Chapter 8

The impact knocked the scream out of my mouth as something dragged my leg between the iron bars and into the darkness beyond.

All the fizzy warmth evaporated instantly as my pulse shot up. My free leg banged into the gate, and I scrambled for purchase as the metal burned into my thigh.

The creature attached to the hand holding me in place appeared between the bars, casting light on its face. At first, it appeared to be a woman missing all her teeth, except four dull yellow fangs. The more she moved, the more I realized she was covered in a layer of black fur, like a wolf or a small bear. Her body seemed twisted, like whatever had combined her with the animal had done a poor job.

I felt her second hand come down on top of my foot, lifting my leg to her face and sniffing like an animal.

At first, I thought she might have been curious, but when she looked up, her eyes were wild, and her mouth twisted into a wicked smile.

Her grip tightened against my shin and the arch of my foot as she pulled each like she wanted to snap my leg in half where the ankle met the calf.

When trying to wriggle free didn’t work, I tried to sit up and reach through the bar, but the angle I was trapped in held me back.

That’s when the pain started, the burn of my skin tightening over bone before splitting under the pressure, followed by my connective tissue snapped apart in rapid succession.

I must have been screaming the whole time. Surely, I was, but I don’t remember doing it. I only remember the pain and the fear. It wasn’t until that last echoing crack of my foot ripping free that I became aware of the rawness in my throat.

My leg flopped down in front of me, and the woman held my disembodied foot aloft, letting it catch in the moonlight, before extending a long reptilian tongue. She swirled it around in the open top of my ankle before bringing the bloody tongue back into her mouth.

Petrified, I watched it unfold in silence until I heard footsteps behind me. Someone appeared over me, brandishing a long stick through the bars.

“Eat shit, creepy turd fucker!” Arlie screamed, jabbing the monster in the face with the stick. “I’ll fuck your mother in the ass! Drop it!”

As startled as I was, she froze, holding my foot out in front of her.

“I’ll chew off your dad’s dick and puke it down your throat! Give that back!” She jabbed her again. “I’ll rip off your face and sew it to my ass so the only thing you can see are my monster shits, you creepy fuckface!”

I blinked up at her, distracted by the sheer confidence with which she’d crafted insults I never would have thought to combine. I couldn’t help but wonder if I should be afraid of Arlie as well.

With another forceful jab, the monster dropped my foot and retreated into the darkness.

“Move, you stupid bitch!” Arlie yelled.

It took me a second to realize she was talking to me.

Remembering where I was, I scooted back, pulling my destroyed leg through the bar and out of the creepy woman’s reach.

Arlie shot forward. And at first, I thought she was actually intending to make good on some of her insane promises. But then she dropped the stick and reached through the bars, grabbing my foot in time before the monster could take it with her as she disappeared into the underbrush.

“Oh my god.” I panted, turning to Arlie. “Where the hell did all of that come from?”

She scoffed, chucking my foot at my face. “I just saved you, Tits. Don’t be an ungrateful whore.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. But also, what the fuck?”

She rolled her eyes. “What would you have preferred I say? ‘Pretty please with cherries on top?’ You guys told me to use my big girl words.”

“I guess I just wasn’t expecting you to paint such a . . . unique word picture.”

“Well, next time I’m saving some idiot from a creepy monster, I’ll think of something more lyrical.”

We laughed, and something struck me.

“Arlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we friends?”

She frowned. “Of course we are, Tits. Get with the fucking program.”

I was surprised to feel a small bloom of satisfaction behind my sternum before I looked down at my severed foot, and the warm feeling hissed into wet ashes.

“Is there a doctor around here?”

“Blair and Tom went to get help, so I guess we’ll find out.”

“What the hell was that thing?” I asked, staring into the darkness beyond the gate.

Arlie grimaced. “Hell if I know. Sure, they said not to leave campus, but that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Running footsteps approached us, and I was surprised to find Professor Faun nudging through a group of gawking students.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, feeling an unmistakable wave of embarrassment engulf me.

Why did he, of all people, always have a front-row seat to my humiliation?

He ignored my question. “What the hell happened?”

“There was this crazy bitch in the trees, and she pulled her leg through the bars,” Arlie said, picking up my detached foot and waving it around.

“A . . . crazy . . . what?”

“Yeah, she was, like, kind of a werewolf but not in a sexy way.”

