Page 22 of Spelunking Through Hell

“Bottle worlds swallow people,” I said. “No witch or sorcerer I have been able to find in dozens of different realities has been able to tell me where my husband is. Wherever the crossroads put him, it’s outside the reach of normal magic. And don’t get that soft-eyed face that means you’re about to try and make me accept some hard truths, because I know two things I didn’t know last time we talked about this.”

“Those being?” asked Helen.

“He’s not dead,” I said. “But the crossroads are.”

Phoebe gasped, turning to stare at me. “You would speak so lightly of the end of your world?”

“What?” I frowned at her. “That’s not what I said.”

“But it is,” said Helen. “Your world has a pneuma akatharton—an unclean spirit. That’s why we cut off trade with you. It came through the membrane and devoured your world’s native pneuma.”

I blinked. “What?”

“The thing you call the crossroads is your world’s pneuma,” said Helen, words slow and deliberate, like she was trying to make a child understand. “It wasn’t always, but it killed the original pneuma and took it over. It came from somewhere outside your dimension, and it darkened your world’s spirit, such that we stopped traveling there. It’s not the only case of parasitism I’ve heard of, but it’s the only one I’ve seen for myself. I’m so sorry, Alice. Your world is doomed if it’s not already dead.”

“My granddaughter said it was something called the ‘anima mundi’ that told her my husband was alive when the crossroads sent him away,” I said. “I always heard that translated as ‘world soul,’ so it sounds like what you call the pneuma is what she called the anima mundi. Does that sound about right to you?”

Phoebe and Helen exchanged a glance before Helen looked back to me and said, “It does, but it’s not possible. The invader killed your world’s pneuma. It can’t be telling anyone anything.”

“And I can’t get wrapped up in whether the world is doomed when I’m trying to find my husband,” I said. “For right now, let’s just accept that everything was normal the last time I went home, and I have a job to do. We’ll worry about the fate of the world later. Bottle worlds. Nothing gets out, but things can go in. Things like a sorcerer chucked across dimensional walls by an unclean spirit, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said Helen reluctantly. “But, Alice, you have to understand that if you go into a bottle world, you’ll never come back. You’ll be trapped in a dead place, one that’s falling apart all around you, and you won’t be able to escape it.”

“Aikanis did,” I said. “He seems to have written everything else down, so I expect the answer to how he got out is either in one of those two books Phoebe has, or in the one that Naga took. I have to go, Helen. You’d go if it were Phoebe. You know you would. If Thomas is there, if he’s still alive and waiting for me to find him, I can’t make him wait because I’m finally stopping to worry about my own neck. My neck doesn’t matter. My neck made a lot of choices, and none of them said ‘hey, it would be fun to survive a long, long time.’ Will you read the books? If Aikanis had a method for exiting the bottle dimensions, you can come and get me as soon as you figure out what it is.”

“Why are you so determined to do this?”

I shrugged. “Because I’ve been hunting for my husband for fifty years without a single lead, and then I find out the crossroads are gone, I’ve potentially been right all along and he’s out here for me to find, but also somehow outside the scrying range of literally any magic user or dimensional mathematician I’ve met, Naga hasn’t been telling me about the dimensions off of Cornale, and I justhappento trip over a map pointing to a dimension people can get trapped in? Don’t you see why I have to go?”

“Don’t you see how likely this is to be a trap?” countered Helen. “Everything you’ve just said is true, but that doesn’t make this an invitation, it makes it a lure. You could be getting set up.”

“By whom, though? I know that ink can’t be faked.”

“Someone could have planted the books for you to find, knowing you’d be unable to resist the lure of answers.” Helen looked almost sympathetic. “You have your share of enemies.”

I thought of how close I’d come to dying on Helos, with those spines in my legs and the sepsis spreading through my bloodstream. “I do,and it’s possible,” I allowed. “But I don’t think so. Healy family luck has always had a tendency to trend toward coincidence. Things either go really, really right or really, really wrong where we’re involved. And I don’t think the anima mundi would have rewarded my granddaughter for killing the crossroads by telling her something she could use to send me to my death.”

Phoebe and Helen both stared at me. I blinked at them. “What?” I asked once the silence had stretched on for long enough to become uncomfortable.

“Your granddaughter killed aworld soul?” asked Phoebe. “I’m sorry, but—no.”

“She says she did, and I believe her when she tells me things,” I said. “She’s a sorcerer. Takes after Thomas. That’s one of the reasons it’s important I bring him homenow. She’s doing pretty well for herself, but she needs training if she’s going to stop setting things on fire when she doesn’t mean to.”

Phoebe put the books down on the table and put her hands over her face, making a despairing noise. Helen put her arm around her wife’s shoulders, still watching me with concern. “If your granddaughter told the truth, then she has accomplished something neither of us has ever heard of,” she said. “I’ll test the crossing point to your Earth, and see if it remains intact, and if so, I’ll look to the other side to check the health of Earth’s pneuma. If it confirms your story—and that’s a very largeif, Alice, this is impossible—then maybe you’re right and your luck is arranging the universe the way you want it to. But, Alice, if you’re wrong, if there’s no way to get out in these books, or if Naga tries to claim he doesn’t have the one you say he has, we could lose you forever.”

I paused. “I’ve been to Helos a hundred times,” I said finally. “A hundred times, Helen, on bounties, on pass-throughs, just to get back to Earth if I’ve been wandering. I’ve fought the people I fought today on dozens of occasions, and I’ve never seen their hoard before. I could have passed through a hundred more times without seeing those books, if I hadn’t gotten lucky. I have to believe it’s the same coincidence that’s been keeping me alive all this time, and that if it had been trying to destroy me, it would have been a lot more upfront about it. A few inches to the right when I fought the big fucker guarding the treasure and I would have bled out in the cave. A few feet to the left and I might not have seen the books at all. I have to go.”

Helen sighed deeply. “Alice Healy, when you die, they’ll retire your name for generations,” she said. “The line between bravery andstubbornness is even thinner than the line between love and foolishness, and you cross them both so often it makes me ache. But you’ve brought some of the treasures of Phoebe’s family back to us, and we will help you. I’ll talk to your...” She paused, nose wrinkling like she’d smelled something bad, and finally said, “Patron. I’ll ask him for the book. If he refuses me, I’ll remind him of the treaty between his university and Ithaca, and the number of items we could demand repatriated to us if we wanted to state them in breach. And if we find a means of pulling someone from a bottle, we will come and rescue you. We cannot stop your foolishness. We may be able to save you from its costs.”

“Thank you,” I said, and hugged her. She smelled of healthy goat, that warm farmyard scent that mostly reminded me of childhood petting zoos and summers with the carnival. I let her go and stepped back before Phoebe could glare at me.

Phoebe glared at me anyway. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” she asked. Apparently, the brief period of grace brought on by my returning something her family had lost was over now. “A sandwich, maybe?”

My stomach growled. I smiled at her as endearingly as I knew how. “A sandwich would be great, thanks,” I said.

Phoebe threw her hands up in the air and stormed back toward the kitchen, hooves clacking sharp against the floor. Helen and I exchanged a wry glance.

“She’s never going to like me, is she?” I asked.

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