A Walk Through the Hollow

Candlesticks marked the edges of a circle. Black smoke curled, congealed, tangled overhead into wet strands - like hair. The sigils didn’t glow: they drank light and spat it back out. No lanterns. No windows. Only bloodred flame eating the wax. Even then, the shine they cast on her face looked more like charcoal than embers.

Regardless, she could ‘see’ well enough; though no longer with her eyes. The taskmasters of the deep didn’t need them. They prayed and bled to contract the parasite, the Curse of the Other, the fumes of decay. Day and night, they’d breathe the solvent of ancient magic: the soul crumbles, then dissolves, then metabolizes. The hexes and incantations, the magic of the sorcery; it would emerge like an invisible humour, like a cough, and ooze to its victims.

Some closed their lids and the sights of the world squeezed through. Others would gather the pictures with their fingers and shovel them into their mouths. In her case, the room whispered its secrets into her ear. Her surroundings seeped and climbed into her brain. Darkness had no power there.

Her chanting had continued for the rising and falling of an eastern star; tomorrow, nobody would see it again. The sages listened to its last cries, spoke their nets into the sky to catch it - too late. It was eaten. It was laid out like bait at the end of a hook, and an emissary of the deep had pricked their finger upon it to be dragged up into the world of light and words.

This non-thing was formless. The word “It” was just that - a word. “It” has meaning. This non-thing did not. It was called that because the air and the eyes and the flame wrapped about the emptiness and gave It a name. Nothing - not even Nothing - could exist here without one.

But It could think, and It could want, and so It - tarred with the burden of meaning - was granted by the curse of existence the power of speech. Its “words” came from the sediment of souls and pushed through the sieve of the circle to say what It thought.

“Zarel.”

That was her name now. It had been longer once. Bargains always claimed something. “My Lord.”

“Your wishes?”

The witch Zarel bowed. “I have ever served you.”

“This is true.”

“Seventeen years this morning, my Lord.”

“A blink. An eternity.”

She caught her breath before she continued. “I wish now to conclude my duties.”

It did not reply with haste. Even the infinite could hesitate. “What?”

“I’m quitting.”

By this, the emissary was pulled ever further from Its dreaming. The shadow drew to the formless and granted It a shape. The slime of reality began plastering onto Its space. Words were peeled from the mouths of the world and stuck to Its surface. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I’m just -” Zarel raised to full height. She brushed off her dress. “It’s been a good run. It’s not that I haven’t felt good about it, but… I’m… well, I feel like it’s time to move on.”

“‘Move on’?”

“Yeah. Like, do something else from now on, that isn’t…” She gestured vaguely at the mass. “All this.”

It seemed to consider this. There was some silence as the darkness receded, coalesced, nearly painted an outline of something not so dissimilar from a person. “You contracted the rot.”

“That I did. In fact, I was going to… mention that…” Zarel’s words slowed as she thought to recall the phrases she’d prepared. “Obviously I can’t have all the Prices back, because I exchanged them for -”

“The id of the deep.”

“The magic, yes. Totally get that. And of course I’ll do the rituals to keep the edges of my soul intact and all that, otherwise I’d… diminish into the…” She clasped her hands together. “But I won’t be making further bargains from here on out, is what I mean.”

“You have been forever rusted.”

“Correct.”

“Never again will you reclaim your lost sands.”

“And I get that, but I’ve spent the last six years on my degree, and really that’s not so different from losing my soul anyway.”

The emissary was confused. Its purpose had been overturned. “How does one accomplish this? To abandon the fold?”

Zarel produced with the writhing of the fumes a black surface, etched in the blood of the stars. Pierced invisibly, it hung limp in the air. “Well, here on Earth we put in a two week’s notice. So you can figure out the scheduling and whatnot.”

“I… see.” The dark contract was withdrawn to the shadow. “Then you are mine to command for, on your world, two ‘weeks’?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

The emissary did not speak for some time. The webs of Earth began to slip from Its shadow. “If you should leave, then I bid you one final task.”

Zarel bowed again. “As you wish.”

“Sleep well. It will command your dreams.”

Voiceless wind extinguished the flames. The dark contract was consumed. Droplets of words rained down with the winding strands of fog, sweeping over the circle, dashing away the memory of the floor. Shadow crashed upon itself and shattered. The emissary was gone.

***

It wasn’t easy to retain a memory of the calls from the deep. The beyond was permanent, and it stained what it touched; but even the nothing could slip off of Earth’s pure, fleeting transience. Dreams faded before long. They’re forgotten unless they’re transcribed.

For the witches, it was less difficult to catch the notions. They’d spin webs through their minds. When a fly came from the deep, it stayed.

At the emissary’s command, Zarel wandered through the hollow, just shy of the surface of the waking world. Roads couldn’t take her there, so she dipped her toes into the bottomless sea and waded through the timeless expanse. Sometimes light leaked inside: echoes of buildings, voices in the mist, eyes seeing for just a moment something that wasn’t quite there. They all were eaten by the writhing feeders from the silent ocean.

