That was a long time ago, and now, both of those statements seem untrue. I am in Juan’s pond again, as Isadora calls it, reminiscing of everything that brought me here. It must have been a couple of hours since I sent Moloch and Miles upwards, perhaps a couple of days.

For months now, I’ve been going deeper into The Pits with ropes and chisels and returned with heavy chunks of Crystal, each one taken with teary eyes from the corpse of a man I did nothing to save. But today, if it were a day at all, was the day my duty would finally be fulfilled.

Alberto was the first to climb over the waterfall, after I’d secured a rope leading from the pond all the way down the stream, and into the waterfall that had broken my arm months ago. Alberto helped me bury Yitzhak in his own pond, breaking open the Crystal cocoon so that the fish he intended to feast on could, ironically, feed on him. Never mind. This is no time to lose focus.

I focus on holding onto the rope, pulling it towards myself this time. Not looking at the bones that are now all that’s left. Isadora is in the stream, having been brought up the waterfall by Alberto. She holds onto the rope with all of her strength and gasps for air as the water breaks on her body, her rod-like appendage above the water where it is safe from the current, her expression pained as I pull her into the pond.

We hug for just a second. She looks at the bones and for a moment she looks like she is about to cry. She turns away and grips my hand tightly.

Alberto, hanging where the water begins to fall, at the end of the stream, guides into the current the first of the lovers. His body is pale, its slickness broken by the waterskin wrapped around his neck. He crawls low, curling around rocks that Alberto and I tossed to the bottom to slow the flow there, until finally he reaches the pond and we pull him in, his soft fingers barely gripping when we reach for them. His lover takes the same route, albeit quicker.

Alberto reaches a claw into the waterfall to splash water down unto something that is rising slowly from below. A roar rises, so loud it quietnes the crashing of the waterfall. Then Osvaldo’s face, if you can call it that, emerges over the waterfall, scarred purple where one of Alberto’s legs pierced him when he fell, when I first went up the waterfall. The liquid-like body flows against the current towards me, the straps of the waterskin on his back barely holding. Once again I am filled with terror that he might eat me. The pond is not large enough for him, so as soon as he can he worms over the shore, where he lies and watches me eyelessly, in air but for the end of him which whips and tosses water to wet the rest of him.

Then Alberto, his body pressed against the ceiling, avoiding the water almost entirely, his delicate, sharp legs stepping on hollows we chiseled into the rock together. Every couple of steps, his claw opens, and the hand within comes to the rubber pear at his chest, spraying water into the gills in the side of his carapace. I sigh with relief when he finally makes it onto the shore.

I expected there to be a celebration, even a single festive cheer, when he reached safety, but there is none. As soon as he’s out of danger’s grasp he starts refilling the waterskin in his back.

The couple lie at the bottom of the pond, exhausted, each curled within the other’s body, drawing strength from each other in impossible arithmetic. They do not worry about lying among the bones, nor the bounty of Crystal: they do not know what Moloch told me, and I will not tell them. Isadora lies with her head in the air, leaning against the edge of the pond, watching Alberto work. Her exhaustion abates just enough to again be bothered by the straps of rubber around her, which she tries to adjust with weary fingers. She could have made it up the waterfall without the waterskin, just like I did, but she won’t make the rest of the ascent without it.

As I watch them all recuperate, safe, and know that I did my part, I feel no exhilaration. On the contrary, my exhaustion only deepens. Curious, isn’t it, that once one has done one’s duty, it doesn’t fill one’s heart as much as carve it hollow. The tension gone as the rider and his savage whip suddenly relent. What will I do, now that they no longer need me?

The crawl back up will be a long one, even with the device I brought to douse my gills. What an ugly thing, this machine to take a fish out of their rightful water. I try to imagine myself standing in the sunlight on two legs, no more and no less, upright in the breeze and yellow-white light, under a blue sky, whatever those words mean. But I can’t see myself in those shoes, or in any shoes. It’s like imagining a stranger—and what will I do with her life? Slither into a profession, marry, wake and sleep as the days and nights go around and around. Down here, there are no days, and there is no hurry.

Osvaldo takes the mound of Crystal that we prepared for him into his mouth. The last of the Crystal that was a part of the body. We don’t know what will happen if he swallows it, and even if he doesn’t, it might still alter him further. But they have to take it up, as a bargaining chip, or at least a proof of goodwill. Goodwill to whom? Whoever receives these crystals will make bombs to toss at whoever is labelled enemy, and kill or deform them. I remember this story, yet don’t quite believe it—like a fever dream, half forgotten. I resisted having more Crystal brought up where it would potentially hurt more people, but hoped it would be worth it, to save these few. Perhaps, if the war was already over…

Alberto watches the behemoth gobble the raw material, and turns to look at me. In the angle of his eyestalks, in the opening of his vertical mouth, I see gratitude, clear as day, and elation, and fear. I thank you, stranger, he might as well have said, as one leg taps against the rock. Pray for me that your efforts may not be in vain. Then he points at the pond, which needs no interpretation.

