“It isn’t a dream, but it isn’t good food, either,” said the matron. “We are here, in this wonderful place, because we went through a door and into a world that shouldn’t have been there, a world that wasn’t good for us. You must not look at goblin men, you must not buy their fruit. A very wise woman said that. What do you think she meant?”
“I knew a woman who’d been to the Goblin Market, and she always said Rossetti was a well-intentioned hack,” said Sumi. “She died after I did. I guess she’s stayed that way, though, or she’d probably be here too, and we could all be miserable together.”
“Sumi, hush,” hissed Cora.
“You know she’s telling lies,” said Sumi. “You know you’re a mermaid. I’m sorry you felt like you had to run away to be safe, but no one gets to dry you out for their own sake. No one gets to hurt you like this.”
The matron’s lips pressed together into a thin, bloodless line. “We aren’t here to hurt you, Miss Onishi. We’re here to prepare you to live in the world where you were born. We’re here to teach you how to survive.”
“Died once, didn’t like it, not going to do it again,” said Sumi. “There. That’s survival. Can I go home now?”
“You can go to the headmaster’s office,” said the matron. She pointed to the door. “Now. Miss Miller will escort you there.”
Sumi rose. Her legs wanted to shake and her knees wanted to knock together and she didn’t let them. She was proud of that.
Cora rose less gracefully, face so pale that she looked like she was going to be sick. She walked to the door, waiting there for Sumi to catch up.
Together, the two girls walked out of the room, leaving the well-lit, oppressive classroom for the dim, equally oppressive hall.
More rooms lined the hallway than could possibly be in current use. Cora didn’t have a clear idea of the size of the student body—they were kept too isolated from one another, aside from mealtime and classes—but she was sure it was less than three hundred, which still made it considerably larger than Eleanor’s school. The matrons liked to imply that the majority of the students were voluntary enrollments, yearning to forget the weight that had been placed upon their shoulders by the worlds they’d been called upon to save. Cora wasn’t sure she believed them.
Rowena might be a voluntary enrollment. Cora still had no idea what kind of world the other girl had gone to, but from the way Rowena sometimes woke up screaming and clawing at the air, she was pretty sure it hadn’t been a pleasant one. And the girl without a name, she was voluntary. She had said so.
They walked, and the sound of their footsteps in their hard-soled, sensible shoes was like the tapping of a typewriter’s keys, strong and regular. Cora looked at Sumi crossly.
“You didn’t have to come here,” she said. “I’m here to save myself, not because I wanted someone to save me.”
“Heroism is addictive. Maybe that’s why it sounds so much like ‘heroin.’”
“Maybe,” agreed Cora. “But I’m fixing it. I’m breaking the Drowned Gods’ hold on me.” She flexed her rainbow-hued hands. “I’ll be free soon.”
“But at what cost?” asked Sumi softly.
Cora didn’t have an answer.
The sound of someone else breathing slipped into the space between their footfalls. Sumi slowed down, gesturing for Cora to do the same. Whoever it was wasn’t just breathing: they were crying, the sound soft and thin and pained. Sumi worried her lip momentarily between her teeth. Then she turned and followed the sound, working her way down the hall until she came to a door that had been left ever so slightly ajar.
Holding her breath to keep herself from making a sound, Sumi pressed her eye against the opening and peered through. There was a classroom, virtually identical to the one she’d just been ejected from, but there was no class, no matron: just a single teenage girl in a Whitethorn uniform, her hands pressed over her face to muffle the sound of her sobbing.
She was tall, or would have been, if she’d been standing, with the kind of broad shoulders that came from a childhood spent doing heavy labor, layering muscle over muscle. Her hair was dark blonde, the color of old hay, and like Sumi’s, had been tamed into a braid. Also like Sumi’s, it was doing its best to escape, breaking free in wisps and irrepressible curls, until it looked like a dandelion on the verge of going to seed.
Cora gasped, the sound small and quickly stifled. Regan was enough of a recognizable figure around the school that seeing her face wasn’t necessary.
Lingering in this empty classroom, talking to this crying girl, would make them late reaching the headmaster’s office. The cameras would have picked them up by now, and would know the path she was supposed to be taking. There were cameras everywhere except the bathrooms, even in the dorm rooms where they slept, making privacy as much of a longed-for dream as rainbows and fires and the flight of the moon mantas. Once they were late, they’d be in trouble. Once they were in trouble, almost anything could happen, and very little of it would be anything they’d enjoy.
Cora knew she should hurry Sumi along, and leave Regan for someone else to find. But she’d already been a bully once today, and if she walked away from Regan while she was crying, if she left Regan alone, maybe she wouldn’t be able to call herself a hero anymore. Maybe this was where she got to choose.
“Be sure,” she whispered to herself, and stepped into the classroom with Sumi at her heels, easing the door shut behind them.
The latch clicked softly when it snapped home. Regan froze, her last sob transforming into a strangled, agonized squeak ing sound. Cora winced. She was making things worse. She seemed to have a talent for it here, in this school, where there were too many rules and none of them understood what it was to be merciful.
“I’m made of candy,” said Sumi.
Regan slowly lowered her hands and turned, staring at Sumi. She had a wide, friendly face, the sort of face that belonged on the other side of a breakfast table, smiling and happy and ready to face the day. It didn’t deserve to be miserable and streaked with tears. That wasn’t fair.
“What?” she asked.
“Candy. I’m made of candy. Technically I think that makes me a really fancy doll, since people are supposed to be made of meat. Only I’m made of meat, too, because the Baker baked me back into being a girl, instead of a kind of pastry, so I bleed and stuff, and I guess I can probably die again. I haven’t tried it.” Sumi cocked her head and smiled, as encouragingly as she could. “Okay. Your turn.”
Regan blinked slowly. “I … what?”
“I just said something big and ridiculous and impossible that can’t possibly be so. Now it’s your turn to say something big and ridiculous and impossible. I want you to believe me, so I’ll believe you, and then we’ll be friends, because friends believe each other. It’s your turn.”
Regan stared at her for a moment, eyes wide and wet and a little bit wild, like she was thinking of running away, like she was thinking of escape. She shifted her gaze to Cora.
Cora shrugged. “I’m a mermaid.”