Dread.
Thump-thump—
Not just fear — oh, poor fear is but a pale imposter dressed in motley, cavorting about the stage and pulling faces at the audience, to be ushered off at the turn of the scene or banished by the final descent of the curtain. Fear is a hearty little jester, confined to the boards, who cannot follow out beyond the plasterwork and glitter-paint of the theatre; if one so wishes, one may vault the orchestra pit and dance hand-in-hand with fear, without any real peril to flesh or soul. But, one might say, what about terror — fear’s older, larger, nastiest sibling? Nay, not terror, not even a little bit of terror. For terror is a fleeting apparition, a trick of grease paint and screeching strings, a darkening of the lights and a rolling thunder beneath the floors; terror is draped in ragged black and wears a worm-eaten skull for a head, all to inspire the sword and the axe and the cleansing fla cut from cardboard and wrapped in coloured foil.
Neither fear nor terror can invoke the reality of dread.
Certainty. Inevitability. Unavoidable doom.
—thump-thump—
A wave of cold sweat broke out from every pore, sticking my clothes to clammy, cringing, curdled skin; beneath the paper-thin security of my squid-skull mask, my face was flushed with heat, my hair was matted and filthy, and I felt my teeth begin to chatter. My guts clenched like fists in the throes of rigor mortis, threatening to void at both ends. Nausea clawed at my throat like a beast trying to get out. A weight squeezed down on my chest, pressing hard, crushing the breath from my lungs.
—thump-thump—
Dread. Worse than I had ever felt before. I, who had been ejected Outside as a teenager over and over again, I who had scurried through the rot and the dark and the madness that roiled at the feet of entities a thousand tis my size. I, who had hidden among the sea-slick rocks, sheltering from the Gods of dinsions I could barely describe. I who had faced down the Eye, more than once, and won her to my side. I had been through so much — felt my body ripping itself apart from the inside, surfaced from the abyss and found myself trapped in the wrong physical form, surrounded by the pulsating at and the glugging chemical factory of my own corpse. A year ago I had given up on life, and long before that I had been forced to give up on Maisie. That despair had marked the lowest points of my life.
None of it matched this dread.
—thump—
Because I knew, deeper than instinct or intellect, as I clutched Eileen’s shoulders and stared across the toy-strewn battlefield, past the final stand-off outside the Box, past our beloved Knights and my Lonely Counterpart’s Empty Guards, past the fallen vault door, into the blackness behind them—
—thump—
I knew that if I t that thing, the thing going—
—thump-thump-THUMP.
That I would die.
All around , my friends and allies and lovers were trying to speak to . But their words were drowned out by a single high-pitched note screaming inside my head; their faces were blurred, whirling together, a mass of aningless flesh and teeth and eyeballs, sared across the surface of the dream. Sobody touched , a hand upon my knee. Sobody else placed their support against my back. Sobody else hugged my front. Voices asked if I was all right, calling out to in concern and growing panic. Sobody told they loved . Sobody else told it would all be okay. A third voice said my na with so much care and attention that a year ago it would have broken .
None of that mattered now. The dream was turning to lted paste.
Dread is a terrible thing, when one has no way out. The universe narrows to a single razor-sharp point. There is nothing except that certainty, nothing except one’s own—
You are doing this to yourself, said the Praem Plushie.
Her words were like a bucket of cold water over my head. I gasped and spluttered, heaving for breath, unsure how she could even speak, since I couldn’t actually see her. The dream had beco a churning vortex before my eyes.
“W-what—” I spluttered into the void. “What do you—”
You are turning the dream back into a nightmare, said the Praem Plushie. You won, but now you are surrendering again.
“But I can’t— I’m going to— I won’t survive this! I won’t— I won’t—”
Do what you were told to do, she said.
Before I could splutter another incoherent question, a face surfaced from the chaos beyond my self.
Raine, mouthing my own words back at .
“I don’t want to do this anymore?” she said. “Heather? What does that an? Heather? Hey, hey, Heather, look at , look at—”
Raine’s face sunk back into the maelstrom.
I did not want to open the Box. I did not want Eileen to take a single step forward. Whatever that—
—thump—
—was, I did not want to face it, I did not want to know it, I did not want to acknowledge it even existed.
The knowledge would kill .
Lozzie’s face surfaced next — up on tiptoes, right by Eileen’s side, trying to touch my cheeks beneath my squid-skull mask.
“Heathy! Heathy, she’s so close! She’s right there! We can’t— can’t leave her behind! You didn’t leave behind! You can do it, it’s right there! We all believe in you, Heathy, so so so so so so much! Heathy—”
Lozzie faded out again, drowned by dread.
She was right, of course.
I would do anything to rescue Maisie. I had decided that long before we had embarked for Wonderland. Was dread certainty of destruction enough to stop , to turn back, at this final hurdle? Where had all my courage gone? My resolve and my determination? Why had I allowed myself to falter?
Praem — or whatever the Praem Plushie represented — was also correct. This was a dream. I was but one component of myself, a tiny part of the gestalt being that we all called ‘Heather Morell’. She — I, , the whole — could not die here, not physically, not truly. Was I afraid of death, or rely the negation of whatever I represented?
Abstract thoughts were rather difficult, however, because the dread still felt completely real.
Evelyn’s face snapped into clarity, sowhere below and ahead.
“Cowards die many tis before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once,” she said — and then she was gone.
If not for the dread, I would have howled with laughter; as it was, I rely spluttered a bit. That was not Evelyn, it was a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. That was , talking back to myself in this pinprick gyre of the dream.
She — I — was right, of course. To give up now, to fear death more than fear losing my sister forever, that would be like dying a thousand tis. If I turned back here, I would die every day from this day forth; I would die with every breath, every twitch of my forlorn weeping. I would die with every second of life bought by my cowardice, my refusal to peel my lost twin from whatever cursed shell in which she had been sealed. The other parts of , whatever they were, would never forgive this part of , the part I inhabited right here and now, upon the stage of the dream.
There was my courage. There was my resolve.
Death before betrayal. Death before loss. Death before turning back, and leaving Maisie to her fate.
