hoping Julian would call him crazy and storm out. “You go in through the dark equinox. In September.”
“Damn, so Cleon was right! There is a foot tunnel under the Thames. It’s nearly impossible to find, he said. I knew it!”
“Well, you are Mr. Know-it-All,” Devi said. “It is nearly impossible to find. For one, the moon must be new.”
“Why?” Only sorcery opens it, Cleon said. Nothing on that footpath but battle and torment.
“Because the moon is inconstant, always waxing and waning. It lacks fortitude. It lacks devotion. Nothing new can be done under a fickle moon.”
“What else?”
“The tide must be at its lowest point. And you don’t go in at noon,” Devi said. “You need a time when the sun is directly over the equator, and the earth is tilted neither toward nor away. You go in at the exact moment the center of the earth intersects with the center of the sun. The opening on the meridian lasts less than a minute and falls at varying times. Some years, it happens at night, others, early in the morning. And some years, it doesn’t open at all, like when the tide is high and the moon is full. But your bad luck is with you, because this coming September the equinox and solar noon both fall at 12:07 p.m. The moon will be new. The tide will be low. You will have those things to help you. And you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“Once I go in, then what? Is there still a leap, a moongate?”
“There’s a river,” Devi said. “You’ll be on it a very long time. It will feel as if there’s no way out. You’ll panic. It might feel like you’re suffocating.”
How could he leave his body? What did it mean to be on a river with no way out?
“I don’t recommend this course of action,” Devi said, seeing Julian’s raging doubt. “You have another choice. You can make peace with what you’ve got left.”
“And what would that be, Devi?” Julian said. “Please—do tell me.”
“Yes, you never thought you had anything.”
“And eventually I was proven correct.” As soon as Julian said it, he sighed with shame. What a pill he was, always barreling forth with the bitter words of the dying.
He knew Devi so well, he could tell the cook was keeping something from him. “Anything else?”
“Still not enough for you?” Devi twisted his finger nubs.
“Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to guess?”
“Where the chasm is, the breach is,” Devi said cryptically. “It’s the song of the earth, it’s what your soul leaps over. That’s the only way you can climb inside your own life.”
“She is the breach in my life. That’s how I’ve always gotten in, that’s how I’ll get in again. Why the hand-wringing?”
Devi pressed his mangled fingers to his healthy ones. “I told you, you won’t be climbing into her life. You’ll be climbing into yours.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Not much,” Devi said. “Just the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
“Maybe because I enter differently, things might turn out differently,” said Julian, sounding almost hopeful, almost optimistic—until he saw the miserable expression on Devi’s face.
“Devi! What?”
“Nothing.” Devi didn’t look at Julian. “There is another thing you must know. Before you make the choice whether or not to go.”
“Is it even a choice?”
“Yes, Julian, it most certainly is,” Devi said. “And you must make it in the here and now. What do you want to be? A happy pig or an unhappy Socrates? That’s your choice. Because after this, there are no more do-overs.”
Julian rocked back. “Sounds like a false choice to me.”
“Memory is retained by the body,” Devi said. “Not by the soul. And only your soul can make it out of the cave.” He took a breath. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No.”
“If your soul manages to make it out, and there are no guarantees, there is a good chance your memory will be wiped clean.”
“Wiped clean of what?” Suddenly Julian had a hard time inhaling. “What, like everything? Like . . . her?”
“Maybe.” Devi didn’t meet Julian’s eye.
Adamantly Julian shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. That won’t happen.”
“Okay.”
“I will never let that happen.”
“Like you have a choice.”
“You just said I did. Literally just now.”
“Okay. So you’ve answered one crucial question. You’d rather be an unhappy Socrates.”
“That’s right. One hundred percent.”
They let it go and did not talk about it again for days.
Julian was the one who brought it up after one exquisitely long acupuncture