But the Moors were there too. The Moors, and the reason she could never go home.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until the teacher had walked over and pressed a handkerchief into her hand. Real cotton, the edges expertly hemmed: no noses would be wiped on sleeves here, no twists of tissue tossed aside.
“It’s all right, Cora,” she had said, and her voice had been warm and kind, and her eyes had been so cold. “I know it’s a shock, but we’re here to help you through this. We’re here to make you well again.”
Cora had smiled hesitantly up at her, and hoped she was telling the truth.
After class came sport, which mostly meant running laps around the track, unless you’d been tapped for one of the various athletic clubs, and then it meant playing some game with complicated, tedious rules that never changed. Cora had managed to avoid the athletic clubs so far, largely by dint of not being allowed to swim, and no one believing she could be good at anything else. She was sure the headmaster would eventually order them to invite her, but for now, she was allowed to just run and run and run, sinking into the feel of her feet hitting the ground and the air in her lungs, and all the other aspects of land-life that kept her tethered far from the grasp of the Drowned Gods.
She had always loved to run. She had always been good at running. She was still good at running, even if there was nowhere left for her to run to.
On the day when Regan Lewis laughed over the intercom and everything changed, the schedule was still in effect. The sound of Regan’s laughter had barely faded before the door opened and one of the matrons stepped inside. Cora stiffened, trying not to show her fear.
The staff of the school—and how strange it was, to be at a school with an actual staff, instead of Eleanor and a few teachers who came during the day and left at night, preferring not to know too much about what went on at the mysterious boarding school full of artists and overdramatic weirdoes! How strange, and how honestly unpleasant—consisted almost entirely of alumni. They had all been through doors of their own, once upon a time. They had traveled to magical lands, places where the sky talked and the sea sang, and they had decided they liked this world better. More, they had decided that because they liked this world better, and because their parents had been sad when they were gone, that all the doors should be sealed and locked forever, to keep any more children from going missing.
This wasn’t the first time Cora had met people who thought their ideas about how the world should be were the only right ones. It was the first time she’d met them when they were in a position of clear, unquestioned power over her.
This matron, a stiff-faced woman who always wore the drabbest browns and grays she could find, like she was trying to vanish into the background, was one of the less forgiving. She looked around the dorm, nose wrinkling slightly when she saw Cora’s covers, which were still disheveled despite Cora’s best efforts to smooth them out. Aloud, she said, “I see an improvement, Cora. You’re beginning to take more pride in your things.”
“Thank you, matron,” said Cora automatically. Failure to thank a matron for praising you could result in demerits, and too many demerits would mean another trip to solitary, another spell spent sitting alone in a room with no windows and no distractions, to think about what she’d done.
Cora didn’t want to think about what she’d done. Sitting alone in silence just created more openings for the Drowned Gods to slither through, and they didn’t need the help.
The matron moved on, shifting her attention to Emily, who stood perfectly straight, perfectly mannered, her eyes fixed ahead of her and a pleasant, almost vapid expression on her face. If Cora hadn’t known what all the members of her dorm had in common, she would have thought Emily didn’t belong here at all.
Each of the dorms was different. The students who’d gone to Logical worlds got waffles for breakfast and bedtimes that changed every night. They got socks that didn’t match and class schedules that shuffled around them like a deck of cards, trying to get them used to the idea that they were back to living in a world where things wouldn’t always, couldn’t always make sense. The students who’d gone to Nonsense worlds got stricter schedules and regimes than even the Wicked students, rules piled upon rules upon rules until the weight of it crushed the rebellion out of their hearts.
Once they were broken—once the Nonsense kids started following rules and the Logical kids started disregarding them—they could be moved to new dorms, to start unlearning other habits of behavior. To start allowing themselves to be ground down, disappearing back into the children they had been before they’d needed something different so completely that they’d summoned impossible doors to whisk them away to a place where they could be happy. Where they could be whole.
Emily shivered. The matron stopped in front of her, suddenly as attentive as a wolf scenting a deer in the still of the forest.
“Emily,” she said. “Where does your family live?”
“Dublin, Ohio, matron.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Two. One older, one younger.”
“Can scarecrows talk?”
Emily trembled.
The matron narrowed her eyes. “Can scarecrows talk?” she repeated, tone clearly implying that there was only one right answer, and it wasn’t the one she expected from Emily.
It hurt, to deny the things the heart knew were true. It hurt, and while Emily and Cora weren’t friends, Cora understood that the matron was holding out a razor and asking Emily to run it willy-nilly across her body, hoping not to hit an artery.
Silence and blending into the background were Cora’s forte. She was good at it. But she was also a hero, and heroes didn’t stand idly by while someone smaller was victimized.
“Scarecrows don’t talk,” she scoffed, loudly enough and clearly enough to guarantee she would be overheard. The matron stiffened. Cora acted like she hadn’t noticed, continuing blithely, “They’re just straw stuffed into old potato sacks. If scarecrows could talk, that would mean straw could talk, and if straw could talk, grass would be able to talk, and no one could mow their lawns.”
“Cora,” said the matron, through gritted teeth, “I don’t believe I was talking to you.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, matron.” Cora blinked at her, trying to look innocent and confused. “I thought it was a question for anyone. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” said the matron, and moved on to the girl without a name. “You’ll be measured this afternoon,” and she said a word, her lips moved in a word, but all that came out was the sound of total, perfect silence. “I’m hoping we’ll see some growth, aren’t you?”
“Yes, matron,” said the dainty girl, voice small and tight with fear.
“If we don’t, we may have to take more extreme measures.” The matron looked around the room, seeming to weigh and measure every inch of it with her eyes. Finally, she sniffed and said, “There will be an assembly this afternoon, to discuss the unfortunate outburst during morning announcements. If any of you are feeling shaky or uncentered, you can request a counseling session after lunch. There’s no shame in seeking help, children. Seeking help is the most human thing a person can do.”