The Road Down

Walking the seabed felt like trespassing in a house where everyone had died politely. Edda kept to the black road and tried not to look at the things in the mud — anchors, ribs of ships, once a doorframe standing alone with nothing around it. The pale figure had not moved since morning. Up close it was a statue, a woman with her arms out, and the road ran straight between her feet and onward into a haze that smelled of iron. Edda touched the statue's ankle. It was warm. Stone should not be warm. "You came faster than the last one," the statue said, without moving its mouth, and Edda decided that she would not scream, because screaming would waste breath she might need later.