Several things all happened at once.

That might seem like a redundant statement if you inhabit the same kind of reality that I do; all things are always happening at the same time, duh. That's how time works. But my sister often assumed that you needed to be told that. Do you? I'm not sure I trust her judgement on that one.

Anyway. Several things. All at once. Fights are just like that.

But I'm only going to tell you about one of those things — the part that I made happen myself. If I told you about the other parts then I would be lying via reconstruction, since I didn't see them as they happened, and that would make a mockery of the truth I'm telling you.

Wouldn't it?

You'd go along with it easily enough if I did; you probably wouldn't even think about how strange it is for one participant in a melee to chart every moving part. We would all pretend that as the pale spider-thing rushed past me and I leapt after it, that I fully registered the events unfolding in my peripheral vision — Muadhnait down on her face, Kimberly screaming as she stumbled backward, Tenny hooking her arms beneath Kim's shoulders, Casma jumping in front of Kim with her hands spread wide, as if she could catch the pale spider like a bullfighter. (Though with Casma, truth was anybody's guess. Maybe she had a long knife hidden up one sleeve of that fluffy white jumper.) I could feed you a play-by-play and you'd eat up every word, no matter how obviously impossible — the same way you'd stare at my body if I stripped off all my clothes, even though the only real flesh I possess are a few shards of greasy bone that nobody will ever see again. A good thick layer of soft and squishy artifice is just so much more attractive than the truth, isn't it?

That's how my sister used to tell these parts. She pulled that trick so many times that I lost count. She didn't even realise she was doing it.

But unlike my sister, I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so we'll dispense with the fiction of brief omniscience. All you get is me and a kitchen knife.

(And that's more than enough for anybody to handle.)

The pale spider shot right past me at knee-height, six white legs whirring, going straight for Kim.

I turned and sprang and sprinted after it, skirt against my knees, shawl snapping in the wind. Standing starts are easy when you don't have to worry about real tendons — if something goes pop down there, just keep running, it'll either fix itself or it won't. I was fast enough to catch the spider — it would only take a few paces — but not fast enough to catch it before it caught Kim first. The pale spider was going to slam into her just before I could reach it, and Kimberly didn't have a big sword or inches of plate armour to protect her; it would only take one strike from those oversize fists to give her a skull fracture. Casma was going to get hurt as well, the thing would run right over her. Tenny might catch a stray or two, and I couldn't understand why she wasn't leaping aside.

If the Mimic wanted to send unsafe toys for me to play with, well, that wasn't what I wanted, but it wasn't offensive. I had agreed to play, after all, even if she hadn't.

But this?

No.

I sprinted three more paces, then leapt onto the pale spider's back.

You might be tempted to assume that because I am made primarily of carbon fibre, that I am quite light, that you can lift me up and toss me around. That would be an amusing mistake; I am not a bike. I am heavily armoured, filled with magic boxes, and wrapped in pneuma-somatic flesh. None of that is free weight, and you can't lift me like one, unless you've got muscles like Zheng, (and she's not allowed to try). I am heavy enough that you can mistake me for real, and while that weight is not real muscle, it's far easier to use.

The pale spider-thing crashed to the grass. I rode it down, legs wrapped around the midsection, arms pinned around the long and twisting neck.

There was no Casma, no Kimberly, no Tenny in the tangle with us. I wasn't sure how that had happened. There was a lot of screaming going on regardless, and a deep resonant hum filling the air, and Casma saying, "Oh dear."

The spider-thing flailed beneath me. Pale limbs bent backward. Long-fingered hands grasped at my arms, plucked at my clothes, and swatted for my eyes.

'Spider' is woefully inaccurate, 'spider-thing' is even worse; I can't keep calling it that now, not when I had gotten up-close and intimate. It had six legs, not eight, and the trunk of the body was a human torso, shaped with the suggestion of hips and a waist. The limbs were smoothly curved like human arms and legs. The neck was out of place — three feet long, twisting every which way in a hopeless effort to throw me off — but the head on top could have passed for the smooth, blank, featureless face of a fashion store mannequin.

It grabbed both my arms and tried to wrench them open to free its neck; another pair of hands found my ribs, digging digits into what would have winded anybody with real lungs. It tried to lurch upright, but I was too heavy and too well locked in place.