Professor Faun pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jeez, okay, you should go back to your dorm.”

“No, I have to help.”

Ignoring her, he turned toward the growing audience, his words echoing across the small campus. “Everyone needs to get back to their rooms. Now.”

That seemed to startle the rubberneckers, including Arlie, who handed my foot off to Professor Faun and patted me on the shoulder.

“Feel better, champ?” she called as she jogged toward the Custos dorm.

“I can probably stand,” I insisted as I pushed myself up onto my leg stump.

Before I could make any progress, I felt his arms lifting me against his chest, the action barely registering on his face as he walked in the opposite direction of the retreating crowd.

“This is faster.”

“Do you think it can be fixed?” I asked, trying to figure out our destination.

His silence confirmed my worst fear.

My eyes traveled to my foot, which was clutched in his hands. It looked almost normal, except it wasn’t attached to me. My soles were dark with dirt, and fragments of grass clung to the wet skin between my toes. The more I looked at it, the more I realized I could still feel the way his long fingers curled against the delicate skin.

I looked away, afraid my stomach would heave from the dread alone. And I realized he was still wearing his regular clothes, but they were rumpled, like he’d fallen asleep at his desk.

“Did we wake you up?”

“It’s my job.”

“To carry limbless students to undisclosed locations?”

He cleared his throat. “I’ve done worse things.”

“Oh, really?”

His eyes finally met mine, but his expression remained flat.

“Hold this for me.”

He shook my foot, and I took it from him. We approached the massive tree on the edge of the campus, and I opened my mouth to ask what we were doing until he knocked on the ancient, crackled bark.

“Is the tree going to answer?” I whispered.

He shushed me as I heard inexplicable rustling inside of the wood.

A rectangular sliver of light appeared on the trunk's surface, revealing a door among the rough lines of the bark.

Surprised, I pressed back into his chest as he stepped out of the way of the swinging door.

My heart skipped as I realized what I’d done, but if he’d registered the contact, he was unbothered by it.

Following his eyes, I found the groundskeeper standing in the doorway, one of the large luminescent bugs sitting on a wooden ledge over her head.

Professor Faun sighed. “We have a situation.”

She nodded and turned, walking down a tightly coiled staircase twisting into the ground below.

He followed, having to hunch over me in the small space. The enveloping closeness of him had me on edge, my body stiffening to appear uninterested in touching him. Even with everything going on, I couldn’t get over the anxious worry he would assume I was savoring the contact.

The stairs opened onto a tiny round room with a small bed, fireplace, and table. Thick, knotting roots lined the walls. Along the perimeter of the room was a wire clothesline, but instead of garments, rotting bodies of mice were strung up by their tails. The place didn’t smell, though. As the flesh peeled away from their bodies, it disintegrated into a thin layer of ash, leaving only the bones to fall into metal trays below.

Professor Faun sat me in a wooden rocking chair by the fire, and the groundskeeper kneeled in front of me to inspect the damage. Now that the professor wasn’t holding me, I found it easier to focus.

“Is there anything we can do, Stacy?” Professor Faun asked, taking the seat next to me.

She didn’t respond, taking my foot from my hand and inspecting it along with my leg.

I turned to him. “Stacy?”

“Well, her real name is Anastasia, but that’s a bit of a mouthful.”

She scowled before pushing herself to her feet. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

“Sorry,” I said, my face heating in shame.

“I’m sorry, Stace. Do you suddenly enjoy talking to the students?”

It seemed like he was trying to play diplomat, but I didn’t like that. Stacy was right, after all.

“No, really, I’m sorry. That definitely was rude.”

“I’m aware,” she huffed, not bothering to turn and look at me as she pawed through a trunk near the bed. “What happened?”

“I was a little . . . Well, uh, I wasn’t thinking right. I followed one of those little glowing mice to the fence because I wanted to see where it was going. But then there was this sort of woman thing waiting on the other side, and she tore off my foot and stuck her creepy long tongue into the hole.”

That had Stacy going still. Slowly, she stood and finally turned to face me. “She tasted your blood?”

Feeling a shift in the room, I tensed. “Is that bad?”

To my surprise, Stacy let out an odd bark of a laugh and turned back to the trunk. “Ephraim is going to love this.”

I looked over and found Professor Faun pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Is this bad news?”

