Content Warnings

Brief mention of implied sexual assault (kinda) (doesn’t happen)

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Did I enjoy that five-hour cross-country hike — shoeless, forearms bare, dressed in a shawl, following the iron-shod shoulders of an armoured nun from Outside?

What a stupid question.

I know what you’re thinking. (You can call it an educated guess, if you’re feeling paranoid.) You’re comparing me with my sister again — she of the collapsible rubber legs, she who cannot run further than the width of her bedroom before stopping to catch her breath; she who can only venture out into the sedately boring English countryside with a sturdy walking stick in her hands, a waxed coat over her shoulders, and a local map open on her phone, as if you can’t just walk in one direction for thirty minutes almost anywhere on this rainy island and trip over a strip of painted asphalt. Heather’s apotheosis has made her a bit more bold about going out of doors — one must be blind to her tentacles to deny that — but the underlying truth remains. She is still who she is, whatever certain parties claim. My sister is the indoors type, for whom the most suitable form of exercise is the horizontal bed-top sprint.

Or—

Maybe I’m wrong?

Maybe you didn’t think of Heather at all. Perhaps you thought of me, via my habits — the vastly disordered collection of anime on my computer; the cute girl serving as my phone’s wallpaper; my taste in entertainment and culture; maybe even the way I dress. Did you assume I would spurn the outdoors and complain about sore feet after five minutes? Do you think I’m more comfortable tucked up in bed with headphones on? Did you imagine me as a hikikomori, happier with cartoons behind closed curtains?

No, you probably didn’t make that mistake.

I’ll give you that much. (And I suggest you treasure it.)

I did enjoy that hike. I loved it. And not just because of Kimberly’s clammy hand trapped in mine.

The landscape we passed through could pass as mostly mundane at first glance, if you kept your eyes on your own feet or other people’s backs. Green grass, brown dirt, pale rocky outcrops jutting from beneath the thin soil closer to the edge of the cliff, the occasional thorny stretch of low bush like barbed steel wool pooling in the depressions between the hills — all almost earth-like, even if the plants were not quite right. But seen from the air, you’d clock this place instantly. Trees were few and far between, stunted straggling cousins to the giant’s forest falling further away on our left. The spiked leaves on the bushes glistened with a layer of oil, like holly dunked in syrup, daring you to lick them; they adjusted themselves openly if they managed to linger in your peripheral vision. Ferns were everywhere, but their patterns were wrong, too complex compared with their distant relatives on Earth. The cliff to our right seemed to stretch on forever, both in front and behind, as if immune to the horizon beyond the castle on the faraway headland. The ocean was flat and black and silent (and that was the only part I didn’t enjoy.)

Muadhnait led the way, up the slow incline of rising hills, into the loose tangle of ridges and rocks, threading our needle between soaring copses and sprawls of razored brambles. She had strong legs and a powerful stride; she could probably have left us behind if she’d tried, but she was too much the nun for that, always careful never to go too fast, always glancing back to make sure Tenny and Casma had not fallen too far to the rear. Nun she might be, but Heather would have gladly knighted her for that kindness.

I was less certain, as you may surmise.

Muadhnait paused a lot, for reasons that had nothing to do with we four flawed damsels watching her metal rump. Whenever the waves of the hills overlapped into crested confusion, she stopped to consult a map which she had tucked into one of the pouches at her waist; it was annotated in a language I couldn’t recognise (which you shouldn’t put too much stock in). Several times she halted on high ridges to look out over the landscape to our left and to our rear; I knew exactly what she was doing, but I decided not to ask the question. (Casma could probably work it out on her own.) I took those opportunities to look back the way we’d come, with the giant’s forest spread out like thick carpet on the floor of a vast valley, creeping away to a distant horizon. We could just about hear the creaking and groaning, even all the way up there.

Three times Muadhnait stopped suddenly, drew and spanned her crossbow, and motioned for silence.

We never met whatever prompted her caution. (Were you faking, Templar Nun? Who were you trying to impress? Me? You shouldn’t have.) But each time we stayed still and crouched low and waited for her armoured hand to lower the bow. The Mimic never showed, which left me rather sad. I wanted my slut to come claim her reward.

Though we did spot plenty of weird shit crawling about the landscape as we rose higher above the hills.

Do you want to know? Fine.

A great lumbering mound with a single massive eye in the middle, hide like stone, trundling along on a hundred tiny legs. A hole in a hillside, square like a trapdoor, twenty feet wide, the innards pitch black; a tree stood within an arm-span of that unbarred portal, hung with strange fruit which might have been corpses, or merely been too far away to tell. One of the straggling giant trees, turned to solid rock, a wide margin around the base bare of grass, earth soaked the colour of cold vomit. A crumbled tower on a lonely hill, the jagged stone tip like the lower jaw of a skull. A wriggle of shiny shell like a giant centipede, sliding between the cleavage of the hills, dark chitin reflecting the grey of the clouds, as wide across as a double-decker bus. Two corpses, locked in an embrace, tucked into a hollow of earth — not rotten or reduced to skeletons, but rendered down into mummification, dry and brown as ancient bark.

Kimberly didn’t like any of those. She always looked away.

