“Cinder,” the man continued, coaxing her forward, “this is my eldest daughter, Pearl, and my youngest, Peony. And that is their lovely mother, Adri. Your new stepmother.”
She peered up at his two daughters from behind a curtain of fine brown hair.
They were both staring openly at her metal hand.
Cinder tried to shrink away, but then the younger girl, Peony, asked, “Did it hurt when they put it on?”
Steady on her feet again, Cinder pried her hand out of the man’s hold and tucked it against her side. “I don’t remember.”
“She was unconscious for the surgeries, Peony,” said the man.
“Can I touch it?” she asked, her hand already inching forward.
“That’s enough, Garan. People are watching.”
Cinder jumped at the shrill voice, but when she looked up, her “stepmother” was not looking at them, but at the house across the street.
Garan. That was the man’s name. Cinder committed it to memory as she followed Adri’s gaze and saw a man staring at her through his front window.
“It’s freezing out here,” said Adri. “Pearl, go find the android and have her bring in your father’s luggage. Peony, you can show Cinder to her room.”
“You mean my room,” said Pearl, her lip curling as she began to shuffle back toward the house. “I’m the oldest. I shouldn’t have to share with Peony.”
To Cinder’s surprise, the younger girl turned and latched on to her arm, tugging her forward. She nearly slipped on the ice and would have been embarrassed again, except she noticed that Peony’s feet were slipping around too as she pulled Cinder ahead. “Pearl can take the room,” she said. “I don’t mind sharing with Cinder.”
Adri’s face was taut as she looked down at their intertwined elbows. “Don’t argue with me, either of you.”
Condensation sprang up on Cinder’s steel hand as she went from the chilled air to the house’s warm entryway, but Peony didn’t seem to notice as she led her toward the back of the house.
“I don’t know why Pearl’s upset,” she said, shouldering open a door. “This is the smallest room in the house. Our bedroom is much nicer.” Releasing Cinder, she went to pull open the blinds on the single small window. “But look, you can see the neighbor’s cherry tree. It’s really pretty when it blooms.”
Cinder didn’t follow her to the window, instead casting her gaze around the room. It seemed small, but it was larger than the sleeper car on the maglev train, and she had no prior bedrooms to compare it with. A mattress sat in the corner with blankets tucked neatly around its sides, and a small dresser stood empty on the nearest wall.
“Pearl used to have a netscreen in here, but Mom moved it into the kitchen. You can come watch mine whenever you want to, though. Do you like Nightmare Island? It’s my favorite drama.”
“Nightmare Island?” No sooner had Cinder said it than her brain started streaming data across her vision. A POPULAR DRAMA AIMED AT TEENAGE GIRLS THAT INCLUDES A CAST OF THIRTY-SIX YOUNG CELEBRITIES WHO ARE CAUGHT UP IN LIES, BETRAYAL, ROMANCE, AND THE SCHEME OF A CRAZED SCIENTIST WHO—
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it!”
Cinder scrunched her shoulders beside her ears. “I’ve heard of it,” she said, blinking the data away. She wondered if there was a way to get her brain to stop doing that every time she heard an unfamiliar phrase. It had been happening almost nonstop since she’d woken up from the surgery. “That’s the show with the crazed scientist, right? I’ve never seen it, though.”
Peony looked relieved. “That’s fine, I have a subscription to the whole feed. We’ll watch it together.” She bounced on her feet and Cinder had to tear her gaze away from the girl’s excitement. Her gaze landed on a box half-tucked behind the door. A small pronged hand was hanging over the edge.
“What’s this?” she said, leaning forward. She kept her hands locked behind her back.
“Oh, that’s Iko.” Abandoning the window, Peony crouched down and scooted the box out from the wall. It was filled with random android parts all jumbled together—the spherical body took up most of the space, along with a glossy white head, a sensor lens, a clear bag filled with screws and program chips. “She had some sort of glitch in her personality chip, and Mom heard that she could get more money for her if she sold her off in pieces rather than as a whole, but nobody wanted them. Now she just sits here, in a box.”
