The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  She lay down.

  ‘He’ll be gone for some time, so you should sleep,’ Petrus said.

  ‘Shouldn’t you tell me your story?’

  ‘Better to wait until you’ve returned,’ Petrus said. ‘The thoughts foremost in your mind should concern only what you have to accomplish in Purgatory.’

  She thought, He doesn’t want to frighten me.

  Taryn woke and stretched, then went and stood over Shift and Petrus as they worked. After a time she addressed the crowns of their preoccupied heads. ‘Will what I’m wearing make any difference?’

  ‘You’ll likely find yourself in a favourite outfit, or you’ll change according to what’s happening and how you feel,’ Petrus said. ‘When I went, I was sometimes so sure I was dreaming I’d find myself in night attire.’

  ‘Taryn’s not thinking of how she’ll look. She’s thinking of the cold, or of moisture-wicking socks good for another hundred miles.’

  Shift really was a bowerbird of things people said, always overburdening his arguments with evidence.

  Petrus said, ‘It’s all immaterial, because you’ll be immaterial.’

  ‘I’m trying to think of any safety measures I might take.’

  Shift looked up. ‘Petrus will issue instructions to both of us right before we go. Anything we want to bear in mind has to be bundled up with our death energy.’

  Taryn became afraid then, as afraid as she’d been when, compelled, she had allowed McFadden to wrap the chain around her neck and shut its lock. On that occasion she’d been thinking ahead. Thinking that once McFadden had gone, Jacob would tell her his plan for escape. Or someone would happen along. When the lock snapped shut Taryn hadn’t had enough time to consider how little chance there was of someone happening along. So little that McFadden hadn’t felt the need to go a step further and tape their mouths, or tie their hands. He’d left their mouths and hands free to let them share their hope, and whatever else followed, like tears and recriminations.

  She and Jacob had escaped, but none of it had been without consequences. And, as soon as Jacob was able to collect himself, his resentment against her had ignited. She was to blame, and he blamed her. That had separated them, and made him vulnerable to Aeng. And that was her loss and Shift’s. Jacob himself was happy. And even if Neve made good on her threats, Jacob would be safe.

  Shift and this magician with oiled curls were going to winkle her out of her body. Taryn had only ever been in her body. It was where she lived.

  She couldn’t think what precautions she could take against what was about to happen, and her thoughts began to circle familiar threats, like being cold to her core, as she was on the beach of the Tacit.

  Shift said, ‘It would be convenient if we could stay in costume, like the ghosts in stories. The phantom monk in his cowl. The Lady of the West Walk in her bloodstained farthingale. Because if we had costumes we could write the rules on them.’

  ‘They’re not really rules,’ Petrus said.

  ‘Considerations.’

  Petrus measured out equal portions of a pale medicine and gave one to Shift and the other to Taryn. Shift knocked his back, which was the right idea because the taste was terrible—only briefly on her tongue, but it took up residence in her sinus cavities.

  Petrus kept taking the temperature of his second concoction. He used his pinkie. Taryn had the impression his touch was as finely tuned as a thermometer. Every now and then he looked up and around, as if he was worried about being intruded on or was expecting someone. This gave Taryn another concern. ‘Will our bodies be safe while we’re away from them?’

  ‘The cut-through to Purgatory is an out-of-the-way spot,’ Shift said. ‘About as out of the way as it gets. The sidhe can’t use it. It only admits those with souls.’

  ‘I will watch over you,’ said Petrus. ‘Shift can’t waste time waiting for ravens.’

  ‘Taryn, forget your body for now.’

  ‘This seems a very dangerous thing for us to be doing,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in danger, but so far I haven’t walked into it with my eyes open.’

  ‘I’ve done this before,’ Shift said.

  ‘I went with him and remember doing it,’ Petrus said. ‘Which is more than he does. So believe me when I tell you it can be done.’

  ‘Will we be too late to save anyone this Tithe?’ Taryn said.

  Shift hesitated, then told the truth. ‘Yes. Our Pact is with the government of Hell. A faction of demons is looking to return Hell to demon control. Their homeland. They mean to use the cipher key the Firestarter contains to free themselves. The Pact will only end if there’s a change of regime. It will all take time. And it would be very bad if, in the meantime, the demons’ plan was discovered by the government of Hell. So we have to let the Tithe go ahead as usual.’

  ‘The players are otherworldly but the principles are ones we’re familiar with, Taryn Cornick,’ Petrus added. ‘Shift is betting on the Tudors, not the Plantagenets, but the Tudors are still short of funds and allies.’

  Shift smiled. ‘Petrus bet on the Plantagenets.’

  Taryn had expected magic to be magical and produce instant results. ‘I have to wait another hundred years to benefit from this?’ she said. ‘That’s too far off for me.’

  Shift stood up. He reeled slightly and Petrus jumped up and took his arm. ‘Easy.’

  Shift freed himself and grabbed Taryn’s hands. ‘What do you want, Taryn?’

  She thought, To be let off the hook. Not to be in the middle of all this. To go back and undo my mistakes and not owe anyone.

  ‘The truth, Taryn. And think it through. What is it you most want?’

  Selfishly or unselfishly? She was only able to summon selfish desires. ‘I want not to have made the mistakes I’ve made. Not to have inveigled McFadden into killing Webber. Not to have sought revenge. Not exchanged Beatrice for my revenge, because that’s what it feels like I did. I want Beatrice to be alive. I want Webber to have driven on past. I want my sister and me to have continued into our adulthood together and for her to have been at my side at our mother’s funeral. Our mother might have lived if Bea had. I want the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb.’ She started to cry and couldn’t speak.

  After several minutes Shift said, ‘What else do you want?’

  ‘Because all that’s impossible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to see Beatrice again. And don’t tell me that’s impossible.’

  ‘It will depend on what you do.’

  ‘I have to do something extraordinary and heroic?’

  ‘Yes. And the right ones have to notice. That’s something we can’t calculate or engineer. The prisons and citadels and quarantines of the Great God of the Deserts have all broken down.’

  Heaven was the citadel, Hell the prison, Purgatory the quarantine. Taryn could figure that one out. She mopped her wet eyes on her still-material sleeve and tried to collect herself. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I want there to be libraries in the future. I want today to give up being so smugly sure about what tomorrow won’t need.’

  ‘For there to be libraries in the future, what would be required?’

  ‘People to care about the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation, and about keeping what isn’t immediately necessary because it might be vital one day. Or simply intriguing, or beautiful.’

  ‘And?’ Shift said.

  Taryn lost her temper. ‘Oh, God. Of course you have an “and”. Of course you have an endpoint to your interrogation or homily or whatever.’

  ‘Civilisation would help,’ Petrus said, offering Taryn a clue to assist with his friend’s inquisitorial nonsense.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Thanks. Yes. Of course I want civilisation. Cities are a necessary condition of libraries. I made that point in my book. The monastery on the spur of rock that people can only reach by being winched up in a basket is still a city—since each church is a house among houses.’

  ‘Yes, you wrote tha
t,’ Petrus said. He had hunkered down again, his pinkie denting the surface of the second potion. He was interested in the argument but could divide his attention without being distracted.

  Taryn was startled. ‘Have you read my book?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it quite wonderful.’

  Taryn blushed.

  Shift said, ‘And what if the hillsides your houses are on slip into the valleys, and everything is buried in mud? What if the wind flattens your houses, or floods wash them off their foundations? What if you’re all like too many mound-building birds in the same forest—you get so tired of stealing each other’s twigs and sticks that no nests are finished, and no chicks hatch? You can’t keep doing everything over, so you sit down in the ruins and starve. What if that? What if the floods sweep the soil into the sea, and the sea seeps up through the land and turns it sour? What if the conditions for civilisation are gone?’

  Taryn stared at him, speechless.

  Petrus said, ‘This potion is ready. I would like you both to prepare by lying down.’