What should I tell you about Kimberly and I holding hands? That it felt good? That should be obvious. How about the way it allowed me to indulge in a fantasy which I knew could never be real? Even more obvious, and barely worth repeating. Would you like some juicy details instead? Like how Kimberly squeezed my hand whenever we stopped, whenever we saw something spooky in the distance, whenever Muadhnait paused and drew her crossbow?

Would you believe me? Would you enjoy yourself at my expense?

Don’t lie. You would. You are.

What if I told you that Kimberly and I held hands all the way, for five straight (ha!) hours? What if I told you that when we were done, I licked her sweat from my palm? What if I insinuated or implied or implicated you in the fact we parted so reluctantly? What if I said we fucked that night? What if I fed you a load of bullshit lies? Would you like that?

We would both like that, wouldn’t we? And I could make it real, by saying it now, by pretending it happened. You wouldn’t know the difference.

Kimberly and I held hands sometimes. We parted at others. It wasn’t practical to link hands during all the uphill sections of the journey. Sometimes Kimberly got uncomfortable, or I wanted to switch in which hand I was carrying my towel-wrapped kitchen knife, or we caught up with Tenny and Casma and it was easier to walk beside them for a bit. Or we just got tired of the pose, because holding hands for five hours is an absurdly long time. Did you really believe a word of what I said before?

Did we fuck that night?

Take a wild guess. Believe whatever you want.

An average human being can walk about 20 miles a day, if they’re trying hard, well prepared, and have done that sort of thing before. (Yes, I had to look that up. What, you think I have that sort of information memorised? I’m not Praem, however much I wouldn’t mind having her frame.) Except for Muadhnait, we were none of those three things, so it took us five hours to cover what Muadhnait had predicted would take four. Later on, when our Templar Nun revealed things to me and me alone, I learned that she had actually budgeted two and a half hours to reach her way point, so even her estimate of our speed was way off.

Though it wasn’t for want of trying. We took a few breaks, mostly for Kimberly and Tenny, but as a group we weren’t that bad at it. Tenny’s unique biology made her well-suited to endurance — though her unique psychology threatened to distract her with open skies and the promise of flight, so Casma had to keep up a five-hour stream of whispered conversation; I caught a few snatches of programming and strategy talk, about the game they were working on, stuff like that. Casma walked without a care, wearing several holes into the soles of her white tights. Kimberly was more robust than she looked; lots of huffing and puffing and going red in the face, but she didn’t complain. (But you could have, Kimberly. You could have complained and I would have listened. Do you think I could have carried you on my back? I think I could have. We could have tried.)

Muadhnait shared a waterskin and food from her pouches — thick black chunks of biscuit-like bread, dense and heavy. Apparently they tasted like sour dough. The water was clean. Casma tested it first.

I didn’t need to drink or eat or slow my pace. I could have, if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t need to. So I didn’t.

After about three and a half hours of walking, during a long stretch of relatively flat ground along the top of several interlinked ridges, Kimberly asked me a question. It was not the first time she’d spoken to me during the hike. We’d been next to each other, sometimes holding hands, for over three hours. Despite whatever you might think, Kimberly is not a complete social incompetent. We had discussed My Little Pony, Demonic Magical Girl Tsubame-sama, and several other anime for over half that time. But that’s private. You’ll have to ask her for those details.

(You don’t have to say a word, Kim.)

Kimberly leaned a little closer to me, and spoke in a low voice. “Maisie. I’m … I’m not sure if this makes sense, and … and stop me if it doesn’t. A-and I’m maybe just being paranoid, I’m not sure, but … well … as a thought experiment—”

“You can do it,” I muttered.

Kimberly pulled her eyes away from Muadhnait’s iron back. The Templar Nun was far enough ahead that she couldn’t hear us. Neither could Tenny and Casma.

“I … I’m sorry, Maisie?”

“She can’t hear us, not this far back, behind her back, not if we whisper. Whisper your suspicions, Kim. I’ll be the only suspect.”

Kimberly gulped, which was very gratifying. “I’m not casting suspicion on Muadhnait,” she whispered. “Well, not … directly. I’m just wondering. How does she understand English?”

I shrugged. “British Empire got everywhere, didn’t it?”

Kimberly sighed. “That’s … well … I … ”

“A joke.”

She tried to smile, which I caught peripheral, and I appreciated the effort; that joke was shit.

“Ah, um, right,” she said. “But … I’m serious, Maisie. She can understand us, and she spoke English, even if it was only two words. I don’t know very much about the mechanics of Outside, not compared with Evelyn, and especially not with Heather. But getting transported here or stepping through a gate, that doesn’t give us all a universal translator or something. We shouldn’t be able to understand her, human or not. Something very odd is going on here.”

I turned my head and touched her gaze. Kimberly tried not to flinch.

Cute.

“You think?”

Kimberly blushed. Her eyes went elsewhere. “W-well, yes, I mean, I know this is all very odd in the first place, but this specifically, this thing with language, how can—”

“What are you suggesting? Or are you thinking out loud, being allowed to think, thinking loudly? Tch.” I had to tut and go elsewhere. Why was looking at Kimberly suddenly harder than usual, even though she was the one averting her eyes?