Cinder shuddered, wondering how common glitches were in androids. Or cyborgs.
“I really liked Iko when she was working. She was a lot more fun than that boring garden android.” Peony picked up the thin metal arm with the three prongs and held it up so that the fingers clicked together. “We used to play dress-up together.” Her eyes lit up. “Hey, do you like playing dress-up?”
Adri appeared in the doorway just as Cinder’s brain was informing her that “dress-up” was A GAME OFTEN PLAYED BY CHILDREN IN WHICH COSTUMES OR ADULT CLOTHES ARE USED TO AID IN THE PROCESS OF IMAGINATION …
Obviously, she thought, sending the message away.
“Well, Cinder?” said Adri, tightening her robe’s belt again and surveying the small room with a pinched face. “Garan told me you wouldn’t require much. I hope this meets your expectations?”
She looked around again, at the bed, the dresser, the branches that would someday bloom in the neighbor’s yard. “Yes, thank you.”
Adri rubbed her hands together. “Good. I hope you’ll let me know if you need anything. We’re glad to share our home with you, knowing what you’ve been through.”
Cinder licked her lips, thinking to say thank you again, but then a small orange light flickered in her optobionics and she found herself frowning. This was something new and she had no idea what it meant.
Maybe it was a sign of a brain malfunction. Maybe this was a glitch.
“Come along, Peony,” said Adri, stepping back into the hall. “I could use some help in the kitchen.”
“But Mom, Cinder and I were going to—”
“Now, Peony.”
Scowling, Peony thrust the android arm into Cinder’s hand and followed after her mother.
Cinder held up the limb and shook it at their backs, making the lifeless fingers wave good-bye.
* * *
Six nights after she’d arrived at her new home, Cinder awoke on fire. She cried out, tumbling off the mattress and landing in a heap with a blanket wrapped like a tourniquet around her bionic leg. She lay gasping for a minute, rubbing her hands over her arms to try and smother the flames until she finally realized that they weren’t real.
A warning about escalating temperatures flashed in her gaze and she forced herself to lie still long enough to dismiss it from her vision. Her skin was clammy, beads of sweat dripping back into her hair. Even her metal limbs felt warm to the touch.
When her breathing was under control, she pulled herself up onto weak legs and hobbled to the window, thrusting it open and drinking in the winter air. The snow had started to melt, turning into slush in the daytime before hardening into glistening ice at night. Cinder stood for a moment, reveling in the frosty air on her skin and entranced by how a nearly full moon turned the world ghostly blue. She tried to remember the nightmare, but her memory gave her only fire and, after a minute, the sensation of sandpaper in her mouth.
She shut the window and crept toward her bedroom door, careful not to trip on the bag of secondhand clothes Pearl had begrudgingly given to her the day before, after her father had lectured her about charity.
She heard Adri’s voice before she reached the kitchen and paused, one hand balancing her on the wall as her body threatened to tip toward its heavier left side.
As she strained to hear, Adri’s voice grew steadily louder, and Cinder realized with a jolt that Adri wasn’t speaking louder, but rather something in her own head was adjusting the volume on her hearing. She rubbed her palm against her ear, feeling like there was a bug in it.
“Four months, Garan,” Adri said. “W
e’re behind by four months, and Suki-jiĕ has already threatened to start auctioning off our things if we don’t pay her soon.”
“She’s not going to auction off our things,” said Garan, his voice a strange combination of soothing and strained. Garan’s voice had already become unfamiliar to Cinder’s ear. He spent his days out in a one-room shed behind the house, “tinkering,” Peony said, though she didn’t seem to know what exactly he was tinkering with. He came in to join his family for meals, but hardly ever talked, and Cinder wondered how much he heard, either. His expression always suggested his mind was very far away.
“Why shouldn’t she sell off our things? I’m sure I would in her place!” Adri said. “Whenever I have to leave the house, I come home wondering if this will be the day our things are gone and our locks are changed. We can’t keep living on her hospitality.”
