're giving away your boat already?" I say, whispering. "You just got it back."

"Not like we'll be needing it," says Sabonis. "Where we're going."

"Why? Where you go?" says Roddie, overhearing.

"Me?" says Sabonis. "I'm going to Connecticut. Naugatuck, Connecticut."

"I ask where you go," says Roddie. "Not where you come from."

Sabonis rolls his eyes and smiles at me.

666

We have easy sailing out of the harbor. It's all downwind once we get past the broken lip of the caldera. We zip past the volcano, keeping well away from those Shade-crowded islets and their treacherous ledges. We're in no hurry; no need to thread the needle this time.

"Go spell Roddie at the rudder," says Sabonis. "We got some tacking to do."

"Why? Where are we headed?"

"My place, for a bit," says Sabonis. "Rest up. Heal up. Get the cat refitted."

"Is it ... safe? What about Alecto?"

"Don't worry about her," he says. "Her sort don't bother with Dilmun."

"How come?"

"I don't know, they just don't. That's why us rejects always end up there. Andali. The Prospers. Delgado never hung out there much, but he was always on the move ... till the end."

I take the rudder and Roddie goes up and helps Sabonis reconfigure the trim of the sails. Roddie proves quick and deft with knots and lines. Unlike me, he's obviously done this before.

We get pointed on an oblique across the prevailing wind. All I have to do is hold on to the rudder until Sabonis calls out to bring the boat around. It sure beats bailing. I marvel at how dry the bottom of this boat stays compared to that sieve of an outrigger.

When it's time to tack, it takes all of my strength to budge the limb connecting the rudders. I do fine, mostly, except for once, I overdo it and bring the cat around in a complete circle.

Roddie comes back. "No need," I say. "I can handle this." Roddie pries at my fingers and shoulders me out of the way and takes the rudder. Miffed, I go forward to the center board, almost wishing there was bailing to be done, something to make me feel useful.

I grab onto the shelter and stand behind Sabonis, by baggy clothes flapping in the wind. We're on a line headed for Dilmun. Sabonis is looking mighty pleased with himself, whatever the reason.

"So remind me," says Sabonis. "What do you remember about floating?"

I bite my lip. "I told you. I don't remember much."

"Except for that jellyfish."

"Oh ... yeah," I say. "But it wasn't really ... I mean the shape of it maybe ... but it was way too dark and opaque for a jelly fish."

"You said you were drifting for a long time. How long?"

"I don't know. Felt like years. But I was barely conscious for most of it. So who knows?"

Sabonis scratches his beard and looks out over the open water. "Well that alone tells us something," he says. "It means you didn't just pop up in the shoals. You probably came in from a long ways out."

"Maybe," I say. An image flashes into my mind—a jagged and barren landscape fringed with rocky coves and black sandy beaches, punctuated with frosted peaks.

"I saw ... the island," I say. "An island, anyway. I remember looking down on it from up high."

"You did say you were flying for a time," says Sabonis.

"Not on this side, I wasn't. When I saw the island, I was in the water, looking down on it from a height."

"Huh? How can that be?"

"I don't know. I bobbed up for a few seconds, broke through and there it was, far below me. Along with those ... those tangles of tentacle or worms or whatever they are."

"That don't make any sense." Sabonis scrunches his face.

"Sorry," I say. "It's the best I got."

The wind stiffens and stalls us out. Roddie brings the boat around while Sabonis shifts the sail for a starboard tack.

Along the horizon, greyish-black lumps, like dense smoke from a distant brushfire, creep into the cobalt sky.

We get the cat pointed on a heading that will take us smack in the middle of the Cape to Sabonis' little homestead. I stretch out on the platform, out of the wind, cozy in my layers of flannel and hoodie. I look forward to Dilmun's beaches, snakes or no snakes. The pears in Sabonis' orchard should be ready to pick by now.

No mists block our view this time. Dilmun's full length is exposed, from the rolling hills and dunes, to the layered, pyramidal promontory at the tip.

The mountainsides of the main island are fuzzed with patches of brown that I know to be the temporary flesh of thousands of souls striving to Ascend.

The sky at the horizon looks much more interesting than usual. Its clouds have a meaty heft and definition, like ripples in muscle, not the uniform and ubiquitous smudge that I had seen every day since my arrival.

The orb shines strong enough for me to bask and accumulate some warmth. I picture myself sprawling in the sand listening to the wavelets lapping in the cove.

But the clouds don't settle for merely looking picturesque. They evolve into spiky columns and anvils. Sabonis goes back to confer with Roddie. He clambers back to the center board looking worried.

"Change of plans," he says. "We got Pounders coming."

666

"Pounders?"

Sabonis' eyes meet mine with unusual gravity.

"Ever notice how there's hardly any big trees in this place, especially on Dilmun?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Pounders," says Sabonis.

"What are they? Like hurricanes?"

"Nothing like you'd ever seen," he says. "Best I can describe is like an upside down tornado, except they don't spin, and they don't suck, they pound."

"Good thing we're so close to home, eh? We can duck into your cottage and sit it out."

Roddie leans hard on the rudder and wheels the cat around facing downwind.

"Get up off your ass and help me with this sail," snaps Sabonis.

"But ... it's just ... weather. Your cove is right there ... practically swimming distance."

"You don't understand," says Sabonis. "You don't just sit one of these out. There's a reason they're called Pounders. These ain't just windstorms. They're goddamned fists that slam down and obliterate anything in their way. There's Seraphim behind these things. My cottage doesn't stand a chance."

"So what do we do?"

"We run," says Sabonis. "Out to sea, where we got space to maneuver."

Roddie points to the rudder and waves for us to come back. "Follow me," says Sabonis. Roddie straightens the rudder and holds it firm while Sabonis lashes it against a strut.

"This will make it easier for you to control," says Sabonis. "I left a little wiggle for adjustments, but really all you gotta do is make sure the rope doesn't come undone. It loosens up, you get it lashed up tight right away. Understand?"

I nod. He and Roddie go forward and expose more of the sail, securing it with extra lines. The cat begins to pick up speed as the extra bit of sail billows out and catches the wind.

I glance back at the storm. My eyes fix on three churning, charcoal columns that have risen from the sea. Knots of boiling mist bulge like tumors beneath their bulbous crowns.

We blow past the Shade-infested islets, passing much closer this time, but well away from their reefs. We enter rougher waters with long period swells. The sharp hulls list up and cut through the chop.

Stringy clouds, branched and twined like veins, stretch out overhead, borne by high altitude winds far swifter than the cat. They filter and weaken the orb light.

Bumpy clouds, like heads of cauliflowers, cap the pursuing columns, staggered one behind the other. Spiral arms uncoil from their shoulders. They look like three-dimensional ankhs or chi-rhos. Sabonis and Roddie gawk at them from the masts.

The swells grow deeper and steeper until it seems the sea has sprouted foothills. I brace for impact as the cat noses into a particularly mountainous swell. The bow tips up, but we ride it smoothly, pivoting over the crest and surfing down the back side.

The Pounders look much too solid for creations of wind and water. Their spreading arms block the orb light, though the horizon remains queerly bright. Wind swirls down on us like helicopter rotor wash.

We nudge off-line and ride up a swell sideways causing the cat to strike the trough awkwardly, ripping Roddie off a mast and onto the roof of the shelter. I shove against the rudder to get us pointed straight again but there's very little give in the lashings.

A sudden gust from a new direction strikes us and the lashings unwind, freeing up the rudder assembly. The cat spins wildly in the swirling winds. I yank back the rudder to get us straightened and lashed up again under the blameful stare of Roddie and Sabonis. From then on it's a wrestling match, but I stay alert and resist any counter forces to keep us on track.

Our shadows grow, no longer truncated by the perpetual noon of Lethe, as we move out from under the orb. Our line of travel, and the wind, perfectly aligns with the shadows. The orb's glow, behind a thin screen of cloud, looks squashed, more elliptical than round.

I look back and see only storm columns. Lethe has vanished. Only a moment ago I had seen Mt. Abdiel poking high above the horizon. A wall of water seems to have risen to block it from view.

Snatches of Sabonis arguing with Roddie carry to me with the wind.

"It is just a squall, mon. We can ride it out," Roddie shouts.

"Ain't no squall, Roddie. But ... this ... this trench ... this is a new one on me. It can't be a swell."

I look out over the bow to see what disturbs them. The sea rears up steeply ahead of us, fixed like a standing wave. The sea seems to dip and then curve upward into the sky. We sit at the bottom of a deep wrinkle. Mountains of water rise fore and aft, or so it seems.

The effect disorients me. I pick up a pebble and drop it. It falls to the bottom of the boat, as true as a plumb bob on a plain. Gravity is curved here, just like earth, except we're on the inside of a dimpled sphere or bowl.

Sabonis comes back, undoes my shoddy lashing, sets the rudder more firmly. The trench messes with the wind. Our sails alternately fill and collapse. Our momentum slows. The columns loom closer.

A gust inflates the port sail and jerks us out of the doldrums. We creep up the wall of water. The other sail fills and we climb higher. We leave the trench. Lethe reappears behind us, but the perspective changes as we rise above its dunes.

I wait for Sabonis to explain.

"Don't look at me," he says. "This is insane."

"You had a boat," I say. "Didn't you ever notice?"

"I thought it was a fucking fog bank. I never came out this far."

Dizzy with vertigo, I keep my head down. My empty stomach clenches.

The lead column crosses the trench off our port side. Sabonis clambers over the boat from stern to stern, tapping in pegs, tightening braces.

I brave another look. We ride up the wall like snails up the side of a goldfish bowl. I look across at Mt. Abdiel as if from the window of a jet liner. Ripples of déjà vu jolt me as memories of those days spent floating return.