I … tightened my grip.

And that was all I did.

I had my knife out, yes. It was in my right hand, right there, and I hadn't dropped it or forgotten about it. I just didn't want to use it on the pale thing beneath me — and no, not just because it had no skin to puncture, no blood to bleed, no organs to perforate. I didn't have those things either, (not real ones anyway, you think my blood contains oxygen? Try again) and I'd used the knife on myself readily enough. No, I was not reluctant to try because I thought I would fail. I wouldn't fail. Knives don't fail until they go blunt, no matter what they are tasked with cutting, and I was far from blunted.

Do I really have to spell this out? Can you not infer? Are you going to make me humiliate myself like this?

(Too bad, I'm not humiliated in the slightest.)

The pale spider-thing was like me.

It was a ball-jointed doll.

Yes, it was made of solid wood rather than carbon fibre, and yes, my joints are significantly more complex than balls and sockets, (though I could have either of those if I wanted, thank you very much). The wooden surfaces of its body were pale, smooth, sanded to perfection. The elongated neck was a set of wooden rings which extended like the trick of a master carpenter. The grasping hands were imitations of human palms and digits. The joints showed no hint of metal or fastenings, they were that perfect.

But the details of the body didn't matter. What mattered is that I knew it was like me.

How? I just did. Don't ask questions I can't answer.

That was why the Mimic had sent it — and that was why the Mimic was flapping above us now, buffeting me with waves of air, watching me make a fool of myself — because this was one foe I would stay my hand against, for reasons that I could not articulate, not even to myself.

But I'll articulate them to you, because I'm telling you the truth.

The pale doll and I trashed about on the grass, making a lot of noise and looking totally stupid but not getting anywhere. It grabbed at my arms and legs, yanking me back and forth, trying to peel me off. Hands grabbed my head, shoving me back, perhaps hoping to snap my neck (not that it would have mattered). I tightened my grip. I whispered things — "Stop fighting stop fighting you idiot stop— stop— you're like me, you're like me, I'm like you, stop fighting, stop stop stop—"

Then it found my throat and tried to strangle me.

It used two hands, squeezing so hard that its wooden fingers creaked. It achieved nothing, because I don't have a trachea. I am unchokeable.

(Sorry!)

When I failed to let go or turn blue or start wheezing for breath, the pale doll finally decided to take a look. The blank ovoid of the head swung backward on the extendible neck, until it was inches from my own. It hovered for a moment, as if it could see me with the smooth empty surfaces. But it couldn't, so then it opened a thousand painted eyes.

The screaming got worse. Casma said something inane.

"Boo," I croaked.

The pale doll froze. A thousand eyes went wide.

Perhaps it was surprised to see something like itself staring back from within its grip. Or maybe I'm just flattering myself with the belief that it saw in me what I saw in it. Maybe I was a twisted mirror. Maybe I was a horror show. Decide however you want. I don't care.

But then the pale doll twitched, as if an invisible hand jerked it away from something it was not meant to see. The thousand little painted eyes shivered and squinted, struggling not to close.

No choice, right. No choice.

I released the neck so I could use my kitchen knife. I put the tip of the blade against the chest — or back? — in front of me. I slashed upward, carving a deep furrow into the pale wood. Then down, then up again, then down once more.

M — that was all I could finish before the pale doll recovered and grabbed my arm with three of its hands. We grappled for a few moments, and this was a real grapple, because this thing was built for snatching and strangling. But I only had to break free once, and then it was over. Casma was shouting, "Strings, strings! Maisie, strings!"

I already knew that, I didn't need her help.

I wriggled my knife arm free and slashed at the empty air above the doll's limbs.

It collapsed instantly. The two hands around my throat stayed in position for a moment, then fell away.

Tiny gossamer threads whipped upward — the strings I had cut, almost invisible in the grey daylight. They led nowhere, up and up and up toward the sky, vanishing into empty air. I grabbed for one, but I missed. I stared after them for a moment, but the Mimic wasn't there.

I stood up and made sure there were no more strings puppeting the pale doll. It lay between my feet like a horse with a broken leg, or perhaps a newborn foal that had not yet learned to walk. The head was still covered in thousands of eyes, all wide open now, all of them staring at me or rolling in fear.

