Translocation isn’t like stepping through a portal; reality goes one way, you go the other.

  The momentum of my own punch rips me off my feet and hurls me across a carpet of wet autumn leaves, skidding and staggering to catch my ruined balance, reeling wide beneath a skeletal canopy and iron-dark skies. A murder of crows scatter from the branches and take to the wing, cawing their chorus of cruel complaints. I almost go arse-over-tit, shoes slipping in mulch and mud. Time for the regular humiliation of eating dirt, another pitiful trip to the ground for a useless cripple who will never walk straight again, magical girl or not. May as well give up, use a wheelchair, accept I shouldn’t even try. Stamp in frustration, go on; at least I’ll go down hard.

  I stamp — and my prosthetic leg obeys like never before, an iron-hard piston into the soggy leaves and saturated ground. The knee locks tight on that crucial split-second, catches me with ease. No cracked jaw, no mouthful of dirt, no soiled coat and ruined t-shirt.

  Pull myself upright with a gasp. Cold air rushes into my lungs. Dry skin drinks the humid chill.

  Tree trunks stand silent on every side, bark slick with rainwater and coated in moss. Leaden skies press down heavy, offended crows wheeling against the mottled grey. Traffic murmurs in the distance. Raindrop drizzle spots the shoulders of my coat.

  Disorientation takes me by the throat.

  A split-second of vertigo, a fleeting sense of unreality, a long spell of deja vu’s darkly shrouded cousin. Is this forest real? Have I been here before, perhaps in a dream? Is this a trick or a trap, a test of my senses? I was on Luna, beneath silvered sunlight and the yawn-wide void beyond, but now I’m here, and I do not recall moving from A to B. Transition achieved itself without time’s intervention. Even bound by Dream-God contract and bolstered with magic’s mysteries, the human body is not best pleased to find itself relocated without the experience of motion. My particular human body feels swirling-sick, fighting for steady breath, struggling to breathe at all.

  And then a fat raindrop lands directly on my nose.

  Blink, click my tongue, wipe the water on my sleeve. That’s more like it, too mundane for a dream. Cold and grey and dreary as the grave.

  Back on English soil. Luna to Oxford, via the no-stopping service.

  At least I sure hope this is Oxford, or I’m going to be doing an awful lot of walking.

  I turn to face the general direction from which I emerged. But there’s no convenient portal sucking itself shut in mid-air, no sliver-sight of the moon’s silver clarity, no other magical girls sprawled in the mud at my feet. I brace for the inevitable; somebody will surely appear on my tail. Nerys will materialise on a bough to grin at my foolishness like an oiled-up Cheshire Cat. Or perhaps Grimgrave will peek around a tree trunk like a snow-dust pixie.

  Raindrops patter on wet leaves, catching in my hair, dusting my cheeks. Cold air creeps inside my open coat. Crows settle down on distant branches.

  Thirty seconds. A minute more. I can’t count. But nothing happens.

  “Right.” Sighing doesn’t make me feel better. “So much for all that ‘one of us’.”

  No reason to be disappointed. No matter what those girls said, I’m not their responsibility, and they’re not mine. Grimgrave’s words meant nothing, same as everyone else in my life. Everyone except Willow.

  Fifty feet to my left — past a tangle of trees, through the undergrowth, across the mat of wet-slick leaves — a line of black railings stand guard, concrete and asphalt lurking beyond. On my right the little woodland copse thins out, gives way to rolling lawns bisected by winding pathways, attended by benches going mold-green with time and damp.

  “Bravo, Octavia,” I hiss at myself. “You’ve landed God-alone-knows where. Couldn’t you have put yourself a little closer to home?”

  Raise my fist, try again.

  Bad idea.

  Searing pain stabs from abdomen to middle back, scraping past my spine. The memory of Scarlet’s sword, hot as the moment she ran me through.

  “Ahhh!” I cry out, bite down, curl up, clutch my belly, stagger forward to keep my balance. Tears in my eyes, panting for breath. Am I coming apart?

  The pain recedes slowly, like a pulled muscle.

  Straighten back up. Blink away the tears.

  “Great,” I hiss. “Just great.”

  Translocation has a cost. Magic, energy, ‘girl-juice’, and I’ve used up my meagre reserves. My body understands even if I don’t, tells me push no further, else I’ll drain the tank like I did yesterday. This time I’ll pass all the way out, unconscious and alone in a place where everyone wants me dead and gone. Or perhaps I’ll just drown in a quarter-inch of rainwater. A fitting indignity to end my stupidity.

  And I do feel stupid. Should I have stayed on the moon, gone along with Signal’s plan? I could have accepted her help, or asked Grimgrave to come with me alone, or just waited a few more hours until I wasn’t running on fumes. Instead I’m all by myself, out of options, standing in the mud.

  No. Regret is pointless, and also wrong. Willow is down here, just as trapped and just as alone.

  I am going to put myself back at her side, whatever the cost.

  “Stop panicking,” I snap at myself. “Don’t be such a child. Think this through, be logical. Figure out where you are. Willow needs you to be calm. For Willow.”

  I take out my phone, confirm the date, breathe a sigh of relief. Friday the 15th of August, 2025; I haven’t lost a week of time in the lunar Dreamland overlap.

  Strong connection too. Five whole bars. I tap the map icon—

  “ … no, no!”

  —and realise my mistake a second too late.

  I jab my thumb into the power button, bring up the menu to turn off the phone, but by then the map is already open, zoomed in on England, swooping down to Oxford, locked on to wherever I am standing. I hammer for ‘switch off device’, miss once with shaking fingers, hit the target second try.

  The phone obeys with a cheery little splash screen, then goes blank.