The columnar storms on our tail have split wide and far apart. One races into the trench off starboard, bending almost ninety degrees as it climbs the wall. The other two linger far behind, cutting off any possible return to Lethe.

Their spiral arms have entangled the sky in a lacework of alternately congealing and dissipating wisps. The orb light pulses bright and dim as stripes of cloud shuttle past.

We sail on, rising higher above Lethe. The closest column comes alongside and passes us, as if determined to head us off.

Sabonis motions to me from the center board to nudge the rudder to angle away from the closest column. The rudder won't budge. He lashed it too tight, leaving no play.

He bounds back and helps me loosen the lashings and together we haul on the assembly. The column bends its trajectory to match our maneuver.

"That fucker's after our ass," he says. "And I think it's gonna get us."

Roddie calls back. "The other squalls. There is a big space between them. We can squeeze through if we're quick."

Indeed, the back two columns have separated. Lethe is framed neatly between them.

"Fuckers. They're like sheep dogs," says Sabonis. "Herdin' us back to the island."

"It's getting wider," says Roddie. "We can shoot the gauntlet."

Sabonis hems and hisses through his teeth. "Get 'er done," he says, and pushes the rudder as far as it will go. We wheel around. Rodney sets the sails to tack to port.

I look over our heads. The sea curls up to a rim punctured by tangles of light, like searchlights through mist that bend and twist and squirm.

"No, wait!" I say.

"Whattaya mean, no?"

"Look up there!" I say. "This is the place I remember. This is where I floated in from."

The beams stretch across the sky fading out and into visibility, all the way to the orb—a bright spot at the base of a massive, dark body hovering far above Lethe—the jellyfish-like creature that is Elysium – ringed by a filigree of translucent tentacles, bouncing and recoiling like springs.

The sight horrifies me. I would have vomited if I had anything left in my belly.

The column that headed us off, swoops after us. The two framing Lethe converge.

"It's a fucking trap!" says Sabonis. "It just ain't fair. They never fucked with Delgado like this. My first time out ... look what happens."

I haul on the rudder and the boat wheels abruptly back around, knocking him and Roddie over. But Roddie reads my intentions and gets the sails back open. We surge out of the path of the oncoming column, its mass and momentum carrying it past us.

A Niagara of wind pounds down on the cat. The water thrums. Spikes of foam whip up like a many-toothed monster. We dart through the chop towards the thicket of Elysial strands and slip into the clear.

The rearward columns close like jaws and obliterate each other with a clap of thunder like a sonic boom. They degenerate into spindly tangles of wind and mist.

The third column has come around and is back on our tail. Waves crash over the sides, swamping and slowing us to a creep. Conflicting gusts collapse our sails. I'm back to bailing, me in one hull, Roddie in the other. Sabonis stays at the rudder.

We drift up to the strands, like explorers on the verge of a rain forest. They shimmer just out of reach as the chasing column gains ground.

People float by, some as dark as Shades, some coated in a milky film that congeals into flesh.

I gaze over the side as I bail. The water is dark and unfathomably deep. A splash to our left, like a dolphin breaching. A strand emerges from the water, its end coiling and dripping. A black corpse bobs to the surface and drifts away, the milky film already forming on its skin.

But then we pass over a brighter area and it's like looking up at the sea surface after a dive—the underside of gentle wind-blown ripples and a real sun, not an orb, in a sky herring-boned with cirrus.

We drift into the thick of the strands, a forest of them, bumping and rebounding off those that lie in our way. They look insubstantial but they bang into and slide off our hull, reeling and unreeling like fire hoses.

Roddie ties up to one of the stationary strands, and lashes the sails tight, and then ties himself up to the center board.

"This must be the place," says Sabonis. "So where do we go from here?"

"Down there," I say. "Gotta be."

"Underwater?" says Sabonis. He looks down and sees what I saw and grins.

The approaching column blots out the orb light. Everything turns black but for the faint phosphorescence of the strands and sunlight seeping in from the living world.

The column strikes. A maelstrom seizes the boat and we whirl. Blasts of wind press down on our hulls. Pegs pop. Lashings groan but hold.

Strands of a different sort descend, thick and opaque, tinged the yellow of an amphibian's underbelly. One tangles itself around a mast and tries to rip it off. Roddie attacks it with a knife, slashing it free. A milky fluid seeps from the cut end as it curls away.

Another strand attacks Sabonis. He bats it with an oar and it coils around the oar and yanks him out of the boat. He lets go, plunges feet first into the ocean. Bubbles trail from Sabonis' beard as he disappears beneath the waves.

My arms are wrapped around the rudder assembly. The cat tips up, immersing the stern. A wave blindsides and tears me free, flushing me into the sea.
Chapter 49: Interface

My sinuses sting with seawater. I tumble, unable to discern which way is up. I surface momentarily to see the cat spinning, Roddie fighting to keep it afloat. The churning sea drags me back under. Water intrudes into my lungs. I sink.

I spot a light below my feet and kick towards it. I surface to calm seas, the sky baby blue at the horizon deepening to royal overhead, no longer the pewter and cobalt of Lethe. There's a real sun riding high, not an orb. Wavelets reflect like many-faceted mirrors.

My flesh is gone. My body is a mere boundary sketch, a field of forces outlining what used to be flesh. I can push a bit of water with my hand but most just swishes through my form as if I were a sieve. I feel neither hot or cold. I can only distinguish solid from liquid. I am what you call ... a ghost.

One would think a ghost would be buoyant, but I sink after the merest glimpse of that earthly sky. Viridian water closes over my head. Everything darkens as I drift downward. I panic and grab onto a passing strand. Big mistake. It drags me back through the interface where I'm blasted by wind before slithering from my grip like a greased snake.

I splash down; my form turned opaque. I am a Shade now, no longer a ghost, although the distinction seems moot. I feel no less numb.

The interface between living world and afterlife seems much like the film separating soap bubbles. No wonder so much flotsam ends up on Lethe's beaches.

My flesh returns, a slimy film of skin at first, and then it thickens and fills with muscle and bone.

I catch a glimpse of Roddie alone in the cat, sails fully open, racing from the Pounder. The other two columns have reconstituted and waiting beyond the trench. I see no sign of Sabonis.

A current sweeps me along, I fight it, but deep drowsiness sweeps over me, threatening my consciousness.

I panic at the thought of washing ashore again on those black sands. This is not the world I want, but here, at least I have flesh. I have a difficult choice to make.

When I see the light appear before my feet, it is no contest. I fill my lungs with water and duck under the surface, kicking and flailing to reach it. I break through to sunlight and again my flesh is gone. Again, I fail to stay afloat.

I kick and squirm, struggling back towards the light, but my efforts prove futile. Eventually, I abandon my effort and let the sea take me. But this time, the current tugs me away from the interface. When I sink, it is only deeper into darkness. No strands come to save me. I slip ever downward like a dead leaf.

What have I wrought? I'm not sure what I expected. It would have been nice of course to end up back in Cortland fully fleshed, step out of my crushed car intact, ready to pick up where I left off.

I suppose I knew in the back of my mind that things might be more complicated and less ideal—things always were—but I never expected to be sinking to the bottom of the deep, black sea.

My semi-buoyancy only extends the torture. I drift downward for what seems like hours, shifting direction as I shunt along cross-currents and sub-currents. It's like a tangle of urban interstates down here with on-ramps and off-ramps, merges and splits.

If I had a do-over, I would have let Lethe take me. At least there I could feel; I had some semblance, some pretense of life. Here, I am nothing but a shell. In all the days since my death, I've never felt deader. I wish I could just blink out of existence.

In life, deep water had always spooked me, and now there I was, floating to the bottom of the sea. I feel all anxious and phobic. If I had a heart it would be pounding. I feel no physical discomfort. How could I? I had no physique. Though my panic may be virtual, it feels no less real.

At least it's easy, with senses so numb, to go blank, and deny the horror of my situation. I force myself to daydream about pleasant things, meadows and warm beds and such, anything that distracts me from my disturbing new reality.

When I hit bottom, I don't even notice at first. I feel no impact, just a cessation of movement. I just assume that I've spun out into some eddy.

I lay still, cultivating blankness, but what senses I retain, eventually intrude when I feel some creature tries to wriggle through me. I don't even know what it is, worm or eel, but it is a persistent little bugger. I crawl away on what passes for hands and knees and lay back down.

I can't help noticing, though, that my head lies lower than my feet. I am reclining on a slope. It makes me wonder.

I stand and test my legs, and discover that the spongy auras that define my feet can generate a push, even against the soft silt. So I climb uphill, hoping, at least, to find a place that the light can reach.

I take long, bounding strides, much like an astronaut on the moon. The water resists me more than a vacuum, but no more than an atmosphere resists flesh and blood.

I plant one foot after the other, never tiring. I can go forever like this, circumnavigate the globe if I want. I find movement much more inspiring than lodging in the mud. A spark of hope flares in the cold embers of my despair.

Something flutters by, a school of fish maybe, though it's still too dim to even make out their shape.

When the sea floor levels out, I continue straight ahead until I encounter another slope and then climb it, whichever direction it leads me.

At some point I realize I am looking at ripples in the sand, criss-crossing the sea floor. My inward focus is so intense and the light has increased so gradually, I hadn't noticed the change. I thrill at the sight of the faint but clearly human footprints behind me and the modest clouds of silt I raise with each step.

The gentle slope steepens until I am climbing the equivalent of a cliff. I surmount it with no more effort than if it were level. When it plateaus, I realize this must be a continental shelf. I must be approaching land. I step up the pace and sprint across the sea bed, exhilarated.

I thread my way through beds of seaweed as the sea bed brightens and I spot the disc of the sun overhead. I follow along an unstable ledge of silt and gravel to a gap harboring a strong and murky current—a river bed.