"Stay there," I said to it. My voice was croaky and scratchy from the bruises on my throat. My hair was all in my face from the fight.

Kimberly was still screaming.

You would be justified to assume that I enjoyed that sound — but I didn't. There is a big difference between a quick yelp of fearful surprise and a drawn-out terror-wail of mortal fear. If you don't understand the difference, then you don't understand the difference between me and Heather.

Kimberly was screaming because she was twenty feet off the ground. Tenny had got her under the armpits and scooped her out of harm's way.

Tenny was airborne.

My sister had always imagined that Tenny's flight would look ungainly — great big wing-flaps and lots of buffeting back and forth with gusts of air. Heather was not being uncharitable, either on purpose or otherwise; she loves Tenny almost as much as it is possible to love anything, but her mental image of Tenny's flight was forever fixed by her one failed attempt at gliding. I had not thought about it much, so I was, for once, just as surprised as she would have been.

Tenny flew like a moth — wings stiffened and extended outward to their full length, wider than she was tall, beating the air with a blur of prismatic colour and coal-black flesh, stirring a deep and resonant hum inside one's chest. She was wide-eyed and wide-mouthed with happiness and pride.

"Maze Maze Maze!" she shouted down at me. "Auntie Mazeeeee! Maze!"

Which was a little hard to make out over Kimberly screaming her head off. Tenny had both her arms under Kim's shoulders, and several tentacles wrapped around Kim's waist for extra support, but apparently that wasn't enough security to overcome the sudden fear of being up in the air.

Casma shouted, "You can put her down now, Tenns! Come back down, come—"

Clank clank clank went our Templar Nun, marching across the grass toward my rear.

I turned around and showed her my knife.

Muadhnait was back up on her feet, sword in both hands, blade point-down. She halted her advance, because I had a knife and I was not happy. She was visibly panting, obvious even through all that grey metal armour; I could hear her heaving for breath and see her shoulders rising and falling. She was hunched slightly; probably bruised, if there was anything much to bruise in there.

"I know what you want to do," I croaked at her. "And you're not going to do it. Unless you can do me first. Do or don't."

Casma said, "Oh … dear?"

Muadhnait's sword stayed where it was. Her visor-slit showed nothing but gauze and shadow. Behind me, the sound of Tenny's wings stuttered and lowered, then cut out completely, followed by the sound of Kimberly's slippers kicking against the grass. Her screaming collapsed into wet weeping.

Casma appeared beside me, peripheral. I almost told her to go away. But I didn't, because the outcome mattered more.

"Maisie?" Casma said. "Muadhnait? Are we having a set-to? Or are we just setting up for an upset? Can't we set aside the sides?"

Muadhnait shook her head, dome-shaped helmet sliding back and forth on her massive gorget.

"Get set," I said. "On your marks. Ready."

Casma stepped forward, in between the two of us, which was extremely annoying because it meant I had to either look away or look at Casma. At least she had a refreshingly simple expression on her face. She said, "Our unlucky assailant has been assaulted in reverse by our most illustrious of knife-holders, has it not? So what is there to fight about, or over, or at? Are we contesting the corpse for a right to pillage? I don't think it has much in its pockets!"

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"It's not dead," I said. "I've set it free."

Casma didn't answer for a moment, which would have made me grin with satisfaction if I wasn't defending a newborn child from a butcher.

Casma stared between my legs, at the pale doll. I assume it stared back at her.

"Oh," she said. "Hello?"

Muadhnait flexed her gauntlets around the hilt of her sword; it was the other one, the one made of cold iron, for spitting fairies over fires. I could guess what it would do to the doll.

"It had strings," I said. "It was fighting against them. It's free now."

Muadhnait shook her head again.

"I don't care if you believe me or not," I said. "I will put this knife in you."

Muadhnait huffed — I heard it clear through her armour, a big meaty sigh. She straightened up and rammed the sword into the ground, point down, cutting nothing but a few blades of grass. Her gauntlets clicked as she signed at speed, stumbling over her words.

"Tainted water can never be cleaned by letting it slip through one's fingers," she signed.

"What does that mean?" I said. "Say what you mean and mean what you say. Talk in riddles and you'll get riddled. Why not say it with your fucking bitch mouth?"