“Where” she went was not her concern. She’d been sent on a hunt. Her quarry was her goal, and it wasn’t in a “place.” Zarel walked until she found them.

They did not want to be found.

A thick fog billowed about and consumed all. The world’s secrets were turned back. Beneath her feet, the thin paste of the deep congealed. It coagulated into a muddy curd, the snapping tendrils winding up her legs should her steps not abandon them quickly enough. The mist nipped at her arms. It pulled at her hair. It snatched away fragments of her breath.

Zarel didn’t “survive” the assailing. Death meant the ceasing of the brain: the heart stops, the lungs deflate, blood pools whichever way is down. Parasites of the deep wouldn’t attack the body unless it was given. What they wanted was her light. The embers of meaning and impermanence were a delicacy for the unthinking. These she kept safe. Be it her soul, her name, her memories - they were locked away in a chamber filled with thorns and mirrors.

Lesser witches might have fallen prey to the defenses. With her eyes front and boots ever-striding, Zarel passed this first test.

She walked, and the fog receded. Now darkness only dripped from the sky, building mounds where the bog had dried itself into a loam. Sometimes the sea splashed underfoot; sometimes it just sank. The tendrils continued their desperate climb, scraping themselves ever higher. They’d begun to reach her waist. Her skirt sagged with the weight of the hunger.

They were digging for her fear. Easy prey. Zarel maintained her stride and her breath, and let the stewing mass climb ever higher. It came to her chest. It came to her shoulders. She slowed because the vines strung about her neck and squeezed. The viscous whips from the sea were a thick fiber from the peat. Each step was an effort, and soon they grasped her arms as well. Then her ears. Then her eyes.

She was dragged into the deep.

At even the shallowest of depths, it was crushing. The infinite weight of the nothing wasn’t supposed to accommodate creatures made of bones and veins. Flesh wasn’t supposed to adhere to itself without the laws of the material. Even with her steps dipped so thinly as they had before, Zarel wasn’t supposed to stay there. She was supposed to thaw, melt, and dissolve.

Witches only survived the hollow because they carried a little splinter of reality with them, stolen from the Earth. As with the nets giving form to the emissary, Zarel was cloaked in the axioms of mortality: pure existence plunged with her into the depths, a glittering gem from the macrocosm. Rings, amulets, scarves, pendants - hers was an iron lantern. She clutched it with the same dedication as she had walked.

Still, no talisman - even the strongest - could withstand the pure Nothing for long. Already, the sphere of dim light was collapsing. It guarded her soul and her name, leaving her body entirely undefended. Parasites knapped her bones, ground her hair into powder, ran their claws over her fingernails. For now, she kept her mouth shut, but they clambered into her nostrils and in through her ears, looking for breath.

The light diminished. It abandoned even her head to protect her heart, leaving her thoughts unguarded. Mites swarmed inside, looking for a feast: she’d had one prepared, hidden behind pits and spikes. They’d best those in time.

She couldn’t breathe. Zarel had left only what air she’d brought with her. Panic arrived: it was snapped up with malicious glee. They tore at it and drank the marrow. The last vestige of life would be the burning, the squeezing, the infinite terror - even that was taken, ripped apart, made to bleed.

Waiting. Patience was something humans shared with the deep. The light thinned itself around her heart, stretching. Weakness would tear before long.

Before it did, Zarel blew out her last breath. Bubbles - real bubbles - burst into the deep.

Every hungry mouth of the sea ripped itself out from her mind, away from her flesh, off of her soul. The darkness burst away to chase the foam, and she dropped. The infinite sea abandoned her. Without the hooks clinging into her, without the light to keep her afloat, without a place to fall, she was snagged away by the Earth.

Shadow rushed past and faded, and in its place returned the light of the world. Her body was fine. Bits of her soul had been picked off. Secrets again wandered to her ears. Stone was at her feet. Air brushed her arms. It was cold.

The parasites had reached her name after all. Zael breathed.

She wasn’t alone. Sitting deep in a chair made from roots older than mountains, unmoving, was her quarry.

“Your cunning is remarkable, little warlock.” Said the Eldest. “As is your courage.”

No coven or council oversaw the witches, but respect carried further than title. This husk remembered the founding of flame, the smelting of iron, the beginning of words. Their secrets held fast to the ocean beneath their skin, but the memories were allowed to escape. These clambered out to the surface and fled, clutching now to Zael’s skirts in terror. Infinite droplets in a thick mist rocked at her feet.

The fume billowed within them. It surged through their veins in place of blood; it stitched their flesh together in place of tendons. Immortality was no so difficult a feat for the cursed. One naturally stretched out their life by inhaling the endless ocean. All an Elder needed was to keep the heart and the mind and the flesh it commanded. It could happen on accident.

Their skin was sunken to the bone. Filling the holes where their eyes had once been were starving parasites, waiting for light to return.

Their lips moved, but the words came from the shadows, rattling droplets from the ceiling. “I am your task.”