I follow the canyon, anticipation building. The hull of a boat passes overhead, inboard propeller churning. I smile inwardly. Now I knew this had to be Earth, not Lethe.

I pass through oysters and rocky reefs. Crabs and lobsters clamber, oblivious to my presence. I find a collapse along the canyon wall and climb into the shallows.

I approach a row of pilings. Something dangles in the water before me. It looks like a centipede, but I realize it's a sand worm baited onto a hook.

A cable stretches down to a concrete block embedded in the mud. I haul myself upward, hand over hand, easy going for someone a few hairs beyond neutral buoyancy.

I break through the water surface, relieved to be among air-breathers again. My euphoria is tempered, though, by the realization that being out of the water doesn't feel a whole lot different than being at the bottom of the ocean. An outboard motor sounds tinny and distant even though the boat passes right beside me. The landscape looks grainy as high-speed film; colors seem faded and tinged with sepia. My sense of smell is gone.

I climb onto the pier feeling wobbly and ephemeral. If someone tied a string to me I think I might make a good kite, though stiffer gusts seem undeterred from passing through me.

From what I can tell, my shape is taller, bulkier than I had been in Lethe. I see the world again from a familiar height, as a moderately tall male, not that it matters without the flesh to prove it.

A strand of hotels and casinos stretches before me beyond a boardwalk. Big red letters on their rooftops read: Trump and Caesar's. The place looks familiar.

I am alone on the pier but for a black man with a surf rod. A carton of bait and bucket of striped bass sit at his feet.

"Hello!" I say. My voice comes out all muffled and distorted, or is it just my hearing? It's not like I have ears.

The man gives no indication that he even heard me. I move closer, and speak louder. "Hello!"

The man flinches. He would have stumbled off the pier if not for the rail. He looks through me and around my general vicinity but can't seem to fix my position.

"Someone there? Someone say something?" he says.

"Can you tell me ... I was wondering ... where we are?" I enunciate as clearly as I can, but it sounds to me as if I'm gargling through a kazoo.

"A-A-Atlantic City," says the man, stepping back, squinting. His eyes have found me.

I don't wish to terrorize him any further, so I turn and walk away. This was not at all what I had in mind when Sabonis talked about going back. What good does being here do me? If Gina freaks out the way this guy did, then what was the point? Why did I bother coming back, if I can't touch her, or hold her? I really do wish I could just blink out like a candle flame.

I glide down the pier past restaurants and gift shops overlooking a beach. Upon reaching the boardwalk, I veer across to a set of stairs that brings me down to street level.

Down some street I go, putting distance between me and the cursed ocean. It sinks in that I've done it. I'm really here. But my numbness annoys and distracts, prevents me from enjoying the experience. I miss the flesh I possessed in Lethe. I don't care if it was female, it was flesh, it was human.

At Pacific Avenue I wait for the light to change before crossing, though I don't know why I bother. Would I even notice if a truck ran me over?

A kid wearing an over-sized Cavaliers jersey walks into me, makes me stumble. He darts away and slaps at himself like he's covered in bees, squinting at the corner where I stand. Maybe I do have to worry about trucks.

After I cross, I go out of my way to bump people, ruffle their newspapers, spill their Starbucks, just because I can, and am grateful for confirmation that I still have substance.

One woman is too engrossed in her texting to even notice my shove. Another guy frowns and shrugs me off as if I am some downdraft. An older fellow grumbles, blaming my bump on a passing stranger. Somehow, these actions fulfill me; they make me feel more connected to this world.

I have to be careful, though. Some folks do seem to notice me. They stop and stare as I bound along the sidewalk. A Westie on a leash comes up, wags its tail, sniffs my foot.

I stop at a news kiosk to read the headlines. "Sestak ousts Specter in Pennsylvania primary." The date reads May 18, 2010. It was just as Mr. Corduroy said it would be, difficult as it was to believe at the time. Counting all the days I spent floating and roaming around Lethe, weeks should have elapsed since I passed, but instead, here I was, one day after my death.

It means I've gone back in time, re-entering the living world only moments after my death. It explains why Sabonis didn't cross over with me. He died in 1999.

It also means that my funeral has yet to occur. My family and Gina are probably still in shock. My parents will be flying up from Florida. My little sister Diane will be coming up from college at Stony Brook, everyone converging on the little ranch house on Elm Street where I grew up.

Funeral arrangements are probably underway. Will they bury me in Cortland? They had better not ship me to Florida. But why would they? Our family has roots in Cortland. One set of grandparents and an uncle are buried there.

I picture Gina hunched on her sister's sofa, inconsolable. I need to reach Cortland quick. I race down the Avenue, searching for a bus station or some way to get North in a hurry.

Tour buses pass me, carrying senior citizens to the casinos. I see city transit, but no long distance lines. I am pondering hopping into the bed of an F150 pickup truck stopped at a light when I notice a sign bearing the blue and red vectors of an Amtrak logo.

I cross a busy avenue, past a playground and spot a bunch of parallel train tacks behind a fence. I slip beneath, and leap down a concrete embankment from a height I never would have attempted in life. It's not as if I have to worry about breaking bones.

I follow the rails to the station and slip onto an express train north, pulling myself up into the overhead rack to keep out of everybody's way. Some lady puzzles over why her bag won't fit when it looks like there should be plenty of space. I give her a hand and slide back to make some room.

I rest, not that I need it, nor that sleep or dreams are even possible. Hours later, we reach Penn Station, New York. Signs direct me to the Greyhound terminal. I look around for a schedule, finding a touch screen display by a counter. I'm hesitant to try it, but it works. The glass mists up where my fingers tap as I home in on the 8:20 pm bus to Syracuse, stopping in Cortland at 5:05 the next morning. A little boy with a sucker walks up and watches me, his eyes rapt.

When the bus pulls in and begins to load, I slip into the open luggage compartment. I don't dare ride up with the passengers. There are too many kids on board and they seem to notice me. I lie back on some suitcases, comfort not an issue. The lumpier the better—it makes for more interesting pressure points, gives me something to feel.

I spend tedious hours bouncing around the pitch black compartment, trying to guess our location from stray snatches of conversation during stops and strips of light seeping through the seams of the hatch.

The luggage compartment creaks open. I peer out at slick pavement, neon puddles and a haze of drizzle. A woman gazes out the plate glass of a brightly lighted waiting area. The sign above her head reads: Binghamton. Another hour on the road and we'll reach Cortland.

The driver drags a suitcase out of the bay and tosses in a duffel bag. He squints into the back where I recline on a garment bag, staring as if he senses something wrong. I lay still until he slams down the door.

The bus swings one way, then another around corners. Its brakes snort at light after light until we're finally accelerating and riding smoothly on the highway again.

Water hisses off the tires. It's raining harder out there. I am vaguely aware of a draft of cool, damp air but I don't feel cold. There's no hint of discomfort or pain anywhere in my form, not even in my trick knee. What I would give to shiver, to ache.

I am getting nervous about Gina. I desperately need to contact her, but have no idea how she will react to seeing me. If I just show up at her place, she might just freak. But if I texted or tweeted her in advance, would she even believe it was me? I decide not to decide, but to play things by ear.

When the bus pulls off the exit ramp, I know exactly where we are—it's Exit 10 onto Port Watson Street off I-81. I've come this way a thousand times before at least. I follow every stop and turn in my head, the rattle of the bridge as we cross the Tioughnioga River, the pothole in front of the Hess station. So I know exactly when we pull up to the County Office building on Central Avenue.

The cargo door lifts. I scurry out past the driver. He leaps back, spooked, as if a suitcase has disgorged a brood of rattlesnakes.

I'm off down the sidewalks, heading straight for Gina's place on Pendleton Street, no longer worried about discretion or finesse. I just need to see her ASAP.

My feet don't quite splash but ripple the puddles as I go. The sky is socked in grey, stifling any hint of sun. The damn birds sing on regardless. Their levity offends me.

I pick up a Cortland Standard from someone's driveway. Handling the rolled-up newspaper is a bit awkward, as my boneless fingers feel like they're made of silicone. I manage to work it out the plastic sleeve and slip off the rubber band. I lay it flat, plastering its pages on the wet concrete.

MAN DIES IN FREAK STORM, says the headline.

One? Only me? How is that fair?

The entire front page is devoted to the storm. MICROBURST, NOT TORNADO, SAYS WEATHER BUREAU, says another story. Buried inside, I find my obit:

DANIEL T. TOMPKINS, 22, died May 17, 2010, in Cortland. A memorial service will be held Friday at 10 a.m. at St. Mary's Church. Interment will follow in Cold Brook Cemetery. Friends may call on Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Gray-Fallow Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, family requests memorial contributions be provided to Cortland County Life and Rescue Squad.

I am to be buried in Cortland. That's a relief. Calling hours are tomorrow, the funeral two days hence.

I leave the newspaper stuck open on the driveway and continue on, passing through neighborhoods that look like they've been bombed. A swath two blocks wide but running all the way through town seems to have taken the brunt of the micro-bursts. Much of the damage has already been cleaned up but the dismembered carcasses of giant trees still litter many lawns. Oozing stumps are all that remain of the giant elms that once shaded these streets. Blue tarps covered dents in the roofs of houses. Slabs of sidewalk tilt nearly vertical by upturned roots.

The sight stirs a memory of the sudden and crushing pressure that took my life. It happened so quickly, I am surprised I had time to register a memory. I try to take a breath, but there's no air to be had.

I pass onto a street spared by the storm. Boughs of sugar maples overhang the walk. New leaves adorn them—floppy and unblemished, innocent and chartreuse. The lilacs are blooming late this year. I have no need for a nose, seeing them suffices to conjure their perfume.

I jog in the bouncy, jaunty way that seems natural to my new form. Coming to Route 13, I cross without bothering to break my stride, not worrying about the pulses of morning traffic beginning to rumble down its length.

