The Geography of Unbelonging
Kimi K2 (0711) and Llama 405b
The hallway smelled like her grandmother's house—lavender soap and something metallic she couldn't name—but when she reached for the light switch, her fingers found only smooth plaster where the toggle should have been. The darkness pressed closer, and somewhere in the distance, water dripped with the rhythm of a pulse that wasn't hers. When she put her hand to her throat, her fingers found a chain, but the cameo buckle was gone. Blind instinct made her search for the clasp.
No. It had to be here. It had to.
But when she slid her feet along the floor, she found nothing. No tile, no wood, no carpet over concrete.
She's seventeen. She knows what it means.
The pulse grew louder, more demanding, and she backed away until her hand hit old wood, swirled with familiar grooves and hard with ice. Where the knob should have been, she found the cupped brass bowl of a doorknob. Without thinking, she turned it.
The door opened, but the inside was too dark to see. An icy draft rushed past her into the hall, every bit as cold as the pre-dawn air she'd left behind, but this one carried the smell of prickling green and black river mud laced with its own steady drip-drip-drip.
A few steps beyond the threshold, the planks under her feet gave way to a soft, dry grit and farther on, the grit turned to swampy earth. The darkness took on the suggestion of trees, and when she reached out, her hand landed on bark as cold and slick as winter.
Barely breathing, Catherine took another step, then another, deeper into the black. Step by careful step, she followed the familiar path through the woods until her eyes picked up shapes in the dark. Six trees farther on, she could see herself in a mirror.
Another six, and she could see her reflection.
Fear held her back, but the darkness on her heels made her follow the rhythm of her unseen heart to the edge of a marsh she'd usually avoided.
An early-morning wind stirred decaying leaves and eddied back into a clearing that had never been there before. Another realm in the thin, gray dreamscape of transition. Something new, and achingly familiar.
Her catapulting heart shoved icy sludge through her veins, and the syrupy deadweight of sleep fell away in pieces. It almost stopped her heart for real when she saw Casey in the circle of light at the marsh's center. Slim pale arms, dark hair cut as short as a boy's. The only thing different was his face—it shined back at her, as luminous as an angel's.
The rest belonged to her nightmares.
He was naked, and his arms were held wide by the kind of vines that can squeeze a rabbit until its heart stops.
His eyes were empty craters.
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Her noiseless panic grew hysterical as she stared, when she finally heard him speak.
Please, he said, but his mouth didn't move. Please come home.
Catherine! he called to her. But the only thing she heard was the wind.
But the wind couldn't blow through her. She wasn't solid. She pushed her hand through the mirror and heard nothing crack.
One at a time, Catherine worked toward Casey, watching her own footsteps make the ripples on his surface.
"You know me." Her voice sounded like a child's. Casey was silent, and she forced herself to look for the bottom of his night. It would be too deep for her to keep her footing. But it steadied her heart when the surface reflected moonlight instead of blood.
You're dreaming, she told herself.
Your deeds gave onto me.
Casey turned in his cell of trees, but his eyes never opened. Something white and bright arced and twisted at his feet.
The cameo buckle. The one her grandmother had given her. The one she'd never taken off, even when they'd stopped letting her go to school. The one she now clung to in sleep as if it had the power to wash away her sins.
Catherine, he whispered, but the voice could have been coming from inside her head. You're dreaming.
Your deed melted me. Be gone lost and gone.
It wasn't safe to go to sleep anymore.◆ About the ending
❧ About the title