“We humans?” I echo Nerys. “Worth the trouble?”

  “Mmhmm,” she purrs, gurgling like hot tar. Still stroking my right cheek, running her thumb down the jagged line of my scar. “So much trouble, humans. But you’re worth every drop.”

  I’m disinclined to agree, even with a hundred feet of zoog goddess-thing hunched over me. Some people are worth any amount of trouble — Willow, my lost parents, a handful of others, people I will likely never meet. But ‘we humans’ in the aggregate? We’re awful creatures, and not just to each other. In Nerys’ position I would probably prefer the zoogs. At least they’re honest about wanting to eat you.

  But I’m too exhausted to interrogate the motivations of a Dream-God.

  “Fine,” I sigh.

  Nerys’ true face vanishes; the oil-dark sea, the carrion plain, the swarming zoogs about her feet, they all lift like a dream, along with the rough caress of her fingertips against my scar. We’re back in ‘Plato Base’, in the massive concrete room. My backside is still planted in an old armchair, surrounded by a living space fit for the best of the banned surrealist paintings. Nerys is once again an imitation zoog, made of slippery black ooze, moving like something extruded from a pool of oil, crouched in front of an animal bed dusted with stray fur. Her backing chorus of ordinary grey-and-white zoogs are all peering over the lip of the bed, little jaws hinged open, pink tongues lolling, panting their appreciation.

  Can’t help myself, I touch my scar with my left hand, where Nerys touched me. Few have touched there before, only the doctors, my grandmother, and Willow. If anybody else did that without permission, I don’t know what violence I might do.

  But Nerys gets it. Whatever else she is, her humanoid form is scarred and crippled, just like me.

  “Haaaah,” Nerys rasps. “Don’t believe me, huh? Nah, don’t worry, no offence taken. But seeing is believing, Octavia. By their fruits you will know them. The bread will be on the table. The proof is in the pudding. Mmmmmm, I like that version best. Pudding, yes.”

  The other zoogs all smack their lips, hissing, “Pudding! Pudding!”

  I shake my head; bad idea, makes the room spin. “I don’t care. I’m too tired to worry about whatever your angle is. Whatever’s in all this for you. Whatever.”

  “You’ll see, Octavia,” Nerys purrs. Black lips peel back from obsidian teeth, dripping phantasmal droplets that vanish before they land. “You’ll see.”

  “Fucking ‘ay you will!” says Patience. Graves. Grim. I’d flinch if I weren’t so exhausted; forgot she was there. Nerys’ carrion-dream is too vivid, it took me away. “Nerys is legit, for real for real. She’s not some parasite fucking with us, not like all the others. She doesn’t even call herself a god!”

  “Not allllll the others, Grimmy,” says Nerys. “I do have some equals, deep in the Dream. Though, you know how it is. It’s hard to equal a zoog.”

  The other zoogs chitter and hiss, little zoog-laughs from their sharp-toothed maws, flapping their ears back and forth.

  “Yeah, yeah!” Grim laughs. “It’s cool, no offence to your mates!”

  Banter washes over me, storm-rain on granite. I could sleep right here, sitting upright, right in this battered old armchair, in the middle of a giant ex-ballroom, in a secret base on the moon.

  Straighten my spine, raise my chin, deep breath, in and out.

  “How do I go home?”

  Nerys and Grim share a glance, both of them guilty. Nerys shows her teeth in a very un-zoog-like expression, an awkward cringe. The other zoogs go quiet.

  Grim shrugs. “You don’t!”

  “Is that a threat?”

  She snorts. “‘S got nothing to do with me! You’re the wanted woman!”

  “That’s not what I meant. I will not be kept here. How do I go home?”

  Nerys lets out a soft hiss, tail curled low around her flank. “You’re free, Octavia. All my girls are free, forever and ever. Come and go, sleep and wake, do what you like, where you like, when you like. I’ll teach you how to translocate, as I said I would, and once I do … poof!” She slaps her tail against the floor; the basket of zoogs all flinch as one. “I can’t stop you leaving. But right now? Hnghhhhhhh … ” Nerys raises her spine and lowers her muzzle; instinctive defensive posture for a zoog. “Right now the pigs and the dogs and the stinking cat-piss things all know your face. I wouldn’t. Bad idea. Bad bad bad idea.”

  “Translocate.” I clutch at that word. “That’s how you brought us to the moon. You promised to teach me. I want to go home.”

  “You’ll die if you go.” Nerys stretches out her front paws and flexes her ooze-covered zoog digits against a patch of exposed concrete between the rugs. “Out in the open, all by yourself, worn down and tired, not paying attention? Hnnn! You won’t last five minutes before you get spotted, and when you’re spotted, you’re dead. Dead dead dead! Don’t throw yourself away.”

  I shake my head. “I have to see Willow. I have to see her. As soon as possible. Now.”

  Nerys hisses through tight teeth. “You won’t survive another brush with the Trio, not in your state, not yet. Even another fledgling magical girl could kill you, easy as swatting a fly. No. You have to rest—”

  “You think I can sleep, like this!?” Try to shout, can’t get the air into my lungs. “Without knowing if she’s … if she … if … ”

  “Octavia! A pack of pigs could take you out right now! They wouldn’t need magic, just lots of guns! I’ll teach you translocation later. After you rest.”