Casma held up both hands, one to either of us. She was smiling. "Muadhnait, Maisie, M&M, please—"

Muadhnait signed again. "The fairy is still a danger. It walks by daylight and it hunted us. If it recovers from this crippling, it will hunt us again."

"I cut the strings," I snapped. "Unstrung the limbs. It's freed and newly born and I'm pretty sure it doesn't know that yet. You want to kill it now, you can kill through me, and your pigsticker isn't enough to stick my guts. It's free—"

Muadhnait signed. "We cannot let it live."

"I can!" I shouted. "I can! I will!"

"Maisie, Maisie, Maisie!" Casma said, facing me in full. "Are you sure about this? Sure as sure is sure?"

"Yes."

"How can you tell?"

I looked Casma in the eyes. Casma looked me back. My eyes started to water. She struggled not to blink.

She knew I couldn't tell shit. I just wanted to believe.

…

You're comparing me to my sister, yet again. No, don't bother to mount a defence, I'm not so angry about it this time, because comparison can also reveal difference.

Heather's infamous mercy. Heather's unflinching desire to extend the benefit of the doubt to even the worst. Heather's heroine complex, her need to save everybody, to see the good in even those who had attacked her. Heather would have spared anybody, if they'd given her an opening. She would have spared Alexander and Edward Lilburne both, if she could only have found a way. She spared Sarika when perhaps she shouldn't have done so. She spared Badger, and that one paid off, and she will never let us hear the end of it, even though she doesn't say a word about him. She spared Kimberly, and I wouldn't have liked if she hadn't.

Sometimes I thought she was wrong.

And no, you can't turn her against me by telling her I said that; she already knows all the contours of my thoughts, far better than you do.

But I was not being like my sister, because I was not being merciful. I was not extending charity and forgiveness to the unknown other. I was only doing this because the pale doll was like me.

And that's about as selfish and irresponsible as you can get.

…

Casma bit her lip. The lip-biting was not complicated, but the rest of her face was.

I had to look away before she decided which side to take, but not because of the way her gaze made my eyes itch.

A face was peering over Muadhnait's shoulder — with nuclear fire in her eyes and skin like melted stone. Our Lady of the Forded Briar ducked down behind Muadhnait when Casma turned back around.

"Maisie is generally right about these things," Casma said to Muadhnait. "Right way up and right way round, when it comes to dolls like her. Can't we try some trust?"

I had no idea where Casma had gotten that from; the only other 'dolls' I knew were the Good Doctor, and Praem, and I had never offered her an opinion on either. But I didn't complain. Casma had taken my side.

(Casma always takes my side. And I'll take hers.)

Muadhnait didn't answer for a moment. She didn't hesitate either. Eventually she signed, "To kill it now would be a mercy. You have crippled it."

"Do I look like I need strings?" I said. "String me along and I'll string you up, restrung with the highly strung— tch!"

I hissed and shook my head. The Briar-bitch peeking at us had thrown me off. All my thoughts were down in my abdomen, glowing like molten metal.

Muadhnait hesitated. That was better. Back to normal with the nun.

"It's only just been born," I said. "Give it a moment to learn the moment."

"You better step off it then," Muadhnait signed.

"I better had," I said.

But I didn't.

Casma raised both hands again, one for each of us — ever the little diplomat that her mother was so bad at — but then her pink eyes widened in shock and she stepped aside.

Kimberly stumbled into Casma's place.

Wild-eyed, tear-streaked, auburn hair all over the place, raked back out of her face. Shaking and shivering with a potent cocktail in her veins — adrenaline, mortal fear, maybe something worse, something that I'm too much of a child to understand. She looked like an adult then, with adult fears and adult limits. Tenny had tried to hold her back, but Kimberly shook off the black tentacles wrapped around her forearm. Casma spoke some soothing nonsense sounds, but Kimberly ignored her.

None of that was cute.

"Just fucking stop!" Kimberly shouted. She managed to look back and forth between me and Muadhnait so quickly that I wondered how she didn't give herself a neck injury. "Stop! Fucking stop! Stop!"

