Page 60 of Katabasis
“No, dear.” The Weaver Girl’s red silk billowed up between them. “Trust your instinct.”
Alice batted the silk away. “Stop...”
“You know there’s no future.” The Weaver Girl spun Peter to face her. She had left everything above his mouth uncovered; all Alice could see of him was his eyes, huge and terrified. “You’d think more often it’d be the man. But it’s always the girl. She’s always afraid. She wants to believe him, but she can’t. He’s let her down too many times in the past. She knows he’ll do it again. And in the end, she has to look out for herself.” The silks hoisted Peter in the air and left him dangling there, twitching like some grotesque overgrown larva. “You’re all part of the same story. The same ending, every time. I know your script, and I can rewrite it. I am doing you a favor.”
Alice strained. “Stop, please—”
“Don’t worry,” sang the Weaver Girl. “I’ll love him. I’ll love him well and long. I do love flimsy twig men. They need such care.”
Peter tried to cry out, but a band of cloth tightened over his mouth, another over his eyes; and then the only sign he was struggling was the bulging of his veins.
“Go on, dear. You won’t like to watch.”
Oh, God, what had she done? She fumbled in her rucksack for the hunting knife. When she found it, the skeins had proliferated; a wall of crisscrossing cloth separated them. She tried to hack her way through, but the silk did not give; it only tautened, caught the blade. She flailed, slicing harder. The wall held firm. Peter was nearly swallowed in cloth. She could hardly see him—only a tuft of brown hair, the rest a mummy, unable to budge. She tried yanking instead at the cloth, to pull open a hole so she could get him, but each time she touched the cloth it thickened. It did not matter, she was powerless, she couldn’t stop it, she couldn’t take it back.
This keeps happening.She redoubled her efforts, sobbing in frustration. It always went like this—it didn’t matter what she intended, it all went to shit anyway because she was so stupid, worthless, she could not stop falling apart, she could not hold the thoughts inside, she made all the wrong choices and it hurt everyone around her. She faltered and Grimes died; her mind slipped and Peter was doomed—
“Don’t fret,” the Weaver Girl cooed; a silken tendril stroked up and down her shoulder. “Don’t think about it, dear, it will all be over soon.”
Click-clack.
Alice’s neck prickled.
Click-clack.
The Weaver Girl heard it too. Her spinning paused; the skeins dropped Peter to the ground. Her head jerked this way and that, scanning the cliffs, her eyes wide with panic.
She knows, Alice thought;she’s seen them before.
Over the hill they came, a horrible wave of white.
First they set upon the Weaver Girl. She shrieked; a flurry of cloth whipped around her face, a pointless silk shield, but they were undeterred. They nipped and dragged, pulling in all directions until she could hardly stand, wrenched down by the growling mass.
The bone-things were most interested in Peter. Alice they largely ignored; they skirted right past her to get to him. They made short work of his cocoon, flinging shreds of fabric through the air. He wrenched himself free and batted his hands around his head, trying to protect his face and neck. But they would not stop coming.
“Here—” Alice tried to slide him a knife, but they were too many; they swarmed the blade the moment she set it down. With shaking hands she uncapped her flask. But it held such a flimsy quantity of water, barely a splash, enough only to stall the bone-things around her for seconds. And the Lethe lay so far down the ledge, too far for rescue.
Peter cried out in pain. A bone dog had landed on his back, its teeth fixed in his collarbone. Alice made to reach him but felt a dozen sudden stabs of pain. They’d decided to pay attention to her now, and they were at her ankles, at her knees. And they kept coming; an endless stream of white rippling down the rocky hills. It seemed then they might be swallowed by a veritable pile of bone, that when it subsided there would be nothing left but flesh picked clean.
Their mass was so great, there was nothing to do but succumb to the surge. Alice shut her eyes and hoped the end would come quick. She anticipated excruciating pain, a million tiny bites. But perhaps the shock or blood loss would numb her first, perhaps her consciousness would fade. And then the rest, easy, like going to sleep. But the pain never came. A thousand tiny pressures against her side; snouts digging not into but beneath her. Suddenly they lifted her up. Some scurried beneath her to make a bed of bones. Then off they went at a dizzying pace, a horde of ants delivering spoils to their master.
Alice writhed, but it was pointless. Any way she turned another mass of bone was ready to catch her, jolt her back into its center. The dim sun spun overhead, sharp ledges against the orange sky, which disoriented her so she had no idea where they were going except the vague sensation they were traveling down, down, deeper along the cliffs until she could hear the churning Lethe roaring by her ears, the mist against her cheek. The bone things turned sharply. Down the bank, Alice glimpsed a bone-thing larger than the rest; a chimeric amalgamation standing upright on two legs, its head an enormous, fanged skull.
A horn’s blow pierced the air.
The bone-things lurched to a halt. The effect was instant; it was like a string was cut. Their tight coordination vanished; their limbs shook listless, confused. The bed disassembled. Alice tumbled to the ground.
For a moment all hung still and silent.
The horn sounded again; a solid, vigorous note. Then, over the churning water, a very human voice: “Away, you!”
A dark shape appeared over the Lethe, growing larger and closer with every passing second. Alice made out the strangest river craft she’d ever seen—an unbalanced barge-type thing composed of scrap and bones, flying a tattered black flag with no symbol she recognized. On deck stood a single boatman, outfitted much the same way; a ragtag pirate from no era or nation, just the detritus of the underworld. A mask of bone covered the top half of his face, leaving visible only an eager, grinning mouth.
“Away! Back!”
The boatman sprang gracefully onto the shore and, in one fluid motion, drew a spear from his back. He spun it round twice above his head—a bit showy, Alice thought—and then jumped out and swung it so quickly toward Alice that it nearly scraped her nose. A crunch, a whine. The bone-thing by Alice’s chest shattered to pieces at her feet.
He’d made the opening volley. The bone-things responded in kind. The boatman became a flurry of spins, whacking bone-things left and right. He was wonderful to watch. The bone-things redoubled their attack, but the boatman seemed well practiced at their maneuvers. They lunged from every angle, but he anticipated their blows—smacking their joints, their spines, all those sticking points that held the rest together.