  “No. No! I’m going, I’m going, I’m going to see Willow, I—”

  Put my hands on the armrests, try to stand; I’ve stored up some strength, enough to take a few steps, maybe swing a punch or two. I’m going to raise my right fist and threaten Nerys until she teaches me how to translocate back to Earth. I don’t care if she is a Dream-God, if she can snuff me out with a thought; I have to see Willow, I have to, there is no other option for me, because without Willow I may as well be—

  “Hey, hey, Occy! Occy!” Grim waves one hand at my face, scoops up the television remote in her other. “Look! Look, hey!”

  She points the remote at the quad-screen television setup and presses a button. The paused picture unblurs, broadcast resumed.

  A mad cackle explodes from the speakers.

  It’s me.

  Grainy CCTV footage, high-quality enough to pick out the face of a woman gone mad. Eyes wide, teeth clenched, grinning wild. Right fist raised, prosthetic hand coated with gore. Clothes blood-stained and bullet-holed. A pixelated lump lies on the ground to the rear, a censored corpse for the evening audience.

  Scarlet Edge stands tall, her sword raised, defying the insane laughter from this blood-soaked banshee.

  Octavia-on-screen screeches her screed: “I’ve hated you for so long. All of you! And now I’m going to punch your—” BEEP “—ing head off your shoulders!”

  Scarlet Edge adjusts her sword. The footage flickers with overexposure in deep blue and lighting yellow; Azure and Dawn touch down either side of Scarlet. The Trio of Albion form a united front of beauty and strength and elegance, to face this latest threat to England’s internal security, a cackling goblin coated with gore.

  The footage pauses, shrinks to an inset window behind a BBC news set, and zooms in to highlight the face. My face. Me.

  A round table news set, stuffed with people, all talking at once — a newsreader, a senior police officer, a man from the Ministry of Dream Control, two politicians, several others who could be anybody.

  “—murdered two officers—”

  “—urge a normal level of caution—”

  “—no direct threat to the public at this time—”

  “—unseen developments, yes, but our girls are more than capable of handling anything that comes their way—”

  “—the Dreamer, last seen here at an undisclosed location in Greater Oxford—”

  “—remind the public not to approach suspected Dreamers—”

  “—do we know anything about this Octavia girl—”

  “—Miss Carter, twenty years old, of—”

  “—suspected Dreamer—”

  “—Octavia Carter—”

  “—Octavia—”

  Grim pauses the broadcast. My face remains framed on the screen.

  “Ha!” Grim barks. “Look at these limp-dick shitsuckers! Talking crap, all of them. But hey, Occy.” She glances at me again. “You get it, yeah? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in England knows your face right now. Give it time, get a good transform in, it’ll all be alright. But right now? Noooo, fuck no, yeah? You gotta do like Nerys says. Hide out for a bit, don’t go alone, lay low. Think like a zoog!” She taps her skull with a fingertip. “That’s what Nerys said to me back when it was my turn. And heeeey, I’m still here!”

  “Willow … Willow’s seen this,” I murmur. “Willow must have seen … me … ”

  “Like, yeah, everybody’s seen this!” Grim laughs. “Not just England, you’re all over. Look at this shit!”

  She flicks through international news channels, some of them legal in England, others only accessible via clandestine VPNs. There I am again and again, displayed in all my grainy, blood-soaked humiliation, commented on by coiffed Americans, gesticulated at by Russian state newsreaders, ruminated over by French critics, all hoping that the latest English disease doesn’t cross the sea. Grim breaks into a nodding grin as she lingers on the Japanese NHK news; there’s me again, turned into an absurd chibi-insert, lined up next to their mascot-scale version of Scarlet Edge, alongside half a dozen stylised illustrations of their own national magical girls. On every channel, the me on the screen screeches and cackles in a breaking voice, while Scarlet Edge stands tall and defiant in her dignified silence.

  Heat blossoms in my chest.

  “It’s edited.”

  “Eh?” Grim glances back at me. “Occy?”

  “It’s been edited!”

  Suddenly I’m up on my feet, don’t know how I got there. Swaying, lurching, heaving for breath, clutching at the armrest to stay upright; my prosthetic hand knocks over the paper bag of cold chips and chicken strips, scattering food on the floor. One bad step with my prosthetic leg, pain flaring in my hip, foot twisting sideways, knee starting to buckle, and I know it’s happening, there’s no stopping it now.

  I am going to fall over. The ultimate humiliation, the latest echo of a thousand tumbles and falls and trips to the ground, because after everything is stripped away I’m still just a useless cripple who can’t keep my feet.

  Grim drops the television remote and leaps to my side. She catches me by the left arm.

  “Occy, Occy, hey, yo, haha!”

  “It’s been edited!” I roar again, waving my blood-stained prosthetic at the television screens, paused on a wide-angle view of that asphalt corner outside Dream Control Oxford Headquarters. “Scarlet Edge, her! She was hunched over, clutching her stomach, because I punched her in the gut! And they’ve edited her! They won’t even show she got hurt! Cowards!”

  “Yeah, yeah, fucking right!” says Grim. “Like they can’t show any cracks, you know!?”

  “I punched her!” I make a fist with my prosthetic hand, raise it to the screens. “I did! She was wounded and reeling! I did that to her, I did! I—”

  By chance, I glance at Patience.

