Katalepsis V: "No Nook of English Ground" (part six)

The fox situation has been...I don't think "resolved" is the right word. More like just plain abandoned. There may or may not be dire consequences for this. Well, there will be consequences for it, of that I'm absolutely sure, but it remains to be seen whether or not they are dire ones.

Anyway, they're also finally going to look at the multiverse map that they've been very weirdly hands-off about despite it being the entire reason they came here and it being Heather's best and only lead for locating Maisie. Unless it turns out that they (well, Heather in particular) have been mind-whammied this whole time, then this is going to keep hanging over my memories of this otherwise excellent arc like a black cloud. Better late than never I guess, but seriously.

So. Last chapter of "No Nook of English Ground."

5.8​

Contrary to Evelyn's dire warning, confronting the map was only the second most terrifying challenge I had to face that following day.

The fox came back, and now it's leading a pack of militant hedgehogs.

"Before you hit call, let's hash out a plan, yeah?" said Raine from next to me on the bed. She even raised a hand to stall me, as if I'd located my courage somewhere between my quivering pile of nerves and my inability to grip the mobile phone straight.

"A plan," I managed. My mouth felt so very dry.

"Yeah. You're not just gonna shout 'hey mum, I'm super gay' down the phone, right?" Raine couldn't keep the amusement off her face. I failed to see the humour in the situation. "You know me, I tend to leap before I look, but I figure you'd be more comfortable with a bit of a script."

Okay, I guess now is as good a time to do this as any.

...oh wait, no it isn't. Use the fucking map already!

I gave her the best glare I could muster. Weak and shaky, under the circumstances. "Oh yes, good idea. Great idea. And here I thought I'd just say whatever, muddle through. You know me," I echoed her.

Raine snorted with poorly concealed laughter. I attempted to glare a hole in her head.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, it's just so cute." She reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "Heather, it's gonna be fine."

"What if it isn't?"

"Then I'm right here. Always." To her credit, Raine killed the smirk at last.

I forced out a shaky breath and gestured limply with the phone.

"It's alright for you," I said. "You don't have to make the call. I hate making normal phone calls, let alone dramatic ones."

"I totally can, if you want." Raine held out a hand for the phone, and I knew this was no rhetorical gesture. She'd do it if I asked. "Hell, it was my idea. I'll rip the plaster off, you can do the aftercare. We'll one-two punch 'em. We can show off how we make a great team, as well."

"Raine, I don't want my parents' first impression of you to be a voice on the phone asking 'Guess who's banging your daughter'."

I mean, do you not want them to get the most accurate impression possible? The only way to give them a better quick overview of Raine by phone would be if there was a dying skinhead whimpering in the background.

Raine lost her composure and started laughing again. "I won't say that! I won't. Cross my heart and hope to die. Best behaviour."

"Your face tells me otherwise."

Stacy rays of that intensity are very difficult to suppress. The human face can only absorb so much.

Her offer was extraordinarily tempting. I really didn't want to do this, however much sense it made. My guts churned and my chest felt like a vice, my heart fluttering in my ribcage like a dove trying to escape. If I delayed much longer, I was going to get light-headed.

Let Raine shield me from reality, from unpleasant tasks, from life itself? No, she was here to help but I had to do this myself, I couldn't avoid it forever.

I still wasn't all recovered from last night, a little wobbly and unsteady, drained inside, even after several hours wrapped up warm in bed with Raine as a hot water bottle. She'd helped change the dressings on my feet this morning, but they still ached from all the little cuts and scratches. I'd eaten too much breakfast – great big slabs of toast and jam and a helping of scrambled eggs – but now the food sat like lead in my stomach.

I stared at my phone's contact list, trying to decide between my parents' land-line number or my mother's mobile. Slim choice.

According to our original rough itinerary, my parents were expecting us at their leafy suburban house in Reading tomorrow morning. They expected myself and two friends, for a little stay in the few days leading up to Christmas.

Oh, right. I totally forgot that they were planning to go visit Heather's family after doing their business at Evelyn's. Okay, that makes this conversation make a little more sense, albeit not why it's happening before rather than after the map.

I doubt they were prepared for their only daughter to stage a full-blown closet evacuation.

Heh, you should make this a double-entendre and recover Alexander's literal skeleton to show them as well.

Nor could anybody prepare for Raine.

All the more reason to tell them now, I suppose. Raine strikes me as a person who's hard to prepare for if you don't know what to expect, but relatively easy to if you do. She's pretty low maintenance as long as you're in a safe neighborhood and you aren't a landlord or something.

I could just about picture myself stammering out to my mother that I was a lesbian, and yes it's not a phase, and fielding the inevitable invasive questions and idiotic assumptions, but deep down inside I was terrified of what they'd think of Raine.

Even if she passed muster as a 'normal' person – rather than a dangerous sociopath entangled with an occult underworld – I was afraid they'd see the leather jacket, the short hair, the cocky smile and rippling athleticism, and see a predator who'd poached their vulnerable, mentally ill daughter. The same assumption I'd first made, the assumption I'd liked and gone along with.

If either of them said anything like that to Raine's face, I don't know what I'd do. I hated confrontation. I might be able to kill an evil wizard with my mind, but a shouting match with my parents? Absolutely not.

Sounds like distraction might be the tactic to employ here. "Hey mom, dad, look what I can do!" They'll be so shocked by the table flying across the room and so horrified by Heather coughing up blood that they'll barely be able to care about her being gay or dating an action heroine.

I think Raine figured that out before I did. That's why she suggested the phone call.

After breakfast that morning, Evelyn had said she wanted to try a further magical experiment on the caged fox. A boring experiment, to hear her tell, which would involve a lot of reciting Latin at the poor animal, and drawing several more magic circles, in an effort to tease out whatever supernatural shard had embedded itself in the fox's brain. I'd been all ready to go with her, as a peanut gallery or to sit quietly, but Raine had declared quite firmly that she and I had a matter to attend to.

Alright, there are still more tests to perform on the fox. I have slightly more faith in Evelyn's abilities now, though she really should have said this the night before. "Not finding anything yet, but I'll need to run some longer tests after I've gotten a night's sleep" would have been a lot more confidence-inspiring than "it's just a fox."

"Ah yes, I see, starved for each other's attention," Evelyn had drawled. "Don't let me get in the way of a good shag."

"Evee!"

Raine had burst out laughing. "I wish, but no dice. We gotta call Heather's mum."

The bottom had dropped out of my stomach. "We- we have? We?"

"I think we better. Give her a bit of advance warning. Only fair."

"Ah. Good luck. Shout if you need … help, I suppose." Evelyn shrugged.

Once again, Evelyn justifiably finds Heather's own mommy issues to be - at the very, very most - kinda cute.

She took Praem with her instead, all prim and proper in her new uniform, after assuring Lewis we'd all still be here when he and his lady friend returned from London that evening.

I'll bet he didn't even ask about the caged fox lol.

