Katabasis

During the winter of Alice and Peter’s first year, Grimes’s fourth-year student suddenly left for Canada after an ultimatum from his girlfriend. Alice and Peter were recruited to work uncredited hours to make up for the loss. She and Peter bonded amid the difficulty, and Alice thought she may have been in love. She loved her work because she felt like she could make discoveries no one had made before; she felt the same way about Peter, and she noticed him making observations and discoveries about her. They shared details about their specialties and knowledge and developed a shorthand language.

After Grimes’s project ended, Peter pulled away. He merely nodded in greeting and refused to engage with their old inside jokes. Alice went to Italy with Grimes the next summer, and her life changed. Shortly after that, a philosophical article came out that proposed that the things people think define personhood do not ground fact, and so it is impossible to truly know someone else’s essence. Alice used this to comfort herself about not truly knowing Peter.

Alice thinks she’s still reasoning through which apple to grab, but she looks down to see she’s holding the green apple. Weaver Girl tells Alice to go on alone and begins to wrap Peter in a silk web. Alice tries and fails to cut through with her hunting knife. 

When Peter is almost fully encased, bone-things set upon them. They pick Alice up and begin to carry her, but a horn scatters them. A boatman arrives and begins fighting the bone-things. She brings Alice and Peter onto the boat before Weaver Girl can reclaim them.

The boatman introduces herself as Elspeth, a name Alice recognizes. She was a Grimes advisee who died by suicide 10 years before Alice arrived at Cambridge. Though Cambridge had tried to scrub evidence of her from existence, rumors still circulated. In Hell, she’s solid-looking, beautiful, and chatty. She says the bone-things are controlled by magicians called the Kripkes. Alice recognizes them as American academics who used “wild and unconventional magick” (228) that could fill stadiums. Their tenure was denied, and they disappeared from public for five years before announcing a “TO HELL AND BACK” event (229). On stage, they consensually slit the other’s carotid artery and bled to death. Academics decided the pair got lost within their own “complex webs of fantasy” (230).

Elspeth says the Kripkes have taken on the “attributes of deities” (231) in Hell. She thinks the bone-things contain fragments of their minds. She says they also have a large bone construct imbued with their son; before they died, they laced his drink with arsenic. They’ve travelled all over the Courts trying to find a way back. Elspeth also tells Alice and Peter that if they die in Hell, they can’t be reincarnated.

Elspeth leaves to get food. Alone, Alice apologizes to Peter for condemning him. She tries to explain how her pentagram scar makes her lose her sense of self and agency. She admits she was afraid he’d condemn her because she saw his notebook. He’s offended she’d think he’d exchange her and expresses disbelief that he ever thought Alice wasn’t like Grimes.

Elspeth roasts rats for their dinner. Peter asks her how she and the Kripkes use magick. She cuts herself and dips the chalk in her blood before writing a pentagram that will fix Peter’s scratches. She says bigger spells demand bigger sacrifices. Peter tries a more complex spell with Alice’s blood. Elspeth says living blood works better than that of Shades, so the Kripkes have hunted any magician who has made the descent since their arrival. They’re on “the Great Quest” to leave Hell again: Elspeth discovered she didn’t want to stay in Hell, so she is also on the Great Quest. They can succeed by finding a “True Contradiction” (244) or a Dialetheia.

Elspeth invites Peter and Alice into her home and shows them her library, filled with books she fished out of Lethe. When Peter goes to the bathroom, Elspeth says something that implies Alice and Peter are romantic partners. Alice denies this and changes the subject. Alice asks how Elspeth stays more solid than other Shades; Elspeth says it depends on proprioception and being able to hold an image of what you looked like in your mind while using your will to assemble your essence. Alice asks her why she died by suicide. When Elspeth asks why, Alice confesses she has considered it.

Elspeth begins by asking who Alice’s advisor is; Alice lies and says Helen Murray. Elspeth says her advisor was Grimes, and she was extremely successful until the “absolut[e] farce of it all” (250) became apparent to her. She sees Grimes as symptomatic of that structure. Alice thinks she is better than Elspeth because she could “read [Grimes’s] moods” (251) in a way that kept her from the worst of his anger. Elspeth also says Grimes is not a great magician anymore and is riding on his wartime success. Alice defends Grimes, and Elspeth drops it. 

Instead, Elspeth explains a philosophical paradox called the self-torturer problem, where an individual chooses to imperceptibly increase their pain for a reward, which is figured as rational because the pain is imperceptible. Eventually, they experience intense pain but continue to make the choice and receive the reward, as the change is still imperceptible. She compares this to academia and says Alice looks like she understands. Alice knows Elspeth wants to help her and feels resentful.

Alice wakes Peter in the night to convince him to find the Dialetheia before Elspeth does, so they can use it to bargain for Grimes’s life. Peter is shocked by Alice’s desire to betray their ally. Archimedes is listening, and Alice warns him not to tell Elspeth.

Alice reflects back on an ex-boyfriend who guessed she was infatuated with academia because she liked to accumulate gold stars. Alice thinks she’s enamored with “the high of discovery” (260). She thinks this separates her from being “just an animal” (261). She also loves how, among her peers, she is free to follow whatever trains of conversation they please without judgment. She sees the institution as the thing that gets in the way of that and decides she just needs to survive it.

When Alice wakes the next morning, she joins Elspeth and Peter on deck. Inside the water of the Lethe, memories swirl in eddies and currents. Elspeth has to beat back a tumultuous nightmare. Alice almost gets sucked in by the memories, but Elspeth draws her back to herself. She explains that a draft made from the Lethe is used to cleanse Shades’ memories for reincarnation, but drinking water from the river directly can destroy Shades. She has seen the Kripkes drinking from the river, slowly erasing their humanity. Alice finds the idea of stripping away parts of herself alluring.

They sail past Greed, the Third Court, which takes the form of the empty areas at the edge of campus where the university has bought land but not done anything with it. Elspeth says she sees many academics in Greed, and they have trouble getting out.

They pull over at Wrath, where the structured institutions that mimic campus begin to disintegrate. Elspeth disembarks to gather hot coals left by Phlegyas. Peter goes below deck to draw the pentagram that will trap Elspeth. When she returns, Alice asks Elspeth for some tea. She goes to the kitchen, where Peter has hidden a pentagram under the mat. 

As Elspeth makes tea, Alice starts asking Elspeth questions she hopes will be affected by Peter’s pentagram. They’re interrupted by Archimedes, who attacks the mat and reveals the pentagram. Elspeth calls Peter up to join them. In her fury, Elspeth transforms, butterflies erupting from her eyes. She alters the pentagram to make Peter and Alice tell the truth. They admit they’re there to rescue Grimes. Butterflies swarm them, carrying them off the ship and onto the shore of Wrath.