“It’s going to be all right, love. Our luck is changing.”
“Our luck!” Adri’s voice spiked in Cinder’s ear and she flinched at the shrillness, quickly urging the volume to decrease again. It obeyed her command, through sheer willpower. She held her breath, wondering what other secrets her brain was keeping from her.
“How is our luck changing? Because you won a silver ribbon at that fair in Sydney last month? Your stupid awards aren’t going to keep food on this table, and now you’ve brought home one more mouth—and a cyborg at that!”
“We talked about this…”
“No, you talked about this. I want to support you, Garan, but these schemes of yours are going to cost us everything. We have our own girls to think about. I can’t even afford new shoes for Pearl, and now there’s this creature in the house who’s going to need … what? A new foot every six months?”
Shriveling against the wall, Cinder glanced down at her metal foot, the toes looking awkward and huge beside the fleshy ones—the ones with bone and skin and toenails.
“Of course not. She’ll be fine for a year or two,” said Garan.
Adri stifled a hysterical laugh.
“And her leg and fingers can be adjusted as she grows,” Garan continued. “We shouldn’t need replacements for those until she reaches adulthood.”
Cinder lifted her hand into the faint light coming down the hallway, inspecting the joints. She hadn’t noticed how the knuckles were fitted together before, the digits nestled inside each other. So this hand could grow, just like her human hand did.
Because she would be stuck with these limbs forever. She would be cyborg forever.
“Well, how comforting,” said Adri. “I’m glad to see you’ve given this so much thought.”
“Have faith, love.”
Cinder heard a chair being pushed back. She retreated into the hallway, but all that followed was the sound of running water from the faucet. She pressed her fingers over her mouth, trying to feel the water through psychokinesis, but even her brain couldn’t quench her thirst on sound alone.
“I have something special to reveal at the Tokyo Fair in March,” Garan said. “It’s going to change everything. In the meantime, you must be patient with the child. She only wants to belong here. Perhaps she can help you with the housework, until we can get that android replaced?”
Adri scoffed. “Help me? What can she do, dragging that monstrosity around?”
Cinder cringed. She heard a cup being set down, then a kiss. “Give her a chance. Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
She ducked away at the first hint of a footstep, creeping back into her room and shutting the door. She felt that she could have wept from thirst, but her eyes stayed as dry as her tongue.
* * *
“Here, you put on the green one,” said Peony, tossing a bundle of green-and-gold silk into Cinder’s arms. She barely caught it, the thin material slipping like water over her hands. “We don’t have any real ball gowns, but these are just as pretty. This is my favorite.” Peony held up another garment, a swath of purple-and-red fabric decorated with soaring cranes. She strung her bony arms through the enormous sleeves and pulled the material tight around her waist, holding it in place while she dug through the pile of clothes for a long silver sash and belted it around her middle. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
Cinder nodded uncertainly—although the silk kimonos were perhaps the finest things she’d ever felt, Peony looked ridiculous in hers. The hem of the gown dragged a foot on the floor, the sleeves dangled almost to her knees, and street clothes still peeked out at her neck and wrists, ruining the illusion. It almost looked like the gown was trying to eat her.
“Well, put yours on!” said Peony. “Here, this is the sash I usually put with that one.” She pulled out a black-and-violet band.
Cinder tentatively stuck her hands into the sleeves, taking extra care that no screws or joints caught the fine material. “Won’t Adri be mad?”
“Pearl and I play dress-up all the time,” said Peony, looping the sash around Cinder’s waist. “And how are we supposed to go to the ball if we don’t have any beautiful dresses to wear?”
Cinder raised her arms, shaking the sleeves back. “I don’t think my hand goes with this one.”
Peony laughed, though Cinder hadn’t meant it to be funny. Peony seemed to find amusement in almost everything she said.
“Just pretend you’re wearing gloves,” said Peony. “Then no one will know.” Grabbing Cinder by the hand, she pulled her across the hall and into the bathroom so they could see themselves in the mirror.With her fine, mousy hair hanging limp past her shoulders and awkward metal fingers poking out of the left sleeve, Cinder looked no less absurd than Peony.
