Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children, #7)

by Seanan McGuire

Cora had traveled to the Trenches, an underwater world full of mermaids, mysteries, and maritime monsters.

Antoinette had traveled to a Nonsense world, and a dry one at that, a place of jumbled boxes and endless shelves, where all the lost things went.

Only Sumi wasn’t required to have a roommate anymore, since apparently the rules were different for people who had died and come back.

At least with the lights down, she couldn’t see her own skin; couldn’t see the thin scrim of oil-slick iridescence that covered every inch of her, and had since she danced with the Drowned Gods in the waters of the Moors.

promised to return her fins and scales and free her from the bonds of gravity,

He was the only quasi-nocturnal student currently in residence, with Nancy having gone back to the Halls of the Dead and Jack at home in the Moors.

Drowned Worlds were Drowned Worlds, regardless of whether or not they had Logical rules or leaned toward the Wicked.

According to Kade’s map, the Trenches were a Logical, Wicked world, but Cora had never been able to see the Wickedness in them. They weren’t cruel.

According to that same map, the Moors were also Logical and Wicked, and Cora couldn’t stand the thought of her kind, beloved home having anything in common with that nightmare landscape, with that leering red moon washed in so much blood that it would never be clean again, with those deep and dangerous waters.

Her hair had been brown, not aquamarine, before she found her fins. Christopher would die without his flute—literally die. Seraphina was the kind of beautiful that stopped hearts, and everyone who’d seen pictures of her from before her travels said that she hadn’t always been like that. She’d been attractive, not impossible.

The doors made changes. The doors stayed with you.

they couldn’t help were happy to laugh when the fat kid fell down on the blacktop, even if she stood up bleeding. “You could choose not to be fat,” they would always say, when she called them on it. “If you just had a little self-control, there’d be nothing to make fun of you for. We’re doing you a favor.”

fighting the Serpent of Frozen Tears with the other mermaids, flirting with sirens and chasing currents for the glory of the queen. Then had come the dreadful day when she was swept into one of the Serpent’s whirlpools, and the reaching hands of her sisters hadn’t been enough to anchor or to save her, and she’d woken on a beach back in the world of her birth, tail split down the middle into two familiar,

But she’d already heard the officers snickering at the naked fat girl, and she already knew that telling her parents she’d tried to drown herself and turned into a mermaid instead wasn’t going to get her very far, so she’d turned her face away and stammered excuses, claiming not to know, not to remember, not to understand.

Then one of the other girls on the swim team had broken the silent agreement not to look at the fat girl during post-pool shower time, and the news that Cora cared enough about her “new look” to dye her pubic hair had spread around school before the end of the day.

But Eleanor’s door was one of the rare stable ones, and everyone did know that she could go back whenever she felt the time was right.)

Eleanor pulled her hands away. “The Whitethorn Institute. Cora, you can’t intend—” “You said they steal your students sometimes. That when you’re not fast enough, or when the children are having a harder time adapting to life in this reality, that sometimes Whitethorn gets there first.”

They had been viewed as a unit by the rest of the student body since their return from the Moors—a third trip through a door that hadn’t been meant for most of them.

to the Halls of the Dead, and the second to Confection,

they’d arranged for Sumi’s re...

Cora, Kade, Christopher, and Sumi.

Sumi had been dead. Christopher loved the dead. Kade had no door to go back through, even if he’d wanted to; Prism had rejected him completely. He could have given himself over to the Moors, and the Drowned Gods could have taken his loyalties without a fight. But they had chosen Cora. The Moors had chosen Cora.

Her hair was a wild mop of carroty curls, too orange to fit any modern definition of “attractive,” too bright to be overlooked in a crowd.

Eleanor startled in her seat, sitting up straighter, eyes brightening. “I lost those twenty years ago,” she said. “However did you…?” “I can find anything,” said Antoinette, looking briefly, completely peaceful as she put the keys down on the table nearest the door. “I found your keys, and see, there’s my roommate. And I wouldn’t have had an excuse to knock and find her if I hadn’t already found them, so it all makes sense if you put it in a line.”

By saving Jack’s future, she had sacrificed her own. The rainbows dancing over her skin were proof enough of that.

