“There’s a real welter of the stuff down there,” says Jil Punkinflake. “Water main broke a few years back, when all of those—” he flips his hand at the stones, and now I see fragments of coffin, a dull bronze handle “—were just in.” And we pass by. “Wouldn’t you love to have a cake of that?” They grin at each other. “Fine laaadyyyy soooaaap.” “Or make candles, for a slow steady cremation.” “Remember Cinto’s—with the flower candles?” “We haven’t had one as good as that this year. Did you go to Tehute’s? Wasn’t very good. Just two mutes at Tehute’s.” Drain pipes, slimy soot-blackened brick, clouds hurtling past far overhead. I feel as though I’m all muffled up, stifling warm but not sweating, not hot. Why am I so warm? Jil Punkinflake and the others all seem warm too, in fact they give off a palpable, febrile heat. They lead me back through streets and derelict houses, over a broken mausoleum, its marble dimly radiant in the starlight, to the Embalmer’s College. A bearded man in a black skull cap or is it a toque is waving in a cart laden with bodies, puffing a blunt black cigar. Students dash excitedly from cellar doors and collect the bodies, carrying them inside. My companions saunter toward one of the wings, full under the gaze of one of the gaunter deans, who sits on horseback veiled from the crown of his silk hat down past his knees in nearly opaque black gauze.

I follow through dingy halls lined with matted dust, grimy wallpaper whose pattern is nearly browned out by years of smoke. The whole place is impregnated with an oppressive odor of stale smoke, rotting meat, embalmer’s preparations, clashing with my hunger so that my head spins and I don’t know whether or not to be disgusted. Banging lockers—the halls are thronged with students. Jil Punkinflake takes my hand in his hot dry fingers and leads me to the refectory, yellowed tiles over every surface in the room, over the elaborate groined vaults and niches, even the cenotaphs are tiled. I am shown to a bench at one of many long steel tables whiskered with tiny scratches, and presently Jil Punkinflake brings me a steel tray of food. Black bread, a bowl of brine to season it with, hard dry cheese that thankfully is not too ripe and the mold is all on the outside and easily cut away, leathery preserved meat dished with stewed prunes, a beaker of thick porter so bitter my eyes tear up drinking it. Jil Punkinflake bangs his beaker against mine and toasts, “To the Cannibal Queen!” A few of the masters enter veiled, glide past us, receive their trays of food and set them in niches hewn like dictionary tabs into the sides of the cenotaphs. They pull up their chairs and raise their veils, eat soberly with their heads thrust into those niches. Now my head really is spinning, and Jil Punkinflake leads me by the hand to the dormitory room he shares with Nectar and a few others. I am guided into a nearly invisible bed and I can barely see Jil Punkinflake’s broadcloth back lying down beside me.