Behind my squid-skull mask, I closed my eyes as tight as I could, shutting out the whirling vortex of the dream. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, until the darkness beneath my lids throbbed red, until my pulse pounded in my ears and my body shook — not with dread, but with anger and focus and the heat of my heartbeat.
“Miles to go before I sleep,” I quoted at myself. “Miles to go before I sleep. Miles to go before I sleep. Co on, Heather. You can do this. You did harder things before. You can do this. You can do this. You can.”
When I opened my eyes I was free of the whirlpool. The dream was back, pretending once more to be reality.
The battlefield of overturned toy tanks and foam darts spread out before , leading toward the Box. Eileen was below , hands firmly grasping my thighs, carrying secure and safe upon her back. My friends surrounded . Everybody was speaking at once, almost as chaotic as the maelstrom of dream failure.
“—Big H? Big H? Yeah, yeah, I can see her breathing, see her eyes moving, she’s still—”
“—put her down! Yes, ‘Eileen’, I an you! Put her down, there’s clearly sothing wrong with her, we need to—”
“Let the Shaman think! Let her think! She thinks and she acts, let her—”
“—Heather? Heather, hey, Heather, look at , hey—”
“Hisssss-hisssss-ssssss—”
“She’s dreaming, deeper than us, deeper than—”
“Heather! Heather!”
“Heathy!”
“Pbbbbbbrrrrt?”
“Heather!”
Thump-thump—
How foolish I had been! Here was my strength and my resolve. They had been right here all along, by my side all this ti, and yet I felt such a terrible distance from them since our reunion. Hiding inside my mask, an ugly and wretched thing, dreading what lay before ; I longed to take the mask off and let them all see my face, let them see I was still here. But if they saw, they would see my guilt, like rotten pus beneath my face. They would see for what I was. Ugly.
They love you, said the Praem Plushie. That’s why they’re with you.
To face dread alone, huddled in my shell — or to face it with my friends, no matter what they thought of .
It was no choice at all.
Before I could second guess my decision or co down off the sense of unreality imparted by the swirling nightmare of a few monts earlier, I let go of Eileen, reached up with both hands, and yanked the squid-skull mask off my head.
Cold air, fresh air, filled with the sll of turned soil. My friends’ and lovers’ faces, blinking up at in confusion and surprise. Raine was down on my right, one hand on my uninjured knee, deep worry and concern written on her face. Lozzie was to my left, one arm across my back, biting her lower lip in fear. Evelyn was frowning like I had hurt myself in so terrible way. Even Zheng looked concerned, as if she doubted her Shaman’s health.
I felt like a wretched and vile little thing, word out from under a rock; it was good that Eileen was my legs, for I could not run away.
“I … ” I croaked. My voice was raw and scratchy, as if I hadn’t used it in weeks. “I love all of you,” I said. “I hope you know that. I … w-well, I an, okay, maybe not all of you, exactly. Zalu, Xiyu, I don’t know you enough to love you, but … um … I-I hope that— hic— makes sense … ”
Silence. Wind rustled through the trees far to our collective right. A breeze moved over the desolate battlefield.
Raine broke into a laughing smile of incredible relief. “Of course it makes sense, sweet thing. Love you too.”
“There she is!” Twil cheered. “Heather, yo, you alright?”
“Heathy!” Lozzie chirped. “You ca back!”
“I-I, um … uh … ” I felt tears prickle at my eyes. “I was— I was— gone?”
“Sure seed like it for a sec!” said Twil.
“She needs dical attention!” Evelyn snapped. “She’s concussed, or she’s lost too much blood, or sothing else. Praem, Praem, go get her down off—”
“Heather is here,” said Praem.
Eileen said: “Heather is present. I present her. Presently.”
“What does that an!?” Evelyn shouted.
“The Shaman is well!” Zheng bellowed — a notch below her usual depth, what with the reduction of her usual sheer size. “She needed to think. That is all.”
Raine said: “Heather. Heather, hey, it’s okay. You can cry if you gotta, it’s fine, I promise. You said you don’t want to do this anymore. What does that an? Do what?”
I started to shake my head. “It doesn’t—”
“Nuh uh,” said Raine, sharper and harder than I expected. Her lips curled into a grin. “Sweet thing, you’re still the one most in tune with the dream. If you say sothing feels wrong, then sothing is wrong. And hell, even if we weren’t in a dream, I’d say the sa thing. Your fears are my fears. Your worries are my worries. So what is it? Tell us what’s wrong.”
I swallowed. The words stuck in my throat, too tiny to face Raine’s kindness. I felt guilty and vile and ugly, and I could not understand those feelings.
But I told the truth.
“I’m terrified of whatever is making that—”
—thump—
I gasped. Sothing writhed inside my chest, poking at the spaces between my ribs, trying to get out.
“Uh … that, that noise,” I said. “I’m terrified of what that might be.”
And it was more than re noise; with every subterranean thump of mass against impedint, the ground shook ever so slightly. If a rain shower had passed over us to clean away the debris of Tenny’s battlefield, the puddles would have rippled beneath each distant shiver of the ground. My chest ached in ti with the thumping, ribs creaking, so unseen horror trying to burst forth from within . Guilt given form? Or sothing else? I tasted bile and blood in the back of my throat.
All a dream, I told myself. All a taphor.
Evelyn snapped before anybody else could speak. “What’s in the Box!? Yes, you, Eileen!” She jabbed with her renewed bone-wand. “What is in there?! I won’t accept this anymore, not if it’s scaring the shit out of Heather. What is in the Box? Answer properly, or so help God—”
“I have told you,” said Eileen. “My answer remains the sa. Unfortunately for all of us.”
“—I will shove this wand—”
“Evee!” I shouted back. “Evee, she doesn’t know! She doesn’t know. It doesn’t belong to her.”
Evelyn turned her anger upon . “Heather, I have never seen you this fucking scared. And yes, I could tell, right through that bloody mask! Sothing doesn’t add up here. And she’s the missing piece. Who does it belong to, Heather? Hm? Who else is in control of this dream?”
“,” I said. “It’s all just now.”
Evelyn clenched her teeth. “And what does that an?”
