Katabasis

The wind bit, the sun hid, and on the first day of class, when she ought to have been lecturing undergraduates about the dangers of using the Cartesian severance spell to revise without pee breaks, Alice Law set out to rescue her advisor’s soul from the Eight Courts of Hell. What magicians of ancient civilizations discovered through accident and ingenuity, and what the English philosopher-magicians of the eighteenth century onward codified into the Euro-American received canon, was that the natural laws of the world were set but fragile. All magicians could draw a perfect circle. “Mother of God.” Peter spread his hands around in the dirt. “It’s an Escher—” He vanished. At last she reached the peak, and Alice saw that the braid had led her to a throne.