“So we keep you safe,” said Tanya firmly. “Our story is not
going to be the one that brings down the monomyth.”
“What?” I asked.
“Haven’t you heard the word before? The monomyth? Basic
pattern at the heart of all the other stories? Some people say it’s the hero’s
journey, but that’s too simplistic.”
“It’s too complicated, too,” interrupted Ayane. “The
monomyth is the story that’s managed to win. The one that beat up all the other
stories and sent them crying home to Mommy without their schoolbooks and lunch
money.”
Unpleasant realization dawned. “You’re talking about
reality.”
“Of course we are, dummy,” said Ayane, giving me a sidelong
look. “What, you thought that one story was somehow more real than all the
others, just because it’s the one that has the most people living in it? Shit,
if it worked that way, all the narratives would focus on quantity over quality,
and we’d be buried under something featuring rabbits. What we think of as
reality is just the tale type that took over longest ago. The others keep
fighting back.”
I stared at her as the snow fell all around us. I couldn’t
think of anything else to do.
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 410 (“Sleeping
Beauty”)
Status: ACTIVE
A pathway had been hacked through the briars choking the lobby.
Peering into the tangle of thorns and branches, Sloane could see the security
guards who had been on duty when Priya was smuggled inside. They were sleeping
soundly—or at least she hoped that they were sleeping. One of the guards had
blood on his collar, and from what she could see, those thorns weren’t being
too careful about where they grew. If his jugular had been pierced …
If the thorns had grown into a major artery, he was already
a dead man, and there was nothing she could do for him. Sloane crept along the
makeshift path until she could see out the door, wincing as wayward thorns dug
into the soles of her feet. Birdie had left two men guarding the sidewalk,
their sleekly tailored black suits making them look like they belonged at the
Bureau. Sloane didn’t recognize either one of them though … and that was a
good thing. She didn’t want to think about Birdie having too many people on the
inside.
“What are you doing there?”
The voice from behind her wasn’t familiar, but it was male,
and it was angry. Sloane stayed where she was, sinking a little deeper into her
stance as she braced herself.
“Did you not hear me, or are you stupid?” A heavy hand
landed on her shoulder.
Sloane moved.
Someone who had never seen her in the field couldn’t have
been blamed for thinking that a woman of her height and generally curvaceous
build would be slow, even ineffective in hand-to-hand combat. Anyone who
thought Sloane couldn’t fight would have been quickly disillusioned by watching
her in the lobby as she twisted, uncurled, and sprang.
Her fingers found her assailant’s wrist before she even
started to turn, pulling him forward as she rolled her weight onto one hip and
pivoted on her left foot, effectively flipping him over her shoulder into the
thorns. As soon as he fell, she was driving the heel of her right foot down on
his instep—not as effective a move as it would have been had she been wearing
shoes, but the combination of her weight driving down onto his boot and her
grip on his fingers left him briefly incapacitated from the pain. That was good
enough.
Sloane pushed back one more time before she drove her elbow
up into his jaw, snapping his head back into the thorns. This time he tried to
scream, only to find her right hand smashing his mouth shut while her left hand
gripped his nose and yanked his head hard to the side. There was a small,
almost inconsequential snapping sound, and the man stopped fighting.
“Asshole,” Sloane muttered, straightening up. Birdie would
realize that she was down a man soon; if they were patrolling the building
looking for people who hadn’t been caught by their Sleeping Beauty, they’d
probably be doing it in pairs. She needed to move.
He had a gun clipped to his waist. He’d been so sure that he
couldn’t possibly be overwhelmed by a lone woman that he hadn’t even bothered
to open his holster.
“Amateur asshole,” Sloane amended, and took the gun,
retreating with it back into the building. She needed backup, and she needed it
now.
“When’s the last time Adrianna got out of the wood?” I asked
suddenly.
Tanya stiffened. Ayane frowned. And Judi burst into a gale
of silent laughter, her hands moving in patterns I didn’t need interpreted for
me. I crossed my arms.
“You weren’t planning to tell me that she’d managed to
escape before, were you?” I demanded. “You were just going to let me think that
this was business as usual when you had a potentially open doorway. What’s her
deal?”
