Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
It's been well documented in fairytales and folktales, in myths and legends, that children are drawn to doorways to other worlds. Sometimes those children complete quests and live out their days in their worlds beyond the doors and some die and are buried in graves, as heroes or as monsters. Sometimes those children come back, either by choice or not, but with pieces missing, and they never feel whole again, or they feel lost in a world they once thought they knew. When Eleanor West opened her Home for Wayward Children, she knew not all children she saved would truly be saved, but she knew she had to try.
Cora wakes from a nightmare, which is typical now that she is back home from the Moors. Her roommate, Antoinette, Antsy, is still sound asleep. They don't really have anything in common, their doors were very different. Cora went to the Trenches and became a mermaid. Antsy went to a world filled with lost things, after all, she was lost, so why not go where the lost things go? Cora sneaks out of her room and toward the bathroom, all the while hearing the whispers of the Drowned Gods from the Moors, calling for her, reaching for her, never giving her any peace. She fills the bathtub with hot water and scents and bubbles, very different to the cold, dreary water in the Moors, and finally is able to rest.
Cora’s childhood was full of bullies and eating disorders and her parents telling her there's nothing wrong with her and more bullying and more eating disorders and even more bullying until the day Cora walked into the sea determined to drown. Instead of dying, Cora was washed away to the Trenches where she became a mermaid and her brown hair turned bluish green to match her scaly tail. She swam for the Queen and fought the Serpent of Frozen Tears and flirted with sirens and was happy until she got caught in the Serpent’s whirlpool and was sent back to the world she drowned to get away from. She washed up on shore, naked, with perfectly blue green hair everywhere there was to be hair and was again mocked and bullied. Then Eleanor came and Cora left her family again to go to the Wayward School.
Now Cora visits Eleanor in her office, still dripping from the bathtub, her oil slick rainbow skin, left on her from her time in the Moors, drying out. Cora tells Eleanor that she wants to go to the other school that Eleanor has mentioned before, the one that will help her forget going through any doorways. The Drowned Gods keep whispering to her and she's afraid if she were to go back to the Trenches, they would follow her there and be a greater evil than the Serpent of Frozen Tears, and she can't have that. She needs to forget. Antsy pops her head in the office with a set of keys Eleanor lost twenty years ago declaring that she lost her roommate, but here she is, found, and if she hadn't found the keys then she wouldn't have found her roommate, then she skips off to class.
Cora pleads with Eleanor that if she doesn't get to go to the other school, the Whitethorn Institute, then she will succeed in taking her own life, because she's done it before. Cora leaves while Eleanor feels as though she's failed. Cora heads to class but stops by the cafeteria first and runs into Kade. He escorts her, kind as always, friendly as always. Cora is only in class for a little bit before Sumi delivers a message that Eleanor has called her back. It's surprisingly simple to switch schools apparently, at least, it's easy to get into Whitethorn. It might be nearly impossible to get back out.
Cora is given a uniform, with shoes just a little bit too tight, and flown across the country and then chauffeured to Whitethorn Institute. It's made up of miles of wooded grounds surrounded by a ten foot high wall. Nearly everything inside is shades of black and white and gray, except for Cora and her rainbow skin and blue hair. It’s nothing like Eleanor’s school and, after meeting the headmaster, she immediately wants to go back home. Ahh, but she is home now. Headmaster Whitethorn, a remarkably unremarkable man, who Cora thinks she might forget if she looks away from him, asks Cora about going through her door and being spit back out again, and Cora clarifies she's been through multiple doors, but that she wants to escape the voices from the last one. She wants to forget. The headmaster assures her that that is what she will learn at Whitethorn.
Two months have passed and the Drowned Gods are still whispering to Cora. She wakes one morning at the 5:25 alarm after a night of barely sleeping to the rest of the girls in her dorm rushing her to get up, get dressed and make her bed. They are due for an inspection and Cora's untidiness will lead to a demerit, which they do not want. One girl, a very small, bossy girl that Cora isn't sure has a name, or maybe she did but it was taken away as punishment?, is the meanest of all and another, Emily, tries to stop her, but then it's time for morning announcements and all the girls stop talking and listen.
The headmaster begins his speech as usual, but today's announcement mentions one of the girls in another dorm will be graduating. Regan Lewis begins speaking, blathering on in a voice as exciting as oatmeal, about how she's completed her journey at Whitethorn and she'll be going back to her home and school but her work hasn't ended and then she abruptly stops, basically saying it's all horseshit and that she did go to a different world and she believes in unicorns and she didn't want to be a hero but this institute isn't going to make her a villain. The loudspeaker cuts off. No one in Cora's dorm says a word.
