She was dreaming of the open sea when a sudden shock of icy water splashed across her face. She sat bolt upright, clutching the thin blanket she’d been given around herself.
The headmaster looked down at her, the empty glass still held in one hand, and shook his head. “You were doing so well, Cora,” he said. “What in the world made you stand by while your friend assaulted another student?”
“She made us late to breakfast,” said Cora. “You always say punctuality is a virtue, and she made us less virtuous. So when Sumi hit her, I didn’t stop her. Instead, I did what you said and turned my back on weakness.”
“And why did you barge into a room where you had no business being, when you were meant to be escorting Miss Onishi to my office?”
“We heard—I mean—” Cora stopped, trapped between her pretense of turning her back on weakness and admitting her sympathy for Regan.
“I see.” The headmaster nodded slightly, seeming to read her thoughts in the same way he had seemed to on her first day. “I hope you understand that I am very disappointed in you.”
Cora bit the inside of her cheek. The headmaster’s disappointment was like a chain around her throat, dragging her down to where the Drowned Gods still waited, singing their poisonous songs. Desperately, she blurted out, “Where is Regan? Where is Sumi?”
“Miss Lewis and Miss Onishi are spending time in quiet contemplation while we review their respective educational plans,” he replied with a cold smile. “They may each require a bit more … specialized help in the future.”
“No!” Cora couldn’t stop herself; she couldn’t stand to pretend anymore. “Can’t you see that you’re hurting people? Don’t you care?”
“Did you forget why you came here, Miss Miller? The sing ing of the sea in your ears? The rainbows on your skin?” The headmaster grabbed her wrist, turning it so that her palm faced the ceiling. “They’ve faded, but they haunt you still. How could I allow you to leave before they disappear? How could any caring guardian allow their students to continue carrying the weight of such a delusion?”
Cora shook him off. “I’m a student. Not a prisoner. I refuse to trade one monster for another.”
“If we’re monsters, so is Miss West.”
Cora went very still.
The headmaster smiled, almost sympathetically. “We’re sister schools. One can’t exist without the other. Yes, we have our share of involuntary enrollments—but really, how many of the students at your last school were consulted before they were shipped away by parents who no longer understood them? How many of them got to choose? You think of Miss West fondly because she gave you what you wanted to have, she told you what you wanted to hear. We’re as much on your side as she ever was.”
“I came to you voluntarily,” said Cora. “Regan didn’t. You’re not setting her free. You’re hurting her.”
“It’s true that Miss Lewis never had the benefit of choosing her education. But your Miss West never taught you how to fit into this world, either. She let you wallow in regret, knowing that most doors never reappear. Her way, my way, it doesn’t matter. You’re part of this world now, Cora. You’re not going back to your underwater fantasyland. You were a hero, and now that’s done, and you’re a teenage girl again. You need to learn to live with that. Someone has to teach you.”
“I didn’t ask you to teach me,” said Cora. “I asked you to free me.”
The headmaster smiled that terrifying smile. “But you did, Miss Miller. You asked me to teach you how to forget. You enrolled here because you wanted to forget the monsters, and you will, oh yes, you will. You have so much more to learn before you leave us. I’ll free you from your gods and monsters. All of them.”
“You … you are a monster,” said Cora, almost wonderingly. “You’re hurting the people you say you’re trying to help. You’re a monster in a hall of heroes, and we’re going to defeat you. That’s what heroes do. We beat monsters, no matter how much it costs us.”
“But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said the headmaster, crossing to the door and opening it with a simple twist of his wrist, like it was nothing, like freedom was a toy. “You’re not heroes anymore. Not here. It’s time for you to accept that you aren’t going to win. This is a world without heroes, and you’re here.”
Then he was gone, and Cora was alone. More alone than she had ever been before.
She put her hands over her face, and she cried.
PART III
THE DOORS THAT OPEN, THE DOORS THAT CLOSE
10?A CROWBAR OR A KEY
THE DROWNED GODS CAME for her as soon as she fell asleep.
They came as she had seen them in the Moors, unspeakable towers of tentacled flesh, suckers pulsing, surfaces bristling with eyes in a thousand shades of sunset, their pupils like sine curves against fields of red and gold and pink.
“You belong to us, little mermaid,” they whispered. “We gave you back your legs. We gave you back your voice. You belong to us.”
“I do not.” In dreams, Cora had her fins and her scales again, and the lashing of her tail held her upright, as freed from the bonds of gravity as the Drowned Gods themselves. “I fell because you designed the bridge to fall. An animal that falls into a trap may be caught, but that doesn’t make it a possession.”
“We flushed you out of hiding. You are ours.”
“I am not. I refuse.” The water was sweet. Cora inhaled deeply. “The gods of the Trenches and the gods of the Moors aren’t the same. You don’t belong in these currents. Be gone.”
“Not alone.” A tentacle lashed out, wrapping tight around her waist, trying to drag her forward. Cora shook her head, silently refusing to be moved, and try as the Drowned God might, it couldn’t budge her. She hung in the sea like a star.
“I will not,” she said. “I am not yours to cling to or claim. Go back to your own waters.”
Her time at the Whitethorn Institute had weakened their hold on her. She knew that now. In the months of resisting Whitethorn’s pressure to transform her into something else, she had somehow built up her strength to resist the Drowned Gods’ attempts to do the same thing. And their desperation was growing, or they wouldn’t have approached her so directly. She was stronger than they were, here in this familiar sea.
Slowly, the tentacle unwound from her waist. “We will be back.”
“And I will not go with you. Now, or ever. This is not your place.” She took another breath. “I am not your door.”
The eyes of the Drowned Gods slammed shut, taking the light they had cast with them, leaving Cora alone in the dark water. She floated in place, arms spread, hair a skirl around her face. To the silence she repeated:
“I am not your door.” After a pause for thought, she added, “But I might be my own.”
Cora sighed, and stretched, and woke in a cold, white-walled room with a thin blanket wrapped around her legs, binding them together into a child’s approximation of a tail. She kicked once, enjoying the way her industrial cotton “flukes” bounced, and waited for someone to come and let her out.