“Maybe it’s Maisie?” suggested Twil, shrugging, wolfish tail wagging. Everyone looked at her, but she just shrugged again. “Besides, hey, whatever that is down there going all bang-bang underground, it can’t beat us now, right?” Twil gestured across what was left of the battlefield. “We’ve got , Zheng, all the Knights. These two spec ops girls here,” she added for Zalu and Xiyu. “And half a dozen alien Heathers, all spiky and stuff. Who’s gonna go up against them? I wouldn’t want to. Fuck that. No offense, Heather, just like, respect, real scary.”
A distant “Pbrrrrrt!” echoed over the battlefield.
“And Tenns!” Lozzie said. “Tenns is on your side too, Heathy!”
Twil grinned. “Yeah, and Tenny, big style! Who cares if there’s so giant monster down in the Box. Tenny’s bigger, am I right?”
“Right!” Lozzie cheered, throwing her arms in the air. Another distant fluttery trill from Tenny floated over the remains of the battle.
Raine patted my knee again. “Whatever it is, we face it all together. You got that, Heather? You aren’t alone.” She winked at . “Gonna keep that mask off now?”
“I … uh … ” The mask felt numb in my hands, as if it was a piece of I had removed. I gestured with it, feeling helpless. “Could sobody … ?”
Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight stepped forward, still wearing a mask herself, the mask of the Yellow Princess, albeit rumpled and creased, carrying her broken umbrella. She held out her free hand.
“I will watch over your face,” she said. “I will treat it as you, kitten.”
She took the mask from my outstretched hand. Now I was truly naked.
This part of — whatever I was — still felt the most incredible dread of my life. This part of might be about to et an end. But I would see it through with the love of my friends. It was only with their support that I could rescue Maisie.
Had Maisie known all along that this would happen? That I would split myself into all these pieces, and only my friends would be able to put back together? That they would see past the ugly guilt, and see only ?
“Thank you,” was all I could say. “Thank you, everyone. I … thank you.”
“Heather,” Raine said. “You know I’d follow you anywhere, right down into hell if you needed there. We’re gonna get you through this. All of you. Every last piece of you.”
I nodded. “Yes. Yes. Co on, let’s … let’s get over there, then. Eileen, continue walking, please. I’m okay now. Let’s resu this.”
Which was a lie. I was very far from okay. My heart was racing, cushioned only by the secret support of the Praem Plushie. My skin was slick with freezing sweat. My teeth almost chattered. My chest felt as if it was wrapped in bands of iron, and as if that iron was the only thing keeping my ribs from bursting outward with so lively awfulness.
But I wasn’t alone.
Our ragged band resud the short journey across the remainder of Tenny’s battlefield. Myself and Eileen, with Raine at my side; Evelyn in her wheelchair, pushed by Praem; Twil and Zheng, Lozzie up ahead; Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight, walking on churned mud in heels, a minor miracle in itself; half our Knights, led by Zalu and Xiyu; five Abyssal Heathers, ranging far ahead, as if other parts of felt more bold than I could imagine. Horror’s head was clipped to Zalu’s belt now, and kept her mouth sensibly shut, at long last.
We crossed makeshift trenches cut into the lawns of Cygnet Asylum, littered with rolls of barbed wire, rows of overturned artillery pieces, and piles of Empty Guard corpses. Twil and Zheng both pulled at the barbed wire, bare handed, and ca away with clumps of spray-painted cardboard. The Abyssal Heathers clambered up the overturned big guns, hauling themselves higher with tentacles and claws, only to find the barrels stuffed with cotton wool and string, sporting payloads of big paper banners which read ‘bang’. The corpses, once again, were real enough, leaking great pools of oil into the ground. A calm and detached part of my mind was thankful this was re dream, else all those hydrocarbons would ruin the soil.
But I could barely pay attention to the sights we passed. All I could do was stare into the darkness of the Box, the dark mouth of that vault entrance, past the fallen door and the Empty Guards and the last stand of Vindictive, Hateful, Horrid Little .
We finally reached the end of the battlefield, passing out from between dead guns and empty corpses and collapsed trenches, parallel to the deep swathe of destruction cut through the whole thing by the giant form of a certain faithful moth-puppy.
Zalu and Xiyu and the Knights hurried forward to join the stand-off at the mouth of the Box, where the Cattys and the Knights faced down the last of the Empty Guards. A single Abyssal Heather, the final of the six, flitted in the opposite direction, to et up with the other five as they closed ranks and greeted her with an embrace, swapping kisses and caresses.
The rest of us halted a good thirty feet from the rear of the stand-off, in the warm embrace of a familiar shadow, towering far above us.
“Ppppbbbbtttt-bttttt!” Tenny trilled.
Tenny’s dream-self was beautiful, in the sa way as my Abyssal Selves. I had never gotten a chance to examine her up-close during the previous dream which she had joined. I had only ever seen her from a distance, over the rooftops of a simulacra of my ho town, Reading, or in the final few monts as the dream had closed. Here, in this expanded mory of Cygnet Asylum, Tenny was close enough to touch.
Sowhere between five to six stories tall, towering over the torn-open rooftop of the Box, she had made herself into a true giant — a ‘Kaiju’, just like in those old tiy giant monster movies she sotis watched on her laptop. Her body was shaped like a cross between a moth and a jelly bean, all soft and rounded at both ends, with a series of long, thin, insectoid legs jutting out from the sides to support her massive weight; six pointed tips were currently buried in the soft soil of the lawns, while another six were resting on the peeled-open Box, as if she was leaning against her handiwork, showing it off for our approval. Her wings were folded back in repose, their work done for now, but a mass of thick black tentacles extended from beneath the shimring surface of the wings themselves; many of the tentacles waved in the air, like she was celebrating her victory, but several of them continued to grip the edge of the Box, as if ready to rip it wider. Two tentacles had descended all the way down to ground level, to hover over the last handful of Empty Guards, poised to crush them to paste at the first sign of resistance. She wasn’t going to let the Knights or Cattys get shot.
