Katalepsis

placid island; black infinity - 2-1.13


We left the balcony by the route I had suggested — over the side of the stone bannister, across a pair of rooftops tiled in dull black metal, then straight down the open face of the castle's innards, with empty windows and cold window sills for handholds. We descended through cloying layers of wet fog, cold on my skin, congealing on Muadhnait's armour, until we reached the open street-like passageways of the castle's ossified intestines.

Such a Heather-esque metaphor, isn't it? But this time, I couldn't bring myself to care about the comparison (and neither should you), because I had better things to do. It really did feel like standing in the open bowels of a fossilised corpse, with formaldehyde fog soaking into the tissues of old stone, keeping it from rotting, gluing it to hollow bones.

The doll from the office didn't follow us down, which was both a relief and pity. She was cute. We could have done more. Oh well.

Anyway, I didn't need the distraction. Had things to concentrate on.

Muadhnait was moving a little slowly after her death and resurrection. She crossed the rooftops with her arms out for balance, then took the final descent as if each foothold might crumble away beneath her metal boots. Couldn't blame her for caution, not after that fall; if she'd hurried, I would have told her to slow herself. I scurried down ahead of her, blazing the proverbial trail, with my knife wrapped up careful, tucked into the waistband of my skirt. Dangerous, but I didn't care — not like it would do any real damage if it poked me at the wrong angle, just flesh, just surface.

You'd assume it's hard to climb in a skirt, but that's only if you're wearing the wrong type, and I never wear the wrong clothes; yes, that includes the tie-dye. My feet ached as I searched for each new windowsill and put pressure on the cuts in the soles. The wounds were already bleeding into the bandages, but Muadhnait's first aid held fast. I touched down on the rough cobbles of the open street without losing my footing to a blood-slick of my own fakery.

I waited for Muadhnait at the bottom of the wall. She tested each handhold and foothold as she came down. The metal of her gauntlets scraped on the stone. I wondered if I could catch her, if she fell.

I couldn't, of course. Carbon fibre is very strong, but it's not magical, not like my innards. If Muadhnait missed a handhold and tumbled to the street, I would snap my arms and legs trying to brake her fall.

I would, too. I knew I would. I waited for the moment.

But Muadhnait kept her grip and kept the faith (in gravity). She reached the ground, took a moment to straighten up and straighten out the shakes, then drew her cold iron sword again. Did you know that swords don't actually go 'shing' when drawn? That's a movie thing, a stage thing, a cartoon thing, and this was real, more real than me. She was silent as the fog. I unwrapped my kitchen knife and stuffed the maid-covered tea-towel back into the waistband of my skirt. That was silent too.

"You good?" I whispered. My voice echoed off the narrow stone, despite the fog, so I rearranged my shawl to cover the lower part of my face, tight and close. Now I felt like a real guerilla. "Good to go, good to rest?"

Muadhnait nodded, her big dome-shaped helmet rocking back and forth. She signed, "I am okay. I feel better. The climb did me good."

"Good enough to swing your sword good?"

Muadhnait took a deep breath; I heard it through the black slot in her helmet. She was alive in there, more alive than me, meaty and wet. I wondered if she was sweaty after the climb down. Probably. (Yay.)

She signed the sign for 'minute', so I gave her one.

We had descended into a narrow, kinked, blind-cornered side-street, walled in white and highlighted with black, floored in cobblestones worn smooth by centuries of passing feet, their centres greyed with age. The castle reared up either side, connected to itself with walkways and raised bridges like fibres of scabrous muscle or strings of dust-thick mucus. The omnipresent castle-fog was thick and soupy and grey, like in old photos of coal-era London, as if the black and white stone had extruded duelling miasmas to mix and blur. One end of the little street connected to the main thoroughfare, where the fairy procession had just proceeded.

The drum-drum-drum of marching wooden feet still pulsed through the fog, but the procession had passed this point a few minutes earlier. The fog was still swirling, just beginning to settle into little eddies and drifts, like silt on a riverbed. We could follow without risk, and we weren't likely to lose them, not with all the racket they were making.

I glanced up at the sky — at the tiny sliver of it I could see from all the way down there at the bottom of this world. I'd never been in a real canyon before, not outside of my sister's imagination. The fog was so thick and the castle walls so high that I couldn't tell where the sky began. We were buried under a mountain of stone, down in a crack which went all the way to the core of reality.

But I couldn't see the black speck anymore. Tenny had moved on, hopefully back to Casma and Kimberly.

The faces in the pattern of the castle were still there, now made of equal parts fog and stone, like floaters in my own vision superimposed over whatever I saw. They had always been there, all along, watching, reading, recording. If I could somehow banish the fog and peel back the castle like bloody muscle, the faces would still be there, made of cloud and wind and empty air. If I stared at a blank patch of stone, they would find their features in the rough surface and the play of light on texture. If night fell and the fog became so thick that you couldn't see past the end of your own nose, they would be made of darkness and suggestion.

All of them were watching me. Or maybe Muadhnait. Either. Both.

That was fine. As long as they didn't lose interest and look for Tenny again.

"This is what you want?" I whispered. "Want for nothing. I'll give you nothing. Touch Tenns and I'll kill you all."

Some of the pattern-faces smirked. A few laughed.

Muadhnait signed, "Excuse me?"

"Nothing," I whispered. "Wasn't talking to you. Ready now?"

Muadhnait hesitated, then signed, "Yes. But. I need to know you will not rush in without—"

"I'm not going to fight a thousand dolls," I whispered. "I don't even want to fight one. Here's the plan, planned well, well made, made for me. We follow the procession, become their rear, too rear to be seen. We wait to see if they end somewhere, or if they don't, we find a way to end for them. Watch for where the fairies go. And where your sister follows. Our intention is to get her alone, or close enough to alone that we can make her alone." I gestured with my naked knife, at Muadhnait's sword; the fog had already moistened both blades, shining and wet. "These are for bad fairies, not a thousand dolls."

Muadhnait took another deep breath, then signed, "Thank you."

She stepped forward to take the lead, but I put my arm out and shook my head. "I go first." Before she could sign a counter-argument, I put my weight on the scales. "I'm smaller and faster and I have a better field of vision. I go first. You follow. Watch our backs."

Sure sounds like I knew what I was doing, doesn't it?

Muadhnait made no argument. (Good girl, learning fast.) I slipped past her and padded to the end of the narrow street, where it joined the main vein, and the light from the white-stone walls wasn't quite as crushing. I pressed myself against the corner — like in a video game, and yes, it really does work, which was cool as shit — then peeked out, one side, then the other. The coast, as they say, was clear, just fog and the rearing walls of the castle deeps. I gestured to Muadhnait. She came forward and we crept out, side by side.

We made quite a pair. A doll with her face wrapped up like an assassin, dressed like rainbow vomit, carrying a knife, leading a woman in armour.

We followed the marching sounds from up ahead, sticking to one side of the canyon of fog and stone. Muadhnait somehow managed to walk in all that armour without making a sound. Magic, maybe. The cobblestones hurt my feet, but the wounds stopped bleeding after about fifty meters. When I looked back our trail ended at the edge of the fog, marked by the final crimson smears from my soles. The red was already greying out.

The castle was weirder down at ground level. Any pretence of simplistic 'spooky bullshit' fell away, as if the upper levels of the structure had been yet another shell over yet another layer of truth. Scooby Doo time was over. Off to bed, kiddies. Adults are here for the real thing.

The canyon down which we walked was simultaneously both arrow-straight and also a twisting mess of wide meanders and jumbled corners. Doesn't make sense, right? Well it didn't to me either, so you're just going to have to deal with it. How can something be both bent and straight at the same time? (My sister has a couple of friends who can answer that, especially the ex-copper.) To look at it with the eyes showed the twists and turns, but if you followed your feet you seemed to be walking in a straight line. Sections of the black and white stone walls had fallen away or been punched through, many of them riddled with thick white roots pressing against the edges of broken masonry, some of them wider than I was tall, as if the giant trees back in the forest had their undersides sunk into the castle bowels. And maybe they did, maybe that made sense here, though the forest was two days walk behind us. Flowers of lichen spread across the walls in oddly fractal patterns, joining and parting, shying away from the black or the white as per their own clashing shades; sheets of the stuff had peeled away from the walls and become an entirely different kind of plant altogether, twisting into static coils of upright frond and fuzz. We steered clear of those, and the clouds of spores that seemed to hang in the air around them, choked and suppressed by the fog.

The gutters were full of dried slime, also black and white, like oil and pus left to set together, the surface glistening with fog-born moisture. We passed the occasional giant centipede, sleeping or curled up or clinging to a wall, but nothing on the same scale as the vast dark thing I'd encountered in the night. A couple of them were dead, carapaces cracked open and hollowed out for meat. A few scuttled away. Most paid us no attention, probably because we were being quiet.

The parade of dolls had left no detritus behind in the canyon-passage, so we tracked them purely by sound, by the thump-thump-thump of their marching feet. Plenty of side-streets and twisty passages led off into other parts of the castle, but none of them were wide enough to carry the procession. Stone doors stood shut along the route; wooden ones lay open, or splintered, or had rotted away to a slimy margin. A few doorways looked as if they'd been barred with metal once upon a time, all rust and memory now, while others had no doors at all, only a darkness inside that seemed total enough to act as a barrier. Sometimes things moved beyond those darkened doorways — shifting presences too large for the interior spaces of the castle, or faces that hung peripheral, or the suggestion of open meadows which vanished when confronted with direct sight.

We passed beneath arches carved into the likeness of a thousand screaming faces, their features worn away by time and fog. We crept through a statue garden in which every plinth held a different monster engaged in a grisly act of murder upon some fleeing human — but with their edges chipped away and their details blunted, so they seemed like the memory of a forgotten massacre. We slipped past a theatre stage set back from the street in a massive alcove, but all the wood was rotten and rough, the stage dressings were grey rags, and the seating had collapsed into a heap of damp kindling.

Muadhnait was angry about those last three. She didn't stop to tell me why.

The stage made me wonder. The Mimic was apparently interested in making me repeat the motions of my sister's story, for whatever reason.

Stories and stages, roles and masks. Could it be? Was all this that simple?

But I'd seen no sign of Sevens' siblings here, no tell-tell yellow. My sister hadn't met all the children of The King in Yellow, of course, but they all must know that messing with me would bring Heather and Sevens down on their heads. Seemed unlikely.

Besides, Muadhnait wouldn't understand that wandering. I kept it to myself.

After about half an hour of following the procession, I felt the first speckles of rain. It stirred and thickened the fog and dampened my hair and shoulders. The growing sheen of moisture made the black stone more black and the white stone shine like new bone. The gutters began to run with slime and the cobblestones grew slippery underfoot.

Rain and fog at the same time? Why yes. Of course. Why not? Perhaps we weren't so far from England after all.

(I'm allowed to make that joke; you're not. Probably not. Whatever.)

The pattern-faces were still following our progress from their aerie up in the towers. The rain didn't blur them, it became part of them, dressing them in horns and fangs, smearing their cheeks with grey-scale blood and their chins with soggy drool. I scowled at them several times, when Muadhnait couldn't see. They were chuckling and grinning, having too much fun.

Muadhnait paused briefly so she could sign to me in the rain. Little rivulets of water were starting to run down her helmet; the slot for her eyes diverted the streams, keeping her vision clear.

"I am sheltered from the rain inside my armour," she signed. "But you are unprotected. Should we find shelter and wait for it to pass?"

I pushed my hair out of my face; I had so much of it that it would weigh a ton if the rain kept up for long, or got any heavier. I eyed my knife for a moment and considered the obvious.

But if I cut it all off, I would look like Heather.

The faces up there in the rain grinned like demons, wide and bright and roaring.

"Don't care," I said. "Doesn't matter. We might lose your sister. Carry on."

"Are you—"

"Yes," I said, and turned away, back on the path. "Doesn't matter. Carry on."

The pattern-faces subsided. Smiles sank. Sullen cheeks turned away.

All I cared about now was reaching Muadhnait's sister, making sure they both lived for the reunion, and through whatever came after.

Does it seem strange, my sudden and absolute determination to make sure Muadhnait's story had a happy ending? I hope it doesn't, but it might. I won't be angry with you if you don't get it already. This is a me thing, that's all.

Yes, I'm fine. I'm not angry all the time.

This simply wasn't my story. I had accepted that now. At first I'd felt bitter about it, frustrated, humiliated. I'd been a bitch. Hand on my heart (ha!), I had been a right cunt. Maybe I'd even harboured some resentment toward Muadhnait, though nothing here was her fault. She hadn't muscled into my brainless isekai romp and stolen all my maidens. I didn't have any maidens in the first place. She'd been here first, already waist deep in her own tale when I had turned up and told her I'd like to stick my knife in her.

And then I'd fucked up.

Let's be blunt, no more bullshit, not between us. This was meant to be a small thing, in and out, twenty minutes, as the saying goes. Now three people who I cared about (yes, Casma, shut up) were in danger, and a fourth person had died. Because of me.

Muadhnait had died, because of me, because I wasn't Heather. And then she had been brought back because I was willing to knife-fight a goddess, because I wasn't Heather.

I wasn't Heather. Muadhnait was Heather.

What did that make me? It invites comparisons, doesn't it?

If I wasn't the Heather in this story, then what was I? Was I Muadhnait's Raine — a girl with a penchant for quick and decisive violence, encountered over the top of a toilet stall? Maybe, but I hadn't a fraction of Raine's dash and daring; I didn't actually know how to fight, or shoot a gun, or give a pep talk. And my good looks lay at the opposite end of the spectrum to Raine's. I'm pretty as all fuck, and I know it, but I can't be that kind of butch.

What about, say, Evelyn? Was I Muadhnait's Evelyn in this situation? Ridiculous. Evelyn had only one prosthetic leg, I had an entire prosthetic body. And I gave worse hugs (unless I was hugging my sister, in which case I gave the best hugs ever). Was I Twil to Muadhnait's Heather? A near-invincible friend who didn't quite get it, but had a heart positioned in the right place?

Ha! Of course not. There was no heart inside my chest at all, not even a black one all used up, just the memory of a pulse, kept alive by illusion. Praem — could I be Praem? Sadly not, however much I wished I could fill out the chest of her uniform. Zheng? Tenny? Anybody?

No. I was none of them. I was beyond the pattern, out in the borderlands of meaning, lost in places I didn't know.

I was Maisie Morell, and I didn't know who that was.

But I'd done this once before, hadn't I? Or she had. Maisie Morell had thrown herself into another's cause without hesitation. Heather's cause, in the dust and ash of Wonderland, beneath the Eye.

You've been waiting to hear about that part, haven't you? My side of the story. You want me to fill in the blanks that my sister remembers only as a childhood nightmare. What happened on that fatal and fated night, beyond the walls of reality? How did you do it, Maisie? How did you make yourself into a pebbled pearl and blind the Eye for long enough for Heather to get away? Did you already know magic? Were you blessed-and-or-cursed with the same mathemagical nonsense as Heather? How did you do it? Tell us, tell us! Complete the story! Finish your sister's sentence!

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I have to disappoint you, (and I'm not sorry.)

I don't remember.

Those parts of me burned away a long time ago, long before I came home. I remember even less of Wonderland than my sister does. I don't remember throwing myself at the Eye, or how I did it, or what happened afterward. I don't remember what I did. I don't remember being heroic. I just get told I was, once upon a time.

But perhaps this feeling was the same urge, no? An echo of Maisie Morell, of the girl I'd once been, here to save another Heather.

Or maybe I was just projecting my baggage and bullshit onto Muadhnait.

Who cares.

My hair was starting to stick to my scalp, and the bandages on my feet were like wet socks. That was when we heard the procession start to break up.

It didn't halt or trail off — I'd half been expecting that, like the whole thing would wind itself in before some grand stage where the mystery figure inside the silken palanquin would make a speech. Muadhnait and I could hide at the edge of the crowd and soak up the words of some demented Outsider demagogue who liked to listen to the sound of their own voice, before an army of dolls and a handful of sulking fairies. And then we would spring onto the stage and—

But that wasn't this story. That sounded more like my sister.

The procession split and fanned out. The noise of all those marching wooden feet, which had been squarely before us despite the impossible twists in the canyon of stone, suddenly seemed to be heading off in every direction, bursting apart like the rain clouds open above us. The stomp-stomp-stomp began to fade into the myriad passages of the castle.

Muadhnait and I didn't need to communicate for this (which was nice, well done, good girl) we just sped up, approaching a particularly nasty tangle of thick white roots and tumbled stones, where both sides of the canyon had fallen in, creating a narrow passageway through which we had to slink.

On the other side, blossoming from nothing as if we'd turned a corner in reality, was a cathedral.

Not literally a cathedral — no crosses, no earthly symbolism, none of that. My sister would undoubtedly have been able to say that the building failed to conform to any known architectural history, so it really wasn't a 'cathedral' at all. But it was big and ornate and tipped with spiky towers of white stone. It had ridges and ruffles, like it was dressed for a ball. It was dotted with stained-glass windows muted with fog and grime. It had a set of huge wooden doors open toward us, with soft light glowing inside. It was human-scale, amid this giant corpse. Good enough for me.

The thing-that-was-not-really-a-cathedral (happy now, Casma? No, really. Are you?) was set in the middle of a huge depression in the guts of the castle, like a central plaza floored with yet more white cobbles. Other entrances to the plaza led off in a dozen different directions. The last few dolls of the procession were vanishing down those streets, spreading out into the rest of the castle. Muadhnait and I hung back for a moment, concerned that we might have been spotted, but no dolls doubled back for us.

I checked the faces, up at the lip of the canyon. They were still watching us, compound eyes and alien stalks and slavering jaws and all, staring down at us, at the building ahead. Unblinking, wide-eyed, focused, like something was about to happen.

Shit.

Muadhnait paused, gestured at the cathedral, and signed, "Trap?"

"Maybe," I whispered, though my voice was all but drowned by the raindrops. "Probably. No choice. No choice? Be ready to turn around."

Muadhnait nodded. I took the lead, scurrying across the wide space of cobblestones to the open mouth of the cathedral. Muadhnait followed, her sword held low, ducking her shoulders to gain whatever sliver of stealth she could. I stepped through the doors first, out of the rain and into the echoing silence of stone within.

The inside of the cathedral was a cavernous space of black and white masonry, like hundreds of inverted chessboards, supported by hexagonal fluted columns and walled in stained (and stained) glass, so that the light from outdoors was a smoky, smothered, dying thing, fighting against the glow from half a dozen lit braziers full of black wood. The space was split into two levels — lucky for us, because otherwise we would have been spotted instantly. Inside the entrance was a sort of raised landing which ran around the perimeter of the walls, with stepped seats on two sides, for an audience to watch whatever went on in the main space down below. A pair of massive processional staircases swept downward from this upper level to the main floor of the cathedral, which was much longer and wider. The main floor was tiled in neat rows of white stone between narrow bands of black. It had once hosted perhaps a hundred wooden pews, like in a real church, but they had rotted away to stained suggestions on the floor. At the far end of the main floor was another pair of doors which led into a smaller chamber — these were in the process of closing when Muadhnait and I entered, but I couldn't see anything in the half a second I got before they shut with a resonant thump of wood on rock.

Muadhnait and I stayed low, scurrying to the lip of white stone at the edge of one of the grand staircases. We both dripped softly, Muadhnait from her armour and me from my hair.

The main floor of the cathedral was occupied.

Six fairies, six of the seven that I'd spotted in the procession. Of the palanquin and the fairy who had been nearest the front of the procession — the shadowy mass of ragged grey with hands like scissors — there was no sign. There were no dolls either, (boo).

The six fairies watched the big doors at the opposite end crash shut. Then they all looked very awkward, like they didn't want to be there.

Muadhnait signed quickly, her hands down low, out of sight. "My sister is in the next room, I'm sure of it. She—"

Muadhnait halted suddenly.

I mouthed, almost silent: "She's the seventh fairy. I know. Makes no difference. To you?"

Muadhnait hesitated, then signed, "No."

I put a finger to my lips and met the black slot in her helmet with a sidelong look. I pointed at my left ear and mouthed 'listen'.

She nodded.

The fairies cast looks at each other in the growing silence beneath the rain.

The Mimic (my Mimic) was all the way over on the right of the group, standing a little way apart from the others, looking distinctly nervous. She was twiddling her thumbs and constantly shifting her many feet, rocking her ragged trunk back and forth. Her chin was dipped, so she looked out from upturned eyes, like a naughty girl who knew she'd done something wrong (which was right). I fingered my knife and told myself to wait. She could wait. I could wait. She didn't matter.

I mean that, really. She didn't matter. I had to abandon my assumptions; Kimberly was correct (good girl, Kim, you're so fucking good). The Mimic wasn't the force keeping us here or keeping Heather out. She was too small and unimportant for that. She looked like a nervous teenager in a gathering of stressed adults.

The other fairies looked more self-possessed, but no less unhappy. The woman made of glass, complete with a glass dress, was all transparent and glossy. The firelight from the braziers refracted inside her, like flames in her gut. She had the look of a long-suffering aristocratic lady trapped at yet another interminable social function. She was also very pretty in that kind of mature way, with heavy lips and plush cheeks and big, round, wide hips; I wondered what she would look like when angry, or upset, or aroused — or crying.

The green man in mossy robes had moss-shrouded eyelids, and seemed like he wanted to fall asleep, leaning against one of the pillars. The slug-person whose gender I couldn't tell was half-folded up on the floor, as if exhausted, clothed in nothing but sheets of sticky mucus. The teenage girl with the butterfly wings and the cruel smile was tapping her foot, arms folded across her chest, tossing her long blonde hair now and again; I stared at her face for a moment until I was certain — she wasn't actually a teenager, she was older than me, just petite and compact. Her pink dress was like something out of a magical girl anime, so many frills and ruffles, lots of places to hide weapons inside the big poofy skirt. Her face was pinched and tight and nasty in that very specific way which suggested she needed some expert hands to unknot her and make her cry for an hour or two.

The dandy gentleman with the lower half of a satyr was looking around and puffing out his breath from big beardy cheeks. He was the one who broke the silence, with a voice like a goat's bleat.

"Must we really all stand around here until it's over?" he said.

His voice was deep and meaty, like a peat bog. It carried easily in the stone cavern, despite the static hiss of raindrops against the roof. His face was full of broken capillaries beneath his top hat, once jolly but now twice brought low, with sadness sitting heavy in big liquid eyes.

Nobody answered, so he carried on. "Surely it makes no difference if we're here or not, when she emerges. Does it? Do we not all have projects to attend to? What if … "

He trailed off and glanced up, at the ceiling. At the rain? At some hidden watcher I couldn't see? I followed and stared and looked for a pattern among the black and white tiles. Nothing but regularity.

The petite woman with butterfly wings (which were pink and purple and white and delicate and I wondered if they might shiver when you touched them) turned to him with a smile gone sour. "It is tradition!" she hissed. Her voice was sharp and high. Her eyes were very wide.

"Tradition, certainly," the goat-man bleated. "But—"

"She will need guidance when she's done," Butterfly-wings snapped. She stomped one foot and I noticed she was wearing pink heels, to match her frilly dress. "How do you think she's supposed to get started if we leave her by herself? I did it for you, Calderon! If you try to leave then I shall pull out your hairs, one by one, until you scream."

"I'd like to see that," said the glass woman. She had a voice like glass, obviously. She sounded very bored.

'Calderon' — the half-goat-man — gestured with his walking cane and smiled as if shrugging off a joke, tipping the brim of his top hat with his other hand. "Wouldn't dream of it, wouldn't dream of it, Aspen. I'll be right here, right with the rest of you, of course, of course. I'd never dream of, ahem—" he actually said 'ahem' out loud "—independent action."

Calderon flourished his walking cane with a flick of his wrist and started to pace up and down. His feet made clicking sounds on the stone floor — hooves. His shaggy hips and furred legs were broad and muscular, rolling as he walked. 'Aspen', the pinched woman with the butterfly wings and the magical girl dress, she huffed and put her hands on her hips. Her fingernails were six inches long, glittering like diamonds.

The slug-person made a wet sound. Calderon guffawed and gestured at it. "Quite, quite! Bravo. Well said, Gulrick, well said. I think we can all agree on that, no?"

The others didn't reply. Calderon pretended this didn't matter.

Muadhnait signed to me, behind our stony cover, "We have to go through them."

"I know," I mouthed. "Watch for now. Maybe they'll move."

After a couple of trips back and forth, clicking his hooves and clacking his cane, Calderon stopped pacing. He gestured around at the others and bleated again, low and steady. "Friends, siblings, brother-and-sister auteurs, ex-lovers, lovers-to-be—"

"Get on with it," drawled the glass woman. "You can be such a bore."

Calderon stuttered, halted, then cleared his throat and tried again. "When was the last time we were all gathered in one place like this? Must have been years ago!"

The green man gestured with a green arm, draped with moss and ivy; of all the fairies, he was the most like the Mimic, made from wood and leaf and rot and life. He gestured at her — at the Mimic.

"Mave's investiture," he said. He sounded half-asleep, a muddy mumble.

Mave?

The Mimic was called Mave?

I took that name and peeled it open and stuck it to my tongue, then mashed it against the roof of my mouth. Mave the Mimic. Now I had her name. For later, after Muadhnait's quest was done. For later. Later! My knife went back into the tea towel, then came out again, then rested in my palm.

Later. Mave. Later.

Mave.

Mave blinked with eyes the colour of rotten leaves, then smiled awkwardly, showing lots of crooked teeth.

Calderon boomed, throwing his arms out wide. "Ahhhhh, of course, of course!" He was smiling now, a twinkle in his eyes, big orange beard bristling. "We discussed collaborations, didn't we? I remember it now, it's coming back to me. Mave, you had some brilliant notion about twins. I wanted to borrow it for a … a … I mean … one of my own … one of my … "

His smile stayed, tightening, struggling. The other fairies looked deeply uncomfortable. Aspen turned her head away, wings twitching. The slug-person curled up even tighter. Mave nodded and smiled, as one does with a relative who no longer recalls the years. The glass woman stiffened and swallowed.

"Well," Calderon carried on, trying to pick himself up. "You know how it is. Never got around to it, did we?"

Mave shook her head.

Calderon seemed about to break off the line of conversation, but then he suddenly swung back, as if giving in to temptation. "We … we could," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "We should try! Or if you don't want to risk it, then … then I could do it, alone, by myself! I could take one of your concepts, this twin thing, and apply it to my work, my old men! Yes!" He straightened up and stamped with his walking cane. "Why not! Why shouldn't I! It would be so innovative, so new, so—"

Aspen rounded on him, one hand hooked into claws, her nails glittering in the firelight. "Stop it!" she screeched. "Stop it! You know you can't talk like that! You know they don't like that kind of talk! Just because we're out of sight doesn't mean we're out of mind."

Calderon turned to face her, chest puffed out with wounded dignity. "All I want to do is experiment!" he cried. "It's the same thing, over and over! I can't— I can't take it anymore!"

The glass woman drawled, "This new investiture, it'll take some pressure off us, surely."

"Said that last time," grunted the green man. "Never works."

The slug person gurgled.

"You think you have it bad?!" Aspen spat at Calderon. "I've been here twice as long as you!" She gestured at the slug-person. "Gulrick's older than both of us, and he's still keeping himself together! Why can't you?"

Calderon raised his chin, defiant with bruised dignity. "Gulrick is just as exhausted as I."

Aspen hissed through her teeth. "You are courting disaster, you bloody fool!"

The glass lady sighed. "You can't blame him for being bored, dear."

"I can!" Aspen spat. "It's dangerous!"

"And this is why we shouldn't meet," the glass lady drawled. "Didn't this happen the previous time, too? Except then it was my fault, I suppose. Oh, bother."

Calderon stamped with his walking stick, banging the tip against the stone floor. "I refuse! I refuse, I refuse, I refuse! I would rather die than continue this."

Aspen sneered at him. "You know they won't let us."

Calderon drew himself up. "Very well, my dear. Then it falls to me to take action. I do declare, right here, right now, at the moment of this new investiture, that I am going to change the genre and tone and even the very basic character of my tales and my—"

The ceiling of the cathedral exploded with sudden motion, like a swarm of bats released into the air — faces, flowing downward. The pattern-faces from the top of the castle, appearing in the join of the lines and the junctions between black and white, living in the firelight flicker and the chance angle between blocks of masonry.

A crowd flew to join us.

Nothing about the ceiling or the walls actually changed; the interplay of black lines and white tiles and flickering brazier-light did not become a set of gargantuan faces pressing through the stone, warping the material like some cheap CGI from the 90s. That would be too simple, too easy to stick a knife into. The pattern which was already there merely resolved into a new meaning, with blazing eyes and howling maws and rage-tossed hair springing from wall and ceiling and floor as if they had always been present. A magic-eye picture, resolving with a trick of the mind.

Hundreds of faces descended, each of them larger than the space they occupied, crushing the six fairies into the core of a claustrophobic ball made from gnashing teeth and screaming mouths. They made no real sound; they changed nothing, touched nothing, disturbed not a single hair on any head. But suddenly they were the inner surface of a sphere of rage, a thousand alien visages howling and roaring and biting.

Calderon's words snapped off. He went pale and drawn, staring straight ahead, tears shining in his eyes. The other fairies stiffened with alarm. Aspen folded her delicate butterfly wings inward. The slug-person on the floor drew tight and turned the colour of old concrete. Mave whimpered and covered her head.

I whispered to Muadhnait, "Do you see those?"

Muadhnait signed, "See what?"

Muadhnait could not see the pattern-faces. The fairies could, and I could, which was something. And the pattern-faces were working themselves up into a frenzy, shouting and screaming in silence, teeth cutting the air next to Calderon's head, their eyes boring into him from every angle.

Unlike my sister, I'm a bit more adept at rapidly adding two and two.

If any force was keeping us here and keeping my sister out, here it was. The ones who wanted to watch me repeat the same story over again. The watchers from above, beyond the stage, the screen, the page, the whatever, demanding the players go through the motions again, and again, and again, and again.

Apparently I wasn't the only one they wanted to force, either.

Aspen recovered first. She spoke quickly. "Calderon, you old dog, how's your latest work going? Do tell us. I'm sure we'd all love to hear. Another two old geezers again? You do enjoy your old guys, we all know that. Tell us, go on."

Calderon closed his eyes, squeezing tears from between the lids.

"Tell. Us," Aspen repeated.

Calderon took a deep breath. "Well … it's … it's about two men, yes. Two men. Yes, two … two men." He wet his lips and kept trying, opening his eyes and blinking away the tears. "One is a grizzled veteran of some sordid little war. I haven't bothered myself much with the war, that's not the important part, of course. The other one is a kindly young carpenter. Though not too young. Old enough for some arthritis and whatnot." Calderon smiled and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "I'm … I'm going to do such things with them." He tried to smile. "Yes. Such things."

"Things not meant for my young and girlish ears, right?" Aspen prompted, cracking an evil little grin.

"Haha!" Calderon laughed. "Y-yes, of course. My usual subject matter. I've become … quite the expert, yes."

The pattern-faces were slowly subsiding, no longer so angry, just sullen and grumpy, as if they didn't quite believe the platitudes.

The glass lady said, "And what about your latest work, Aspen dearest? Are you still calling them 'magical girls'?"

Aspen puffed out her chest, put her hands on her hips, and raised her chin. "Always! What reason do I have to deviate from a winning formula?"

The pattern-faces seemed very pleased by this. They crowded around Aspen, as if trying to get closer to her words, pinning her at the centre of their sphere of attention. She blinked and gulped, but kept her smile.

Aspen held out three fingers. "A team of three. Pink, blue, and red. And on the other side." She held up a single finger of her other hand. "Purple!"

"A winning formula, indeed," said the glass lady. "And the inevitable redemption of the purple one, I assume? That's how it goes, right?"

"Of course." Aspen shrugged. "Unless she dies before the end. We'll never know for sure!"

The pattern-faces swirled with something closer to anger, but not quite, bearing their gargantuan teeth and bulging their eyes. Aspen swallowed and shot a smug look at Calderon. Even I could read that one — 'this is how you do it, you old fart.'

Calderon sighed. His smile was very tired. He turned about, but none of the others would look at him, until he finally settled on the Mimic again.

"Mave," he said. "What about you? What are you working on now?" He gestured at the big doors with his cane. "Your previous work has been cut short by the investiture of one of the parties, so that's ended a little prematurely. Do you already have another pair of twins on the go?"

Mave nodded. Her voice came out high and scratchy and timid. "Um … yes. Yes. Twins. T-this time. It's not always twins with me. Just … sisters. Twins only sometimes. Like a … an extra spice. Aheh … "

As she spoke, a fresh crowd of pattern-faces swirled closer to her, made of firelight and the lines between the bricks. They were open-mouthed and salivating, hungry-eyed with need.

Calderon smiled and nodded, gesturing for Mave to go on. "And are they very much in love with each other, like the previous pair? Yes? Yes? Do go on, do tell us, do tell!"

Muadhnait signed to me, keeping the motion out of sight. "We must get into that next room. I believe my sister is in there. These fairies will not move before whatever ritual in there is completed."

"Agreed," I whispered. "And there's no way to sneak past. No route to slink. We have to go straight through them. Ready for going?"

Muadhnait's gauntlet creaked on her sword. As good an answer as any.

"I'll lead," I said.

Then I stood straight up before Muadhnait could do otherwise.

I strode out onto one of the big sweeping staircases. Muadhnait rose as well, quickly taking up position at my side. The six fairies all stopped talking, a few mouths agape, eyes staring up at us. Even the slug-person uncoiled, stalks rising to peer out with big wet eyes. The pattern-faces swirled into a new configuration — backing away and lining up. Watching the show. (And I was going to give them such a show. You know it.)

Mave — the Mimic — recoiled in horror.

(Good girl.)

"We're going through those doors," I announced. My voice echoed off the masonry. "I'll put my knife in anyone who tries to stop us." Then I looked at Mave. "I'll be back for you later. Bad girl."

She made a face like a wail of terror, but silent. (Delicious.)

Calderon waved his cane at us. "What— what— what is this!? Mave, are these yours? Isn't that the sister of the new girl?! She should have been discarded, ages ago! What happened, why didn't you dispose of her?!"

"I did!" Mave shrieked. "I sent a puppet, a good puppet!"

"I freed it," I said. "Now it's free."

"Wait a moment," the glass lady drawled. "Isn't that your new damsel? The little one with the knife, I mean. She's part of an ongoing tale, the centre of it. Am I wrong?"

Calderon guffawed. "Damsel? She's not very damsel-like, is she? Not that I know anything about damsels, but still!"

"Fuck!" Aspen spat. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"A doll and a knight … " Calderon mused, stroking his beard. "What an interesting combination. Do you think … the two of them … could we perhaps … "

"Mave," drawled the glass lady again. "I don't mean to tell you your business, but this is a bit of a disaster. She doesn't look like she's in need of rescue. And she absolutely shouldn't be down here. Did you lose track of her?"

Mave hissed and spat and scurried backward, fleeing from embarrassment. "I can't control her! She's out of control!"

Aspen shouted after her. "Where are your extras?! Throw some extras at her! You can't have things collapse like this, it's—"

Muadhnait and I reached the foot of the stairs. Muadhnait stayed one step back, on my left, covering my off-hand. We strode straight forward, toward the doors, daring the fairies to stop us, willing them to part.

The glass lady said, "We can't touch them. They're part of a story."

"The lady knight though," Aspen spat, "she's a loose end. We can tie her up!"

I was about to say something rude and fun to her — half-hoping she would take offense — when Calderon stepped forward, booming out with his bleating voice.

"Wait, wait, wait!" he said. His bearded face curled upward into a boyish smile. "Does this mean we are part of the story too now?! We are, we must be! She's speaking to us!"

The other fairies exchanged worried looks. Aspen said, "I don't think—"

"It does!" Calderon boomed. "And it's ongoing, haha! We cannot be stopped or interrupted! We are on the page, in the flow of something fresh! Look at this … this … " He looked me up and down. "Whatever you are. Whatever you are, I approve! Marvellous costuming choices! Bandaged feet, very odd, very novel."

I held up my knife. "The doors. Step out of the way."

"Not for a kingdom!" he roared — and parted his walking cane, drawing a concealed sword from within the wood. "Haha! Have at you!"

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