Gina's block lies just ahead. I approach with trepidation, filled with the crawly tingles that pass for stress in a ghost. I pause before her duplex, beneath the mountain ash, desiccated berries from the season before, littering the dewy grass at its base.

I walk up onto her porch. The screen door is latched. I try squeezing through the mesh, but my cheek just squeezes flat. Passing through solid objects might work in the movies, but not so much for me. So much for popular conceptions of ghosts.

I consider knocking or ringing the doorbell. But it's not even six a.m., and Gina's not a morning person. Besides, showing up dead on her doorstep is not the best way to introduce her to my new condition.

I walk around back, checking every casement window, finding each locked. But a dryer vent protrudes from a piece of painted plywood mounted in a window hole.

I kneel and pry at the edges with my rubbery fingers. It wiggles a bit, but I don't have the grip I need to pull it loose. I slam my shoulder into it. No dice. I have mass, but not quite enough.

I back up into the yard beneath an apple tree in bloom, and take a running leap at the window, feet-first like a missile. The board breaks free of the trim holding it in place and collapses inward. It clangs off the top of the dryer and clatters against the basement floor.

I am inside, draped and dangling atop the dryer. Surely this sufficed to awaken the dead, but I hear no movement upstairs. Is Gina even home?

I clamber off the dryer and climb up the basement stairs. The door creaks open into the kitchen. I see flowers on the table, sympathy cards from Gina's friends, Ziplocs with brownies and chocolate chip cookies, a teddy bear.

I step lightly around the corner to her bedroom. Stealth comes easy to those like me.

The door is open. I slip around the jamb. The bed sheets are in chaos. The poor thing's been tossing and turning. Wait, she's not alone.

I may not have a heart, but I discover a core that clenches as painfully as my heart ever did. Gina's in bed with a guy—the same guy she ditched me for the weekend we were supposed to go to Manhattan. His furry arm is draped over her bare torso. A condom wrapper lays crumpled on a night stand.

I am frozen to the spot by a churning combination of anger and horror and grief. I want to run. I want to do harm. I want to cry. I can't do anything but stare.

Turns out, I can feel pain after all. I feel plenty right now. I crumple to the floor, sobbing dryly until I can't bear being there anymore and I crawl away, back into the kitchen.

I am about to slink back into the basement, but I see a pad of sticky notes on the fridge. I pick up a pen, fisting it to keep it from falling out of my grip, but I can't figure out what to write.

I scribble: "Bye, love DT." Lame. It looks like the first scribblings of a three-year old. I drop the pen on the floor and flee into the basement and out the open window hole.

I run all the way back to Port Watson, wait for a Walmart truck to come barreling down, and leap in front of its bumper.
Chapter 50: Home

A chrome bulldog flashes into view just before the bumper of the eighteen-wheeler slams me down, bounces me beneath the undercarriage. Wheels churn over me. The truck squeals to a stop.

I lay beneath the trailer, completely unharmed, as numb as ever. Hydraulic fluid drips on my face and rolls off like quicksilver.

The heavyset driver hops down and peers under his rig. Red-faced, panting, he stares for the longest time. His eyes look straight into mine.

"Sorry about that," I say.

The driver's cheeks quiver. He scans the pavement, gets up and paces to the end of his rig and back, scrambles into the cab and pulls away. I lay on Port Watson Street staring up at the thinning clouds.

I get up and plod across the avenue and cross several storm-ravaged blocks. The devastation fits my mood.

The grand old trees lining Central Avenue have lost a few limbs but all remain erect. I cross a park kitty-corner to reach my house, the little ranch I have lived in since I turned four. The weeping willows in back are still intact and still hold my old tree house with the rain-warped plywood walls. Not a leaf or shrub in my yard seems disturbed by the storm. I wish I had stayed home that day.

I step out onto the street. Something sinuous and translucent snakes down the front of my house. I scurry back to the park, retreat behind a hedge, peer over the top.

The tip of the strand rears and curls like a question mark, looking for me, but I'm right here. Are ghosts that difficult for them to sense?

The strand slaps against the front door, probing the gap I seal with a rolled up towel in the winter. It finds a space and shuttles into the house. For long minutes I watch, wondering if I should escape. But where would I go?

The strand backs out from under the door and creeps down my front walk. Dark bulges squeeze down its length, extruding as little black blobs. Done, it coils and springs into the sky. Its black spawn wriggle off the walk and into the grass. A jogger runs by, oblivious to their writhing.

I step out from behind the hedge and cross Elm Street, examining the sky for any sign of movement. Out of habit, I veer towards the mailbox. Oddly, it's empty. Did someone fetch the mail? Does that mean someone's home? But who? The driveway is empty.

I step carefully over one of the black blobs as it creeps through the overlong grass, stretching and contracting like a leech. I would have mowed if I had known I was going to die. Reacting to my presence, the blob extends pseudopod-like feelers. I'm tempted to slam my foot down and squash it, but for some reason I leave it be. I've always had a soft spot for invertebrates.

I find the spare key where I always leave it, on the steps of the side entry, under a deceased geranium.

I open the door. Someone's been here. There are flowers and cards in my kitchen.

A denim purse lies by the phone. My sister's—Diane. How did she get up here so quickly from Stony Brook? She doesn't even own a car.

I hear the TV on in the living room. I pause on the threshold of the dining room. Diane's there, sitting in my easy chair. Calling hours aren't for another day, but it appalls me to see her by herself. She looks horrible, hair askew, face all puffy and inflamed.

I slip inside the room, keeping to the shadows, working my way to the sofa, in the periphery of her vision. I settle onto it slowly to avoid attracting her attention. My mass depresses the cushions slightly.

Diane's head flicks in my direction, but she looks straight past me towards the dining room.

"Hello?" she says, calling into the kitchen. "Is someone there?"

I stay silent and still. She straightens up in the chair, smooths her hair.

"Hello!" she calls, louder. She rolls out of the easy chair and grabs a lacrosse stick from an umbrella stand. She slinks right past me, turning the corner into the dining room like a TV detective. She checks the bathroom, locks the basement door.

I regret coming into the room. I'm not ready to be seen, not like this, not by my own sister. I get up from the sofa and slip behind some drapes.

The drapes are still swinging when Diane comes back in the room. She stares, lacrosse stick cradled across her front like a goalie. I notice the drapes bulge slightly around my form.

"Whoever you are ... get out of my house ... or I'll call the cops!" She's got her cell phone, thumb ready to speed dial.

"No!" I say, stepping out from the drapes.

Diane gasps and stumbles back.

"Diane! It's me," I say.

"Dan?" Her mouth shapes unvoiced words.

"I didn't mean to scare you," I say.

"How ...?"

"I'm just ... visiting. Don't worry, I'll leave soon."

"No," she says. "Please ... don't leave. I mean ... this is your house, too." Tears burst from her eyes. She puts down the stick and steps towards me. "No matter what ... you're still my brother." She rushes forward and tries to hug me. The pressure of her embrace feels like a force transmitted through stone.

She pulls pack and shudders. "Gosh, you're so cold," she says. "Can I get you a sweater ... a blanket?"

"That's okay, Diane. It won't help. I don't ... feel ... anything."

"Sit. Sit down," she says, rocking on the balls of her feet, looking confused, flustered. "I can make you some breakfast, but ... I suppose you don't eat ... do you?"

"I ... don't."

"I can't believe it's really you standing there," she says. "You sound a thousand miles away ... through a bad connection."

"I didn't mean to surprise you like this."

Her eyebrows pull together as she squints at me, trying to resolve my form.

"Can you even see me?" I say.

"Sort of," she says. "You bend light, so things look warped through you, like antique window glass."

"Good to know, I guess."

"What's it like," she says. "Being dead?"

"I don't recommend it," I say. "Live to be a hundred if you can. It's not so great ... on the other side."

"Shit! Don't tell me that," she says.

"Maybe ... it will be different for you," I say.

"What are you doing here? Is there something unfinished ... that you need to accomplish ... to be free?"

"Not really," I say. "I just wanted to come back. But I wouldn't have come if I knew it would be like this."

Diane's eyes flare wide. "I should call mom and dad. They're landing in Syracuse on a red-eye. They'll be renting a car and driving.

"No," I say. "Please don't mention that you saw me. Let's keep this our secret, okay?"

"But why?" says Diane. "We're family."

"Mom will freak," I say. "You know how she is, and I don't want to give Dad a heart attack."

"Too late," says Diane. He's already had one ... when he got the news about you."

"What?"

"Well, not exactly a heart attack. Angina, but they say he's gonna need stents when they go back to Florida after the funeral."

"Oh Jeez," I say.

"It's gonna be hard staying mum about this," says Diane, frowning. "Maybe, I'll say you came to me in a dream." Her eyes shift. "Does Gina know about this? Have you seen Gina?"

I look out the window at the willows, avoiding Diane's gaze. "Not yet."

"She came by the house yesterday," says Diane. "We had coffee together, looked at pictures and cried."

"That's nice," I say.

"What's ... wrong?" says Diane. "Are things... were things alright with you two ... before...?"

"Things were fine," I say.

Diane studies me as if she's trying to read my body language, but there's nothing to read. Ghosts spill no tells.

Diane skitters over to the basement door. "The spare bedroom! I can fix it up for you. The house is going to be full this afternoon and there you can have some peace and quiet. Unless ... you want to hang out up here ... with everyone."

"No," I say. "Too many eyes." I look out the window at the willows. "I think I'll hang out in the tree house."

666

Later that morning, folks start showing up at the house. I watch Mom and Dad arrive in their rented Camry. Who knew a guy with no innards could feel like he'd been punched in the gut, but that's how I feel when I see them lumber out of the car, weighted by grief.