(Don’t tell me. It’s a rhetorical question.)

Kimberly shrugged in my periphery. “I’m not sure. Maybe when the ‘Mimic’ brought us here, she did something to us. Or maybe this method of travel does it. Or … ” She lowered her voice even further, to a true whisper. “Or maybe this isn’t Outside at all.”

She squeezed my hand, which made me look at her again.

She didn’t know what she was doing to me.

(It’s alright, Kim. You didn’t.)

“You think we’re elsewhere? Where?”

“I-I don’t know,” Kimberly hissed. “But it doesn’t feel like Outside. I feel … well, pretty normal, actually. You’ve never been to Camelot, but if you stand out there for more than, like, oh, I don’t know, thirty minutes? You start to feel weird, dissociated. It builds over time. And I’m not feeling any of that right now, though we’ve been here for hours.”

Kimberly looked so serious. Eyes pinched, lips tightened, stray strands of auburn hair stuck to her forehead with a little sweat.

“Besides,” she went on when I didn’t answer. “How could we have Slipped without touching? Even Heather can’t do that.”

“What were you doing when it took you?”

Kimberly’s lips did this twisting thing which was like a little angel had peered around the side of a hedge and then gotten spooked. Her eyes darted to Tenny and Casma, up ahead. She swallowed. She started to blush. She couldn’t answer that question, and I knew it, because I already knew the answer.

“Is your backside damp?” I asked.

“W-what? Sorry? Um— I—”

“Never mind.”

Tenny and Casma were looking away. Muadhnait was up front.

I turned my head and stretched my face toward Kimberly. Her eyes went wide, which was exquisite. Her feet stumbled to a brief halt. And her head — jerked back.

(Not her fault, you understand? It’s not her fault, it was never her fault, and if you so much as imply she was doing anything wrong I will—)

(Forget that.)

“M-Maisie?”

Something very much like lust — but not quite, which was the problem — stumbled to a much harder halt than Kimberly had done. It went cold and limp and looked back at me like a wet dog in a downpour. I told it to fuck off.

“ … you might be right, rightwise,” I whispered quickly. “But this isn’t a dream, or the dream, or dreamwise. Dreamed up dumped down. Heather always said it’s confused at first, blurred and blurry with dream stuff. We’re not in a dream. You’re not dreaming.”

Then I righted myself and pulled on Kimberly’s hand.

Let’s all pretend none of that happened, okay?

Good.

After five hours of slow ascent up the rising hills, we reached Muadhnait’s shelter for the night. The cliff to our left was no longer a clear line and a straight drop to the black ocean down below, but had become tangled in itself — parts of it rising, others dropping and twisting, presumably creating all manner of caves and hollows and shelves and slopes, just out of sight beyond the lip of pale rock. Muadhnait led us back toward that cliff, then between a pair of hills which turned into a narrow gulley, passing through a tangle of bushes and beneath several of the not-so-giant trees.

Beyond that thicket stood a wall, spanning the gulley. Hidden by the curves of the landscape, tucked into the valley like a dam, made of pale stone, each block the size of a double-bed — and ruined. The wall was pitted and worn with age. Creepers and vines and moss and lichen coated the surfaces. Massive doors of solid stone lay half-buried in the dirt. The passage through was big enough for a cargo ship. The wall itself was tall enough to stop a giant.

We passed beneath the wall — almost a full minute of walking in echoing silence, down a tunnel of black with a pinprick of light at either end. That creeped Kimberly out. I could tell because her hand got sweaty. Casma whistled the whole way. Then we emerged into more overgrown gulley, then finally out, into the ruins of a village.

We stumbled (well, they stumbled, I didn’t) to an awestruck halt.

I’m going to spend a few words on that place. I don’t care what you think of it.

The village had been cleverly concealed, tucked into a curve of cliff-side, spread out on a sort of wide shelf which rose toward a little headland. The opposite side of the cliff — the one which towered over the village — was topped with the remains of the rest of the wall we’d passed beneath, a vast margin to keep out unwanted visitors from the mainland. The village itself didn’t seem enough to be worth that scale of protection — half a dozen stone cottages surrounded by long grass, clustered around a central green all overgrown and covered in burned rubble. (Yes, ‘green’. Blame my English provincialisms if you must, but you must also endure them). One of the cottages was a bit larger — three rambling stories built half into the cliff itself, a little way back from the others. A few raw pathways led up the pale cliff sides to other places unseen, or perhaps to other exits through the massive wall.

On the very edge of the headland, a statue stood on a pale plinth, framed by the obsidian ocean.

By the time we reached the dead village, the sun was setting. Orange light simmered almost horizontal through the heavy grey clouds, drowning this beautiful corpse in liquid amber.

(I say ‘sun’, but it was shaped like a ring, with long filaments like tentacles reaching outward. Casma had asked Muadhnait about it on our walk, because only Casma was capable of staring into the sun, but Muadhnait had refused to explain, begging ignorance. I’m not going waste our time by calling it The-Thing-Which-Served-The-Purpose-Of-A-Sun-But-Was-Not.)

“Does this place have a name?” Casma asked. “Or must it remain in an unmarked grave?”

“Good question,” I muttered. “Well questioned.”

