10. Virgil
VIRGIL
When we step back onto the bog's path, I hesitate mid-stride.
Something has changed—a barely perceptible shift in the quality of the bruised sky overhead, the texture of fog curling between half-drowned trees.
I remain mostly disconnected from Dante's mind, which means this alteration belongs to my perception alone.
I do not know why.
Dante moves forward like the unstoppable force he believes himself to be, his coat carving through the mist as he strides ahead. I quicken my pace to match his, but the discomfort of my realization refuses to dissipate.
My perception of this realm has not shifted in...
centuries of mortal time. Perhaps longer.
I have become a constant, a thing that exists in a state approaching inertia.
I observe the changes of the world around me as I stand motionless.
An artifact that witnesses mortal reality but remains untouched by its currents.
The swamp has always appeared precisely thus to me: mournful, stagnant, eternal in its decay.
Until now.
Dante tugs at his sleeves and attempts to smooth them. They changed in the previous chamber, absorbing the steam I could not feel, the heavy-hanging humidity that remained for me as nothing more than visual texture—a painting of discomfort rather than the sensation itself.
"It surprises me that lust was your first realm of temptation."
Dante tenses for a moment, missing a step in his careful navigation of the moss-riddled ground. "All men have temptations."
"Of course. But generally, the least challenging ones for each individual emerge earliest. For most, lust comes much farther along their journey.”
"Ah." He shrugs but keeps his gaze fixed forward. "Physical pleasure is a distraction from the more important things in life. It destroys lives, diverts people from pursuits of real value."
The sharp clip of his words warns me not to press further on that particular matter, though it surprises me.
Most souls who arrive here have experienced some positive dimension of physical connection, even if merely a warm embrace or a steadying hand upon the shoulder.
Many of them have also known some aspect of sensual pleasure.
There exists a reason poets have spent so much ink describing the euphoria of carnal love through the ages.
"What holds real value, then?" I ask.
Dante releases a sigh, as though of all the foolish things I have uttered since our meeting, this question proves the most egregious. "Meaningful work. To be productive. To provide for one's self without feeding off the hard labor of another."
"Do you believe that logic applies equally to infants?"
He whirls toward me, but the scathing expression I expect to find etched into his brow, pulling his lips downward, is not there. Instead, he appears more curious than offended, his lips pursed in contemplation.
"Very well then, guide with millennia of accumulated experience." His voice carries an edge of challenge. "What is the meaning of life? Perhaps you possess some advantage that might help me navigate this realm more swiftly?"
I study him for a moment. His hair has softened in the residual steam, curling gently against the edges of his neck. His entire appearance has relaxed by the smallest degree—his piercing gaze a touch less cutting, his clothes a bit less armor-like, more simply cloth upon a man's shoulders.
"I am the wrong man to pose that question to," I say quietly. "I squandered my mortal life."
Vigor returns to him at my remark, and he thrusts his hands outward in an uncharacteristically expansive gesture. "How can you say such a thing?"
A howl breaks through the bog's eerie silence, something hunting, or perhaps being hunted, but Dante seems not to notice.
"I say it simply because it is true."
"You wrote an epic that defined Roman history and has withstood the test of time.
" Color rises in his cheeks, animation sparking in features usually held so deliberately still.
"Did you not remind me that my own name shall soon be forgotten?
My contributions negated? Yet you defied that—defied death itself—and you are dissatisfied with how you spent your years? "
This impassioned speech has brought brightness to his eyes, warmth to his complexion.
It makes me wonder what he might look like laughing—a true laugh, the kind that originates in the belly and works its way upward until it unfurls the lips, crinkles the corners of the eyes.
Somehow, I doubt he has exercised that expression often.
The chirping and croaking of the swamp stretches between us, filling the silence with its ancient, indifferent song. When I speak, I do not match his fervor. Instead, my words emerge as scarcely more than a whisper, offering bare truths stripped of passion. I accepted my choices long ago.