She didn't raise her hands to us like Casma had done, but curled them into claws, like she was trying to grab something in mid-air in front of her own chest and choke it to death. She panted more like an animal than a person (which, again, would have been cute, but was not). She looked ready to pluck the knife right out of my hands. She looked about to scream. She looked done.

When neither of us answered (and I couldn't look her in the eyes), Kimberly shouted again. "You!" she pointed at Muadhnait, punctuating her words with jabs and slices. "Put the sword away! Away! Away! Now! Now!" Before Muadhnait could obey or otherwise, Kimberly whirled on me. "And you, put the knife away! Put it away! Put it away!"

Muadhnait and I did as our screaming charge bid us — though I delayed by a moment, waiting until Muadhnait went first. She did.

It wasn't hard to put the kitchen knife away, not that time.

The moment the sword was in the scabbard and my knife was wrapped up in the tea towel with the little maids on it, Kimberly's mad fight left her, as if she was also a puppet with her strings cut. She sagged and panted, gesturing vaguely, opening her mouth as if she had something more to say. Tenny stepped forward and took her by the forearms to stop her crumpling to her knees. Casma stood aside and watched.

"I just … " Kimberly mumbled. "I can't— I can't do this—"

She didn't react much when the pale doll began to rise.

I stepped off the fallen puppet so it wouldn't accidentally head-butt me in the arse. It was still sprawled on the grass like it had died there, but it was starting to twitch and tremble. The head was still a ball of eyes; some had begun to squint and blink, each of them moving independently of the others.

Were you seeing sunlight for the first time, little thing? You had been made with strings, born to be moved by the will of another. Now you were free, weren't you?

I didn't know that for sure. But my assumptions serve us both pretty well. Put up with them for now.

Muadhnait backed up a couple of paces. She kept one hand on her sword, but she didn't draw it again; lucky for her, because if she had, I would have found a way to cut through her armour and remove her hands.

The pale doll found its feet with some difficulty, scuffing and slipping against the grass several times before it staggered upright. It didn't stand like a spider anymore, but like a hunch-backed human on two hand-footed legs, while the other four arms dangled apelike. The lowest pair of hands plucked at the grass while the upper pair investigated its own flawless wooden joints. It still had the steel bolt from Muadhnait's crossbow lodged low in its midsection, but though it plucked on the tip, it couldn't remove the rod.

A big letter 'M' was carved in the middle of the chest. At least I'd left that mark.

It would be a comfortable lie to tell you that it looked at us — at me — and understood what it saw. It would be the sweetest of fictions to tell you that it spoke, and thanked me, and said 'Yippee, now I'm free.' It would be the most self-serving rewrite of reality to pretend that it followed us like a loyal hound, or a lion with a thorn pulled from its paw, or just a person with chains struck off.

Whatever. I'm not telling you lies.

You can't tell where something is looking when it has a thousand eyes.

I opened my lips to say something. Hello? Welcome to being free? Insert whatever weak and witless words you think I might have said, because I didn't get to say them. At my first intake of breath, the pale doll retreated half a dozen paces, loping like a gorilla mated with a giant insect.

"Don't—" I said.

And then it fled. It turned around and ran away, a pale doll retreating across the grassy upland meadow.

It was framed against a hillside for a moment; it paused, turned, looked back. Or maybe I just like to think it did.

Then it was gone, off among the hills, down between the ridges.

Muadhnait and Kimberly had a brief argument, mostly conducted via Casma, about stopping for a few minutes so everybody could recover and catch their metaphorical breath, (or literal breath, in Kim's case.) Calling it an argument gives it too much gravitas; Kimberly just wheezed and dry-sobbed a few pleas, Muadhnait put up a token resistance about needing to get on as soon as we could, and Casma came to the rescue (yet again) by pointing out that the sun (which was not a sun) was still high in the sky, not yet far past noon.

Tenny helped Kimberly over to the big rock, so she could sit with her back against something solid. Casma went with them, prattling on about everything and nothing. Muadhnait retrieved her crossbow, then shrugged her pack off her back, sat down, and set about cleaning and oiling both her swords. She checked her armour too, when she thought nobody was paying attention.

She should have been covered in bruises from that tumble. But there was nothing behind the visor except a little slice of night. Or maybe she just hid her pain.

Our Lady of the Forded Briar was nowhere to be seen.

Bitch.