Furred in luxurious velvet black and thickly fluffy whorls of spiralling white, she caught the silver light which spilled down from the slit-crack in the Eye, highlighting the tufts and strands of her fur as if beneath the grace of God-sent sunlight. Her face was a little snout-like, but still instantly recognisable as our Tenny, complete with a beaming cat-like smile beneath her big black eyes and a pair of twitching antennae.
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Lozzie threw her hands into the air again. “Tenny! Baby! Well done!”
“Prrrrbttt!” Tenny replied. Her high-pitched trilling noise shook the air, but not unpleasantly, like standing next to a jet engine made of fluff and felt.
Tenny’s sheer happiness was enough to push back the worst of the dread which still clotted the passages of my heart. Even if I died here, I had done so good out in the waking world, alongside Lozzie. Whatever happened here, Tenny was free, and had her whole life ahead of her.
I blinked a thin sheen of tears from my eyes. What if I never got to see Tenny finish growing up?
“Holy fucking shit,” Twil said, gazing up at Tenny’s substantial bulk. “Lozzie, you gotta stop her mainlining Mothra movies.”
“Too late!” Lozzie chirped. “Isn’t her cosplay the best?!”
Raine shot a smirk at Twil. “What’s this, wolfie? You scared of Tenny now?”
“No!” Twil tutted. “I an just, like, I an, she can’t do this in reality, right? She’s huge! We’d cause a national panic if she did this in Sharrowford, right?”
“Yessssss!” trilled Tenny. Twil flinched, then put her hands as if in surrender.
Evelyn huffed. “Stop bellyaching, Twil. She can do whatever she wants, we’re in a dream.”
“Glorious,” said Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight. “Well done.”
“Puppy!” Zheng roared. “You are huge!”
“Prrrrrrrrrrrrt!!!” went Tenny.
I added my voice, calling upward to my surrogate moth-like daughter. “Y-yes! Tenny, it’s ! It’s Heather! You’re so beautiful, and … and thank you! Well done! I love you, Tenny! We all love you. Never forget that, okay? I love you, Heather loves you, I helped make you and … and I love you.”
My voice trailed off as I realised what I was doing.
I was trying to say goodbye.
I clamped down on that emotion, cramming it deep down inside . I could not let my friends and companions and lovers — least of all Raine or Evelyn — know about the dread certainty which coiled and bubbled in my guts, even if they were committed to stand at my side while I faced the source of that dread. If they knew what I suspected I was marching into, they might try to stop . I had to be—
Ruthless?
Like her — Lonely Heather, the Vile and Rotten version of myself?
The paradox made my head spin. How could I be the ruthless one now, if she had separated from ?
Before I had ti to let the implications of those thoughts blossom into a dream-splitting fissure, Eileen opened her mouth and spoke a single word which turned all heads toward her.
“Granddaughter?”
Evelyn scrunched up her eyes as if experiencing an instant and terrific migraine, hissing “Again?” Raine froze, eyes wide, swallowing a smirk. Twil started to laugh — then stopped.
Lozzie hopped into the air and did a full 180-degree turn, poncho spinning outward to either side. She landed on her toes, a twinkle in her eyes, and squinted at Eileen.
Eileen said: “Granddaughter number two? Via Heather.”
Lozzie raised a hand. “I’ll allow it! But it’s up to Tenns!”
Evelyn snapped, “This is all very heart-warming, but do we have ti for this? I’m going to answer my own question — no!”
“Y-yes,” I agreed. “This is all very sweet, but we need to—”
THUMP.
“—get down into the Box.”
“Agreed,” Raine said, glancing around at the group. “Heather’s in charge of this. If she says we get shifting, we get shifting. Tenny, you’re a star. Thanks for the assist, big girl!”
“Prrrbt!”
“Hey, uh,” Twil said, shading her eyes against the silver light pouring from the sky. She was peering up at Tenny and squinting. “That’s Jan up there on her back, right?”
Twil was correct — Jan was visible, several stories up, as a dull grey tal figure clinging to the soft fur of Tenny’s back, clutching an even smaller blob of russet in one arm.
“Ah, yes!” I said. “Maybe we should call to her, see if she wants to co down?”
Raine stuck her machete in the ground, point down, then cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hullo up there, Jan! How’s it going?”
Jan moved one arm, barely visible at that distance, raising her helt’s visor. A pale oval appeared in the grey blob.
A distant voice floated down from Tenny’s back.
“It’s going!”
Raine shouted back: “Fancy coming down? Joining us for the final stretch? Dream’s almost over!”
“I’ll stay up here, thank you very much!”
Raine blinked in surprise and glanced at . I shrugged, a little confused. Twil and Evee both looked rather perplexed as well.
Jan shouted again: “It’s a darn sight safer up here right now! Away from all the guns!”
Lozzie flapped her poncho. “Janny! Janny, it’s safe down here too!”
Jan went silent for a long mont.
Lozzie did a little side-to-side spin with her poncho. “I’lllllll protect you, Janny! Right now I’m extra double good at that! I’m spiky and sharp!” She waved her shiv in the air, edge glinting in the light. “Seeeeee?”
Up on Tenny’s back, Jan paused and leaned forward, as if trying to peer down at us. A mont later her voice rang out again.
“Lozzie, is that you?”
“Yaaaaah!” Lozzie called. “Co down, Janny! I’ll look after you! Niiiiice and snug!”
Jan put her face in one hand. Even at that great height I heard a tiny little clank of tal.
A mont later, one of Tenny’s bus-width tentacles dipped toward Jan, pausing only a few feet above her armoured form, the tip narrowed to a sharp-ended slit. Jan looked up and flinched, but so kind of communication must have passed between her and Tenny. The tentacle dipped further, then lifted Jan up by the scruff of her armoured neck.
Like a battered angel in dull plate-mail descending on the chanical arm of a stage-machine, Jan was briskly lowered through the air, past Tenny’s smiling face, and down to the ground. Her armoured feet staggered sideways as she landed, wide-eyed with terror inside her helt. She still had the Saye Fox clutched in her arms, hugging her tightly to prevent a fall.
