Expect no kindnesses

Taliette knelt before the mousehole and stared at it. It was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. It was not dark or light, it had no colour or depth, it was just... gone, in a way that made no sense but made the purest, most perfect sense at the same time. It was a hollow blankness with no clutter, no emotion, no thought, just a hunger to be filled with something - anything.

"Someone cut your heart out too," she whispered to it. It shifted a little as though it heard her.

She closed her eyes and leaned down. Her hair was tied up, so her forehead touched the surface first. The Mousehole resisted her, pressing back, and then opened and pulled her in.

It closed over her head, a pool of black oil. There was no light, nothing to touch, only pressure on her face and ears and a silence like the snow. A crazed panic rose in her chest. Buried alive. Buried head-first in a hole. A thousand years in a hole. She kicked her feet and twisted and tried to yank herself back out again. She could feel her legs up above struggling in the free air, but she could not reach them. They were a hundred thousand miles away in another world. One of her arms sank in, then the other as she slid deeper down. No way to hold on, nothing to hold onto, just down. She gasped a breath and felt nothing, no taste of the air, no coldness on her tongue. She screamed and fought, scratched at the softness, and heard nothing.

Stop! She took a moment to compose herself, no expression. There was no one to see down here, but still, it wouldn't do to let Gintas see her legs flailing in the air. He was up there now, staring at her bottom. Dignity is taken, not gifted, mother would have said.

She wriggled her shoulders and found she could inch onward, hands up close to her face, using her elbows for leverage. She felt the darkness squeeze her legs together. She was right inside now, between the threads of the world, like a bug rolled up in a carpet. There was no turning around. No such thing as "around". She sensed that very clearly, there was only forward, and pressure.

“It goes one way only,” Gintas had said. “Once you’re in, you can’t ever back up.”.

The way in front was blocked, but she felt it opening up beneath her, bending down. She followed it, curving her body, leaning into the way, pressing her knees and her elbows into the soft stuff. It was so quiet. She could hear the sound of the blood squishing in her ears.

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"The men who made these holes made them straight and wide to get somewhere, but everything shrinks and twists as it gets older," Gintas had said. "A grown man can't fit, so you have to go."

She promised herself she would slap Gintas round the chops when she got out if her heart would allow it.

If she got out. She half giggled at the thought. If she got out.

The hole grew suddenly narrower. Her heart beat hard as the darkness squeezed down on her shoulders. She exhaled fully and pulled herself in. The mousehole helped to push her forward. It braced against her legs, keeping her from slipping back.

"Don’t get stuck," he had said. "If you get stuck, no one can come for you. I will have no choice but to close up the entrance and you will remain down there."

She kicked against the hole’s resistance, imagining she was kicking Gintas’ face. The darkness gripped her legs. She braced against it and forced a way in, further and further.

"Bam, Bam," she said. "Kick you in the face. Right in the face. Mash it all up." She stifled a giggle.

“Death is a kindness afforded to us by the world,” he had said. “You will be going outside of the world. Expect no kindnesses. You will not rot. You will not starve. You will not bleed out." He had taken her chin between his thumb and forefinger and looked in her eyes. "Do not get stuck.”

And then the darkness lifted and there was a brightness, but it was not the brightness of the sun, and she saw, as though through a fog, just below her, a great plain full of shadow men, silently churning, and in the heart of the plain, a black gate, broken, and atop the gate...

She blinked and the darkness returned, but in her mind she still saw it. A vision of bones and lace, clutching a rose to its ruined chest.

She shook her head to clear it. Stupid vision.

The mousehole bent upwards, steeper and steeper and she was climbing and working her body against the resistance.

Her heart whispered to her. Don’t get your knees trapped under your body. Don’t let your arms get pinned. You are long and thin, you are a worm, you are a snake, you are a skein of yarn. You are a stream of light lofting over the abyss. No time, no space. You are eternity unravelling...

Stupid heart. She wasn’t a worm, she was a spider. Or maybe she was a rat, slinking through a tunnel, ready to bite something.

The mousehole became very tight, squeezing her shoulders and her chest, and she kicked and wriggled, moving forward inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat, squeezing through the tiny hole, and there was light, a single bright star a thousand miles distant that swelled into a pale moon, a flower of light, opening to the heavens, and suddenly she slid free, lying on her back on a wooden platform high on the far side of the garden. The moon was out, and the stars shone above her.

She gasped for clean air. Rage mingled with triumph and elation, and she was laughing and coughing, and tears were bright in her eyes.

Gintas stood over her, and he was grinning too, and the heady scent of the rose garden washed over her body like cool water. She had hardly gone any distance at all.

"You’ll do," he said, and he took her by the hand.