Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)

by Seanan McGuire

she was doing her best to be a good person, and to figure out what that meant in the context of the world she knew and had and understood.

(the idea that she might not think of herself as lacking anything had yet to form, and wouldn’t for years yet; the idea that a child who didn’t conform to his exact ideas of shape and function could be completely happy, and not consider herself lacking in the least, was even further away).

The idea of asking Nadya what she wanted had never occurred to either one of them. Children were people, absolutely, but foreign orphans were sure to be so consumed with gratitude that all they could possibly want was to make their new parents as happy as possible.

This was not her choice. This was her body, but it was not her decision, and that alone made it very heavy, and difficult to carry.

Privately, Nadya thought Pansy was less than perfectly content, and maybe shouldn’t have been allowed to have authority over another human being until she figured out how to be kinder to herself.

She’d never really considered her missing arm a disability—it was just the way she was made, and always had been, and it didn’t stop her from doing anything she wanted to do—and now it was all the other children could see.

She hated being forced to conform to other people’s idea of normal, whether they be cultural or physical. She hated how easy it was for the adults in her world to pass her around like a doll, moving her from Russia to America, from house to doctor’s office, from her bedroom to wherever they wanted her to be. She hated that her agency had been taken away from her in ways she couldn’t fully articulate, and she sat at her desk, and she seethed.

“You saved yourself,” said Vasyl. “I would think that is the most important adventure of all.”

A future is a monster of its own breed, different for everyone, and ever inescapable.