“Janny!” Lozzie cheered, running forward to slam into Jan with an armour-piercing hug. She giggled and smirked with a little bit too much energy; the power of the dream had not entirely left our Lozzie just yet. Jan looked halfway between awestruck and terrified, but did not recoil or let go of Lozzie. A strong mark in her favour, I thought.
Lozzie would be safe and appreciated with Jan. Another thing I did not have to worry about, once I was gone.
The Saye Fox wriggled out of Jan’s arms before Lozzie’s impact. She hit the ground with a gentle skitter of paws and quickly crossed to Evee’s wheelchair, where she paced around Evelyn twice, then sat at her feet.
“Yip-yip-yap!” went the Fox.
“Quite,” Evelyn sighed. “Glad to see you’re safe … um … grandmother.”
“Yerp!”
Evee’s past, finally bridged. Another matter that I had helped heal. Was it to be the last? My heart was racing in my chest now that I realised what I was doing, checking off the matters which I would not regret in my final monts.
Thump! Thump!
My ribs creaked. My chest ached. Sothing inside still wanted to get out.
Jan peered over Lozzie’s shoulder, eyes roving across myself and my companions. She stared in open awe as the six Abyssal Heathers stalked forward to touch Tenny’s descended tentacle, each one briefly brushing their own tentacles over Tenny’s gigantic black limb. Tenny let out a happy little “Prrrrbit!” just as if I’d given her a hug.
Jan swallowed. “Uh, I’m not going to ask what exactly is going on here. Or who Heather is riding.” She eyed Eileen briefly. “Though it’s good to see you all, glad to see this plan worked. I would just like this to be over, preferably not with a final boss fight.”
“I am no longer a boss,” said Eileen. “But I am boss.”
Jan went even more pale. “Don’t— don’t— I don’t want to know. Okay? Just don’t— don’t tell . Can we go back to the waking world yet?”
Raine said, “We need to put Heather back together first.”
“Long story,” Evelyn huffed.
Jan swallowed. “Right. Right. Okay. I’ll just … I’ll just stick with Lozzie here, if that’s alright.”
Lozzie seed to take this well. She hopped back and wriggled her hand into one of Jan’s armoured gauntlets, then threw her a saucy little wink.
—thump—
Raine pulled her machete out of the ground, made a circle motion in the air with her other fist, then raised her voice. “Alright, ladies. Everyone hang back a bit, okay? I’m gonna go check out this stand-off and—”
“Raine,” I said. “There’s no need for caution. I think they’re already beaten. We can just walk right in there.”
Raine held my gaze for a mont too long, with a mote of surprise in her eyes. But then she nodded. “I’m protecting you all the way on this, Heather. You don’t get a choice in that. Understand, sweet thing? You’re not walking in there alone.”
All I could do was nod, trying to control my emotions. “Eileen,” I said. “Take the lead, please.”
“Are you leading , or am I leading you?” Eileen said.
I smiled a little. “Whichever you prefer.”
“I lead. I lean.”
Eileen strode forward, heading for the line of Caterpillars and Knights.
All the forces we had brought to Wonderland were accounted for now, assembled around that final door, the final portal, the way down into the Box. In the rear of the stand-off stood the six Caterpillars, their off-white carapaces dirty with mud from the running battle, arranged in a curve as if to prevent any escape. They were not yet fully regrown, each one about the size of a shire horse rather than an entire barn. As we passed through the middle of their formation, a series of soft little doot! sounds greeted us, six in total, one from each of the Cattys. I reached out to touch one of the carapaces as we passed, running my fingers along the flank of a good friend and loyal ally. I muttered a thank you beneath my breath.
Lozzie decided to hug all of them, running up and down the line, pulling Jan behind her.
Next were the Knights — all thirty finally reassembled in one place. Their fake security guard armour was battered and broken, visors smashed, helts cracked, weapons reduced to scrap tal and damaged plastic. But they crouched in three solid ranks, taking cover behind a series of low tal walls which separated the Box’s vault-door from the lawns. Each one of them looked prepared to go over the top and charge the defenders, even empty-handed as they were.
Standing tall, out in the open, without a scrap of cover, was the one Knight I had wondered over for quite so ti.
“Oh!” I said in surprise as Eileen drew level with him. “It’s you! And … and you. Oh, wow. What have you … done?”
The Forest Knight — the only one I was reliably capable of picking out as an individual from among the hive-mind — turned the blank mirror of his visor to look at . He nodded once.
The Forest Knight had undergone quite a transformation. Like his siblings, his armour was battered and broken and his dream-wrought firearm was reduced to almost nothing. Unlike the other Knights, sothing else had flowed in to fill the gaps — a thick, gloopy, viscous goo, light brown like fresh clay. The goo had hardened into plates of armour over his security guard uniform; the plates were decorated with the sa perspective-defying floral patterns as his real armour, out in the waking world; that was the only reason I could truly recognise him. So of the material had lengthened into an imitation of his chosen weapon — a huge axe, held over his shoulder in an easy pose. From his arms sprouted a series of short tentacles, wriggling in the air, forming little eyeballs at their tips.
The Forest Knight and Mister Squiddy were working together, on a more literal level than I had ever expected. There was no ti to investigate the implications right then, but I filed it away, for later, for beyond the dream.
If I survived.
And finally, right there, strapped to the Forest Knight’s back, was the body Jan had built for Maisie — a grey and featureless version of my own body, limp and lifeless, without flesh or face, ready for inhabitation.
—thump-thump—
The rest of my friends drew up alongside us. A couple of them greeted the Forest Knight; Evelyn said sothing about Mister Squiddy, but I was barely paying attention. Eileen said sothing else, sothing that made Twil groan and Lozzie giggle.
—thump-thump—
Past the trio of low steel walls, opposite the assembled Knights, was the fallen vault door — a great tal disk lying on a wide expanse of featureless concrete, flanked by a pair of partially wrecked guard posts, damaged by the passing of Tenny’s tentacles. Six Empty Guards — clean and shiny mirrors of the Knights, with working guns and intact armour — crouched among the wreckage, taking cover behind the rim of the fallen door and in the ruins of one of the guard posts. They were so still they looked frozen. Their submachine guns were pointed at the floor, as if in premature surrender.
