Ironskin

Chapter 16 May Day

“With a face like that, all men would be at your feet,” said Edward.

She whirled, finding him there, a black hole of absent moonlight. Pale, drawn, enervated. Sagging, sad, but the fierce words still came to attack him: “I didn’t ask for all men. What demon possessed you to make this?”

“You do not want to know.”

“I know all too well.” His warmth versus his chill—oh, she knew. She picked up the mask and shoved it on her own face.

The inside of the mask was cool on her skin. Sensuous, molding—like skin itself rather than cold clay. She peered out at him and it was like looking through binoculars the wrong way. Everything seemed distant, cut off. “How do you like me now?”

His eyes were invisible. “I like you as you are.”

She could not hear in his voice whether that meant “before” or “now.” Could not feel it, either. She was turned all upside down by the clay on her face. It seemed to thrum with implied power, but differently than her curse had, so that she would have to recalibrate everything she knew.

She turned past him to the mirror at the end of the room. Her eyes looked out from behind the mask. Her own visage, yet transformed. Enduring. Only her frightened eyes marred its regal beauty.

He came up behind her, slid a hand to her waist.

She could not move from the mirror.

“You think I mock you. You think I want you to be other than you are.” He drew his fingers down the cheek of the mask—she felt it as a coldness that slid over her real skin, her damaged skin. “How could you not?”

“When the proof is right here.”

“I used to be a fine artist,” he said. “I used to find beauty in what was. Now I sculpt every mask and it turns fey under my fingertips.” He pulled the mask from her face and she cried out as her reflection appeared again. And hated herself for the agony her own reflection stirred.

“I tried to form your face. Your face, undamaged. Yet the clay twisted under my fingers, edges where there should be none, roundness where there should be none—remaking your face into some horrid fey ideal. Turning a pretty human face to grotesque parody.” He tossed the mask to the worktable, and its forehead chipped. “I had no idea what I’ve become.”

Hardly thinking, she reached to him, ran a comforting hand on his back. “Ssh,” she soothed, like she would Dorie. “It’s all right.” But her words didn’t reach the coldness that seeped out of him again, thick and strong.

“I lose time when I work…,” he said, his voice trailing off. “At first it seemed no more than an artist’s reverie, such as I often had in my youth.…” He balled one fist into the other. “Their gifts are poison, Jane! Miss Ingel…”

Jane formed the word on numb lips. “Dead?”

“We found her in the clearing. Poule stabbed her wrist—iron in any line to the heart works, she said. She killed the fey, but it was too late for Blanche. I fear she will be an imbecile forever.”

Shock and horror. “It could wear off? Dorie woke from it.”

“The only good—nay, wonderful—thing of the day.” But he shook his head. “Dorie has gifts Blanche did not. I fear the worst.”

“It could be.…” She picked up her face, held it to her chest. What was she risking?

The nearness of his body was suffocating. “The fey are drawn to beauty.” Warmth, towering over her.

She could hardly breathe. She wondered if Edward had some other fey glamour besides the ability in his hands. “They are drawn to themselves,” she gasped out. “I am at risk either way.”

He spun at that, spread his hands as if seeing them for the first time. Was he realizing that he must also be at risk? The fey gift lurking in his hands—that too must be the same fey substance as all the rest. The masks, the curses—even the bluepacks? And what was that substance, anyway? Something they grew, gathered? Or spit out, perhaps, like a spider produces silk.

“Yes,” he said, and he folded one hand in the other as if he no longer knew what to do with them. “You are at risk.”

“Give me the new face,” she said.

He shook his head. “I won’t do that to you. The risk—”

“Is the same,” she said, touching her cursed cheek. The imagined pond evaporated into anger. “I have borne the risk for five years, so tell me why the hell I shouldn’t get the reward? And besides. If you use your fey skill to reverse fey damage, wouldn’t that be setting something right?” Steel held her up. For once she was going to get exactly what she wanted, and damn anybody who told her she wasn’t right to want it. “I resent being labeled a victim.”

“I don’t think of you as a victim. As a survivor.”

“I resent having had something to survive. I resent the five years I spent letting fey emotions seep into me, send me down this life that is not mine. Five years their curse has grown into my soul until black rage and shame seem a vital part of me. One I cannot tear out by the roots, no matter how much calm I project. I resent that, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

The fire died; the coldness was in her body, too. “No. You can’t. Not you, with your … collusion.”

“My daughter—”

“A daughter is a separate part of you. You can project your sorrow onto her. You can go out and be free of her for hours at a time.”

“No.”

She opened her eyes and studied the pain in his. “No, you’re right. I can’t understand yours anymore than you can understand mine. There. I resent that even in our war scars we are separated.” She held the mask in front of her face. “I resent being alone.”