  She’s wrapped around my left arm, taking half my weight, her face closer than I expected. Eyes wide and bright, glittering green with mania below the surface. Birthmark on her cheek mottled like a deep bruise, spreading down her throat, slipping beneath the neckline of her white dress. She’s grinning at me like I’m the star of the show.

  Nobody has ever looked at me like that before. Not even Willow.

  “Nerys told me!” she says. “Scarlet fucking Edge, you nailed her! You know how hard it is to make that bitch blink?! And you slugged her one in the gut, haha!”

  “Ah, yes … ” My anger fades, attention back to the screens. “And … and I did say that to her, but … but not like that. They’ve cut together two separate things I said. And I didn’t swear. I mean, well, I did, but not in that sentence. They’ve put words in my mouth.”

  “Swear all you like, Occy. No H&H nurses up here.”

  My anger gutters out, snuffed by proximity to Patience. The frozen image on the screen reveals more changes. “They … they’ve edited my prosthetic? Made it look like a real fist? Why?”

  Grim slowly lets go, so I can stand on my own. I try not to show too much relief. She shrugs. “Fuck knows.”

  “And Nerys isn’t there at all,” I say. “They’ve cut her out completely.”

  “Ssss!” Nerys hisses. “Zoogs are too good for television.”

  “Yeah,” Grim says. “Like, they can’t let the public know about shit like Nerys, you know? It’s why they called you a Dreamer and stuff, just to pretend you’re something they can deal with, something they’ve already got sorted. Can’t let anybody know about us real magical girls, right? It sucks, but shit, not like we ain’t been trying.”

  I shake my head, grope for the chair behind me, resist the urge to sit down. If I sit now I’ll lose even the dregs of this righteous anger.

  “They won’t show the end of the fight,” I say. “When she ran me through, with her sword. That’s not part of the Trio’s image, is it? Huh.”

  Grim snorts. “Now you’re getting it. Shit sucks. Arseholes write the news, usually about other arseholes.”

  Willow must have seen this footage by now, unless she is indisposed or in a coma. My face on every news channel in every country that has public television, my prosthetic fist raised, coated in blood and gore, shouting obscenities at the Trio of Albion. But it’s not the whole truth; I scored a palpable hit on Scarlet Edge, I felt her stomach compress under the power of my knuckles. I watched her firelit eyes go wide, her pretty legs stagger back, her elegant poise broken by my hand.

  I want Willow to see that. The real me.

  “Willow’s seen this,” I say, trying to construct the thought. “She’s seen me, but it’s not … ”

  “Naaaah,” Grim says. “You got nothing to worry about. Your girl’s gonna think you’re cool as hell!”

  My girl?

  Don’t say anything.

  “Hell is traditionally hot,” I mutter, finally sinking back down into the armchair. My legs are quivering with effort and my pulse is a drumbeat in my throat; stay standing much longer and the brute facts of biology will leave me no choice, and I don’t want Grim grabbing me again. I resist the urge to collapse against the cushions. Lean forward instead, so I don’t fall asleep. If I give in now, I’ll never rise from this chair.

  Then again, what’s the point?

  Why bother standing up ever again? With the spark of anger gone, I slow to a near-absolute stop, because there is nowhere else to go.

  The half-dozen brave zoogs in the animal basket are peering over the edge, beady black eyes locked on a spot below the arm of my chair. Spilled food, cold chips and leftover chicken strips. A half-dozen furry grey snouts swivel back and forth between the food and my face, claws clutching the soft rim of the basket, jaws parting with silent hisses, caught between the desire for food and the terror of my sudden rage.

  I gesture with my head. Go on, you may as well eat it, because I won’t. The zoogs look to Nerys for reassurance, permission, leadership.

  “Octavia is one of us,” Nerys rasps. “Safe.”

  The zoogs creep out of the basket and slink forward, their furry grey bodies pressed close in a protective mass, their pinkish tails stiff with tension. Eyes on me, claws clicking on the concrete, then reaching for the spilled food. They break as one, scramble forward, snatch up mouthfuls of chips and chunks of chicken strip. Loot secured, they retreat in a skittering mass, squirming back into the animal bed. The rearguard zoog leaves the best morsel of chicken in front of Nerys, then joins the others. A line of zoog heads pop up over the edge of the basket, claws cramming food into their pointy snouts, lips smacking as they chew their prizes.

  “So,” I say, voice too tired to break. “I can never go home. My life is over.”

  “Eh, what?” Grim frowns, then breaks into an infuriating grin. “Whaaaat? Occy, what’re you talking about? It’s gonna be fine!”

  Not enough energy to glare. “Fine? Living on the moon with you and the zoogs? That’s my future? That’s fine?”

  Grim throws her arms wide. “All you gotta do is transform!”

  “ … what?”

  “Transform! Magical girl transformation? Nerys, fuck’s sake! You not even tell her this stuff?”

  Nerys replies through a mouthful of chicken strip. “No time. Keep saying. No time for that.”

  “I wasn’t ‘transformed’ when I punched Scarlet Edge on camera,” I say. “I wasn’t in disguise. That’s my real face in the footage. My real name. My life is over.”