So that's how I ended up cross-legged on the bed, cradled by residual warmth, rubbing my feet through thick socks to ease away the little pains. Raine had sat me down, rubbed my back as she explained her rationale: it would be easier on them and me if I told my parents now, give them a day to process – or let us read the signs that we shouldn't turn up at all.

Better to avoid the cliched soap opera moments. Parcel things out in bite sized chunks. Fair warning.

None of that helped the crippling anxiety.

"Then you gotta have a plan," Raine was saying. She leaned against the bed's headboard, one foot rubbing my shin. "Do you wanna hit them with the big shock first, a rapid attack, and then flank them up with some softer stuff so they can't over-focus? Or go in nice and slow, lead them on with a couple of gentler strikes before you drop the hammer?"

I say you should find a choke point, mass hydralisks, and keep some guardians just a liiiittle ways back for when they start rolling in siege tanks to counter it. You might also want to keep a defiler or three hidden nearby in case they luck into revealing your guardians with a comsat sweep.

Coming out to your parents is like beating terran with zerg. You've got to think a couple moves ahead.

I squinted at her. "Raine, this isn't a battle. What on earth are you trying to say?"

"What's going to shock them more, that you're gay and have a girlfriend, or that you've moved out of your old bedsit?"

Oh, right. Are they still paying rent on that room? Is Heather still keeping it available for herself as a plan C?

"I … I don't know. I don't even know where to begin."

"What's the worse case scenario?"

"Raine, please don't. I don't need that on my mind."

"You absolutely do, so we can defeat it," she said. She wasn't joking. She'd finally wiped away even the shadow of an amused smirk, replaced by sober concentration. She met my eyes and I couldn't look away from that all-knowing certainty, that confidence burning like a bonfire. "What's the worse case scenario? Try to put it into words. As clumsy as you like."

"They … they could shout at me. Tell me not to go visit them. They wouldn't though. N-no, wait … the worst thing would be if they treat it like it's not real, not legitimate, something you've pressured me into, a thing girls do at university, something like that."

Alright. Normally Heather is good at this type of thing, but here I think she critfailed her emotional intelligence check.

Think about who you're talking to and what you know about her, Heather. Raine never told you why she ran away from home, but I think it's pretty likely that her sexuality had something to do with it. Your worst case scenario is something she probably only wishes she could have had. Throwing a pity party for yourself over it in front of her is not the most sensitive thing you could do.

"Gay 'till graduation. Right." I could hear the eye-roll in Raine's tone.

"Exactly. That would hurt."

Normally Raine would take a cue like that to pull me into a hug, tell me it's all going to be okay, play the bold angel on my shoulder. Instead she fell silent, looked up at the ceiling, nodding slowly.

"Raine?"

"That would be the worst, yeah. Thinking about whether I should tell you a little story or not. Last thing I wanna do is put the wind up you, but … " She shrugged with lazy theatricality.

Yep. Here we go.

It's very easy for sheltered people to complain about their families. From what the story has told us, Heather has a lot of very legitimate things to complain about, but her family isn't one of them.

I sighed at her. "You could not be more obvious with your bait if you tried. Go ahead, say what you have to say."

"Who says I'm not trying?" Raine shot me a slow, knowing smile, but then she pressed her lips together and brought it under control. Her tongue lingered at the corner of her lips. "I never had to come out to my parents. I was way too obvious."

I blinked at her in surprise – Raine never talked about her family. She waited a beat, watching me, and I thought she wasn't going to continue.

"You're rather obvious these days, as well," I said, hoping it would prompt her.

She nodded and laughed softly. "Yeah, just the way you like it, huh?"

"I won't deny that part."

Raine looked up at the ceiling again. "I think my mum and dad liked to pretend I'd grow out of it, but I can't be sure. Never mentioned it, never brought it up. Never got the bird and the bees speech either, any of that."

"Tch," I tutted. "That's so irresponsible."

"Par for the course round where I grew up. By the time I ran away from home, maybe a third of the girls in my school class had gotten themselves knocked up. Like thirteen, fourteen years old. Place was a shit hole. Probably still is." She shrugged. "Anyway, I'm drifting. Point is, my parents didn't know even half of what I was up to. What they did notice, they pretended not to."

Okay, not as bad as I was expecting. At least, so far.

Not sure what part of England is being alluded to here, but there are more than enough American equivalents for me to get the picture.

"Things you were … up to?" My imagination raced, filled in the details of Raine as a young teenager. She saw the look on my face and laughed, reached over and goosed my knee.

"Yeah, you best believe I was a walking scandal," she said with a grin. "The tween dyke terror of Beetham Comprehensive. Watch out, Raine'll get you alone in the changing rooms and pop your cherry. Don't call her a lesbo or she'll deck you. Don't you know she fought a dog once? Scary bitch, that girl."

"Are you … you're serious?"

Beetham is a small town in Cumbria, way up in England's northwest corner. Right, I think it was mentioned earlier that Raine had a northern accent, that makes sense. Guess it's a pretty economically depressed place going by the author's description via Raine.

Anyway, what breed of dog did Middle School Raine fight, and did she win? These are important questions.

She shrugged and half-shook her head. "All teenage crap, but it feels different at that age, you know? Though I did fight a dog when I was twelve, that really happened. Long story.

See previous.

Just watch now as it turns out that twelve year-old Raine embarked on her lifelong quest to become a skilled fighter after getting her ass kicked by a chihuahua.

I did make out with girls at school a few times, and I got in a scrape – twice – over other girls. I had this whole love-hate thing going on with one of the preppy crowd. She was trying to hide it from her friends. Super repressed, I was trying to help, you know, my Robin Hood act? Doing it even back then."

"Raine." I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or not. "Goodness, I'm glad I didn't know you. I would have found you terrifying."

She laughed again, almost self-conscious. "Stupid drama, you know? Nothing serious, nothing permanent. Until my parents caught me necking with a girl, and everything blew up. In my own bedroom, mind, not in public. She was half-naked, I was, you know. Not the sort of thing they could pretend not to see. That was about a week before I ran away from home."

Alright, looks like there was more to get to after all. Heather, prepare to apologize.

"That was why you left?"

She nodded. "My dad said some things nobody should ever say to their own kid."

"Oh, Raine." For once it was my turn to lurch into a clumsy, reassuring hug.

"Ahh, it's fine, I'm fine." She laughed and rubbed my back. "I broke his nose for it."

It turns out that what he said was "I fucked ur mum."

It wasn't until after Raine was out on the streets cleaning the blood off of her fist while the police sirens grew in the background that she realized he was just calmly stating the facts. Too late by then, though.

I pulled back, staring at her. "You what?"

"I broke his nose. Er, not exactly my proudest fight. Had to use a chair."

"You broke your own father's nose? With a chair? At fourteen years old?"

"Yeah." She cracked a grin. "Hey, I gotta have some talent in life other than making you happy."

I sat back and nodded, still processing these scraps of my lover's history. "You deserve so much better than that."

