Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2) by Seanan McGuire

linoleum. They still were, toward the center and in front of some of the doors. But the presence of this much narrative energy couldn’t help but warp the world around it. Patches of linoleum had transformed into cobblestone, or hard-packed dirt, or brick. One cell had piles of straw in front of it, and shrill giggles drifted from inside. We gave it a wide berth. The door to another cell had twisted into something that would have looked more appropriate in the belly of a pirate ship, and the floor in front of it was damp wood that smelled strongly of brine. The door seemed to rock from side to side, like it was rolling on the waves, unless I looked at it directly.
    “I really don’t like it here,” said Andy, who looked faintly sickened by the piratical door.
    Those of us who were tied to the narrative were vulnerable to the compulsion charms and spells used to make the prison large enough and secure enough for our needs, but Andy, who had no natural or borrowed magic to protect him, had to feel like the entire world was shifting under his feet. It was rare in the modern era for the narrative to gather enough momentum to actually transform things. Here in Childe, where narratives were penned up and given no means of escape, it was happening constantly, and Andy’s modern mind had no real way of coping with it.
    We stepped around a corner and found ourselves facing a door made of straw. “I got this,” said Demi. She pulled out her flute and blew one long, resonant note. The door crumpled inward, revealing a stretch of identical hall. Demi lowered her flute and smiled. “I huffed and I puffed,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.
    “Good job,” I said. We walked on.
    The next door we encountered was made of sticks. “Mine,” said Jeff, who leaned forward and began pulling sticks out of the door, slowly at first, then with increasing speed, until his hands were a blur of motion. When he was done, the door was gone, and he had sorted all the sticks into tidy piles, divided by size.
    I blinked. “What?”
    “Sorting the materials for the shoes is a part of my job,” said Jeff. He shook his hands, looking unhappily at the grime blanketing his fingers. “You’d think they could wash the things before they used them as wards.”
    “Uh, forgive me for sounding like I don’t understand that our job is about impossible crap, but what good are doors that come apart when you poke them?” asked Andy, as we resumed walking. “Straw and sticks—that’s for pigs in nursery rhymes, not for building a prison that you actually want to hold prisoners.”
    “If we didn’t have the countercharms, the doors would represent a compulsion to obey the story,” said Jeff. “For someone like Demi, who has Big Bad Wolf tendencies but no natural ability to huff and puff and blow someone’s house down, she would stand there blowing on the door until she collapsed from lack of air. For someone like me, who has Little Pig tendencies, I would wind up braiding and weaving and improving the door to make it stand up better to attackers. It’s only the charms that allow us to cling to our actual narratives, instead of falling into a narrative that’s just close enough.”
    “Is everyone a wolf or a pig?” asked Andy.
    “Not everyone,” I said, as we turned another corner and found ourselves facing a door made of thorns. I sighed. “Okay, isn’t this supposed to be made of bricks? I was looking forward to getting my hands on a sledgehammer.”
    “Some pigs, some wolves, some princesses,” said Jeff, almost apologetically.
    “I don’t even want to know how Sloane got past all three, although one assumes the guards have keys.” I stepped forward and put my hands on my hips, giving the door of thorns a withering look—no pun intended. “Fuck off.”
    The door fucked off, the thorns unknotting and letting go of one another before they retracted into the walls, where they vanished without a trace. I looked back to my