"I wrote a domesticated inversion of folklore, what people of your age might call a literary pastiche, based upon the truly great works of Homeric tradition.
I did so in the service of crafting propaganda for an emperor who required legitimacy to gather even more power unto himself.
" I pause, watching the fog curl between us.
"And unfortunately, the criticisms I wove into the text of that man were apparently too subtle, as they seem lost upon most readers. "
Dante's mouth falls open during my speech, and it takes him a moment to recover himself.
"No," he protests. Then more firmly: "No. It has been some time since I read the Aeneid, but... the main character..." He searches for the name.
"Aeneas," I offer sympathetically, though with little personal investment.
"Aeneas!" The name emerges triumphant. "He was not domesticated. Did he not battle monsters and conquer kingdoms? Found a new civilization?"
I look out across the bog to where a snake coils beneath the cracked and desiccated limbs of a dying tree. The creature watches us with ancient, patient eyes. Or perhaps it watches nothing at all.
"I suppose that depends upon what one considers to be a monster, and whether one views conquest as strength or simply another form of destruction.
" My voice remains flat, distant. "Perhaps domesticated was the wrong word to describe my work.
It was brutality penned in the service of an emperor, and it became the most effective weapon he ever wielded.
Even when I begged for its destruction upon my deathbed, that final wish was not honored.
" I turn back to meet his gaze. "So you are correct.
My deeds continue to echo throughout the ages, returning to me like waves against a shore that cannot erode. I never forget them."
An expression I cannot name settles within the dark depths of his eyes. They are wider than I would expect, gleaming with some emotion, though whether it be fury or grief or disgust, I cannot determine. For whatever reason, it remains as untouchable to me in this moment as he himself is.
"You are not proud of your greatest work?"
"The Aeneid is not my greatest work." The scoff escapes before I can contain it, and I am surprised at how much of the old bitterness I can still dredge from depths I thought long emptied.
"What do you believe is, then?"
"The Georgics."
His brows draw together, and I am not surprised. Very few remember them now.
"They are poems about pastoral life," I explain. "About tending bees and growing crops. About the honest labor of hands in soil."
His frown deepens, then he shakes his head. "I am no great reader of poetry. I am certain there are people who still know them as well.”
"Certainly," I agree. "But the reason you recognized my name when you stepped into this realm was because of the glorified war chronicle I penned for a man consumed by avarice and ambition." I let the words settle between us. "He arrived here—in this very place—not long after me, actually.”
"Did he make it out?" Dante asks.
"Some men never do." I nod toward a shape materializing behind him in the mist. "We have reached the door. It is just beyond you there."
He hesitates, studying me with such intensity I feel flayed open, his gaze searching for the truth beneath my skin.
He has already witnessed it, of course—or enough of it.
He simply does not wish to accept that some hero of his own private mythology, his notion that a man can achieve greatness sufficient to endure, and that such endurance is what grants existence meaning, results in nothing more than a wisp of regret and accumulated disillusionment.
He turns and opens the door.
As we step through the threshold, I steady myself.
It is not like me to give in to bouts of passion-driven frustration anymore, and certainly not with a soul I guide through this place.
I have my periods of melancholy, and they drive me into the swamps, through the murk and chirping insects and gray-green waters, the sandy-mud paths, the endless mist-shrouded inlets.
It has been such a length of time since I've revealed so many of my flaws and fits of temper to another that I can scarcely remember the last occasion.
But there is something about this man that is like the pressure of falling beneath water.
Words escape me seemingly without my control.
I cannot name what it is about him, but it is the same feeling I had when I first watched him walking his endless loops through the empty streets of his city.
As though something about his very presence compelled me forward.
It is with the discomfort of that thought settled upon my shoulders that we step into the next realm. My unneeded breath comes sharp, and I quickly divert my eyes to the path, fighting the urge to look again.
I am grateful, for once, that I lack other senses to draw me in.
"Gluttony," Dante scoffs. "This should have been my first temptation. It tempts me not at all."
"Surely that cannot be true?" I lift my face to ask the question. A mistake.