“I was bidden to find you, yes.” Zael clung still to her lantern, though it burned no longer.

“You do not know who I am.”

“I do not.” Zael replied. “Nobody does.”

The mouth of the Eldest curled. The dry pale about the eyesockets pinched. A smile where none had been for lifetimes. Hungry mites surged at it and picked away the glee. “Do you wish to?”

Parasites ate their fill and dropped away from the flesh. They cast off into a silent wind: a maelstrom, its belly full of laughter. It dragged at her dress and her hair. Zael stood fast.

“Come to me, child.”

Zael did not cause her feet to carry her, but the commands of the Eldest were not so easily foisted off. The dew of the deep crashed from dark heights and evaporated, slunk into the cobblestones, crept through her pores, grasped her very blood in thoughtless claws of ice. The freezing, biting, wringing pell did not surprise her - but it was stronger than ever she’d felt it. Not with a thousand Elders could one resist the words.

For the first time in moons upon moons, Zael’s curse was overridden. She became the thrall of the Eldest and stepped to the throne of briars, fingers gone stiff over the wire of her lantern.

Again, it was difficult to breathe. There was no “getting used” to the stranglings.

“You are young, little warlock. Hardly ripe… but the will of the deep has echoed your talent to my ears. You have the makings for the greatest of us all.”

Despite the piercing fire at the return of her body to her own mind, Zael managed to bow. “Thank you, Eldest.”

“You are unsurprised?”

“I’m told that the emissaries of the deep do not lie.”

“To deceive is not in the nature of the void.” The Eldest leaned towards her. “And yet, despite these praises, you seek to leave the Curse behind.”

“Not the Curse.” Indeed, that was impossible now. “But my bargain will be fulfilled.”

The Eldest fell back again. “You could become mightier than all from ages past.”

Zael said nothing.

“You understand not what it is you push aside.” Their hands were raised. Shadow swirled about the palms and fingers. “To plunge into the depths and emerge unscathed. To treat with the secrets beyond the universe. To see the void. To read the void. You dip your quill into the ink and strike out the passages of the world - you could gather it like a pail from a well. A lakefold. An oceanfold. You could paint a portrait of your will over the fibers of reality.

“Look at me -” And Zael did, for there was no disobeying the Eldest. “I am empty. I am sightless. I’d forgotten my name long before you ever received yours. But you - you needn’t besmirch your form to do these things. Immortality: eternal youth. I have sold my beauty, but you needn’t. I have sold my walking days, but you needn’t. Dominion over oblivion and time, at the cost of nothing. You could do this! You!”

The Eldest stared into the darkness above. Around her, the mists had fallen still. They were listening.

“Take it, little warlock,” they said. “I cannot command you in this. You must bear yourself to the dagger on your own feet. Cut away my heart. Blood and marrow, and eternity is yours. I’ve made my peace. It is time I am reclaimed.”

Silently, the mist drifted to the floor, like snow without wind. Ashes from an invisible flame. The Eldest turned their empty eyelids back down, settled their arms, and said no more. Even the gnaw of the darkness seemed to wait.

Zael allowed the silence the settle, then asked, “May I speak now, Eldest?”

“Speak.” It was not a command.

“Okay. So,” and Zael took a tentative step back, “I’m going to… not do all that. Sorry.”

If the Eldest had eyes, they might have narrowed them. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not interested.”

The mist began to stir. Darkness crept from the floor at her feet. Memories fell back, confused. Droplets hung in the air, wavering. Shadow and wind began to coalesce into mounds here and there: emissaries of the deep peering into the realm of mortality, curious. She felt heavy. The very ocean of the void was watching.

The Eldest curled their fingertips over the roots of their seat. “Why?”

“Well, just because that all sounds… pretty miserable, actually.” Zael shook her head. “I’m not really that big on rewriting the laws of the universe or whatever it was. I’ve kind of got other stuff to do.”

“How could a mortal endeavor outstrip this grand honor?”

“Just got my Master’s in Biochem and I’ve got a paid internship lined up, so…”

“You need only take up my blade.”

Zael set her teeth to a grimace. “I’m also vegan.”

The Eldest stood, hoisted by the fumes, hanging like a marionette. “An eternity of secrets!”

“You memorize a codon chart. I’m sick and tired of secrets.”

The darkness lowered their arms. Breathing, confused, the Eldest turned what was once their gaze to the floor. “You would abandon it all.”

“Yep.”

So they sat again and turned one hand to their head, scratching. “Very well.” They waved her off. “I needn’t bandy with such a fool. Begone.”

One last time, the ice of the commanding words grasped her from head to foot. It bore not her legs to walk or her eyes to see; instead, they dragged her once again into the shadow. Now for only a passing moment, she returned one last time to the deep.

It spat her back out from whence she’d came. Burning lights. Wooden floors. Cotton, steel, and warmth.

Her roommate glanced up from her phone. “How’d it go?”

Zael stood and brushed off her dress. “Pretty good.”