“Adrianna wants to replace the monomyth,” said Ayane finally,
earning herself a bitter glare from Tanya. She shrugged. “What? New girl knows
that something’s up, and it’s not like we can hide Princess Crazy-pants and her
world revision brigade forever.”
I frowned. “Wait—brigade? That implies that she has help.”
Judi’s hands flashed as she directed a pointed look at Tanya.
I turned. The other whiteout woman was red-cheeked and looked ashamed.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked softly, and my words
fell between us like snowflakes, one more layer of accusation and betrayal lain
at the foot of this damned, impossible forest. I couldn’t stay here much
longer. I wasn’t safe. I never had been.
“Most of the ones who go bad are sealed away for our own
protection,” said Tanya, choosing her words with care. “We lock them in the
mirrors. Sometimes they figure out a way to communicate despite their
situations, and they whisper in the ears of anyone who will listen. They reach
out. They … influence.”
I blinked at her, a piece of the endless puzzle of my
existence snapping into sudden clarity. “That’s where the magic mirror entered
the story, isn’t it? It was all simple poisons and jealousy once, until
suddenly there was real magic, and everything changed.”
“We didn’t mean to shift the narrative,” said Tanya.
“We never do,” I replied. “So every magic mirror is a Snow
White gone wrong. All of them, all the way back to the beginning?”
Tanya didn’t answer me, but Judi nodded, tugging Ayane’s
sleeve before her hands flashed and flew like milk-white birds. Ayane signed
something back, a frown on her face. Judi nodded. Ayane turned to me.
“Some of the mirrors are other stories, but most are ours,”
she said. “That was part of the codification process for our narrative.”
“And the Bureau doesn’t know.” I glanced desperately around.
The snow was still falling heavily, and between that and the black trunks of
the trees surrounding us, there was no way I’d be able to pick Adrianna out of
the wood. If she was coming, she was coming. “There’s something this major
about one of the most common narratives, and the Bureau doesn’t know.”
“There’s something major about
every
narrative that
the Bureau doesn’t know,” said Ayane. “That’s the nature of stories. No one
ever gets to know the entire thing. We just get to know the parts we have to
deal with right here, right now. Before they rip our throats out.”
The snow was falling even harder. I was starting to be
afraid—really afraid—that I was going to die here. I was starting to be even
more afraid that I wasn’t going to die at all.
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 410 (“Sleeping
Beauty”)
Status: ACTIVE
Sloane left bloody footprints through Dispatch, a clear sign
to Birdie and her minions that someone in the building was up and about. It
couldn’t be helped. She’d make too much noise if she put her boots back on, and
the first aid kit in the break room wasn’t extensive enough to stop the
bleeding. She kept her head down and moved quickly, her stolen gun held out in
front of her the way she’d seen a hundred action heroes hold their weapons. That
wasn’t her narrative. It was still pretty damn powerful in this modern world,
and maybe that would work for her. Maybe some kid was already dreaming up a
Cinderella remix with guerilla fighters in place of stepsisters, and she could
tap into that sweet vein of potential story.
It was funny, in a twisted sort of way. Sloane Winters—not
her original name, not by a long shot—had been with the Bureau longer than
anyone really knew, held in a permanent teenage dream by the story that didn’t
want to let her go. As long as she didn’t pour the poisoned cup for anyone,
time couldn’t touch her. That meant she’d had longer to practice her arts than
anyone ever wanted to give her credit for, and longer to learn how to feel the
edges of the narrative, what it was doing, what it was growing into. The war
fantasies of her childhood had matured into the spy dreams of her second
adolescence, and now the male power games of the modern day. They were all part
of the narrative, if she dug down deep enough, and if she was willing to let
them finally have her.
Sloane liked being her own woman. She liked being alive even
more. So she crept through the building and thought of ninjas, of barbarians,
of anything that might give her just that little extra added edge.
One of Birdie’s men was in the hall between Dispatch and the
bullpen. Sloane didn’t hesitate before whipping her stolen gun hard against the
side of his head and then, when he crumpled into an insensate heap, pulling the
knife from inside one of her striped stockings and opening his throat in a
gleaming ear-to-ear smile.