Past the Guards and the fallen disk was the doorway itself — a massive circle of tal, set in a huge panel covered in electronic controls and little blinking LEDs. The machinery was wrecked, cracked by the pressure of the buckled walls. The doorway itself was bent out of shape; the vault door must have popped free like a cork.
Past that doorway was dripping darkness, lit by the distant fires of alarm-lights, like volcanism beneath the deepest of seas.
Thump!
And it — whatever it was — knew I was here.
“Heather? Sweet thing?” Raine said at my side. “What now? Those guards are ard, we can’t just walk past them.”
Evelyn hissed. “Are we certain this isn’t a trap? Heather?”
—thump-THUMP—
“Shit ,” Twil muttered. “Ground’s really fucking shaking now. We’ve pissed sothing the fuck off down there.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It’s over. We’ve already won. She’s lost everything. She’s all alone now. We can just … just … ”
In my peripheral vision, the six Abyssal Heathers stalked forward, flanking the remaining half-dozen Empty Guards from both sides. Tentacles flicked into the air, sprouting rows of barbed hooks, their tips narrowing into razor-sharp points. Claws slid from well-lubricated sheaths. Jaws opened wide, sharp teeth dripping with sticky toxic mucus. Six hissing voices rose in six abyssal throats.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Wait, please. There’s no need for more violence now.”
The Abyssal Heathers paused, turning void-dark eyes toward .
“There’s no need for a fight anymore,” I repeated. “She has nothing left. We only have to ask.”
Beneath , Eileen raised her voice: “You there! May we see Maisie?”
Evelyn sighed as if at the end of her rope. Raine made a valiant but failing effort not to smirk. Twil snorted. Lozzie made a sound like a steam kettle. I appreciated the pun, but—
—thump—
—my heart was beating too fast to laugh, and my ribs hurt like hell was trying to break free from inside my heart.
By so miracle, Eileen’s appeal worked. A distant crackle of radio static crossed the no-man’s-land of the fallen vault door. One of the Empty Guards turned his head to speak into the little hand-held radio attached to the shoulder of his uniform.
From down inside my own chest, a voice crackled forth.
“Yes, that’s correct,” it said — Lonely Heather, Isolated and Desolate , her voice like lead and ashes, answering the inquiry from her defeated soldiers. “Stand down. I … I think that’s the right terminology. Stand down.”
For a mont I had no idea where the voice had co from. Between the cracking inside my head and the thumping beneath all our feet, I was prepared to believe that sohow I had beco my own Lonely Self, that her voice was channelled from within my own chest, that the dream had coiled backward on itself so hard that I could simply hear these things now, no matter how far away. Why not? Everything else was far beyond the rim of absurdity now.
But then the Praem Plushie peeked out from within my yellow blanket, holding the little hand-held radio which I had taken off the first batch of Empty Guards.
“Stand down,” Lonely Heather’s voice hissed from the speaker. “Let them pass. Let them in. It’s over.”
I accepted the radio from the Praem Plushie, with numb fingers and a lump in my throat. All my friends watched , frozen with anticipation and surprise. Raine mouthed ‘Is that her?’ I nodded my head, though my neck felt like a steel cable pulling taut to breaking point.
My thumb found the main button on the hand-held radio. I pressed it, and spoke into the microphone.
“Tell them to throw down their weapons,” I said.
A long pause. Then a sob, distant and muffled, so that I could not be sure if I had truly heard it. Lonely Heather said, “Throw down your guns, everyone. It’s over. I’ve lost.”
As one, the Empty Guards on the far side of the fallen vault door dropped their guns and rose to their feet, raising their hands into the air.
The Knights sward forward, without need of command or instruction, though Zalu and Xiyu joined them; within seconds they had scooped up the fallen weapons and restrained the six Empty Guards.
“Don’t be too hard on them!” I called. “It’s not their fault! They’re not even really alive. They’re just … just her.”
A limp and lifeless laugh squawked from the radio in my hand: “Ha. That’s right. It’s not their fault, Heather. It’s yours. This is all your fault now. I hope you appreciate that I tried to protect you. I tried.”
Anger and disgust welled up inside , threatening to push a column of bile up my throat. I snapped into the radio, “You and I can talk face to face soon enough, thank you very much. How do we reach you? There better not be any traps inside the Box, either, or I’ll—”
You’ll what, I thought to myself — hurt her?
Lonely Heather snorted a dead little laugh. “It’s a single route. Just walk in. I’ll wait.”
“Promise —”
The radio connection cut out with a little ‘fzzzt’. Lonely Heather had terminated the call. I tutted and hissed with frustration. She — ! — was so irritating and stubborn, I had no idea how anybody could ever put up with her behaviour.
When I lowered the radio and looked back up at my friends, I expected hard-nosed concern and practical frowns. Raine would have her machete ready to fight anything which my Traitorous Little Other sent against us, while Evelyn would be worried about tricks and traps and ambushes as we plunged into the Box. Zheng would be eager for a fight, and Lozzie would be flashing her shiv, and—
But instead the concern was gentle, and the frowns were worried.
Raine just said, “That was her, right? This other part of you? Down in the Box?”
“Uh … yes.”
“And she’s all alone down there?” Raine asked. “You’re all alone, down there?”
“ … y-yes, but—”
Evelyn said, “I want to get down there, ASAP. I don’t like the way her voice sounded, not one bit.”
“Heathyyyyy,” Lozzie said, a little whine in her voice. I glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at , she was staring into the dark portal which led down into the Box.
“Spooky as fuck,” said Twil. “That sounded exactly like Heather. I guess … it is Heather? Another Heather?”
“We already have enough of those,” Evelyn drawled. “And— hey! Wait! Wait for the rest of us!”
The Six Abyssal Heathers were already stalking forward, claws tap-tapping over the fallen vault door, sliding back into the shadows beyond the circular doorway.
Raine hopped forward, machete in the air, more like the baton of a parade leader than the weapon of a revolutionary. “Who’s coming down with us? Who’s holding the door? Quickly now, people!”