The fish are trapped in the narrow spaces between our bodies, Sargasso’s bones, and the Crystal. The fish who had a refuge carved for them by a being whose plans they could not fathom, and ended up eating that being. I dive below and slap a fish out of the water, into Alberto’s reach. He ignores it, letting it fall onto the ground and drown.

“The bones,” says Isadora, her voice assured and clear yet grave. I look at her charming, commanding eyes and nod. They decided to take the bones with them, did they?

Alberto cocks his body to one side and chirps. I look at the bones, the shape of a man tied together by uneaten tendon and sinew that I tried so hard to ignore. I attempt to bring my hands, suddenly shaking and weak and so very human, to the bones but they move slowly, I cannot bring them to wrap around the bone itself. Isadora places a hand on my shoulder, her face underwater and very close as she shakes her head. She cannot touch the bones either, I realise. She pulls me back, lets one lover raise the bones above the water, where Alberto grabs them with delicate claws, then folds them carefully and arranges them into a Britonish Army standard leather pack.

Isadora shakes her body, a declaration of renewed vigour, and the lovers answer, once again lively as they begin to collect themselves and adjust each other’s breathing aid.

Go, she says to them with a tilt of her head, leave us alone for a moment.

Alberto chirps once and pulls them both out of the water and they start at a snake’s crawl up the rock stairs and towards the entrance hall, with its statues. Osvaldo crawls away silently, for once, or at least as silently as he can. The sucking sounds of his movements echo in the cave.

We dive into the water, where she speaks to me in clear English. “Remember: The most sunny day, a dress the colour of blood, Plaza de España. Sun, blood, a place. Will you ֱremember?”

In her voice, in her movements, I can read her thoughts clearly – With reverence we worshipped the sun every day, so the void would one day spit us out as heretics, and it has. And you, who never rejected this void, will you let it devour you whole?

Yes. I nod, the motion moving my entire body.

She kisses me then, for the first time; my first time, and ours. At first, it doesn’t feel like it is out of passion, when she presses her cartilaginous lips against mine, but out of desperate a desire to drive me back to life, back to the surface, back to human form. But why? Why is that form real and worthy, and this one isn’t? It doesn’t matter—the rapturous sensation takes over, and from the way her hands hold on to my head and her body squeezes against me I can tell it’s Eden for her too, a sensation she can lose herself in. We are blessed with only a single moment of it before we are banished by a sound like a mountain grunting. Osvaldo, I realise, crying out with jealousy that wouldn’t shame Cain.

No—an alarm. Not a whine, but a warning.

“They’re coming,” she says. “Not human. Coming from your side.”

Go, I say with my entire body. Quickly.

She kisses me again, the fool, as if this matters more than getting a second of a headstart. I push her away, and clench clawed hands. Whoever Osvlado warned me against, they can’t be allies.

We lift our heads out of the water and see Alberto dancing down the stairs and Osvaldo peering from the cliff. Did we take so long that he’d climbed and returned?

Isadora sends her arms out to Alberto and he picks her up, using his hands and not his claws, and soon she is out of the water, carried on his back. Away from me.

Osvaldo’s soft skin wrinkles and stiffens, as much as it can. I don’t think I see bravery in it but a wish to stay here, to martyr himself by slowing down whoever is chasing them so that he may never be seen in sunlight, as if he somehow still thinks of this form as shameful.

Forget about it, Isadora barks, the phrase clear to me even though I don’t understand a single Espanish word. The commandment sends waves through his body and turns him back towards the path that will allegedly take them up to España. She looks at me once more, as Alberto carries her up the stairs, but what she last sees in me I do not know.

Heretical, Osvaldo turns to me one last time and his lipless mouth, torn open and full of Crystal, lets out a steady monotone roar, so fierce it makes my bones sing too. I hear among the modulations of the sound an intent, and I understand this intent, and realise that I have understood for a while now, as if another, subtle alteration occurred without my knowing.