  “Shit!” A few crows shift in the branches. “Shit. Octavia, you idiot!”

  Dream Control already know my phone number. GCHQ are probably tracking the device.

  “Alright, alright, okay. I can fix this. I can fix it.” I’m going cold inside. I can’t fix it, and I can’t run. “Don’t do that again. Don’t do that again! You have to move. Get away from this spot. Right now. Move!”

  I head for the railings, the sound of traffic, the looming titans of tall buildings; but I hang well back, lurk in the trees, squint through the thick grey drizzle.

  Beyond the railings lies a main road thin with cars. Suburban terraces squat on the far side, a shuttered pub on one corner, a few vacants further down, a scattering of tower blocks straight and tall over their shoulders.

  Don’t recognise any of this. Am I even in Oxford?

  Left or right is pure coin-toss; I pick right, trudge through the trees parallel to the black iron barrier, until both end sudden and sharp. A tarmac path appears out of the rain, cutting through soggy grass. I stare for a moment, dumbfounded and slow, then yank the hood of my coat up with shaking hands, pull it down low to hide what I can.

  A public park entrance. There’s even a sign, blighted with lichen and water stains.

  Wotton Park; somehow I’ve translocated to the inside of Wotton park, in the north west of the Oxford New Expanded Metropolitan Area. A familiar enough place, seen from an angle I never knew, though I haven’t been here in a long time.

  About thirty minutes walk from home. Poor aim, but perhaps not so bad for a first try.

  Now all I need to do is walk the streets of Oxford unrecognised, after my face was plastered all over the evening news last night. Britain’s most wanted, out in the open, right under the public’s collective nose. I adjust my hair inside my hood, try to conceal a little of my scar. Double-check the glove on my prosthetic hand, make sure I’m showing no machine. Hopefully a smart young woman in her best coat, clean and proper, looks nothing like the blood-drenched goblin from the footage.

  Out the park gates, onto the pavement beside the road. Heart in my throat from the very first step; halfway down the street my head feels light, pulse like a fire-hose in my throat. Sweat glues my t-shirt to my back, mouth gone dry as sandpaper. I avert my face from passing cars, tread steady and straight, though my left leg has turned to rubber.

  How do the able-bodied keep moving with two legs like this? If it weren’t for my prosthetic I’d fall flat on my face.

  At least I lucked into a rainy day, with few enough people on the streets — a woman walking her dog on the opposite pavement, a pair of cyclists racing past, a trio of young men in hi-vis builder’s vests with their own hoods up, shoulders hunched against the weather.

  Walk past them all, don’t veer aside. Back straight, head held high. Nothing wrong here.

  England doesn’t feel real.

  The scent of rain on concrete, the damp-draped bare hedgerows and the dripping trees, the road-gunk runoff sluicing along the gutter. The people I pass waiting at a bus stop, two old ladies and one middle-aged man, shadows lit by the side-glow from an advert on the shelter. The lights at a zebra crossing, red, red, red, then the click of the button as I press it with the sleeve of my coat. Damp air on my face. Sky a silent blanket, woven from cold lead.

  Known these things all my life, but they feel like a dream.

  “It’s not a dream,” I whisper in the warm pocket of my hood. “Pull yourself together. Concentrate. Concentrate.”

  Home is thirty minutes away. Down the main road from Wotton Park, across the street at the lights, then south into the tangle of terraces and towers, so typical of the eastern end of the ONEMA.

  The Oxford New Expanded Metropolitan Area. A bland and functional name applied far after the fact, as if giving such chaos a neat designation could erase the conditions under which it had been born. The O-N-E-M-A, spelled out letter by letter if you wish to be pointlessly polite, pronounced ‘ony-maa’ by those with pretensions of locality, twisted into ‘enema’ if you’re really from here. Often just Oxford, shameless theft from an older city long choked to death. ‘Ox’ if you’re being rough and tumble, ‘Oxy’ if you’re drunk and feeling the love, ‘Doxy’ if you want to be clever.

  Forty one years ago, in the early days after Richard Harding demolished the walls between the waking world and the Dreamlands, over five million refugees poured out from London’s twitching corpse. The entire London Metropolitan Area emptied out, along with a good chunk of the countryside. Gravesend to Epping to Watford to Windsor to Woking to Redhill, everything inside the desperate cordon that would later be formalised as the London Exclusion Zone. Somewhere between one-point-five to two million additional people did not become refugees, because they were too busy being corpses.

  Plenty of those refugees left the memory of London forever, flowing into the resettlement programs up north, departing for Scotland or Wales, or dribbling down to the south coast, into the now-bloated urban strip from Southampton to Brighton, the iron plate on England’s underbelly. A few stayed close to the casket as the Wall went up, those who couldn’t bear to leave her behind; the government still fast-tracks them into military service if they so wish, for a life spent watching the London Wall.

  But the majority of Londoners ended up right here in Oxford, when their legs or their courage or their resources ran out.

  My parents were both ex-Londoners, too young to remember the dead city, just old enough to recall the trauma of leaving. But my grandmother grew up there. In rare unguarded moments she mentions places long-lost to the dream. Her little flat in Peckham, the girls’ school she attended as a teenager, an eel and pie shop she would visit every Wednesday night.

  She never speaks about the flight. Few do. There’s books and films and television shows, but it’s hard to believe a word of those.

  Oxford needed new homes for all those displaced people; the decade of shanty towns and tent cities and UN aid packages is long past, but the wounds cut so deep, the scars won’t fade for a century. Outside the old core, Oxford is a city of quick-laid long-crumbling concrete, a web of cracked asphalt and tight lanes, broken promises laid across the remains of village and farmland. The west end of the city is a bit nicer, all rows of suburban houses and the new business core around the Oxford Parliament, furthest from the roiling corpse just over the horizon. The east is Oxford’s true face, home to the majority of her new population, toothy with high-rise tower blocks and crusted by endless terraces, crammed full of London’s orphans.