“Perfect,” said Peony, beaming. “Now we’re at the ball. Iko used to always be the prince, but I guess we’ll have to pretend.”
“What ball?”
Peony stared back at her in the mirror as if Cinder had just sprouted a metal tail. “The ball for the peace festival! It’s this huge event we have every year—the festival is down in the city center and then in the evening they have the ball up at the palace. I’ve never gone for real, but Pearl will be thirteen next year, so she’ll get to go for the first time.” She sighed and spun out into the hallway. Cinder followed, her walking made even more cumbersome than usual by the kimono trailing on the ground.
“When I go for the first time, I want a purple dress with a skirt so big I can hardly fit through the door.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
Peony wrinkled her nose. “Well, it has to be spectacular, or else Prince Kai won’t notice me, and then what’s the point?”
Cinder was almost hesitant to ask as she followed flouncing Peony back into her bedroom—“Who’s Prince Kai?”
Peony spun toward her so fast, she tripped on the skirts of Adri’s kimono and fell, screaming, onto her bed. “Who’s Prince Kai?” she yelled, struggling to sit back up. “Only my future husband! Honestly, don’t girls in Europe know about him?”
Cinder teetered between her two feet, unable to answer the question. After twelve whole days living with Peony and her family, she already had more memories of the Eastern Commonwealth than she had of Europe. She hadn’t the faintest idea what—or who—the girls in Europe obsessed over.
“Here,” said Peony, scrambling across her messy blankets and grabbing a portscreen off the nightstand. “He’s my greeter.”
She turned the screen on and a boy’s voice said, “Hello, Peony.” Cinder shuffled forward and took the small device from her. The screen showed a boy of twelve or thirteen years old wearing a tailored suit that seemed ironic with his shaggy black hair. He was waving at someone—Cinder guessed the photo was from some sort of press event.
“Isn’t he gorgeous?” said Peony. “Every night I tie a red string around my finger and say his name five times because this girl in my class told me that will tie our destinies together. I know he’s my soul mate.”
Cinder listed her head, still staring at the boy. Her optobionics were scanning him, finding the picture in some database in her head, and, this
time, she expected the stream of text that began to filter through her brain. His ID number, his birth date, his full name and title. Prince Kaito, Crown Prince of the Eastern Commonwealth.
“His arms are too long for his body,” she said after a while, finally picking up on what didn’t feel right about the picture. “They’re not proportionate.”
“What are you talking about?” Peony snatched the port away and stared at it for a minute before tossing it onto her pillow. “Honestly, who cares about his arms?”
Cinder shrugged, unable to smother a slight grin. “I was only saying.”
Harrumphing, Peony swung her legs around and hopped off the bed. “Fine, whatever. Our hover is here. We’d better get going or we’ll be late for the ball, where I am going to dance with His Imperial Highness, and you can dance with whoever you would like to. Maybe another prince. We should make one up for you. Do you want Prince Kai to have a brother?”
“What are you two doing?”
Cinder spun around. Adri was looming in the doorway—again her footsteps had gone unnoticed, and Cinder was beginning to wonder if Adri was really a ghost that floated through the hallways rather than walked.
“We’re going to the ball!” Peony said.
Adri’s face flushed as her gaze dropped to the silk kimono hanging off Cinder’s shoulders. “Take that off this instant!”
Shrinking back, Cinder instantly began undoing the knot that Peony had tied around her waist.
“Peony, what are you thinking? These garments are expensive, and if she got snagged—if the lining—” Stepping forward, she grabbed the collar of the dress, peeling it off Cinder as soon as the sash was free.
“But you used to let Pearl and me—”
“Things are different now, and you are to leave my things alone. Both of you!”
Scowling, Peony started unwrapping her own dress. Cinder bit the inside of her cheek, feeling oddly vulnerable without the heavy silk draped around her and sick to her stomach with guilt, though she wasn’t sure what she had to be guilty about.
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