"Got it now, haven't I?" She winked at me.

More seriously now, I wonder what it was he actually said. If it was a threat, an ultimatum, or just a really awful condemnation.

I guess those things might be the same in spirit, depending on what sort of communicators Raine's parents were.

Wonder what her mother was doing this whole time, and what she thought about how the events unfolded? She could have been in total agreement with her husband, or she could have been too afraid of him herself to express dissent, depending.

I sighed and felt myself deflate a little again. "Flattery will get you everywhere. How much of that story was told in aid of taking my mind off calling my parents?"

"Some," she admitted. "Point being, there's no way your parents are gonna react worse than mine did. If your mum gets ugly, you can put the phone down. Just put it down. Block her for a couple of days, give them time to think it over. You're not a teenage girl trapped in her bedroom with her dad about to hit her. You've got us, and you're free."

Ah. "About to hit her." She left that detail out before, though I did sort of suspect it.

Granted, Raine was fourteen and angry, so some of the details might not be 100% accurate. But...this one is believable enough that I wouldn't make assumptions either way.

I sniffed back the edge of a threatening tear or two. "Okay. Thank you, Raine. I'll … " I waved the phone vaguely, trying to control the tremor in my hand. "Stay here, okay? Please don't wander off while I do this."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Here I uh … here I go then."

I selected my mother's mobile phone number, took a deep breath in a vain effort to control my racing heart, and pressed the call button.

I definitely admire Raine being so calm and conciliatory in how she told this story, rather than turning it into something Heather needs to apologize to her for. I don't think I'd have been able to manage that, in her place.

She picked up on the fourth ring.

"Heather dear, is that you?" My mother's voice, higher-pitched than my own, a little pinched with age and stress, practised and smooth from almost two decades of a customer-facing job.

"Yes, of course, um, hi mum."

I glanced sideways at Raine, received two thumbs up and a big grin of encouragement. My pulse throbbed in my throat, so hard I was certain my mother would be able to hear it down the phone line.

"And how are you, little miss gallivanting around the countryside?" my mother asked. "Are you having a nice time with these friends you still haven't told us about?"

Truth be told, my mother and I didn't look that much alike. Samantha Morell was bigger boned and a little heavyset, especially around the waist, where her twin daughters were slight and petite. My and Maisie's phenotype had apparently jumped a generation from my grandmother. I could picture her perfectly from her voice, the practical and serious expression on her face, the slight frown of curious attention, the hint of ironic disapproval behind her words.

l imagine that this recent development must be equal parts relief and concern for Samantha. Heather suddenly has friends that she's traveling around with! Is it too good to be true? Is she in danger and being taken advantage of somehow? Why are things suddenly going so right?

"Yes, uh, y-yes, we've been having a really nice time. My friend, um, she's got this really big house in the countryside. It's nice here."

On top of the messy lie, my words sounded lame and limp. I felt myself shrivelling already.

Hey, that's not a lie!

...okay, maybe the "it's nice here" part is a lie, to be fair.

"Well, you should send your father and I some pictures, shouldn't you? You do have a camera on that phone, and you almost never use the thing. Sometimes it's as if you're on the moon, dear, rather than at university."

"The moon? No, haven't been there since my other new friend stopped calling me. And we only ever went there in spirit form anyway, at least I think."

I let out a little sigh, trying to rally. "Yes. Sorry, mum. L-look, I have something I need to tell you about. It's important."

A moment of silence, then: "Yes?"

One word, and I set off shaking again.

My mother's tone was all too familiar, the same detached waiting she'd always used when I was struggling to deal with a particularly gruesome hallucination, when I was on the verge of expressing the horror out loud, whenever my mental illness threatened to issue forth into the real world.

Raine was right, I should have planned. I needed a script, a set of correct pronouncements.

"Mum, I-" I swallowed.

I almost pulled the phone away from my ear and handed to it Raine. Almost. My arm twitched. Dammit, Heather, you've faced otherworldly monsters and alien gods. You've saved friends from hell dimensions and out-thought evil wizards. You're friends with magicians and werewolves and your lover is a murderer. Dammit.

"Mum, I'm- I'm gay. As in, a lesbian. I thought you should know."

Halting and hesitant, but once it was said I felt such a weight lift inside me, head throbbing with adrenaline, light with release. I let out a slow, shuddering breath.

For a long moment my mother didn't say anything. I began to tense up again, braced for the worst.

"Don't be stupid, Heather, of course I know you're a homosexual."

Hah!

First thing: apparently the reason Heather talks like a time traveller from the 1970's is because her parents never stopped talking like it's the 1970's, and she hasn't been exposed to enough other people.

Second thing: outdated word choice aside, this is probably the best response Heather could have gotten. Seems like they know, they're fine with it, and they figured they'd just let their daughter tell her about it when and if she feels like it rather than prying into her sexuality when it doesn't have to be their business.

Now, on one hand, Heather's fear and uncertainty about her mother's reaction makes me raise my eyebrow a little. I feel like her parents should have realized she might be afraid of telling them, and made a point of making pro-LGBT comments around her so that she'd know they were safe to talk to. But, on the other hand, Heather has been zonked out on excessive medication for her entire teens. It's entirely possible that her parents did do exactly the above, and Heather was just so spaced out on antipsychotics it kept floating right passed her.

So, not sure if I should be judging her parents here or not. They might have been doing everything right, but they also might not have been. Difficult situation all around.

I blinked, at nothing, then over at Raine. She was close enough to hear my mother's voice from the phone – grinning like a maniac, she mouthed 'homosexual?' in real or feigned outrage, I couldn't tell which. I shook my head, struggling to concentrate on what I'd heard.

Yeah, you and me both, Raine. Still, no malice behind it, just old-fashioned-ness.

"B-but, mum, y-you-"

"Parents know things about their children, dear." My mother actually tutted. "Of course we know. The signs aren't exactly subtle, if one is merely a little attentive."

"What- I- signs? I-I showed signs?"

"Of course you did. All sorts of things down the years. Don't you remember that one trip to the hospital, when you were, oh, about twelve, I think, and you really liked that one nurse? You kept saying you hoped she would come back, you wanted-"

"Mum!" I flushed beet-red. "Oh my God, that's so embarrassing, stop."

Well now we have to get Praem a nurse outfit to complement the rest of her new wardrobe.

Raine was laughing so hard she had to roll her face into the pillow to contain the noise. She kicked her legs against the bed.

"Or the sorts of posters you used to put on your bedroom walls," my mother went on. "Never boy bands or strapping young men, absolutely not, no boy-crazy years for you. Really, you think your own mother wouldn't notice these things? I deserve a little more of your faith, I think. You must get this from you father, he's likely to be a little confused by all this too, but read my lips, it's obvious."

Not sure I understand what's being said about Heather's dad, here.