Casma smiled at me, which I ignored; she had thought the same thing as I — that this place was a lovely cadaver, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about sharing her thoughts.

Muadhnait turned to us. Her visor was a black slot in the sunset glow playing across her armour. Her fingers spelled out the name. “C-e-a-n-n-m-a-a-m. Ceannmaam died a long time ago, but it is still a good refuge. The walls remain strong, so the worst things cannot get in here. There should be plenty of firewood in the head house, but these stones attract squatters. Do not wander far before we have checked them all.”

She drew her crossbow and yanked the spanning lever. The string thrummed like a drum. A metal bolt slid into place.

I let go of Kimberly’s hand and unwrapped my kitchen knife.

“Maisie,” Kimberly hissed. “Let her deal with checking the houses. Please?”

“Deal’s a deal. Deal with it.”

Kimberly bit her lower lip so hard that I heard her skin squeak. “Okay. Okay. Cas, Tenny, uh, come— come stand behind me, okay? Let Muadhnait and auntie Maisie go first. Just, uh … stay … behind me, right. Right.”

Fortunately for Muadhnait the stone cottages were tentatively untenanted. Several of them sheltered nothing but old bits of fossilised furniture. A couple had partially collapsed, decades ago. There was a lot of juicy moss and lichen everywhere, which made the most delicious smells. In one of the houses, something small and dark and lean flashed out from under an old iron table and bolted between our feet.

Tenny went ‘brrrr-rrrrrt!!!’, Casma squealed, and Kimberly pushed the girls back like she was protecting them from a charging boar. I sighed.

Muadhnait lowered her crossbow, and signed, “Wild cat.”

“Cats?” Kimberly panted, a hand over her heart. “You have cats here?”

Muadhnait hesitated, then signed: “Yes.”

“Cat … ” purred Tenny, staring off at where the little black cat had vanished into the long grass.

Muadhnait was right about the larger house, the one built partially into the cliff side. The ground floor of the structure was crammed with firewood. Three steel-headed axes were propped in a corner, but they didn’t look like they’d been used in months, or maybe years. The wood itself was coated with dust, but it was dry, and that was all which really mattered; it was heavy as lead and dark as ebony. I picked up a stray chunk and slipped it into my skirt pocket.

Muadhnait loaded up on wood. Kimberly hesitated; I didn’t want her to scratch her bare arms, so I stood in the way without looking at her or acknowledging that I was in the way, which made her hesitate long enough to give up. Tenny helped. So did Casma, which was very stupid, because she got her pretty white jumper covered in little splinters which she spent the next hour plucking out of the fabric.

A fire pit lay cold in a sheltered area between the green and three of the cottages. Four very large, dark, heavy logs formed a loose square around the memory of ashes.

“Doesn’t look like it’s been used in years,” said Casma. “Unused and unloved. Poor pit.”

“We’re here now, Cass!” Tenny purred.

Kimberly sighed. “That we are.”

Muadhnait stacked the wood and got to work. I know bugger all about starting fires ,(unless you want me to do it with a lighter. Do you? I will. You won’t even have to ask nicely), but she seemed to know what she was doing. She used a small knife to make shavings as kindling, then messed about with a piece of steel and a chunk of flint. Twenty minutes later we were treated to the crackle and pop of logs in the flames; the fire competed with the dying sun, losing badly.

Muadhnait signed: “It will have to be fed all night long. After sunset we cannot go back for more wood.”

Kimberly was trying not to look worried. “Y-you’re sure this is enough?”

“Almost.”

“I’ll get more!” Casma said. She and Tenny entertained themselves by scattering off back to the big cottage. Kimberly did a horrified double-take and trotted after them.

I was about to follow, but then I stayed to watch Muadhnait.

You might assume that was because I didn’t trust her, but that would be the reaction of a simpleton (and I know that whatever else I am, I’m far from simple.) No, it wasn’t that I thought she was going to do something underhanded or secret, or run off and leave us behind; it was a strange desire to be alone with her for a moment, to see what she would do when nobody but me was looking. Might she remove her helmet, to reveal Heather’s face beneath? Or might she whisper to me in a voice like the Mimic? I was the only one supposed to be here, after all, so perhaps with the secondaries and tertiaries away, something unexpected might happen.

Alas, Muadhnait was more interested in the ground.

Her helmet rotated back and forth several times, looking from the fire to — the grass? The cottages? Something else? She didn’t even glance at me. I was less than scenery.

She strode a few paces away from the fire, then stopped to look back and forth, then strode a few more, then looked, then strode a few more still.

“Measuring for a ball game?” I said out loud. “Pacing for a duel? You still want to test my knife with a test of courage?”

Muadhnait shook her head, big helmet sliding back and forth. She signed: “Please let me concentrate.”

She shuffled around a bit more, looking at the fire, bending so she could see her feet from inside her armour. Then she opened a pouch on her belt, produced a little white sack, and started to sprinkle a fine white powder on the ground.

Salt.

She drew a circle around our fire, about twenty feet out, in salt.

“Fairies,” I said. “Huh.”

Muadhnait flashed an affirmative with one finger.

