THE FRONT HALL OF the Whitethorn Institute seemed to have been designed by a team of people dedicated to stamping out all hints of imagination. The walls were polished oak; the floor was gray marble, lined with industrial rugs to keep students from slipping. Cora stepped onto that floor, tight new shoes clicking against the stone, and swallowed, her hair suddenly feeling like some huge and unspeakable offense. It was a color that didn’t belong here, had never belonged here, and should have been washed away before she brought it to sully this pristine place.
The conviction that she didn’t belong here was beginning to coil in her chest, tight and heavy as the Serpent. She swallowed, forcing herself to keep breathing through the first stirrings of panic, and walked on, waiting to hear her driver’s footsteps echoing her own.
She heard no such thing. The man who had brought her to the school’s gates, helped her bring her suitcases to the door, was not following. He had retreated back to his car as soon as his duty was done, leaving her to move onward alone. This was her school now. This was her home. She might not belong here yet, but she would. She had to.
She’d signed all of her choices away.
The hall was straight and easy to follow, leading inexorably toward a single conclusion. Cora took a deep breath and kept walking, summoning the courage that had seen her go from drowned girl to mermaid to Drowned Girl, capital letters and all. She had been swept into the Trenches because she needed them, and she had become a hero there because heroism had always been in her, a hard core of sharpened coral as strong as steel tempered in her soul. It was that core she gathered around her now, and used to keep herself moving forward.
The only thing that made her courage shiver and try to shrink away was the cold that filled the hall, gray and unforgiving, inimical to the silver glitter of the depths. There was no glitter here, and every breath was another kind of drowning. Cora shivered, tightening her fingers on the handles of her suitcases, and kept walking. If she stopped moving here, she would never start again.
And she had come of her own free will. If anyone was at fault here, it was her. No one was coming to save her.
This was how she saved herself.
The hallway ended at a tall mahogany door, unmarked, like the person on the other side knew without a doubt that anyone who made it this far would know who they were. Cora stopped, blinking silently, and waited for something to happen. The echoes of her footsteps faded, until all that remained in the hall was an absolute, swallowing silence. The door swung open. The man on the other side regarded her with quiet sympathy, eyes going first to her hair, and then to her waistline, and finally to her face—a progression she knew all too well. Cora bristled, but said nothing.
He was tall, not only in relation to Cora herself, but in relation to the world around him; he made the man who had picked her up at the airport look like he’d been built to a slightly different, considerably more reasonable scale. He was neither old, like Miss Eleanor, nor young, like Cora, but somewhere in the measureless, interminable middle, where he could have laid claim to almost any age and been believed. A scar ran from the right side of his jaw and down the length of his neck, vanishing into the starched collar of his white button-down shirt. It was the only truly eye-catching thing about him. Terrifying as he was—more through the weight of his presence than through any single aspect of his being—Cora felt as though she could forget him in an instant, as though taking her eyes off of him for a second would be to risk losing track of him forever. There was nothing about him to hang a memory on.
Nothing except for that scar.
“Thank you for coming here so promptly,” he said, eyes remaining settled on her face. It was like being pinned under glass, held somehow captive. The sudden urge to run seized her, almost uncontrollably strong. She was here because she wanted to be, and she still wanted to run. Even if she didn’t make it to freedom, she’d know she’d tried. She’d have that much to hold on to.
“Miss Miller,” said the unremarkable man.
Cora froze.
“It’s an admirable thought,” he continued. “Most of our students think to run, but relatively few think to try it during intake. I’m impressed. Attention on me, please.”
Cora swallowed hard and fixed her eyes on the unremarkable man’s face.
He smiled. It was a pleasant, paternal expression that did nothing to render him more memorable. “I am Headmaster Whitethorn; welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. I’ve read your file. I’m thrilled you’re going to be joining us. I think you’ll be an excellent addition to the Whitethorn family, and I believe we can help you. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.”
Cora let go of her suitcases and started, for some inane reason, to curtsey. She caught herself before she could complete the gesture, freezing with her hands on the skirt of her uniform, feeling utterly foolish.