  Ugly, scarred, and half-forgotten. Home to me, dream or not.

  Even with all the cameras.

  I would love to pretend that I’d never thought about them much before, because that’s what we must all pretend. Forget that we are watched by ten million glassy eyes, the sensory organs of a creature with no brain and no body and no need to rest, no desire and no hunger and no capacity for reason. Because if we stop pretending, England will go mad.

  CCTV cameras outside pubs and shops, ‘public safety’ cameras in their upside-down domes of reinforced plastic, doorbell cameras on one in five houses, all keeping one eye peeled for my face, my clothes, my gait, my scent. Of course they’re not all plugged into the same network; there is no master room in the heart of GCHQ, no round-the-clock thousand-strong battalion of agents observing every corner of Oxford, let alone all of Britain.

  But every frame is forever, recorded on tapes and hard drives and solid state storage, fed into server farms and datacenters, combed by algorithms and bloodless machines and dead-eyed minimum-wage workers on the far side of the world, recombined into new patterns no single mind could fathom.

  I might not get spotted right away, but that’s not the purpose. The panopticon doesn’t need to watch you, just make you feel watched. And in watching, your every movement is more grist for the mill, more fodder for the machine that watches, more connections in a brain that is not a brain. Every footstep, every glance, every twitch, each tightens the net another micron, until we can all be strangled together.

  But now they feel different. For the first time in my life, I can no longer hide in plain sight. I am a fugitive and a criminal; I must start thinking like one.

  Off the main roads and into Oxford’s calcified guts, I pick the most disused alleyways, the dingiest streets, the dimmest passes beneath the most dilapidated tower blocks. The usual public information and propaganda posters are thinner and older and more often vandalised down here; ‘Report Strange Dreams’ stands untouched, but the Trio have been graffitied with slasher smiles and cartoon breasts. Some brave soul has torn down a Cross of St. George, stamped it into a gutter, and pissed on the remains.

  Most of these places I would never have trodden before, at least not on a clear day, and never at night. But the cold damp drizzle keeps the worst indoors, and I’m a magical girl now. What mundane impediments must I concern myself with?

  Police. Everywhere.

  Thick as flies on week-old carrion. They appear before I can think to turn around and pick another route, and then it’s too late, too suspicious to change.

  Squad cars wind their way through tangled streets, crawling slow past rain-slick pavements, headlights glinting off concrete walls. Officers in riot gear gather on corners, unhurried but alert, faces tired behind rain-flecked plastic visors. Uniforms knock on doors, speak to those inside; most open, some don’t, but nobody shows anything. Even in these fallen times, you still can’t say ‘papers, please’ in England, unless it’s Dream Control doing the asking. They’re out in force too — Section Special officers lurk among the mundane police, head-to-toe in black body armour, sporting fluted tubes of burnished metal like rifles, experiments straight from the Dream Institute. Will I light up like a beacon if they point those tubes at me? The red-marked flash of mundane firearm units lurk at the end of Cordwain & Down streets, make me stop and stare and turn away; the main road that cuts by the new council estate is blocked off by a full-on checkpoint, officers shining flashlights into the few passing cars, waving bovine faces past.

  A pair of drones loiter high in the sky, buzzing dots at the edge of hearing, just below the ceiling of leaden cloud.

  None of this makes sense. They told the public I’m a Dreamer. I could be on the other side of the wall of sleep by now, or right in the centre of London’s corpse, or sunning myself on a deserted Australian beach. A Dreamer could not be compelled back to English rain and English cold. According to them I am a thing to be caught by my attachments, not by physical anchors in the waking world.

  But here they are, hunting all the same, in the one place I might actually be.

  Somebody in charge knows the truth. Dream Control? ‘John Smith’? The Trio of Albion?

  I clench my prosthetic fist in my coat pocket as every marked car rolls by, expecting the squeal of tires and the shouts of ‘stop right there!’ I cross the street to avoid little scrums of armoured officers, ready to break and run at the slightest sound. I duck and turn and weave about, avoiding parked police vans and roadblocks and Section Special teams waving electronic devices up and down the concrete towers. I have never done anything like this before, never so much as avoided a teacher in school. My heart is going to burst in my chest, my throat is going to betray me, the slightest difference in my prosthetic gait will give me away. I’m so sure, I’m so certain, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.

  But the officers don’t give a second glance. The firearm teams pass by. The Section Specials with their darkened visors look right through me.

  I’m always one half-step aside, one step behind, one alleyway down from the man being arrested, one pavement across from the curious crowd watching the officers knock on a door. I pick new directions faster than my feet can turn. Shoulders back, hood down, hands deep. Walk brisk and clean and don’t look up. Never look back. Lose myself in the rain.

  By some miracle, it works. Perhaps it’s the cold and dreary day, numbing senses and noses alike. Perhaps it’s pure luck, about to run out.

  Home draws near; police presence grows thin. The four familiar tower blocks of Crowden Close loom from the rain-streaked murk.

  Far behind the towers, horizon glows like oil on water, the edge of the clouds turned to prismatic glass and the underside of shadow-streaked ocean deeps. London’s corpse, reflected in the distant sky. Stronger and brighter than usual, despite or because of the terrible weather. A bad omen for most; good sign for a dream-criminal?

  I turn the final corner into the main road alongside the tower blocks, lined with parked cars and dying hedgerows.

  Not until I’m almost home do I question what the hell I’m doing.

  The street outside the towers looks no different to usual, but I’m not that kind of fool. Dream Control is likely watching every entrance, waiting for me to show my face. Likely they want me to go inside first, corner myself in a dead end. Then they’ll call the Trio and sit back to watch the fireworks. Or will they try to take me themselves, with guns and tasers and nets?

  I watch the windows, spot at least a couple of people moving inside, one person cooking at their oven. They haven’t evacuated the buildings, so they’ll blame me for any ‘collateral damage’.

  More importantly, why am I even here? Why am I trying to go home? Shouldn’t I be heading straight for Willow?

  Because I’m a fugitive. I need my stuff — my laptop, my running blade, my spare batteries, at least one change of clothes. That would be the sensible answer, but it’s also a weaselly little lie. I’ve spent half an hour route-marching through Oxford and dodging police; my clothes are damp with sweat, my head pounds like a broken vein, and the stump of my right thigh aches very badly.

  I just want to see my bedroom, lie down and close my eyes, pretend the last twenty-four hours never happened.

  “Octavia,” I hiss at myself. “Don’t be foolish.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  But I do need my stuff.

  Police don’t know every route in and out of the Crowden Towers, same as every other housing estate in Oxford.

  An alleyway between the third and fourth towers was closed off years ago, both ends boarded over with sheets of plywood and corrugated metal, stamped with Oxford City Council signs declaring this area was due to be resurfaced. The metal has since rusted and the plywood is black with rot; there’s a big flap you can lift up and use to slip inside, if you’re willing to step through stagnant puddles more rat urine than water.

  I make for the secret way in, blocked from the street by the jumble of a children’s playground. Scurrying through the gap takes but a moment, and then I’m out of sight, straightening up in the shadows, inside the reeking no-man’s land between the pair of towers. Nothing here but standing water, broken bottles, used condoms. All except a tiny corpse flung against one wall.

  A dead zoog, blood still fresh around the snout, deep bite wounds on the throat. Killed by a cat. Not even eaten.

  I point at it, avert my eyes, no idea why. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I … I can’t pause to bury you. They might already be after me. And there’s nowhere … I don’t have a shovel or … I’m just sorry, okay?”

  None of this is okay.

  On through the shadows, head low and hood lower, to where the barrier at the other end has fallen into complete disrepair. I turn sideways, manoeuvre through the debris, and then I’m home free, out in the open, in the big courtyard between the four towers, with the concrete slab pathways and the dead flowerbeds and the things that were meant to be trees. No dark figures lurk on the far side of the courtyard, no men in suits watch from open doorways, no tell-tale shadows hunch in the bare bushes. The tower blocks frame a patch of solid grey sky, a crucible choked with cold lead. A tiny speck floats dark against the backdrop; one of the drones I spotted earlier, heading north.

  The back doors of tower number one open into darkness, bulbs dead for years. My left hand is clammy with sweat when I grab the handle and swing the door wide, but there’s nobody in the courtyard, nobody calling out my name, nobody—

  A whip-streak of fur slips out as I open the door, slinking past my ankles.

  “Ahh!”

  I swallow a scream, hold a whole-body shiver, feel like an absolute fool.

  A cat. A huge off-grey tom, tail like a jungle vine, fur thin with age, body all lank and bony, like a little scarecrow without enough straw. No collar around his neck, but he’s too well-fed for a stray. A popular local mouser perhaps, though I’ve never seen him around before. He pauses a few feet past me, then turns his head and looks right back, leading with his eyes — alert, intelligent, far too wide.

  “What?” I hiss.

  He looks incredulous, as if I shouldn’t be here.

  Then he startles, the way cats do when they hear a sound not meant for human ears. He turns and hurries away, unconcerned by the drizzling rain.

  Just a cat, or something more? I pause and wait as long as I dare, half-in and half-out the door, braced for the wail of sirens or the distant buzz of a drone, or the sky-flash and lightning strike of magical girls dropping on my head.

  Thirty seconds, sixty seconds. This time I count.

  Three minutes pass, nothing but rain. My hip starts to cramp, but I ignore the pain, wait another two. Still nothing. I put the cat from my mind, slip into the tower block, hurry to the stairs; I’m not going to risk getting trapped in the lift. Climbing three flights up is always a mild challenge, just enough to worsen the ache in the stump of my right thigh.

  Third floor. Concrete corridor, frosted glass, litter in one corner. The door to flat number 13 is sensibly shut. Nobody in sight.

  My key is out of my purse and in my hand before I reach the door. Prosthetic fingers would shake if they were flesh. I slide inside as quick as I can, then close the door behind me, twisting the handle to avert a click from the latch.

  Home?

  All the lights are off. A grey-dappled glow peers from the kitchen and the tiny sitting room, to my left and my right. The end of the little hallway is thick with shadows, all the other doors closed tight.

  Push back my hood, shake the rain off my coat. Start to remove my shoes, then stop. Lifelong reflex.

  “ … gran?” I say. Louder. “Gran? Are you home? It’s me. Gran?”

  Silence.

  “Don’t just stand here,” I hiss. “You’re not a child. Do what you came for, then get out. Willow is waiting. Willow needs you. Stop being so useless. Move. Move. Now.”

  I creep down the hallway and into the shadows, breaking all the rules about shoes on carpet. I open the final door on the right.

  My bedroom’s been ransacked.

  Bed stripped, mattress sliced down the middle, stuffing spewed all over the bare bed frame; my pillow and my tiny collection of plushies have been subjected to the same indignity, cut open and gutted, spent shells tossed aside. The chest of drawers has been emptied out onto the middle of the floor, drawers themselves smashed apart, clothes dumped in a big pile; some of my underwear lies off to one side, I don’t want to know why. Curtains have been torn down, split along the seams, peeled back to get at the inside, naked windows bathing the wreckage in cold grey light. The few posters I’ve had up since I was little have all been ripped away and cast down — the dinosaur one, the one from that factory game, the how-it-works cut-away of a Challenger MBT. The cupboard door is off the hinges, contents strewn forth, all my childhood toys, all the random mechanical bric-a-brac, the half-finished repair projects I’ve accumulated over the years. My desk has been dismantled, turned upside down, the back taken off, to rule out hidden compartments. All my books have been torn apart, shaken down for contraband, tossed in a corner.

  My laptop, my bare-bones desktop tower, my kindle, my second-hand jail-broken console — all gone. They’ve taken the diary I keep out in the open, all my notebooks, all my designs, all my work, and who knows what else.

  None of this matters.

  I cross the violated aftermath of my bedroom. Don’t shake. Don’t whimper. Don’t give them the satisfaction. I squeeze into the cupboard. Dream Control have already done half my job for me, I don’t need to move the cardboard boxes out of the way like usual. I crouch down — not as easy as it looks with a prosthetic leg — and peel up the rear corner of carpet. The loose floorboard requires pressure on precisely two spots to make it move. Modern law enforcement is not trained in cold war methods, too analogue for our age. I set the floorboard aside, reach into the gap.

  My real computer is right here, a battered old Thinkpad with almost every component replaced or upgraded, wrapped in a waterproof Faraday bag. My real diary is in there too, written in a cypher.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, hugging the laptop to my chest, though I don’t know who I’m thanking. “Thank you.”

  No time for sentimentality. Not now, not yet. Only self-control.

  I dig out a sports bag from the wreckage, fill it with the essentials. Laptop and diary, spare batteries and chargers for my prosthetics. They’ve opened my tool kit and dumped it out, so I scoop up what I can, add that too. A tub of resin and superglue, a handful of spare parts. The running blade attachment for my leg is gone; I snort at the mental image of some Dream Control agent opening my spare limb in a bomb disposal suit.

  Can’t afford to take any projects, at least not the sentimental ones — the radio I repaired by hand when I was little, the ‘robot’ dog which I put back together and reprogrammed, the three gutted desktop computers I used to use for experiments and learning. Whoever tossed my bedroom intentionally broke the LED lamp with the extra colour range, and my custom mechanical keyboard has been snapped in two. My two old furbies are intact, along with the software hiding in their guts. I throw them in the bag.

  Not much space for clothes. A couple of shirts and a pair of long skirts, some underwear, another jumper—

  “Ew! What the … ”

  A wet patch, down one side of the pile of clothes. It reeks of cat piss.

  Stare for a moment, a twist in my chest. The insult burns, but I cannot lose my temper here and now.

  I zip up the sports bag, try to stand tall, lift it to my shoulder. Not too heavy, not for a magical girl. All I need now is to reach Willow, and everything will be alright.

  Is this goodbye? Goodbye home, goodbye Oxford, goodbye England?

  Suddenly I can’t move. Can’t bear to step away. Can’t stop the tears thickening in my eyes. The magical girls on the moon told me everything will go back to how it was before, once I transform, but that doesn’t feel real. How can any of this be taken back? How can I just pretend this didn’t happen? I can’t believe them, can I? Can’t risk that trust. They haven’t come to help me, haven’t come to fetch me. They were all lying. Probably Nerys too.

  Luna isn’t home either. I’m all alone. Except for Willow.

  A soft click echoes from the far end of the hallway. Footsteps slow and steady plod up to my open bedroom door.

  “Octavia,” says my grandmother.

  Tears stop before I turn. She always has such a frown for children’s tears, makes you ashamed to cry.

  My grandmother, Phyliss Lambert, the woman who has raised me since the death of my parents, looks the same as always, tough as an old boot with a little mold around the sole. Iron-grey perm like a helmet crouched over a sagging face, wrinkled and liver-spotted before her time, tiny bright eyes trapped behind thick glasses, lips pursed tight in a narrow line. She’s put on weight over the last decade, plus water retention in her lower legs and ankles. But she’s still upright and firm, despite the walking stick in one hand.

  “Gran … ” I rasp. Clear my throat. Swallow my tears.

  Gran shakes her head, opens her mouth with a dry click. “I tried my best with you. I really did.”

  “I’m not a Dreamer. Gran, I’m not a Dreamer. It’s all lies.”

  Her lips tighten, an upside-down smile, neither acceptance nor denial. She nods at what’s left of my bedroom. “We used to have lawyers for things like this. Time was, police couldn’t turn over a house without a warrant. Police couldn’t lock you in a room and keep you there without good cause.” She sighs, an old tree creaking in the wind. “Then again, police used to beat confessions out of people. Bastards never change.”

  My eyes go wide, my mouth hangs open. I’ve never heard my Grandmother speak like that before, not a bad word against anybody in power. And certainly no ‘bastards’.

  “Gran?”

  “They told me you killed two men,” she grumbles. “It’s all over the telly, but that’s not where I got it from. They told me themselves, face to face.”

  “Who? Who told you?”

  Gran almost smiles, a disgusted curl of her upper lip. “Stupid boys playing dress up. Two Dream Control boys in ties, with a whole bloody troop of those monkey-besuited soldiers behind them, armed with a mess of ridiculous trombones. Waved their machines up and down every corner of the flat, they did. Ruined this room. That’s a good mattress they’ve butchered, and I mean to lodge a complaint, at least to have that closet door replaced.”

  “Gran … ” I almost smile too. “They won’t pay you for the door.”

  “Mmhmm,” she grunts, unamused. “They told me you killed two men. Is that true?”

  “Section Special officers. They shot me first. Really, they did. They did, Gran.”

  Gran frowns too. “You look alright, for a girl who got shot.”

  “I’m not a Dreamer. I’m not. And I’m not lying, I wouldn’t lie about this. Why would I lie? My life is over, I—”

  “Calm down,” she grunts. “Your life isn’t over, girl, stop being hysterical. And I know you’re not lying. You’ve always been a terrible liar. It shows on your face.”

  “ … it … it does? You’ve never said that before.”

  “There’s a lot I’ve never said to you before.” She takes a deep breath, straightens herself up. “I always knew you were a bit queer in the head. The way you expressed yourself. The way you … all of it. Always knew you’d end up like this. I tried my best.”

  “Gran, I’m not a Dreamer, I’m a magical girl.”

  Her frown deepens. “For England?”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s … it’s hard to explain. And they’re keeping it off the news, lying about it, lying about me. There’s so much I didn’t know, before yesterday. It’s … I can’t— I can’t stay, I have to—”

  Gran turns half-away, sagging face framed by shadows. “I’ll have to call them, to tell them you’ve been here. I can’t keep that a secret, not at my age.”

  My stomach drops. “Gran, no—”

  “Not until, oh, ten or fifteen minutes after you’ve left, of course. Have you been eating?”

  “Yes, actually, I—”

  “You’ll want a cup of tea in you.” She turns away fully, swings her walking stick out, voice receding into the hallway. “Wherever you’re off to, that’ll set you right. Come along, girl.”

  I say a silent goodbye to my bedroom, the off-cream walls and scratchy brown carpet, all early-ONEMA standard. But it was mine. These old tower blocks do have their advantages, cool in summer, warm-ish in winter, half-decent sound insulation between floors. People turn their noses up at these old titans, but they’re good machines for living.

  My grandmother has already made it to the kitchen. She may be old, but she can scoot when she wants. For a heartbeat I consider passing on by without a word, heading straight for the front door; my grandmother and I have never seen eye-to-eye, and even now the way she speaks to me makes acid rise in my throat. But the woman did raise me, and I might never see her again.

  Our kitchen is an awkward space, narrow and cramped, same as all these flats, just a stretch of countertops either side of the sink and the oven, all beneath a wide window looking out over Oxford’s rooftops. Lino floor, scuffed skirting board, battered microwave in one corner, a line of cabinets opposite. We usually eat in the sitting room, but Gran insists we keep a little table in here, two chairs with barely any room to sit.

  Gran doesn’t switch the lights on. She shuffles over to the kettle, lit by dreary rain-haze from outdoors, grey-on-grey on her wrinkled face. She shoots a disapproving glance at my shoes, but says nothing — another first.

  “Put that bag down,” she says. “Unless you’re leaving already.”

  “R-right.” I put the bag down and move to help her with the tea, but she turns one shoulder to block me. “Gran?”

  “This might be the last time I make you a cup of tea,” she says, eyes pointing anywhere but my face. “Sit yourself down.”

  I sit down at the little table, do as I’m told, automatic. My gran fetches two mugs from the cupboard, teabags from the tin.

  “You’re keeping your coat on too?” she says. “In your own home?”

  Almost shrug, then stop myself. Gran doesn’t like careless shrugging. “It’s not my home anymore, is it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she grumbles.

  “I’m not.”

  Gran stands still as a statue, weight on her walking stick, staring at the electric kettle as it boils. I don’t know where to put my hands, or what to say to make any of this better. My own kitchen feels like a memory I never really knew. The light, the scent, the taste of the air, it’s all so dull and dead, after the certainty of anger and the strange clarity of the moon. I’m so far away from myself, mired in the past.

  “Your mother was like this too, you know,” Gran says.

  My left eye goes so wide it feels like it’s bulging from my face. Even my right tries to join in, lid flexing, echo of pain in my scar. “ … wh-what?”

  Gran shoots me a dark look. “Not ‘what’. ‘Pardon’.”

  “Pardon,” I sigh. “Gran, you can’t just say that and not explain. What do you mean, mum was like this too? Like what?”

  She sighs, more heavily than I’ve ever heard from her before. The kettle finishes boiling, water bubbling along inside, switches itself off with a click. She pours two cups of tea, bags floating in dark water, steam rising from the mugs.

  “What I mean,” she says, “is that you take after her. Your mother was a very difficult teenager, not exactly the same as you, but close enough. When she was a little girl, she was so sweet, and she grew up into a sensible young woman eventually.” Gran bangs the kettle back down. “But my God, she was a nasty teen. Secretive and paranoid. Argumentative and abrasive. Doubting and chafing against every little thing. She was miserable for no reason, then hyperactive for the same. We had such terrible rows, her and I. The things she got up to.” Gran shakes her head, staring out of the window. “She ran away from home in a terrible strop once, though it was only for a single night. I assumed she was staying with a friend, like she so often did. She had enough of them wrapped around her little finger, a whole gaggle of them who’d do anything for her. But the ‘friend’ that night was a boy. Your father. He convinced her to come home again, but not to apologise. Tch. Smart man, your father was. I always liked him.”

  Gran trails off, staring into the grey sky beyond the window, then shoots me a frown.

  “Put your tongue away, girl.”

  I close my mouth. Open it again. “You’ve never told me a word of this before.”

  “It wasn’t any of your business to know,” she grumbles, stirring the tea with slow precision. I look down at my gloved hands, trying to twist thin memories of my mother in new directions. Gran fumbles the teaspoon, drops it on the countertop, takes another from the silverware drawer, spoons the teabags out of the mugs; with such low brewing time it’ll be very weak tea, but I can’t even raise my eyes right now, let alone care. “Besides,” she adds with an odd tremor in her voice. “You didn’t need any additional encouragement to be difficult in your own way.”

  She carries one mug to the table, puts it down in front of me, goes back for her own. She sits down opposite, slowly and carefully, with a little grunt as she takes the weight off her walking stick.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “What do I do with it now?”

  She puts her chin in one hand and stares out of the window, across the shadowed rooftops, beneath the ceiling of dark grey clouds. The rain is starting to pick up again, turning the air to dense haze.

  “I’m not quite sure,” she says. “Because you are your mother’s daughter, I think. You are all I have left of her. Whatever you are, whatever your proclivities that I’ve tried to discourage, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve become, this is my fault.”

  “Gran, no.” I sigh. “It’s not your fault, don’t be like that. This was pure chance. Willow and I, we got caught up in that bombing. There was a magical girl, and the police, they didn’t believe me, it was all so— I didn’t have a choice— I—”

  “Shhhhh. Shhhh.” She reaches over the table and pats the back of my hand, shaking her head.

  I expect more — her usual, admonishment, explanation, insistence. But it simply doesn’t come. She withdraws her hand, picks up her mug, stares into the tea as she takes a careful exploratory sip. Her eyes flicker to me, then down at my untouched mug, prompting me to be polite and drink up.

  One sip wrinkles my nose. Peppermint.

  She knows I hate peppermint tea. Sharp, astringent, like drinking perfume; not even any caffeine. This batch tastes worse than her usual brand, dry and bitter and sweet all at once. Even on what may be the last time we ever talk, my grandmother still cannot resist the desire to shape me in her own direction.

  But I drink anyway, several polite sips. Because she’s my gran, she raised me, and none of this is her fault.

  “Where did you spend last night?” she asks slowly.

  Shake my head. Sip again. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. And I … I probably shouldn’t say, come to think of it.”

  “Try me.” She sighs, small and sharp. “I won’t get any of your friends in trouble, I can promise that.”

  “What friends?”

  Gran tuts, shakes her head. “Your friends, Octavia. Friends.”

  My turn to sigh, just as small and just as sharp. “Gran, I’ve tried to tell you so many times. I don’t have any friends. Nobody except Willow—”

  “That girl. I knew it. You stayed with her, did you?”

  “No. Gran, Willow’s in hospital! She got hurt, in the bombing. That’s why—”

  Why I’ve come back. Where I’m going next. Do you know that already, Gran? I cover my paranoia with a sigh and a sip. The tea tastes worse with every mouthful. I can barely get it down.

  Gran waits.

  “I didn’t stay with Willow,” I finish.

  “Mmhmm,” she grunts. “Then where, if not with her?”

  Even the colour of this tea doesn’t match her usual brand, oily and dark. “Gran, are you fishing for something to give Dream Control?”

  “Huh.” She laughs without pleasure. “I’m ‘fishing’ for plausible deniability. I asked, you refused to answer, and then I don’t have to lie to them.”

  “Oh.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes, one I’ve never seen before. “I see. I mean, I think I do.”

  “Mmhmm. Where were you last night, then?”

  “On the moon.”

  She frowns. “That certainly will confuse them. And I’ll forgive you for lying to me, under the circumstances.”

  “Thank you,” I murmur.

  I’m not lying; I want to shout it at her. I’ve been to the moon, to the hideout for a magical girl terrorist cell led by a zoog Dream-God. But I keep my lips shut, fill my mouth with more tea. Still disgusting.

  Gran shakes her head slowly. “This is all my fault, and don’t you say otherwise. I raised you, I had responsibility for you. And I should have kept you away from that girl.”

  “Willow? Gran, she—”

  “The very same. I never liked her. I’ve always been clear about that. And not just her, the parents too, there’s something off about that whole family.”

  “Gran.”

  “But mostly her. Something about her just isn’t right, something I could never put my finger on—”

  “Gran—”

  “—but I knew it was there. I knew it. I can tell. I might be an old Londoner, but I’m not blind or deaf yet. That girl is all wrong, no matter the prim and prissy front she puts up. She’s very pretty, isn’t she? And that’s half the problem, preening like a—”

  “Gran!”

  She shakes her head harder. “I’m not talking about you and her, whatever it is that you two … you know.”

  My face flushes, mortified heat in my cheeks. My eyes feel wet, head full of steel wool. “Gran, I’m not— we— it’s— Willow and I don’t—”

  She taps the tabletop with a fingertip. “I don’t want to know. I never wanted to know. The less anybody knows, the less attention from the H&H people.”

  “You— you never— never said—”

  “Because you were very good at keeping it under wraps. And it’s not as if they could arrest you for it, just pay you more attention, just … mm.” She waves a hand, dismissing all my secrets.

  Can’t meet her eyes. She knew all along? Knew what, suspected what? The things Willow and I have whispered to each other in private? The secret touches and unspoken promises? The giggles and caresses and my hands locked within Willow’s? I force a deep breath, but my lungs feel tight, I can barely fill them halfway. I stare out of the window, at the grey skies to the far horizon; a black dot hovers high up and far away, another drone.

  “I’m not a homosexual,” I whisper. “Willow and I, what we’ve done, it’s not … ”

  Silence. Gran sips her tea.

  “I’m not!” I snap.

  “Dream Control already had a file on you, from when you were little. We always knew that. The extra attention was the last thing you needed. And besides, it doesn’t matter now. I never liked Willow, and now she’s done this to you. Being right gets me nowhere.”

  My jaw tightens so hard my teeth creak. “Willow had nothing to do with this.”