The world is manifested by a great number of conflicting wills creating what is behind every thing you see there is an intent conflicting with another not just the warring armies but the shape of the mountains and colour of the sky and smell of flowers all decided by triumph and defeat and all manners of stalemate in between. There was a man supposed to be born, one thousand six hundred and sixty six years ago, and if he had been he would have bound all our faiths under one thorny crown and so forbade the existence of these nameless wills, and anointed the champion of your kind. Do not ask how I know this but know that I am certain beyond any doubt that this is truth and the only truth and as such compels us to call any manifestation of a strong enough will unto this world a god and we have crawled blindly into the guts of one, aiming to devour the most nutritious morsels while it devoured us like a man swallowing whole spoonful after spoonful of parasitic worms, thinking he was eating them while they laid eggs in his heart. Know that I have never worshipped it and so am permitted to leave, my punishment being what it may. Whether you are crawling down its gullet or up, do so with your eyes open and do not lie, for lies beget regret. Always.

He leaves in silence, relief emanating from his massive peristalsis. His sermon stuns me, Crystal clear and truly awe striking—what if it wasn’t my duty that drove me to rescue these people, but the simple fact that they did not worship these caves, and the caves themselves wanted them out?

But I have no time to be stunned. I search through vague memories to guess who might be coming. A snail, hungry for Crystal? Or a long-legged insect who would claim back the contraptions I have shamed him into making?

Whoever’s coming, I will not let them take any more Crystal. It belongs down here.

And then the creature comes, walking on the ceiling above the stream where there are no footholds, coming from upriver, eight arachnid legs shifting swiftly and two unaltered, human hands holding each other. Eight red eyes shine in the darkness, and as I recognize them I feel such a sense of warm longing, seeing this spider that I’ve missed.

Not knowing how to communicate, I let my emotions run free in my body: my happiness at seeing her, my sadness that she’s come so far for me. These emotions twist my body, curling me up in waves. You came, I try to communicate. For me. I don’t expect her to understand, but that is faith, isn’t it? Speaking even when you’re not sure you’re heard.

She bends her eight knees and closes one eye, right column and second from the top, as if to say that she understands, and that she knew what she’d find down here. The more I listen, the more I pick up. The slower speed of the opening eyelid means not that she understands, but that she was told, by the snail that is no longer a snail.

He told me about the murder, she seems to say, and all of her eyes turn to me. And how it changed you.

It might seem strange to people above, that we convey so much meaning without words, but isn’t it the same for them when they gain insight into each other’s minds through the angles of face musculature and the distinct intonations of their voices, without ever having learned to do so?

I let another wave go through my spine, head to tail, then gulp air, telling her everything, from how I lied to the insect to the way I threatened the snail. All the while she’s crawling on the walls towards me, dancing her delicate dance. For an exhilarating moment I think I see jealousy as I tell her how I kissed the angler fish.

As she goes over the cliff, down the stairs which she no longer needs, her movements tell me everything she’s been through since I last saw her. How she carried the Crystal out of the depths, altering while she did; how she couldn’t convince the nurses at the sanitorium to see and treat her as a human being, even as she was losing her mind from sleeplessness; how she forced the repentant snail, guilt-ridden over how he failed to retrieve me, to give her the Crystal she needed to transform and finally venture down here. Not by threat or bargain but by will alone, demanding that he provide. And he did, as was his duty.

It’s not the snail’s fault that I’m here, I writhe.

No, she responds. The fault is mine. You asked me why it was just you and I staying down here, so long ago. It was because I saw that you wanted to. And I wanted to give it to you, that offering. I have been fooled into sacrificing you instead of sacrificing for you, and I will bring you back from these caves made altar.

Back where? Why?

Frustration resonates in her body, and from her abdomen she tears the patch of web that I didn’t notice. It is a piece of paper, folded, in an envelope. She puts it into the water and I smell its oily, waterproof casing. I catch it, slash the envelope open with a fingerclaw, and take the letter out. But I cannot read. I wave at her. Bring me the glowing worms from atop the statues… I had forgotten her name, and even if I had not, it would not matter for it would have no word in this language we now spoke …lover. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.

What funny creatures humans are. She crawled through danger, acquired enough Crystal to change her form so thoroughly that it might never change back, all for me, and yet now as she collects the worms in their nooks, she might as well do that thing that unaltered humans do, when their faces change colour. She returns, clutching worms in her delicate unaltered hands, holding them up for me to read. I do my best to string together the archaic lines and crude language into meaning.

Dear Samsonite,

Ricca said that we should wait for you to finish bringing back all of the Crystal in the depths, but I managed to explain to her how idiotic that is. I did not, however, convince her to let me go into the depths myself. As you can see, we managed to come to a compromise. Good woman; I hope you’re not causing her any more grief.

I don’t know how to say these things. I’m worried about you. I pray more than I ever did. You know that I love you very much, right? If I’d had more than half a brain I’d have said it before you left. I would very much like to see you play your lute and sing again. Return to me. Return to the light. If not for you, then for me. Please.