  “Nah nah nah.” Grim waves both hands. “S’not how it works. When you transform, it like, makes everyone forget, yeah? It’s like the whole world just goes ‘who was that bitch again?’ and nobody can remember. Anything you did before, it’s a dream!” She counts off on her fingers. “Mundanes, the cops, Dream Control guys, your friend who might have seen you on telly, your parents — you got parents?”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Shake my head. “I live with my grandmother.”

  “Your gran then. All the mundanes. They’ll all forget when you transform.” She waves a hand at the television. “All these talking pig-fucks, they won’t remember your name this time next week! Sure, like, you got arrested before Nerys found you, so they’ll remember that, but like, then you got released, so hey! You’re in the clear.”

  “There’s footage,” I say. “Video. On the news. Cameras, records.”

  “It’ll all vanish!” Grim laughs. “For serious! Footage gone, memories fucked. Your name, wiped! We’ve got a Dream-God on our fuckin’ side, hey! Seriously, you can transform in the middle of a crowd and the normies forget everything!”

  Hope hurts like a speck of grit in my heart; or maybe that’s one of Grimgrave’s birdshot pellets. “That sounds too good to be true.”

  “It’s how magical girls work,” Nerys rasps, swallowing her chicken. “Started the moment you accepted my deal, Octavia.”

  “How? Do other magical girls work like this? Have normal people just been forgetting things, for forty years?”

  Grim shrugs. “Yeah, sure, why not? Signal’s got some theories, you can ask her tomorrow, but fuck, I wouldn’t if I were you, she’ll bore you to death. Look, all you gotta remember is the mundanes can’t remember shit, not even occultists. But other magical girls? Dreamers? Other stuff from the Dreamlands? Never transform in front of them. If you do, they can remember.”

  “You transformed in front of me.”

  Grimgrave lights up, manic grin to fifty percent power. “Yeah, ‘cos we’re friends! You’re one of us!”

  I shake my head. “The Trio, they saw me, they’ll remember me.”

  Grim opens her mouth, closes it again, frowns. “Huh. Maybe? I dunno. They might? Nerys?”

  Nerys tilts her snout one way, then the other, nose twitching. “I’m not certain. This has never happened before.”

  Grim shrugs. “Whatever then. Look, even if they do remember you, they can’t just come up and mess with you. You’ll just be some regular girl again! They can’t smash you in public.”

  “Optimistic,” I croak.

  Grim giggles, as if that was a compliment. She retrieves the remote and finally switches off the quartet of televisions, washing my bloodstained face from the screens. She squats next to the animal bed, hem of her white dress trailing on the floor, messy brown hair falling across her bare shoulders. She reaches out, unafraid for her fingers, and pets the zoogs. Strokes their backs and their little snouts, gives them scritches behind their ears and under their chins. They chitter and purr and rasp, some of them still smacking their lips as they chew the leftover food. Nerys watches Grim, seemingly content. I’m starting to fade, listening to the echoes and the moon-wind beyond the walls, resisting the urge to straighten up and lean back, because then I would surrender to sleep.

  “So … so … you don’t … live up here?” I manage.

  “Huh?” Grim looks up; one of the zoogs nips at her hand when she stops petting, but either she doesn’t feel it or she’s too used to this to care. “Ehhhhhh, we kinda do? Bright’s up here the least, she’s got a sweet place back on Earth. Signal’s in and out ‘cos she’s busy all the time, always some new thing she’s gotta go do. Tissy lives here full time, but she’s a native, she don’t count. Me, I’m up here more often than not, you know?”

  I nod slowly. I am not consigned to living on the moon. This is good news.

  “How do I transform?”

  “Eh? Like, right now? You don’t.”

  “How do I transform?” I repeat, harder. “I want to go home. I want to go home now. I want to see Willow. You blew her up, so you help me get back to her, right now. You take responsibility for—”

  “Octavia,” Nerys rasps.

  Patience laughs it off, big and toothy and grating at my ears. “I can’t do it for you, Occy! It has to come to you, in a dream, like. It’s personal, I can’t help with that. You gotta get some sleep, girl! Have a dream or two, maybe you’ll wake up with it going on, yeah?”

  “Sleep,” I echo. “Dreams. That’s how it works?”

  “Truth,” Nerys says. “That is how it works.”

  “Sleep. On the moon.”

  Grim stands up. One of the zoogs goes up on its hind legs, trying to get more pets, but Grim’s already moved on. “Look, hey, you’re flat wiped. You’re outta juice, and we don’t need Signal here to tell us that. You gotta sleep!”

  “Sleep,” Nerys purrs. “To dream. You want to be a magical girl, Octavia? This is the next step. Then you will see your Willow again. I did promise you would, and I’m not in the habit of breaking promises.”

  “Woman of your word, are you?” I mutter.

  “She is!” Grim says. “Nerys is the best, for real.”

  Nerys appears no more trustworthy than she did back in the interrogation room; but she did save my life twice over. Patience Graves, ‘Grimgrave’, she looks like she belongs in an I&O cell, gagged and blindfolded, and she did shoot me; but not once has she stared at my slitted right eye, or frowned my scar. If she wanted me dead she could have burst my skull with her shotgun after she’d laid me out on the lunar soil.

  Is this a ploy to get me to sleep in a Dreamland overlap, to break me into something new? But I’ve already slept, out there in the open, for hours. If I’m mad, then I was mad long before now.