"O-okay, um, g-give me a moment. I didn't expect … " I took a deep breath, and a vindictive part of me reared up inside. "Mum, also, I've moved out of the flat you and dad picked at the start of term. I've moved in with a friend, and my g-girlfriend."

This time I felt my mother's frown before she spoke, a hundred miles away. "Heather!" she snapped, and I flinched. "You … I can't believe you, you moved out without telling us? What were you thinking? Who are these people you're living with, the same friends you're with now?"

"Yes. Yes, mum it's fine, it-"

"You know how you get, you know you can't let peer pressure dictate your behaviour."

"Mum, I-"

"Of all the irresponsible things. Heather, I thought we had a handle on this." She huffed, tight and exasperated. "Between your medication and the-"

"I'm not taking my medication any more," I blurted out, before I had time to think.

" … Heather?"

Oh dear. I sat there on the bed, head pounding, at a sudden loss. I almost flinched again when Raine took my shoulder. She nodded once, gently. I swallowed and opened my mouth, and let the words flow.

Well fuck. Yeah. That's going to make her considerably more worried and considerably less elated.

And also make her way, way, WAY less optimistic about the situation with Heather's new friends.

"I know you don't like it when I talk about being mentally ill, but … mum, listen, I don't see things anymore. At all. Not a single hallucination, for months now. No more lost time. No more nightmares." Technically every word of that was true. I'd never hallucinated in the first place. There was no need to tell her the truth of what I saw every day, or that a magical symbol inked on my forearm held the nightmares at bay. "I'm healthier than I've been since-" Since before I lost Maisie, before the Eye. "Since I was little. I'm well, for the first time ever, and I owe part of that to … to taking steps for myself."

" … well, well, that is … good news, certainly." My mother slipped into silence for a long moment, then sighed down the phone. "Perhaps it's something hormonal, perhaps the end of puberty. Changes to your brain chemicals. Well, I'm very glad you're having fewer problems, but I really want you to go back to doctor Merile before you flush all your pills down the toilet."

"I know, I know, but-" I felt a little steel enter my voice. "Mum, I'm never going back to the hospital. Not Cygnet. I don't need to, and I won't.""

"Mm, we'll see about that." From my mother, that was as good as surrender.

Well.

This might be really, really tempting for Samantha to believe. On one hand, the "too good to be true" factor is a powerful barrier to accepting it. On the other, from her perspective, Heather's "mental illness" started completely out of the blue, with unbelievable suddenness. So, who's to say it couldn't end just as rapidly and arbitrarily?

Heather was going to have to cross the medical bridge sooner or later, of course. She must be getting periodic meetings with a psychiatrist as part of her medication regime. Would it have been easier to just lie to the psychiatrists and keep getting medicine that she's not going to take? Possibly. Depends in part on the medical insurance situation she and her family have got. But in any case, lying to a shrink for an hour at a time once every few months is a lot easier than keeping the wool over her family's eyes, and the ruse wouldn't be nearly as sustainable with her parents.

Probably the best way to handle this would have just been to be honest. Go home, make the furniture fly around the room, cry tears of blood and puke for a minute, and then explain to the parents that they really ought to believe Heather when she tells them the situation isn't what they thought. I don't blame Heather for not taking the time to think this through, considering the emotions involved here, but...

...oh wait. No. Because if she told them about the magic, they'd also ask her about the twin sister she spent years going on about after not actually developing schizophrenia. And then she'd have to explain it to them. And I don't even know how the fuck you would go about crossing that bridge.

Yeah, never mind, I take it back. No breaking this to them until after Maisie's been rescued. It's just going to be too much difficulty and pain for too little benefit if she tries it before then.

That said, I have to wonder if the little contradictions didn't gnaw at them too for those years. There must be little tangible evidences of them having had two daughters, even if it's just the contents of their house and the setup of Heather's bedroom. And with Heather insistently claiming that she has a sister...how haunted were they? How unsure did they themselves feel as they desperately tried to assure her that she was imagining this?

Such a sad, fucked up situation. For Heather especially (not to mention Maisie, but that kinda goes without saying I think), but also the parents.

"So, don't keep me waiting, what's her name?"

"Her … " I blinked. "Um, I'm sorry, whose name?"

In the corner of my eye I saw Raine light up with a cheeky, knowing grin. She kept far better track of this conversation than I could.

"You used the word 'girlfriend', very distinctly, and I'm not going to pretend I didn't notice, and you're not one to make up things to brag about.

Even if not for that, Heather answered her mother's questions about her new friends with "mom, I'm gay." The implications are, uh, pretty obvious lol.

So. This girlfriend of yours," my mother said. "What's her name? How long have you been going out? How did you meet? Is it serious?"

"Very, very serious. Uh."

"We killed a smug nepobaby together. In her culture that's a marriage proposal."

Raine radiated smugness. She cracked a cheesy open-mouthed smile and pointed both index fingers at herself. I went to swat at her but she wriggled clear and hopped off the bed.

"And what's her name?"

"Her name's Raine. Raine Haynes."

Raine struck a pose, hands on hips, chin inclined.

Wasting a superheroine pose when they're not even doing a videocall.

...why aren't they doing a videocall? Heather's mom should be proposing it, since she already pointed out that Heather's smartphone can do that, shouldn't she be?

"Well, your father and I are going to have to meet her, aren't we? Don't you have any pictures of her? You can keep us informed about things like this, you know, you don't have to hide them. We get very nervous when you hide things, you know that."

"Uh, I-I don't have any. She's right here though, I can-"

"Oh? Put her on the phone then, I want to talk to her."

My throat closed up and I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I covered the mouthpiece and stared at Raine with mounting panic. "She wants to speak with you! What do we do?"

Raine stuck her hand out. "Wow her with my sheer charisma."

"Raine! Don't you dare use any innuendo. Please."

"Okay, no innuendo, I'll just say it all out in the open."

Raine feigned with her right hand, then swiped the phone from me with her left, dancing back beyond my reach.

"Raine!" I hissed, but she gave me a capital-L look, which under any other circumstances would have me melting at her feet. Instead I shut my mouth and clamped my hands in my lap, about ready to vibrate out of my skin.

Raine drew her spine up straight, composed her expression, and put the phone to her ear.

"Mrs Morell? Good morning. I'm Raine, and first I must apologise for any unintentional eavesdropping on my part. Oh, no no, that's quite alright. Let me say though, even if we're not face to face, it's a delight to meet you."

For one mind-bending moment I thought Raine had been replaced with a doppleganger, so artificial was her good-girl voice, then I heard the tinny sound of my mother asking a question and Raine flashed a huge grin at me, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Yes," Raine replied, voice still imitating a bright-faced innocent maiden. "Yes, more than anything. I am taking very, very good care of her, I promise.""

Heh. I guess Raine's gotten better at holding it in since she was 14.

Granted, she implied that she was surviving as a petty criminal for part of the time since then, so this is a skill it would make sense for her to learn. Knowing how to play innocent is very important for the guilty.

Burning with embarrassment, I buried my face in the bed and crammed the sheets over my ears.