“So which is it that matters more?” I asked. “More matters. Matter matters? The firelight, or the circle of salt? One of your swords is cold iron, isn’t it? One steel, for the ones who don’t need the extra sapping, and the other meteoric iron, for the fairies.”

Muadhnait looked up and signed: “Of course.”

Kimberly, Tenny, and Casma returned with more firewood — or rather, Casma did, arms laden down with logs, with a refreshingly uncomplicated smile on her face for once. Hooray. Tenny looked like she’d been giggling and Kimberly looked like she’d been forced to herd cats. We all watched Muadhnait finish drawing her circle of salt.

“Night will fall within the hour,” she signed. “When it does, do not step over the ring of salt, and do not leave the firelight. I will not be able to help you. I must prioritise my own kin, I must complete my quest.”

Kimberly made a brief attempt to look bravely unconcerned — then gave up, bit her lower lip, and screwed up her eyes. She did turn away from Casma and Tenny, though, which was brave but not as cute as I had expected. Tenny let out a series of little trills and wrapped a trio of black tentacles around Casma’s arm.

Casma just said, “Okay then. In for the night.”

The others did their best to settle in, though there was precious little to get settled. Kimberly sat on one of the big logs, took off her slippers with a wince, and started to massage her aching feet; I didn’t stare because I’m not into feet. My own bare feet were filthy from the walk, but who cared? Casma arranged some pieces of firewood into a little pyramid. Muadhnait removed the pack on her back and some of the heavier-looking pouches around her waist, then signed to us that she would be back shortly; I assumed she was going to slip behind one of the cottages and open a hidden compartment in her armour so she could take a shit — but she strode off, across the open space in the middle of the village, heading for the statue at the edge of the cliff.

When she got there, she sank to her knees, put her hands in her lap, and bowed her head.

“Brrrrt?” went Tenny.

“Praying, I think,” said Kimberly. “Best leave her be. Why don’t you sit down, Tenns? You look tired.”

“Kimmy-Kimms is more tired.”

“I … I am, yes. Can I have a hug, Tenns?”

“Yaaaaaah.”

The armoured nun was a smudge of grey metal against the gloaming behind the clouds, head bowed to a piece of sculpted stone, for minute after minute. Kimberly said something to my back, but I ignored her, (because ignoring her for now was safer.) She said something more urgent as I left the fire behind, but I ignored that too. I knew she wouldn’t follow.

Muadhnait stayed perfectly still as I approached. The edge of the headland was so silent — no crash of waves from below, no whip of wind around the rocks, no cry of gulls, no creaking of trees all the way out there. The silence of a long-empty grave.

Wasn’t sure if I liked that. The crackle of the fire was better.

The statue was (of) a woman, cut from the same pale stone as the cliffs and the cottages. Dressed in rags of lichen and garlanded with moss, her surfaces worn by time and rain, she was a thing of ruin and rot. She had once been grand — one hand looked as if it had held a sword aloft, while the other clutched a shield all chipped and pitted. Her facial features were blurred. Her hair was long. She was human, or at least human enough.

“Who is she?” I asked.

Muadhnait raised her helmet. Didn’t bother to look at me, just up at the woman. Her hands flickered: “Our Lady of the Forded Briar.”

“And who’s that, when she’s not standing on cliff edges, collecting grime?”

Muadhnait didn’t respond for a little while. I’d probably offended her, which was fun. Then she signed: “A long time ago, all the people were lost in other places. Our Lady forded through the briar that bars worlds from each other. She brought us here.”

“Here doesn’t seem so good, what with fairies and monsters and all. Unless you like that sort of thing. Do you?”

“Here is better than nowhere,” Muadhnait signed.

“You didn’t answer my first question. Back when you were drawing a circle. Firelight or salt? Which matters more?”

Muadhnait made a funny motion that told me she was sighing inside her armour. She signed, “Salt is for the fairies that pretend to not be fairies. The firelight keeps worse things at bay. We have less than an hour until dark. If you need to urinate or defecate, do it soon or you will have to do it within the circle.”

“I don’t need to shit or piss unless I want to.”

Muadhnait hesitated. Her helmet rotated to look at me. A blank slot, black as coal. Were you even in there, nun? Or were you none at all?

“I told you,” I repeated. “I’m not a human being. Did you not believe me? Do you need me to repeat my demonstration?” I gestured at the blood dried on my t-shirt. “Or did you forget?”

“No,” Muadhnait signed. “Thank you.”

Then she stood up and walked away.

Which was fair enough.

The sun hurried below the horizon as if it had an appointment to keep on the underside of the world, (and perhaps it did, because it wasn’t a sun). The orange light deepened until our fire finally stood victorious, which gave the shell of the old village a glimmer of reanimated life. Muadhnait actually cooked some food; she produced a tiny collapsible stove-stand and pot from within her pack, along with some kind of dried meat and a few handfuls of grain. She boiled it up over a low corner of the fire. Kimberly ate like she was starving (which she was). Tenny ate with her tentacles, which made Muadhnait stare until I flicked the handle of my kitchen knife with a fingernail. Casma ate like a bird, because she didn’t strictly need to. Muadhnait ate through a weird little slot beneath the dome of her helmet; I saw no mouth in the darkness within.

There was very little to do except talk, worry about the dark, and talk around the worries about the dark, (though I was not worried about the dark.) The only one who did anything practical was Muadhnait — though she was very predictable; she spent the spare time cleaning and oiling both her swords, then partially dismantling her crossbow to let certain components ‘rest’. She also checked the joints of her armour, but she was a lot more covert about that. Tenny was very interested in the crossbow and how it came apart; I was more interested in finding gaps in the armour.

Kimberly was worried about Tenny and Casma getting cold as the sun went down. But the temperature didn’t seem to be dropping by much, and the fire was plenty. Muadhnait came to a redundant rescue with a trio of blankets from within her pack. Kimberly accepted one, Tenny and Casma took another.

I shook my head. “I don’t get cold. Unless I want to.”

Kimberly started to say: “Maisie, please. I-I know you don’t really need it, but you might want it, and—”

Muadhnait signed, “Do you want to get cold?”

I took the blanket and draped it over my knees.

Eventually there was nothing left to do except watch the coming darkness and wait for sleep. Except nobody was sleepy.

“This is so weird,” Kimberly said. She was sitting with her back to one of the big logs, blanket drawn up around her body, staring into the fire. “This morning we were just … home. Back in Sharrowford it’s probably … what, mid-afternoon?”

Casma and Tenny were sitting together, though Casma took most of their blanket. She said: “Twelve minutes past five in the afternoon. Early evening, or late afternoon? Or both, overlapping? What a question. I like it, though. We should ask it more often.”

“Ah,” Kimberly sighed. “I suppose it’s a bit like jet lag. I’ve never had jet lag. I … I think this is the furthest from home I’ve ever been. I … ”

Her face scrunched up. She hid it by pretending to sneeze into the crook of her arm.

(You shouldn’t have to hide it, Kim.)

She didn’t hide it too well, though. Casma said, “Yes.” Tenny made a series of soft little trilling noises, which should have made me very happy, but which were too sad and worried to have their usual effect.

Kimberly sniffed, then said, “Wish I had something to take the edge off.”

But there was nothing any of us could do; there was nothing I could do. I could not even communicate with Heather.

And in that helplessness was liberation.

…

If it was truly almost quarter past five in the afternoon (yes, afternoon) back in Sharrowford, (and I had no reason to believe Casma was lying, and neither should you), then Heather had probably been home for several hours already. She would be going completely spare with worry. Lozzie would be searching for Tenny with no less love. A certain mother would be tearing the skin off whole worlds to locate Casma — or would she? I mused over the question for a bit, watching the formless patterns of the fire. Casma’s mother did allow her a staggering degree of independence. Maybe she wasn’t worried at all. And then there was Kimberly.

I tried not to think about the people who would be looking for Kimberly. For the sake of my fantasy I decided to pretend they did not exist.

And for all that worry, there was nothing I could do. I could not contact Heather to let her know I was safe, so her worry was not my responsibility.

You probably think I’m horribly cruel for that, don’t you? How can I claim a love for my sister which exceeds the petty affections of family, when I was relieved by the fact that I could not give her relief in turn? (And I’d given her so much of that, more than you could ever know.) How can I be a faithful sister, how can I do justice to her selfless giving of herself, when I let her twist in the wind?

Because I wasn’t letting her do anything.

Do you see? If you don’t, you’re blind. I was not in control there. I did not have the power. I had been kidnapped, against my will, and I was doing everything I could to open the way for Heather, to get us all home. If by some miracle my phone suddenly found a bar of signal, then I would have to message Heather, and all this justification would vanish.

But as long as I was cut off, I was in the clear.

…

“When will we see them?” I asked. “If we can see anything.”

Kimberly looked up from the fire. “Maisie? What do you mean?”

Night had drawn itself over the ruined village in a velvet blanket. The clouds kept the starlight out (if there were any stars), and there didn’t seem to be a moon, so beyond our little pool of salt-rimmed light the darkness was absolute. The outlines of the distant cottages and the rearing wall atop the high cliff were suggestions beneath a sea of black. We had become an island in the night, a tiny universe unto ourselves, cut off from the world.

“Muadhnait,” I said. “The things kept out by fire and salt. When will we see them?”

Muadhnait was sitting on one of the wide, flat logs. The darkness inside her visor was no different to the darkness beyond the fire.

She signed: “I suggest you sleep. You won’t see much. If you do, do not acknowledge it, do not make eye contact, do not speak to anything. I will wake every two hours to feed the fire.”

A very boring answer. I wanted to yank that helmet off and bite her cheeks.

Muadhnait slept flat on her back, in her armour, swords still on her belt, hands by her sides — which was, I think you will agree, weird as shit; I’m not judging, you understand, only trying to judge her humanity beneath all that spell-scribbled iron. How many people who aren’t made of carbon fibre can sleep stock-still on their backs wrapped in full plate? How many nuns can time their own waking every two hours? (Many nuns, in fact, but that’s a story for another time.)

Tenny and Casma fell asleep next — or maybe first, since Muadhnait’s face was hidden — stretched out on the flat, dry, soft ground between the fire and one of the logs. They shared a blanket; Casma had Tenny’s shoulder for a pillow, and Tenny did a thing with her tentacles behind her own head and neck. I stared, because I couldn’t stare very much when either of them were awake, and I wasn’t sure if I’d missed something. Tenny’s fluffy white antennae twitched in her sleep.