He seized her hand and fire leaped inside of him. “Jane, my love. No. Do not ask this of me. If I were to lose you…”

Her anger threatened to crumble, her heart trembled at the caress of his words. Her words were fluttering steel. “You said you owed me. The day I pulled you back from the forest.”

He leaned in as if he would kiss her again and she stopped him. She would never kiss him again with these lips.

They stood there, and then finally she said softly, “If we are both in danger, at least let me head into battle with my own face.”

Deep inside a small voice said: Beautiful Jane is not you any more than scarred Jane is. Can you really pretend your motives are pure?

She could not, but she was out of the necessary will to walk away. Her hands closed around the iron-threaded cloth Poule had given her, but at that moment her focus was so hot and pure that she knew she had no need of it. She stood there and told him silently: Give me my face.

He started to protest, but then she saw that glassy white swell in his eyes, as her command raged forth, just as it had against Miss Davenport.

Give me my face.

Give me my face.

Silent and unseeing, Edward took the mask with the chipped forehead from her. She turned and marched to the door at the other end of the room, though her ankles shook her stride.

He made her lie down on his table.

He laid one fey-cursed hand on her forehead and one hand on her heart and then the small white room shifted into dreams.

Dream.

I am the Fey Queen, and Edward is at my command. When I tell him to go, fetch, stay, he does. I have complete power over his hands, his body, his soul.

But I would not command him to do evil, Jane thinks, I would command delightful things. Draw me a picture, I say. Paint a portrait of you, me, Dorie all together on the back lawn, with gold sunlight glinting from our clothes and hair. You swing her around till she is nothing but laughter. Show us how happy we are.

Dream further back. Go to somewhere in the middle of the Great War.

I am the Fey Queen, and I have lost Edward, I have let him go, he has won his freedom in a game of wits. (I did not pay enough attention to him; I was planning battles.) I am angry, but I do not show it. Instead I smile with blinding beauty and I grant him a gift. A special gift, the use of his hands, those sensitive artistic hands. And I tell him his hands will do grand things, and I will come to him and show him how.

No, thinks Jane. I will not be a part of this, of your plan to force Edward to give you the world. Did I coerce Edward to give me that face? Did I command? Then I was wrong. I reject this side of me, of what I could be, of what I might have been.

Are you certain? Look what you could be, with me.

Yes, says Jane. I am certain.…

Show me more?

Dream further back. Twenty, forty—sixty years.

I am the Fey Queen and I am listening. My people tell me that human factories are polluting our woods, destroying our homes. But another fey has an idea. We will distract the humans by solving their problems before them. Fey will run their mechanical horses, heat their habitat, power their nighttime suns. They will have no need to invent, to destroy us.

Yes, it is clever and it will work for now. But it will not work forever. The humans will go back to their factories eventually, and then … there may well be war in our future. Within the next century, I suspect.

Oh, it depresses me, and I need distraction. A small child wanders through the woods, red-faced from another fight with his father. I have watched him often. He cheers me with his drawings; he is the cleverest, sweetest, brightest boy. He will be gifted by my presence, for humans age more slowly in our company; three years seem as one. (A gift for us, too, or he would be over in a blink.)

Yes, here he comes, see him smile at the face I create for him, see him shyly extend his sketchbook for the pretty lady to see.…

Oh, he will do just fine.

Dream. One thousand years ago.

I am the Fey Queen and I am here. Through storm and change and wind and you and all that is to come I will be here forever. You may reject me, but you cannot stop me. You will be part of my always and ever, a leaf of my tree, a dress of the season, a blink of eternity falling in a slow blinding crash.…

No, says Jane. I won’t let you, no. No no no.

I am Jane.

I am Jane I am Jane I am Jane I am …

When she awoke there was white sunlight on her body. She sat up and her head rang. “Edward?” she said.

But no one was in the room.

She patted her head where her hair itched—there were no bandages there. Either Edward hadn’t done that part or perhaps he’d never started her face at all. She didn’t know if she was ready to look in the mirror and find out.

But she would have to look sometime. Jane levered herself to the floor and wavered there until the dizziness subsided. She remembered having strange dreams, but the only fragment that was clear was a moment when someone accused her of coercing Edward. Compelling him.

Like the fey.

Deep inside she swore to herself that she would never do it again. She had not known she was doing it to Miss Davenport. But she had known she was coercing Edward. Once was enough for a lifetime.

Her feet seemed steady, so she inched along to the first door, stepped out into the workroom.

A breath. And she would turn and face that mirror, accept what she had chosen for herself.

And then a woman screamed.

Jane stumbled through the workroom, catching only glimpses of a messy workbench, a new mask hanging, things she hardly registered as she flew downstairs on stumbling feet. Dorie. Dorie.