Raine was talking to my mother! Ninety percent of what Raine and I did together was absolutely not for parental consumption. Even the non adults-only stuff. I'd rarely felt so awkward, desperate to drown out the one-sided conversation. After a minute or two of agony, Raine gently tapped me on the shoulder and waggled the phone at me.

It's easy to forget that with the lifestyle she's been forced to live, Heather is - at least in some ways - still thinking like a child. Passages like this are reminders.

"I'm to leave the room," Raine said with a controlled smile. "Your mother wants to talk to you alone."

I accepted the phone and Raine went to the door, then turned back and mouthed 'I think she likes me'. I waved her away, still flushed in the face.

"Mum?"

"A sweet young lady, very well spoken. We will still have to meet her, Heather, I'm not entirely comfortable with you doing this sort of thing on your own."

"Mother, I'm an adult," I hissed, surprised at myself. I'd never spoken to my parents like that in the past. "I can make friends and l-lovers by myself, thank you."

"Mm. Has she left the room?"

I glanced up. Raine waved at me from just beyond the doorway.

"Yes."

"She knows your … " My mother lowered her voice, as if the neighbours might overhear. "About your issues, yes?"

"Yes, she knows all about my history of mental illness. She doesn't care about that. She's helped."

Raine beamed at me.

"Mm. Well. You and her are dropping by tomorrow morning, yes?"

"And my other friend too. She's called Evelyn, we're very close."

"Oh yes. Making friends." My mother sighed. "Heather, I know I'm an old worrywart, but I do like that you've spread your wings a little. You've grown. You never used to play well with others as a child, you were always on your own. You seemed so happy, until … well, until all the unpleasantness."

I wilted inside, lost for words in the moment. This minor victory, this understanding from my mother, passed beneath the shadow of a far greater dislocation; I'd never been alone as a child. Me and Maisie, always, always together. I bit my tongue.

It didn't matter how accepting my parents were. They remembered the wrong history.

They're going to have to adress this at some point. That's going to be some really deep-biting psychological horror, when it happens. I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading it.

"Why would you let your kid daughter be alone so much?" is one of those questions that's likely to make them uncomfortable if you press.

"I have a theory," Evelyn said.

"Oh?"

"It's your theory really."

"I'm sorry, a theory about what?"

"About fantastic mister fox, what else?"

Evelyn looked resigned, that same slow acceptance she sometimes displayed when her guard was down. She adjusted her feet and her weight on her walking stick, and returned to peering down the cellar stairs.

We stood side by side in the dusty sitting room at the far end of the mothballed east wing, the concealed cellar door wide open before us, weak illumination creeping up the wooden stairs from below. Raine had insisted we remain up here while she checked on the doors we'd have to pass on our way to the map, and Evelyn had sent Praem along with her. The work of a few minutes, apparently, so Evelyn and I waited, kicking our heels and feeling surplus to requirements.

"My theory?" I said, terribly awkward at bringing this up again. "My theory was that it was your mother."

"Contamination, pollutant build up, all that stuff." Evelyn waved a hand. "I still can't tell what that fox is, only what it isn't, and that got me thinking. With the tools I have I can find pneuma-somatic life, demon possession, translocated minds, stray Outsiders, all the stupid brute stuff of magecraft. Whatever's in the fox is too subtle, below my notice, not in the old books. Not worth the time and attention of a power-hungry magician to study and record, because it's not useful." She shot me a glance and cleared her throat. "My mother isn't the only Saye family mage buried in that graveyard."

"You mean it might be somebody else?"

"A piece of some ancestor, or perhaps all of them, accreted over time. My mother, she … the things I found in her notes, about failsafes against death, those were intentional. She wanted to be immortal, she wanted to come back. The fox, it's hardly brimming with power. And I'd like to think not all my ancestors were monsters. Perhaps the spirits around here think so too. Whatever's in the fox probably doesn't even know it was human once. Like a gut parasite."

Possible. I'm still not convinced though.

If this is true, then it stands to wonder how many other bits and pieces of Evelyn's ancestors are floating around in the minds of local flora and fauna. And what effects this might be having on the local ecosystem, to say nothing of the house's magical wards and constructs.

"A disgusting metaphor," I said with a bit of a forced laugh. "I'm quite sure they weren't all monsters. They produced you, after all."

Evelyn smiled ruefully. She shrugged.

"Have you set it free yet?" I asked.

"The fox? No." Evelyn frowned, hesitated. "I'm trying to decide on killing it or not."

"Oh, that's … that's your call, I suppose."

"I'd rather not. Can't be certain."

"Maybe it's best not to anger the ghosts of your ancestors?" I suggested, half-serious.

"No such thing as ghosts," Evelyn grumbled. I relented.

Seriously, Evelyn? Seriously?

If a mind can move from body to body, or continue operating while inside of a decaying corpse, then that means that ghosts ARE real. Or at least, something close enough to a "ghost" that splitting hairs over it is empty pedantry.

Anyway, if the fox ain't hostile, no need to kill it. Though I do wonder what about it set Praem off so badly, if it really wasn't doing anything sinister.

I could barely imagine the difficulty of the decision, but I wanted to be here if she needed a sounding board.

"Praem did seem quite intent on killing the fox last night," I said. Evelyn regarded me with a pinched frown, and a sudden sinking feeling tugged at the base of my stomach. "Oh. Oh you don't think she knows more than she's letting-""

"Absolutely not," Evelyn snapped. "I can compel truth out of her, understand? She doesn't know what it is either. She said she wanted to kill it? God dammit, the last thing I want is a trigger happy demon. Where's she picking this up from?"

"From-" I swallowed. "From you?"

Evelyn huffed and waved me off. "Maybe."

...huh. Well, that answers my question.

And it makes all too much sense. Paranoid, trigger-happy Evelyn. "Look out, the pigeons might be spying on us." If that's been Praem's number one role model for how to get by in Earth conditions, then yeah, any animal behaving even slightly suspiciously might look like a deadly threat that requires immediate and overwhelming use of force.

I really do wonder what sort of environment Praem IS used to, and how much any relatable concepts map onto it.

"Evee, I- what if-" I took a deep breath and tried to put all the pieces together in my mind. I had them all to hand, but expressing this in the face of Evelyn's ire was not easy. "I think Praem's just being protective, of you."

Evelyn's expression fell into unimpressed gloom. "Heather, how many times do I have to repeat it? She can't care. What possible motivation would she have?"

I've explained already how Evelyn's own account of her possession by King Whatsisface directly contradicts this, so I won't bother doing so again.

"She did hear everything you told me, Evee."

Evelyn squint-frowned at me.

"When you told me all about your mother, at the graveside yesterday," I said. "Praem was standing there behind us the whole time. She can overhear conversations, yes? And then down there," I nodded at the open cellar door. "She heard every word from you. Everything you told me. Is it so implausible she might have felt the same way I did? Jumped to the same worried conclusions about the fox?"