  This is the only way back to Willow. I cannot turn around now, I must press forward.

  “Sleep, then,” I mutter. “Here? In the chair?”

  “Eh?” Grim laughs. “Nah, don’t be daft! We’ve all got bedrooms up here. Plenty of empty ones too. One for you, if you want it.”

  “ … do the rooms have locks? On the inside?”

  Grim blinks. “Yeah? Why?”

  “I’ll sleep in a room.”

  “Right on!”

  Rising to my feet unaided would probably result in a quick trip to the floor and a much sharper sleep than desired. When I grab the armrests again and try to stand up, Nerys swings her snout and rasps, “Grimmy.” Grim scurries over to me and takes half my weight, slipping a slender shoulder beneath my left armpit, sliding a warm little arm around my waist, her hand braced on my hip.

  I recoil; it’s a much closer grip than when she grabbed me before. Closer than I’ve ever been with another girl, besides Willow. Patience is so petite and delicate, as if my weight would break her, but she lifts me like my whole body is carbon fibre and foam, steadies us both when I almost send us toppling over.

  “Steady, Occy! Hahaaaa!”

  I curl my left hand away from the bare skin of her shoulders, try not to look her in the face, turn my head to escape her sticky-sweat skin-scent. Her small hand is pressed tight beneath my ribs, holding onto me, making sure I don’t fall. All my awareness is focused on that hand. I wish she was Willow, I wish it was Willow’s hand, but it’s not, and I can’t breathe.

  “Bedrooms here we come!” she cheers. “S’not too far, no stairs or other stuff. You can make it, easy times, easy times.”

  “Dream well, Octavia,” says Nerys.

  Patience helps me hobble clear of the big room’s domesticated corner, guiding me toward one of the nearest concrete corridors which lead off into the depths of Plato Base. We pass through another set of solid gold doors, down a windowless stretch of corridor graffitied with more brilliant colours, interspersed with crude spray paint illustrations of what might be magical girls, fighting and flying and shooting sparks from wands. A big bundle of cables is stapled to the corridor’s ceiling, snaking off into the structure; the light here is different too, cast by glowing fixtures set into the walls.

  A pair of zoogs trundles along in our wake, little claws tapping on concrete.

  “Why … why do I feel so exhausted? Why does it hurt so much?” Desperate for a distraction from Grim’s hand on my waist, I say the first thing on my mind. “It wasn’t this bad when I woke up. Out there. On the moon.”

  “Ehhhhhh,” Grim cringes, right next to my face. “Kinda my fault? You’re super tapped out, low on juice. Scarlet did that, that fuckin’ sword of hers. I wouldn’t ‘a shot you if I’d known, serious! Probs you were right on the edge anyway, one load of birdshot put you over. Soz’! Better than the alternative, like. Better you get hazed by me than Bright.”

  A T-junction. We take a left. If my sense of direction is still correct, this corridor must run toward and beneath the lunar mountains in which Plato Base is embedded.

  Doors line this corridor, not golden and destroyed, but plain matte metal, each of them shut, marching off until they’re swallowed by the darkness where the lights have failed. The graffiti here is less broad, more individual: one door has been coated in clashing pink, framed by jagged lines, sporting the words “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY”; another is all black, like a rectangle of void cut into the concrete; a few have been crossed over with big red Xs; one is hung with a badly faded sign that says ‘Jenny Only’; another has a rubberised port cut into the side for a mass of cables that vanish within. But most are unmarked.

  Grimgrave guides me to a staggering stop. “Pick a room, Occy, any room! Well, like, a room without anything in it. Any of the blank ones. You wanna go right next to me? Then you can thump on the wall to say hi! And we can—”

  “Juice,” I grunt.

  “Eh?”

  “Juice. You said juice. You keep using that word. What does it mean? ‘Low on juice’?”

  “Ohhhhh!” Grim bursts into giggles. “You mean girl-juice!”

  I lift my left arm, indicate that I want to stand on my own two feet. Grimgrave finally lets go, carefully unwinding her support, taking a half-step back, which is definitely not enough. The pair of zoogs have followed us the whole way; they hurry forward and wind themselves around Grim’s ankles, rubbing their snouts on her shins.

  Straighten my spine, force a breath down my throat, endure the swirling in my head. I need to stand alone, or she’s going to grab me again.

  “Juice,” Grim says. “Girl-juice. Magic. Magical energy. ‘Mana’.” She adds air-quotes around that last one. “Don’t call it ‘mana’ in front of Signal tomorrow, you’ll get one of her lectures. We just say juice, it’s easy. I like girl-juice though.” Her manic grin flickers on, ten percent power. “If you know what I mean, haha!”

  “Juice.” I am not calling it girl-juice. “So … why am I … why does it hurt?”

  Grimgrave waves off the question. “You should ask Signal for the one-oh-one. Tomorrow morning, like.”

  “You’re a magical girl too. How does this work?”

  Grim looks away, folds her arms over her chest, grin gone dead, emotions right out on her face. “I don’t like to think about it, okay?”

  “You owe me. You shot me. What if I wasn’t a magical girl?”

  A shrug. “Then you’d be dead. Moon Beast feed.”

  “You’re a psychopath.”