"Maisie? Maisie? Maisieeeee?"

Casma came, to annoy me to tears.

"Mm."

"Maisie, I'm not trying to be annoying, just annoyed to be trying. Oh, wait, no, that sounds rude, and I didn't want to be rude to you. I'm worried, but mostly worried about being worried. Why don't you come sit with Kim and Tenns? Here, I've got your—"

"I'm fine here."

A long pause. She wanted me to look. I wouldn't. "You haven't moved in—"

"I said, I am fine here."

"Telling lies?"

"I'm fine. Here. Here fine. Fine here."

A soft tut. I still wasn't going to look at her. "Maisie."

"We'll be moving again shortly, anyway," I said. "What do you care what I do with spare time in the meantime? I can be mean with time."

"You're all alone, and that's no time at all. I thought maybe—"

"Glomps you."

Somebody spluttered — not Casma. Probably Kimberly. (You're of the right age to get that, aren't you, Kim? You're welcome.)

"What?" said Casma. I almost grinned with the triumph of landing a hit she didn't understand.

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"Well, here," she said. "I've got your—"

"Don't touch me," I said.

Casma gave up on me (though not for never, never for good, for which I cannot forgive) and went away.

The cloud cover was thinner than on the day we had arrived, but still total; I wondered what colour the sky was behind that blanket of royal grey.

Reality is patterns, but patterns are not reality. No, I'm not riddling at you, this isn't a Buddhist koan, it's a literal description. You can spend half your life learning the way that patterns work, learning how to read the chaotic unfolding of a tiny change and how it snowballs into all other tiny changes and then builds and builds toward something large and true. If you were not unlucky enough to be stuck in prison for a decade with little to do but see through the eyes of your sister and watch the patterns in the dark, then perhaps you can read books on system theory and catabolic collapse — though I don't recommend you do that, you should watch anime instead — but none of that can prepare you for a moment for which all the reading of patterns lacks even the most rudimentary answer.

I didn't know why I'd done what I had. Why had I freed the pale doll? Why had it run off?

Perhaps that's why my stomach felt like it was full of worms. I didn't even have a stomach. I'd never eaten a worm, (unlike my sister.)

I wasn't going to vomit again, though. I'll leave that to Heather.

"Auntie Maisie? Brrrrt?"

Tenny's purring trill tricked me into taking a breath for the first time in a while. I finally looked away from the point where the pale doll had vanished between the hills.

Tenny stood a few paces to my left, looking very big-eyed and a little sheepish, reaching for me with half a dozen tentacles, touch aborted.

Kim and Casma were sitting in the shade of the big outcrop of rock, talking softly, too quiet for my ears. Kimberly looked partially recovered, but not good. Muadhnait was sitting a ways off, perfectly still, meditating or praying.

Tenny offered me my shawl.

"Tenny," I said. "I dropped that?"

"You dropped it," Tenny said. "Drrrropped. Do you want it back?"

I accepted the shawl and wrapped it back around my shoulders again. It didn't help. I tidied my hair out of my face. That didn't help either.

"Well done for saving Kimberly," I said. "Well done. Done well. Good to see you fly. I know you wanted to. Wanted to know that you did. Well done. Yes."

"Mmmmmm-brrrrrr," Tenny trilled. "Auntie Maisie, are you okay?"

I took another big breath. I didn't fill my lungs, because I didn't have any. But it still felt better than being still again. "Yes," I said. "You don't have to … do … this … "

Tenny looked so much like a puppy.

"Auntie Maisie has been standing there foooooor … " Tenny's tentacles wiggled a bit. "Sixteen minutes? Sixteen minutes. Casma said that."

"I was just lost in thought."

Not a lie; wouldn't lie to Tenny.

Tenny puffed out her cheeks — an expressive habit she'd picked up from Lozzie, highly context-dependent. It either meant she was annoyed and couldn't put it into words, or that she was too excited for speaking. On this occasion it was probably both — I was being annoying as crusted shit, and she was still hyped after her maiden flight. Her wings were not folded away properly, not lying down her back like a cloak, like they normally did; instead she kept twitching them upward, shoulders flexing. The surface of the wings had not quietened down either; she could have given my tie-dye t-shirt a decent rival if she'd cranked up the colour saturation another notch or two.