Evelyn frowned tighter as I spoke. "She can't feel, Heather. They don't think like that."

"A-and," I tried my best to forge on through Evelyn's scorn. "She has us for role models."

"What? Role models?"

"Whatever monsters your mother made, they only had her as an example. The … demon, the one she put in you, the impression it had of human beings was entrapment, hate, torture. I'm no expert – that's your area – but Praem's had us. You, me, Raine. She met Twil, she helped us save Lozzie. We're not so bad."

Evelyn stared at me for a long moment, frowning hard. I assumed I'd lost her again, though I believed every word I'd said. Eventually she grumbled low in her throat and shrugged.

"Maybe."

I think Heather took something different from Evelyn's story than I did.

To me, it sounded like the entity DID have a frame of reference to contrast the imprisonment and torture against, and was able to draw a distinction between the behavior of different humans (ie, it chose to work with Evelyn against Loretta). It also was some kind of leader, Evelyn said, which means that it must have had some kind of concept of society, interpersonal relationships, and hierarchy and/or property before it ever met a human.

Those are all things we can readily understand and relate to. Which in turn suggests that there's much about our own world that it could readily understand and relate to. The thing had relevant experiences of its own to view and judge Earth through.

Now, the same may or may not be true of Praem. We don't know if all "demons" have much in common besides being called that by human wizards, or whether she and it were summoned from the same home reality. But Heather is acting AS IF Evelyn's assumptions about Praem are suggestive of anything she told her about King Whatsisname, and they really aren't. Even though Heather is disagreeing with Evelyn's conclusions, she's accepting her premises, and these premises do not strike me as even remotely acceptable to after even the most cursory consideration.

I don't know if this is me misunderstanding something, the story failing to explain something, or just Heather having a stupid moment.

"I'm not surprised she might want to protect you. You brought her here. To her, maybe you're … sort of … a … surrogate-" Evelyn frowned like thunder and I cut off the final word of my sentence, put my hands up in surrender. "Sorry, that's a little distasteful, yes."

"Bloody right it is." She tutted.

Erm. You know. You could always try ASKING Praem about this, yeah? Does she already have a family-equivalent social group in her home realm? Friends? Do her kind have those kinds of relationships when they aren't adapting to human norms? Is she doing other stuff back in her native environment while simultaneously puppetting the fetish meido avatar over here? Does she consider everything she's learning and developing here to simply be on-the-job work training, or actually transformative of her core self? What do the humans she's meeting here mean to her, compared to her potential preexisting relationships with other entities?

You can ask her these things. Her answers might be vague and frustrating, at least at first, but you should still try!

Well, apparently we're not going to probe any deeper into this subject right now. On to the map. On one hand, finally. On the other hand, I do hope they get back to these Praem questions very early in the following arc.

"Hullo!" Raine called from below, voice echoing up the cellar stairs. "You two still up there?"

"We are!" I called back in relief.

"Dead zombie storage is clear and locked," she called. "Come on down."

"Dead zombie storage." I raised an eyebrow at Evelyn.

"Semi-literal," she grunted.

==

The cellar vaults extended much further beneath the Saye mansion than was entirely sensible.

Praem took a vanguard position and Raine held my hand, a heavy-duty lantern torch in her other. We quickly left the main cellar room behind, with the stacks of metal kegs and pretension toward modern concrete. Raine had to duck as we passed underneath the open stonework archway at the back of the room. Our cluster of footfalls echoed off the centuries of stone, vanishing into the subterranean darkness of the T-shaped hallway beyond.

Dank air seeped into my clothes, but this time I was prepared for the journey – three tshirts, two of which were Raine's, my pink hoodie, and a pair of very comfortable gloves Evelyn had lent me. I'd tucked my hair down the back of my hoodie too. Every little helped.

The mapping device is kept right near the zombie containment facility. Makes sense; keep the guards right next to the thing that needs guarding.

I still shivered, but not because of the cold.

We clattered down the short stone corridor. Half a dozen heavy wooden doors led off on either side, all shut tight, then we crossed what seemed like a much older storeroom – filled with the rotten stubs of ancient barrels and some shattered pieces of furniture.

The only modern object was a huge cork pin-board mounted on a stand, covered with the corners and scraps of once extensive notes and anatomical diagrams. Bulbs struggled along the ceiling on metal brackets hammered into gaps in the stonework, half of them dead and the other half too weak to matter.

"This certainly is appropriately creepy. I'll give it that much," I muttered.

"It's fine," Evelyn said, at full volume, the depths returning her voice as a dozen twisted echoes. "Everything down here is dead or deactivated. We're almost there. Praem," she called a few paces ahead. "Don't touch anything."

"No touching," the doll-demon confirmed.

The door loomed up out of the shadows. The Door, capital D.

"Oh, you have to be kidding me." I let out a long-suffering sigh. "That is absurd."

"It does look kinda overkill," Raine admitted.

The door which barred our way to the map was straight out of a dungeons and dragons adventure, or one of those role-playing video games Raine is so fond of.

I was about to question Heather's familiarity with DnD, but yeah, between Raine's vidyagaems and Evelyn's animoo Heather's probably been somewhat acquainted with the history of fantasy gaming by now.

Hewn from a slab of oak, banded with black iron, sealed with a trio of huge stainless steel padlocks, it looked ready to withstand a battering ram. A magic circle ringed the door frame, spilling onto the stone floor, cut directly into the surface with a chisel or acid. Whatever was in there was not getting out, and nobody unwelcome was getting in.

"I hate magic," I muttered under my breath.

"So do I," Evelyn grunted, and set to work.

That got a chuckle out of me, heh. Kinda relatable actually; we all feel that way about our work sometimes, even if we're working our dream jobs.

Unlocking the door was quite a performance – thirty seconds to remove the padlocks, the clunk of their mechanisms echoing in the stone confines, followed by a long drawn-out two minutes as Evelyn traced her fingers over precise points of the magic circle, muttering Latin and worse beneath her breath.

What language could possibly be worse than Latin?

Finnish, I'll bet. Yeah, definitely Finnish. It's canon.

Some of the words hurt my ears, made me wince. I felt my heart in my throat, and took a steady, calming breath.

Oh, that language. I still think mine was a good guess though.

Eventually Evelyn stepped back and spat a gob of bloody saliva into the corner.

"Evee?" Raine asked. "You okay?"

"It's nothing," she grunted. "It's unlocked now. You first," she nodded at Praem.

The doll-demon grasped the door's iron handle and shoved it open. Raine raised the lantern, squeezed my hand, and we shuffled inside.

I'd expected an actual map, perhaps something pinned up on the wall. Or a huge scrawled mural, a magical design so complex and so insane it would make me quiver inside with disgust and recognition in equal parts.