  Patience’s lips flicker with a pilot light for her manic grin, but then she huffs. “Alright, fine. Short version? You can shrug off mundane hurt real easy. But if you take hits from another magical girl, or a Dreamer, or a Nightmare, or something else from the Dreamlands? Then it’s real. You gotta burn through a lot more juice to heal up, and it takes longer, feels worse. You got rammed on Scarlet’s sword, and that thing is serious bad stuff, so that fucked you right up. Healing that used up your juice. That’s why you feel like shit. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Grimgrave is hunched so tight, still won’t look at my face; I remind myself that she blew up Willow. “How do I get more ‘juice’?”

  “Girl-juice?” Her head snaps up, a smirk back on her lips. Why did I ever feel sorry for her?

  “Juice.”

  Grim snorts, but keeps the rest of the joke to herself. “Sleeping in an overlap helps. Food, water, that’ll keep your engines turning. There’s ways to get a lot more, super fast, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow, yeah?”

  “How? How. Now.”

  “Nightmares!” Grimgave laughs. “Nightmares, s’all about Nightmares. And you’re not fighting Nightmares when you look ready to drop on your arse, Occy.” She gestures at the doors again. “You gotta sleep! If you wanna see your girlfriend again, you gotta sleep.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” Say it automatic, too defensive, same way as always. Always the same joke.

  Grimgrave pulls a face. “Eh?”

  “Willow. She’s not my girlfriend. Don’t call her that.”

  Grimgrave makes her eyebrows do something impressive, but I’m too tired to care. None of the metal doors look inviting, but I do so badly want to lie down.

  Patience takes my left arm. Was I swaying? I make an effort to pull away, but I’m so worn out, and she won’t let go.

  “You can share my room for the night, if you want?” she says. She’s not joking, not blushing, not even awkward. “I’ve got room, you’re wiped out, you don’t know shit from an arse right now. Any of these empties, they’re kinda bare at first. Mine’s already set up, real comfy. You can share the bed, mine’s big enough for like five people and I never get a chance to—”

  “I don’t … no.” I pull my arm from her grip, look away, don’t meet those eyes.

  She snorts. “There’s no DC up here, you know? Girls can totally share a room! Nobody fucking cares.”

  “I’m not a homosexual.”

  Patience bursts out laughing, big loud giggle-snorts.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” I whip back to her. Too fast, almost stumble. “I’m not! I’m don’t— I’m not—”

  Her grin is back at full power, still widening as she laughs. Mania glows behind her eyes, molten emerald boiling inside her skull. Teeth gritted, lips peeling back and back and back, like she might split her face open on her own bottomless mirth. Same way she looked this morning when she threw the bomb; same way she looked when she shot me.

  All our ‘friendly’ conversation had lulled me into a false sense of normalcy. Forgot what she is.

  I raise my prosthetic fist halfway; I don’t really mean it, don’t have the strength for a punch, let alone whatever pugilistic magic I’ve been channelling so far. But I don’t know how else to make her stop.

  “Occy, Occy!” Patience controls her laughter, but only just. I lower my fist. “Shit, come on! There’s no Dream Control up here! No emotional health and hygiene nurses, no anybody but us. You get it? You’re on the moon! You can let loose. Like, really let loose! You think anybody gives a shit if you wanna munch some cunt?”

  I pick a door and stare — one of the blank ones next to the pink-painted door.

  “Occy? Heeeey?”

  “When you looked at me in the crowd,” I say. “Before you threw the bomb. Was that planned? On purpose? Did you … pick me?”

  “Eh? What? Oh! Naaaah. Pure fucked up coincidence.” Grim laughs. “Forgot about you five minutes later. You were just like, whatever, another normie.”

  My next breath comes a little easier; Grimgrave was not hunting me for sexual sport. She could be lying, but I don’t think she’s capable.

  I point at the door, because it’s the closest. “That one.”

  “Sweet!”

  Grim leads the few steps to the door and tries the handle as I shuffle over. It opens without issue. She pokes her head inside.

  “Cool cool,” she says. “S’got sheets already. Tissy probably did that, knew which one you’d pick before you did. Right next to me, too!” She steps back and gestures at the next door along, the one splashed with painful pink, labelled with ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’.

  I should have guessed. Don’t have the energy to complain, much less to change rooms.

  Besides, I’m not going to be living up here.

  This is all to get back to Willow.

  “There’s a bolt on the door,” Grim says. “On the inside. Just swoosh it shut when you’re in. Nerys can go right through walls if she wants, but she doesn’t spy on us taking a crap or anything.” She pauses, tilts her head to one side, messy brown hair like a swaying waterfall, tresses trailing over her bare shoulders. “Occy, heeey? Are you alright to like, lie down? You’re not gonna shut the door and collapse, right? I can like, come in, and—”

  “I can put myself to bed.”

  I don’t want Patience to tuck me in.

  “Cool, cool! Okay.” Grim nods, seemingly to herself, then squats down and picks up one of the two zoogs still nosing at her ankles. She cradles it like an oversized cat, holding it against her chest as she stands back up. It paws at her shoulder, nuzzling her neck, eyes drifting shut.

  “I thought they tend to bite,” I say.

  “What, zoogs?” Grimgrave snorts. “You listen to the government too much, Occy. You ain’t immune to propaganda and all that.”