Kimberly stood up very quietly and fussed with the edges of their shared blanket, to make certain it wouldn’t catch any stray embers from the fire. When she was satisfied (are you ever really satisfied, Kim?) she turned to me and pulled one of those smiles which doesn’t really mean a smile.

That wasn’t very cute.

“Maisie?” she whispered. “You should really try to sleep, too, you know … ”

I met her eyes. She trailed off.

“Later.”

Kimberly turned half away, then back again, then away, then back. She seemed to realise she was oscillating on the spot and cringed at herself. I enjoyed the show. Much better.

“ … please,” she whispered eventually, closing her eyes. “Please don’t leave the fire, or the circle of salt. I … ”

‘I couldn’t bear to see you hurt, Maisie. I couldn’t bear to lose you. I want you to sleep with me, curled up beneath my blanket. Come put your face on my cunt.’

She didn’t say that. She didn’t even think that.

Pressuring Kimberly into being my bedmate that night would have been the easiest thing in the world. She would have acquiesced, because she was terrified — of being out here, of being cut off, of being alone, of me, of Heather, of consequences, of cowardice. She would have accepted any imposition, because the alternative was far worse. She would have told people, of course. But who would raise a word against me? I am Heather’s twin, and I can get away with anything I want.

The thought crossed my mind. I hated it so much that I spat into the fire. A glob of saliva sizzled on a piece of burning wood. Kimberly flinched.

“You don’t know what you would tell Heather,” I whispered, finishing Kimberly’s actual sentence, “if you lost me out here.”

Kimberly gaped for a moment, then cleared her throat. “Yes, of course. I mean, I don’t want anything to happen to you anyway. Please, Maisie, just … stay safe. Even if you don’t sleep.”

“Understood. Understanding is easy. Undermining is harder.”

Kimberly nodded. “R-right. I’m going to sleep now, I think. If you’re okay, by yourself?”

“I’m fine. Go to sleep.”

Kimberly did one of her little oscillations again. “Are you … okay, Maisie?”

“Yes? Yes. Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean … well, okay.”

Kimberly slept on her side with her back to the fire, curled up around herself beneath the blanket, right next to Tenny and Casma. The orange firelight turned the exposed skin of her neck to sun-dyed lily petals, and her greasy auburn hair to strawberry gold, sweet and creamy.

Why I had tried to kiss Kimberly during the journey?

No. Wrong question. I knew why I had tried to kiss her. Better question — why had I failed?

Don’t answer for me; don’t even try. You couldn’t understand the truth even if you had been sitting right there next to me on that ebony log, inches from my head, staring through the carbon fibre shell of my skull. I had failed because I’d done it for all the wrong reasons. Because when I’d done it, I had not been in thrall to lust. I had not been thinking about how cute Kimberly was.

I had done it because I was afraid of losing control. A kiss distracted Kimberly from her questions. But a kiss without intent is just meat, and I’m not made of meat.

I had failed not because I was a hormone-addled young woman (because I had no hormones) making unwise decisions, but because I was not enough of a hormone-addled young woman, and I had not yet embraced the degree of foolishness the situation required of me.

If I wanted to kiss Kimberly, I had to get much more stupid.

Eventually I pulled out my phone and stared at the wallpaper for a while. Here was an anime girl who could never reject me, though I could not cuddle with her beneath a blanket next to a fire. I briefly wished I’d put some anime on my phone, but we can’t all be perfectly prepared for everything, or we’d be stepping on Praem’s toes.

That morning’s text messages from Heather made me smile to myself. The inability to reply grated at something where my heart should have been.

I put the phone away again and decided to get stupid.

The darkness beyond our little patch of firelight was so dark and so deep that I decided it was Total — the opposite of patterns, of structure either built or imposed. No moon, no stars, no horizon of light pollution, only the rim where our own fire surrendered to the dark. Beyond, where once had stood cottages and stones and the side of a cliff, was now just Empty. The darkness did not merely conceal things, but had subtracted them from reality, leaving behind a greater Reality in the wake of departing light. The sun would remake the world in the morning, but how could we be certain the things it remade were the same as on the previous night?

The corpse of this village had us, as a spark nestled in its core, but would the village itself blossom around us as it had in the light of the dying sun? Would we find ourselves deep in the giant’s forest? (Please.) Or merely back in another version of the village, without even knowing that the substitution had taken place? Would we care? Did it matter?

At the very edge of the firelight the blades of grass slowly faded into deeper and deeper shadow, until they were no longer visible. They were Gone.

And where did things Go when they Went?

I wanted to see.

I unwrapped my knife from inside the tea towel and—

“Maisie?”

The whisper would have made anybody flinch, but I don’t flinch.

“ … Maisie? Maisie. Maisieeeee.”

Leaving the darkness behind was very annoying; I had been getting wonderfully stupid and had been about to make a poor decision.

Casma was awake, sitting up, staring at me with her pink eyes.

I looked at the fire. “What?”

