Where the Drowned Girls Go(Wayward Children #7)(36)
“How?” asked Emily.
Sumi grinned, seizing the dialog. “Nonsensically.” She turned to the nameless girl. “You’re good at fitting in little places. Go find a way into the matrons’ quarters. See what happens when they take Miss Lennox’s name away from her. See where they put it. And then come back here, and we’ll smash everything we have to smash, and we’ll go find Regan and her deer, and they’ll lead us out of here.”
“Are you sure?” asked the nameless girl timidly.
“No,” said Cora. “But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
15?TWO SIDES OF THE STORY
REGAN WALKED THROUGH THE forest as if it were the most familiar, beloved place in the world; as if she knew every inch of it, and every inch of it knew her. The creatures of the wood reacted in kind. They didn’t flee at the sound of her footsteps, but inched closer, moving through the brush to watch her as she came. One particularly bold blue jay dropped so low that his wings brushed her hair as he flew by, and her laughter was all the brighter because she hadn’t laughed in so very, terribly long.
She had always been a solemn child, slow to make friends, slow to trust anyone’s intentions. She’d had her reasons—of course she’d had her reasons; most adults even agreed that they made sense, even as most children called her stuck-up and arrogant and weird when they thought she wasn’t listening, even as the girl she’d trusted most in the world had shared a secret that wasn’t hers to share and broken Regan’s heart in half—but all the reasons in the world can’t change the end result. She’d been lonely, she’d been angry, and when a door had appeared where a door had no business being, she hadn’t hesitated.
In a way, she supposed she was one of the lucky ones. She’d come back from her adventures to a family that loved her, even if they couldn’t understand who she’d become. That was all right. They hadn’t been able to understand her before. They’d loved her and they’d cared for her and they’d blamed themselves for the way she was and they’d blamed her for not mysteriously becoming different, and when they’d told her that she was going away to boarding school in order to “get over her ordeal,” she’d packed without complaint, because she’d assumed that anything had to be better than walking through a house filled with cool, accusing shadows.
She’d been wrong, of course. Home at least had the horses, had the trees behind the house, had the kids who’d treated her like an outsider for most of her life and at least couldn’t find anything new to torment her about. School was an unfamiliar country, filled with adults who wanted her to deny everything she knew to be true, and kids who were torn between a deep, angry denial of their situation and an even deeper, even angrier desire to find their doors, to go home. All any of them wanted was to go home. It was just the shape of the idea that changed.
Regan stepped into a clearing, her feet as light on the forest floor as the hooves of any wild thing, and stopped in her tracks at the sight of a single stag cropping at the ground. He wasn’t the sort of deer who gets stories written about him: no one from the Disney Corporation was going to cast him in their live-action remake of Bambi. One of his antlers was broken. His coat was moth-eaten, mangy, and things moved in it, a density of fleas and parasites so high that they were visible to the naked eye. He was favoring his right hind leg over his left, and when he raised his head to look at her, the insides of his ears were caked with grime, and the corners of his eyes were thick with mucus.
He was the most beautiful thing she had seen in so long that she thought her heart might break from it.
“I don’t feel the need to run from you,” said the stag. “Why is that? Humans are a menace.”
“I’m halfway yours,” said Regan. “The other half of me is human, and that’s useful, because thumbs.” She held up her hands and wiggled her thumbs at him in illustration.
“My name is Lord of the Forest,” said the stag.
Regan nodded. Every stag she’d ever met had been named Lord of the Forest, even when there was another stag only a few feet away. Deer didn’t understand irony. “My name is Regan,” she said. “In the name of the Great Alliance of Hooves and Hands, I greet you.”
The stag flicked an ear. “That’s a name I haven’t heard since I was a fawn,” he said. “What do you want from me, Regan of the Alliance?”
“The wall around this wood was built to hold human children, not Lords and Ladies of the Forest,” she said. “My friends and I need to find a way out.” Inwardly, she was rejoicing. I’m talking to a stag, she thought, and it was light and lightning in her veins, it was joy beyond comprehension. It all happened. I was right the whole time. It happened.
“Why should I help you?”
“Because you know what agony it would be to have your freedom taken away, and you’re too good, too gracious, to allow that to happen to anyone else.” Regan bowed her head. “Please.”
The stag flicked an ear, considering her. Finally, sounding almost bored, he said, “Follow me.”
Regan straightened, smiling bright as a prairie sunrise, and let the stag lead her deeper into the wood.
16?SIDES CHOSEN, CHOICES MADE
EVEN AS REGAN WAS remembering what it meant to breathe, the girl who no longer had a name crept along the edge of the hall in the main building of the school, her back bent and her head hunched, willing herself unseen. She knew where the cameras were, thanks to weeks and months of observation, and she knew how to flatten herself out, to fit into their blind spots. It was a necessary skill to possess, especially when living with the daily fear that eventually dwindling would become shrinking would become regressing. The day she was more rat than girl, she would need to be ready to go into hiding, to find a way into the walls in order to save herself from an exterminator’s hands. The headmaster—fake, real, it didn’t matter—would never tolerate vermin sleeping in a bed like a real person. It didn’t matter that she was real, that she had always been real. She’d die for the crime of not wanting to love a monster.