Nona was severe.
“You talk too much, Pyrrha.”
For a moment she could not decide what to put in—she considered the foot, on the understanding that the foot was the furthest away from the head so maybe it would take the pain longer to travel—but that would have messed with her shoe. Shoes never grew back. And she had never liked her hands. Nona reached out with her left one, trembling a little—she never minded pain as it happened, but she was a terrible baby anticipating—until she gasped, “Pyrrha, help, I can’t, I’m frightened,” and Pyrrha took mercy on her and grasped her by the elbow. She thrust Nona’s arm forward. The tips of her fingers breached some invisible barrier, and they dissolved.
Something awful was happening where her fingers met the barrier. The tops of her fingertips became a red and grey mist. A fine spray splattered back on her hand or became tiny white drops of steam when they hit the barrier and then those drops of steam became nothing. Pyrrha was holding her still as her hand burned apart, her hand felt sick, her hand felt like throwing up. It was like the lurching pain of having a tooth knocked out, if it was about one hundred teeth and they were all at the ends of your hands.
But the worst part was what her hand was doing, because her hand freaked out. Great gouts of skin were suddenly travelling up where they shouldn’t have been, looking like red-and-brown-and-white lumps of wax—soft ferny sprouts of what she realised was her own bone were poking and trembling out of that flesh, spiralling forward as though trying to find something to grasp on to, as though they could regrow her fingers in a safer place. That was what frightened her, watching that flesh resolve, watching that flesh resolve into extra fingers. Out of the wax another hand sprouted, reaching back toward her, as though it were a mirror—and Nona screamed, sickened, and thrust her hand in to the wrist to get rid of it.
With a retort like a million tiny fireworks the red marks covering the corridor exploded. One went, then the next, then the rest all at once—POP—POP-POP-POP-POP, like Honesty had bought them cheap at the dairy and thrown a match in the box. There was a noise like a car backfiring, the air shimmered, and a fine bloody powder rained down from the ceiling.
Nona dropped to her haunches and clutched her hand between her thighs, afraid to look at it. Her heart was beating so hard that she was worried it would burst. Her gaze lurched drunkenly, as though her eyes were independent of herself. For a moment she wanted to yell, Help, like she had done before, pretending to be the Captain. She wanted to shout. She wanted to be listened to. She wished the barrier had taken her hands. She wished she had thrust herself into it—become that big seething mass of flesh and meat and tendrils—ruined her body, just melted it; come back messed up, so that nobody could want her body but her, so that it would be hers and nobody else’s.
This was a horrible thing to think. Nona hated herself immediately and fervently.
Pyrrha had dropped down beside her—had gathered her in her big dark wiry arms, smelling ferally like sweat, her cheeks a little rough from the bristles where she hadn’t shaved. Her throat was scratchy and nice, and Nona buried her face in it and made little ah, ah, ah sounds until she felt better.
Pyrrha had reached down and seized her hand—was saying, “You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong. Look.” But she couldn’t make Nona look for fully twenty seconds. When Nona looked at last it was fine—her hand was perfectly normal—except the fingernails had grown way too long, massively long, so that one of her hands looked like a claw. Pyrrha immediately took out her pocketknife and shaved them down for her, a bit ragged, but much better.
“Brave girl. Sorry, Nona, no time to catch our breath. Go start opening doors,” she said. “I’m going to clean this up in case any of the wards are partially intact. Don’t want the body losing chunks on the way out. She’s going to be hell to carry.”
Nona’s head swam again briefly, but she nodded. She set off down the corridor. She opened the first door on the left, but it was only a cupboard with some brooms. She jogged to the next one, a heavier door, with a key still in the lock. She turned the key, pushed the handle, and stood on the threshold.
It was just an ordinary bedroom. It didn’t have any windows—they were probably at least a floor underground—and it was only lit by a single lightbulb, so it was pretty dim. It looked wide: there was room for the whole bed, and would have been room for another if you pushed it up against the wall. And stretched out on the bed—nearly too big for it—was the girl from her dream: the girl who might be her.