No, that's not right. You've known about her, sure, seen her shadow.

A few steps out of the sun, standing in puddles of darkness pooling at the base of big trees that dig their toes into the asphalt, the flickers of darkness in the corners of your vision when you've had a bad day.

Better.

More accurate.

Precision is important. Precision and accuracy are closely related but not the same. Accuracy is what you want to have, precision is what others want you to have.

Predictability is key. That's what she tells you, one day when the sun is very bright and you're taking refuge in the yawning abyss of the sky dropping away beneath your feet as water soaks through the soles of your shoes and you startle, breaking the spell and disrupting the mirror-glass stillness of last night's rain clutched in the depression of the blacktop.

You can see the foursquare lines underneath, and the shell of a discarded snail. It reminds you of an encyclopedia of alternate worlds in the library, you're not sure why. Probably something about the way that the potential sits moribund within the mildewed pages, the meat within picked out by other birds. You pocket the shell. Your pockets are always bulging with little trinkets - never know when you might need something, a TI-84 plus graphing calculator covered in Chiquita banana stickers, a lacy-edged purple handkerchief, a plastic cuvette, four pencils and a rubber eraser and folded sheets of notes covered in drawings and impossibly small handwriting. No candy. The calculator is your most prized possession, obviously. You have the Z80 assembly table in hex sigils, spirals of ink on your hands and up your arms, curling around you under your sleeves. You shiver, thinking about what might happen if it ever spread further, then remember that it's not malignant fungal tendrils, it's a shield from mundanity, a reminder of what you can do. That's comforting.

She's looking at you over her clipboard, long hair dropping down over her left eye, a coil stuck in the frame of her glasses that she hasn't yet noticed or chosen to remove. Hey Lin, she says.

Miss Thorn, you acknowledge. She hasn't asked you anything at all yet, so you squat and begin picking up helicopter seeds. You're going to spend hours at home carefully extracting green seed from brown casing, stripping the tenderness from the husk and denying it the option to just walk away. You like having them all there in a tiny jam jar. Lots of life within.

Potentially. More accurately. I've got a library pass for you, she says. Go on inside. There's a book for you in there. You have an understanding.

The library is full of heavy, dry air. It's heady, mood and paper and the crossbreeze of latex paint from the open gymnasium door.

Strange figures you mostly perceive out of the corner of your eye, geometric patterns lurking within carpeting and book spines and fading movie posters.

Miss Thorn stands under the yellowing fluorescents with her hands in the pockets of her corduroy jacket, watching you make your way between stacks. She doesn't say anything at all, merely nods when you pull a fat hardcover volume of early encyclopedias from a low shelf. Your fingers stick briefly to the spine before coming away coated in dust.

The dust orbits your fingers as you carry the book to one of the round wooden tables and flip through pages, catching glimpses of anatomical diagrams and star maps and lists upon lists of names for clouds, crystals, trees. Your scalp tingles and you scrub at your undercut with your free hand, nails rasping over buzzed hair. So much to take in, encyclopedias always made you feel simultaneously small and vast with possibility. Miss Thorn's doing, or perhaps she's merely the needle that threaded this particular bit of string through reality. As above, so below. You laugh, sharp bells of delight, at a plate showing cutaway views of the stratum that make up the crust and mantle.

Dimly you register Miss Thorn clearing her throat, the weight of her gaze on the crown of your head.

You wave her off without looking up, fingers tracing the curve of the mantle and the plume of magma that fuels it. "I see," you murmur.

She's a lot closer now.

When you do look up, blinking and rubbing at your eyes, the shadows have lengthened and Miss Thorn is standing directly across the table from you. You straighten with a wince, joints protesting the hours spent hunched over diagrams, and meet her even gaze. "Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks, and there's an edge to the question that drags your attention fully into the present.

As though she already knows the answer. As though she's known, all along. There's sympathy in the lines bracketing her mouth and you find that unsettling - is there something here you've missed? Have the underpinnings of this peeled away when you weren't looking, a stage set collapsing as the actors take their final bows?