He was memorable, and he was terrible, and Cora, who had been a hero, who had saved the Trenches, bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out in fear.

trust you’re all awake and ready to put all your energy into learning, growing, and becoming better citizens of the world in which we live. It’s the only one we have, so we have to take care of it.”

If a thin, pretty girl smelled bad, it was because she smelled bad that day. If Cora smelled bad, the other girls would say it was because she was fat, would say all fat people smelled bad, all the time.

can’t do it. I’m sorry, and I never wanted to be a hero, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let you turn me into a villain.”

They named the dimensions differently, called Nonsense and Logic “Delusion” and “Compulsion,” called Wickedness and Virtue “Recklessness” and “Austerity,”

The students who’d gone to Logical worlds got waffles for breakfast and bedtimes that changed every night.

The students who’d gone to Nonsense worlds got stricter schedules and regimes than even the Wicked students, rules piled upon rules upon rules until the weight of it crushed the rebellion out of their hearts.

“Whale,” repeated the girl, eyes on Cora’s own. “Fatty. Stupid pig. Emily’s not your friend. No one is. You’re too disgusting to have friends.”

doorway was a short, plumpish girl of Japanese descent, her long black hair tamed into a braid that fell down her back in a single inkslash line.

Cora, who had never been expecting to see Sumi again, could only stare in frozen silence as the matron pushed her and her suitcase into the room, then turned and closed the door, leaving the six girls alone.

Rossetti

Cora sighed. “They call it ‘Delusion’ here.” “Oh,” said Regan. “Um, no. I didn’t go to a Delusional world. I went to a Compulsion world.”

“You’re not heroes anymore. Not here. It’s time for you to accept that you aren’t going to win. This is a world without heroes, and you’re here.”

Most of all, she could have told them about Sumiko, poor shade, discarded self, who was stirring more and more, because Sumi had been the necessary armor to survive Confection, and Sumiko was the necessary armor to survive the Whitethorn Institute.

I’m still shrinking. I still don’t have a name.

Me, I got ‘the floor is lava’ from a place that really meant it. I could graduate tomorrow if I wanted to. But out there, in the real world, doors can pop out of nowhere and sweep you away. Out there, the rules can change.”

“I can’t … I know you when I see you, but I can’t remember your face when I’m not looking directly at it. Why is that?” And the headmaster’s smile widened.

found myself in a world where color was a fairy tale. It was a cut-paper reality, black and white and malleable, and I was a god there, because I understood how to move in three dimensions.

“They said I couldn’t go without allowing them to give me a gift, because I had been so very good to them, and

the people who I’d come to care for almost as family, and they stripped the individuality from my bones, so no one in this world would be able to remember me between one moment and the next.

“Because I don’t think any of us has ever met the headmaster,” said Cora. “We’ve met a man who says he’s Headmaster Whitethorn, and he does a pretty good job, but he’s not the headmaster, and I think we’re in an awful lot of danger here, if we stay.”

think I know why you still don’t have a name.” The nameless girl stopped breathing. “The matrons don’t have names. The matrons never have names. I’ve seen them go to ridiculous lengths to keep from using anything that might even be shaped like a name—but Miss Lennox has a name now, and it’s changing her. Can’t you see how it’s changing her? Names have power. Names define things.”

“The … the Rat King stole it when I said I didn’t want to be his bride,” said the nameless girl, voice gone small with pain and memory. “I had to come back here so he couldn’t use it against me. My … Bright said she thought it would follow me through the door, that the Rat King couldn’t hold it if I wasn’t there, and then once I had time to recover I could come home,

It said ‘be sure’ on it in these dripping blood letters, so I figured it was the way to get to a bigger scare. Instead, it led to a world where it was always harvest, where it was Halloween every night, and I danced with monsters and sang with scarecrows, and I was happy.”

“I’m eleven.” Rowena spat the words out like they tasted sour. “Okay? I’m eleven. I was missing for three hours, and when I found my way back through the veil of clocks to the door, I looked like I was six years older than I was supposed to be. I fell through the door when I was six and I came back out physically twelve. My parents don’t believe I am who I say I am. I’ve been here for five years and I could graduate tomorrow, if I had anywhere to go.