Instead, the underground chamber contained a kind of secret study. A small, neat desk sat against the back wall, a pair of thick modern notebooks stacked before an uncomfortable chair. Evelyn flicked at a light switch and a few sad little bulbs guttered on above us, chasing the shadows into the cracks between the stones. One low table contained some magical detritus, a half-finished circle on some canvas, stubs of chalk, a sheaf of notes.

The weak lights "chased the shadows into the cracks between the stones." Another banger of a descriptive sentence.

A second low table played host to a box. A tall, rather intricate box, standing on its end.

Dark lacquered wood, decorated with floral gold leaf. Tiny brass hinges crowned the top and split the design at regular intervals down the length. A puzzle box, closed and locked.

"Right, the trick is not to look at it in your peripheral vision," Evelyn said as she crossed toward the box. "Either keep it in full view, head on, or don't look at it at all. If you have to look away, it's easier to close your eyes first."

"Is that it?" I glanced from her to the puzzle box.

"This? No, this is some old Chinese tourist trap nonsense my grandmother picked up in Shanghai. Simple good fortune it's about the right size to hide the map from an accidental glance."

Makes sense.

And also makes me suspect that Evelyn's mother or grandmother saw "Hellraiser" before deciding to use it like this.

She tapped the black wood with the head of her walking stick, then met my eyes. "I'll open it up whenever you're ready."

"Wait, wait, I need to- that's- We're just going to- I'm just going to go ahead and look at it?" I swallowed, throat dry, and glanced between Evelyn and Raine for help. Praem stood prim and proper by the doorway, no help at all. "W-what should I expect? I'm feeling a little intimidated here."

"S'a sculpture, basically", Raine supplied. She let go of my hand and unfolded a pair of extra-large plastic food bags from her back pocket.

I stared at the bags. I didn't even have to ask the question. "Right. Sick bags. Great."

"Just in case." Raine made a pained smile. She slipped her arm around my waist, for support.

For the record, I was expecting the "map" to be more like a helmet you put on to give yourself a brain-blasting bird's eye view of the multiverse. Can't really have a physical map visible within our physical space if it's mapping in more than three dimensions.

"This is the fruit and purpose of my mother's demon summoning," Evelyn said quietly. "This, in this box, this is the great secret she traded my health for, the truth she wrung from an unwilling demon, over the course of years. It's … " Evelyn glanced away and took a sharp breath. I caught an odd, almost wet look in her eyes. Gone when she tilted her face back into the light. "I'd never considered before that it might actually be worth something. Something real. If this works, if you can locate Wonderland, if we can save your sister … well, it's the only good that's ever come from that dead bitch."

Yes, I caught the subtext of Evelyn's last sentence there. No, it's not good, and it demonstrates that she still has a long road of recovery ahead of her. Clearing out the torture chamber was just one difficult step along the way.

She cleared her throat. "Anyway, the faster we do this, the faster we get out of this hole. It's freezing down here."

"O-okay." I tried to take another deep breath, but my lungs quivered.

"Heather," Raine said my name softly. "I've seen it before. It's tough, it might mess with your head, but I wouldn't let you do this if I thought it was genuinely dangerous."

"But if you two have seen it already," I said, struggling to resist the urge to back out, to panic. "What am I meant to-"

"I don't know exactly what effect it will have on you, I admit," Evelyn said. "But from what I know about how the map works, and your self-implementing hyperdimensional mathematics, I think you're going to understand this in a way I never could. In a way my mother never could. An Outsider made this thing, with my hands, but with Outside logic. You have those principles living in your head. Read the map, Heather. See if you can."

This time I managed to suck down that deep breath, nodding slowly. I leaned back into Raine's arm. I reminded myself why I was doing this, the reason I was even here: Maisie.

"Go ahead, open the box."

Evelyn nodded, and grasped one of the hidden seams on the puzzle box. "I've stared at this thing enough in the past. I'm going to look away, alright?"

"I'm going to stare into the sun right along with Heather," Raine announced. "Nothing to it."

"Do it," I said. "Before I lose my nerve again."

Evelyn opened the box. Folded down the dark wood. Let it splay itself like a flower.

Inside was the most intricate and most delicate sculpture in all the world.

Metal, perhaps stainless steel, shining and bright – but could any steel be wrought as thin as spider silk? Three feet tall, a foot and a half wide, it contained a hundred million feet of space, folded and folded and folded again.

Spars and bridges of metal connected tiny perfect spheres, razor-edged cubes, fluted columns, in such fragile miniature, all embedded in a base of more metal flowing outward like a slug's foot. My eyes roved across the structure almost as if I couldn't control my hunger for more detail. Thousands of those little spheres and cubes, a hundred thousand spider-webs linking them. Rough metal joints, scratches, pieces bent out of shape – none of it could mar the perfection of the whole.

Damn. Okay, maybe you CAN represent multidimensional structures in just our three, assuming you have insane hand-eye coordination and cryptography.

Or else we're only seeing one layer of it so far, and the higher dimensional structures that it used Evelyn's hands to connect this to are about to come into focus and give Heather another face-bleeding episode.

For five or six seconds, I merely stared, amazed at the detail and beauty of the object – then I began to feel queasy.

Beautiful, yes, but deeply unnatural. Angles of metal vanished in on themselves. Spans of silk-delicate steel threaded behinds spheres and cubes, seemingly connected to nothing. Spirals of spheres and cubes ascended or descended, yet formed perfect loops. A million optical illusions all at once.

Yeah, there we go now.~

I felt Raine tense up next to me with the same gut-sick reaction. To run one's eyes across the shining bridges of metal, to consider the sheer number of little spheres, try to count them or to trace a route from one spot to the next was to invite a head-spinning nausea. Cold sweat broke out on my face.

"I don't-" I said, as I tilted my head to look from a different angle.

And I saw what I was really looking at.

How could one possibly describe the majesty of a sunset to a person who's never seen the sky?

This sculpture, made by a tortured captive demon, held a layer of meaning that only I – and perhaps Lozzie, and somewhere out there my twin sister – had the contextual framework to comprehend.

Oh, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

My eyes ran faster along the metal, tracing routes with increasing speed, tripping and skipping ahead as my mind completed the leaps before the structure expressed them. There was the Fractal, a part of the map, and wasn't that funny? A piece of the structure of reality was inked on my arm, keeping the Eye at bay.

Huhhhhhhhh.

The fractal is a 2D approximation of some kind of natural planar configuration. And it hurts or repels certain creatures.

Is that section of the multiverse a kind of Bermuda Triangle, for said creatures? Its structure naturally mind-warping to them in the same way that the not!Aklo language is to humans?

Or, perhaps, is it an instilled aversion? There's something in that region that's so dangerous that creatures have learned to avoid it and anything reminiscent of it?

Or maybe it's not natural at all. Maybe something shaped an entire planar constellation into that shape in order to repel enemies. The work of a true god, likely done as a power play against similarly godly opponents.

So, so, so many tantalizing possibilities.

