CW: Body horror, blood, mutilation, suicidal thoughts

Harriet banged her head against her cage's wooden bars. She didn't want to hear it. Not again.

They were singing the Kara Mae song. It was the 96th time they'd sung it. Harriet didn't mean to count, didn't want to, but she couldn't stop her brain. She couldn't distract herself. She couldn't help but mouth the lyrics as they were sung.

Kara Mae, she ran away.

Didn't think we'd catch.

But Sidhe are smart, And Sidhe are strong.

Not long before we stretch.

She'd seen what they did to Kara, bending and twisting her until she was no more than a spiderweb.

Brings her back in one small sack.

To a tree we strung.

"Sidhe, Have mercy!"

"Sidhe, Oh please!"

Out comes her little tongue.

And the wordless screaming. It went on forever.

First her back, we twist, we crack.

Never will she walkies.

Then Sidhe, we cut,

And Sidhe, we bash.

We sad she no more talkies!

They all laughed and cheered, some so hard they fell over. With any luck, they'd switch to a revel song about the various animals they tortured to death or, at least, some person Harriet didn't know. Withy luck, they wouldn't come to pick another one out of the cages to destroy.

The sidhe were singing again, but it wasn't a new song. It was a new stanza for the Kara Mae song Harriet hadn't heard.

Now she dead; we keep her head.

Our revels never end.

Sidhe eternal!

Sidhe immortal!

It's time to kill her friend.

Harriet gritted her teeth. It would not happen to her. The sidhe wouldn't do to her what they'd done to Kara. They wouldn't sing revels about her dying for all eternity.

She drew her wand, and a rush of uncertainty rose inside her. What if it didn't work?

"Don't freak out," she said to herself. "Aim straight. You can do this."

There was a scream in the distance. They weren't coming for her. It was Geraldine. Somewhere in the dark they were dragging her from her cage.

She could save Geraldine.

She was a good witch. A great witch. All her teachers told her.

She wracked her brain for a spell that would work. The sidhe let them keep their wands, likely because they didn't think magic was a threat. They were probably right.

She couldn't save Geraldine. She was useless.

When the four of them came through the mushroom circle and been attacked, Harriet tried fighting. The sidhe shrugged off all their spells.

Wakefield summoned silver darts, but the sidhe just laughed. Geraldine summoned iron, but there was none in that entire world. Carl conjured steel, but it was as worthless as the silver.

Geraldine screamed, but not that horrible, distorted scream Kara made when the sidhe stretched her. They were doing something different. Something worse.

"Not me," she said, rolling back her left sleeve.

She took a deep breath and held up her wand. Her hand shook.

"Diffindo," she said, aiming for her wrist.

She missed. Two of her fingers fell to the floor of her cage.

She yelped in pain. It hurt more than she expected but bled less than she'd hoped.

"Fucking idiot," she said. "Missed. Made it worse."

Geraldine's distant scream made her jump. It wasn't the time to give up. She raised her wand to try again. Her hand was trembling.

She was sweating.

That was odd, because she was never warm. The sidhe's world had no sun. She wasn't sure how life could ever have flourished, how it could survive with only starlight. She asked one of the sidhe, hoping to start a rapport, and it'd just said "The revel fires are all sidhe need to keep warm."

She wasn't just sweating now. Her heart was beating faster, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. Her head swam, and she leaned against the bars of her cage for support.

She was going into shock. Yes, hemorrhagic shock. What was the treatment? Stay warm. Elevate the legs. Stop the bleeding.

She stripped off her torn robes and balled them up as a pillow. Then she lay flat on the cold mud. It wouldn't be long, less than a day, and then she would be dead and gone.

There were worse ways to die.

The pain in her hand was intensifying. She clenched it around her grandmother's golden locket.

The sidhe cheered. They laughed. Poor Geraldine was dead at last. Hopefully Harriet would join her soon.

In the light of the giant revel fire, she saw someone walking, someone distinctively not sidhe. She sat up, squinting to see who it was. It wasn't Carl or Wakefield. It was Geraldine.

Harriet smiled in spite of herself. They hadn't killed her after all. She looked strangely healthy, or at least she was fatter than when Harriet saw her last. Her belly was plump.

A ray of hope brightened inside Harriet. Maybe the sidhe weren't planning on murdering them all. Maybe some might be spared. All she had to do was figure out what they wanted from her.

Geraldine walked around the revel fire, talking with the sidhe. She seemed to be joking with them, or something she said made them laugh. A disquiet settled in Harriet as she watched. There was something wrong with how she walked; her arms and legs were too stiff.

Geraldine laughed heartily, so heartily she bent backwards. She kept bending and bending, like a contortionist, then like more than even that. Her head formed a tripod with her feet. Then that belly - that fat, swollen, distended, unnatural belly - split open. A head came out, then arms and legs. A sidhe had been inside her. The Geraldine that Harriet knew shivered and deflated, falling to the ground like an empty jacket.

Geraldine's death was worse than Kara's. At least Kara's body hadn't been used like a puppet.

She curled back on the cold ground. Yes, there were far worse ways to die than shock. If she was lucky, she'd die before she had to hear Geraldine's song.

"Harriet!" Someone outside her cage hissed her name.

It was probably a hallucination brought on by blood loss, but she sat up anyway. Carl stood on the other side of the bars. He smiled at her, and she realized she was in her underwear. She grabbed her balled-up robes and covered herself with them. She was sure he couldn't see much in the dim light, but it was Carl. Carl couldn't see her looking like that.

The reality of her situation came back to her.

"Carl, what are you doing?"

"I'm saving you. I'll open your cage."

"Don't! I can get out whenever I want. I still have my wand. Alohomora is easy. The bars are just wood. But it's an alien world. There's nowhere to go. I conjured a new mushroom circle, but I couldn't make it work. I'm not powerful enough. I'm not even sure the sidhe can leave this world."

Harriet threw the robes over her shoulders and stood to go talk to him.

"They can come to our world, but only if they have a beacon," Carl said. "They need a convergence of bloodlines."

Harriet didn't know what that meant, but she was too impressed by what he knew to care. He must have done research in his spare time. She was surprised. Carl wasn't exactly the smartest kid in the Eldritch Wizardry Club. She had a hopeful suspicion he'd only joined to spend time with her. If he'd done outside research… Her heart thumped wildly. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

She smiled. Was this love? Then remembered she was in shock.

"Run if you can," Harriet said. "Maybe you can find someone else on this world. Someone to help you. Maybe you can make weapons. Conjured steel and silver won't work, but maybe cold-wrought iron will work."

"There's no iron on this world," Carl said.

"Maybe it's just the cold-wrought part, then. Try hammering something into shape without using magic or heat. Or don't. Just get away, and don't let them catch you. As for me, I found a different way to escape."

She held up her hand. Her finger still oozed blood.

"Don't do that," Carl said, a deep seriousness in his voice.

He reached through the wooden bars and pulled her hand out. It was dark, she couldn't see what he did, but the pain stopped. He released her, and she looked at fingers. They weren't bleeding anymore. They seemed scarred over, as if they'd been pinched shut.

It was impressive magic, but she was too angry to care.

"Why did you do that?" she said, sitting down again. "Now I have to start over again. I don't know if I can! I just want to die peacefully, not twisted up or hollowed out. Why did you do that?"

"Because I like you," Carl said, opening the cage.

She looked up at him as he came in and sat next to her.

"You mean like or like like?" she said.

He leaned forward and kissed her, and her body soaked up his warmth. There was dizziness, but that also could have been the effects of shock.

"I've never been kissed before," she said. "I'm glad it was you."

"We get you feeling better," Carl said. "Then we escape."

"You have to run," she said, lying down and propping her legs up against the cage bars. "If they find you here-"

"Rest," he said, and she was too weak to argue.

Harriet must have blacked out for a moment, because he was gone when she opened her eyes.

"Good," she thought. "You wised up."

It was a bittersweet thought. She expected to be cold, shivering, but he'd covered her with a blanket. She wasn't sure where he found one, but she was grateful for it.

At the revel fire, the sidhe were starting a new song. Her mouth was dry. Geraldine's song. Harriet didn't want to hear it.

This song was different, though. She'd heard their songs for months now, and they always had some variations, but they were always ensembles. They sang all the words together. This time, a single sidhe stood up on a rock by the fire and sang a solo.

Carly boy was such a toy,

And how I loved to kill him.

The sidhe around the fire chanted the last two words.

Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!

"No!" she shouted despite herself. Why didn't he run? Why did he wait for her?

All the sidhe sitting around the revel fire turned and looked at her. They laughed and pointed. The one singing a solo, smiling at Harriet's interruption, continued.

I hollowed him out,

And put him on,

Such a warmy ski-hin.

Ski hin! Ski-hin! Ski-hin!

They did to him what they did to poor Geraldine. Harriet jumped to her feet and shouted at them.

"You sick fucks!" she said, desperate for something to say to hurt them. They laughed at the most vicious of insults. "That doesn't even rhyme. It's a stupid song."

Her barb must have hit home, because the one singing the solo scowled at her. It raised a single, blue finger in her direction.

Now sidhe-Carl, I kissed a girl,

And happy did I make her.

Make her! Make her! Make her!

Now she's all warm,

And he's all gone,

She never got to thank him.

Thank him! Thank him! Thank him!

But he's still there,

So have a care,

He makes a happy blanket.

Blanket! Blanket! Blanket!

The sidhe watched as Harriet looked at the floor of her cage where she'd dropped Carl's blanket. It wasn't a blanket. It had arms. It had legs.

She shut her eyes so she wouldn't see what else it had. She covered her eyes with her hands to make sure she wouldn't catch a glimpse. She curled up into a ball because she couldn't stand, couldn't sit, couldn't breathe.

She could scream, though. She could scream very well.

A scream went up from around the revel fire. Despite herself, Harriet turned to look. It wasn't a scream. It was a cheer. They'd raised the singer – the one who'd killed and impersonated Carl - on their shoulders and were parading him around like a hero, like a fucking quidditch star.

"Sing your praises evermore!" the crowd sang. "Sing your cruelty evermore!"

Harriet twisted inside.

She bent her soul with bare, dirty fingers.

She snapped herself in half and stomped on the remains.

She was not a witch, a girl, a human. She was a single-minded incarnation of hate. No matter what happened, no matter what she had to endure, she would escape this world.

She would escape this world and hurt as many sidhe as she could along the way.

But how?

"Silver didn't work," she said. "Steel didn't work. Iron didn't work. Maybe it's the 'cold wrought.' Maybe it's the work of your own hands that matters."

She ripped her grandmother's gold heart necklace off and searched the floor of her cage. Most of what she found was gravel. With some disgust and trepidation, she moved Carl's skin to the corner of the cage. It was still warm.

Under the skin was exactly what she wanted: a stone. It had a point on one end and a dent in the other. It looked like a heart, like Carl's heart.

She glanced back at the sidhe. They were still cheering. Soon they'd get tired of it and sing again. They'd sing of Geraldine's death. They'd sing of Kara's death. They'd sing of Carl's death. They would never sing of hers.

She raised the stone and brought it down hard on the locket. It dented slightly. She turned it over and struck it again. Another small dent. It would take some time, but sooner or later, she'd have a weapon.

"Sing about this, mother fuckers," she said.

Outside her cage, the revels continued.