Ash hadn’t meant to frighten the girl. She hadn’t even noticed the little blonde until after the subway train pulled away. The disembarking crowd quickly dispersed, leaving the underground platform empty but for Ash and a few other waiting passengers. In a blue princess’s costume and a plastic tiara, the girl stood next to her mother, clutching a bag of party favors to her small chest. Though her face was turned away and Ash couldn’t see the girl’s smile, she could taste the happiness emanating from her, unsurprisingly sweet.
Had Ash ever felt that much joy as a girl? She couldn’t remember. Emotions must have touched her deeply at some point in her life, because she recognized how little they touched her now—as if her ruined memory hid enough data to compare an After to a Before that she couldn’t recall. And though she knew those emotions were missing, Ash didn’t feel their loss like a hacked-off limb. Even her sense of emptiness remained on the surface, no different from noticing a bruise on her knee and idly wondering when she’d gotten it.
With the same idle interest, Ash observed the girl, who lifted the side of her hem and twirled around her mother as if circling a ballroom. The tiara’s paste jewels flashed beneath the fluorescent lights, and a name leapt into Ash’s mind— Cinderella—but there was something else, an impression just beyond it, like lightning seen from the corner of her eye, like a word at the tip of her tongue.
Her name? No longer idly curious, Ash stared at the girl, mentally replaying that twirl and the flash of light, willing the impression to strengthen into a solid connection, so that she could trace the memory to its source. Was Ash’s full name at the end of it?
Cinderella wasn’t right. Reminded by the girl’s dance, Ash could suddenly recall images from the animated movie, the gliding waltz around the ballroom with the prince, but the connection she sought wasn’t there. Ash was looking for something a step aside from Cinderella. The girl in the cinders and ashes . . . ?
That wasn’t right, either. Not quite.
Why couldn’t she remember? Frustration skimmed over the surface of her mind like a blade over ice, leaving little evidence of its passing. What had happened to separate Before from an After that contained memories, but was still so empty?
Dimly, she became aware that the girl had dropped her bag of party favors to the train platform. Treats and noisemakers forgotten, she tugged insistently on her mother’s hand, her widened eyes never leaving Ash’s. Happiness had changed to sour fear, far stronger than the unease children usually projected when they glimpsed the vermillion symbols tattooed over the left side of Ash’s face. The girl’s distress intruded on Ash’s focus, and the impression of the name she’d been seeking faded.
It disappeared altogether when the mother’s gaze followed her daughter’s. Unlike the girl’s sour fear, the mother’s tasted of bitter cold, like icy sweat against Ash’s tongue.
Dread and terror.
From the tunnel came the clatter of an approaching train. The woman gathered up the girl and set off for the far end of the platform at a stiff-legged trot. The look she threw over her shoulder included bared teeth—the mother protecting her young.
Fear wasn’t just an emotion. Sometimes, it was a survival instinct.
But why consider Ash a threat? Not just the tattoos, obviously. In this part of London, heavy ink sometimes provoked fascination or disgust, but was common enough that it didn’t incite terror.
Ash glanced down, where more symbols marked her hands. Around the tattoos, the skin was tan, not the crimson it sometimes became. Her jeans and leather jacket hadn’t disappeared—and when her clothes vanished, she knew very well that titters and gasps followed. Not fear.
Brakes screeched as the train stopped. Ash’s image reflected faintly in the car windows. Beneath the sweep of blond hair across her forehead, Ash’s eyes shone as brilliantly red as two small stoplights.
Ah. So that was the cause of their fear. Ash wasn’t surprised; when she’d lived at Nightingale House, the same glow had come a few times, and she’d only noticed when the lights in her room were out—and because she’d once terrified a ward nurse making the night rounds.
The hysterical nurse had returned less than a minute later with an orderly in tow, but Ash’s eyes had looked like any other person’s eyes by then.
Glowing eyes, red skin—the changes always faded within moments of Ash noticing them. In the train window’s reflection, her irises had already returned to a more human blue, her pupils were black, the whites white. She glanced toward the girl again, but the mother had hustled past the disembarking passengers and taken a seat. The woman held her daughter, staring at Ash through the window—likely praying that she wouldn’t board the train with them. The girl huddled on her lap, her blue dress twisted around her legs, and Ash’s earlier impression suddenly solidified into a word: Aschenputtel.
Ash’s disappointment was a soft weight, barely felt. Though the first syllable of Ash’s name sounded similar, Aschenputtel was Cinderella’s name, not hers. So she would have to keep searching.
The train began to move. Not so frightened now, the little blonde peeked beneath her mother’s arm and met Ash’s gaze. Brave girl. Ash smiled faintly and lifted her hand in acknowledgment.
Hello, little princess. You’ve escaped a monster who can’t remember her name, or even what sort of monster she is. But don’t worry that I’ll crawl under your bed . . . unless, of course, you have answers there.
The train clattered down the tunnel, taking the girl with it. To avoid further notice, Ash drew up the hood of the sweatshirt layered beneath her jacket, then settled in to wait for another ten minutes. That had been her train, but she didn’t feel impatience any more than she did frustration or disappointment.
