Page 39 of Where Light Cannot Follow

He felt me.

I know it wasn't physical. There was no graze of finger, no weight of my hand coming down on his shoulder, no warmth of my body reaching his.

But he felt me nonetheless.

Felt my presence.

Of the endless number of souls I've guided, there have been a few teary goodbyes at their ascension. Even more expressions of gratitude.

But I was their guide. A voice to push them through their hell.

Not a presence they recognized. Not something they reached for.

At some point, as Dante sank, I started shouting his name in a manner that would have made my voice go hoarse if such a trifle were still possible for me. But no—my voice, the thing I sacrificed everything for, remained strong right to the end.

And then he'd broken the loop, and I'd been helpless to assist him. Unable to offer a hand to pull him free. Unable to shake him when he was enraptured by it.

I am nothing but words.

Yet he felt me.

Dante has remained silent as we've woven our way through knobby cypress knees and curtains of Spanish moss that hang like shrouds at a funeral. As the path widens, he falls into step beside me.

I'm not worried, truly, about us getting lost. After all, we have forever. No need for sleep, food, or time that might run out. We could wander for years if need be before finding our way back to the main path.

It's not that which concerns me about our misdirection.

It's the other things in this place.

The dangers far crueler than death. Horrors that Dante doesn't know exist in this realm. Not yet. If we don't watch our direction, if we stumble into the wrong corner of these wetlands, he might face things just as brutal as his genesis moments, but entirely new.

There's nothing quite like the cesspit of a hundred haunted souls trapped in loops while demons stir their misery for their own sustenance.

I shudder just as we reach a point where we must duck beneath a low-hanging branch. We emerge onto a wide floodplain where bent necks of creeks wind through the skeletal, wind-scraped expanse.

"Recognize anything?" Dante asks.

It takes me a moment to find my voice. "Not yet. It may take some time. But stay close—we don't wish to get separated here. This part of the realm shifts frequently."

"How does that work?" Dante tucks his hands behind his back, but not in the authoritative and defensive manner he once employed. More contemplative now, like a philosopher pacing the agora, discussing some spark of interest. "Everyone who dies brings their beliefs with them here, and that shapes the environment?”

"I'm not entirely sure." We step over the emaciated trunk of a rotted tree. "But the best way I've come to understand it is that this realm is similar to a net. Anyone who holds fast to their pain, their regret, their loops—they get caught in it, blocked from ascension. Once you release the things you don't need to carry, you can slip through the openings."

"Huh." Dante licks his lips as though they need moisture, as though his body is real. He seems prepared to say something more when a splash, a violent breaking of the water beside us, seizes both our attention.

A slender arm breaks the surface, silt and debris sliding down the ivory form.

A woman's head rises next to it, gasping, choking, gagging. She submerges again, then bursts forward with a scream.

"Gods," I gasp, right as Dante says, “Christ.”

For a moment we're both frozen. Then he jerks his head around. "Find a limb or something we can use to pull her out."

"Dante," I whisper as the woman struggles beyond us, water flying around her. "You cannot help her."

He's already moved forward and is heaving on the end of a fallen log, wrenching a large branch free. His still-damp shirt clings to the muscles of his form as he completes this task, and warmth spills into my stomach at the sight—followed instantly by shame. Of all the moments to feel this, this must be the least appropriate.

"Give me a hand, Virgil," he shouts, urgent and expectant. He believes I'll help him. That I can.