The front door was open, but Cook stood just inside of it, blocking her way. “You won’t be wanting to go out there, lass.” She peered down at Jane and her kindly face went white.

“Jane,” Jane said. “I’m Jane.”

Cook’s hand crept to her apron pocket and suddenly there was a feyjabber in her hand.

“I am,” said Jane. The newness of the mask was making her dizzy and she desperately wanted to lie down, but she had to find Dorie.

The feyjabber wavered. Who had screamed?

“You know me,” said Jane. “You told me the story about your sister, remember? ‘May you be born plain.’ ”

The older woman’s lips trembled. “Would that you had listened.”

A sudden bear hug from a small girl knocked her off balance. Dorie had flung herself through the door and knocked Jane backward. “Mother!” cried Dorie.

“I was so worried when I heard the scream,” said Jane. She drew back. “What did you call me?”

“Pretty lady,” said Dorie. “Mother.” She hugged Jane harder and her affection billowed up bright and strong.

Jane put a shaky hand to her face. It was cold and smooth and when she ran her fingers along her cheek it was unscarred and whole. Confusion—if her cheek was unscarred, how was she still sensing Dorie’s feelings without the benefit of the fey curse? Was she immediately, full-on using the mask in the same way she’d used her curse? But that confusion seemed a minor detail compared to being called “Mother.”

“Where’s a mirror?” Jane said to Cook, but Cook frowned.

“Don’t know that you’ll be wanting to find one.”

The one on the landing, Jane suddenly remembered, and she led Dorie toward the garret, to the stairs where the mirror suddenly rushed out at you. Her steps faltered the closer she came.

No bandages, as she’d felt. But he had finished. The thin red line encircled her face where he’d finished his surgery.

But it was not the mask she’d seen last night—the beautiful version of her with the chipped forehead. “Dorie,” she said. “Whom did your doll look like?”

“Mother,” said Dorie, and Jane nodded, her gut cold as stone.

She had the face of the Mother doll.

Of the Fey Queen.

“Stay inside,” she told Dorie, and she ran down the stairs, pushing past Cook and out the back door, rocks stinging her bare feet. Everyone from the house had hurried out and stood, openmouthed, hands to hearts or mouths.

A fey hung in the air on the back lawn by the Maypole, a swirl of blue-orange light with an imaged face like the Mother doll, the fey Jane had seen in the clearing.

The Fey Queen.

Advancing on Nina.

Jane shouted at the crowd: “Get back inside!” and they looked at her, startled, as if trying to figure out who she was. Only a few of them obeyed.

But the Fey Queen listened. Instantly dropped Nina and shot through the air to Jane. Hung there in front of Jane, reflecting her new face back to her.

“You’re not taking my body,” Jane croaked.

“Made for me,” the fey said.

“He wouldn’t…” But the proof was on her face.

“Was your. Purpose here.” The swirls tightened; Jane felt the mental effort as the fey switched into a more human way of speaking. “He’s done it before.”

“Dorie’s mother…,” said Jane. But what had been nagging her about Edward’s story finally hit home. “She died almost five years ago. But Dorie is nearly six.”

“I am Dorie’s mother,” hissed the fey. “That form was just the bearer. I needed a body, so I found him a town girl, someone silly enough to be pleased by the master’s notice. Once I helped him seduce her, she was ours. A strong body, even in death. I kept that body a year before the villagers noticed the stink. Your live body will last me much longer. Decades, before it wrinkles and I kill it.” Pitiless eyes. “Once you’ve been the consort of the Fey Queen, you’ll do anything to regain that.”

“You lie,” said Jane desperately. “He has a conscience.”

“A conscience, bah. A human thing, and he is practically one of us. He was with us years and years, after all. You have seen his hands, yes? How he can sculpt beauty out of earth? We did not gift him with that. This is a talent worthy of the fey if ever there was one.”

“But he loves me,” Jane said softly, and somehow all that was left in the words was the wishful thinking of a silly girl. “I love him.”

The Queen sent a wave through her that somehow she knew was the fey equivalent of ostentatious yawning. “In one sense, you shall be with him,” the Queen said. “The other form is nice enough, but yours is the one designed for me. I have seen what you are made of, you know. Your mind will accept my patterns very nicely. We will go together well, after you succumb. I will have it.”

Then the blue-orange advanced on Jane, and Jane was too despairing to run, for the proof of what the Queen said was all too visible. He had given her the Queen’s face, and there could be no other interpretation of that.

She had no defenses, none, and then suddenly there was a wall of iron in front of her and the Fey Queen was crashing into it.

“Run,” said Poule, and she shoved her back toward the house, lifting her makeshift shield at the Queen.

Of course the Queen could go around iron, even a large piece of it, but the brief moment of surprise at hitting it dead on stunned the Queen so she only hung flickering for eight, ten seconds, before she could move again. Jane moved her nerveless feet faster and faster, flung herself over the iron threshold just as the Queen pounced on her ankles and came up with only air.