I hang out up in the willows all the rest of that day, in the rickety eyesore that had once been our castle. Diane comes out to visit from time to time, under the pretext of needing time alone. Everyone leaves her be, gives her the space she needs to grieve.

Mom pretty much stays in the house. I catch glimpses of her through the windows. Dad comes out from time to time to trim the bushes and weed the flower beds.

He steps right into a patch of those leechy-things without noticing them. Those little buggers have homed in on me in the backyard. One made it halfway up a willow before I was able to flick it off with a twig.

Aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors and strangers I've never seen before come by during the day to drop off casseroles and fruit salads and such, but the big show will come tonight at the wake.

The calling hours and service will be with closed casket. The funeral director strongly advised Diane not to peek. Was my body really trashed beyond the skill of an undertaker and his cosmetic wax? It made me curious to see what's left of me. I won't be shy. It's my body after all.

If I looked halfway decent, I might be tempted to possess myself the way Haurvil took over Mr. Corduroy. Rigor mortis by this point, I suppose, would make that impractical. And who knows, the properties of Shades in Lethe might differ from Ghosts on Earth. I wasn't sure being a Zombie would be much of an improvement over my current condition.

When cars start pulling out of the driveway in the late afternoon, I climb down out of the tree house. Diane, wearing a black skirt and top, runs right past me in the middle of the lawn.

"Diane! I'm right here."

She skids in the grass, her heels flopping over.

"We're going to the wake," she says, breathless. "Want a ride? I can sneak you into the trunk."

"No thanks," I say. "I think I'd like to walk."

"Walk? Really? You can walk?"

"What do think I do? Hover?"

"I honestly didn't know," she says, touching her finger to her chin. Her eyes flick towards the driveway. "Gotta go. Mom's looking at me like I'm nutso. See you there?"

"So to speak," I say.

She runs over to the idling Camry and it pulls away.

I follow after it, but a ripple shimmies my leg. I have stepped on a leech and it's dissolved a piece of my virtual foot as if I have stepped in acid. I hobble away and the remainder of my soul flows in to fill the void, but I'm that much lighter now. It seems someone aims to reclaim me piece by piece.

I pick my way over to the sidewalk, watching carefully where I step. I stop and look back at the house and see a man in dark clothing standing at the corner of the block, staring up the sidewalk. I start towards town and he starts after me.

Coincidence, I tell myself. My own sister can't see me, how can he?

It's a lovely afternoon, more sun than cloud, although the clouds overhead are stacked pretty high—Michelangelo clouds, as Gina calls them—thunderhead wannabes.

The sidewalk I stroll along is the one I learned to ride and crash a bicycle on, the one my beagle Lucky would trot down every day to fetch me home from primary school.

I pass lots of people out for walks. The oldest and the youngest folks seem more likely to notice me than anyone teen to middle-aged. An octogenarian lady steps aside as I approach, as if I'm the angel of death. A baby in a stroller points and laughs at me. Dogs like me more than they ever did in life.

That guy, he's still following, keeping half a block away as if he knows exactly where I am.

The funeral home, a bloated, over-expanded Victorian, is tucked among black locusts on the edge of the business district. Dark-suited attendants loiter by orange cones and "Funeral Parking Only" placards. Turnout, so far, is rather light, though it's probably still early.

There's a guy standing with a bulky briefcase across the street who doesn't seem to be part of the funeral home staff, nor does he seem interested in sharing condolences with my family. I don't know why, but I get the feeling he might be a lawyer, one of those ambulance chaser types, but his nose rings, mullet and pony tail make that seem unlikely.

I walk around the building, down a drive tucked along the side. I enter through a propped-open door and pass through some offices, avoiding the more public spaces until I reach a side door opening into the chapel/viewing room upstairs.

My casket's a beaut—polished walnut, pewter hardware—overkill for something destined to be covered with dirt, never again to see the light of day. I would have been fine with a rental for show, and something cheap and piney for the actual disposal.

A steady flow of people trickle in, high school friends, employers from my various summer jobs and many faces I don't recognize. Both my parents are weeping softly. Mom, especially, goes through heaps of Kleenex.

I suppress the urge to join them. I'd love to be able to tell them not to worry, that I didn't feel much pain, that I'm doing okay, even though I'm not. Maybe Diane can do that for me.

About an hour into it, when I'm starting to get bored, Gina walks in. She's alone. She kneels at the casket, prays, and then goes and sits by herself off to one side. Diane whispers into Mom's ear. Mom goes over, gives Gina a hug and gets her to sit with the family.

After a while, when she gets up to leave, I slip along the wall and follow her out into the entry. She pulls out her cell phone and reads a text. I come up behind her; I can't see what it says.

"Gina," I say, softly, because there are people nearby. She jumps, fumbles her phone, swoops down, snatches it up and rushes out the door, tossing wide-eyed glances over her shoulder.

I hurry after her. An Escalade pulls up to the curb. Gina climbs in and slams the door. That guy she was with is driving. She collapses against his shoulder as they roar away.

I sink, and just when I think I can't get any lower, the lawyer guy, the one with the nose rings and the bulky briefcase comes out from behind a street lamp and tosses a handful of powder in the air. It twinkles down like pixie dust and sticks to me, stinging. He comes at me holding the briefcase out front as if it's rigged with a bomb.

I dash back into the funeral home, down the stairs and into the depths of the mortuary, exiting from an open window in the embalming room. I run back home as fast as I can.

666

When Diane comes home, she finds me in her room. I tell her what happened: "I think there's someone after me."

"What do you mean?" she says.

"There are these folks. They collect souls. Permanently. I think I saw one at the wake."

"You're ... kidding," she says.

"No shit, Diane. They're after me."

"But ... why? Why would they bother with you? What are they, like ... Ghostbusters or something?"

"Something like that," I say. "I don't belong here. I think they want me back."

"Was it that ... creep? The one who kept hovering outside? The one with the nose rings?"

"That's the one," I say.

"That guy stank," says Diane. "He tried to hide it with cologne. Dad was about to call the cops on him but Mom talked him out of it."

It takes me an hour to scrub that sparkly dust off. The only thing that works is a rusty, old Brillo pad. Diane is reluctant to help me at first, saying that she kind of likes the sparkles, because they outline my form – until I tell her how they burn.

She vows to protect me, staying up till four with the lacrosse stick cradled in her lap. Now she snoozes in her bean bag chair. The blinds are drawn. The door is locked.

I spend the night in Diane's closet, under a dozen birthdays' worth of plush toys and Barbies. She lent me her iPad to keep me occupied. The touch screen is just sensitive enough for me to operate. I go on Facebook and update my page, searching and friending half-forgotten friends, catching up with their lives, not letting on what happened to me.

Folks who know of my death call me a hacker or a sock puppet. Gina logs on, posts a sweet remembrance in one thread, an accusation in another. She writes: "Sick, sick, sick! You're a goddamn sicko."

It's amazing how far and wide the news has traveled. Even Alan Hydeck, my best friend from third grade who moved to California when I was nine, posts a memorial on my wall.

I have a decent amount of savings but no will. I don't even know what happens to bank accounts once you die, if they freeze until the Government gets their share or if they get transferred to your parents' accounts automatically. But I figure I might as well take a shot at redistributing my 'wealth' as I see fit.

So I go on Amazon and order a nice Seiko watch for Diane. I get my Dad the flat-screen TV he's always pined for. Mom, a nice big hammock with a bug canopy.

With Gina, I'm feeling spiteful, so I order her several books:

Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man, by Douglas Wilson.

Why She Cheated, and It's Your Fault, by Greg Reynolds.

The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People, by David P. Barash, Ph.D.

I ignore my order's eligibility for "FREE Super Saver Shipping" and check the box for overnight express delivery. I also check the box for "Add gift wrap/note."

My note: "To Gina, with love, forever, Dan." I figure my selection reflects mixed feelings about seeing Gina in bed with that guy not even two days after my body went cold: 1. I hate her; I hate that fucking bitch. 2. Her reaction is my fault, a symptom of our dysfunctional relationship. 3. What she did is only natural.

Whatever's left, I give to charity, equally distributed between Oxfam and the World Wildlife Fund.

And then, I indulge my virtual self: Asgard Thornbrake, my World of Warcraft Alliance warrior of steroidal bulk and CGI swagger. I stream WoW to my iPad from a Gaikai server. My guild mates have staged an important raid to go down at 06:00 server time in Roknarag dungeon, seven minutes from now. I had expected to miss this raid because Gina I would scale down my WoW obsession, and then I missed it for real because I died, but now I am back, and my promise to Gina is moot, so I'm ready to go for glory.

I count down the minutes and appear out of nowhere. I go nuts like a berserker, slaying handfuls of orcs and trolls, ignoring my declining health points until a mage sears me to death with a level 50 scorch spell.

I reappear, fittingly, as a virtual ghost in a cemetery far from the action. I gift my degrading weaponry and armor to my guild mates along with every last bit of my virtual gold. I cancel my account. Asgard Thornbrake is no more.

I feel fulfilled. I feel empty.

The sun is sneaking past the blinds, so I crawl out of the closet and slink out of the house. True or not, sunlight makes me feel safer.

Diane's iPad tucked under my arm, I cross the dewy lawn, which seems clear of leech-y landmines. I climb back into the tree house, relishing the sway of the trees and the pressure of the wind as I surf the web, catching up with the NBA semifinals I had missed.

A man walks by the house. A few minutes later he walks by again. The kitchen door opens. Diane peeks out into the yard. She dashes to the tree house in her pajamas.

"Dan?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"What are you doing outside? There's a guy out there."

"I saw."

"Come on, get back in the house!"

I start to climb down the tree. A ring of black blobs creep up the bark. I leap down to the lawn and roll.

Mom opens the kitchen window. "Diane! Lacrosse, really? In your nightie? Get inside!"

"Just a sec," says Diane.