Curiosity wasn’t an emotion, however, but a state of being—and so Ash did wonder why she hadn’t boarded despite their fear. After all, frightening a little girl was the least of her sins. She’d also jumped the high gates at the subway entrance instead of paying her fare. Later that evening, she planned on breaking into a dead woman’s home.
Disregarding the girl’s terror hadn’t felt right, however—and Ash spent the next ten minutes trying to decide whether “feeling right” was an emotion, or something else.
A month ago, shortly before had Ash escaped from Nightingale House, she’d slipped into Dr. Cawthorne’s office after midnight and read through every file and notebook that referred to her. Cawthorne knew nothing of Before, not even her name. She’d been committed as a Jane Doe, and in the computers and on the file labels she was called “Mary Bloggs,” a placeholder designation often followed by the date of her admission. That day, during one of Ash’s therapy sessions, he’d written into his notebook: Schizoid personality disorder?
He’d underlined the question mark twice.
After almost three years in the care of his private mental hospital, the psychiatrist still hadn’t known how to classify her. Not that Ash had helped him along. Two years had passed before she’d spoken aloud, and nine more months had gone by before she’d cared enough to wonder who she was and what had happened to her.
Though he’d speculated, Dr. Cawthorne hadn’t figured that out, either.
In his earliest notes, he’d attributed her lack of verbal response to brain damage caused by her persistent febrile temperature—a fever hot enough that Ash should have been hospitalized. Cawthorne’s records didn’t indicate why she hadn’t been given emergency care; he only indicated that her fever didn’t respond to medications or external remedies. Finally, when it became apparent that neither weakness nor delirium accompanied the fever, Dr. Cawthorne had stopped trying to lower it.
Ash had clear memories from those days. She remembered nothing from before Nightingale House, and everything after. She could recall how she hadn’t spoken, but had automatically obeyed every instruction given to her: to get up in the morning, to shower, to dress, to eat breakfast, to sit and watch television, to eat dinner, and then to lie in bed until she was told to get up again. At the end of the first year, Cawthorne had noted in his spidery scrawl: Mary-052007 will not respond to any name, but displays clear comprehension of verbal and written instructions when they are spoken directly to or placed in front of her. She performs both menial tasks and more complex operations, such as solving mathematical equations, tending the garden, or typing and sending an e-mail (dictated).
They’d instructed; she’d performed. When they asked her to accomplish tasks that were impossible to carry out, such as urinating into a cup, they never tried to force her. The nurses simply noted “Mary’s” lack of response in her chart, and Dr. Cawthorne would write the name of another disorder in his notes, followed by another question mark.
The second year had passed in the same way. A few weeks into the third year, the doctor had been thumbing through the calendar on his desk and making his usual, halfhearted attempts to draw out a response—
How are you today? Pause. The rain has let up. You’ll be able to take your afternoon walk through the garden, though it will be too wet for planting. What sort of flowers should we add this year? Pause. Peonies would be lovely, wouldn’t they?
—when he’d cut his thumb on the edge of the calendar paper. Another pause had followed the peonies as he’d stuck his thumb into his mouth, and Ash had remembered that she’d once drunk her own blood, too. She’d remembered the blade carving symbols into her face, her torso and arms. She’d remembered the knife at her chest, and the dark figure pronouncing her name—but she’d only heard the first syllable before his terrible voice had torn everything apart.
Sitting in Dr. Cawthorne’s office, that memory had quickly faded—or she’d stifled it, just as she stifled the tremors that shook her body when she thought of that dark figure. Just enough of the memory remained, however, to remind her that she had to tell Cawthorne something.
“My name isn’t Mary,” she’d said.
Dr. Cawthorne’s hand dropped away from his mouth. He’d stared at her, his jaw agape. Whenever someone on the television wore that expression, a faceless crowd laughed on the soundtrack. No one in Cawthorne’s office laughed in the background. The only reaction that Ash could detect was the sudden shift of Cawthorne’s emotions: from frustration and resignation to surprise and excitement.
But though she could sense his exhilaration, he didn’t show it. Evenly, he’d asked, “What is your name, then?”
“Ash . . . something. I don’t know the rest.”
“Ashley?”
“No.” She was certain.
He’d nodded in that same slow, calm way, but to her ears, his heart pounded almost as loud as his voice. “Until we know, may we call you ‘Ash’?”
“Yes.”
Smiling, he leaned back in his chair and studied her. “And you’re an American? Canadian?”
“I don’t know.”
“But your accent is . . .” He’d shaken his head. “No matter. You’re here now, and it’s wonderful to hear your voice after all this time. Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
“No.” She’d already told him that her name wasn’t Mary. That was all she’d had to say.
His excitement dimmed, followed by his relief when he’d continued talking and she’d continued answering him. But by the time he’d ended the session—an hour later than usual—unease threaded through his curiosity. He’d already been jotting notes when she rose from her chair to leave.
She’d stopped long enough to ask, “What does ‘complete lack of affect’ mean?”