Page 16 of Spelunking Through Hell

Oh, well. I could worry about that later,afterI had given Naga the bags and gotten back on the metaphorical road. I can’t stay still too long, or I get twitchy. I’m always twitchier after a procedure. I opened the door and stepped into my room, this time pausing to turn on the light.

After Thomas had had a few drinks and let the last of his guard down, he used to tell me about his days at Penton Hall, back when he’d been a ward of the Covenant. His parents had died before he was old enough to remember them, victims of the Covenant’s endless,unnecessary war against the cryptids of the world. He grew up in a plain white room that was essentially part of a barracks, and nothing he did could ever have made it seem more like a place where people actually belonged. It was part of how he’d been able to adjust to the old Parrish place so quickly. Sure, the house had been actively hostile, but at least it had beenhis.

My room at Naga’s made me think I understood him a little better. No matter how much of a mess I made or how much stuff I packed into the reasonably small space, it never looked like anyonelivedhere. There was a bed, flat and round and designed for a very young lamia, but sufficient to my needs. There were two dressers, both constructed from hard red wood that smelled faintly of turmeric, sized for human use and probably built by some of the same people as assisted the artists; there was a wardrobe that matched the dressers. There was nothing else. Nothing on the walls, which was my own fault. Naga wouldn’t have stopped me from hanging pictures, or maps, or charts, and sometimes I’d been tempted.

But it felt like there were very few steps between truly starting to make this space my own and starting to think of it, not Buckley, as home. And once I stopped thinking of Buckley, ofEarth, as the place where I actually belonged, something would be over. Something I might not ever be able to get back.

My bag was where I’d dropped it, along with the map roll and pile of books. Might as well look at those now, see what I’d stolen, and figure out whether they were anything Naga might want to keep.

The map roll was so old it didn’t have a zipper. The top was capped with a hard leather “lid” that creaked and stuck as I wiggled it off. I immediately tipped the case upside down over my bed, figuring that if anything nasty had managed to creep its way in there, it would spill out along with whatever else was inside. Nothing came. I turned it back toward me and peered into the dark interior. Something was mashed up against the side, and bit by bit, I wiggled it out, until I was holding a sheet of vellum approximately three feet long.

Someone had been mapping for quite some time before they’d ended up on Helos and lost their possessions. Their possessions and, given the surrounding debris, very likely their life. Oh, well. Dead people could still have opinions, and if this map had been haunted by someone who didn’t want to give it up, they would have told me so by now. Picking up a couple of knives to serve as weights, I began unrolling the map on my bed, placing a knife on each corner to keep it flat.

When I was done, I was looking at something very much like a star chart, except that the things it showed weren’t stars. It was the unfinished point that told me what I was looking at. Our long-lost cartographer, whoever they had been, whatever had happened to them, had been on their way to Helos to chart the dimensions branching off from there.

Using that as my starting point, I was able to trace back to familiar lines and pathways, finding worlds I knew in the web of interconnected lines. Some of them were connected in ways I hadn’t seen before, new shortcuts and directions that might be useful in the future. And then I reached Empusa in the chart and had to pause.

Because every dimension is a blood cell or a hex in a hive or a grain of rice in a sack or whatever metaphor you need to let you picture something that literally cannot be pictured by the human mind, there are always a lot of directions you can go. It’s not like being a person standing on a flat plane, where you can walk almost any way that isn’t barricaded, but you can’t go up without a jetpack or down without a shovel. It’s more like being a deep-sea diver. You can go in any direction, three hundred and sixty degrees all-immersive, and because you’ve presumably got a tank of oxygen strapped to your back, you don’t really need to worry about drowning.

But if you don’t have a guide, you pretty much have to go by what you’re told. You have to follow directions from your dive instructor, basically, the people who’ve been there before and know where the giant eels that like to eat novice divers are lurking. Naga’s dimension, Empusa, was one that had been familiar to me for most of my life, and since he’d been summoned by a Buckley snake cult, it had been relatively easy to get there after Thomas disappeared, requiring just a little blood sacrifice and a little help from a routewitch who’d started out her life as part of a snake cult.

I say, “relatively easy,” which means it wasn’t impossible, the way it should have been for someone as magically inert as I was. I didn’t have to give up my firstborn child, my name, or any body parts, and I got a one-way ticket out of Earth and into the domain of the only person I knew who might actually be able to help me.