“In a word,” he said, looking up over his knuckles at me, “yes.”

“There’s a very good reason yearlings aren’t allowed to leave campus,” Stacy chided.

A hot lick of indignation rose inside me.

“I didn’t leave campus. How was I supposed to know something was going to reach in and grab me? No one thought to mention that possibility.” I turned my head to Professor Faun, anger bubbling within me.

Stacy picked up the conversation, her words sneering. “Do you really think anyone would want to be here if they knew what lurked in this new world you call home? You can’t even begin to imagine what’s out there and what they can do to you.”

“Well, I’m finding out now, and I’m not exactly thrilled about it.”

“But you don’t want to leave.”

“Who says?”

Stacy looked around. “I don’t see any black doors in here.”

“What?”

Professor Faun piped up. “The black door will appear anytime you genuinely consider leaving.”

“That’s creepy.”

“But also very telling,” she said.

“Fine, I don’t. I would like to have my leg fixed, though.”

“Oh, honey bunny, your foot is never going to be fixed.”

My drunk brain finally drudged up the memories from hours before. Once you’re injured, there’s no going back.

Stacy pulled out a long, thick ribbon from the trunk and closed it, grunting as she stooped in front of me again. She took my leg in hand and rolled my pants up out of the way.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Shit, indeed.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Hobble.”

Groaning, I leaned back in the chair, rubbing my hands against my face.

“What’s so bad about hobbling?” I peeked between my fingers to find Stacy shooting me a ghoulish grin. “I do it all the time. It’s a great way to clear the line in the dining hall.”

“Don’t taunt her,” Professor Faun chided.

I crossed my arms and sighed. “No, weirdly, I think it’s making me feel better.”

“Lighthearted torment is the best medicine.” Stacy wheezed as she positioned my foot on the floor and wrapped it in a crisscross formation.

We all watched in silence before I got up the nerve to ask, “What’s the deal with the mice?”

“None of your business.”

“We might as well tell her. She’s already seen enough of them.” Professor Faun sighed.

I raised an eyebrow. “Has no one ever asked?”

“To a lot of people, the mice seem to be just another weird creature lurking around purgatory.” Stacy said, the fire popping, shifting the shadows on her face as she tended to my leg. “But the mice are so much more than that. They’re technically not even mice, much less alive in the conventional use of the term.”

“Is that why they can die?” I asked, pointing to the tiny bodies dangling around us.

“The mice are what makes all of this possible. They keep everyone here from becoming like the creatures outside the gates. While they’re not alive in the strictest sense of the word, they are, in essence, life itself.”

“Is that why Ephraim was drinking that weird tea when I first got here?”

“We all drink it, the faculty and older students, that is. You yearlings have been alive recently enough that the nasty side effects of dying aren’t going to hit you for a few more years. That’s why it’s bad that she’s tasted your blood. You’ve still got a bit of that life coursing through you, and the things out there would do anything to get a taste.”

“Marvelous.” I sighed as she tightened the ribbon around my shin. “More things to add to the list, being hunted and also needing to catch mice to keep from losing my mind.”

“If it helps, they’re easy to catch,” she said, plucking out one of her eyelashes with a wet little pop before placing it in her palm and laying her hand on the floor.

From the knotted roots, a glowing mouse appeared, scampering enthusiastically into her palm to grab up the hair. It fed the hair into its mouth, chewing greedily until it was gone, none the wiser that Stacy was bringing her fingers up around it like a cage.

She lifted the creature and held it out to me, close enough that I could see the stars in its eyes again. And then she got to her feet and walked over to the drying line where an empty clip sat, waiting.

Opening her palm, she picked the creature up by its tail and clipped it upside down next to its fallen comrades. It squirmed for a few seconds, it’s light dimming, before it finally went still and snuffed out.

“Jeez,” I said, not sure how to feel.

“You mind it more than they do.” Stacy shrugged her twisted shoulders. “Anyway, you should probably leave.”

“Already?”

She blinked. “You want a bedtime story or something?”

Professor Faun stood, offering me his hand, which I didn’t take. I pushed myself up onto the foot, feeling the strain of the wrapping as I tried to find my balance.

“How is it?” he asked.

I didn’t answer, trying to get a feel for it. The oddest part was that not only did it not hurt, but I could still feel my foot perfectly, as if nothing had happened. But when I tried to step forward, I leaned into the foot wrong and felt my ankle sliding against itself, throwing me off balance.