Rage in her head, from the Queen, then enticement. Lust, love, lulling, luring Jane to step back across that threshold and out into the open.

Jane slammed the door. She flung herself to the floor, on top of her hands, and though the compulsion seized her till she wept, she had just enough strength from all her work with the fey curse to keep her hands curled under her belly, her knees drawn to her chest.

From outside came Nina’s voice, shouting no, no, no, and there was nothing Jane could do, for the compulsion still pulled her like a string pulls a top to its apex, plucking her with the fey call, and with her own human guilt, for despite not adoring Nina she did not want her to be consumed by the Fey Queen.

The compulsion died even as the door opened and Poule slid around it and into the foyer.

“Nina…,” said Jane.

“You’re not to go out there, you hear?” said Poule. “For all she has Nina, she’d drop her like hot iron if she could have you.”

“Just jump from one to the next?” said Jane. Who could stand against that?

“I don’t know,” said Poule. “I’ve been turning over the event with Blanche and I think perhaps the fey are stuck in a body till it dies. That’s why that other fey tried to force Blanche to slash her wrists with a silver knife. It knew it was discovered and was trying to win free.”

But the Queen had entered Dorie, and left, thought Jane. She entered me, while I was asleep. Jane could not quite buy Poule’s slim hope.

“It’s curtains for Nina, but at least the Queen’s trapped there for a while,” continued Poule. “She’ll either have to use the body or destroy it, and she’ll have to get full control of it to destroy it. Nina’s stronger than Blanche ever was.”

But Jane slumped to the floor, hardly listening.

“He would’ve given me to her like … like a thing, a toy, a body for her. For her to be with him.”

Poule’s eyes were gentle. “You can’t be trusting anything a fey says.”

“He assumed no one would miss me. Like the village girl.” She rounded on Poule. “That must have been true. Dorie had to be born out of a human form. How did it happen? Just like she said? Is that who he’s been paying off all these years?” A thought flashed through her mind. “That man at the carriage house that day—the girl’s father, it must have been.”

“Before my time,” said Poule. “Let’s have you lie down in your room. You can talk to him when he returns from the forest.”

Jane stumbled to her feet. “I can’t see him. I can’t see him ever again.” Her fingers flew to the edges of the mask. “And this face, this face, get it off of me—”

Poule clasped her hands, pulled them away. Worry was in her voice as she said, “You’ll hurt yourself. Don’t do that.”

“But I can’t have it, I can’t.”

“I’ll think of something,” promised Poule. “Or Edward will fix it himself.”

But that was the wrong thing for Poule to say if she wanted Jane to calm. She drew back from Poule, her eyes flooding. “I have to go,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Jane. Jane!”

And she ran from her, ran out the side door to where the party guests were hurriedly throwing their trunks and dresses willy-nilly into their carriages and motorcars, rousting their idle groomsmen and chauffeurs, fleeing.

Jane jumped onto the running board of the Davenports’ motorcar. It was over-full, stuffed with the family and with another gentleman who had come by train and didn’t want to wait for a hired hand to take him to the station. “Please,” said Jane. “Are you going to the city? Please, you must take me with you.”

“There’s no room,” said the mother, but the elder Miss Davenport, the one who had let Dorie go into the forest, looked into Jane’s clay-ringed eyes and said “Squeeze in here.”

Jane wasted no time stuffing herself in, could not even find it in herself to care that she was half on top of the girl, pulled the door closed on their skirts as the motorcar was peeling out down the mud road and away, away from Edward.

The Davenports’ goodwill (or in the elder Miss Davenport’s case, guilt) extended only so far. Jane walked the fifty-three blocks from their house to Helen’s, alone with her thoughts. The afternoon sun was hot on her shoulders and the top of her head, and though she had nothing with her—not even money—she was also glad she had nothing to carry.

It felt quite strange to be on the streets without veil or mask. People stopped to look at her, and Jane was shocked over and over again to realize that they were staring because she was beautiful. She looked longingly at a roasted-chestnut stand as she passed, and a gentleman in a well-brushed suit ran after her and begged her to accept a striped bag full of them.

Jane accepted, an unfamiliar smile crossing her lips, a smile that apparently made the nice man blush and hurry off.

So she was not surprised when the butler at Helen’s house dropped his respectable demeanor and said, when she told him her name, “Never Helen’s sister?”

But she was shocked enough to drop the last of the chestnuts on Helen’s nice clean floor when she saw Helen.

Chalk it up to another thing she should’ve known, she thought. Helen’s hints about Alistair finding a solution, Edward mentioning that he’d seen her sister …

Helen was beautiful.

Fey beautiful.