“I made a mistake,” she said, and her lips were numb, and her tongue was too big for her mouth. But this place, this place was so big and so cold, and this was just a different way to drown. The Drowned Gods would still be able to find her here. If traveling to a different world hadn’t been enough to break their hold on her, why would she think that a few miles would make any difference at all? All her bravery had been spent on making it this far; she had no more left to spare. Voice small and pockets empty, she managed to continue, “I’m sorry to have wasted your time. I want to go home.”
“Miss West is a trifle eccentric, and her teaching standards fail to align with our own, but she has never struck me as incompetent,” said the headmaster. He fixed her with a steely eye. “Are you saying that she sent you here without signing the transfer papers?”
“N-no,” stammered Cora. “I signed everything, but—”
“And your parents, Miss Miller. I believe they signed the papers as well? And those papers included detailed information regarding this school’s legal obligation to our students?”
“Yes,” said Cora, voice still small.
“Then I’m sure you understand that this is your home now, and this is where you belong, by your own choice and admission. You signed the paperwork. You are allowed one call off-campus a week, on Friday afternoon; if you wish to call your parents then and begin the process of removing yourself from our custody, that is your right.” His lips drew back in what someone less afraid might have called a smile. Cora flinched. There was something disturbing about the expression, almost disturbing enough to make him memorable. Not quite, though. She knew that if she looked away, or even blinked too long, she’d forget everything about him.
“You know all about running away, don’t you, Miss Miller?” he asked. His voice was soft and lilting as he continued: “There was a door. Your file doesn’t go into detail as to its nature—psychiatrists always forget the most essential parts of the story, I find—but there was a door where a door wasn’t meant to be, in a wall or in the pattern rain makes on the sidewalk, etched in chalk or scrawled in shadow. There was a door, and it called to you somehow. It knew you. It wanted to be opened, and you, poor child, poor, innocent child, you were naïve enough to open it.”
Cora felt as if her blood had been replaced by seawater, cold and thin and sluggish in her veins. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe.
“I know it will take time for you to trust me enough to tell me what you found on the other side of the door. I know it was a world where the rules were different, or where it seemed like there were no rules at all. A world where you could live your most ridiculous, decadent dreams. I think all children dream of finding a place like that, a place without bedtimes, or lessons, or rules. But children crave structure as much as they crave freedom. They start to dream of it if they go without for too long, and then those beguiling, alluring worlds, those whimsical fantasies, they turn cruel. Yours did, didn’t it? It cast you out.”
He leaned closer. The smile was gone. For the first time, he was memorable. 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.
“It told you to be sure, and it changed you—your hair, your skin, everything you thought immutable about your self—and yet somehow you still weren’t sure, and now you’re here. You’re finally safe, Miss Miller. Everything you experienced happened in another world, in another life, to someone you aren’t going to be anymore. We’re going to help you.”
“How?” whispered Cora.
“We’re going to teach you how to forget,” said the headmaster, and nothing had ever been so terrible, and nothing had ever been so wonderful.
“I didn’t … I didn’t go through only one door,” said Cora. A tear ran down her cheek, so hot it was scalding. “I followed a girl with lightning where her heart was supposed to be through another door, and while I was there, I caught the attention of some … some things I shouldn’t have. They want to take me and make me their own. I asked to come here because you could help break me free of them. Can you really make them let me go?”
The headmaster smiled again, settling his hand on her shoulder. “Most of the work will be yours, but yes,” he said. “We can reconnect you to this world, where you belonged all along. We can set you free. All you have to do is make an effort. We only want what’s best for our little community. We only want everyone to be well.”
“That’s all I want,” said Cora. She was crying again, with relief, not fear. “I just want to be well.”
“That’s all anyone wants, in the end,” he said. “It doesn’t matter why you want it. Here, we don’t require you to be sure. Here, we’re sure enough for everyone.”
He led Cora deeper into the institute, and everything was silent, and everything was still, and the whispers of the Drowned Gods still echoed in the corners of her mind like warnings that she wouldn’t get away that easily.