“I imagine they become bogeymen,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said. “But in all that eating, they’re still giving up more than they get, and this place still takes pieces out of them. It’s the whole purpose.”
I remained silent. I wasn’t sure what to say to all that, and this bit was a little steeper, the corner of the ledge more rounded, allowing an errant foot to slip.
“I stick to the shallows here, mostly. There practically no food, little fishes and frogs and bugs if I’m quick, but it’s safer. Only a few guys I gotta watch out for in the water here.”
“Anything I need to worry about?”
“Not unless you go for a swim. One of them, they’re only a threat to me, it feels like.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
“You’re so calm,” she said, again, almost in awe.
I was quiet, making my steady progress. I passed into an area with light.
“There’s a bit coming up where I won’t be able to follow you. Not so much stuff in the way. Bigger things underwater.”
“Like the guys you mentioned?”
But she was gone.
A moment later, a faint sound of splashing water, she emerged, hands on the ledge opposite me.
She wasn’t wearing a skull mask. Her face was skeletal, the skin virtually transparent, veins visible beneath the surface, red, blue, and yellow-black.
I was pretty sure people didn’t have yellow-black veins like that.
All this time, I’d been thinking she didn’t blink. Now I saw that her eyelids were so transparent that I couldn’t tell. Her eyes, luminous green in the dark, were a pale milky white right now.
Her teeth were tiny, narrow, and sharp, visible through transparent lips.
The lights flickered out, leaving me with an afterimage of her face superimposed on darkness.
She reminds me of a fish from the deep ocean. The angler fish or something like that.
“There’s a branching path ahead,” she said, in her whisper of a voice. “Go left. I think that’s the last advice I can give you.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Good luck,” she said. “Good luck. If you wanted to stay here or come back sometime, that’s okay. We can talk, and I could show you where the stuff is on land, for food, while I get the stuff from the water. Some rats here can get pretty fat. And if you die, I can eat you, and that can be your payment for me showing you the ropes.”
The sluice, somewhere distant, closed. The abrasive noise stopped, and I realized I’d been tensed. My shoulders relaxed.
The lights came back on.
“Bye,” she said, her voice far clearer in this sudden quiet.
“Wait,” I said.
She stopped. There was only the sound of water, and with the slope well behind us, even that wasn’t as bad as it might otherwise be.
“I owe you one,” I said. “You said that some of the guardians of the exits, they ask for people to carry favors or carry things back to the real world. Is there anything I can take back for you?”
“You really think you’re going to make it back.”
“I’m going to try.”
“I don’t think you realize how bad this place can be.”
“You don’t know how bad some of the stuff I’ve dealt with so far has been.”
She remained silent.
“Sorry if that came out wrong,” I said. “I do appreciate the help, and the offer stands.”
“It’s easier if you don’t fight. Stay out of the way.”
“Before, you said you get to leave all your burdens behind,” I said. “I don’t think that’s entirely true. My burden is, well, I can’t just stop like you’re suggesting.”
She nodded slowly.
Lights out.
“I don’t have anything I want you to take back there.”
“Then, what if I said I really am, in a roundabout way, one of those wizards you talked about, one of the people who come to collect monsters and take them away?”
“Are you?”
“Not right now,” I said. “But I’m hoping I can be again. Kind of hoping. I think it’ll happen when I get free.”
She stared at me.
“Would you want me to come back for you, if I could?”
“I’d like to get away from the black fish… but I can’t think about the future like that. I have to think about food, and keeping certain areas blocked off, and figuring out where and when to rest where I can’t get surprised or cornered.”
“Nothing, then?” I asked.
“You should be doing the same,” she said. “Focus on the now. Realize just how much trouble you’re in here. Giving you something to think about could get you killed.”
I leaned back.
“A kiss?” she asked.
I startled a bit.
In the darkness, I couldn’t make out her expression. Even if I’d been able to see her face, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.
“I… it’s something I let myself think about, sometimes.”
I couldn’t shake the idea of her simply grabbing me and hauling me under, especially after I’d refused her offer to stay.
I remembered her lurking beneath the water, not warning me, only watching to see if I drowned.
But here I was, utterly alone.
In a way, the very worst thing that could have happened to me had happened.
In a way, that made it very hard to be afraid.
I still felt numb inside.
A kiss, bodily contact, that was scary unto itself.
But all of that, even that part of the past, it felt so far away.
I knelt on the ledge, aware of how precarious my position was.
She heaved herself partially out of the water. Two transparent lips brushed against my cheekbone. I flinched, despite my best intentions.
Then she pushed herself away.
I stood, slow, aware that my clothes had partially dried, though I was still freezing.
The light came on just in time for me to see her dive. Her tail broke the water, and I saw a flash of albino white scaling, and skeletal ridges separating transparent fins.
“Bye, Green Eyes,” I said.
I moved on, with excessive caution, and I reached a branching path. Wooden planks had been arranged in a triangle, allowing passage between ledges. They were supported by trash and debris that had collected at the intersection.
I passed over the bridge, my heart pounding.
The tunnel opened up into a vast area, so wide I couldn’t take it in all at once.
Tunnels were lit by dim lightbulbs within, and others were only hinted at, highlighted by distant lights. The smells were thick in the air, and I could see where it might be called compost, or sewers.
The drains and grates and pipes all led onto ledges and balconies, or emptied water intermittently onto broad bridges, or simply dropped vast amounts of liquid into vast, empty darkness. Here and there, I saw figures, most furtive, moving quickly from one area to the next. Here and there, I saw others. A man was perched in one spot with what looked like a jury-rigged tent, made of trash. A tarp was laid out, showing an arrangement of common trash and shells. He was only a hundred feet away, or so, but he was across from me, and a great void separated us. It would be a long, convoluted road to meet him.
Not that I had anything to barter with.