"Feeling bad?" Tenny said.

"Feeling bad." I looked across the open meadow, at grass and distant hills and the clouds.

Tenny didn't say anything for a minute or two, which was really nice. Tenny got it, fundamentally, gut-wise. She just stood there by my side, stretching and wiggling her tentacles, and because I knew it was Tenny and not Casma, I knew her next words would not irritate or corral or seek to understand me more than I wished to be understood, or more than I understood myself.

I watched the ends of her silken black tentacles wiggling in front of her, their tips occasionally opening to sip at the air.

"Why?" she eventually asked.

I looked at her, then over at Kimberly, still red around the eyes. I looked at our butcher-nun. I looked at the towel-wrapped kitchen knife in my hand. I looked at the Briar-bitch who was standing on a hill at the extreme limit of my vision.

"It's hard to explain," I said. "Explaining is hard. Hardly explained. Hard up for—"

"Auntie Maisie," Tenny trilled. "Try?"

"I'm not sure—"

"Brrrt!" went Tenny. "I'm not a little kid. I'm grown up. Talk?"

"Talk," I echoed. "Right … "

Kimberly's tears were not the kind I enjoyed; I would never get to see those up close. Muadhnait would have killed the pale doll if I had not stood over it, and I didn't know why I'd done that. The doll itself had not been able to speak. Casma was a failed diplomat and amateur head-shrinker. Tenny had achieved flight and had been put in actual danger. Kimberly had come within inches of injury, maiming, death. I couldn't look at anime girls on my phone. I could tell that Tenny was hungry — really hungry, for a proper meal, and whatever she said about her intellectual maturity, Tenny was young and still growing and under the care and protection of the adults present. I was an adult present, a present adult; Tenny and Casma had worked together to pull another adult out of harm's way. Next time we might not be fast enough.

Heather would come for us eventually. I might have to explain why one of us was gone.

…

I know what you've been thinking, and you've probably been thinking it for a while now, because I was thinking the same thing.

But I wanted, so badly, to be irresponsible.

I wanted to drop the burden of trying to be human, just for this little adventure, a little side-story of my own telling. Put the burden down for a while, then pick it up again later, after I'd had my fill of tears and trembling. I couldn't be harmed, not really; I was made of carbon fibre, and who could dispute that? Heather would come pick me up, we'd all go home, and that would be that. Hooray.

Except Kimberly and Tenny were both made of flesh and bone, (though the latter was debatable in Tenny's case, and to my knowledge nobody has ever x-rayed her). Casma was unique and special, but then again so is everything else about her. Muadhnait was dangerous.

The price of laying down my burden was too high.

If I'd been there alone, things would be different. But I wasn't, and I wasn't free, and I wasn't being me.

…

I opened my mouth to give Tenny an answer — a true one, even if I couldn't fit all those words in, and some of the bits about Kimberly were not appropriate for Tenny.

"I'm not having—"

Our Lady of the Forded Briar strode off the distant hill.

In one step she was halfway to us, in another she was another quarter of the way, and in a third she was only ten feet from me. Nuclear eyes bored into mine. She was like a little piece of star, shaved off and stuck in the ground. How did she not burn through the soil and sink into the bedrock? Her bare feet were molten. Her hair was flames descending from the sky. She carried her spear, but the tip had been cut off, and was weeping melted iron. Her shield was gone — not bothering with protection anymore, were we?

—fun anymore. Died on my lips.

A sudden heat deep down in my guts felt like I'd chugged a pint of boiling honey laced with molten gold and rocket fuel. For flesh that wouldn't be so good, but I was made of carbon fibre. I could take it. I could take anything.

"Auntie Maisie?" Tenny said.

I smiled. The Briar-bitch smiled back, and I imagined what she would look like crying tears of hot metal.

Then she turned and strode away, off toward the Mimic's castle on the distant headland.

When she was gone, my belly was still warm.

"Maybe I'm not feeling so bad, after all," I said. I turned to Tenny, though I made eye contact with the white fur on her fluffy shoulder. "More important. Importantly. Are you okay?"

"Brrrrrrrrt," went Tenny. "Auntie Maisie … "

She saw right through me.

Told you I was an irresponsible little shit.

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