Something giggled behind her. She turned to see the
tabby-striped cat slink out of the shadows, tail held down low and an
all-too-human grin distorting otherwise perfectly animal features. The cat—or
Cat, as was more appropriate—couldn’t take its eyes off Sloane’s latest kill.
“Hello, kitty,” she said softly, crouching down. “I was
hoping I’d run into you. Do you want to make a deal with me?”
The Cat giggled again, slinking closer still.
Sloane struck like a snake, her hand grasping the back of
the Cat’s neck and pulling it close to her before it could respond. She held it
in front of her face, forcing it to look at her, and said, “I’ll kill them for
you, if you’ll loan me your stripes for just a little while. Think about it. These
men are just like the ones who brought you here. They don’t care about the tea
parties or the topiary. They don’t care about Alice. Poor little Alice, all
alone with no one to take care of her. You don’t want that, do you?”
The Cheshire Cat blinked, smile fading as the thought percolated
through its simple feline mind. If it was here, and Alice was not here, then
Alice was unprotected. An unprotected Alice was an Alice in danger, because
Alices were foolish things that never knew how fragile they really were. An
unprotected Alice might get
hurt
. The Cat’s ears flattened against its
skull, and it made a small, querulous sound.
“Give me your stripes, and we can save her,” said Sloane. “All
you need to do is trust me.”
The Cat meowed. Sloane sighed, looking put-upon.
“Yes, I swear by the red
and
the white that I’ll give
them back to you. I don’t need to be a Cheshire Wicked Stepsister, I just need
to be a Cheshire girl who isn’t dead.” She tucked her gun into her waistband
and lifted the hand that wasn’t holding the Cat, turning her palm outward. “You
can trust me, or you can leave Alice to the jabberwocks and borogroves. It’s up
to you.”
The Cat lashed its tail. The Cat growled, deep and low and
dangerous in its throat. And the Cat slashed its claws across Sloane’s palm,
cutting deep into the flesh. She hissed and dropped the Cat, falling from her
crouch onto her ass. She hissed again when her butt hit the floor, somehow
managing to swallow the urge to yell. Blood welled up in the scratches the Cat
had left across her palm—and then shadow-gray stripes began to slither up her
arm like snakes, spreading until they covered her entire body.
Sloane watched the march of stripes with wide, solemn eyes,
looking momentarily like an Alice herself: younger than she should have been,
older than any child should ever need to be. Then she shook off her surprise
and bowed her head to the Cat, which was grinning again as it licked her blood
from its claws.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now hide yourself. These aren’t
people that you want to have interfering with you.”
The Cat yawned, displaying a full array of razor-sharp
teeth. Then it vanished, leaving nothing behind it but the smile.
“I’ll probably regret losing sight of you later, you little
creep,” murmured Sloane. She stood, watching her own shadow-striped arm as it
began to blur into the background.
Once she was on her feet she froze, holding perfectly still
while the Cat’s borrowed camouflage worked its magic. Less than a minute later
she turned, and a Sloane-shaped shadow slunk toward the bullpen, leaving only
the dead man on the floor to mark her passing.
Someone tugged on my arm. I turned to find Judi standing too
close for comfort, a pleading expression in her overly blue eyes. She moved her
hands in a quick, almost perfunctory motion. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t speak ASL.”
Judi frowned and moved her hands again.
“Neither did most of the girls when they first came here,”
said Ayane. “I was a translator—amusement parks, concerts. Judi beat me to the
wood by almost twenty years, and before I arrived, she was lucky if anyone
realized she was talking.”
Judi flipped her off. I laughed.
“Okay,
that
sign I know,” I said.
“It’s pretty universal,” Ayane agreed. She signed something back
to Judi, who nodded. Ayane frowned. This time, it took longer for her to sign
her message—whatever that message was. “I’m sort of stuck here. As a
translator, it was my job to relay what my clients were saying, regardless of
how I felt about it. As a Snow White, I’m supposed to listen to the wood before
I listen to the other girls.”