The People of the Toenail live in the hardest country of the body, a land they build, plate by plate, out of themselves.

Keratinocytes are the cells of your skin, hair and nails, and their whole way of life is sacrifice. Deep in the nail’s hidden districts, the Matrix, tucked under the skin at the nail’s root, young keratinocytes are born, and immediately begin filling themselves with keratin, the toughest structural protein your body makes. As they mature they flatten, harden, and finally give up their living machinery altogether, cementing themselves into the translucent armour plate you can see: the nail itself. What you trim off your toe was once a crowd of living citizens.

The geography in the story is real anatomy, named district by district. The Nail Plate is the hard country on top; the Nail Bed lies beneath it, feeling everything; the two Matrix districts are the birthing-grounds where growth happens; the pale half-moon Lunula is the Matrix showing through; the Cuticle seals the border against invaders; and the Distal Groove, the story’s fallen Disco Groove, is the seam at the nail’s far edge, the body’s frontier with the outside world.

A healthy nail grows about a millimetre a week, which is why Wollumbin’s people speak so slowly and remember so long. And their motto, Tough as Nails, holds only while the country is well fed and well defended. When something breaches the border, as it does in the Dreaded Onychomycosis, the plates ridge, grey and flake exactly as Ayanda sees in the Keratinocyte child.

Hear Toenail speak in Chapter Four · Go deeper: Onychomycosis