  “Zoogs injure people. That’s not propaganda.”

  The zoog on Grim’s shoulder opens its jaws and hisses softly. “Pissssss.”

  “Yeah, and?” says Grim. “Everything injures people. You see how you like being gassed and trapped, you’d injure people too.”

  “ … I suppose I already did.”

  As I turn to step into the room, Grimgrave clears her throat. “Occy?”

  Wish she would stop calling me that. “Mm?”

  “Tomorrow morning, or like, tonight, if you don’t fall asleep right away, you should, uhh … ” She swallows, wets her lips, tries to grin again, can’t quite relight her flame. “If you see anybody who isn’t one of us, you should run away. Keep your door shut. When Nerys teaches you how to translocate, you should do that, if you see anything here that’s like, too much weird.”

  I stare.

  “Ha!” She laughs. “Yeah, I’m weird as shit and loving it, bitch! But I mean weird like … like anybody who isn’t one of us. Or Tissy. Tissy’s blue all over, you can’t mistake her. You know me by now. Bright is, well, she looks a bit like Scarlet Edge. Signal’s a big mess, baggy clothes, you’ll know her right away, and she’ll let you know too. But if you see anybody else, or anything that isn’t a zoog, you should just, like, steer clear.”

  “You said this place was safe.”

  A snort. “Nah, no I didn’t. I just said the Moon Beasts don’t come near. Normally yeah, it’s safe ‘cos we’re all magical girls. But you’re out of juice. Just like, lay low, yeah?” Grim flashes a big toothy grin, her manic look drained down to about ten percent power. “Night, Occy! Sleep well and all that.”

  “Mm.”

  I shuffle into the room. The zoog on Grim’s shoulder lets out a little hiss — ‘Sleepingggggg’. Grimgrave reaches out and pulls the door handle for me, shutting me in with a little metallic click.

  A concrete cell.

  Bare floor, walls, ceiling, the same dull grey as the rest of Plato Base, no bright graffiti in here. A metal desk against one wall, with a faded leather armchair. Bed in one corner, neither spartan nor plush, just a wooden frame with a mattress and some sheets, a couple of lumpy pillows on guard duty. A bedside table to one side, light coming from a bare-bulb lamp plugged into a power strip that snakes in from under the door. One corner of the room hosts a toilet, a sink, and a shower inside a frosted glass cubicle. Towel by the sink, mirror above it.

  Clean, spacious, old, empty.

  Not how magical girls are supposed to live.

  “This was a prison cell once,” I croak to myself.

  Then I sigh, because I’m going to sleep here regardless of what this place used to be. Probably won’t even remove my blood-stained clothes before I lie down and pass out.

  But I’ve strength enough to do the most important thing. I shuffle over to the sink, crank the taps to hot, and stick my prosthetic hand under the stream.

  Heat and water loosens the worst of the gore caked into my mechanical finger joints. Pinkish-red fluid sluices down the plughole, blocked momentarily by chunks of flesh or brain matter. Can’t avoid my own face in the mirror; I am the worst I’ve ever seen myself, hair a mess, clothes in ruins, eyes ringed dark like a terminal insomnia case, dried blood crusted around my mouth.

  All that time I was talking to Patience, I had blood caked across my lips? Scarlet’s blood?

  I close my left eye, stare at myself through the slit of my right. I look like a nightmare, a monster fit for the Dreamlands, scarred and stained and far past sane.

  Water alone has done all it can, I cast around for soap; there’s an unused bar by the sink. I lather up with my left hand and then coat my right as effectively as I can, working suds into the prosthetic finger joints, trying to scrub away the blood. I’ll need my tools and a proper workplace to strip it down, take the outer casing off the fingers, make sure every scrap of gore is cleaned away. Soap and water are imperfect, but they will have to do for now. When I’m satisfied with my work, I use some fresh soap to wipe at the mess on my face. I rub until my skin hurts.

  I dry my hands on the towel next to the sink. Only a few flakes and spots of blood stain the fabric. Good enough. Pity about the rest of me.

  Bedtime. Still wretched and filthy, but I’m going to sleep anyway.

  Knock knock knock.

  Freeze.

  I have not bolted the door, not yet. Never had a room with a bolt or a lock, somewhere I can close myself in, assured of privacy. What was Grimgrave saying about running away if I see anything weird in Plato Base?

  I stare at the door handle, but it doesn’t move.

  “ … Grim? Grimgrave?”

  No answer.

  Shuffle back to the door. Heart in my throat. Pulse like lead in my skull. Reach out — handle or bolt?

  “I’m a magical girl now,” I whisper. “What have I got to be afraid of?”

  Grip the handle. Fingers shaking. Palm sweaty. Ease it down. Pull back, an inch, a crack. Wait for a Moon Beast to smash the door down.

  But that doesn’t happen, so I pull the door wider, to silently greet my inanimate visitor.

  A metal cart has appeared in front of my bedroom door, carrying a blue plastic tray. On the tray, a plate. On the plate, a trio of croissants, a little dish of butter, and a knife. A mug and a jug of water stand beside the plate, both made of blue glass. On the other side is a bundle of fabric.

  There’s a note on a piece of stiff blue plastic, smooth and cool and wafer-thin, words carved into the surface.