The matron of Cora's dorm comes in for inspection and asks Emily, the only girl that's been any sort of nice to Cora, if scarecrows can talk. Obviously this is meant to be triggering to Emily, so while she is stunned, Cora answers for her but pretends that she didn't realize that question was meant only to torture Emily. The matron moves on to the unnamed girl and says she's going to measure her later, hoping she will have gotten bigger, which is weird, and it's even weirder when the matron says the girl's name, but no sound comes out. The matron leaves, Emily cries and Cora tries to help her, but the nameless girl bullies her and mocks her weight and tells her she has no friends. Just as Cora is about to break down, the matron returns with a new student added to their dorm. Sumi. What in the world?!
Sumi is there because Antsy can find anything and they all knew that Cora was missing, so they asked her where she went. Since they all know that Sumi will most definitely get to go back through her door again one day since they met her daughter a few books ago, it was decided that Sumi will be the one to come rescue Cora. But Cora doesn't need to be rescued, she came here of her own accord. There's a little bit of an introduction to Sumi and then the girls go to breakfast where there's a lot of bullying and then they spot Regan sitting by herself. She didn't get to graduate and go back home or to the Hooflands as she obviously really wanted to. So what's going to happen to her now? No one knows, which means it can't be good.
In class, Sumi daydreams as everyone would expect Sumi to do and, when she's called on to answer a question she definitely wasn't paying attention to, she answers very nonsensically and then calls the teacher out for knowing the doors exist but acting like they're the worst things in the world. As punishment for asking questions and being truthful, Sumi gets sent to the headmaster's office and Cora is made to escort her.
Along the way, they hear someone crying and find Regan alone in a classroom. Sumi introduces herself in a wildly ridiculous way and asks Regan to do the same so they can believe and trust each other. Then Sumi hits Regan, telling her they need to talk more, but if they want to talk, they won't be able to because the matrons won't let them, so they have to trick them. This logic actually makes very good sense. Sumi takes off running down the hallways, stripping completely naked, and then all three girls are sent to solitary confinement. The headmaster tells Cora he's very disappointed in her after throwing water in her face and she realizes that he's a monster and that, as heroes, she and the other students at Whitethorn will have to defeat him.
For three days, Cora is kept in solitary and not fed. Fortunately, she spends most of her time there dreaming, and in her dreams, she conquers the whispers of the Drowned Gods. Whitethorn was meant to change her, but she refused their change, which gave her the strength to refuse the Drowned Gods, too. All the rainbows move from her skin to her hair, and when she finally gets to go back to her dorm, she tells Sumi it's time for them to leave. At first, the nameless girl and her friend Rowena are shitty to Cora, but Emily and Stephanie stick up for her. She tells them all that the school is a prison and it's not helping them, and it seems only Rowena disagrees. She had a roommate that tried to leave by writing home to her family, but the matrons never sent those letters, so Rowena believes they are trapped until they graduate. The nameless girl agrees with Cora and tells her her name, but only white noise comes from her mouth. She says she wants to go home. They begin to plan, and even Rowena helps.
The next day, Cora is perfectly plain and normal and all the matrons are pleased. Before blandly leaving the cafeteria, she catches Regan’s eye and winks. All Cora's classes go well and then, in one, the headmaster enters. He requests of Miss Lennox, the matron he called by name which is unheard of, that Cora accompany him to his office. Rowena asks if they can continue their lesson without Cora and the headmaster grants them permission to take a walk on the grounds. In his office, the headmaster tells Cora he thinks she and Sumi are up to something, a plan to escape, and she pretends that they are not. As she is about to be dismissed to rejoin her classmates, Cora asks the headmaster a question. She asks why she can only remember his face when she's looking at him, and he smiles.
The headmaster tells Cora that boys rarely get caught by doors for misogynistic reasons, but he is one of the few that did. The world he went to was flat and 2d like paper, and the food, though delicious, felt like sawdust in his mouth. He easily ruled the 2d world, but he was sure, when the time came, that he wanted to go back to his own world. Before he left, the 2d people gave him a gift: they stripped him of his individuality. No one in this world would be able to recognize him or remember him when he was out of their sight. He was fortunate to grow up in the age of the Internet, because at least he could make a name for himself through text, and he went to school and he decided to help people like him who were never saved. Cora thanks the headmaster for his story and she is dismissed to find her classmates on their nature walk, but he warns her that there is a nice big refreshing lake on the grounds, too.
