Page 61 of Where Light Cannot Follow

We hunch close together, weaving through ancient, wicked trees. Their forms are crooked and lightning-struck, bark split open to reveal heartwood black as char. The canopy above blocks what little light this realm possesses, leaving us in a darkness that feels almost solid.

Something pulls my attention to the side. Not a sound—something else. A sensation like a cry that bypasses the ears entirely and lands somewhere in the chest.

"Virgil," I say.

"Hmm?"

"I think something is over there." I gesture toward a gap between two massive trunks. "Perhaps... could it be another child?"

Virgil looks to where I point, then frowns. The expression carves years into his face—deep furrows across his brow, lines bracketing his mouth. It doesn't diminish him. I see it now for what it is: the marks of a man who cares deeply. Who diverts from his path to bring stories of hope to frightened children. Who walks alongside some hopeless soul and helps him escape his self-imposed prison.

"I'd hoped you might not sense this one," he says quietly. "But if you do, then I fear you must face it before you can ascend."

"I suppose you won't tell me what lies ahead?"

Virgil turns toward me fully. There's something in his eyes—something as rich as aged wine and deep as a well I once lowered a bucket into as a boy on a rare visit to my grandparents’ farm, before I understood that some depths have no bottom. I'm certain I can almost name what I see there, but the word hovers just beyond my reach.

"If you asked it of me, I would tell you," he says. "Though knowing may hinder more than help."

"Then we follow your rules." I hold his gaze a moment longer. "But you'll stay with me?"

"Until you no longer wish me to. As I vowed." There's resignation in his voice. As though he's already mourning something that hasn't happened yet.

We walk deeper into the trees. The path narrows. Branches scrape against my shoulders.

My mind reaches for something—anything—to offer him. Some fragment of the world he's lost. Words are all I have. The only currency that can reach him here. It feels important that I choose the right ones.

But words, at least of the poetic variety, have never come easily to me. I've spent decades repressing that impulse, laying it down as a sacrifice at the altar of efficiency. Soft things don't survive in the worlds I've inhabited.

But maybe if I stop holding so tightly, the right ones will surface on their own. Somehow I sense that Virgil doesn't need something grand. He needs something small and true.

I laugh when I land on what might work, and Virgil glances toward me, curious.

"Have you ever eaten an orange?" I ask.

"An orange?"

"A citrus fruit. It's… well, orange in color. Round, about the size of a fist."

"Ah." He considers this. "We had citron in my lifetime. Very bitter. No one ate them for pleasure."

"No, this is different." I'm smiling now as we navigate the darkening path. It feels odd to smile in a place like this. Odd in a good way. "I remember one afternoon specifically. I was perhaps twenty-two, still in graduate school, still poor enough that small pleasures felt like luxuries. The sun was setting between the buildings, painting everything in… in amber and gold. I sat on a fire escape outside my apartment, my legs dangling over the railing, and a breeze swept through—the kind that carries summer's heat away and promises autumn."

Virgil is watching me with quiet attention, the way he watches everything. Like he's memorizing it.

"I began to peel the orange. The mist from the rind caught the light as I worked—tiny golden droplets suspended in the air for just a moment before vanishing. The smell..." I shake my head slightly, reaching for words that feel adequate. "Like someone had distilled sunshine and green leaves and something sweet all at once. It filled the entire fire escape, that small space, until I felt like I was sitting in a grove rather than a rusting metal platform in Brooklyn.”

I pause, remembering. The weight of the fruit in my palm. The way I neatly peeled the segments away from each other.

"The pieces came apart perfectly. And when I placed the first one on my tongue..." I close my eyes for a moment, let the memory wash over me fully. "Sweet, but with just enough tartness to make your mouth water for the next bite. The juice burst across my palate, bright and clean. For just that moment, sitting there with the sunset on my face and the taste of that orange in my mouth, I wasn't worried about tuition or rent or my past. I was just... present. Alive."

I open my eyes. Virgil is smiling at me, a real smile, one that softens his entire face and makes him look like the young poet he must have been once, before death and damnation and two thousand years of grief.

"Thank you for that, Dante," he says quietly.

I smile back. "You're welcome."

A wail shrieks through the darkness ahead.