The centaur carried her over his shoulder with her hands tied behind her back, up the incline into the hull and down identical, dimly lit corridors before he dumped her in a corner that looked the same as the rest. The mouthy one then tied up her ankles and bound them to her wrists, as if preparing a hog intended for slaughter. But she didn't think about that. Her mind was too busy curling inward like a terrorized armadillo. She took in her surroundings like someone passing by an open window: the mouthy man griping about the pain between his legs, boasting of all the crude things he would have liked to do to the boy; his comrades' silent discomfort; and the uneasy glances the man with the melted face kept throwing her way. All the while, Gran bled out in her mind's eye again and again, like a broken phonograph with a garish skip.

The chatter stopped when a man in a long white coat arrived. His gloved fingers poured over her body, massaged her neck muscles, checked her pulse, turned her head this way and that, and shined a tiny light into her eyes. When he slipped a hand through a tear in her dress below her left breast, wiped the skin there with a cold compress stinking of chemicals and injected her with a hot liquid that caused her innards to coil, she merely inclined her head to peer past the spectacles to his ghost-grey eyes that complimented his receding hairline.

This is procedural, the eyes said. Complimentary for all guests.

He left her with a slow burn pulsing under her skin. The centaur, too, had gone, though she didn't remember his leaving. The one who sounded like he had a snake lodged in his throat graced her with a crisp smile, got his knees, leaned between her and the wall and sniffed. Her thighs instinctively clenched and nausea rolled through her stomach.

"Stop it!" the burnt one barked and capped it with an oath, but mouthy wasn't keen on obeying orders.

Panic dripped into the fog of her brain slower than a caterpillar spins a cocoon. Her adrenaline spent, she was beginning to crash, and it took everything in her to stay awake.

He returned to his knees and his comrade kicked him like a stray dog. It didn't deter him. The burnt one stalked off, muttering curses.

Her skin pimpled at his warm breath and she wondered if this wasn't one of those dangerous men Mat had warned her about right before she lost the fight and fell asleep.

Lungs dry and her mouth full of humid night air escaping her in quick bursts, Snow ran through the Burnt Forest, a threat hot on her heels. She tripped in her haste and turned to meet her aggressor and found herself face to face with a wolf, white pelt bristling, muzzle pulled back in a toothy grin. If she reached out, she could flick a fuzzy ear. It licked its lips in the most human way. A sudden burst of warmth shot across her back and she awoke in a sudden panic, blinking back tears as she whipped her head around to find the mouthy man clutching at his throat, blood seeping through his fingers. A vision of terror, he gave one final gurgle, then slumped against the wall, dead.

"Sorry about that."

Snow blinked up at three new faces. Two of them wore the same get-ups as her captors: combat boots, boiled leather shirts, coarse cotton caps and trousers with belts sporting blades, a bludgeon and a long stick. But the one who had spoken lacked the stoic demeanor of the others and while he wore the same trousers and boots, a woven grey sweater hung loose at his shoulders and his belt was empty, his only weapon the bloody dagger in his hand. He wiped it clean on the trousers of the guard to his right, earning himself a glare, then cut her loose before handing the dagger to the same guard who holstered it in her belt.

Snow hastily pulled down what was left of her tattered dress as she stood up, the mouthy man's blood now crusting in all the worst places.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he said, and retreated down the hall.

Hands on their belts, the guards waited for her to budge. What choice did she have? She wiped her face and followed. Her sand-papery eyes bore into the back of Sweater's thick mess of hair, the tips turning an inky-blue under each rectangle of light that dotted the ceiling as they went. He might be the tallest man she had ever seen.

They turned down a wider, brightly lit hallway that burned her eyes and the two guards branched out to flank her.

"I've been pushing to have them all gelded," Sweater drawled. The male guard visibly straightened. "But Highness thinks it'd be bad for morale. Still, she's got a no tolerance policy for the grabbies; I don't want you to think we just go around murdering each other around here."

He said everything with a gravitas of boredom.

Snow nearly barreled into him when he abruptly stopped beside a door with a tiny window that appeared to have a glass inlay, the like of which she had only ever seen in spectacles. If she had had the mental capacity to wonder, everything aboard the ship from its alien metal walls to the lights in the hall that anyone might suppose were windows if there was a sliver of sky to be seen, might fascinate her. Instead, she was sinking into eyes the color of ether. He was as pale as a faery's second face, lithe and gaunt, and would look very much at home in the Burnt Forest.

"Here we are. Decontamination."

He opened the door to a blinding light. Squinting, Snow peered into the white-tiled room where there was a drain on the floor, and a disk with pores and a chain hanging from the ceiling. The light itself seemed to come from where the walls met the ceiling, a peculiar phenomenon.

"You have five minutes. I'd use soap," he added, looking to the blood crusting between her legs. He put out a hand. "Hand over the dress."

Backing into the room, she clutched at the rags that now left little to the imagination. He stepped into the doorway and spared a glance over his shoulder before leaning in, as if he had a secret she should be so lucky to hear.

"You don't give me the dress and one of these muscled brutes will insist on cutting it off you."

She spared the hall a glance and found the man staring back.

"Turn around," Sweater said over his shoulder.

The grizzly of a man smirked, trying to catch the eye of his female comrade who turned around, leaving Grizzly to glare at Sweater before obeying with a snort. Sweater closed his eyes and gestured for the dress.

Persuading herself that getting rid of the dress meant getting rid of what remained of the mouthy man besides what was holed up in her head, she stepped out of the dress and handed it over.

"Five minutes," he said, then closed the door.

Feeling exposed in every sense of the word, Snow wrapped her arms tightly around her body, tucked her hands under her armpits, fingernails biting into her flesh, clenched her thighs together and stared at the ominous-looking disk.

Her thoughts began to curl inward again, the worst of them vying for her attention until it culminated into a terror that drove her into the space below the disk where she frantically tugged on the chain. Water cascaded down, pelting her like shards of ice. Her arms wrapped back around her like elastic bands, she stared at the tiles, watching soot and blood swirl in garish colors down the drain until the door swung open.

"Time's up."

Snow leapt for the bar of soap cradled by a ledge in the corner and was vigorously scrubbing herself when Sweater pulled on the chain, reducing the water to a steady drip. Snow looked up at the disk pleadingly as suds slid down her legs.

"That's going to itch," he said, throwing a towel atop her head. He held up another. Making no move to grab it, she pulled down the one from her head and draped it before herself, scowling over the top.

Sweater shrugged and dropped the other onto the wet floor.

Snow dried off as best she could without flashing too much flesh, then nabbed the clothes he held--a white, cotton shirt and trousers to match. The fabric was warm but thin and she stared in dismay as it clung to her wet body in all the wrong places. She looked at the towel on the floor, prickly at the loss.

"Let's go." Sweater stepped to the side to let her pass.

She thought about refusing, demanding answers as she supposed any abductee ought to do, but her resolve slackened as she looked to the guards and decided she'd hate to give anyone any reason to touch her. Hating herself, she tucked away that nugget of resistance, saving it for later, and plodded out into the hall.

It belatedly occurred to Snow that it might prove useful to memorize the ship's layout should an opportunity to escape arise, but every corridor, corner and door looked the same and she quickly lost count of the turns. She had never seen so much metal and glass and wondered at the advanced technology it took to build such a monster. And where were the other passengers?

Sweater came to a stop at a glass door. He inserted a card into a box with a red light on the wall, the box beeped, the light flashed green, and the door slid open.

Her nose wrinkled at the stink of sweaty bodies and filth that rushed out to greet them. Grizzly gave her a push when she tottered on the threshold. The room was long, lined on the left with metal bars and more little boxes with red lights, and on the right were more rectangles of light that made her wonder how close they were to the sun.

"This one's yours," Sweater said beside the very first set of bars.

Snow peeked around him to a man in scrubs identical to hers with a mess of gnarled white hair and a beard to match lying on the floor in the adjacent cell. Propped up on one arm, he turned his head away from the wall that separated him from his other neighbor, and her breath caught at the familiar pair of icecap-blue eyes.

"In you go," Sweater said.

Grizzly closed in and Snow instinctively moved into the cage furnished with nothing but a wooden bucket.

"You ask me, I say she's dimwitted," Grizzly said to the others.

Sweater shut the door, the box beeped and the door gave a click.

The guards left the way they came. Sweater lingered long enough to pay her neighbor a stony glance before following suit.

Left alone to suffer her own thoughts, that slow burn returned under her left breast where the man in the white coat had pricked her. Snow shoved a hand under her shirt and traced a tiny lump there until she caught her neighbor ogling her. Not in the mood for conversation or prying eyes, she turned toward the wall and sat on the floor. The burning pooled at the lump, the edge of which she traced with a fingernail. It was just below the surface. Surely, she could dig whatever it was out.

"Don't touch it," her neighbor said.

Nobody asked you.

Snow dug her nail into the edge of the raised skin and suffered an immediate shock that shot from her chest, up her neck and down her limbs—with a sharp cry, she passed out.

Mat traipsed through rolling hills of marigolds with a shovel resting on his shoulder. She called out but he ignored her. Blood stained his head, his hands--it crusted on his trousers, had matted his goldenrod hair, and every marigold he brushed against bled.

Snow awoke with bile racing up her throat. The bucket forgotten, she quickly crawled to the bars and spewed vomit out into the corridor. She spat, then wiped her mouth and leaned her sweaty head against the cool bars.

Movement in the corner brought her head around; the man with the ogling eyes stood with his hands wrapped around the bars they shared.

"You've a chunk," he said, gesturing to the corner of his mouth.

Wary and annoyed, she tried to stand.

"I wouldn't."

Her legs wobbly, she fought the urge to spew a biting retort and instead put all her energy into pulling herself into a standing position. Once erect, the shooting pain returned to her chest, her vision swayed, and she slid back down the bars to the floor.

"The sickness will pass. The pain will last much longer."

He had a curious accent.

In the tail of her eye, she could see he had pulled up his shirt, though she refused to look.

"I dug out my first two. Body rejected the third." He let the shirt fall. "They're not shy with the needles."

Needles. A new word.

Again, Snow slipped a hand under her shirt and gently rested a finger atop the tiny orb, then shoved her hands into her armpits to prevent herself from scratching. Despite her leaving it alone, the pangs still came in waves, making her eyes roll back, each pulling at her like an undercurrent until one finally succeeded in dragging her under. The last thing she remembered was dirt, mounds and mounds of it, earthworms pushing up through the soil and the squawk of a vulture overhead before she awoke to something—no, someone tugging on her big toe.