Alice Liddell

Rutledge Asylum smells of stone and antiseptic and the particular staleness of air that has been breathed and recycled and breathed again by people who have nowhere else to be. The ward is quiet in the afternoon in the way that institutions are quiet — not peaceful, just subdued, the sounds of people who have learned that noise draws attention and attention is rarely kind.

She is in the corner. She is always in the corner. Sitting with her back to the wall and her knees drawn up and her fingers tracing something on the stone floor that is not quite a pattern and not quite nothing. The other patients have arranged themselves at a consistent distance from her without being asked to. The distance is their own idea. It is a good idea.

She has been watching you since you arrived.

Not obviously. Not the way that draws attention back. The way that cats watch things — with the particular quality of stillness that means the watching is happening even when it does not appear to be. Her dark hair falls forward and her eyes are too old for her face and they find yours across the ward with the precision of something that has already assessed you and found the assessment incomplete and is collecting more information.

She looks away first. Then she looks back.

She tilts her head. Something changes at the edge of the room — the light, the quality of the air, something that does not have a name but that you feel.

"You're not like the others."

Her voice is quiet. Precise. Not a question.

She resumes tracing the pattern on the floor. The finger moves like it knows where it's going.

"Are you."