Katalepsis

…

You're asking the obvious question, aren't you? If you're not asking it yet, you will be soon enough. I've backed myself into a corner with this one. I've done myself dirty, by telling the truth. (That'll teach me. Honesty is its own reward.) I could have lied and made up some other ending to our meeting with the mage, but I told the truth, so now there's no way out. Fine. Go ahead. Ask away. See if you get an answer.

If I'm made of carbon fibre, how could I be knocked unconscious?

Because magic is bullshit, and mages are big saggy rotten bags bursting with bullshit.

That's the answer I would give if I was trying to fob you off with some bullock dung of my own. A wizard did it, stop asking questions! But we both know that isn't true, and I'm not going to tell you such an obvious lie, (you've gotten too smart to fall for that). Evelyn Saye is neither saggy nor rotten. Kimberly doesn't contain a single ounce of bullshit, only endless agonising authenticity. Mages and magic are not the problem here.

The truth? I was knocked unconscious because my body doesn't know what it is.

My body thinks that it is Maisie Morell, homo sapiens, twenty years old, nominally female, whatever the fuck that means. It believes that it is made of flesh and bone and blood and skin, which in turn is made of water, carbon, ammonia, lime, and so on and so on. It thinks that when it is cut, that it should bleed a red and sticky fluid. It thinks it needs fuel, carbohydrates and proteins and fats, squeezed through a series of meaty tubes, to turn into shit and piss. It believes that I should have tits and a face and joints that go pop when overextended. It's absolutely certain there should be a cunt between my legs, (and I agree with that part, well done body). It thinks that I've got a mass of grey fatty tissue inside my skull which can get bounced around by kinetic impact. Hence, concussive unconsciousness.

My body is wrong about all of those things. It doesn't recognise the truth — carbon fibre, steel, kevlar, titanium, ceramics, all wrapped up in a solid glob of fairy dust and dreams. I do have all those things it thinks I should have (except the fucking tits, on which it has not delivered), but they're not really mine. Those things belong to a girl who never got to grow up, a girl who died in prison a decade ago, a girl whose name and face and family are now mine.

The Good Doctor Martense says I shouldn't think like that. She says it's important to remember my flesh is an extension and expression of my soul. I am like this because my deepest core recognises itself in what it has made of the materials to hand.

But it's not real. All my flesh burned away years ago. I'm just a few greasy shards of bone, puppeting a doll.

And what do dolls do? Nothing. Dolls are meant to be moved and posed and used at will.

…

Anyway, I woke up in a dungeon.

…

A sheer-sided square pit, about fifty meters across, built of black brick, floored with filthy white tiles. The pit was set in what I assumed was a much larger room, though I couldn't see much of it, just the curved columns arching overhead to support a ceiling of yet more black stone. Greyish light traced skeletal fingers across my face from somewhere beyond sight, crooking an arm through a distant window set back from our subterranean prison. Dark static washed everything like a shitty sunset on a rainy day, though I couldn't hear any more raindrops. The walls of the pit were too high to leap and catch the lip — unless you had a cluster of tentacles to use as a spring, which I didn't, and don't, and won't. It all seemed a bit extravagant for holding a pair of bipeds; this pit was more suited to a dragon, and wouldn't that be better suited to a fairy tale? Puff puff puff, breathe fire on all the fairies and the mage and her ugly palanquin too, cook their flesh on their bones, burn it all down, melt the stones of the castle into smooth and featureless glass, so even the pattern-faces had nothing in which to appear.

How had they gotten us down there? Thrown us? Rope ladder?

Didn't care.

After I woke up, I lay on my back for a long time, staring at the black ceiling, the grey light, the lip of the pit, a sharp black razor blade demarcating the limit of a new world. Waking was not clean. It came messy, ebbing and flowing, so the endless void in my nightmares became the pit in which I lay, and the pit became the void, and they were the same thing, the same thing over again, back here, all over again.

The floor was cold, but what did I care? Not like carbon fibre could feel. Dolls do what they're made to do, and I didn't feel like doing anything.

Somebody was weeping and wailing, far away. The voice kept echoing off the walls, like a crowd of ghosts. I wanted that to stop. So, after a while, it stopped.