  A light snack, in case you wake and find your stomach in need of fillings. The tapped water is potable, but my reserve is of greater equalities. Please leave your ensoiled clothes on the cart, if you wish for them to be otherwise and unholed. I will return all in good order, early on the morrow, before your risings.

  Peering out into the corridor reveals nobody, not even a stray zoog, just the doors of Plato Base’s former prison wing.

  “Grimgrave?”

  My voice echoes off the concrete.

  The croissants smell good. Fresh, buttery, still hot. My stomach rumbles.

  Would poison or sedatives even work on my body anymore? There are probably poisons made especially for magical girls — a handful of moon dust, a sprinkle of zoog droppings, a tear from a Dream-God.

  Whatever.

  Necessary manoeuvres take longer than I would like, feels as if I’ve aged ninety years in a day. Tray goes into the room, onto the table. The bundle of fabric turns out to be a robe and a set of pajamas. They go on the bed. Bolt the door first, then undress. That takes ages, at least ten minutes. Feels like I’m going to pass out every time I move too fast or rotate a joint too far or try to bend over. Take out my purse and my phone, put them on the bedside table. Gloves, coat, jumper, shirt, shoes, skirt. Bra as well, not salvageable, too much blood, but I’m keeping my knickers and my socks. The pajama bottoms are clean and comfy, slide on over my prosthetic leg with no trouble; the top is warm. The robe is thick and high-collared, falls to my ankles.

  Open the door again. Cart’s still there. All my clothes go on the top; I don’t trust this, but they’re all ruined, bloody, torn. I keep my shoes in the room though, by the door.

  Bolt the door again. Sit down at the metal table. Maybe I’ll sleep in the chair.

  The croissants are still warm. They’re very good.

  I eat with one hand, examine the blue plastic note with the other.

  There’s no cypher or secret message encoded in the words, but figuring that out is just exercise to keep my mind ticking over. The real puzzle is the material. Feels like plastic, but too thin, too light, printed as fine as paper. The words have been cut into the surface so the edges are rounded and smoothed, as if melted, but I can’t see any seams, any tell-tale marks from a 3D printer, or any sign of material deformation from melting, like it was extruded in a single finished piece. The reverse side looks flawless, but when I lay it flat and run a fingertip over the surface, invisible curved ridges reveal themselves to my touch.

  “You’re not plastic,” I mutter. “You’re a lie.”

  But then I sigh, half because my belly is full of butter and pastry, half because I’m in a Dreamland overlap. The little blue plastic note could be made of anything. For all I know it’s the fingernail of a Dream-God who specialises in room service and overnight laundry.

  Food in my stomach makes it a little easier to stand, so I guess I’m not sleeping in the chair after all. Before I turn to the bed again I shuffle back over to the door, draw back the bolt, and peer out into the corridor.

  The cart is gone, along with my clothes. I heard nothing, not a whisper.

  “Not Grimgrave, then.”

  Bolt myself in for the night. Peel back the bed covers. Clean sheets, no stains, no blood, no crumbs.

  Whoever ‘Tissy’ is, I owe her for this.

  I ease myself in slowly, still feeling every twinge and twitch. My prosthetics stay on; I rarely take them off to sleep anyway, and I’m absolutely not removing them here, though I do loosen the straps that keep my arm attached, just to lessen the strain. I reach over and turn the bedside light down to a minimal glow, then grab my purse and my phone and put them in the bed with me. I keep the robe on, pull the covers up, snuggle down deep.

  Locked in for the night. I’ve never had a room with a lock before. My grandmother cannot snoop on my belongings in here; she cannot go through the diary I keep out in the open, the decoy. If it was up here, on the moon.

  A room of my own, private and secret. My mind creeps toward wild things I might do, in a room nobody else can see. A place I would love to invite Willow.

  I want to pull out my phone to look at her face, but my body is so tired and sore, I don’t want to move.

  Sleeping on the moon. Wanted dream-criminal. Face all over the news. Magical girl.

  Plato Base is not silent. Lunar wind whispers and wails against the exterior of the structure, seeping down from the mountains. Scitters and skutterings echo through distant passageways, maybe zoogs, maybe other things. Twice I think I hear voices far away, muttering in muffled conversation. Once the structure itself seems to creak and groan. What was this place, before it was occupied by English renegades and zoog diaspora? Who built a fortress on the moon — or in the Dream?

  How can I possibly sleep, after everything that’s happened today? I’m on the moon, beyond the ragged borders of the waking world. I’ve never had a good night’s sleep anywhere that isn’t my own bed, with everything just right, everything just so, with my red-bulb lamp turned down low so the dark doesn’t keep me awake. I need my pillows in the correct right-angled position, one behind my head and one to my left, framing me with just the right amount of warmth and pressure. I need exactly three blankets and one sheet, or everything feels wrong.

  The only other place I can sleep right is wherever Willow happens to be. And besides, the echo of Scarlet’s burning sword is still ringing in my core.

  “There’s no way I can sleep here,” I whisper, accepting a night of insomnia.

  And that’s when the nightmare takes me.

  normal. Normal girl.

  Maidens of the Fall is once again on a break next week, as per the usual schedule. Which means I'll be back on the 10th of January, and I'll see you all in the new year!

  Maidens right away, you can: