Monachopsis | Chapter One: The Fall (1/2)

Madder had been inside Queensquare’s training chamber before, albeit only as a member of the audience. Perching in a wheelchair while other people drilled with practice clubs wasn’t really her idea of fun, but it was at least better than sitting around in her room. Or, worse, hobbling through the Queen’s flower gardens with a flotilla of nurses hovering at her elbow to make sure she didn’t hurt herself.

This morning, though, she picked her way through the sharp-edged columns to the center of the chamber with her own club in hand. It felt odd, the club, like it was made out of slick wax instead of wood; Madder supposed she had her still-healing nerve endings to thank for that. She hoped it would not interfere too much with her performance today, and she redoubled her grip on the club as the thought crossed her mind.

She would not let it interfere.

Trainer Sangria, the retired Bishop who oversaw the other pages in Madder’s unit, was waiting in the center of the chamber with a real Chessur stick balanced on her shoulder. Madder eyed it warily; it was longer and thinner than the practice club and made out of a polished black material that was, apparently, the remains of a bandersnatch’s thigh bone. She’d seen the sort of welts it left on those who didn’t get out of the way fast enough, but she’d never before been within hitting range of one.

“You’re late,” Trainer Sangria said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Madder said, dropping her gaze to hide a scowl. It seemed she was always late to everything as far as the inhabitants of Queensquare were concerned. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“No doubt you did,” Sangria replied, her face as expressionless as her voice. “Now. Show me what you know.”

“I—what?”

Madder looked up into a narrow-eyed sneer and flinched. “You must have gathered some small scrap of information when you watched us train before. Go on. Don’t fret. I don’t expect you to be good at it.” Sangria made a sharp motion with her free hand, and Madder swallowed her protests.

She hefted her club and made a few feeble attempts at imitating the fluid strikes she half-remembered from watching drills. It hurt; after the first few swings, her wrist locked up like a rusted hinge and refused to come loose again. An extra-wild swing almost ripped the club from her grasp altogether a few seconds later. Madder felt her cheeks burning as she stumbled to a standstill.

“Hm,” Sangria said, and then, a moment later, “you mustn’t cling to it so. It weakens you.”

“But if I don’t hold on tight—”

Sangria cut her off with a dismissive flap of her hand and lifted the Chessur stick from her shoulder. Madder retreated hastily, but Sangria didn’t seem interested in hitting her. Instead, she whirled the stick through the air, so fast that Madder couldn’t track its progress.

“These weapons are intended for use against bandersnatches,” Sangria said. Her arms never slowed, although her gaze was fixed on Madder’s. “They’re the fastest hunters on the mainland, and if you want to have a chance at surviving one, you must be faster. A tight grip means rigidity, and rigidity slows you down. Only when there is impact”—she snapped her stick to the left and it slammed into a pillar with an impressive crack!—“should you sacrifice speed for strength.”

As fast as she had begun, Sangria broke out of the drill and resumed her previous position, motionless and almost stiff-looking with the Chessur stick propped on her shoulder. She cocked an eyebrow at Madder. “Try again. Allow your grip to remain firm, but flexible.”

Madder obeyed, but all that happened was the practice club sliding out of her grasp at the peak of her first swing. Sangria let out an almost-inaudible sigh as the club clattered over the floor. “Retrieve it, Madder. Find a balance between too much and too little.”

Face stinging with embarrassment, Madder hurried after her club. It had scraped her palm when it flew out of her hand, and that stung even sharper than her blush. A quick glance showed her the first hints of blood, and she stifled a groan. She should’ve had the foresight to ask for a pair of gloves even if it was tradition to get your callouses started by doing your first weapons drill bare-handed.

Too late to turn back now, though.

Several more mishaps with the club and the beginning of a nasty blister on her right thumb later, Madder had figured out the right mix of strong grip and loose wrist to at least keep hold of her weapon, provided she didn’t move too fast.

“A drill,” Sangria announced, after another moment spent watching while Madder flailed around with the club. “The simplest: Imagine a clock-face in front of you. Strike from one to seven, then eleven to four, then nine to three and back again. Like so.” She demonstrated once, made her go on gesture, and then stared with narrowed eyes while Madder started the drill.

Sangria stopped her twice more to adjust the arrangement of Madder’s fingers and then to snap that the club wouldn’t bite her and she had no reason to swing it so politely, but after that she seemed content to stand aside while Madder repeated the four movements over and over again. Madder felt her sense of time slipping away after the first two dozen or repetitions; the steady burn in her palm and the faint hum of air moving between columns had a sort of numbing quality that made it difficult to focus on anything but motion.

(—boxes and boxes and boxes; she choked on the stale stench of cardboard and she wanted nothing more than to throw things—)

The ground lurched like it was trying to buck her off. She had a vague impression of her hand springing open and the club spinning away; for a few awful seconds, she reeled off balance in the training chamber and stomped across her bedroom to slam her hand against the headboard at the same time.

Then she lost her bearings altogether and the chamber floor swooped up to meet her. Her teeth rattled when her jaw met stone, and the other reality snapped like a rubber band stretched too thin. Madder sagged back into herself and shuddered. Her skin seemed to have been coated in a cold layer of invisible slime during her absence.

“Madder?” Sangria’s broad, dark face eclipsed Madder’s view of the ceiling, and Madder was gratified to see honest concern written over her features. Sangria had never looked that way at any of the other pages. Never mind that none of them were in the habit of falling over at random intervals. Madder smothered a gurgle of panicky laughter and fought to focus through the lingering haze.

It meant nothing. She was fine. Fine.

Sangria’s voice pulled her back to the present. “What happened?”

It took too long to remember how to speak. “Tripped,” Madder managed to spit out after a brief struggle with disobedient vocal cords. “’m fine.” That was a lie; the coating of slime migrated inward as she spoke, taking root under her skin and creeping through her muscles on cold, sticky legs. But she didn’t feel injured, and that was all that mattered for weapons training.

“You’re bleeding,” Sangria said. She reached for Madder’s wrist and lifted it to inspect her palm. “And—oh.”

Madder almost didn’t dare to look. The expression on Sangria’s face told her quite enough, but curiosity drove her to glance downward anyway. Her stomach rolled over and tried to force itself up her throat at the sight. A large chunk of skin had pulled away from the base of her thumb and now dangled from the center of her palm by a few thin chunks; she must have landed on it at just the wrong angle, or perhaps swinging the club had done more damage than she’d expected.

Blood dribbled from the wound and down her wrist, colder and stickier than Madder would’ve expected. The warm, nauseatingly sweet tang of blood drove away the lingering odor of cardboard. Sangria hauled Madder to her feet—Madder wobbled on legs that felt disconnected from the rest of her—and began to march her toward the training chamber’s exit.

“It’s fine,” Madder said. “It doesn’t hurt.” Now that she’d gotten past the initial shock, in fact, looking at it, made her feel a lot better; the slime under her skin began to evaporate, and the sensation of ants crawling through her body lessened. “And—it’s not as bad as it looks. I’ve lost a lot of skin, the past few months. Because of the frostbite.”

Granted, that had been a matter of dead layers sloughing off on their own, and it had never bled like this, and that had more or less stopped happening after the fourth month, but Sangria didn’t need to know any of that.

“You are not fine,” Sangria said. “You’ve just done yourself the worst first day injury I’ve ever had the misfortune to see, and you will not be returning to weapons training until you have fully healed from it, understand?”

They reached the exit, and Sangria kicked the door open without letting go of Madder, who nodded miserably. For months, she’d been looking forward to this; beginning to train with weapons meant she’d finally maybe start to belong in Queensquare, instead of being a strange, long-term guest waited on by a fleet of nurses and sitting on the sidelines while everyone else her age learned how to kill monsters. It had taken her four weeks to coax Healer Carmine into letting her try. She ought to have known she’d find some way to mess up her chance.

“Please,” Madder began weakly as Sangria steered her around a corner. “Please, I can just wrap it up and take care to disinfect it every day. I’ve got lots of stuff for that because of my foot, I’ve got more than enough for—please, ma’am, I’m really fine…”

Sangria clicked her tongue once, and that simple sound managed to convey more derision than any combination of words ever could. Madder tucked her injured hand against her side and let herself be silenced.