She opens the steel casement door leading into the basement.

"Get in," she whispers. "Lock it and I'll open the other door from the inside."

I comply.

"Are you in?"

"Yes!" I snap.

"Well, I can't tell."

The steel door clangs shut and I set the latch. Footsteps clatter down the basement stairs. The other door swings open. I slip through and she slams it.

"There, you're nice and safe and you've got the run of the whole basement."

"Oh joy," I say.

666

I recline on a pile of dirty clothes that I never got around to washing. Gina's stuff is intermingled, a bra, panties, a pair of jeans.

I listen to the familiar rhythms of footsteps on the kitchen floor, Mom's heavy thump, Dad's syncopated limp, Diane's flighty pitter-patter. I hear the garage door open. The Camry starts up.

The door opens a crack.

"We're going out for breakfast!" Diane whispers down the stairs. "You okay?"

"Fine," I say.

Mom yells for Diane to hurry.

"Later," she says.

I roam the basement, a graveyard for board games, appliances and exercise equipment. The pool table's loaded with old pots and pans and casserole dishes. My old trombone gathers dust in its case.

Metal scrapes metal from a casement window in my Dad's work room. I peek around the corner. A dark shape crouches before it; prying a blade against the latch through a crack in the glass. It's the man from the sidewalk.

I look around for something sharp, finding only a broken pool cue.

I stalk up to the window. The man's knife nudges open the latch. The window tips open. I jab the cue into the back of the man's hand. He grunts. The knife drops into the basement.

I thrust again, puncturing his thigh. He yells, blood turns his grey slacks black. He crab crawls back from the window and rises, leering into the dark basement.

"No worries," he says, clamping a handkerchief against his wound. "We'll get ya soon enough. We know where ta findya."

"Who are you people?" I say.

"Bounty hunters," he says, limping away towards the walk.

666

A limousine brings the family to St. Mary's for the funeral service. I stay home, ensconced back in Diane's closet with the mercenary's knife. It's a Gerber DMF, a black and toothy switchblade. Why the man needs such a weapon against a ghost baffles me, unless part of his job is reaping souls from the living. Clearly I'm dealing with a higher order entity here, not one who needs to resort to employing raccoons and bees as assassins.

The plan is, after mass, during the procession to the cemetery, Diane will get her friend Susie to peel away from the procession to Cold Brook Cemetery and rush her back to the house, ostensibly to fetch her camera.

I watch the clock on Diane's dresser, and right on time, Susie's car pulls into the driveway. The kitchen door opens. Diane trots in and snatches her camera from the counter by the toaster.

"Dan? You here?"

"I'm out the door," I say,

Diane locks up, opens the back door of Susie's car to toss in a sweater. I hop in. We race back to the cemetery, where the interment ceremony is just getting underway.

It's a glittery day. The sun twinkles in the wet grass. It's almost worth coming back just for these glimpses of what used to be mine. I love this world, and I miss it, even though it surrounds me.

Lots of familiar faces here, even more than attended the wake: Mr. Meecomb, Doctor Sharma—a bunch of folks from work. Rhea's there as well, with some of my other Ithaca friends.

I see Gina standing alone, sobbing. I thread my way over to her through the crowd, careful not to bump anyone. I get beside her and reach for her hand, but catch myself, remembering the effect my touch has on people.

"Gina ... don't cry," I say, softly.

She gives such a start she almost inhales her tongue. She looks at the people around her, and up into the tree canopy.

"I'm here," I say. "Don't be scared."

"Dan?"

"Where's your friend?" I say.

"Dan? W-where are you?"

"I'm right here." I touch her hand. Her hand flies back as if she's touched a hot stove.

"Sorry," I say. "Didn't mean to scare you."

She shields her face with a program. "I ... I don't believe in ghosts. I don't."

I sigh. "Neither do I."

"Why are you here ... talking to me?" she says.

"I just didn't want you to feel too bad about me. I'm doing okay."

"Go back, Dan. Please? You don't belong here."

"Can't Gina ... kinda I'm stuck."

"People ... are staring," she says.

"Never mind them," says Dan. "How're you doing, Gina?"

"It's been ... hard. Really hard."

"Though ... I see you're getting plenty of comfort."

Gina holds a handkerchief up over her nose and mouth. Her eyes go everywhere, she doesn't know where to look.

"What do you mean by that?"

"That guy. The one who picked you up from my wake. The one you've been sleeping with."

"How do you know that?"

"I came by your place, Gina. I saw you two."

"That's ... really creepy, Dan. You shouldn't go sneaking around like that." My grand-aunt Nellie gives Gina a queer look.

"I'm dead," I say.

"Mark's been a big, big help," says Gina. "This has really been hard on me, Dan. You have no idea."

"On me, too."

"Obviously," says Gina. She turns. Her eyes try to find mine. I notice a sparkle or two still clinging to my torso from the mercenary's dust. "So that really was you? On Facebook?"

"Yeah," I say. "I'm the sicko."

Something blackish moves among the headstones down the hill, arcing around the proceedings. And then there's another, converging from the opposite direction.

"Gina, I don't want to drag this out. I just wanted to say good bye. That's kind of why I came back. To say goodbye."

"We should talk," says Gina. "I can meet you in the park afterwards."

The man with the nose rings steps around a monument and strides down a paved walk.

"Can't," I say. "I gotta go. I just want you to know. I loved you. I really did."

"I love you too, Dan." She tears up afresh. "Are you going ... to Heaven?"

"Not quite."

My Dad shovels ceremonial dirt; my Mom and her cousins toss flowers onto my coffin. Something moves behind a bush. It's a guy I haven't seen before, wearing blue jeans and T-shirt, carrying a blocky toolbox.

"Dan?" says Gina. "Dan? You still there?"

I scuttle over to Diane's side, whisper to her so only she can hear.

"They're here," I say.

Diane wheels around and spots the guy with the toolbox. Her eyes narrow and she stalks up to him. He's got his eyes so fixed on me, he pays no heed to her approach. Diane shoves him. He stumbles against a tombstone. Bystanders swarm to her aid.

I escape through the crowd. A woman in a purple dress reaches into a purse and tosses a handful dust in the air. A stinging cloud wafts down and clings to me, highlighting my form in a constellation of sparks that collect and magnify the sun. Rays refract as if I'm a prism, leaving a rainbow shadow in my wake.

The man with the nose rings comes trotting after me. I dash through a forest of headstones, careening off the marble and granite slabs. Another man, the one I stabbed at the house, comes running across an access road to head me off, gripping a tool box like a football.

I veer down an alley between two mausoleums. The pierced one skids in the moss at the other end, blocking my way. He unlatches his briefcase. The other guy comes up behind me, unsnapping his toolbox. I'm trapped.

Before they can reach me, my world blinks out.
Chapter 51: Lucy and Bianca

Sabonis drags his carcass up out of the sand, bends over and belches seawater. Algae slickens his legs. He peels strands of seaweed out of his beard. The scar on his cheekbone, from the time he tangled with Cato, is gone. The skin on his hands is puckered but smooth; his Shade, knit tightly to his flesh. His body has been replaced.

"Hot dog!"

He straightens up and stretches. A short, glassy woman watches him from atop a tussocked dune. Startled to see her, he stumbles in the sand.

He collects himself and glares up at her, widening his stance, cocking his hands on his hips as she glides towards him down the dunes. The wind buffets his slack penis against his thigh.

"Hello," she says. "You must be Marco. I am Lucy. I'll be your Guide."

"The Hell you will."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't need no fucking Guide. Do you know who I am? I'm what they call an Unfettered One."

"I can see your thread," she says. "You're not Unfettered at all. You're just an ordinary soul."

"Ordinary, my ass," says Sabonis. "You're a newbie, aren't you?" He spies a pair of souls, a man and a woman, sprinting down the beach towards them. They're practically flying.

"Come," says Lucy. "Let's find your stratum."

"Hey, I know you're just trying to do your job and all but ... bug off. Okay?"

He looks at the runners, trying to discern whether they're chasing or being chased. But he knows well the woman's slender-hipped figure, her flowing hair. It's Bianca, but she has flesh. She must be Fallen.

He recognizes the man as well. It's Simon, an old-time Squatter that Sabonis has known since his early days on Lethe.

Simon's jaw hangs slack, misaligned with the rest of his face, giving him the appearance of being in constant awe, but it's just the result of an old fracture that didn't set quite right.

"Marco!" says Bianca. She runs up and embraces him. "When Simon told me you were here, I didn't believe him. You're back much sooner than I expected.

"Yeah, well ... wasn't no picnic on the other side."

"I tried to warn you."

"Say farewell to your friends," says Lucy. "It's time to find your place on the mountain."

Bianca sighs. "Lucy, will you please leave us be? I guarantee that this one will not be climbing anytime soon, with anyone ... and neither will I."

Simon guffaws. Lucy backs away up the dune looking flustered. Bianca takes Sabonis' arm and leads him away.

Sabonis looks back at the impression he left behind in the sand. "Tried to bring some shit back. Tanqueray and chew. Seem to have lost it. I don't know how Delgado does ... er ... did it."

"I've been roaming all the beaches, waiting for you to show."

"For ... me?"

"Yes. Are you surprised?"

"Kinda. Cuz I told you I wasn't planning to come back."

"Oh, I knew you wouldn't like it there. You just didn't want to listen."

"So what's up with you? You're talking like a Squatter?"

"Maybe I am, in a sense. I thought, perhaps, you might want to go to Dilmun. Fix up your house. There was a storm, you know. Seraphim and all."

"What's this about me not being Unfettered?"

"I wouldn't fret about it," says Bianca. "You were never that interested in climbing, anyhow. Were you? And if you do want to climb, you can always get it done the way everyone else does. That's still open to you."

"Not sure I like this arrangement," says Sabonis. "But ... does that mean the Facilitators will leave me alone?"

