Page 132 of Katabasis
“Who are you,” Alice scoffed. “The research assistants?”
Theophrastus broke away and ran screeching up the hill.
This seemed even to startle Magnolia, for she reached out to try to grab him. He evaded her grasp, scrambling on all fours at an inhuman pace up the sands, growling and yipping as if he were a wolf.
Alice saw a dizzying montage of all the misbehaved children she had ever encountered. Toddlers throwing fits at the grocery shop. Cousins over for the holidays, screaming their cheeks scarlet. Helen Murray’s squalling brood, whom she had once babysat for pocket change. The younger boy had pooped his pants and pretended he hadn’t. The older sisters had screeched with laughter and danced around singing that he stank, and the youngest one decided she was a lion and kept sinking her teeth into Alice’s ankles. Alice remembered how children could be capable of such gleeful destruction; how they smashed and hit things with no care for the consequences; how at Helen Murray’s house, she’d had a guilty, violent impulse to smack one of them across the face. Most of all she remembered that children were a fright... but they werechildren—and so very, very small.
Theophrastus ran full-tilt toward her, and all she had to do was scoop him up by the arms and lift him flailing into the air.
He was very light. It would have been so easy to fling him over the ledge, but Alice did not want to hurt him; this was not his fault. She decided she would dump him in the Zeno trap. Time out, go to bed, let the adults have a word. Alice dragged Theophrastus toward the pentagram, tussling as he flailed.
Magnolia appeared atop the hill.
“You,” Alice panted, “are a very bad parent.”
She wondered why Magnolia did not attack. Then it occurred to her she might use Theophrastus as a hostage. The child stood between them—perhaps Magnolia was afraid Alice would hurt the child. Alice was pondering how best to make this threat when Magnolia grasped for her own left shoulder and popped the arm clean off.
Alice gawped.
Magnolia whipped her skeletal arm at Alice’s face. Cold bone smacked Alice across the cheek and jaw, rattling her teeth. Magnolia struck again, and this time the force of it sent Alice sprawling. Theophrastus wriggled free, shrieking and clapping.
Magnolia advanced, swinging her dead withered arm like it was some medieval ball and chain.
Alice scrambled to her feet. She felt a surge of indignant fury. The ridiculousness of it all. Peter had not died in the desert so she could be smacked around by someone’s detached arm.
Magnolia swung out again. This time Alice traced its coming. She caught it by the wrist and tugged hard. The chalk dust still coursed through her veins; she still felt a strength whose limits she did not know. Apparently this shocked Magnolia, for she offered almost no resistance. The arm slid clean from Magnolia’s grasp.
Right, Alice recalled. This was her advantage. The Kripkes were not accustomed to anything fighting back.
Magnolia drew out her knife.
No, no, thought Alice. She flung the arm away, then flung herself at Magnolia.
Alice had never fought anybody. She’d been such a well-behaved child. The closest she had come was a basketball game in elementary school, when she’d been so furious that another girl stole the ball that she lashed out and kicked the girl in the shin. They tossed her out of the game for that. Her parents collected her and yelled at her in the car while she sobbed and explained she didn’t know why she’d done it, she’d never be so bad ever again. The lesson had been engraved in her mind ever since: Other bodies are inviolable and you do not touch them without permission. You do not try to hurt or break them. You keep away and they will keep away in turn, see, everyone exists in their little bubble. So it was a great shock when she collided against Magnolia and they toppled, still wrestling, to the ground. Alice’s chalk-dusted senses did not help her now. All she could perceive was thuds and swipes, spikes and sharp edges. She couldn’t see, her hair was in her eyes. She swung wildly with her own knife but could not tell if she made purchase. She thought she hit something, but it could have just been leather, just armor. She felt vaguely that she was losing. Then she was flat on her back, winded. Magnolia had her pinned down by her knees. Magnolia’s knife came down. Alice flung her hands up against Magnolia’s wrist, straining to push the blade aside. But Magnolia was so strong. The knife pressed perilously close against her face.
Alice’s gaze slid to the pouch at Magnolia’s waist; crimson, bobbling. Two principles clicked in her mind then:
We are in the Zeno trap.
She needs blood to get out.
Abruptly she let go of Magnolia’s arm. Magnolia, expecting resistance, lurched up and over. Her knife jammed into the dirt by Alice’s head. This gave Alice just enough time to wriggle forth and slash desperately at Magnolia’s belt. The pouch popped. Blood splashed across her face—Peter’s blood, rusty and salty and somehow still hot. The swell of memories nearly overwhelmed her—the Escher trap closing shut, Peter’s smile, the screech of iron—and it was all she could do to train her focus, recall those most basic algorithms. Blood filled her eyes and nose. She choked and sniffled, all the while gurgling out the words in Ancient Greek.
Magnolia swung her knife down above Alice’s head. Halfway through the arc her movements slowed to half, then half again, then half of that. Alice could see her arms straining to move inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, but it was no good, for the more Magnolia tried to move the slower she got, her degrees of freedom vanishing into one divided by squares of two, until for all intents and purposes Magnolia knelt frozen. Behind her Theophrastus sat completely still, hands stuck midclap.
Alice scrambled to her feet.
The only things Magnolia could move were her eyes. She glared up and locked on Alice, gaze bloodshot and furious. Alice could read her frustration, her condescension. Zeno’s Paradox. Ababy’sparadox. But to disprove it she needed blood, and all the blood was in the sand.
“Ha,” said Alice.
Magnolia’s eyes widened with terror. And at first Alice could not make sense of that terror, until Magnolia’s gaze slid to Alice’s knife, and she realized from Magnolia’s point of view, the rationally expected thing for her to do now was to kill them both.
Alice had not thought this far ahead.
In all her fantasies the river had done the work, and she merely got to stand by observing, absolved.
But what to do now?