Casma whispered. “You were muttering under your breath and staring into the dark. I was worried you were feeling wrong. Are you okay?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?”

“Once is not keep.”

I shrugged. “I’m fine. Lie down. Go back to sleep.”

Casma did not lie down. She made a complicated expression, to which I could not respond. Silence was like cold marmite in my head, stuck to the lid, dried out, impossible to shift.

Eventually Casma whispered again. “I don’t think you are fine. I think you’re the opposite of fine. Unless we’re using the colloquial meaning, in which case I don’t mean to imply that you’re not pretty. You are very pretty. But you know that already. I think you’re quite confident—”

“Casma. Stop.”

“You didn’t like the silence. I thought I would fill it with words.”

“Go to sleep.”

Casma wriggled out of the blanket she was sharing with Tenny, checked to make sure Tenny didn’t wake up, then tiptoed around the fire to take a seat next to me on the log.

She fed a couple of sticks into the fire. She folded the ends of her fluffy white sleeves over her hands. She smoothed her pink skirt over her thighs. She looked at me from the side. She looked back at Tenny. She looked at my knife; I looked at my knife. It was still wrapped in the tea-towel, in my lap.

Casma whispered, “Can I whisper again?”

“I can’t stop you.”

“You could. You have a knife.”

“Do you think I would knife you?”

“I don’t know for sure. You’re the one with the knife. For knifing. Like you said.”

“I won’t knife you, Casma.” I almost wanted to say I would, so she would go away and stop trying to talk to me.

“But you don’t want to talk to me,” Casma said.

“You can talk if you wish. You’re safe from knives.”

“Okay. You’re a bit disappointed there’s no spooky monsters out in the dark, aren’t you? I think you are, but I can’t be sure, because nobody can be sure about anything. That’s an epistemological problem.”

“Mm,” I grunted.

Casma waited.

“Yes,” I said eventually. “I thought there would be something in the dark. There’s not, because darkness isn’t anything, it’s an absence. It’s Total.”

“It’s total?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Not quite. Total isn’t total.”

I glanced at her. Casma’s eyes were like little pink sunrises in the dark. She knew exactly what she was saying, and said exactly what she meant.

Casma said, “Maisie. Why do you hate me?”

And that was not a conversation I wanted to have.

Which is why I’m going to delay it as long as possible.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Oh Maisie, Maisie, Maisie. I don’t even know what to say after this chapter, there’s so many things going on here. Anything I can gesture at, Maisie has already shoved in our collective faces. But it seems like Casma is about to use Maisie’s own strategy against her.

Maisie, please don’t make me take an unplanned break week. I’m not even kidding. Her reluctance to have this conversation very nearly spilled over the 4th wall.

Behind the scenes, though, things are still going swimmingly! The arc marches on, for many chapters yet. Hope you’re enjoying it!

No fanart or anything to share this week, so I’m going to do something I very rarely do. A shoutout! Here it is!

In Sekhmet’s Wake (Not All Heroes #2) A pacifist haunted by visions of the apocalypse must choose between love, justice, and the fate of humanity in this super-heroic combination of THE BOYS and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION. The year is 2061 and the world is ending. In the city of Geneva, Sabra Kasembe, one-time savior of the world, prepares for her prophesied apocalypse, unsure whether her dreams paint her as a humane champion of the oppressed or a blood-soaked harbinger of the end. When an explosion rips through the city center, Sabra’s pursuit of the truth brings her face to face with none other than her former nemesis: Jack Harper. But Jack comes with a warning–that is, if Sabra can trust him. There’s a darkness in the heart of Geneva, a web of corporate interests, vicious paramilitaries, and superheroes both living and dead, and Jack doesn’t know who he can trust. But he knows the bomber was no lone wolf, and deadlier agents are waiting for their signal. As Sabra chases her premonitions through Geneva and beyond, attempting to find the link between her present and her fate, she suspects that the conspiracy is aimed at the heart of her lover, the super-powered robot Revenant, and that letting it come to pass may be Sabra’s final chance at averting her greater cataclysm. To defy her own prophecies, Sabra must hone her soul against the line between slaughter and justice, where flinching risks bloodshed in the streets of Geneva, the betrayal of her ideals, and the death of her lover. Because she must save Revenant’s life, no matter the cost, or Sabra fears she’ll light her a funeral pyre that will consume not just Geneva, but the rest of the Functioning World… IN SEKHMET’S WAKE is an in-progress post-superhero sci-fi thriller, and the second in a trilogy (the first novel, IN SEKHMET’S SHADOW, is also available on this page.) It is intended for mature audiences and features violence, swearing, and ideas that may be considered traumatic or provocative. But remember this: everyone finds love in the end. Cover art by the phenomenal Tommy Arnold. No Patreon, no Discord — please show support by following, favoriting, and rating. This is a story for those who want to answer the big questions: can superheroes reconcile the contradictions within capital and themselves, does power corrupt, and is it gay if you’re a woman and she’s a goth-rock robot? Is it easier to end the world than end capitalism?

 

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Next chapter, Maisie goes non-verbal. Or just rips up my drafts. Or exits through the 4th wall by handing the POV to somebody else??? She is pretty determined not to have this conversation, after all.