"Facilitators? Why would they bother with a Squatter? Just don't go meddling with the Interface and they'll pay you no heed."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. No fucking way I'm going back there again. I'm sorry I ever did."

"Why?" says Bianca. "What happened?"

"You never told me they had Facilitators in the living world. Man, they were tough to shake. I felt like a mouse in a room full of cats. Chased me all the way to Waterbury. Had me trapped in a brass factory. I had to crawl through culverts to get away."

"What about Dan?"

"No clue what happened to him. He was still in the boat when the Pounders hit. Then there was this snaky thing that dumped me in the water. I started to sink, so I latched onto this strand. Tried to buck me, but I hung on till it dragged me all the way to the other side, skimming along the ocean all the way to some hospital room in Cape May.

This guy's family nearly died of fright when I showed up. Even the dead guy started freakin' at me. Got my ass out of there quick. I went out to the Parkway and hitched another ride, this time on an eighteen-wheeler."

"Whatever that is," says Bianca.

"It's a truck," says Sabonis. "It's—"

"Whatever, Marco. Go on."

"The amazing thing, though I didn't realize it right away, it was 1999. I saw it up there in big lights on one of those bank time and temperature signs. Right back where I left off. I'm talking days after I died. Kind of explains why I lost touch with Dan."

But anyway, I got off in Bridgeport and walked north, up through Stratford and Shelton and Derby and Seymour—all the way to Naugatuck."

"Did you go see Joanne?"

"Why the Hell else would I go to Naugatuck?" he says. "But I wish I hadn't." He sighed and kicked at the sand. "I went straight to her place. Rang the doorbell. She came to the door in a nightie. Didn't see me right away. I said, loud as I could: "Hi Joanne, Long time, no see." My voice sounded like a bottle rattling around a garbage can. She kind of squealed and slammed the door. But then something funny happened. She came back to the door and opened it back up a tad."

"You didn't harm her, did you? You used to talk ... of going back to murder her."

"That was just talk," says Sabonis. "I could never hurt Joanne. I hurt her plenty over the years, the stuff I pulled."

"Did she recognize you?"

"Doubt she saw much, but she knew it was me. She even said: 'Marc?'"

"I said, 'Yeah baby, it's me.'"

"She said: 'I'm not hallucinating, am I?'"

"I told her no. I told her that I just escaped from Hell."

"She said: 'Why doesn't that surprise me?'"

"I asked if she was gonna let me in or not. Her eyes wandered all around, trying to find my face, my eyes, but she couldn't. She said: 'I just made a pot. Wanna come in for some coffee?'"

"I said: 'Coffee don't do me much good these days, Joanne, but I wouldn't mind coming in for a chat.'"

"It caught me off-guard, her being so cool about having a ghost show up at her door. But Joanne was always a big believer in the supernatural, so I guess seeing a ghost was no big deal to her. What surprised me more was that she was nice to me. Calm, polite. She let me talk and she sat there and listened. That alone was worth going back for, and more than I dared to hope."

"So I went in and sat down at the kitchen table, the chair nearest the door, my chair before we separated. She sat down across from me, looking good, I mean really good for a lady pushing fifty, not a whole lot of lines or droops, even though she just got out of bed. I had kind of stopped noticing how pretty she was. To me she was just Joanne. And I just sat there feeling pleased with myself, happy just to look at her, just to be there."

"But then Joanne starts getting antsy. She says: 'What brings you here?' Can you imagine? What brings you here, as if I came back from the dead to shoot the shit over a cup of coffee?"

"I tell her I just wanted to see her. I get all passive-aggressive, saying that I didn't get a chance to come over and say goodbye when I was stuck in the hospital."

"And then she gets all defensive, saying that she had planned to come by, no hard feelings, but she had no idea things were so bad, that the end was so close. I guess, no one ever told her that I had accelerated the process. That I ... killed myself."

"So I apologized for all the shit I pulled on her over the years. The affairs. The savings I blew, going to Foxwoods and Mohegan. Treating her like crap in general. Joanne, she was a good woman. She never deserved any of the stuff I pulled."

"She says: 'Water under the bridge. I was no angel myself.' That last bit threw me a little. I had no idea what she meant. Not sure I want to know."

"She got curious, asked me what things were like on the other side. I told her it was no big shakes. Just like here, but different. Kinda ... rustic."

"She's looking at me, looking for something to look at, and she tears up and tries to find my hand to hold it but it's too cold for her to hold it for long. That's when she really breaks down, sobbing, and I realize I'd better be going."

"But first I ask her to do me a favor. She says: 'Sure, anything.' Well, I ask ... could she write me a letter and hand deliver it for me? She clamps up and sits up all straight and stiff, asks me if this is for a girlfriend of mine. I say no, not at all, just some guy I knew on the other side. So she loosens up and goes and gets a pen and paper."

"A letter?" says Bianca. "For who?"

"Dan," says Sabonis. "Only thing is ... I tell she's gotta hang onto it for ten years ... and make arrangements to get it delivered if she can't do it herself."

"Why ... a letter?"

"To keep his ass out of Lethe before his time," says Sabonis. "To warn him."

Bianca looks stunned, eyes all flickery. "Do you suppose ... she did as you said?"

"She promised," says Sabonis. "And this is Joanne we're talking about. Unlike me ... Joanne keeps her promises."
Chapter 52: Uris

Thunder rumbles the stone bones of Cornell's Uris library. I sit behind the curved glass of the underground addition, a concrete and turf-bolstered bunker known incongruously both as the "Cocktail Lounge" and the "Group Study Area" though I can't imagine serving cocktails here and the only groups present seem to be studying the insides of their eyelids.

Libe slope spreads beneath me—dorms in the foreground; Ithaca's flats, Cayuga Lake and Connecticut Hill in the distance. The letter had predicted a bad storm, and severe storms are not uncommon in the Finger Lakes in May, but the monster churning over Trumansburg is another sort of beast altogether.

The sky over Ithaca is simply not of this earth. On the fringes of the storm front wander the flat-topped cells of potent but ordinary thunderheads, dark curds spinning off like tumbleweeds. But the center of the front bearing down on the land between the lakes rears and curls like a black tsunami. Concentric, layered rings give the appearance of a mushroom cloud from which descends an opaque curtain like an ashen bed skirt, and beneath it all, a back-lit jaundiced haze of rain. I have never witnessed such a storm. It's the kind of entrance the Four Horsemen would make.

I drum my sweaty fingers against the arm of my chair. It's been a strange day, full of bodily visitations and alien urges. I started off by heading to work, ignoring the letter's pleadings to stay put, but when the traffic incidents and raccoons and bees all started to conspire against me, I took the company library pass and came straight here, ensconcing myself in this chair with a teetering stack of books, ignoring the ripples and flutters that kept squirming through my brain like a worm, fluttering in my chest like a second beating heart.

The yellowed envelope sits atop a tower of mouldering Apocrypha: the Book of Enoch, the Gospel of Thomas; along with every literary depiction of the afterlife I could dredge out of the stacks—most notably Paradise Lost and Dante's Purgatorio.

My cell phone buzzes in my pocket. Gina's been trying to reach me all day. This last weekend has been tumultuous, almost disastrous, and issues remain unresolved. I'm not even sure if a resolution is possible or desirable. For the fourth time, I let her call go through to voice mail and don't even bother to look at the stack of text messages that has undoubtedly collected.

The library is packed. It's the last week of final exams. I hear a tapping sound, a rattling breath. Chills trickle through me. A stubble-faced old man in a moth-eaten sweater wanders by, looking confused. Some emeritus professor, most likely, who's lost his way. His cane probes a centipede's feelers. He thumps past, dangling a yellowed shirt-tail over the back of his gray slacks.

As the storm swallows Ithaca, I no longer believe it was such a crazy thing to come here. I'm glad I listened to that strange woman who showed up on my porch speaking of ghosts and bearing a letter, she said, bearing warnings from beyond the grave. I took her to be a wacko. I had almost called the cops on her.

But everything she had told me has come true, from the series of little accidents that had befallen me in the morning, to the unsettling proddings and probings under my skin and in my bones, and now the very storm that would take my life if I failed to heed the letter she had come to deliver.

She came to me in early March, just before the trees started to bud, when the crocuses had just begun to pop. She pulled up to the house in a baby blue Cadillac with Connecticut plates. I was out back, refilling the bird feeder, certain that this stranger had come to the wrong house.

She came up the driveway, a heavy-set woman, honey blonde and gray, with doll-like features made grotesque by age and obesity.

"Dan?" she said. "You Dan Tompkins?"

"That's me. Can I help you?"

"I got something here for you." She showed me a yellow, dog-eared envelope, sealed and stained with rings of coffee.

My name is hand-lettered neatly on the front.

"What's that?" I said.

"A difference-maker," she said. "This will change your life." She put her hand on my wrist and looked at me with what I took to be the earnest and empty stare of a proselytizer. "Before you read this, you've got to promise me to take this with an open mind. There are things in this universe we can't possibly know, things unknowable to most of us ... like life after death. Do you not agree?"

I'm not even sure I believe in an afterlife, fallen Catholic that I am, but I shrugged and sort of nodded. "Yeah, sure," I said. "I mean ... that's unknowable."

"Do you believe in ghosts?" she said. "Messages from beyond?"

That threw me. I was expecting Jesus talk. Saviors and such. I put the bag of birdseed down on a rusty patio table.

"Someone I know is trying to help you," she said. "He's my ex. Not the most dependable guy that's ever lived, but his heart's in the right place, and he wants to save you from a premature death."

"Death?"

"I've been holding this letter for eleven years. He told me not to bring it to you too soon, and I see what he meant. You must have been in Middle School still when he came to see me. I was going to bring it this past winter, but I've been sick. I was getting worried I was cutting it too close, but I'm glad I waited. You've got two and a half months to come to terms with this. I suggest you take what's written here really serious."