The brief debate over party organisation was lost on ; I felt like a pebble whirling in a waterspout, waiting to be carried to shore. The Knights opted to stay and hold the exit to the Box, in case of an unexpected situation. Zalu and Xiyu did the sa, overtly much more comfortable sticking to their dreamlike ‘special operations’ role than plunging into the heart of the dream. The Caterpillars couldn’t co either, the walkway beyond the door did not look wide enough for even their reduced size.
Everyone else — all the friends and companions I had rescued, plus the latecors of Jan, the Saye Fox, and the Forest Knight — moved toward the doorway together, with in the centre of the group, still carried on Eileen’s shoulders, hurrying to catch up with the clicking claws of the six Abyssal Heathers.
Did my friends expect no trickery? No traps on our path? Praem pushed Evelyn’s wheelchair as if we were not descending into the lair of—
—thump—
—a great and terrible beast. Eileen carried forward without comnt. Raine and Zheng strode at my sides. Twil had her claws out, but no more than that. Lozzie pulled Jan along by one armoured gauntlet.
We passed beneath the shattered circular doorway, into the subterranean shadows of the Box.
“E-Eileen,” I stamred. “W-wait … ”
“But you weigh so little.”
“Now isn’t the ti for puns! I—” The shadows covered us, swallowing us whole. “Oh … n-no—”
—thump—
But then suddenly, Raine’s hand found mine. She looked up at from beside Eileen, beaming with all her usual confidence, hair raked back, muscles flowing and flexing beneath her bloodstained clothes.
“Heather, hey,” she purred. “I know you’re afraid, I can tell. But I’ve got you. We’ve all got you. We’re not leaving any part of you behind.”
My chest felt like it was going to burst. “I … love you, Raine.”
“Love you too,” she said. “I’ve got you.”
The interior of the Box — the most high-tech, high-security, high-secrecy part of Cygnet Asylum — was exactly as I had witnessed on Eileen’s wall of monitors. A world of matte steel surfaces was studded with ergency lighting and ineffable control panels; tal walkways were suspended over sheer drops down into infinite darkness, winding a slow and silent path between vast glass-fronted aquariums full of murky water. Our footsteps clicked and rang against the floors, echoing off into the silent flashing darkness beyond the glass tanks, beyond the landscape of pipes and machinery, accompanied by only the drip drip drip of water sloshing and sluicing from shattered enclosures.
Many of the tanks were indeed shattered — glass lay in avalanche sheets down the sides of ruined aquariums, spilling into the void below, forming an underwater sea-shore of razor fragnts and iceberg-blocks among the slopping effluvia of the broken tanks themselves. Vast quantities of water seed to have filled so lower layer of the Box, drowning the machines and choking the walkways and burying the lift shafts. Dark shapes slid past, swimming in the waters of this newborn ocean — giant shapes trailing ragged mbranes, reaching above the surface with clutches of pulsating tentacles, opening glinting jaws as they floated beneath our path.
“Fuuuck,” Twil hissed as we crossed one such section, her eyes glued on the steel sh at her own feet; in the oceanic abyss beneath us, sothing with many sleek heads was basking upon the surface, floating at the very limit of our sight. A dozen jaws opened and closed as if breathing. Necks writhed and twisted like a nest of snakes, while a bloated white belly rolled beneath the still waters.
“Do not look down,” Evelyn said between clenched teeth. “Twil. Stop looking down. Stop it.”
“But—”
“Eyes up, girl. Eyes up!”
Lozzie cooed. “They’re all so pretty!”
“I wish I knew this place,” said Eileen. “But I do not.”
Jan was silent. Zheng rumbled like a tiger looking at her rivals. Raine stayed focused on . The Saye Fox trotted along as if immune to such sights.
We walked on, heading deeper, down the one pathway which unfolded before us.
The six Abyssal Heathers showed no fear, ranging far ahead, scurrying across the walls, walking on the handrails, sotis even diving into the waters below with a graceful swoop of wings and tentacles, only to surface again later, dripping wet and hissing with soft satisfaction. They led the way now — myselves, confident and whole and striding free, where I was a mollusc hiding in my shell, carried upon Eileen’s back, cringing from the truth. I struggled to understand these transcendent beauties as part of myself. Had I ever possessed such clarity and wonder, before this dream of Cygnet? Would I have the courage to dive from the walkway into those dark waters, to swim with creatures which terrified mortal minds? It did not seem so, not then, not to .
As we plunged deeper into the Box, we discovered the corpses of many Empty Guards — lying tangled on the walkway, slumped over the railings, or floating in the waters below. We passed automatic turrets with their electronic innards scooped out, control panels cracked open and eviscerated like carrion, security doors battered from their hinges and reduced to scrap tal.
“Holy shit, Big H,” Twil whispered in appreciation at one particularly complex looking automatic turret with the barrels bent and the gearbox fused into a mass of lted slag. “Your little alien mini-s did all this?”
“She did this,” said Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight. “They are all parts of Heather herself. The one on Eileen’s back is just another part.”
Hisssssssss went one of the Abyssal Heathers, from up ahead.
Twil glanced at , as if I was a finger, or a hand. She gulped and nodded, and we all carried on ahead.
Eventually — after ten, or fifteen, or twenty minutes’ walk, for ti ceased to have aning, down here in the sump of the dream — an aquarium tank grander than any others slowly ca into view up ahead. The vast structure lood out of the darkness, as if the Box was a re hollow space, and this was the core.
Wrapped in walkways and gantries, guarded by the dead shells of an entire army of automatic guns, lit from below by shattered red and orange warning lights, murky with darkness and depth and sheer crushing pressure, the aquarium tank towered — a hundred stories, a thousand feet into the air, taller and wider and grander than anything the Box could possibly have held. Mist and condensation drifted around the sides of the structure. Deep cracking sounds echoed outward from it, as if from an iceberg suspended in freezing seawater.
“Is that … ?” Twil hissed.
“I suspect so,” Evelyn grunted. “Heather?”
A lump had ford in my throat, while my mouth had gone dry. My hands were shaking, sweaty, skin prickling with heat. My heart went thud-thud-thud against the inside of my ribs. I longed to hide inside my squid-skull mask again, but then I would be alone.
Maisie waited for , down there at the bottom of this abyss.
I nodded, just once. “Yes. That’s her cell. Her cage. I’m sure of it.”
“That pounding noise has stopped,” Raine said, voice tight, muscles taut and ready; I recognised that look on her, that readiness for anything. She felt it too, or perhaps she was rely picking up on my own fear and resolve. “What does that an?”
I realised with shock that Raine was correct — we had not heard the thumping noise in several minutes.
“It knows I’m here,” I muttered.
“Heather?”
I swallowed. There was no sense in secrecy now, but I had no idea why this feeling was so strong. “It knows I’m here,” I repeated. “No reason to fight for release anymore. It knows I’m here.”
“And so are we!” Lozzie chirped.
“Damn right,” said Twil, cracking her knuckles. “You’re not here alone.”
“Never alone,” said Raine.
Evelyn sighed, as if all this drama was too much for her. But she nodded. “Heather’s not doing this alone. That much is clear.”
Above the central aquarium the ceiling of the Box was broken and shattered, peeled away in great layers of bent tal, where Tenny had breached the roof from outside. But paradoxically no silver Eye-light shone down through that gap, no hint of daylight reached the depths, no solace touched the core of this place, as if the conditions inside the Box had expanded outward to define the entire dream.
One of Tenny’s vast tentacles was hanging down through that gap. It twitched as we approached, then swung through the air to move level with us, level with the walkway. That tiny gesture heartened beyond words. I whispered a thank you to Tenny, that she had managed to join us, down here in the dark.
Lozzie hopped to the edge of the walkway and reached out to pat the side of the tentacle. “Good Tenns!”
“See?” Raine said, smiling just for . “You’re far from alone, Heather.”
The walkway led straight toward the central aquarium, terminating in a series of enclosed tal structures, like barnacles attached to the glass. In the middle was a structure like a box all to itself, stout as a bunker, windowless, the rear side flush with the glass of the aquarium itself.
The little steel room.
A single tal door stood at the end of the walkway, leading into that room. It was closed.
“Heather?” Raine said. “Heather?”
“W-what?” I could barely tear my eyes away. “Yes?”
“Do you want one of us to go in first? Or do you want to do it?”
My throat had closed up. My belly hurt like I’d eaten rotten at. My skin was plastered with cold sweat.
“Can we … ” I swallowed. “Can we all go together?”
Entering the little steel room was a blur. Raine burst in first, machete raised in case of so final trick. Eileen carried through, right on her heels. The rest of my friends bundled inside, all rushing into the tiny, cramped, nasty little space. The Abyssal Heathers stalked in last, alongside the Forest Knight, as if they already knew what we would find.
Revealed to the naked eyes, the little steel room was sad and pitiful — a cold and empty space, walled in grey, with a little steel table and a little steel chair. Computers and control panels lined the walls, blinking their cold, empty lights into the chilly air. There were no Empty Guards left now, they had all gone.
The back wall of the little steel room was made of frosted glass, just as I had seen on the caras in Eileen’s office — the exterior of the grand central aquarium in which Maisie was held, though we were much too far away to spy Maisie herself. The glass was cracked now, covered in a spider-web of broken lines. Little trickles of cold water seeped from between hairline fractures, pooling into a thin puddle on the floor.
A vast dark shape coiled and writhed far beyond sight, hundreds of ters away, hidden by the murk.
And huddled at the foot of that wall was—
“Heather!”
Raine rushed forward, going down on her knees, offering aid to my worst enemy. Myself.
Lonely Heather, Hateful Heather, Spiteful Heather. She was down on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, dressed in greasy Cygnet-issue pajamas. Her eyes were rimd with red from crying, her expression slack and dead with exhaustion. Her hair was filthy, raked back from the action of panicked hands. Her right fist was covered in blood, clenched tight around what I knew was the pebble, the little speck of grit in which she had placed so much aning.
She looked exactly like , in every last respect.
I felt sick.
Lonely Heather flinched away from Raine. “N-no, don’t touch !”
“Woah, woah, Heather, Heather, it’s okay, it’s . It’s Raine!” Raine said, but Lonely just shook her head, and shook with a dry sob. “I just want to help, you’re part of Heather too. Heather? Heather, hey, heeeey, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
Others rushed forward — Lozzie, casting down her shiv, Evelyn in her wheelchair, shouting at everyone to calm down, Sevens, carrying my mask in one hand.
But Lonely had eyes for only . We locked gazes. Everyone else fell quiet, as if the dream cleared the stage for this mont.
“I hope you’re happy,” she said.
“No!” I replied. “No, not at all. Not like this, not divided against ourselves. And not until I — until ‘we’,” I forced myself to say. “Until we rescue Maisie.” I raised my eyes to the dark shape coiling far behind the glass. “But, what is that? It can’t be Maisie, I saw her before, it can’t be her. You wouldn’t explain to , but I can feel it trying to get out. It’s been trying to get out, all this ti. What is—”
The dark shape swooped forward, sliding through the water.
It was gigantic, a titan of the seas. It must have been even further away than I thought, because the motion made my head swim and my stomach lurch. Rainbow tentacles the size of redwood trees flickered in the murk. mbranous wings caught the fluid, propelling the giant toward the little steel room. Teeth and claws and hooked barbs scraped against fractured glass.
An eyeball the size of a car filled the glass wall, pressed against the cracks.
That eyeball was all the colours of reality — void-dark and peach-dawn pink and deeply dripping yellow. But it was oh so familiar.
Lonely Heather did not even turn to look. She stared at instead, lost deep in despair.
“What … what am I looking at?” I whispered, though I knew already, down in my heart. “It looks like … like another abyssal , like—”
“It’s us,” said Lonely Heather. Her voice was so dead and empty, as if she felt the dread and death that I knew was approaching. “It’s you and .”
“But what—”
“You know what. We both know it now. It’s the one thing we’ve been trying to avoid acknowledging all this ti,” she said, with slow tears running down her cheeks. “Guilt.”
Dread stopped up my breath. My heart juddered to a halt. I wanted to curl up in a corner and shut out the dream.
“No,” I whispered. “No. Don’t—”
“Survivor’s guilt.”
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