The wind that blew across the ice was harsh, and Hoopla took shelter behind Nuncio. “I can’t make out anything in this gloom. Are there no lights?”

“Ah, no,” sighed Nuncio. “There’s no one here who’d thank you for the favor of a little illumination, for these luckless tribes wish only to be forgotten, even by each other. In all this blackness they muffle their cries, and bury themselves in the ice, and all fruitlessly, for even those who retreat entirely beneath the frost (and there are such) must remember, and suffer for it. Pass on, pass on, time pushes us on and little suffers us to wait.”

Hoopla’s foot struck against something, and a voice cried from the gloom, “Who are you, who, even though you pass to colder ice, seek to pile misery upon those who linger here upon the lake’s edge? What vile crimes have driven you to this exile?”

“By your voice I know you,” said Hoopla, “and hate you for it, you pirate, you rapist. How many did you kill for your greed before the Shu came? How many promises broke? How many lives ruined, you miser, you beast? And how many suffered through that long war because of the medicines you watered, the tainted meat you sold? How many did you kill to prolong your vicious empire?” And, so saying, beat the head with feet and stick, heaping further abuse upon it.

“Softly, softly,” said Nuncio, “though it’s full of admiration I am for your zeal. Dawn breaks unseens down here, but the sun is after rising and we must go.”

On the fourth night they spent in the Great Salt Desert, Hoopla let the fire burn out and the stars draw close while Skiff slept. They were old friends, the stars and Hoopla, and they talked quietly, not as old and distant friends who tell familiar tales, stale with repetition, but in the cheerful gossipy way of two neighbors leaning over a fence and watching the road.

The stars told him their news, though, between jokes and quotations, idly. Births and deaths, marriages and divorces, doors opened, doors closed. Hoopla grew long in listening, and the coal in his pipe burned low and cherry-red. Skiff turned in his sleep and the conversation sank down to where he ran through the long grasses of his childhood, and became music. His sides twitched against Hoopla’s back.

Far away in the dunes the shrieking of the long haired and blood faced woman wailed, wailed for her demon lover, and echoed and rebounded, and Hoopla smoked and talked to the stars, far into the night.

“If I believed,” said the voice, and sighed a little, “that I spoke to one who might bear my tale back to the world above, I of course should yet be silent. But this — I have been told — is impossible. And how should I presume to disturb that endless rolling voice? And how should I presume… So I answer you, and pay thus more my debt.”

“But your name,” said Hoopla, “and what you did, and what you were, and of what family?”

“Go gently,” said Nuncio. “Gently. Not all who suffer along this trench of evil are here out of malice borne, but and again by a thousand tiny cuts and moments lost in the turning of the page. Of such a caste is this soul, I think. Answer clearly,” he said, turned to the spirit, “and fear no ill-report.”

“My presence here is ill-report enough, but as you have asked I shall answer. I am, as you say, not one of the great souls that shook all heaven with their violence. But in my soul I nursed an eternal discontent, that could find no ease in the small rituals and kindnesses of a thousand teas and ices, and so grew foul within, though my tie was rich enough, asserted by — oh! — the simplest pin. And this I spread, turning my back on others and shaking my head quietly in the length of an afternoon speeding past, and dragged everyone down to my level. And her most of all whom I should have guarded against myself, and for this I must suffer here.”

And it fell silent. “Come on,” whispered Nuncio. “Leave him to his misery. Our way lies uphill and down. Leave him to his mermaids and his self-reproach.”

Hoopla and Nuncio turned right and crossed over one of the high arched stone bridges that jumped the canyons. In the middle, Hoopla drew near to the edge and peered over. The canyon below was deep and dark but from this point the bottom could, just barely be made out. The floor and walls were covered with an endless series of round, stone tubes, out of which feet kicked and flailed, licked at by fire.

“Who’s in that middle tube,” said Hoopla, “who kicks so fiercely?”

“Ah,” sighed Nuncio, “but it’s the chief of this place you’re looking at, and for his greatness the flames that feed upon the uncallused soles of his feet are the fiercer. Is it speech with him that you’re panting after?”

“Can we?”

“Nothing’s forbidden on such a trip as we’re on. Well, come on then, down the slope, soonest begun is soonest ended.”

The canyon walls were steep, though shivered into rough stairs by an ancient earthquake. When the rocks slid down ahead of them and knocked against the chief’s tube, he bellowed, “Is that you, Virgil? Have you grown fat so early, and come to knock me from my place? Have these eyes grown weak in this damnable murk? Where is all your gold now, your pride of place?”

“What’s he talking about?” said Hoopla.

“He takes you for your better,” said Nuncio, “and his worse. Speak truth, and ease his mind, though little he’s earned it. Let truth only fill your mouth while we’re in such uncertain climes, for neither cleverness nor strength of arms will be seeing us safe home again.”

“You and your riddles,” growled Hoopla.

for my father on his birthday

When the sun set they could no longer move uphill. “It’s the genius of the place,” explained Nuncio, talking quietly in the evening’s hush. “While the sun shines each penitent may climb as his will allows, but with the first stars movement ceases.”

Hoopla hitched the reed that served as belt a notch or two tighter. It was still, improbably, green. “And so we are confined, here, then?”

“No,” said Nuncio. “Look over yonder. See you the crowds that have alit upon the slopes? To them we may go, if you’ve a mind. It’s only movement uphill that’s not to be done, not all movement together. To have said otherwise as I did was to misspeak, and a disservice done to you.” He smile widely. “It’s all over with penitence I am, suitably. Let us follow our eyes and see what we may discover.”

Hoopla shrugged and they went across the mountain, picking their way delicately among the rocks. Nuncio was canny but they still tended slowly downward, forced unavoidably off-course by boulders and trees. “Oh, ever so,” said Nuncio. “Rare it is to be climbing uphill and easier always the downward path. Primrose and wide and easy.”

“You’re too metaphorical,” complained Hoopla. “Talk sense, can’t you?”

Nuncio laughed. “It’s all an allegory, my wizened friend, and who’s to say which the symbol, which the reality?”