Outside, Cora encounters Regan, which is weird because typically, students who went to worlds full of nature weren't permitted outside, in fact, everything about the school is the opposite of how anyone would want anything to be, but it seems like everyone has just kinda given up on what to do with her. Cora thinks she was used as bait for a trap, but she plans on getting out of Whitethorn and needs Regan's help. She asks her if she can speak to deer as well as horses and horse-like things and she can. As they go to rejoin Cora’s class, they begin to make a plan.
Miss Lennox is much nicer than she was before when she didn't have a name and welcomes Regan to join them where the other matrons would've left her on her own. It just doesn't make sense to leave a student all alone and to let her miss out on her studies! Cora takes a chance with the nicer Miss Lennox and asks to ask her a question. Of course she can ask her a question! She is a teacher and Cora is a student! Cora asks when Miss Lennox graduated and she says immediately that she didn't, and then her brain shuts down and she starts screaming. Sumi asks her kindly if she is remembering and apologizes for what Miss Lennox was forced to leave behind on the other side of her door.
Miss Lennox’s screams draw the attention of several other matrons who rush over. Sumi and Cora suggest that maybe something they encountered on the nature walk bit their matron and that's why she's screaming. The matrons ask to make sure they didn't say anything that caused the screaming and they deny it, so they send the students back to their dorm while they take Miss Lennox away. Cora immediately puts the other students into action asking Rowena not to tattle on them, the nameless girl to find out what happens to Miss Lennox when the headmaster, who Cora believes is a fake, takes her name away, and asking Regan to go farther into the woods and ask a deer how they can escape. The nameless girl takes some convincing, but they finally all agree.
Back in the dorm, Cora asks each girl about her door. Emily went through a door at a haunted house and it was Halloween every night and she danced with monsters and scarecrows. Stephanie's door led to a world with dinosaurs. The nameless girl’s door led to a world with rats and mice and took her away when she was unsafe in her home. Rowena's door took her to the veil of clocks. Though she looks like a teenager, she's only eleven. She was gone from her home for three hours and aged six years. Her parents don't believe she is who she says she is so she is at Whitethorn because she has nowhere else to go. If she went back through her door, she would die of old age in a month.
Cora tells them all that someone's door will be waiting for them when they get away from Whitethorn and its false headmaster. They question why she thinks the headmaster is fake, and she explains that his door took away his identity, so if you're not looking at him, you will not remember him, which means that no one would be able to remember that he has a school called Whitethorn. She says she thinks he gave Miss Lennox her name back as punishment, so she would remember everything and then he could take it all away again, so she sends the nameless girl off to find out what they do with Miss Lennox’s name when they take it. They plan on meeting back up later that night to go find Regan and her deer who will lead them out of the school grounds. The stag calls himself Lord of the Forest and, after rejoicing on the inside that her doorway was real and that she really can talk to hooved creatures, he agrees to show Regan the way out of Whitethorn.
The nameless girl, meanwhile, clambers up into the ceiling and makes her way to where the matrons are all sitting stoically while Miss Lennox, Julia, pleads with one of them, Carrie, to wake up. They were supposed to leave together when they graduated, but apparently they didn't graduate and they've been here, unable to leave. The real headmaster comes in then, and it's a guy everyone thought was the janitor. He's upset that his stand-in messed things up by giving Miss Lennox her name, but then the nameless girl decides to take action. She jumps out of the ceiling onto his back and strangles him until he passes out, telling Miss Lennox to run.
At the dorm, Miss Lennox tells Cora and Sumi that it's not safe for any of them there and that the headmaster wants to seal all the doors forever. They all agree to leave to whatever door will have them, and then they run. They find Regan in the woods and she leads them to a pile of fallen trees near the wall and they all climb out and jump to the wall. Last of all is Rowena, but instead of climbing up and going with them, she tears down the pile so no one can follow them. Unfortunately, someone who sounds like the janitor approaches her and asks where everyone else went. She says “away from you,” feeling proud that she wasn't afraid, but when the janitor puts his hands on Rowena, she doesn't feel proud anymore.
A short time later, a door from Confection opens at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children and Sumi, Cora, Julia, Carrie, Emily and the nameless girl tumble out. Stephanie's door came to her as the group traveled through a cookie tree forest and she happily rejoined the dinosaurs. Kade rushes out to meet them and while he and Cora spin around in delighted circles, the new girls to the school worry about being accepted. As they talk, the nameless girl finally remembers her name. She is called Marian. Marian, Julia, Carrie, Emily, Regan, Sumi and Cora have made it away from Whitethorn to a place where they can be safe, or at least not unsafe, finally, until their doors come, or until they don't.