“My visitors customarily bring gifts,” she said. “I don’t ask them to, but they started doing it, and some even bring small gifts from time to time, so I remember their faces. An insurance of sorts, so I might give them my time when they need it, and I am otherwise preoccupied.”
“Forgive me,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” she said, “You don’t have to give me anything. It’s a convention, not a rule.”
“I’d like to,” I said. “I could give you word of the outside world.”
She snorted rather dramatically. It wasn’t the usual snort. It was the sort of snort that one could only manage if they were particularly ill or if the circumstances and environment were just right. Heavy, impossible to ignore.
“No?” I asked.
“Everyone has the same question, and I’ll ask them if I’m curious in exchange.”
“I like fairness,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Ask your questions.”
I shook my head. “One second.”
I pulled off my winter coat, then my sweatshirt, followed by my shirt.
“You’re more attractive than some,” she said, “But not so attractive a striptease is warranted or wanted, my dear.”
Shirtless, cold, I held out my t-shirt and sweatshirt. “Sorry this is so impromptu. You can have either one, your choice.”
“You’re new here,” she said. “What makes you think I want a filthy, sweaty piece of clothing?”
“I was homeless once,” I said.
“Were you now?” she asked. She quirked an eyebrow. “What do I care about that?”
“There’s always a use for an extra bit of clothing,” I said. “And I assume people are bringing you the wood you’re using for that fireplace, as gifts, and I can’t imagine you won’t find some use for a reasonably clean, intact shirt.”
“You’re not wrong,” she said. She took my t-shirt, smiling. “I like you. Offering accepted. Sit, please.”
I sat, struggling with my injured leg and hands.
She made no comment on either, taking an excessive amount of time to drape my t-shirt over the makeshift fireplace.
“Ask your questions,” she said.
“How do I get out?”
“There it is,” she said.
“I’ve heard there are exits guarded by powerful entities. They exact a price for passage.”
“That’s one way,” she said.
“And I’ve heard that practitioners visit, picking up the most monstrous and powerful.”
“Partially right. The most monstrous are left well alone, and for good reason.”
I nodded. “My… visitor commented that there were powers best left undisturbed.”
“You know of demesnes?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Gods?”
“I know of them,” I said.
“People aren’t the only things that find their way down here. A demesnes with no tie to the world may fall through the cracks just as any person might. Some say this is how this place learns and adapts to the times.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Does anyone or anything run this place?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know everything. I would venture a guess, fellow practitioner, that it was a demesne once, and it was attached to some vital process of our reality. Through this vital process, it came to devour other demesnes and objects, and it swelled in size. It connected to other such areas, and formed the backbone for what might otherwise have been the original void.”
“Nothingness?”
“In the earliest creation myths, void was not nothing, but raw chaos. Nothing was not a concept. Void was an endless storm of everything under the sun, a great elemental grinder to churn up all which fell into its reach. But over time, this place became more civilized. Gods, you see, fall through the cracks as well, without worshiper or memories to hold them in place. They sleep inside the walls, and bring a kind of logic to this place. Demesnes bring memories of their masters. Every visitor shapes this place in little ways. The drains are but one manifestation of this essential need the universe has, for healthy entropy.”
I nodded.
“Cooperating with this entropy and working in concert with this place might make you sensitive enough to the underlying workings to divine a way out. The sad fact, however, is that many who do this don’t want to leave, in the end.”
“I, um, had a dream, where I did that. Cooperated. But I did want to leave.”
“Many have these dreams,” she said. “Not all leave in the dream.”
I nodded.
“There are other ways,” she said. “You know of bogeymen?”
“Yeah. They get out.”
“Hot malice drives them, anger. They boil up much as heat rises, and crawl free. Particularly gruesome, iconic ends give them this strength.”
“I feel pretty goddamn angry,” I said.
“Reports of your discussion with your visitor suggest you are… but the kind of malice and anger I’m talking about is anger where a civil conversation is utterly impossible. If you were one of them, you would attack on sight.”
I frowned.
“There are other ways, but they are very specific ways,” she said.
“I’m open to specific.”
“I couldn’t name them all, and I couldn’t be certain about them all either. At times, it’s ambiguous. Did they escape, or did they die in the process?”
“I’m open to uncertain, too,” I said.
“Too much hassle. Bring me another gift on a day I’m not so tired, and I’ll entertain you naming the possibilities.”
I frowned, hands clenched.
“Another question?” she asked. “You’ve found me tired but in a good mood. Take advantage.”
“There’s something following me,” I said. “A person from a memory. But his hair and clothes are black. A conversation with another resident of these drains suggested she-“
“-Had a shadow as well,” the witch said. “Not everyone does.”