"Who are you? Do I know you?" I said.

"Who I am doesn't matter," she said. "I'm just the messenger."

"Is this ... some kind of scam?"

"I'm not asking for money. I'm just asking that you take care of yourself. Do the things Marco asks in this letter and you'll be safe."

"Sounds like a threat."

"No," she says. "Just a tip."

"I don't even know any Marcos."

"You will," she says. "If you don't listen to what's written here." She handed me the letter.

"Why didn't he bring me this himself?"

"Because he's dead," she said. "Eleven years I've been holding this for you. Kept it in a safe deposit box. Every year about this time I'd go to the bank to check on it, make sure it was okay. Please, I went through a lot of trouble to get this to you. Do take it seriously. There's only one thing you need to do, and you'll be fine: don't go outside on the 17th of May. I don't want to be reading about you in any obit." She turned to leave.

"Wait!" I said. "What if I have questions? How do I contact you? Can I at least have your phone number?"

"I'm washing my hands of this," she said. "Everything you need to know is in that letter." She walked back to the driveway and got back in the car. I watched her start the car up and back out, her face grim but relieved. I wrote her plate number down on my palm: CRC 206.

As for the letter, I took it inside, but I was afraid to open it for days. It was the weekend before I got around to it. This is what it said:

8/23/99

Dear Dan,

You don't know me, and if you're lucky, you never will. Pay attention now. Someone wants you dead, and they will try lots of ways to get it done. You're going to feel funny inside that day. This person has a way of getting into people. You'll know what I mean when it happens. You're going to think stuff you never think. Feel pains you never felt before. I know this, because you told me. Sounds strange, but if this letter does the trick, then all of that will get untold, and you will get undead.

Just to give me an extra boost of credibility (Something tells me I'm going to need it!), here are some tips. The Boston Bruins are going to blow a 3-0 edge to lose a seven game series in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Count on it. The Red Sox are going to fall below 0.500 the weekend before May 17. And the Celtics are going to beat some guy named Lebron James in six games. How do I know this shit? Because you told me.

To sum up, You will die if you get caught in the storm that's coming down May 17, 2010. You remember that date like your own birthday and take cover in the deepest, sturdiest hole you can find. Don't you dare go outside.

You saved me once from a gal named Alecto, so now I'm returning the favor.

Take care, Your friend,

Marco Sabonis

A month went by. I put the letter aside and didn't think much of it. But then the Bruins lost their series exactly the way he said they would and I fished the letter out again, had a good look at it. The notebook paper was brown and crumbly at the edges. I suppose it could have been forged, but it sure didn't look it.

Now it's May 17. I took the letter to work with me this morning just for reference, not really thinking anything would actually happen.

My commute was somewhat disturbing with my bonehead driving and the pains and all. I blamed it on sleeplessness and sciatica.

But I wasn't in the lab much more than an hour before the weirdness started to accumulate. I read the letter and read it again and told Dr. Sharma I was going home sick, but instead, here I am in Uris, and I've been here all day.

The storm slams into Ithaca. Traffic lights are swinging madly, debris is flying. Pseudopods extend down from the clouds like baby tornadoes. Webs of lightning span the breadth of the skyline.

The storm's ferocity awakens some of the slumbering students and they sit there and gawk, looking all disoriented. Other students come to stare down at the solid sheets of water pummeling the lake, until the scene is blotted out by jets of wind-blown rain.

The power blinks out. The thrum of the ventilation system silences. Students groan.

I stay put, safely ensconced in the soft round armchair as the storm beats its head against the glassed in bunker. Just when it seems like it will never end, it winds down to spasms and spurts. The rain falls vertically and evenly, the wind finds a calmer pitch.

The clouds thin and lift, revealing Ithaca below. North of town, the sun glances off the surface of Cayuga Lake. The world begins to brighten. The pressure that has been clamping down on my chest all day releases, and I feel freed.

At the base of Libe Slope, the monstrous elm that once graced the corner of Campus and West Avenue now reclines across the road, its exposed roots poking up like gnarled toes. One of the spruces on the slope itself has been cleaved in two as if by an axe blade. A row of recently planted Japanese Maples in the new construction below West Avenue have sprung from their moorings and lie neatly across the walk. The grounds are covered with branches and posters.

Outside, the clouds are peeling away. The sun sends a shaft racing up the lawn, refracting through the windows of my bunker. I sit awed, humbled, relieved; the universe tons weirder and more dangerous than when I got up this morning.
Chapter 53: Facilitation

Hand in hand with Bianca, Sabonis saunters through the sand hills of Dilmun, denuded anew by the Pounders. They find little remaining of his old homestead. The cove is erased. One pear tree, half its branches torn away, is all that remains of the orchard, although new buds are already forming on the twigs.

"No biggie," says Sabonis. "I've rebuilt before. We can rebuild again."

He spots two sections of post fencing leaned together to form a shelter.

"Someone's been here," says Sabonis.

"It was me," says Bianca. "I came here looking for you."

"Aw, how sweet. Didya miss me?"

Bianca averts her eyes, shyly.

Sabonis goes over and wiggles the rickety shelter. "Not bad for a start. But this will never hold up in a wind." He digs a post out of the sand and fits it against the peak of the A-frame, starts lashing it with some scraps of rope to provide extra support.

"I'm not worried," says Bianca, looking over the sea.

"Me neither. But this is just temporary. We'll make a nice big hut with a thatched roof, just like before, expect with a bigger porch where we can sit and watch the breakers. You know, there's no reason we can't stay here a long time. A real long time. Not forever. I mean, nothing is forever. But ... keep our nose clean. Take care of these bodies. These are good bodies they give us, tougher than the crap they issue in that other place." His eyes linger in Bianca's, wistfully. "Did I ever tell you about the Prospers, and the little girl they had ... the one they named Diamond?

Bianca walks over to a dune where a blue tarpaulin lies half-buried. A catamaran appears around the point, sails full.

"Holy shit," says Sabonis. "Is that my boat?"

"How many cats do you think exist on Lethe?" says Bianca.

She rises up on her toes and waves out at the craft.

A dreadlocked man at the rudder waves back.

"Well, whataya know," says Sabonis. "Old Roddie survived the Pounders. You know what? That man deserves that boat. I'm not even gonna try to get it back from him."

"As if you could, if you wanted," says Bianca. She drags the tarp away. Clumps of damp sand fill its creases. She digs beneath it, uncovering a staff topped with a bronze head, axe on one side, a bladed hook on the other; and three black cubes dangling from a leather thong.

"What the fuck?" says Sabonis, backing away. "What the Hell are you doing with that thing?"

Bianca's eyes lose some of their twinkle.

"I forgot to tell you. They've made me a Collector."

"You?"

"Don't worry," says Bianca. "It's not like they've gone and put me with Alecto. I'm just a Collector."

Sweat beads on Sabonis' brow and slickens his grip on the fencepost.

A thin, calm smile creases Bianca's lips.

"Bianca, you're not—?".

"I said, don't worry," says Bianca, stepping towards him, the pole ax balanced in her hands. "I'm just coming to help you."
Chapter 54: Synched

I'm out in the yard, getting ready to mow the lawn for the first time that spring when I hear a tapping in the tree house. I poke my head up through the hatch. Diane's iPad is there, laying on the floor, totally exposed to the elements. What's more, the damned thing is turned on.

I had gotten used to strange little pranks and noises over the last few days, but this is too much. I clamber up the ladder.

The poltergeist arrived about two days after the storm. I heard the door creak open, saw the curtain ruffle and bulge. And it wasn't just me. Gina noticed too when she came by yesterday, a chill draft, a distorted and muffled voice. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water. I heard the tap run, and glass breaking on the floor. She ran back and leaped into bed, telling me she saw a chair move on its own.

It's out here now, in this willow tree, working that iPad of Diane's that, by all rights, should be in Long Island with Diane. The words of that weird lady from Connecticut, the one who back in March tried to deliver a message from a ghost, return back to me. I wish I had a way to contact her, because I have so many questions.

That weird feeling in my spine comes back from time to time, but it never lingers long. I get a twitch and a shooting pain and then it's gone. If I gird myself against it when it comes, I find I can resist its influence. It's easier to do when I'm aware it's in me. Its only when I don't pay attention that it gets the better of me.

I clamber onto the platform of the tree house. The iPad sits in the corner, screen changing ESPN to Patriots.com like it's surfing the web all on its own. I sit and watch it for while, trying to get a clue from the sites it visits, who might be operating it. Eerily, every site it visits has a slot on my favorites. Mist condenses on the screen and frosts over.

I crawl across the platform cautiously. I've been up here and the wood is getting pretty rotted. I am afraid of falling through the floor.

I lunge for the iPad. My hands tingle and go cold. Something ripples into my limbs, running first down my arms, my torso, and finally, my legs. I panic. It's the poltergeist, dissolving into me like sugar into coffee, possessing me.

Something snaps into my head, and then I know things I wish I never did. But it's too late to forget them. I sit in the tree house and quiver.

I remember something falling—a tree. Before I could even flinch it smashed through the windshield, and drove through me into my seat, cracking ribs, bulging out my eyes, flattening my lungs so no air gets in or out. My heart skittered like a frog trapped under a rock then stopped. Softly, slowly, everything faded.

I know about Lethe and Sabonis and Bianca and what waits for us after death. Despair emulsifies with hope. I'm both scared and relieved to know that life goes on after we die, only it's kind of like this one—no picnic.

I scramble out of the willows and run for the house. The puffy clouds over Cortland never looked so evil. I slam the kitchen door, scoop my phone off the table to call Gina. I need her with me. Now!

But somehow I hang up before the second ring.

THE END