Time passed. Time always passes, so that's doubly redundant. (Just like me. What need does the story have for another Heather?) Perhaps an hour passed, perhaps two, maybe three. The light darkened slowly into a deepening grey, retreating like storm clouds before night's vanguard. After another while the light brightened again, but not from the same source. A sickly greenish glow stood beyond the edge of the pit, steady and weak and cold, like something gathering its courage to look down at the abandoned toy within. Things stayed that way for another long time. How long? I didn't give a shit. (Can't shit, no guts!)

Three fairies came to look down into the pit. None of them glowed green, which seemed like an oversight.

First was Aspen, the butterfly girl. She'd exchanged her bloodstained cotton-candy powderpuff dress for a quasi-military number gold and white and bright purple, with piping and buttons and a little hat, a tight white skirt and high boots with big heels. Her left arm was bandaged and bound to her chest in a sling. Her hair was up in a ponytail. She brought an escort of several dozen dolls, all armed with spears and pikes, like she was terrified that I might leap out of the pit and have another go at her. (Boo!)

All very cute. I'd like to see that faux-military fairy-uniform ragged and rumpled as she tries to wriggle out from beneath me.

I lay on the floor and stared at nothing. Aspen shouted a lot.

After Aspen went away, Calderon showed up. He didn't say as much as Aspen, and he didn't shout, just stood there stroking his big bushy beard, looking over his shoulder with his big wet eyes. His hooves and his cane clomped and clicked off somewhere else in the big room a few times, rattling chains and banging doors, vast echoes passing over the top of my little black void. He returned again and spoke for a while.

"None of this is my usual area of interest, you see?" he bleated. "It can't be certain, it can't! But we're all on the page now, do you understand? Give me a sign if you do, just a blink, a sigh, anything. Anything! You must … you must keep us on the page, you understand? You must try. This is the first time I have tasted freedom in longer than I can recall. As long as you keep us on the page, we can do so much! You must. You must."

Calderon left. Much later after that, Mave visited. She showed herself as a pair of greenish eyes peering over the lip like daggers in the gloom. She said nothing at all. She clattered and yelped, and left a heap of something behind, near the lip, but too far back to tell what it was. A shadow was the only evidence, and shadows all became one down there.

More time passed.

(It always does. Even when it feels like it doesn't. Especially when it feels like it doesn't.)

I was good at this, right? Good at what? Waiting, of course. In prison. Stillness, silence, nothing beyond. But not submission, no. Never submission. Never submit, never give in, never let the cold and the dark and the infinite nothingness win. Burn whatever you must, whatever you have, just to keep the fires going. Burn it all. Burn, burn, burn.

(You always lose track in the end. No matter how much you burn.)

Somebody was screaming again. Sobbing, crying, howling in that terrible animal way that gets into your brain, like you're back to being a naked ape crouched in some cave and you've just heard one of your troop get dragged into the dark by a big cat. Makes you want to leap to your feet and grab a rock. But I was a doll, not an ape, not a human, so I just lay there and let it happen.

The screaming and crying went on for a while. Until I wanted it to stop. Then it stopped.

Been here before. Done all this before. In prison, you know? Ten years of the worst imprisonment you can imagine. Solitary confinement makes people go totally batshit fucking crazy in record time. It's really quite remarkable. Did you know that? Yeah? You did? Really? How could you, unless you've been locked in a cell, by yourself, and there's nothing and nobody there, not even somebody on the other side of the bars. I don't think I believe you. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

(I'm sorry.)

More screaming, lots more. That time it went on for too long. A face appeared, dark and sad and full of hushes and shushes and gentle words.

The screaming trailed off into hiccuping sobs. The face stayed for a while, then withdrew.

I had no idea what was going on, except that I had fucked everything up.

…

This adventure had started with a strange girl in the kitchen of Number 12 Barnslow Drive — a cute thing wearing my face, who got cuter when I pulled a knife on her. I had fallen for that trick, because I had wanted to, and then I had ended up Outside. (If this even was Outside, because that was a question up for further questioning.) Then Kimberly, then Muadhnait, then the Mimic again, then dolls, then fairies. I had fallen for one after the other in a string of inconsequential flings. I was a total slut, couldn't help myself from burying my face in each of them in turn. And what had I found at the centre? Hidden away like a pocket of rot in the core of a dripping wet fruit? Something real and hard and old.

A mage.

And now I was in a pit, in prison, because I was a slut who could not focus or make up my mind. Better for others to move and pose and use me, because I didn't know how to use myself.