This is cosmicism done right. Probably the strongest example of such in Katalepsis thus far. Really feels like peering into something so big and so intricate that it might suck you inside forever and never let you go. And, really, like something you might want to be sucked into forever. This kind of knowledge and understanding...might it be worth staring into until you forget who you are and probably die of thirst or whatever?

It reminds me a lot of how Lovecraft had the narrator of "Shadow Out of Time" talk about the Library of Yith. The seductive allure of knowledge that you know will cost your entire self.

And there was Wonderland, represented by one of those little spheres. How small, how unimportant, compared to the whole.

Interesting. How was she able to recognize the representation of that one multiversal location as Wonderland? Being in a place doesn't give you the ability to locate it on a map.

Obvious explanation is that she's not recognizing it from her and Maisie's visit. She's recognizing it from Eye visions she's endured over the years. Whoever and whatever this "demon" that Loretta summoned was, it uses the same symbolic representations for mapmaking that Mdlkthpk does. This could be a simple case of form following function, or it could be an actual visual language that was spread throughout the multiverse.

In the latter case, this would mean that there is a multiversal society that both Mdlkthpk and King Whatsisname are both part of. Which in turn opens the possibility that Heather might be able to use diplomatic channels to get Maisie back, depending on political factors. Someone like Lozzie seems like a good foot in the door to getting in touch with someone who can get in touch with someone who can negotiate with Mdlkthpk, assuming Heather can get them something they want in return.

That last part is a very big "assuming," of course. Not to mention that the thing these middlemen might want in return could just be "another pair of human twins to do our own fucked up experiments on" or something.

The possibility space of this story was already gigantic, but a look at this map somehow expanded it even further. Again, rare, exemplary case of cosmicism done *right.*

Raine tried to hold me back as I leaned forward, stumbled toward this shining truth, but I barely felt her grip. I saw the ways between the spheres, and it was so obvious. How had I not realised this before? How had I not figured out the maths by myself? All reality lay here, at the tip of my brain, for the taking. All I had to do was reach out.

I slipped along, faster and faster. I was panting, cold sweat soaking my clothes, hands shaking uncontrollably – and I didn't care.

I could find Lozzie with this. I could go anywhere. If I could just memorise every single link, run my eyes down every single filament of wire, the mathematical perfection would complete me, in some fashion I'd never known I was lacking. Who needed friends, or help? Who needed to live, or be human? With this in my brain, I wouldn't even need my twin back, I'd be-

It wasn't Raine's hands or Evelyn's panicked voice which ripped me back. It was that thought – I wouldn't need Maisie?

Nonsense, the map is your sister now.

Being serious now, Heather's dedication being the thing that holds her back from the siren call is admirable. And also understandable, given how much validation she's been given for believing in Maisie after years of the world gaslighting her.

The downside of this, of course, is in calling my attention back to the question of "where the hell was this dedication for the first seven chapters of this arc?"

That was stupid. I wasn't a person without Maisie. I was half a person.

I reeled away from the map, spluttering and gagging, and for a fraction of a second I saw the sculpture in my peripheral vision.

Uh-oh.

The shining metal expanded, building more of itself in the blink of an eye, unfolding to fill all space, all time, until it crowded around the edge of my vision and filled all the world with a cacophony of endless complexity, except for a tiny tunnel left to my fragile human perception. Black and dripping on the utmost rim of reality, the insight a red-hot bolt of pure pain in the centre of my head.

That was the real map – of Outside.

I ripped my eyes away from it.

Not made of the same materials.

Implying that, rather than sticking Evelyn's fingers through the planar boundaries to build a 4D map, King Whatsisname just used her to sculpt an interface for a map that already existed. Someone - either Whatsisface itself, or another entity - constructed this map a long time ago, and Loretta forced it to build her a mouse and screen that plug into it.

Presumably, Loretta chose this particular entity to summon and extort because she had heard that it had access to this map.

I'm imagining, like, a guild of higher-dimensional alien cartographers that might have built this as their lives' work. In which case King Whatsisname might have been one of them, or just a patron/guest/beneficiary of theirs.

Raine caught me, held me up as I scrabbled for one of the plastic food bags in her hands. I got it in front of my mouth and doubled up and squeezed every muscle tight and screwed my eyes shut. I think I made a keening noise through my teeth. I'm not sure, and I certainly don't recall what Raine and Evelyn were saying, because for once, for the first time ever, I held on.

I shook and my stomach muscles clenched up but I held on.

I didn't vomit.

I refused to let that feeling master me – that illusion of true comprehension I'd felt, the seductive temptation of understanding it all, of mapping Outside. Such arrogance. To try was to burn out my senses. I'd grasped enough.

This is basically the title drop for the serial as a whole, isn't it? Katalepsis. Comprehension. This is likely one of the key moments within the story that the title refers to.

"Heather? Heather? Hey, come on, deep breaths, try to stand up straight. You're okay, you're completely okay."

"I got- I got it- I did," I gasped, eyes closed as I made absolutely sure I was not facing that infernal sculpture. "I saw it. I can- I saw it."

"Saw what? What did you see?" Evelyn snapped.

"Let's get out of here first, yeah?" Raine said. I felt her hands, strong and firm, on my back and around my waist.

"It worked?" Evelyn snapped. "Raine, wait. It worked?"

"Sight. Gave me sight," I muttered, nodding.

"Sight? To where? Of what?"

"Evee, come on, let her-"

"Outside. To anywhere," I panted, and knew with sickening certainty I held that map in my brain now. The byways and secret passages of the castle we all lived in. "To Wonderland."

Alright. That helped more than they'd ever hoped it would.

Next step is either to get Lozzie's attention again, or to go back through the portal-tunnels onto the Leviathan's body and start to experiment with plane-shifting from there. Ideally both.

Of course, both of those leads are also things that Edward Lilliburne cares about. So, pursuing either of them is likely to lead into another conflict with New Sun. I'm guessing that's going to be the meat of the next chunk of story.

It's a clever construction, in terms of plot devices. And also could make for an amusing reversal of the first couple arcs. The Brotherhood of the New Sun entered the story by opportunistically stealing something from Heather and Co. Now, we're going to have to go snap up their perceived assets.

That's the end of the chapter, and of "No Nook of English Ground" as a whole.


I don't think I have too much to say about this one that I haven't already. To be fair, I've already said a lot about it. To conclude, I'll just say that "No Nook of English Ground" is a strong contender for the best arc so far. It brings back the haunting mystery and psychological weight of "Mind, Correlating" while still taking all the zany fantasy silliness that's been introduced since then into account. The fact that it sets up multiple additional plot threads (the fox, Praem's whole deal, etc) without revealing much about them is a contributing factor to this, but really it was the character studies of Heather, Evelyn and (to an extent) Praem that did the heavy lifting.

The one big black mark on "No Nook" is, of course, Heather seeming to forget that she wants to look at the map in order to rescue Maisie for the entire middle part of the arc. Try as I might, I cannot think of a justification for this. It just feels like a writing mishap.

Anyway, mostly I just really want to know what happens next.