Yours,

S

I fold the paper, the wax that contaminated my skin refusing to rub off. The water is rushing, the sound echoing through the caves, dripping from the stalactites, an endless pattern that never repeats, and that great hum that no unaltered ears hear.

I can’t recall an instance in which my sister used the word please. Then again, I can’t remember her using any other word. Not what her handwriting looks like, either. Nor her face, or the colour of her hair, even her name. She is a formless entity, sending her demands from above through prophets and scripture, with only a single argument that she is real—Samsonite, she called me, the word echoing deep in my depths, reminding me of sunlight and fear and great courageous leaps. There was a danger in it, I vaguely recall. If someone were to read, it might cause them to want to harm us, though I don’t remember why.

In the end, it is a matter of faith—the simple choice whether to believe or not. I can’t say for certain that she ever existed, that older sister of mine. That it was not intermediaries that forged this message, knowing that I was far enough from the overworld to believe whatever they made up. I would have laughed if I could have.

The spider shakes irritably. What’s so funny?

It doesn’t matter if my sister really wrote this or not. You can’t convince me to come back.

She crouches, shaking her rear in anger. Made up your mind, have you? I had a lot of time to think, in those long nights, about certain events. The unlikeliness of them. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that every piece fell into place to get you deeper and deeper? The snail and the murder, the stranded men and women whose steps I still feel vibrating in the rock, whose mucus I still smell. I bet you were the only one who could save them, weren’t you? And your gills… Do you even remember not having them?

She’s right, I realize. But I’ve known that for a while now, haven’t I?

I climb out of the pond and toss myself back inside, splashing her with water. You misunderstand. If the caves let you come here, it was so you could bring me even deeper.

So you’ve decided to give up? Surrender to it?

Surrender? It’s calling to me, and I am accepting the call. Every curve, every gurgle of water. Without cease, without sleep, on and on it serenades, and I never want to stop listening. The gods above never answered my prayers, but this one does. See all the different ways we have spoken to each other. But what are the words of a god? The stone, the flow of water, the taste of raw fish. The shape of our very bones. Learn to listen, my saint. Learn to listen to this world like you have listened to me, and you will know and be known. I beg of you. You told them that you were coming down to bring me up, but it was a lie, wasn’t it? You too feel the pull. We both hear the song of the depths. Why can’t you admit it?

I see. I can’t change your mind.

She tilts her carapace, then. It’s not that she is lying, but there isn’t a shred of defeat in her tone. Then why…

She leaps forward, exposing a web she was hiding between her legs. Oh, my clever spider. You prepared while I was reading the letter, didn’t you?

She tries to wrap it around me, but I keep one hand away from it, and push her off with the other. We fall into the water as she enfolds me in her eight limbs, powerful despite their thinness. In the water I can feel the current in her nerves. I love you, each one declares. I won’t let you be devoured.

The tyranny of the sun has reached all the way down here to pull me back up, to confine me, to constrict me in its grip. I can’t swim away, but the fingers of my free hand climb over her fanged mouth and find her forehead. In one cruel movement, I scratch out three or four of her eyes.

I will not be taken.

She makes a sound like a hiss and a gurgle combined. It breaks my heart to have hurt her so, to make her scream. She squeezes me so hard that I think that she might have abandoned the ideas of saving me and has decided instead to find her consolation in killing me in these caves, to know that she didn’t lose me to the depths. I thrash, only the end of my tail and one hand free, and this is enough to bring me to where the pond meets the stream. I roll us out into the current, which bears us swiftly to the waterfall. We drop, her nerves squealing in fear. But even as we crash into the rock she doesn’t let go, and I can’t, won’t stir us away from the main current, the one dragging us down to an even larger fall, the one I promised the face-lit fish I wouldn’t look at. I’m not looking at it, now: I am falling to it, over the edge where I see nothing but emptiness beneath me. My eyes are dull and they do not see in darkness, but there is Crystal, more Crystal than I have ever seen, an amount that could only have come into being through pure, unrestrained faith. The body of a god laid bare. In fear and exhilaration, my lover and I hold onto each other as we fall to the bottom of The Pits.

#

We have so many forms that we cannot remember which one is whose. We change and alter and metamorphose, trading one nameless form for another, and with each new form I find a new way to worship it. I am grateful for them, the words of a living god, and most of all I am grateful to this god for bringing her to me, so that I may love her and be loved by her. The rest is commentary.

With my limbless body I sing to her, songs of beauty and surrender, and she tells me stories about the sun with her thousand hands. I laugh, laugh at her madness and sometimes she laughs with me, but she swears that she will climb out of here to the other world she imagines to be real.

God knows, maybe she will. God willing, maybe I’ll join her. 

NEXT (afterword)