Page 66 of Where Light Cannot Follow

"Did you know the water covering Earth is proportionally no thicker than the skin of an apple? That our sun is merely one of four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone? That we spin on a small rock hurtling through a universe containing more galaxies than grains of sand on every beach that has ever existed? Any one of a thousand variables shifts by a fraction, and life simply ceases. Yet we hunger for it anyway."

"We do," Dante says. He rests his chin on his knees again but turns his head to look at me. "How I wish I could live once more, Virgil. I'd do so many things differently."

"So many who pass through here long for that."

"Do you?"

The question catches me unprepared. I smooth my hand over the cashmere sweater I wear, the one I cannot feel, straightening wrinkles that don't exist. A habit from a life two thousand years gone.

Then I lift my face again.

"I do, Dante. If I'm honest with you, it's something I've hungered for every day of my existence here. I often think if I had one more chance, I'd gather enough memories, enough moments that truly matter, that they might be the light I carry with me into this darkness upon my return."

Perhaps I should have offered him a platitude instead. Kept the focus on his journey. But he'd asked, and I'd given him the only thing I have left to give—words and truth, or at least truth as I know it.

Dante's expression softens. He smiles, a quiet thing, gentle and tentative, almost unnoticeable. Then he lifts a hand, palm up, and hovers it in the space between us.

Hellfire pulses in the distance. A creature shrieks somewhere far below. Ash and something older than ash dance in the air around us.

I place my hand above his.

He looks at our hands hovering together, appearing clasped, though nothing connects, and his smile deepens.

"I wish we had more time before the light, Virgil. I do not fear it—the disappearing. But I wish it wouldn’t arrive so soon.”

His dark eyes lift to meet mine, and with the motion, they brighten. He's so open now. So unafraid in a tremulous way, like a newborn colt attempting its first steps, uncertain of new legs but too alive not to try.

I hesitate another moment. Then I whisper words I should not. Words that could damn us both. Because getting Dante out of hell, into the light, escaped from this place—that should be my only aim. That should be all I want.

But instead I say, scarcely loud enough to carry, "There's a place I would show you. If you don't mind a slight delay."

Dante curls his fingers slightly closer to the form of my hand. "I'm dead, Virgil. I have nothing but time."

I rise alongside him, my hand firmly back at my side. A wretched, nauseous feeling churns through me. We are so close. We need only cross the river, quietly navigate his territory, and then we'd reach the mountain. To interrupt Dante's progress for the sake of my own selfish desires...

"What did you think about what my father said?" Dante asks, hands in his pockets as he walks alongside me. He's as relaxed as though we're strolling through Central Park in autumn—a rare and treasured sight I witnessed once in another soul's memories—rather than moving through the darkest region of hell.

"Which part?" I ask carefully. Not one word uttered by that man held any merit as far as I could tell. Had I stumbled across him as a soul, I never would have bothered offering guidance. I'm uncertain what that says about me.

"The part about Stoicism. That's from your era, is it not?"

We make our way to the end of the hill, and I'm still debating whether to take Dante to this place I long to show him, or whether I should rise to nobler instincts and lead him directly toward the mountain.

But his question shatters my anxious spiral entirely.

"That is most certainly not what Stoicism teaches."

Dante is smirking at me.

"What?" I ask.

Then he laughs, rich and pure and startled out of him. The kind of laugh that crinkles his eyes and nose. That transforms his face into something so human, so achingly real, that I feel something crack open in my chest.

"I knew you wouldn't enjoy that," he says. He nudges an elbow in my direction. It doesn't connect, of course. It passes through me like light through water.

But oh, how I wish it would.

I find myself laughing differently, too, a sound I haven't made in longer than I can measure. It feels strange in my throat. Foreign. Like speaking a language I'd forgotten I knew.