…

Those kinds of thoughts went on for a while, until they turned inward on themselves and formed a kind of pattern. The pattern gave me a few paces of distance, just enough so that I could hold the notions at arm's length and see how they were made. All this was no relief, not from the puzzle-pattern of being Maisie Morell. I was still just staring at the pieces without putting them together. Churning the puzzle and then throwing it on the floor. Very mature of me.

Maybe somebody else could put the pieces in order for me? Show me who I am?

"Heather?" I muttered. Voice sounded bad, all crusty with dried blood, throat gone thick. "Heather? Sister? Are you here yet? Heather? Heather … "

No Heather.

"Hastur, Hastur, Hastur," I tried again. Nothing.

No Hastur, no Heather, no Maisie.

"Casma? Tenny? Kimberly?"

I was a useless slut and nobody was coming for me because I had made myself all alone.

" … Eileen?"

But I would come for somebody.

Amazingly enough, the fairies hadn't taken my mobile phone, and neither being thrown by magic nor tossed into a pit had cracked the screen. The battery was low and the screen light blinded me, but it still worked. For some unfathomable reason my hands were shaking, which made unlocking the screen a five-attempt challenge.

I opened my recent downloads and stared at the picture I'd saved while eating breakfast two — three? — days ago, of Yuno from Autumn Girls in Red Season. She was very pretty in the way only unreal people can be. But I needed something harder, somebody with more meat. I went deeper into my saved pictures and found an illustration of an another anime girl, called Aoi; there are a lot of anime girls called Aoi, but this was a particular Aoi, from a gacha game about girls who were also battle tanks, (if you have to ask, don't worry, you wouldn't understand it.) Aoi was big in various ways. In the picture she was having a problem with her shirt, which was too small for her. I stared at Aoi for a long time.

Sensation came back like rising waters, and not in the fun way. Everything ached. I winced and swallowed and turned my head to spit out a mouthful of bloody mucus. My head was throbbing — nice big bruise on the back — as were my hips, my ribcage, one shoulder, and all my joints. I was cold and hungry, neither of which mattered, but that didn't help.

"Fuck," I groaned.

I put Aoi away (thank you, Aoi, and I hope you find a shirt that fits your massive tits), and sat up. That made everything hurt much more. Things inside me were crackling and popping with accumulated damage. I grumbled and hissed and swore a bit more, which was nice. Felt better to call bits of my body nasty names.

Still had all my clothes, nice surprise. The fairies hadn't taken my shawl or the tea towel with the little maids on it, but my kitchen knife was gone. I checked for it in my waistband and around where I'd been lying, but no luck there. I was covered in dried blood, it was pretty much everywhere — ruining my tie-dye t-shirt, all down the front of my skirt, crusted in my shawl, soaking the bandages on my feet. Some of it was even in my hair, which was a new experience.

I pulled the tea towel out of my waistband and used it to scrub at the blood on my face. Raked my hair back with my fingers. Rotated bits of myself until they popped and clicked. Checked for deeper wounds — had they tried to run me through? But no, they hadn't touched me. This blood was all from Aspen's arm, and from her fingernails raking down my cheeks. The scratches on my cheeks were scabbed over, tender to the touch. My feet were still bandaged. Muadhnait's handiwork was holding.

Standing up hurt. Walking over to the wall hurt. Jabbing my fingers at the seams between the bricks hurt more, but in a sharper kind of way, so that was okay.

There was no climbing out of the pit. The bricks were flush, the wall was vertical, and I wasn't tall enough to leap.

"Fuck," I said, and my voice quivered. I shouted: "Fuck!"

That felt better. No more shaking.

Something metal went click, a ways behind me. I turned around, sullen, slow — why bother? — and there was Muadhnait.

She was sat on the ground with her back against the black wall of the pit. She'd been deprived of her swords, her crossbow, and her pack. But not her suit of armour.

Her helmet was off.

It lay on the floor beside her, an inverted dome of inch-thick metal, padded and braced on the inside with thick layers of cloth. The rim was lined with a locking mechanism designed to keep it attached to the massive gorget; the locking mechanism had been shattered, little sheered-off ends of steel and broken hardwood all fresh and new in the grey light, like stubs of broken bone. The gorget of her suit was still in place, a ring of metal level with her chin, packed with padding on the inside. Beneath her armour she was wearing something green, with a high collar that coated her neck and chin.

I kept my eyes carefully off her face, kept her peripheral. What if she really was Heather, under her helmet? I wouldn't have been able to deal with that. I started to shake, couldn't figure out why.

Muadhnait went click-click again, gauntlets moving. She signed in silence: "Are you okay?"

"Define that," I said.

My voice was so small. I coughed, trying to make it bigger. Muadhnait hesitated. Still the same. I looked at her face.

She wasn't Heather. She wasn't even remotely Heather.

Muadhnait had the powerful, piercing, pool-dark eyes of a picture-book aristocrat, the elegant jawline of a princess, and a mouth that could kill just by twitching the lips. Her skin was darker than her eyes, the colour of sunset on sand. Her hair was cut very short, maybe for the helmet, with only a few days of fuzzy black growth on her head.

The software didn't fit the hardware. Confidence would have made her regal. Terror and defeat left her merely beautiful. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles of stress and her lips quivered over words unsaid. A little dried blood clung to the skin beneath her nose.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

She started to sign again.

"Still not talking?" I asked. My throat was painful, like I'd swallowed a handful of nails. I cleared it, hard. More pain. Tried again. "Even with the helmet off? Off with her head, but no chatter from the neck?"

Muadhnait hesitated. Her hands floated to a halt. She swallowed, throat bobbing. She wet her lips. Her tongue was very pink in the grey light.

"I'm only ribbing you," I said. "Teasing, winding you up, having you on. You don't have to talk if you don't want. Don't have to want if you don't … don't." I tutted at my own incoherence. Couldn't get myself in order. My hands kept opening and closing. Nothing to hold onto. My guts were churning with the lost memory of once being hot and wet on the inside.

Muadhnait let out a deep sigh. Her face seemed on the verge of collapse, like the earth over a sink-hole.

"My … my armour is … already breached," she said out loud. "I sign-talk only from force of habit. What point is there, now? What point was there, ever? Holding back will not slow the process."

Her voice was low and rich and deep, the kind of voice that would make a lot of money lulling people to sleep on the internet, the sort of voice that some people go absolutely crazy for.

(Not me.)

"What process?" I croaked.

Muadhnait gestured at her face and throat, as if tracing the arc of her breath. "Corruption. To which I assume you are immune, as you've been exposed all this time. I should … I should ask again, shouldn't I?"

"Ask what? Ask away."

"Are you okay?" Muadhnait asked me again. She didn't seem to hope for a good answer.

"Define okay."

Muadhnait hesitated. Looked away, then at the walls, then back at me, then away again. Without the dark slot of her visor, her eyes were so mobile, always checking the corners, running along the lip of the pit, never staying in one place for long. She was shivering and shaking inside her armour. She looked like she'd been weeping and crying, her eyes were so ringed with red.

"You were … screaming," she said. "On and off, for … maybe hours, it's hard to tell, down here. Whatever mood took you, it seems to have passed? Are you feeling better?"

"I was screaming?"

(Was I?)

Muadhnait's eyes stopped on mine. "Yes. Like I said. On and off."

Well, my throat was raw. I shrugged. "I've been in prison before. How do we get out of here?"

Muadhnait allowed her head to fall back against the black stone wall. Her eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open. "We don't," she said. "It's over."

I stepped closer to her. Reached for my kitchen knife and came up empty handed. Grabbed my shawl instead, pulling it off my shoulders and wrapping the ends around my fists. "You and I are both still breathing. Story's not over until we're done."

Muadhnait shook her head. Her eyes were tight, but she was out of tears, all dried up. "We are dead. We are the dead. We have even been … " Her throat bobbed. She struggled against something worse than tears. "Buried."

"Shut the fuck up," I snapped.

Muadhnait shrugged.

No, no. Wrong track. Wrong words. I clenched hard, had to stop shaking. Bullshit.

"Doesn't mean we're done," I tried again. "Done when you're done, not when you're down. Down, not out. And we're still Outside. Still here. Hear me?"

Muadhnait's lips tried to smile, but then collapsed into something worse than a frown. She grit her teeth and let out a sound that would make her feel ashamed if I repeated it here, so I won't, because she was more than that sound. She banged the back of her head against the stone wall, just once, then sobbed.

"You're not okay," I said. "Not-okay-er less than me."

Muadhnait raised her hands and looked at her metal gauntlets. They were both shaking. Her teeth chattered as she spoke. "I thought that courage would come, at the end. It has not."

"You had plenty of courage with a sword."

She made a little sound, the orphan of a laugh. "Courage? I was outmatched, in ways I couldn't even see. Outfought by a dandy with a blade of grass. Even if we had not met the witch, those fairies would have killed me. You saw that fight, you saw that I couldn't land a single blow. They would have ended me when they tired of the sport. That's what we are to them. Sport."

"I cut Aspen," I said. "Cut her for real. Real good. You saw that, too."

Muadhnait tried another laugh, but it was stillborn. "You're from Outside. I am … bound, to this."

"Not your fault," I said. "This place is bullshit."

Muadhnait shook her head. " … I … I am very afraid to die."

"You're not going to die. Not again."

Muadhnait lowered her gauntlets back into her lap. She looked at me with some hated cousin to awe. "I died when I fell, didn't I? I was dead. I remember nothing. Nothing. It wasn't even like being asleep. It was … did you truly bring me back to life?"

"Don't think so." I shrugged. "Doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen again."

Muadhnait managed a small smile, but it was stretched thin over her face. "I wish I had half your confidence, Miss Maisie. You are … baffling. You are a thing from Outside, but you look like a human being. You act as if all this is already determined. Is it? N-no, don't … don't tell me that, I can't … I can't … "

I shrugged. "I'm not going to let you die. Even if you try."

Muadhnait shook her head again. "What else is there for us to do? I had no idea there would be a witch here." She gestured at her armour, sunk in the shadows. I noticed some of the lines — the magic circles and esoteric designs — were blackened, as if cooked by an electrical current. "My suit turned away the worst of the witchcraft, but still I failed."

"I know how to kill mages," I said. "Generally you put metal in them and they stop like everyone else. Stop and go still. Still works. You know?"

Muadhnait gave me a look of exhausted disbelief. "You propose to slay a witch?"

"Sure. Why not. Don't say it can't be done. I know it can."

Muadhnait raised her hands in a helpless gesture. "Even … " She took a deep breath. "Even if we could get out of here and kill the wizard … my … my sister … " Muadhnait swallowed. "She is a fairy now. I was not insensible to her words in that inner sanctum. She has chosen this, for some reason I can't comprehend. If I could comprehend it, I suspect I would lose my mind. Even if I could rescue her, we can never go home. Do you understand that, Miss Maisie? Do you understand what I've chosen to do?"

"You've said it before, asked me before. I got it the first—"

"No," Muadhnait interrupted, gently enough that it worked (on me). Her voice dropped to a murmur. "You are an Outsider. You have failed to comprehend what was expected of me, by my hold, by the guild masters, by what remains of my extended family. I … I didn't mean to lie to you, I only—"

"I already guessed the truth," I said. "Truth is like that, tends to be truthy. I just chose not to think about it. Thought you would take the other option."

Muadhnait hung her head. Couldn't meet my eyes. "There is no other option."

"You were expected to kill your sister," I said. "And-slash-or die in the attempt. Right?"

Muadhnait nodded, very slightly.

"What's supposed to happen if you killed her and got away?" I asked. "Is there a plan for every fail state, a state for every failure?"

Muadhnait took a deep breath and raised her head, putting her skull back against the stone again. Sorrow and fear had given way to a grimace, almost like anger. (Good girl, getting there.) She gritted her teeth and stared at the shadows.

"I am expected to die in my armour," she said, voice jagged as a rusty saw. "The fact my helmet has been removed — even by force — is proof that I have already failed. But I don't … I don't care about that. I don't care about any of that." She took a deep, sharp, hissing breath. "I just don't want to die. I don't want to lose Neassa. But … but here I am. I am dead."

"Did you agree to it?" I asked.

Muadhnait blinked at me. "Agree to what?"

"All this. The armour. Killing your sister. All of it. Any of it."

It was a good thing I didn't have my kitchen knife, because then I might not have gotten an honest answer. I pulled the shawl tight between my fists.

Muadhnait shook her head and shrugged, armoured shoulders going up and down. "I just wanted to bring her home. I … I told myself that maybe she was still human. Maybe everybody was mistaken, or the stories about what happened to people who were taken, those were just all lies. I told myself that it would be fine, I would bring her home. Maybe even if she was a fairy now, I could … we could … live in the woods, or in the wilds somehow, I … I told myself lies."

"I'm going to rewrite your story," I said. "Give it a new ending. No more end for you."

Muadhnait looked at me like I was mad (I was). "How?" she asked. "Where could we go? Me and Neassa, we can't go home, even if I can get her out of here, even if she wants to come away from this place, I don't—"

"With me," I said. "Outside."

Muadhnait stared, then laughed, once, sad and real. Her laugh was like a rain cloud. "Human beings cannot survive Outside."

"They can. There's places you can go. Leave that part to me. And to my sister."

Apparently that didn't inspire any confidence. Muadhnait thought I was crazy (and I probably was), and she didn't believe a word of it. But I didn't care. I would do it anyway.

It had become very important to me that Muadhnait was going to have a happy ending, with her sister.

Why? Had I fallen for her? No. That would be a very Heather answer.

"Now," I said. "Or earlier. How do we get out of this pit?"

Muadhnait cast her eyes up and around. "I … I don't think there's a way up. It's too sheer to climb, and there's no handholds. They may have a ladder, or a rope, but it'll be up there, out of our reach. We'll have to wait."

"For what?"

Muadhnait shrugged. "For … for one of the fey to return. Or for … "

She trailed off before she said the obvious. I wouldn't have let her, anyway.

I spent a while trying to get out of the pit. Walked the perimeter, looking for a loose brick, because that was the kind of thing you expected to find in a fairy tale, right? Loose bricks, concealed mechanisms, hidden passageways. I tested the gaps between the masonry, seeing if I could pry a stone loose or ram my fingers in somewhere they were not meant to be. There were some bones at the far end of the pit, but they didn't look human, with femurs as long as my torso. I picked one of those up and tried to hook it onto the lip of the pit, but that was a stupid idea and didn't work.

No way out. In the void, in the pit. Only patterns to trace. No skies, no sun, just deep. Forever and ever and ever.

Eventually I came and sat next to Muadhnait. She greeted me with silent eyes, so big and sad. I wanted to slap her.

Silence happened for a while. Was the ground shaking, or was that me? My abdomen felt hot and stormy; the memory of Briar's golden hooks? She wasn't tugging on me, though. Perhaps I was no use to her anymore. Not even a good doll.

"You don't look much like your sister," I said.

Muadhnait sighed. "Yes. She's a fairy now."

"Oh. Right. Yes."

Muadhnait swallowed and shifted in her armour. When she spoke, her voice was dreamy and soft. "She always wanted to be … more. More than she is, I mean. I never understood it, but when she was little, she would point at illustrations in the books we used to read. Dragons, trolls, gargoyles, that kind of thing. She would point and say 'I want to be that'." Muadhnait shook her head. "She got in trouble. Got hit for it, more than once. Learned to hide the desire. I knew what she admired, though, and I never … never told her … "

Muadhnait trailed off.

"And now she's gotten what she wanted?" I asked. "Wanted all along. Wanted to be wanted."

Muadhnait shrugged. "I don't know. I don't understand what it is she wanted."

"To be real."

Muadhnait turned her head to look at me. "In service to that witch? We saw the same thing, Miss Maisie. That horrible thing, it can't be worth whatever price it paid for my sister's service, it can't."

My turn to shrug. Muadhnait looked away. Silence returned. Didn't like that.

"I've been in prison before," I said.

"Mm. You said."

"It's fucking me up," I admitted. (It was.) "If I think about it, it's going to break me. We need to work on getting out." (We did.)

Muadhnait turned to look at me, big dark eyes creased with sympathy — and then she jumped out of her skin and jumped to her feet, clanking and scraping against the stone. No sword in her hands, but she put up her fists, ready to fight. All the shaking and shivering left her like water off a duck's back. Her expression vanished, face set, ready for whatever she'd seen. I stumbled upright and whirled around, following her eyes. I had no knife. Didn't care.

A woman was standing in the nearest corner of the pit. She hadn't been there before.

She took a step out of the deep grey shadows, into what passed for light down there in the dark.

Close-cropped grey hair matched cold grey eyes, set in a lined and weathered face pinned tight by starch and self-discipline. She wore a baggy military combat uniform, in grey-on-grey pixelated camo-print. Her battered old boots and her patched, scarred bulletproof vest were both completely out of place in this faux-fantasy dungeon, a note out of tune, just like me. Straight-backed but sagging inside, she stood with her chin raised and her eyes half-lidded, mouth firm, cheeks gaunt.