I’d barely registered the fall before Professor Faun caught me, weaving our arms together to take the weight off my foot.

“You’ll get used to it.”

I wasn’t so sure of that, but I was already being led back toward the stairs. My foot wasn’t very useful, forcing me to lean into Professor Faun, whether I wanted to or not.

Halfway up the stairs, I managed to stop just long enough to crouch and call back, “Thanks, Stacy!”

I didn’t get an answer as Professor Faun continued leading me up the steps and back into the night—or, rather, morning air. A warm purple glow replaced the sifting pool of stars, highlighting the crisp new leaves, which had regrown and withered overnight.

The growing light made me even more self-conscious of my contact with Professor Faun, as if the only thing that kept him from realizing how I felt was poor lighting. My reactiveness felt preoccupied and juvenile in contrast to his disinterest. Even an inkling of disgust might have provided feedback, but I received no such recognition.

“Is this why you told me not to follow the mice?” I asked once we were far enough from the tree that I assumed he wouldn’t shush me again.

He grinned, the expression not reaching his eyes. “Why didn’t you announce that you’d read your note?”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

“Well, since it’s that bit of information that got my leg torn off, I’d say honesty’s the best policy now, yeah?”

Something, potentially annoyance, momentarily twisted his features. “You can’t blame this on me.”

“You really expect me not to investigate after being told something like that? Get a clue.”

“I’m going to be charitable and assume it’s the traumatizing evening and not your overall intellect responsible for what you’re saying.”

We were in front of my dorm, and I was expecting him to leave me at the door.

“You don’t have to . . .”

I was anxious to be away from him so I could wrap my head around everything, but he was already letting himself into my room.

“I’m not getting lambasted by Stacy when she finds you sleeping in the lobby because you’re being hardheaded.”

Luckily, my room wasn’t exceptionally far away. But, unfortunately, he insisted on getting me all the way to my bed.

Somehow, this man seeing the inside of my dorm was almost the worst part of the night. I’d strewn half the wardrobe over the floor, trying to find something party appropriate. My OM objects were sitting on my desk next to some half-eaten food I’d smuggled from the dining hall. It felt odd that he would see the only indicators of who I was. I didn’t like that it let him know almost as much about me as I was privy to myself. But his eyes didn’t linger on the clutter as he deposited me onto my bed.

“Thanks,” I said, hoping he would maintain his robotic professionalism and leave.

But as he straightened up, his eyes finally faltered to the misshapen pile of yarn on the desk.

“What are you going to make?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my words coming out harsher and more abrupt than I’d expected.

“Oh,” he said before pausing and then left without another word.

When the door closed, I did two things almost immediately, take a whole breath for the first time in hours and burst into tears.

Fear, embarrassment, and confusion had been fighting for dominance, which ended up hitting me all at once. The only thing that snapped me out of it was a burst of moaning erupting from the wall on the other side of my desk. I was so surprised I jumped, feeling a laugh bubble out of me as I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

The loud sex sounds and thumping was enough to shake me loose from my misery and made me realize I was exhausted.

So, I pulled off my sweater and pants, accidentally knocking my foot free from the ribbon and sending it bouncing across the red carpet.

“Fantastic.” I breathed, collapsing onto my bed and pulling my pillow over my face to muffle the exclamations from the other room.

To my utter shock, I fell asleep, which was a blissful reprieve from the events of the day.

***

When I woke up, it was midday, and—eternally suffering christ—the intimate sounds hadn’t faltered. I considered banging on the wall, but I was still mildly terrified of Lindy, so I didn’t bother.

A stack of papers was waiting for me on the floor, and a fan of notes had been jammed into my window. I crawled to the foot of my bed to grab the notes first, finding them all written in the same familiar scrawl.

Are you dead?

Wait, I mean like, really dead—whatever the word for it is here. You know what I mean.

What happened?

Are you mad that I didn’t come with you?

I think Tom is into you. It would be super convenient if you were excited about that information.

Can you even walk now?

Laughing, I set the notes aside, sliding onto the floor and crawling over to the more official pile of papers waiting for me next to the door.

Some of it were generic announcements of clubs, events, and dining hall specials. But the extra thick envelope at the bottom made my stomach drop.

Ephraim wanted to speak with me.