And Naga had been willing—almost eager, even—to help. He’d started recruiting tattoo artists who knew how to seal sorcery into skin almost immediately, and I’d been on my way within a month, passage charms etched into my arm and no real destination in mind beyond “wherever Thomas is.” I’d been trusting the Healy luck tomake me trip over the right rock and fall down the right rabbit hole, like my namesake, coming out in Wonderland.

It hadn’t worked. Again and again, it hadn’t worked, and again and again, I’d returned to Naga, until the first time I returned with a septic gut wound that was driving my fever through the roof and my blood pressure through the floor at the same time, leaving me barely able to stand unsupported, and he’d taken me to the treatment room while I was still lucid enough to consent.

I’d sworn it would be the only time, and Naga had agreed, and kept researching possible directions for me to go, but had always told me not to go in one general direction from Empusa, or one general idea of a direction. “There’s nothing that way that’s capable of supporting life,” had been his final word on the subject. “I feel a great deal of responsibility toward you, after the service your mother did me. I’m not going to let you wander off into a blasted hellscape and die from lack of biochemical reactivity in your cells. Stick with the directions we know are safe.”

But that didn’t match this map.

According to the map, there was a whole cluster of verified dimensions and worlds off in that direction, and if I was reading the symbols correctly, the nearest of them was environmentally very close to this one. That probably meant it was full of giant snakes, and where giant snakes can survive, so can I, as long as I can avoid the giant snakes before they eat me. All the destinations were labeled, and they all had the tiny runic marks that I had learned in order to amend my tattoos.

Naga didn’t know. Clearly, Naga didn’t know. It was an easier explanation than Naga lying to me over and over again for fifty years. I rerolled the map and tucked it back into its case, glancing at the pile of books. They looked like they had come from the same place. Maybe they had more information about the mapped dimensions I didn’t recognize. I sat down on the edge of the bed and unbuckled the strap, opening the first book.

It was written in a language I didn’t recognize, much less understand. Of course. Naga was a professor of extra-dimensional studies, and I briefly thought of bringing it to him for translation, then rejected the idea. If there was any chance hehadbeen keeping this from me for some reason...

No. I couldn’t think like that, but I couldn’t show him the book, either. And I couldn’t explain what I was about to do in any way that would make sense, but I didn’t use my translation charm on about halfmy trips. I’d be fine without it. Pressing two fingers against the hydrangea tattooed high on my bicep, I concentrated, and felt a wave of dizziness as the tattoo flared and disappeared, used up by the intent to use it.

When I glanced back at the book, it was written in English, the handwriting neat and precise. It was a cartographer’s diary, of sorts.

2nd Glorn, fifth year of the reign of our Lady of Pleasures.

We have found another of the bottle worlds, which must be avoided by those who wish to survive navigation of the great weave. It opens from...

And there the entry went into a list of worlds and dimensions, six in all, before concluding with:

... which opens from Cornale, in the upmost when Cornale has been approached from the correct direction, and with the proper intent. It is a small and a terrible place, and better left forgotten. What enters it does not emerge again, and it is my belief that we have found a place of prisonment. That it contains life is unquestionable. That this life is beyond all access by those who wish to see their homes again is equally unquestionable.

We will return home via Helos, to document the branches which open from this world. We have heard that it is well-connected to its portion of the weave, and we might use it to discover yet more wonders. Perhaps this will prove true, and we will return home heroes.

I closed the book, slowly, and stared off into nothing. Eight jumps—nine, if I included Ithaca, which I would have to do to access Cornale, that being the only name on the list I recognized, apart from Helos, where their journey had ended—would leave me too far out to get back. If I entered this “bottle world” they referred to, I’d be down ten, leaving me with five. And five wasn’t even enough to make it back to Ithaca. I should tell Naga about this. We couldn’t pack a single additional crossing charm onto my skin without risking some sort of permanent damage to my nervous system, but maybe he had something external I could take with me, some sort of charm or pendant I could carry.

And maybe I could ask him why he’d told me there was nothing past Ithaca worth even looking into, when clearly the dimensions inthat direction could sustain life, and life that was compatible enough with humanity to draw maps and keep diaries to document their travels.

Yes. Talking to Naga was the right thing to do, despite the small, nagging voice at the back of my mind telling me not to do this. He was my friend. He would tell me how to proceed. He would help me.

He’d been helping me for fifty years.

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