  To my incredible surprise, she stops. Takes a sip of tea. Sighs slowly, as if trying to control herself. My grandmother’s keen-edged tongue, stilled by her own choice, all her usual sharp edges sanded down and softened out.

  “Where are you going to go next?” she says. “Back to ‘the moon’?”

  “I need to get Willow from hospital,” I say. “She needs me.” My head feels like it’s spinning. “But I think perhaps … ”

  Paranoia and indecision gang up to still my tongue. What will I do when I reach the hospital? Punch my way through a hundred Section Special officers? Fight the Trio to rescue Willow? I haven’t thought this through; I can’t even begin. But I have nowhere else to go, nobody else to call on, except my departed parents.

  Perhaps I’ll go visit them, though I don’t say that out loud.

  Wind-caught raindrops patter against the window panes. My grandmother folds both hands around her mug, a woman made of iron and salt, skinned in leather.

  “There will always be a place for you here, Octavia. I don’t care what they say you are.”

  “You’ll forget all of this.”

  She squints. “Mm?”

  “Apparently that’s how it works. I told you, I’m a magical girl now. The first time I transform, everything I did since yesterday will be forgotten. Everyone will just … ” I shrug. “Forget.”

  She takes a long sip from her tea. My face burns again, because she doesn’t believe a word I’ve just said.

  One last sip for me too, just to be polite.

  “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, Gran. But thank you.” I put my tea down, rise to my feet. “I’ll … I’ll … ”

  My left knee gives way.

  Head spinning, kitchen swirling, pulse sluggish as tar in my throat. Left arm and leg feel like jelly, muscles gone soft as melted butter, eyelids heavy as lead. Only my prosthetic limbs retain their strength and clarity, scalpels slicing through thick fog. I lurch for balance, almost lose it all, have to grab the edge of the table with both hands, left arm shaking with effort, left fingers refusing to grip. My right anchors me hard, makes the table creak.

  Can’t breathe, no air in my lungs. Stomach churns like a lightning storm.

  My grandmother watches, still as stone.

  “ … the … tea,” I croak. “You … drugged … ”

  Suddenly she seems her age, a tiny shrunken woman cringing behind the narrow barrier of the table. She swallows, wrinkled throat bobbing.

  “I am not going to lose another difficult girl.”

  I rear upright, fighting for breath; bad decision, the edges of my vision throbbing black. Whatever she put in the tea, it’s fast — sapping energy from my muscles, melting my thoughts, lighting a fire-pit in my stomach. It burns my guts to carbonised flesh; I can smell roast pork.

  “Octavia,” Gran says. “Just sit back down. They promised—”

  Stagger away, reeling from the table. Crack my hip off the kitchen counter, but I barely feel the impact.

  “—they wouldn’t hurt you, if I bring you in like this. Octavia, you mustn’t fight. You mustn’t fight them when they arrive. Do you understand? You need to sit down, or lie down. I’m going to call them, but not until you sit back down—”

  Get my head over the sink. Stomach contracts, hard enough to break my ribs.

  “Octavia!” Gran snaps, chair squealing back as she gets to her feet. “Don’t you dare stick your fingers down your throat! They’ll kill you, girl! I’m trying to—”

  Vomit surges up, a magma-flow of pain. I heave into the sink, spewing a slush of half-digested breakfast, a few slivers of surviving bacon swimming in soupy chyme dyed dark by tea and coffee. Gran grabs my prosthetic arm, tries to pull me away. But she’s an old lady and I’m a magical girl; when I retch and heave again, I buck so hard it sends her staggering, clattering back into a chair.

  The second wave is blood. A crimson mess thick with clot-chunks and flaps of stomach lining splatters up the sides of the sink, stains the wall, dapples the window.

  The third contraction is so hard I feel like I’m going to die, invert my entire digestive system, vomit my whole self up.

  Whatever Dream Control gave her to slip in my tea, it was not a sedative.

  I heave for breath, clutching the edge of the sink, lips dripping with blood, eyes blinded by tears. A terrible burning sensation eats at my guts, as if a wave of stomach acid has breached into my abdominal cavity. Pain grows, core awash in fire, tearing a scream from my throat.

  But then it starts to ebb, dragging down in difficult waves. My body is knitting itself back together inside, the one true benefit of being a magical girl.

  I’m probably not dead. But I can’t stay here to find out.

  Pull myself upright, wipe my face on my sleeve. Stagger away from the sink, try to keep my feet.

  My grandmother is slumped in her chair, clutching her walking stick in both hands. Wide-eyed, white-faced, mouth hanging open. Never seen her like this before, either. A day for firsts. Not every day your own grandmother tries to kill you.

  “I … Octavia, I … I didn’t … I didn’t know— they gave me powder, told me it was to make you sleep—”

  “I don’t care!” I roar at her, spraying blood.

  I stagger past the table and lash out with my prosthetic, at the mug with the poisoned tea. I hit it so hard it bounces off the wall, splashing tainted peppermint up the paint. The mug rebounds, hits on the floor, shatters into a dozen fragments. The handle goes spinning past; I stomp on it with my prosthetic foot, crush it into dust.

  Grabbing the strap of my sports bag is easy enough, but hefting it onto my shoulder almost defeats my left knee. My prosthetic leg pulls double duty; my prosthetic arm is all the strength I need.

  Haul myself upright, lurch for the door.

  “Octavia!” my Gran cries out. “Please, I was only trying to bring you home!”

  I pause. Look back. She shrinks into her chair.

  “You don’t understand anything,” I hiss. “You never did. And I was a fool to trust you.”

  Three seconds later I’m out of the flat, staggering down a cold concrete corridor, leaving a place that used to be home.

  Maidens right away, you can: