Nona tiptoed in, feeling absurdly that it was wrong to make noise, and peered at the body. She had not seen many dead bodies close up. The long corpse was dressed beautifully in white: white trousers, brown boots that looked nearly new, a white jacket with silver frogging and toggles. The jacket had been unbuttoned some. The girl looked like she had gone to sleep with her shoes on after a long, tiring day: her face had that half-past-a-dream expression. Her red hair was even redder in the dark, brighter than Pyrrha’s and redder than Honesty’s, and the little wreath of bones and blossoms was askew over her temples. She had a decided chin and a nose that was the complete opposite of Nona’s nose, one that put her in mind of those big poison desert cats Born in the Morning was crazy about.
Nona wasn’t at all sure she was beautiful. The face wasn’t bad. It made her think of something, but nothing bad really, only dead. Her skin was very much dead-person skin, ashen and tinted the wrong colour around the nostrils and the mouth. But even if she hadn’t been dead, Nona was critical. Her eyelashes were very dark, but short and curly, whereas Nona thought all eyelashes should be long and straight （her own eyelashes were long and straight）。 The corpse had too much mouth and a dimple （nobody in her home had a dimple）。 You could not, at least, see the veins in her eyelids, which were heavy and cold and deep-set. But Nona thought it was going to be a shame to go from being so lovely as she was to being so—redheaded.
Nona put her hand close to the corpse’s cold hand, very tentatively, expecting something to happen, once she touched it; that she would suddenly melt away, or pop out of existence like a soap bubble. What happened made her think much better of the corpse. It opened its eyes—and its eyes were yellow, the gold of the old sky, like hers only much foggier. Those were beautiful: Nona had always adored her eyes, and here they were again, on the corpse, only partially spoiled for being dead. They looked like treasure at night.
The corpse looked at her in such mute, helpless appeal—spoke to her in her first language—that Nona did not have to think about what she did next. She leant down and laid a kiss right on that cool, dead, crooked mouth.
She kissed her just the once. The corpse’s mouth was soft and rough and cold, and did not respond to Nona’s mouth, but a tremble went through the upper body. Nona was surprised and relieved to find that the corpse girl tasted like toothpaste.
At the tremble, Nona pulled back, self-conscious. The expression on the corpse’s face could not have been more rigid with shock and disbelief. She found herself saying, a little defensively—
“You looked like you wanted to be kissed, that’s all.”
A shadow crossed the doorway, blocking out quite a lot of the outside light. Nona turned around and said, “Pyrrha, I’m really sorry, I messed up,” but Pyrrha was staring at the corpse girl as though she had seen a ghost, or maybe two.
When Nona turned to the girl, she was taken aback: the corpse’s eyes were closed and she lay completely still on the bed—arms loose, limbs heavy and untidy, the very picture of deadness.
Pyrrha crossed over, stared down at the barely illuminated corpse, and said— “Yeah, that’s Gideon Nav, all right … I’d know her anywhere. I wouldn’t need to be told. Talk about being the mother’s daughter.”
Nona was puzzled. “Who?”
“You’ve seen her photo,” said Pyrrha, and she reached over—hovered a hand quite close to Gideon’s face—and then pulled it back, apparently having thought better of it. “Blood of Eden mass-manufactured ’em … wasn’t even a good shot. But this kid’s the spit of her … nearly. She’s him in the eyes and brows … amazed Mercymorn didn’t see it. But she wasn’t looking for it, I guess.”
“Her mother was the woman who broke your heart,” guessed Nona.
“Yes,” said Pyrrha. And: “Let’s not get too cute about it, though. My best friend and I punched her out an airlock. Apart from that, I was ready to commit.”
For some reason, Nona felt vaguely hurt and envious. She didn’t have a mother for Pyrrha to have punched out an airlock. Nor had Pyrrha ever looked at her the way she now looked at the dead corpse with red hair—a kind of soft, guarded want; a hunger—a living desire to take the corpse in her arms like Kevin’s wanting desire with his dolls. To own, to squeeze, to cosset and destroy.
She remembered, and said hastily, before Pyrrha could say anything too personal: “Pyrrha, she can hear you, I think she’s awake.”