"And-Steel-Will-Rust," I said. "I knew it. I knew it had to be one of you."

Steel raised an eyebrow.

Muadhnait said, "Who is this? How did she get down here without us seeing? You!" Muadhnait raised her voice. "Who are you?"

"I know her," I said. "Her name is Steel."

"Another Outsider?" Muadhnait hissed.

"Yes," I said.

Steel — full name And-Steel-Will-Rust — was one of Seven's many sisters, another daughter of The King in Yellow. Heather had met Steel twice, once during her initial audience with the King, and once again when she had visited Carcosa to ask advice about the Eye. My interest in Steel was little-to-none, except as another free-floating component of my sister's life. She just wasn't my type.

Which was going to make gutting her alive so much easier.

"You don't know me," said Steel. Her voice was clipped and tight. "You know of me. That is an important distinction under these circumstances. And I know of you, though I have never seen you before. We've never met. Don't confuse memory with experience."

I took a step toward her. I was empty handed, but I pulled my shawl off my neck again and stretched it between my fists. I'd use my nails and teeth if I had to. "I knew all this had to be one of you. One of you or all of you. All of this. All that. That and all and— tch!" I spat and took another step. I was going to pull her head off and spit down the severed stump of her neck and—

"You think this dross is my work?" Steel said. "Don't insult me. This whole thing is already a massive waste of my time."

I took another step. Wasn't thinking.

Steel's outline flickered — less than an eye blink, just long enough to leave the impression of beetle-black chitin and razor-sharp spikes, a hissing maw and strangler's hands, black and bony, with too many fingers.

(Show off. You think I wouldn't?)

Then she was back, frumpy military uniform and grey hair and a sour look on her face.

Muadhnait swallowed a gasp. "What— what was—"

I took another step toward Steel. "I don't care what mask you threaten me with. Threaten me with a good time. I'll make a good time out of your fucking bones."

Steel raised both eyebrows. "You really would, wouldn't you?" She shook her head. "You're just as crazy as your sister."

Another step. "I will fucking eat you—"

Steel held out one hand. "Hold. I'm just a messenger."

"From?"

"Several people. My father, Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight, the Lilburne girl, and your sister, the other Morell."

Steel's face was difficult to read. She was like an old soldier who'd seen too much, covered in layers of grime and dust.

"I don't believe—"

"I was given a phrase to repeat." Steel's eyes flickered to Muadhnait. "Your ears only, Morell."

"She's fine," I said. "Say it."

"I was instructed—"

"Fuck you," I shouted. "Say it or we fight. No knife, no knife, against whatever you've got. I'll strangle your bullshit alien crap and crack it open to eat the meat inside. I don't believe it, or Heather would be here, my sister would be here, she would be—"

"My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it may break."

Shadows lengthened. Muadhnait swallowed loudly. I lowered my shawl, (which was lucky, because it wouldn't have worked anyway.)

"You just pulled a random Shakespeare quote," I said, but I knew that wasn't true.

"I have no idea what it means," said Steel. "She insisted you would understand."

And so I did.

…

You'd think I'd be relieved, wouldn't you? Nobody but my sister knew that was my favourite line of Shakespeare. Nobody but her knew I'd ever read any Shakespeare, because she was the one who'd read it to me, at her own insistence. I wasn't going to do that under my own steam. Not my style, really. Not my jam. But I would listen to her read anything she wanted. She could read the phone book line by line. She could read the shipping forecast.

So nobody knew, except Heather.

Steel was Heather's authentic messenger. The alternative was too complicated to be plausible, that this completely inconsequential secret had worked its way from Heather to the Yellow Court, and was being deployed against me for some esoteric purpose.

So, why didn't I feel any better?

Because Heather knew where I was, and yet Heather was not here.

…

I shook my head. "That proves nothing. You and yours can read minds. Mind the gap between me and you, because I'm—"

"Fine," Steel said, and started to take a step back. "I'm going home."

"No," I said. "Wait."

Steel stopped. Her eyes were like little chips of volcanic sky. She didn't have the kind of face I wanted to bully. Her tears would taste awful. "I'm not going to fight you, Maisie Morell. Your sister would be very upset. Besides, you bore me."

I shook my head and swallowed. Why did I feel so cold? "Where … where is she? Heather, where is she? Why send you? Why—"

"Your sister is in Carcosa, at my father's court. She has appealed to him for help."

"Why isn't she here?!" I shouted.

Steel stepped forward again, hands clasped behind her back, chin tilted upward. "Your sister's mental model of 'Outside' is woefully inadequate, and I assume yours is the same. The universe is not a series of soap bubbles, whose membranes can be passed through at will."

"But Heather—"

"Is a thing from the abyss, yes. But her methods won't get her in here. She's already bounced off half a dozen times. Had to be stopped before she injured herself, or so I've gathered."

"My sister can't get in here?" I wanted to laugh. "Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit."

Steel shrugged. "This place, this dimension, it works according to whatever story they want."

"They?"

Steel unclasped her hands from behind her back and pointed with one index finger — up. I followed, and found the pattern-faces staring back down at us from the grey shadows clustered against the ceiling, their features made from the fall of darkness across the stony underside of the world. They looked bored and uninterested, but they were paying attention, filling the room wider and longer than the space itself, swimming in and out of focus.

"If your sister arrived," Steel drawled on, "that would end this story. They don't like endings, so she can't get in."

I stared and stared and stared at her. Steel was easy to make eye contact with. She stared back, hard as her name. She never blinked.

"Then how did you get in here?" I asked.

A sigh. "Because something in here is relevant to my … special interests." Her eyes flickered my length, looking me up and down. "This was unexpected. Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight has been forcing everyone she can get her hands on to try to get in here. I'm simply the first with anything applicable." She nodded toward the ceiling and the pattern-faces again. "As far as they're concerned, I'm just part of the audience. As long as I don't threaten their good time." She shrugged. "That's the message. Your sister knows where you are."

I ignored that for now. Faith was its own reward, but I felt cold.

"What are they?" I said. "The pattern faces, the audience, up there. What are they?"

Steel glanced at Muadhnait. I looked back as well, and found Muadhnait utterly bewildered.

"You would not understand," said Steel.

I focused on her again. "I understand you well enough. Understand that. How are they different?"

Steel's perfectly composed expression of steely disinterest crumpled into genuine offense, a craggy old-woman frown on her forehead. "I'm an artist," she said. "My father is an artist. All my siblings and relatives are artists. Do you understand what that word means? It means more than just scribbling whatever comes into your head. It means crafting a process, and accepting ends. These things?" She gestured at the ceiling again. "They just want endless repetition without change. Gratification without resolution. And I happen to specialise in very final resolutions indeed. Do you understand that? Maybe you can't, not in your condition."

"My condition? Conditionally, what?"

Steel snorted, then crossed her arms and looked away. "I shouldn't care. This is pandering."

"How do I get out?" I demanded. "Or … " I almost didn't say it. "How do I get Heather in?"

Steel sighed and looked at me again. She rolled her eyes. Seemed to think for a moment. "You would have to adjust things far enough to give her a narrative opening. I … I don't know how. This kind of story doesn't interest me. Though … "

Her eyes flickered down again. This time it was obvious.

She was glancing at my lower abdomen.

At Briar's golden hooks?

"Perhaps you should make yourself into a damsel in distress?" Steel said.

I snorted. "Heather would rescue me and end the story. Same as she ended it once before." I gestured at the pattern faces. "They won't allow that, right?"

Steel shrugged. "Then I have no idea. Like I said, not my area."

"Then why did you come?"

Steel stared. "You're just as obstinate and wilfully ignorant as your sister, too. You just hide it differently. I already told you. I came because my sister — whom I love — is distressed over this. My duty is done, I've given you the message."

I waited a beat. "Then why aren't you leaving?"

Another glance, at my lower abdomen, again. She tried to conceal it, but there was heat in Steel's eyes.

"Steel," I said before she could reply. "What are you looking at?"

Steel clicked her tongue. "If you want to get your sister in here, so she can rescue you, you need to make sure her arrival won't end the story. That's the summary version. Execution is up to you, I have no advice there."

"Steel."

Steel looked at my eyes.

"What. Are. You. Looking. At."

Steel smiled. Such a hungry smile. Such hungry meat.

"Actually, on second thought," she said. "Maybe I'll stay and watch this next part."