I discover, when I stumble, that I am leaving thick, pale prints upon the ground. Beneath my hands as I lift myself to my feet, the ash turns silver. Am I leeching the dark from the stones? Or is it battening upon me? I look back along the trail, and then flinch because Know-all told me not to—but no bolt of black lightning strikes me, and no gorgon pursues me along my track. Just my glimmering footsteps, mute reminder of where I have been. The flow of time and memory. No. The injunction was not the same one served upon Orpheus. Rather, it occurs to me, it was almost a kindness. I am a mortal woman, and however my soul and even my body may be buttressed, my mind is still what it was yesterday. My heart is a mortal heart. In traversing Erebus, it is written, the traveller must traverse the corpse of the beloved. Five rivers, five parts to the body—two arms, two legs, the torso and head counted as a single piece—and each concealing secretly one of the elements that make the mortal world. Fire in the right hand, water in the left, earth in the right foot and air in the left, the torso and head the twin vessels of the soul. The sand conceals the skin, the rivers are made of tears. Dig too deep in Erebus, and you will find a heart.