Where the Drowned Girls Go(Wayward Children #7)(24)

Then he was gone, and Cora was alone. More alone than she had ever been before.

She put her hands over her face, and she cried.





PART III


THE DOORS THAT OPEN, THE DOORS THAT CLOSE





10?A CROWBAR OR A KEY


THE DROWNED GODS CAME for her as soon as she fell asleep.

They came as she had seen them in the Moors, unspeakable towers of tentacled flesh, suckers pulsing, surfaces bristling with eyes in a thousand shades of sunset, their pupils like sine curves against fields of red and gold and pink.

“You belong to us, little mermaid,” they whispered. “We gave you back your legs. We gave you back your voice. You belong to us.”

“I do not.” In dreams, Cora had her fins and her scales again, and the lashing of her tail held her upright, as freed from the bonds of gravity as the Drowned Gods themselves. “I fell because you designed the bridge to fall. An animal that falls into a trap may be caught, but that doesn’t make it a possession.”

“We flushed you out of hiding. You are ours.”

“I am not. I refuse.” The water was sweet. Cora inhaled deeply. “The gods of the Trenches and the gods of the Moors aren’t the same. You don’t belong in these currents. Be gone.”

“Not alone.” A tentacle lashed out, wrapping tight around her waist, trying to drag her forward. Cora shook her head, silently refusing to be moved, and try as the Drowned God might, it couldn’t budge her. She hung in the sea like a star.

“I will not,” she said. “I am not yours to cling to or claim. Go back to your own waters.”

Her time at the Whitethorn Institute had weakened their hold on her. She knew that now. In the months of resisting Whitethorn’s pressure to transform her into something else, she had somehow built up her strength to resist the Drowned Gods’ attempts to do the same thing. And their desperation was growing, or they wouldn’t have approached her so directly. She was stronger than they were, here in this familiar sea.



Slowly, the tentacle unwound from her waist. “We will be back.”

“And I will not go with you. Now, or ever. This is not your place.” She took another breath. “I am not your door.”

The eyes of the Drowned Gods slammed shut, taking the light they had cast with them, leaving Cora alone in the dark water. She floated in place, arms spread, hair a skirl around her face. To the silence she repeated:

“I am not your door.” After a pause for thought, she added, “But I might be my own.”

Cora sighed, and stretched, and woke in a cold, white-walled room with a thin blanket wrapped around her legs, binding them together into a child’s approximation of a tail. She kicked once, enjoying the way her industrial cotton “flukes” bounced, and waited for someone to come and let her out.

It was several hours later when she stepped into the dorm room, a matron behind her and her eyes pointed at the floor, so she wouldn’t have to look at any of the people in the room. She was back in her uniform, her hair perfectly combed and pulled back in a neat French twist that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a senior portrait.

“Please remind Miss Miller of how we do things around here,” said the matron. “I trust you can be gentle with her.” She stepped out of the room without waiting for an answer, closing the door as she went.

Sumi, seated cross-legged on her bed, didn’t move.

Emily gasped. “Cora, your hair…”

“I know. Pretty, isn’t it?” Cora lifted her head, smiling like a shark’s fin cutting through still water. There were no rainbows left on her skin. They had all flowed into her hair, which was still blue-green, but now gleamed nacre-iridescent and impossible.

“You’ve been gone for three days,” said Sumi. Her voice was flat. “They only kept me for one.”

“It didn’t feel like three days to me,” said Cora. “I was dreaming for most of it.”

Sumi nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Did they feed you?”

The nameless girl scoffed from her place on the other side of the room. “Of course they fed her. This is a school, not a prison.”

“No,” snapped Emily. The nameless girl flinched, looking startled. “For you it’s a school, because you want to be here. The rules are different for people who enrolled voluntarily. They’re not afraid you’re going to run. This is a prison. You’re just lucky enough not to be able to see the bars.”

“I enrolled voluntarily,” said Cora. “But no, they didn’t feed me.”

“Not like you needed it,” said the nameless girl, forcing the sneer back onto her face like she thought no one would have noticed when it disappeared.

“I bet you’d fit under the bathroom sink,” said Emily pleasantly. “You wouldn’t have a month ago, but now? You look like you’re just the right size.”

The nameless girl paled, clapping a hand over her mouth like she was going to be sick. Then she bolted from the room, presumably heading for the bathroom. Rowena lowered her book and gave Emily a reproachful look.

“That wasn’t kind,” she said.

“She isn’t kind,” said Emily. “It’s not my fault if she can’t take what she dishes out.”