The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [84]
And so I mounted the Descending Stair for the second time in my life, to walk the depths armed only with the Blades Sinister and Truth, and my voice of winds. Like blades made flesh, Wall-Eye walked to my left, just behind my shoulder, while the little dead man walked behind me to my right.
I fancied I could hear their hearts pounding as loud as my own.
Past the Gillikin temple, it is a terrible journey further down the hole of Ooze. The priests generally make the trip in rope-slung baskets, though that seems far too much like Lizard bait for my ease. The Descending Stair is in part carved out of the walls of Ooze's shaft, and in part hammered together from scrap lumber, rope, and softer things, so that it slings outward in a certain dark grandeur of swaying rot.
An unfortunate circumstance, for the sake of one's footing.
We passed through ruined decking, layers of the greatness that once was Ooze still filling this hole like a leg fills a stocking ― shattered balconies and mud walls, great burn scars and empty spaces where people betimes walked and talked and lived their lives deep in shadow. All of it dead beyond years, nothing more now than memories scarcely discernible even by the light of our torches.
Down there, the air is hot and still, water is scarce despite the cloying damp, and rumblings can be heard from farther below. I know the Lizard lives at the bottom of this great, deep hole. Our great monster is as big as it needs to be. Some have told of resting an arm upon the cracked dome of its wizened skull, while others have danced along its teeth and dodged between legs the size of watchtowers. Still others have seen that great eye, huge and patient as years, that would bespeak a body the size of mountains.
It is real, the Lizard of Ooze, as real as we, for all that its form is mutable to the point of imaginary. The Lizard's shape and size follow no logic but that of fear and desire. I was reminded of this, because above all memory and reason, we could hear its roar as we descended. My heart raced, but I marched onward.
As the fourth hour of our descent came to a close, Wall-Eye called a halt. "Each to his own needs," he said quietly, loathe to stir echoes. This was our time to eat, covering our respective shame with a headcloth, and chewing as quietly as anatomy and hunger would allow. I shooed the fisheater a dozen steps further down, then covered myself to suckle on a salted stick of pork fat and mushroom. Though I closed my ears from decent necessity, the hideous smack of the stranger's enjoyment echoed up the steps.
I kept my anger inside and my hands away from my Blades. This was an outlander, dead but still walking, and there was no point. He was not a hole-dweller like us, his entire life inverted as I understood the life of Ooze to be. The stirpes liked to say it made us better than the world, but having been Above I had my doubts. Different is not always superior.
After satisfying the base lusts of our guts, we cleaned ourselves and resumed our journey. The Lizard thrashed and roared far below, but the fisheater seemed resigned to his fate, and demonstrated no alarm. Eventually the noises settled, combining with the echo of rushing water to seem natural, until the walkway let us out on a round-shouldered ledge past which streamed a cataract, its foam glowing in the dark.
I did not remember this ledge or the waterfall from my initiatory journey as a Shadow, but this was the nature of Ooze ― to change, and change again, so that with a turn of the head the world would be different.
Who would want to live in a ruler-straight city girded by concrete and stone, when this life was before them?
"Water," said the fisheater. "Blood and bone of Cui-ui." He grinned, his teeth sparkling in our torchlight, somehow straighter and taller now in the presence of his totemic element. "Even here you cannot escape the power of the fish."
Then the water spoke, as did the stones, and the very air itself.
"Who-o-o-o-o-o?" it said, slow and low.
My heart raced anew, and my legs