Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the long, ugly middle hours of the day, a letter was slipped under the door. A sheet of printer paper, folded over, with a neat, Polish cursive on its inside. It took the Antimonys some time to read through those unfamiliar flicks of ink:

"You are invited to a sleepover at the home of Zimmy and Gamma; Dorm 6A, Chester South."

— Are you sure it's safe? — Kat asked the two, looming over their breakfast table in her blackened overalls. — I mean, even if the Court wasn't so dangerous right now ... It's Zimmy. She doesn't even sleep! What if she just ... watches you.

The older twin – the Antimony who had taken back her makeup – preened the paper's fold with her nail, and rose.

— Zimmy is nice.

Kat deflated and resorted to pleading to the other Annie with her big, wet eyes.

— Zimmy is my friend, Kat — the other said. (They had yet to come to an exact agreement on the use of the determiners my and our.) — As is Gamma. And they both need more people in their lives.

— Of course! But, does it have to be you guys...

— We are mediums. Who better?

— I cannot think of anyone better — the other added.

— ...I think you two are having a bad influence on each other's egos.

The Annies came to Chester South with hands full. The youngest was hidden behind a tower of bedding, while the oldest cradled DVD cases and an old player. They had both considered the uneasy but all too real possibility that Zimmy had never once seen a film; that she would react to the concept like one of the schlocky bug-eyed aliens in Kat's films.

Antimony smacked the bottom of the door with her foot, the both of them too encumbered to knock, until in a clinking of metal there appeared Gamma, livened with the same shy smile she always wore.

— Cześć, Annie... i Annie — she said, peeking through the opening.

— Cześć, Gamma — they said. Bit by bit, they were coaxing Gamma's voice out more often.

The door shot open, creaking the hinges. That familiar, razor-wire tone sung to them.

— Took ya long enough, Carver! We've been waitin' for youse all day.

— It's only 3 PM, Zimmy.

— Well, it's the weekend so I know youse ain't got class.

— May we come in, or will we be sleeping in the hallway? — the other Antimony asked.

— Yeah, yeah, quit yer moaning.

They slipped off their shoes by the door, and Zimmy and Gamma shepherded the two inside, into their sad, cramped box of a lounge room. In the summer, it must have sweat and stunk like the inside of a locker; in these early days of winter, the concrete was like the pallid skin of a corpse pressed up against theirs. Cold and blueish gray and hostile to life, covered up with funeral home clothes: rugs and beige sofas and potted plants that snaked up the walls as if trying to escape.

And yet inside they were led, for this was home.

In the doorless bedroom, next to the frameless bed, they set down their things, their teenage refuse, and for a moment the two stood in contemplation of this hive of hollowed-out concrete cubes. Somewhere, tangled up in the walls, something whirred, creaked, banged against itself; some long-forgotten machine that worked on for nothing but the pleasure of sustaining the lives of these strange, strange girls.

They sank into the lounge room sofa and stared at the opposite wall.

— Your writing is very pretty, Gamma — the younger Antimony said in Polish, into the silence. — Could you teach me?

— Oh, thank you — she replied, blushing.

Kicking the other Antimony from the armchair that she and Gamma were nestled into, Zimmy said, sotto voce:

— Oi, what are they saying?

— Annie is telling her what nice handwriting she has.

— Hey! — Zimmy barked at her. — Don't go chattin' her up! She's mine, Carver!

Gamma looked down at Zimmy, eyebrows bunched up in concern, and spoke something to her in that language they alone could speak. Zimmy glanced away from Antimony, and a shame drew over Gamma's face.

The Annies knew this as love, but they felt it as sadness.

— You two are doin' my head in. How'm I supposed to pick youse apart? — Zimmy said, puncturing whatever thoughts had been condensing in the air.

— We do look different.

— So do rats but I bet you can't tell them apart!

— Perhaps we should wear coloured ribbons for your sake.

— I'll wear a red one — the Annie from the Court said.

— Red would be more fitting for me.

— Why? You would be green. You were in the forest.

— We were both in the forest.

— Perhaps we should flip a coin.

While she searched her skirt pockets, Gamma perked up, and pointed to the more irritated Annie.

— Ty, bądź "Anka" — she named her.

Then, to the other.

— A, ty, "Ania".

Gamma seemed pleased with herself, and pressed her head against Zimmy's again. Zimmy settled, like someone coming in after a run, with awkward, heavy breaths.

— Is there a... — Ania began to ask in Polish. The words slipped away from her.

— A difference between them, Gamma — Anka interjected. Having a doppelganger to cooperate with had improved their Polish, but they found that their proficiencies were beginning to diverge, like an equal amount of mass being transmuted from one form to another.

— Yes... — Gamma said carefully. — And no. It's hard to describe. They are like the same word in two different languages. Or ... two performances of the same play.

The Annies hummed and looked at one another. There still burned some small part in each of them that insisted that she was both Ania and Anka, as if a cypher existed in that "K" and that "I".

But, Gamma was their friend. If they could not trust her, then they were neither Ania nor Anka.

— Don't get too cushy with it, Carver. I told you we seen people who got split, but it wasn't always their body went along for the ride. You don't wanna end up like that when you get back together — Zimmy said.

— That seems more like a psychiatric illness than an effect of the ether, Zimmy — Ania said.

— Nah! 'sall the same. What, you don't think I have schizophrenia too?

Ania frowned distantly.

— I think you have a rare gift, just as we and Gamma do.

— What a load a rubbish...

Anka spoke up:

— In any case, we have no intention of being one person again.

She took her twin's hand. Zimmy spat out a singular, guttural:

— What?

— Ania, Anka, have you had lunch? — Gamma interjected, placing a hand on Zimmy's head.

---

There was hardly five feet to the kitchen; more a space pod of cupboarded walls and appliances, than some place one might be expected to work. As she worked a knife, Anka glanced through the small, singular window, that showed little more than an implaceable snapshot of concrete and trellis.

Gamma stared thoughtfully into the contents of the refrigerator, the faint hum of the compressor like all the Court's machines; slow and deliberating.

The dull scent of freon and linoleum overwhelmed all sense of taste; she was mechanical, technical. There was an order to things, particularly with Zimmy. This; not that. This and that; not those. Apart, not together. Together, never apart. She held to these rules, and all was well.

— I'm surprised that the Court still give you supplies. Zimmy said they had abandoned this zone.

— Oh, no, the green people help us — Gamma said, leaving the fridge with hands full of jars and wrapped meat. — Even though they seem very scared of Zimmy...

— Why would they be afraid of her? The forest is filled with far worse things than Zimmies.

Gamma set down everything on the counter for her, and indulged in a heavy, huffy breath.

— I don't know. She does not like to tell me about it, but I hear what they call her ... The word is the same in English and Polish. "Demon".

Antimony frowned.

— I'll talk to them. Annie and I are still the medium of the forest, and we are the only reason they're here...

Gamma wrapped her arms around Annie's waist, pulled herself close to the hip, closer than ever.

— Thank you, Annie. And ... maybe you ask them to learn Polish? — She giggled. — It is hard when Zimmy can't help. I already have to ask her to translate so much for me...

— I'm sure she's happy to help you, Gamma. She is your girlfriend.

Gamma snickered.

— She does not like that word.

— She's never seemed very shy about your relationship.

Not shy enough, perhaps. The words "kill everyone in the world and then myself" echoed in her mind.

— She is not ashamed. But, it is a lot for her.

— Hm. I suppose she was not exposed much to... — Redness flushed through her face as she scrambled for a synonym. — Girls who...

Gamma stifled a giggle and managed to say:

— "Lesbijstwo"?

— Yes. Thank you — Annie said, composing herself.

— That is part of it — Gamma continued. — But I do not think she would be more comfortable if I was a boy. Maybe the word "girlfriend" doesn't mean enough for Zimmy, or maybe it means too much for her. I can never tell.

Gamma turned her gaze through the doorway, out to where Zimmy and Ania bickered out of earshot.

— Do you consider her your girlfriend? — Anka asked.

— Of course. — She smiled. — I used to dream about having a girl I could call "my girlfriend" and run away with. I never expected it would really happen.

— You wanted to run away?

There was something like pride in Gamma's face, though it shone through only as form showed through fabric. Soft, easy, veiled, behind that weariness she always wore.

— I hope you do not think of me as a little princess stolen away by a big bad bebok. Life is hard with Zimmy, but she saved me. I think often about who I could have been if I never met her...

— People usually mean that in a regretful sense.

— My parents would have made me marry a man that I don't like, and I would never be able to see all the amazing things I can see here at the Court ... It would have been like dying.

Antimony placed a hand on Gamma's shoulder.

— I hope you can marry Zimmy someday, Gamma.

Gamma looked shocked.

— Is that allowed in England?

— Not yet. But I don't think the Court would mind.

— It is a nice thought. I wish that Zimmy had something like that to hold onto. It is so hard to talk to her about the future... There is so much anger inside her all the time.

— Does she intend to live in the Court with you forever?

The last dusk rays of happiness were eclipsed in Gamma's face.

— Zimmy doesn't think she is going to live anywhere.

---

Zimmy hated the light. Where heat burned, and cold stung, the light left no trace of its damage. Only a force which pulled at the muscles in her eyelids, compelled her to shut them as if she had dreamt up the desire herself. She hated being told what to do, even if by her own body.

Ania had been guilted into sitting with her on the couch, while Gamma and Anka ate at the table under the small window that faced the afternoon sun. Creamy white light shone through across them. Gamma's brown hair, dark like deep earth, had a fire breathed into it; a brown as rich as chocolate, as red as rose thorns.

— Are you certain Gamma would want you to eavesdrop on her? — Ania asked. She had wrapped herself in a blanket, where Zimmy seemed not to notice the chill from the concrete.

Zimmy dug her claws into the sofa, and spoke in a hush, the sharp frequencies of her voice resolving into a hiss.

— Yer really testin' my indifference towards you, Carver.

— You don't even know what they're saying.

— And you do. So tell me!

— I can't hear them.

Zimmy growled.

— Why don't you help me choose a film to watch? — Ania said, putting down her lunch to browse the stack of DVDs they had brought. — Kat suggested I get horror movies for you, but I thought you wouldn't like them.

— Good. I don't get 'em. Why would you wanna watch somethin' like that? — she said out of the corner of her mouth.

— Some people find it cathartic to be scared in a safe manner.

— Maybe 'cause they got nothing to be scared of anyway.

— No one's life is perfect, Zimmy. — Ania said softly. — I know that–

— Know what? — Zimmy said, crawling up her like an upset dog. — That you'll never have to live with one bit of what me and Gamma do?

Ania fell silent as Zimmy curled up again. She glanced over at her doppelganger's warm smile and easiness around Gamma, while here Ania was stuck with the awful one.

The awful one?

— I'm sorry. — Ania mumbled, tugging at her own sleeves.

— I don't care. — Zimmy said over her.

— Why are you so afraid to have someone care about you?

— You don't care about me, Carver. You pity me. I wasn't born yesterday. I know the difference. Yer like a nurse y'know. Great bedside manner.

— That– — Antimony snapped. She began again in a low voice: — That isn't true, Zimmy. You're my friend. Of course I care for you. I want to help you.

She placed a hand on Zimmy's shoulder.

Zimmy threw her off, and a stomach-churned grimace flashed across her face. There was nothing more to say.

Gamma peeked over at them, brown eyes like polished garnets in the sun. They had disappointed her. She pushed in her stool and joined them, posting herself at the end of the couch still near to the light. The Antimonys exchanged a brief conversation in countenances: Anka had no choice, and placed herself strategically – perhaps cynically – between Gamma and Zimmy.

Gamma laid her long legs across Anka and Zimmy's laps, where Zimmy could lay her hands on them like a house cat. Another conversation in countenances: it was best not to make a fuss. At least Gamma could now close her eyes, tilt back her head on the armrest. She relaxed as if she had never before known this thing called "rest".

— How was your lunch, Zimmy? — Anka asked, unbothered by the metre or so of girl across her. — I made it how Gamma said you would like it.

Ania bore an uneasy look as she gave a side-eye at the half-eaten mess of pickles and ... crisps? between the slices of bread.

— Not bad, comin' from you — Zimmy mumbled. The anger had begun to drain out of her face like pus from a wound. — Hurt my gums.

— I can take that as a compliment, coming from you — Anka said with a smirk.

— Is your head better with both of us here? — Ania asked. She reached out to touch her, but her hand recoiled, inches away. Usually, the electric force is too weak to overcome the pull of the nuclear force, but Zimmy seemed always to be filled with lightning, like the power station on the lake.

— I don't know — Zimmy said, not looking at her.

— Do you feel comfortable at least? — Anka asked.

— Youse two are creepin' me out! — Zimmy snapped, bringing he arms up to her chest, across her organs. There was an instinct in all of her movements. — Feels like I'm bein' interrogated by those Court people...

— Oh, I'm sorry, Zimmy — Ania said.

— You're not the first to think that... — her twin added. — Kat has said we can be ... overbearing when we're of one mind.

— Metaphorically, that is — Ania quipped with split-second wit. — Oh. Sorry.

A heat spread through her face in waves, as embarassment compounded in shame, and shame into acute illness.

— Maybe you should just talk with Annie — she said in a rush. She tacked on: — I can ... all Kat!

She was gone before Zimmy could decide on what insult to use.

Gamma opened an eye curiously to survey. Stuck right between the two, Anka could feel something in the air, something being communicated, in a language beyond her.

— Anka, maybe you could go with Zimmy so she can have a bath.

— What'd she say, Carver?

Anka stumbled over her words, but Gamma reached across the lounge room table to put her hand on Zimmy's head. The lineaments around her dark eyes softened, and she said:

— Fine.

---

Gamma lingered outside the door, pricked her ears up to hear the water running and hear Zimmy's voice. She could not understand her, but she would always recognise her.

She found Ania in she and Zimmy's bedroom, face lit up by her laptop at the desk that they never used. In the doorway, she floated, ever a ghost in the great wide world, and caught a glimpse of Katerina's face through the glare and glow.

— Knock, knock, Aniulka — Gamma said sweetly, in her sweet little language.

Ania turned, half her face bathed in light, earphones dangling from her temples. She welcomed her in.

— Aniulka? — she asked curiously.

— It's another nickname — Gamma answered, kneeling beside her to see Katerina on the screen.

— I hadn't realised there were levels.

Katerina began to wave with a frustrated look on her face, and Ania muttered to herself:

— Oh.

She continued in English to her friend, Gamma catching nothing but the word "cześć", followed by a stern look from Katerina.

Ania huffed and said:

— Kat says "hi". I try to teach her Polish but I don't think she has the mind for languages.

The frustration in her muscles melted into a kind of loving sympathy, one that Gamma was too familiar with.

— It's okay.

She sat, watching them chatter away, until her knees pounded with pain and carpet burn.

When Ania was finished, the girls lay out on that carpet, hair two tendrilous masses, one smaller and one larger, one red and one brown. Ania turned to Gamma, as a woman in bed might, and said:

— Annie and I could teach you English, Gamma. We might not be very good at it but we could try.

— I know.

— Then ask. What's stopping you?

— Zimmy would be upset if you did. She's worried that if I can speak to anyone else, that if I don't need her anymore, I'll leave her.

Gamma turned over to be face-to-face with Ania, and continued:

— I saw you two in the living room, earlier, watching us. She wanted to know what Anka and I were talking about, yes?

Ania nodded reluctantly.

— Yes...

— You know, when I told her that I thought you should stay with us for a night, you were still one person...

Ania was silent for a moment, frowning, her mind drawn to the spit in her throat, until she spoke:

— You don't have to do everything she says, Gamma.

— I know. I don't need to do anything she says.

— But you do it regardless ... because you love her.

— No. It's not like that. Sometimes, I think about hating Zimmy. Sometimes, I think I really do. And sometimes, I want to be so angry at her that I could scream.

— Gamma, you shouldn't keep those feelings inside.

— If it was anyone else, I wouldn't.

She smiled smally, and continued:

— If you were making me upset, Ania, I would call you all kinds of things. But with Zimmy, everything's different. You're not like her. Your friend Kat isn't like her. Even your friends in the forest aren't like Zimmy.

— I know she has a difficult life, but that doesn't give her the right to treat you poorly.

— Life isn't just hard for Zimmy ... She's ... like something left behind from another world. Something that was never supposed to be in ours. Like ... an octopus on land.

Gamma bunched up her arms against her chest, and shivered. What was this cold she felt? Creeping up under her clothes, sinking into her skin.

She continued:

— If I let myself be angry, and I yelled at her, and I left her, it would make just as much difference as breaking up with someone while they have a noose around their neck. Zimmy would fall apart, but after ... she wouldn't notice, because Zimmy's still there in that town. She never left.

Once, when Gamma was younger, she had taken Zimmy to the Christmas parade. For as far as she could see, the city was shining white, and for a day, she almost felt as though it were Warsaw.

The memory now was like a dream. One of her dreams in which the world opened up, cut its stitches, showed its innards, all blood and mucus. Dreams in which words gave way, like a door off its hinges, or perhaps, like a door that was never locked. Gamma dreamed that some day, there might be no more language, no more words – only meaning, only sense. In the twinkling lights and carolling of the parade, there had been no need for language. Everything was there to be understood.

And sometimes, sometimes, she dreamed what it might mean for Zimmy; a world of nothing but surface, a world of nothing hidden, nothing obscured. A world of nothing but light, shining out from the Word across all the broken things like Gamma and Zimmy.

And sometimes, sometimes, she realised that world would never come. The light was very far away now. It was all darkness from here.

---

As a child... as a child in that hospital, a "bathroom" connoted certain things. Beige tiles; like the sandstone in her ancient Egypt picture books had been cut out and glued to the walls. Shiny aluminium handrails that cast white flashes into her eyes under the lights. That chemical smell that stung her little nostrils. Linoleum; great swathes; oceans of it. And space. Space enough to die, and space enough to live, but only for months, only for a half-life.

Click. The door shut behind Anka.

Here, there was space for nothing, except perhaps to be entombed. The bath filled half the room, like a queen-sized bed in Lilliput. Zimmy knealt down beside it to run the water, the toilet just jutting into her side.

— ...Where does Gamma usually sit? — Anka asked unsteadily.

Zimmy gave no answer. Anka searched for one in those precious square metres of floor space. The sink was hidden behind the same partition wall that enclosed the bath, and so there she too hid amongst the toilet roll and the cleaning liquids.

— Get back here, Carver! — Zimmy yelled, slamming the toilet lid down and jamming a finger at it. — Yer gonna sit right here and be quiet.

Antimony waited while Zimmy sat and removed her socks. The water rose, and the room fogged up with steam; relief at least from the cold. Zimmy's toenails were neater than Annie expected. This, she pondered, as Zimmy stepped into the bath, fully dressed, and only then began to remove her shirt.

— Zimmy, I haven't turned around yet — Antimony said.

— So?

— I assume you would rather I didn't see you naked.

— Why would I care? — she said flatly, exposing her spindly arms. — It's just my body.

A red stain spread over Antimony's face, like blood in water, but she ignored it. Glancing askew, she said:

— I took you for a very self-effacing girl.

— Do I look self-effacing, Carver?

— You look malnourished, Zimmy — Antimony said, tracing her eyes over the curves of her ribs.

— I told you not to pity me. Stop actin' like Gamma.

— I don't recall you telling me not to pity you, but is that not my job today?

— And don't be clever!

Tossing her knickers and bra aside, Zimmy slinked into the water, black hair like seaweed on the surface. Were she any taller, her feet would smack against the end of the bath.

Antimony sat, and watched, like Leontius at the charnel ground, as Zimmy scrubbed her little arms with soap until they were ruddy and irritated. A part of her wished to help, to be gentler, but there was nothing clearer than that Zimmy would sooner jump from the window than allow a hand on her that did not belong to Gamma. Muck and lather clouded the water, and Annie almost felt thankful.

— Why aren't ya gonna stop being two people? — Zimmy said, not gracing her with eye contact.

— Because we don't have to. Antimony and I want to be there for one another.

— Yer only gonna get more different, ya know. Right now yer twins but what about in a year? What if one of youse wants ... y'know, a boyfriend?

The word was clumsy on her tongue, like it didn't want to be there.

— We've already thought of that. We have rules about sharing everything. And I do mean everything. We can even share our thoughts in the ether like you and Gamma.

— Yer gonna do that your whole life? Fight uphill like that?

— Isn't that what you're doing?

— I wanna get better, Carver. You think I wanna be like this?

— There's nothing wrong with us.

— Yes, there is! — Zimmy shouted. She lunged, knees banging on the enamel. A spray of water and foam hid what transpired: that had Antimony not caught her, her teeth would have lain in a row on the tiles by the edge of the bath. Antimony's sleeves were soaked before the image had even reached her brain.

Zimmy hung like clothes on the washing line, just as unyielding to human inquiry. For some seconds, there was not a sound in the room but the water lapping at her thighs.

— Why don't you wear yer makeup any more, Carver? — Zimmy said, in some quiet shock; that kind reserved for deathbed regrets and divorcees; for grievances held close to the chest. She turned her head up, mouth agape and brows bent into two soft, sad slopes. — The other one does.

— Because... — Antimony started. — My father...

Zimmy bared her teeth like a dog and flailed in Antimony's grasp.

— That git I lamped!? That's the best excuse you have?

— Why do you care whether I wear makeup? — Antimony asked, letting her go into the water.

Patiently, Zimmy wiped the soap from her eyes and hair, face resolving into some contemplative nothingness; the face animals wore when their brains were too diminished for social life.

— 'Cause it looks better. Like Gamma's — she answered.

There were many mysteries under the category "ZIMMY", but it was moments like this that left Annie most confused. The confusion diffused into her face like a tranquiliser. Softened it; erased any hint of anger from the tallyboard of indignance.

So she slumped against the cistern; occupied herself with the long-ago filled cracks in the tile.

— Gamma told me about her parents ... Did they let her wear makeup?

— Nah — Zimmy said bluntly, after a moment of willing away the need the answer. — She did anyway. Second time we met, she musta been belted pretty hard, but she was still standin' there. On the corner. Smilin' like she was the 'appiest person on earth.

— It isn't like that. He doesn't force me.

— But somehow ya still gotta do what he says. He's just like all those damn Court people. They're all the same, Carver. Even that Donlan's folks.

— He's my family, Zimmy. I can't just abandon him.

— The way I see it, he's abandonin' you.

For some time, there was silence.

---

The bed was criss-crossed with wires, all of the machines so haphazardly placed. But it was not as though she would ever be getting up.

In a loud town in the dead of winter, Gamma came in from the cold.

— I'm home, Ania — she said, in clear and liquid English.

Antimony, lounging in a sweater with towers of boxes on either side, embraced her with a peck on the cheek. The smallest trace of green lipstick remained when she pulled away.

— Is that everything? — she asked as Gamma set down a box with "PLUSZAKI" scribbled on it in permanent marker.

— Yes, unless you had a secret serial killer basement I did not know about — Gamma said with a small smile.

— Hm. I can't remember.

She snickered.

— I'm glad we can relax now — Gamma said, removing her coat and boots to feel the indoor warm.

— Annie is upstairs; she wanted something.

Up the steps Gamma trudged in her socks, each creaking in its own way, to the hall at their zenith. It bore through the house like a tunnel, receding into the centre of her vision, and in that centre was that door. That strange, uncanny door that bothered her even in the photos.

She shuddered, and she called Annie's name. A head poked out of a doorway and beckoned her into a study filled with dark wooden furniture and mostly empty bookcases. More cardboard boxes laid at their feet in wait.

Anka too kissed her. She was endlessly beautiful with that flowing red hair; just like her sister, but Gamma saw something different in each of them.

— The landlady came around earlier. I think we may have irritated her ... She made copies of all the keys instead of just the front door key ... Anyway, I thought you should keep them just in case.

Gamma did, and said:

— I am glad you will be safe if Ania ever locks you in her secret serial killer basement.

Anka looked puzzled.

Before Gamma could leave, Antimony stopped her, and said in a rush:

— I almost forgot: when she was here last time, she said something about one of the keys.

— Which one? — Gamma asked, rifling through them.

Antimony daintily picked out a piece of rust-eaten brown metal that had been carefully worked into a delicate, spindly thing with teeth like the walls of a castle.

— This one. She said we can't use it, though she wouldn't tell me why. I don't know why she even gave it to me...

— What does it open?

Antimony glanced up at her, eyes like a big cat's.

— The door at the end of the hall.

— That's strange ... Maybe there is something mysterious in there, like there always was in the Court.

Antimony stepped back, letting the key clatter into the ring.

— No. There's no point. It's probably just the room for the boiler or the electricity ... It would be dangerous.

— Oh, I suppose...

Darkness fell early over the house, but Gamma could not rest herself. She slipped out of bed, out of those arms and into a coat to wander the halls. Sometimes it soothed her to be a ghost.

By the stairs, she lingered, staring down at the door to the cold, the icy moonlight scattering through the window and the glass panels beside it; waiting. Waiting for something she did not know what.

She shuddered. What was this cold?

Backwards she turned, and there was the hall, stretching out into forever, to that door. That door.

Her feet took her to it before she could ask, before she could run. The key ring was already in her hand.

Metal ground against metal, and she gripped the head of the key, her sweat mixing with the rust and reeking of blood.

She need only turn it....

Gamma returned to bed, and as the days passed, and life returned to its usual rhythm, she soon enough forget of the key, and of any desire to use it, and so away in a drawer it was hidden.

As the winter bore on, the three invited Katerina and her wife for dinner; a reunion.

— What is the Court like now, Kat? — Ania asked, cradling a glass of wine.

— Mostly the same, actually! — Kat said, dressed like a teenage boy at his first job interview. — Everyone's not so secretive any more since the █████ ███████ was shut down, but other stuff is gonna take a long time to change... We're still Court kids, y'know.

A dull pain in Gamma's head distracted her from trying to catch what Kat had said.

Paz spoke up:

— It's nice to have creatures from the forest visit even if some people are still afraid of them.

— Eglamore — Kat said, sotto voce, to much snickering. — I'm just glad I got my position after they stopped experimenting on students.

Paz looked to Gamma, and placed her hand on hers.

— It's still terrible what happened, Gamma — she said, and Gamma had not the faintest idea what she meant.

Kat had turned her face away, as if some pattern in the carpet was the most interesting thing in the world.

— We should have a toast — Anka interjected, and raised her glass. — To the lives we always wished we had!

As the hours vanished into the night, and a cloth was soon draped over the clock to drag out the revelry, Gamma found herself surrounded by drunk women. She still clutched her glass of tap water like a railing on a cliffside.

Kat and Paz clung to one another like debutante dates, and Kat slurred:

— Sometimes I wish the Court was stuffier like it used to be ... Jack keeps bringing his girlfriend to our joint chemistry classes and she's all the kids talk about. It's like they're not even interesting in acids and bases...

— Well, Jenny is quite nice — Ania said, hardly tipsy.

— No, no, he broke up with Jenny, remember.

— Who is he dating now?

— I can't remember her name... Ophelia or Raven or something like that.

— Another girl who wears lots of black — Paz interjected.

— I think Jenny mighta lost his heart when she started dressing like she survived the Blitz...

— Oh... — Ania said.

— I guess she isn't that bad ... Ophelia ... ha! Not like your ex, Gamma. Nahhh, just a bit pretentious.

— Sorry? — Gamma said.

— I mean, you know how she was — Kat said, more lightheartedly.

— Kat — Ania said, in a long, outstretched syllable, almost ominous.

— How wh...

Before Gamma could finish, Kat began to look rather green about the gills, and clutched her stomach.

— Kat, are you alright? — Paz and Ania said in unison.

— I'm okay ... I just don't like wine.

— Ania, where's Anka? — Gamma asked, taking her ear.

— I think she's in the upstairs toilet.

Gamma left, head filled with something she couldn't place. A searching. An expectation. As if through every doorway she walked, there should have been someone there. Not Antimony. Not Kat. Not Paz. Another girl.

But that couldn't be. There had only been one other girl, and she had died before Gamma learned her name.

She rushed up the stairs for Anka. It didn't matter if she would have to beg outside the toilet door to talk. She needed something flesh and blood to hold onto.

But at the crest of the stairs, she froze as if winded, the air taken from her.

There was that door. The door she had forgotten of.

With unsteady steps, she trespassed the hallway. The sound of dinner and mirth faded behind the walls, and the darkness of empty rooms enveloped her, until her vision was useless. Yet there she felt it, a few more steps forward. Hard and old and locked. Locked for years more than she could count.

Her eyes felt hot and heavy, like clothes wet from summer rain.

She shuddered, and tried to drink from her glass, wet her throat. Something clanged against her teeth and rang in her head, forced her to sputter it out.

The key, blood on the blade, there in her hand.

She put it in the lock and turned it, without a second thought.

— Gamma? — called Anka, or perhaps Ania; Gamma could not tell.

The tumbler clicked into place; the latch was free. The door stood as if solid concrete, until the lightest brush of her hand on the doorknob opened it, slow and creaking and deep in her stomach.

— Gamma, what are you doing? — came a chorus of voices behind her, more urgent.

Gamma glanced over her shoulder at them. Only for a moment. Only to register that she couldn't listen. She couldn't care.

The darkness before her resolved, as if it had always been her home. Pressed against the wall, right up into the corner, there a girl on a hospital bed lay, whose face she had forgotten of.

Gamma whispered her name and stepped forward. It was all laid out for her. All the work already done. The girl's lips, pale and almost bruised. Wires scattered over her body, the ringing of those machines still in her ears. On her lap, like the ring bearer on her wedding day, lay a yellowed pillow, freshly plumped.

She wanted this – Gamma – Gamma wanted this. She placed the pillow on the girl's face, pressed down on those thin, pale lips, and waited. It would only be a minute; two; three. The body thrashed – the girl – the girl thrashed.

And then it was quiet. And then it was done. When she turned to the others, they bore grins like young parents.

When Gamma awoke from her sleep, there was a name on her lips.

---

— Are you sure it's safe to leave the flat without Gamma? — Anka asked, waiting in the cool ginnel outside as Zimmy squeezed through the little square bathroom window like a cat.

A dull thud, as the balls of her feet hit the cobbles rougher than hoped.

— That thing you and her can do — Zimmy huffed. — Yours has got stronger. Dunno why.

Antimony reached out a helping hand to stop her falling backwards into the piles of broken things left by generations of Chester students. Annie's lips and eyelids were both dark with makeup; hardly her style, but second-hand supplies left little choice.

— Our connection to the ether must be becoming deeper — she mused. Zimmy peaked around the corner with her dark eyes. — Maybe I could help more often.

— Stop gassin' on and get closer — Zimmy barked, yanking a shocked Antimony over by the hand.

— Is that a yes?

— Sure. Jesus, don't wet your knickers over it, Carver.

— Somehow, the thought hadn't occurred to me — Antimony said, being dragged down the little street by Zimmy.

They snaked through cobbled ways all at odd angles to one another, the weathered, overcast buildings of the residential quarter rising up on either side like great sea walls. Antimony would spot someone from the forest in a flash, through an intersection of streets, and they would be gone the moment Zimmy insisted them both forward.

Bit-by-bit, the streets widened out, and any glimpses of life thinned into airy nothingness. A glimmer of recognition was lodged in Antimony's mind, but there was no placing the boulevard they now walked, void of traffic of any kind. It could have been the street that she and Kat escaped to one night with the others, or it could have been its doppelganger, kilometres away; perhaps decades newer, like the regenerating cells of all animals.

She stared up at the rank and file of buildings looming overhead, drenching them in their cool darkness, and tried to imagine what might be inside. Endless offices for all the million unseen staff of the Court. Nests of robots, carving out their strange society into the tunnels and underspaces. Or perhaps nothing lay behind those walls. Empty rooms in empty buildings, stretching into the horizon like a tumour. Just endless concrete cubes.

One thinks of the city as loud, frenetic, but the Court was something different altogether. Nothing like Gillitie Wood, and yet nothing like anywhere human. Quieter than death. Stiller than ice. Darker than night. The home of everyone she had ever loved, except for poor Ysengrin.

Every so often, Antimony would reach to rub her eyes, or lick her lips, and only stop herself before she ruined her own work. A silly kind of shame set in, not only at the state of her, painted like some buried princess from long ago, but at how long it had taken for her to steal this back. At least there was no one but Zimmy to see for now.

— I can hear you, y'know — Zimmy said.

— What?

— Calm down! I can't tell the details. Just how you're feeling.

— But you can tell I was thinking about you?

— Ya looked right at me, Carver. Don't have to be clever to figure that out.

— What else was I feeling?

— Lonely. I can always tell when Gamma feels lonely 'cause she gets interested in the Court just like you were.

It was more impressive when Mr. Dupin did it. Antimony protested:

— I don't feel lonely. I'm just ... taking in the Court.

— That's called being lonely.

Antimony frowned.

— You are the one who wanted to explore.

— Yeah? — Zimmy said.

Antimony pressed her nails into her palm. It was well-practiced; she knew the skin couldn't break.

Zimmy stopped, and sat herself on the kerb, feet in the dry gutter. She continued, staring at her shoes:

— Yer other one asked what me and Gamma do.

— Annie did?

Zimmy nodded.

— Well that's it, really. Takin' in the Court.

Antimony got down beside her.

— I thought you hated the Court, Zimmy.

— I do hate this damn place! — she said, wrestling her school shoes off. — But it's not like I can live anywhere else. All I can bloody do is sit here and put up with it. They're never lettin' me go from this place.

Antimony placed a hand on her shoulder.

— ...It's said that the Court is alive. It was grown from something. Perhaps that's why people like you and I seek it out when we feel alone.

— Heard that too. That "Seed Bismuth". But y'know what the truth is, Carver? The Court's not alive. It's dead. A big dead body a hundred kilometres across. They brought it up and then they butchered it. We're not feelin' nothin'. We're just at its funeral.

She hung her head, fingers hooked into the heels of her shoes.

Antimony took her free hand, wrapped her fingers in hers, and leant her head against Zimmy's. No outburst, no anger, no flinching; nothing from Zimmy, except the warmth of her hand, and the tickling of her frail black hairs on the side of Annie's face.

— Maybe the Court is dead, but we're the Court too, and we're alive — Antimony said slowly, with hardly any emotion in her voice. — Can you feel them? Annie and Gamma back home. What do you think they're doing?

— Gamma's probably asleep, like a babby. On that armchair she likes. The other one is probably still calling that friend of yours. Tellin' her ... dunno. Tellin' her about how shit I am.

— ...What do you think Gamma is dreaming about? — Antimony asked.

— Her old mates. Goin' to class. Havin' a life. Gettin' a job. All that stuff normal people like youse and yer friend do.

— Don't you think you're there too?

— I couldn't be.

— But Gamma must want you to be.

— If I could be there, it wouldn't be me, would it?

On one of the rare occasions on which he spoke to her, Antimony's father had taught her Leibniz.

What compelled him to teach this one philosopher out of hundreds, she still agonised over, but so it had happened, and so those words still spoke themselves in her mind, in his voice, as cold as ever in the late winter.

"Some will argue that the world could have been without sin and without suffering, but I deny then that it would have been better." Every night, before bed, in those long years in Good Hope, another paragraph, another lesson. She hadn't known what it meant; wouldn't, for some years; what he was trying to impart on her. "For all things are connected: the universe, whatever it may be, is all of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect to every distance."

She had always thought of her father as a scientific man. A Court man. One who didn't humour the magical, the overly etherical, the beyond-real. And so it never made sense, that he would read her such words, when they seemed so very mystical. The universe, an ocean.

Now, her father stood in her memory with half an arm missing, with a face broken by things he did not understand. Like father, like daughter.

"So all things have been ordered beforehand, once and for all, in light of future prayers, in light of future good and bad, and of all the rest; and each thing has contributed, before its existence, to the resolution that has come to the existence of all things; so that nothing can be changed in the universe but its essence; its very being."

Before the final sentence, he would always close his book, as if the words had long ago been engraved in his heart.

"If the smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it would no longer be this world."

Antimony thought of the empty buildings, and she thought of her father.

— Carver ... — Zimmy choked out. — Yer not like me. You can still live yer life. It's still possible. For you and ... you and the other Antimony.

She hadn't used that name since the first day they met ... She went on, between sniffles:

— Fuck! — she belted out. — Yer doin' my head in with your thoughts!

Antimony snorted.

— I'm sorry. I'm just ... realising something.

— Well, I'm glad yer havin' a good one while I'm bawlin' my guts out! — she spat.

Antimony wrapped her arms around Zimmy and took in a deep breath of cold, Court air. The slight thing in her embrace froze like a startled animal.

— You're right. It is still possible. Because you're alive, Zimmy.

— 'Course I am — Zimmy said through her teeth.

— You're alive — Antimony said warmly. — You're here in the Court, you're sixteen years old, and you're alive.

— I can tell!

Antimony let her go and pressed her forehead to hers again.

— Listen with me more. Tune in to the Court.

— Fine! — Zimmy said, fidgeting with gritted teeth. — Being in that forest has turned you into a nutter, Carver.

The wind picked up, through the great valleys of the Court.

— Kat said the same ... Can you feel that?

— I can't feel nothin' but yer grip.

— The wind — Antimony said quietly, and bunched up Zimmy's long hair to move it away from her nape. — Feel it on the back of your neck.

Zimmy shuddered, first in her core and then up into her braincase. Antimony watched as the little hairs on her neck, only barely visible in the gloom, stood to attention like an insect's searching antennae, reaching out into the thick substrate of heat and wind and vibrations and feelings.

— It's freezin'. Like when it rains in winter.

— Everyone in the Court feels that wind right now. Whether they're outside, or bundled up, or sitting by a fire. The cold is all the same.

— This something that "Coyote" taught you?

Antimony was quiet for a few moments, not only to think, but to feel Zimmy.

— I had forgotten ... When Coyote first invited me to Gillitie Wood, he showed me everything in the forest, and that all of it was his body. The sun and the moon, his eyes ... the land, his blood ... the trees, his bones. I thought he was only trying to impress me. But, now, I don't know. — Zimmy drew her hands in close to the warm blood in her chest, taking Antimony's with them. — Perhaps the Court is the same.

— Sounds like somethin' in a picture book. Whose bones is the Court supposed to be? 's no one here into that magical crap anyway.

— Ours.

She splayed Zimmy's fingers with her own, and continued:

— You. Me. Annie. Gamma. Kat. Paz. Jack. Parley. Andrew...

— I know who's in the damn Court, Carver...

— They're all feeling the same cold in their bones right now. The hairs on their neck are standing up just like ours, on the other side of the wind.

Zimmy shuddered again, letting out a shallow little breath.

— Perhaps we should go home before Gamma thinks you're missing — Antimony said, clearing her throat.

Zimmy held a hand to her face, to her eyes. She could have been crying, but when Annie turned her gaze down, only two blood-red rings stared back, all the darkness gone.

— Carver — she said shakily. — There's no rain.

---

At first, Gamma was not sure that she had woken. It was not every day that she did. In the darkness behind her eyelids, only something small at first stirred. A cautious, careful animal that could sense the light on its face, but do little else. She might as well have been in the depths of the sea.

But then all at once, Gamma appeared, that beautiful creature who could speak and think and know. A name was on her lips, and when she pushed herself up, and opened her eyes, another name joined it.

— Hello, Ania — she said in Polish.

There on the bed beside her was Ania, eyes rapt in a cool, careful attention that Gamma appreciated. She hated to be worried for. Care, however, was something different.

— How was your sleep? — Ania asked. — You seemed ... stressed.

Gamma settled up against the pillows, tucking her knees close to Antimony's.

— Nightmares don't bother me. I still get to sleep — she said, bearing a small, soft smile. — I feel better. I realised something in my dream.

— What visions did you receive? — Ania asked, tongue-in-cheek.

— You and Anka were there. We were very close.

Gamma looked away from her, set her eyes on the ceiling – something fixed – and spoke:

— I realised that if nothing changes, one day I'll do something terrible. I'll have everything I want, but she won't be there, and I'll wish that I could take it back, but I won't be able to.

— Are you worried you'll leave her? — Ania asked.

Gamma gave a sad smile.

— Something like that.

— I'm sorry if it seemed like I was suggesting that earlier. I know you care for Zimmy...

— No. You were right.

— Does that mean you'd like Annie and I to teach you English?

— Yes. I would like that.

---

Gamma was not stupid. English was a cipher to her, but even without a key, patterns can be noticed. She had long since known the words for many things. Yes. No. Please. Thank you. Room. House. Street. Food. Drink. Money. I love you. I hate you. I like this. I hate this. In Birmingham, in the Court, the world of people had resolved into a web of these calls; a pin-pricking of buoys across a vast and bottomless sea.

Something of that world could be grasped, but she knew always that there was something just below the surface, waiting for her. A texture and rhythm that she was yet blind to, that rolled off of her like water across the concrete.

The first week had been the worst in months, though Zimmy had not complained a word when Gamma told her she wished to be taught English. The groaning and begging began only when the second half of her wish was admitted: that Zimmy would learn Polish.

But, soon, Zimmy's protests softened, at least on the way to that abandoned classroom hidden away in the school, and on the way back to their dormitory in Chester South. There was a kind of acceptance.

The Antimonys had agreed to take turns tutoring the two girls. Thrice a week, they would meet in the classroom, lock the door, pull down the blinds, and work.

Given what Gamma already knew, the Antimonys had begun with grammar for her; the delicate joints between all those hunks of word that surrounded her. Anka drafted a conjugation table on a little roller blackboard, with annotations in her own semi-literate Polish: teraźniejszy, przeszły, imiesłów teraźniejszy, imiesłów przeszły.

Every missing accent and misplaced digraph the Annies wrote was a quiet reassurance to Gamma that she was not alone.

English, she had discovered, was much simpler than Polish. At all waking moments, she would repeat to herself in her mind: sing, sang, sung. Eat, ate, eaten. Go, went, gone. Hide, hid, hidden. Went would only occasionally become stuck in the back of her head like a memory from another world. It was a silly word. But then she supposed idzie and szedł were just the same.

She squeezed Zimmy's hand, rubbed her thumb over the soft skin. Zimmy's education was less conventional than Gamma's. Neither Antimony possessed the slightest understanding of Polish grammar, however well they spoke it. Ania flicked through a Polish textbook she had borrowed from the school library, but knew not to attempt to drill inflections into Zimmy's head.

They worked slowly. How to say yes. How to say no. How to say please. How to say thank you. Classroom. Dormitory. Hunger. Sleep. Danger. I love you. I hate you. I like this. I can't stand this.

In the second week, everything seemed to open up for Zimmy. The thought of saying a single word in Polish had at first made her bash her head on the desk, and dig her nails deep into her scalp. Now, during their lunch break, she would sit with Gamma and jab her finger at things, yelling, "Co to jest!", "co to jest!", "co to jest!", then listen for each of Gamma's soft answers. Ściana. Podłoga. Włosy. Oczy.

Zimmy repeated the words again and again with Gamma, until just barely their pronunciation surfaced in the thick sea of her accent. The Antimonys sympathised. It was hard being from up north.

And when the lesson began again, she and Gamma would turn their chairs away from one another, and only then would Zimmy begin to complain.

— Lousy Carver... — Zimmy muttered, smacking her foot anxiously against the leg of her chair.

— What is "lousy"? — Gamma asked in Polish.

Zimmy dug her nails into her own scalp.

— Zimmy — Ania said.

Zimmy groaned and hit her head against the desk.

— I know! Cow tow jest whatever. It's how you ask what something is.

— And?

— ...Złah.

— Good enough — she said, and added in Polish: — She means "bad", Gamma.

— Oh, that is good, Zimmy! — Gamma said, filled with too much joy to think of anything more complex.

— Uh, thank you — Zimmy muttered.

— Annie is "lousy". How?

Zimmy wracked her mind for a moment before screwing up her eyes and telling Gamma in their language:

— (I'm sick of Carver's lessons! I don't wanna sit around all day like I'm in school. I just wanna talk to you.)

— (I know, Zimmy. But Ania and Anka are the only people who can teach you.)

— (We could teach eachother.)

— (This is easier, Zimmy.)

— (Doesn't feel easier.)

In the afternoon, as the morning chill gave way to a dry cold like a death rattle, Katerina poked her head into the classroom.

— This is where you guys are! I thought my computer was broken — she said. At the end of her scan of the room, she at last saw Zimmy and Gamma. — Zimmy. Gamma.

Only Gamma responded, waving:

— Hello, Katerina. I learn English.

— Oh, that's great! Maybe you can make some more friends now, Gamma.

— Kat — Antimony warned.

Zimmy threw the nearest book at Kat's head. Static filled their ears.

Like a thousand involuntary memories, city streets snaked jagged-like out into the horizon. Smoke and the smell of rain filled her nostrils, drifting over the buildings like clouds. She was back in those clothes, just as she would be until this place devoured her.

— Kat! Annie! — Carver yelled. The one with long hair. She screwed up her eyes. — I can't hear her through the ether...

— You's magical crap don't work in here — Zimmy said. — Hurry up and 'elp me find Gamma.

Carver scrambled towards her, right up into her face, brows knit with anger.

— Why did you do that? Kat was only being nice.

Zimmy diminished. Her eyes refused to meet Antimony's.

— You don't get it, Carver...

Antimony waited for something more.

— Fine — she said, backing away and drawing herself together. — Let's just find the toy shop.

She rushed down the road. Zimmy struggled to keep pace. The city was empty of nobodies, and that unnerved her more.

— I- I helped you and 'er once, y'know.

— When? — Antimony asked, half-looking over her shoulder.

— When you was in sick bay.

— ...I had a dream.

— Probably felt like it.

— If that really was you, then thank you, but it does not change anything.

— I'm not tryna toady to ya! I'm just sayin' that ... 'Could help you again. I can see inna that unseen world 'n ways even you can't.

— You admit you have a gift.

— Are you gonna listen or not?

— We do not want to be one person, Zimmy.

— ...How come you get to say that? When I...

She disappeared into a back street, shoes smacking against the concrete.

— Zimmy! — Antimony gasped.

As she whizzed around, faceless things filed out of ginnels and doorways like black smudges on a photograph. She pushed her way through the crowds of them, after the mess of hair, all she could see of Zimmy.

Everything thinned out. She splayed her hands in front of her to grasp something. At least her shoulder hit the ground first. The pain resounded like an echo through the edges of her body.

A hand grasped hers. Anka opened her eyes. Her twin stood over her, pulled her up.

— Are you okay?

— Annie... — she muttered, embracing Ania and planting a full-faced kiss on her chess. — Where did Zimmy go? Did you see her?

— No... I heard you yelling. Did the two of you find Gamma or Kat?

— Not yet. Maybe she's going to the toy shop ... It was this way — Anka huffed, stumbling a few steps forward before Ania let her lean on her shoulder as they walked.

— Zimmy seemed better after that night with you ... But now we're here again... — Ania said.

— She must have been keeping it bottled up.

Fat droplets of blood splashed onto the concrete, leaving stains like oil.

— Annie, your knee...

Ania sat her down, and pushed up her pant cuffs to her thighs. Jagged gashes tore through both knees. Rivulets of blood ran down her skin.

Anka ignored it, and continued:

— Zimmy needs to realise that if she doesn't stop this, then someday Gamma won't be there when she needs her.

Ania reached a hand out to grasp Ania's knee. The flesh blurred in her eyes. The very distinctions between objects became confused. They flinched away from one another.

— Zimmy's power...

— This must be what she meant.

— What did she say?

— She wanted to ... "help" us, by making us one person again.

— ...The ether must recognise that we're the same person.

— We should be careful — Anka said, fixing her pants and pushing herself up on her abrased palms. — I doubt Loup would be happy to split us again.

— Even if he were, would it still be us?

— I don't know ... I hope that we would still be there, even in one body.

— This does sound like a mental illness... — Ania muttered.

Anka frowned. Her twin went ahead of her, dragging her hand along the sides of the buildings they passed, the rough old bricks tickling her fingerprints.

— Maybe it would be easier if we let her fix it — she mused.

— Easier? It isn't difficult to be different people, Annie. Everyone is different people.

— No, it isn't. Being the same person is what's hard.

— I don't understand what you mean.

— Father might not look away from me if I were you...

— I- I'm sorry that he treats the way he does. He is trying to get better. You know that.

— You can't even say it out loud — Ania snapped, stopping. — How can we share everything when I can never be what you are to him? A good daughter.

— This is no reason to erase both of us!

— I wouldn't be erased, because I am Antimony Carver. I would still exist.

Anka grit her teeth in frustration.

— I know. We both are. But something would still be missing.

— No. Everything would be there. We have just been making up stories to explain how we are not one person, Annie.

— Of course we have. But we are already a story. You should know that. That's what Coyote was trying to say.

— Don't bring up his magical crap. It's impossible! — Ania shouted.

— Annie? — Anka said in confusion, reaching out to her.

Ania returned the gesture by slamming her against the siding of a building, the both of them crashing through plywood and tarpauline. More pain rang through Anka's body, bounced around like a ricocheting bullet.

The strange pungence of dust overwhelmed her first. Her eyes saw little but a trickle of light from a few paces away.

She pushed herself up on twice-bruised hands and once-bruised arms. Beside her, Zimmy was curled up, the light falling over her.

— Zimmy...

A hand reached out to her. Pale and soft. It was Gamma's, but Zimmy did not take it.

Anka found her own light. Ania, sat in the pile of toys with Gamma. In the corner, away from the light, another Zimmy, with her knees up to her chest.

— I don't understand... — Anka muttered.

— Do you remember when you and Zimmy helped that boy? — Gamma said. — This often happens to Zimmy...

— Which one is the real Zimmy? — Anka asked.

— Well... — Gamma said.

— Does there need to be a real one? — Ania asked.

She reached out a hand to her, but Anka ignored it. On her knees, she crawled to the Zimmy sat in the far corner of the room, in a din of dark and cold.

To her, Anka reached out her hand. Zimmy shuddered. The room folded in on itself, and static welled up again in every empty space in their bodies. The walls of a supply closet forced them together, knees against chests.

Zimmy bucked like a horse until they collapsed side by side in a clatter of shoes and wood. Dust settled on their clothes like droplets of water after the wave.

— You enjoy seeing into the ether, don't you? — Antimony asked, spitting fire-red hair out of her mouth.

— Does it look like I enjoy it?

Voices called their name in the room outside, but Antimony simply continued:

— I could feel it for just a moment. We were confused in the ether, and I could feel your thoughts, as you feel others'. It isn't like the nobodies or the hallucinations, is it? You enjoy it.

— I don't enjoy nothin'. It would just be stupid to shut it out. Might hear somethin' I need one day... Somethin' that I wouldn't be able to protect Gamma without.

— Like the word Omega?

— Aye.

— You could hone your power, Zimmy, just as Coyote taught me to do.

— No, I couldn't. Coyote's dead anyway.

— Then let me teach you.

— You just wanna teach me and Gamma everythin', doncha?

— I want to help you two.

— I can't have my cake an' eat it too, Carver. Can't hear nothin' without seein' those things too. Whitelegs and nobodies and dead people that ain't dead yet.

— Maybe you just need to close your eyes. The best seers are blind.

The door creaked open. In the moon-white glare, Gamma crammed herself inside and shut the door behind her. Zimmy squirmed in her embrace.

— Carver, get outta the damn closet!

— I ... can't.

— I dunno why we keep you around...

— (Zimmy, what happened?) — Gamma spoke into her mind.

— (Just lost my grip.)

— (It wasn't really about Katerina, no?)

— (No. She just made it worse.)

— (You don't like learning Polish?)

— (I'll do it if you tell me to. That ain't the problem...)

— (What's really wrong?)

— (Why can't we teach eachother?)

— (Zimmy...)

— (What!)

— (There's no world where I don't do this.)

— (What's that supposed to mean? Don't tell me Carver has been feedin' you some crap about fate and destiny.)

— (I mean ... you can't have your cake and eat it too. If Ania and Anka don't teach me English then...)

— (Then what? What's gonna happen? Nothin'. Nothin' has to happen.)

Gamma spoke aloud in English:

— We will die.

---

In the halls of the Court, one might not have noticed the world outside. The glimmering barrier over their world. The great tree that had shot up from the earth like Yggdrasil, heralding the end of the world. In the walls, all of this was away.

And in the halls of the Court, one might not have noticed what had changed within. Inside the minds of the four strange girls that happened to be walking them, on one peaceful evening, after a day of lessons.

— Anka, do you remember your first sleepover with us? — Gamma asked, to which Antimony nodded. — I never knew what happened to Zimmy. Why she was better even though it did not rain...

— Well...

Zimmy marched ahead of Antimony through the long and winding path home. The thick black dark had begun to well up in the corners of her eyes again, but she was happy.

Zimmy was happy.

For once, she had felt the Court not as it looked – as a machine for her damning; as the site of the resurrection of her every nightmare – but as it was against her skin, in her lungs, on her neck, in her blood. A fullness that began below her feet, deep in the ducts underground, and that rose up through the tunnels and halls, and stretched out from there into the sky and up to the limit of the atmosphere. She breathed deep, and she shuddered at the coolness of the air.

Antimony recognised this new life in her step. She had stood there with Gamma, so many times over, and seen it as the rain clouds grew dark overhead and poured over every surface they could see; poured into the cracks and the grates and the gaps in the doors.

As she had walked with Zimmy, she had wondered whether this affliction might not be so etherial after all, if so mundane a solution was waiting: to stop and feel it all; feel the air; feel the life; feel the shivers.

But Antimony was wiser than a thought like that. Coyote and Jones had taught her well enough. The ether was not something beyond the world, something unlike it; it was the most mundane thing of all. Every breath; every thought; every life; all of it swam in the ocean of the ether, and all of it beheld the waves.

At first, Gamma did not speak, but a small smile formed on her face and creased her weary eyes.

In the dormitory, in the bedroom, Gamma and Anka lay side-by-side while Ania washed Zimmy in the bathroom. For a moment, Antimony thought Gamma was asleep, her eyelids heavy and still.

Until, she spoke.

— Anka ... Do you think I could learn to use one of those fire stones too?

— ...I do.