Of course she knows. You feel the first prickle of unease since she waved you into the library after pulling a carefully selected volume as an offering. "Something unexpected," you tell her, slow. Careful. "Something important."

She nods, and there's a glint in the darkness of her left eye that makes you think of the way sunlight reflects from obsidian, a flash both warning and what lies beneath. "Do you have what you need?"

Your answer lodges in your throat. Do you? Suddenly you're not so sure, staring at her across a landscape of dust and knowledge hard-won. Finally, you nod.

Miss Thorn reaches across the table and carefully closes the encyclopedia. "There are other paths ahead of you," she says, matter-of-fact, as though she's simply commenting on the weather. "Other choices to make. Remember where you've come from."

A muscle jumps in your jaw. "I know where I've come from," you say, dazed.

She looks sad, suddenly, gaze dropping to trace the whorls and knots in the tabletop. When she speaks again her voice is quiet, pitched low like she's sharing secrets. "Do you? We spend so much of our lives trying to figure out where we've come from, who we are. It's easy to lose sight of yourself along the way."

I'm not lost,

I'm not lost,

I'm not lost,

It's dark now. The last bus left hours ago, but you know where to hide.

You walk with your hands in your pockets, shoulders hunched against a wind that stirs the tops of pines towering over cracked asphalt, your footsteps a metronome keeping time as you trace paths long committed to memory. There are places even she does not go.

This isn't one of them.

She very much does go here.

It never ends well when they run, does it?

Well is relative, she's decided.

The forest closes around you like a fist, branches interlacing over your head until even the stars are blotted out. This far in only the pale scuttle of spiders across dry pine needles breaks the ominous silence. You stop beneath a lightning-riven trunk, dragging the back of your hand across your mouth, and reach for the supplies cached on your way in. Familiar tools, hard edges and rubberized grips, slide into place. The weight is comforting against the small of your back.

Turn around.

You do, slowly, breath frosting the air. She's there, of course, a darker shade of the encroaching night. There are questions in the cant of her head, the slight frown tugging at her mouth, but for once she stays silent. Waiting. The moment stretches, fragile as spun glass, and in the space between heartbeats you see - really see - how very tired she looks. How thin the veneer of control has worn. Your fingers flex, leather creaking, and in the woods something shrieks as claws meet flesh. You wonder if she hears it too. If she's listening for the echoes.

You wonder what she hears in the depths of the woods, in the places not meant for children's soft footsteps. Her gaze sharpens, focusing on the weight slung across your shoulders, the tension singing through your frame.

She smiles, faint and sharp-edged in the gloom, nodding at your burden like she's known all along. Perhaps she always has. "Was it worth it?"

You tell me.

I found what I was looking for, you say. What I needed. Isn't that always worth it, in the end?

She steps closer, posture rigid, fingers curling against the rough denim as she leans forward slightly. Her breath mists the air between you. "And have you considered the cost?" she asks softly.

Cost is currency. Currency is merely a construct. What truly matters -

She holds up a hand, forestalling your response. "I've heard enough. The time for philosophy is past." Her eyes are flinty in the gloom, hard edges glinting like fractured glass. "There's a price we pay for knowledge, child. One you have yet to reckon with."

The cost was knowledge and freedom. And those are the only things that have ever mattered.

I have already paid the price, Miss Thorn. In blood and bone and sacrifice of innocence. What further reckoning remains?

She sighs, a soft sound nearly lost beneath the whisper of wind through needled boughs. "Freedom is never free, is it?" She gestures at the dark bulk of the woods surrounding you both. "Look around, Lintel. Is this freedom?"

Lintel tightens her grip on the strap slung over her shoulder, shifting her weight as she meets Miss Thorn's stern gaze. "I did what needed to be done. Found the truth hidden beneath the surface." She pauses, searching the other woman's face. "You taught me to question everything. To dig deeper, no matter the cost. Was that not the lesson?"