(A Brief and Unavoidable Travelogue)

It has been suggested—by persons whose judgement I neither solicit nor particularly respect—that my recent silence requires explanation.

Very well.

I went below.

An explanation, I am aware, that explains nothing—which, in all truth, is precisely where I would prefer this matter remain. But those self-same persons who have cavilled and harped at me until I began this very missive will not, I suspect, regard those few brief sentences as sufficient.

So:

The Under is not subterranean in the geographical sense. It is simply… beneath. Beneath the visible, beneath the named, beneath the polite agreements that allow the Over to function without noticing what supports it.

One does not descend so much as recede.

The air grows dry the further one goes. This surprises most people. One expects dampness. One expects dripping caverns and bioluminescent fungus.

Not even faintly correct.

The Under is arid. Sand collects in the seams of your boots, grates between sweaty toes. It infiltrates cuffs and collars. It gathers in the hinges of doors that were not there the moment before you reached for them.

There are worms.

Not metaphorical ones.

They move without urgency. Vast, patient, indifferent. They do not hunt. They do not flee. They simply continue, as though the concept of obstruction has never occurred to them.

There are enemies as well.

Not the kind that declare themselves. The Under has no patience for banners. No interest in confrontation.

Enemies there are made of proximity. Of standing too close to something that recognises you as excess, surplus. Not unwelcome, as such, just not needed here.

You won’t understand that.

Not yet, anyway.

Time does not behave properly beneath the tides. Thirty-eight days may pass above while one is still negotiating a corridor that insists on being narrower than before.

The corridors hum.

The walls shift with the tides.

Occasionally, a policy grows from the stone.

I did what was required. I retrieved what I could. I left what would not fit in my hands.

When I returned, the clocks insisted it had only been weeks.

Clocks are optimists.

In my absence, certain fragments were dislodged from shelves I do not remember cataloguing. They will be shared in due course, assuming the tides remain cooperative — and if I ever discover the source of this damnable sand.

You may consider this an explanation.

It is not an apology.

— The Archivist