  Taryn wasn’t ready. She was furious. Speeches had been made at her. And that couldn’t be Shift’s endgame. No one could save the world.

  ‘Lie down,’ Petrus said.

  The potion was cooling. It was yellow, with a chalky pinkish skin.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Taryn said to Shift, meaning it.

  ‘I haven’t got ahead of myself. I know everything depends on a few things,’ he said.

  ‘He’s mad,’ Taryn said to Petrus, in a tone of wonder, but it was an appeal.

  ‘Lie down,’ Petrus said again.

  Taryn lay down and then had to sit up to accept her measure of potion. She looked at it. Steam still puffed out from under the twitching lid of its viscous skin.

  Shift sat beside her.

  ‘I’m going to tie your hands together. It will help.’

  Petrus didn’t mean her hands—she wouldn’t have let anyone tie her hands now. He meant to tie her left hand to Shift’s right.

  Petrus hovered over them with a scarf. ‘Move a little nearer Taryn, please Shift.’

  The gate swelled quietly towards them and moved the three of them away from the vials and baskets, the crucible and alembic, the beakers, glass tubes, and hearth. Taryn found herself sitting in dust as soft as face powder and close to the same colour. They were among rocks velvety with it. Water was running somewhere nearby, a stream with an odd muffled chuckle, as if it were hot milk rather than cold water.

  There were carvings on the rocks.

  The sign of a fish was what Christians used to mark the lintels of their meeting houses in the time of the Apostle Paul. Before they began to use crosses there were fishes. These fishes had eyes and scales, but no tails. Their tails were severed from them. These fishes were souls that couldn’t swim all the way to Heaven. This was the border to the place where bodies couldn’t go.

  Petrus fastened Taryn’s hand to Shift’s. He said to them both, ‘I’ll tell you when to drink that.’

  ‘It’s too hot,’ Taryn said—a small objection and postponement.

  ‘These are the things you must consider and hold in mind. First, you will be souls. Souls can’t be injured, or killed, but they can get lost. Shift, you will have to follow Taryn. Prompt her, then follow her. She will be more forgetful than you. She will want to be helped. Don’t let anyone help her, or seek assistance yourself. Remember that almost no one in Purgatory is hostile, or dishonest. They are only trying to pull themselves together. They try to provide guidance, because guidance is what they crave. But when in Rome do not do as the Romans do. Taryn can find the shortest distance to her mother. Remember, Taryn, you are looking for your mother. You are not looking for your sister. Beatrice isn’t in Purgatory. Do not part ways with Shift—he belongs there even less than you. Purgatory is not a place prepared for the likes of him—so it will want him to leave. If you stick with him you will get out, whether or not you’ve found what you’re seeking, because Purgatory will expel him. Shift, do not try to change yourself. You will only be there by the virtue of your human soul, which does not comprise half of your living self, as Taryn’s does. Your human soul is a passport, under which you can smuggle in your godhood and not be in any danger of forgetting what you’re there to do. But you have to remember you can’t make Taryn find her mother. Don’t either of you look around for anyone else. If you are followed, remember: Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”’

  Petrus guided the beakers to both their mouths. Taryn considered casting hers aside. She had no idea what her life would be like if she did. Would doing it be like saying no to McFadden when he laid out his offer to kill Webber? Or would it be like what she did do? Would it be like staying silent?

  She drank down the mixture. She hoped her silence was a refusal of refusal.

  Her gullet went numb, her face, her fingers. Petrus laid her down gently, then did the same for Shift. Petrus was saying to him again, ‘Don’t change, you’ll ruin everything if you change.’

  A yeasty silence flowered in Taryn’s ears, spilled out and fastened her head to the ground. The tailless, elliptical fish were eyes, not fish; and they weren’t going anywhere themselves, just seeing her off.

  29

  Purgatory

  The light was even and dim, mid-afternoon of a thickly overcast day. Wide-eyed or squinting, nothing improved visibility. Taryn followed Shift. He was, in turn, following a stream, but almost seemed to lead it. The trickle of water fingered out into the dust before him, cutting a channel in the powdery ground, flowing like a measure of water into flour, making a bed of batter.

  There were a few trees, stunted olives. Shift wended his way to each, and the water followed him.

  He wasn’t wearing his homespun anymore. He was mantled in an unconnected cloud of matter, a bristle of air in which was suspended feathers and fur, seed heads, dead leaves, tufted grass, sparkling drops of rainwater, the wings of moths and butterflies, or their whole bodies; beetles, glistening skeins of frogspawn, and myriad tiny bones. The mantle of matter extended a good foot over his head, the detritus thinning so that if he looked behind him he’d be able to see through it. The mantle was thickest between his shoulders and knees, then sparse again below that. Taryn could see his bare feet through the floating objects and their faint shadows. In fact, Taryn could see him more clearly than she had before—a handsome young man of Arab descent with eyes too widely spaced, and something oddly raptor-like happening between his nose and forehead. That oddness was as disconcerting as the mantle; it was as alien and, for some reason, more alarming.

  Taryn finished her examination of Shift, then stopped walking. He went on ahead, winding from tree to tree, the stream turning to come to heel each time he changed course. He continued on. It was all downhill from where Taryn stood. To either side the slope extended in a shallow curved contour into the distance, or into the bad light. Down was a way to go, in lieu of a path, or any track other than the watercourse coming into existence as it nosed after that person she was thinking better of following.

  She would just wait here until he was out of sight.

  Taryn considered sitting down, and only then noticed she was wearing her favourite skirt, the turquoise one with the geese on it. The skirt had pockets—pockets were rare and desirable in women’s clothes. Taryn had got the skirt at a shop in Seven Dials the summer before she went to university the first time. With her skirt she was wearing a cropped T-shirt and a pair of walking sandals she’d bought in Paris while shopping with Alan. Everything Taryn wore went together, but her sense of satisfaction was mixed with one of incongruity and she didn’t know why.

  The air pressure altered. The person in a nature-spirit mantle was standing in front of her. He’d crept up on her while she was admiring her clothes. He said, ‘Have you already forgotten why you’re here?’

  ‘No, I’m meeting my sister. She’ll be along in a minute. We’re going to the movies. If it’s
any of your business.’

  ‘What film will you see?’

  ‘Beatrice wants to go to Donnie Darko.’

  ‘And what film did you end up seeing?’

  Taryn frowned at the question. Then she remembered how she had argued for A Beautiful Mind and they’d both been disappointed. Taryn watched Donnie Darko only last winter, in a hotel in Liverpool the night before some bookshop gig. She was very moved by how the hero let everything happen again so that it was he who died, not his sister.

  Taryn looked down at her skirt. She’d bought it in 2001, when she was eighteen. The skirt that was still hanging in her wardrobe, its waistband a little too tight. She’d got the crop top at fifteen. The sandals she’d owned for ten years.

  Beatrice wasn’t here, but their mother might be.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You look a little alarming.’

  Shift gave her his hand and they set off, straight down the hill. They passed the place where the thread of running water had doubled back on itself when he had turned around to fetch her. He said, ‘I’m sorry, too. I had no business watering the trees. We have to be careful. Right now we’re pretty much only our propensities.’

  Taryn tightened her grip. She kept hold of his hand because it wasn’t a thing she’d do.

  They’d been walking for hours, but had gained no landmarks, or even level ground. Their shadows had reappeared, eight or so each, fanning out around their feet. They were moving through pasture of a sort, grass that was stiff, and as glossy as tufts of raw asbestos.

  They had been going downhill, but the land behind them wasn’t uphill. The horizon was too close back the way they’d come, as if it were the edge of a cliff.

  Taryn wasn’t footsore or hungry, only hollow, as if her innards were spooling out of her the further she went.

  Again Shift came back for her. She had stopped in order to listen. She thought she could hear a distant horn, sounding long and low. A train, she thought.

  ‘This place is easier for me,’ he said. ‘Easier to keep my place. No one I remember is missing. No one I might expect to find here.’