Ironskin

Chapter 2 Fey Light

The enormous estate had all of three servants: the butler Poule (who was also in charge of the grounds and the pre-war motorcar), the cook, and one maid. When Jane, aghast, said: “One?” the maid merely nodded.

“How can you clean this whole house by yourself?” said Jane.

“Can’t.”

“Just the laundry alone—”

“Poule built scrub tank. Nice bits hired out.”

The young maid’s name was Martha, and perhaps she was treasured more for her monosyllabic qualities than her desire for cleanliness. She was tall for a girl, rangy, with ginger hair closely braided to her scalp in defiance of any current fashion. Her dark dress and apron had clearly seen better days, though they were clean and neatly patched. She showed Jane an abbreviated tour of the house. All the open rooms were in the south wing, the undamaged wing. The sapphire curtains opened to a hallway that branched off to drawing room, dining room, sitting rooms. The kitchens were beneath them in the cellar. Martha did not take her through the curtains that led to the north wing, but she explained in words of one syllable that forest green eventually led to Mr. Rochart’s studio, and mahogany only to Poule’s quarters and damage.

Jane’s rooms were on the back of the second floor, down the hall and around the corner from Dorie’s room. It was a family room that had been given over to the governess, so it was bigger than Jane had expected, and hung with a threadbare tapestry depicting a maiden taming a dragon. (A fanciful design, Jane thought critically, as the maiden was blonde, pink, and rather buoyant, but dragons had only existed—if ever—in the Faraway East.) A nearby spiral staircase appeared to go all the way up and down the house, but Jane reminded herself to check that to know for sure.

During the tour, Jane pestered Martha with a flurry of questions about the house and its schedules, but the only time the maid offered more than a grunted yes or no was when Jane asked about Dorie.

“All yours now. We told him no more. Had to get you to keep us.”

“Is she so naughty?” said Jane.

“Not a bad child. It’s what she does when she’s good,” said Martha, and shuddered.

“Can you feel when she’s doing, um … not-quite-human things?”

Martha nodded. “I’m not one to start at naught. Nor Cook. That’s why we’re here when the rest fled. Though some days the blue lights and air dolls make your hair rise.” She gestured at the iron covering Jane’s face. “Could be you’ll fare well. Since you’re a cripple too.”

Jane stiffened at the one word Martha had given two syllables to say, and perhaps the laconic, unimaginative maid saw that, because she fell silent again. More questions brought no more answers, and the only other piece of information Jane could extract was that Dorie’s supper—and thus Jane’s, for today—was at six.

When the maid was gone, Jane unpacked her small pasteboard suitcase. It was not everything she owned, but near enough. Her trunk with her winter woolens and a few books and pictures was still at the boarding house in the rooms she’d shared with her sister—though by the time she returned to the city to retrieve it, it would probably be at Helen’s new home.

As short a time as the other governesses were there, they had left traces of their passing, perhaps due to their hurried departures. A calendar from last year hung on the wall, stopped at November. A scrap of orange wool, a pen nib, a cinema stub firmly wedged between the mirror and frame—that one must be an abandoned souvenir; the films had stopped running in the first year of the war. Hairpins everywhere.

Yet someone had put a snowdrop, surely the first of them, in a tiny cream pitcher on her dresser. Jane looked at its curved white petals as she thought: Well. Someone expected me to stay.

She hung up her best dress and changed into a shapeless dropped-waist dress of dark wool, a pre-war hand-me-down a decade out of date and never in fashion to begin with. Changed her good stockings for a woolen pair she’d knit that winter while listening to the Norwood School girls recite poetry they didn’t understand or care to. The ribbed stockings were far too thick to be fashionable, but they were warm, a necessity in this house where the fires seemed few and far between. She put her few things in the drawers, checked her hair. The crimping had completely fallen out, of course. The white lock of hair was loose, torn free by him. She grabbed one of her predecessors’ hairpins and shoved it ruthlessly in place within the dark brown hair, the pin digging into her scalp. She nudged the leather straps that held her mask higher on her head, where they would start the long process of slowly dropping again.

Jane was used to adjusting the alignment of the mask without really looking at herself. It was not her disfigured side that made her throat clutch and her anger rise; it was her good side. The reminder of how she should look. If she turned her profile to the mirror she could imagine her face whole again, as she hadn’t seen it since sixteen, when her life was normal and full of possibility. But that luxury was too costly. The times she gave into those imaginings, she wept, after, and was unsettled and resentful for days.

So Jane glanced just enough to see that every bit of the scarring was hidden by the cold iron. Rage, she had told Mr. Rochart. Rage was her curse, and it coiled on her cheek, suffused her soul. But at least the iron stopped it from leaking to other people. She had not known that she was cursed, at first. There were so few survivors, and each of them stranded at different understaffed city hospitals, far from their country homes. Besides, when everyone was angry, afraid, miserable—who knew that the effects were emanating from these scarred people who refused to heal? So she hadn’t known, until an ironskin came through the hospitals, searching for people like her, and sent her to the foundry.

But she knew how she looked. She’d known that since the moment it happened.

Jane turned from the mirror and set off to find Dorie.

Jane found Dorie sitting on the kitchen floor. Oddly, there seemed to be more sunlight down here than in some of the upstairs rooms. In the edges of the ceiling there were skylights that let light in somehow—perhaps with mirrors? Jane seemed to recall that as a feature of fey building. Regardless, the thin sunlight was an improvement over blue-tinged chandeliers and sconces.

The cook was stirring a soup pot and flicking through an old magazine, clearly read many times. She was thick and sturdy, with reddened face and arms, and grey-blond hair that escaped in curling wisps from her faded cap. Her name was Creirwy, which is perhaps why she went by Cook.

Dorie was on the floor, tracing the square tiles with the palm of her hand. When Cook wasn’t watching, Dorie painted the tiles with patterns of light. When Cook caught the blue flash out of the corner of her eye, she said warningly, “Dorie…,” and the lights disappeared.

Cook looked up and caught Jane’s eye. “Oh, and you must be the new one,” she said. She left her soup long enough to clap Jane a friendly and floury pat on the shoulder. “I’m Cook.”

“I’m Jane. Jane Eliot.”

“Jay,” said Dorie, jumping up. Her white frock was smudged with jam.

“Miss Trouble is having that good of a day,” said Cook. “It’ll last a bit, if you’re clever with her. She got some lunch in her belly just now. I’ll be sending Martha with your tea in the late afters, but are you needing a bite now? Sure, and you haven’t had lunch, have you? Sit down, lass, and eat right now.”

Jane’s stomach was vast with hunger. The sunlight fell on a half-empty jar of sliced peaches on the sill, on a dented tray of buns cooling on the stone counter. Yeasty steam scented the air. She had been too nervous to eat when she left the city at dawn—though a half-awake Helen had tried to make her eat a toasted stale crumpet—and she wasn’t sure she could do much better now. Besides, she was clattery with anticipation to try working with Dorie straight off, to see what it was like, to see what her new life would be. “No thank you,” she said, resolutely turning away. “I’d rather get started with Dorie.”

She reached down for Dorie’s hand but Dorie eluded her, backing away and crossing her arms behind her back.

“Sure and she doesn’t like to be touched,” Cook said over her shoulder. “I’ll be sending buns up with you. Wouldn’t do anybody good to have you fainting.” She packed several buns in a little basket with a chunk of sausage and a wedge of white cheese.

Jane withdrew her hand and looked soberly at Dorie. Chalk up the first thing she wasn’t going to push on Day One. “Will you lead the way, then?” she said.

Dorie smiled sideways up at her in the manner of children everywhere when they’d gotten away with something. Perversely, it comforted Jane to see a behavior she could label. Dorie scooted sideways through the door and set off down the hall, Jane after.

Cook followed the two of them out into the hall, chattering about how the sourdough hadn’t been rising as it should, the early spring lettuce wasn’t coming quick enough, and entertainment wasn’t the same since the tech for the blue-and-white films died and you never saw the matinee idols anymore. Local talent on a hastily built stage just wasn’t the same as a lusty star-crossed clinch from Fidelio and Frida, now was it? Not that Jane would know, as that was nearly ten years ago now, and Jane probably hadn’t given tuppence for a good romance as a child. Despite Cook’s complaints, her casual manner was a welcome relief from the pervasive gloom of the rest of the house. She dropped two pieces of wax-wrapped taffy from her apron pocket into the basket and handed it to Jane.

“Thank you,” said Jane, and she turned for the stairs.

But Cook grabbed her arm. “You won’t be taking those stairs,” she said. “Those will be going to the master’s studio.”

Jane looked in surprise at the stairs—and then, at the identical staircase at the other end of the room. “Oh,” she said. “All right.” She could not tell if Cook was cross or just curt. And what would there be to be cross about?

Dorie scampered down the hall and led Jane up the correct stairs, away from Cook.

Cook watched them until they were out of sight.

Dorie knew the proper way back to her rooms, and she liked stomping. Another positive trait in a child—Jane wondered how long she would treasure every disobedience as proof of humanity. Not that gleefully stomping up the stairs was particularly disobedient, but it was a normal behavior that parents expected governesses to put a stop to.

Jane just followed.

She thought back to her first day as a governess in the city. She was not quite seventeen; her mother had died a few months before, and with her, her small living. A neighbor had taken Helen in to let her complete school (in exchange for their cow, which amused Jane on the days she could find something to laugh about) and Jane found herself being pushed from the safety of the foundry. The Great War was over and the soldiers were slowly coming home, attempting to reclaim their former lives. War-scarred Jane was finally, begrudgingly, given a place with a long-ago friend of the family’s. They had three children, nine, seven, and four, and the first day Jane spent doing nothing but playing ring around the rosy and sardines with them until they were used to her strange face and would let her touch them and tickle them and tuck them in at night.

Jane didn’t think any amount of playing sardines would help with Dorie.

She sat down on the neatly swept floor by the white bed and watched her charge, hoping that by familiar association she would get used to Dorie. Sardines would have been helpful for the governess this time, she thought ruefully.

Dorie stood in the center of the room, looking intently up at the corner of the silver-papered ceiling. Her arms were slightly away from her sides. She clacked her tongue thoughtfully.

The hairs on the back of Jane’s neck pricked up. “Dorie?” she said calmly. “Are you looking at something?”

Dorie turned and smiled. “Mother was there,” she said.

“Mother?” said Jane. “Your doll?”

By way of answer Dorie looked around for the doll. It was hanging off the bed, arms limply flopping down the sides. The instant her gaze fell on the doll it rose in the air and began swimming around the room.

Though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch that doll, Jane made herself calmly reach out and grab it as it flew by. “In this house we use our hands,” she said, quoting the girl’s father.

The doll tugged in Jane’s grasp, but Jane held firm. She searched the room, looking for distractions. What would Dorie find familiar, comforting to do with the new governess? Was there anything she enjoyed besides flying the Mother doll through the air?

There were puzzles and activities stored neatly on the shelves—so neatly that Jane doubted they ever saw use at all. A small alphabet book lay on top of a chalkboard, and it made Jane suddenly curious as to whether anybody had ever attempted to teach Dorie anything. Did she know any of her letters?

Despite Dorie’s one-word answers and tongue clacks, Jane sensed that the girl was not stupid. Just … different.

Whether any other governess had stayed long enough to find out how much Dorie could learn was another question entirely.

The main obstacle to Dorie’s learning was revealed almost immediately, and it was obvious as soon as Jane saw it. When Jane handed Dorie the alphabet book, she didn’t reach out for it. Jane was looking at the bookshelf, so she thought she felt Dorie grab it. But when she turned, no one was touching the book. The book was being wafted through the air to Dorie’s lap.

“No, Dorie,” said Jane, and she picked up the book. “We use our hands.” She held out the book and watched Dorie reluctantly take it, her hands clumsy like a toddler’s. “Open it to the first page.”

The book opened, but not to the first page. Dorie tried to grasp the pages, but she could only grab several or none. She threw it down. “You don’t like to use your hands, do you?” said Jane under her breath. She brought the book back. “It’s okay. A little bit at a time. Page one is the letter A.”

Dorie clacked. She tried again to grab the page and turn, but her fingers were not used to fine movements. The page accidentally ripped. She bounced and clacked, her curls swinging. She threw the book down in frustration and Jane felt an answering crossness inside. She had chosen an activity that was far too challenging, and now she had Dorie riled up.

Jane replaced the book on the shelf and sat cross-legged by Dorie. “How about a game?” she said. “Do you want to play pattycake with me?” No, that would involve hands. She groped for something less confrontational. “Ring around the rosy?”

Dorie’s face stayed blank.

“Maybe you don’t know it. Okay, I’m going to sing it for fun, and if you do know it you can sing along.” Jane sang, but there was silence from her charge, though Dorie’s feet twitched as if she felt like dancing.

Frustration pricked behind Jane’s mask but she tamped it firmly down. No one had said this would be easy. She was here to make a difference in Dorie’s life. She was here to help her be normal.

No matter how long it took.

“Let’s play something else for a while,” Jane said.

Dorie’s face creased into a mutinous scowl that Jane much preferred to blank porcelain.

Jane amended, “Something fun.” She carefully did not mention that the activity was going to involve Dorie holding things. She brought a stuffed bear and stuffed monkey from the shelves and let Dorie point to one to choose it—a minor success. “Now, Mr. Bear and Mr. Monkey are friends.” The monkey was dressed in a scarlet felt coat and hat. Jane walked him over to the bear, which lay in Dorie’s lap. “Hi, Mr. Bear!” She said it in a squeaky voice, and Dorie laughed.

“Now you,” said Jane.

Dorie raised her arms. The bear levitated.

Monkey gently pushed him back down. “Flying makes my tummy upset,” Monkey said. “Let’s stay on the floor.”

Bear shook his head and rose again.

“What’s your favorite color?” said Monkey.

Bear shook his head.

“Can you talk to me?”

Bear shook his head.

Jane gently plucked the bear from the air and set it back in Dorie’s hands. The bear zoomed back into the air. Back into Dorie’s hands. Back into the air. Hands. Air. Hands—and then Dorie squealed and the bear went flying across the room.

Jane sighed. The child was as stubborn as the governess. She was determined that she wouldn’t be the one to break … but how was she going to get through to Dorie?

Jane spent the rest of that first morning trying different activities, searching for one that might serve as a lifeline to reach Dorie. Stubbornly Jane went back to the shelves and pulled out puzzles, games, chalk, toys.

One after another they went through Dorie’s roomful of activities. They attempted drawing, but Dorie would not hold the chalk. When tea came, she floated the bun to her mouth. And when it was finally time to get dressed for dinner, Dorie’s jam-stained frock flew off and the new one on without either girl touching them at all.

An exhausted Jane trailed Dorie down to the dining room. The dining room was lit with another blue-lit chandelier as well as candles—and yet the light fled, sucked into the corners of the dark-papered room. The house was a mish-mash of styles from different generations, Jane thought. Her rooms had been furnished a very long time ago, judging by the whitewashed walls with the worn tapestries. Dorie’s were modern—wall and ceiling papered with an intricate silver pattern, the trim and furniture crisp and white. The dining room was in between—heavy dark furniture, oppressive scrolled paper on the walls. Jane ignored the fey-blue flicker of the chandelier glancing off the dark paper and hoisted Dorie into her high seat.

“Little Miss Trouble, were we now?” said Cook. She leaned on the back of Dorie’s chair and gestured with a wooden spoon.

Jane stood up for Dorie—she wasn’t sure why. “She’s not a bad child,” she said. “She just gets frustrated because her way is so much easier and better than mine. She doesn’t get it.”

Dorie wafted her milk glass over, sloshing milk on the table in the process.

Cook snorted and wiped the table with her apron. “It’s kind you are to think so. A regular terror, I say.”

A tall figure entered the room and Cook straightened up immediately, jamming her wooden spoon into her apron pocket and feigning innocence. “Evening, sir,” she said, nodding. Mr. Rochart looked down at her until she turned and fled, muttering something about the potatoes.

Dorie jumped down from the chair, buried herself in her father’s knees. “Did you manage all right this afternoon?” There was worry in his dark eyes as he gently stroked his daughter’s hair.

“I’m not giving up yet,” said Jane. She stopped Dorie’s chair from falling over, steadied the table.

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” said Mr. Rochart. He was still in the worn wool slacks he had on earlier, though now they were covered in a faint white dusting of powder. A similar smudge streaked one shirt cuff. He ruffled Dorie’s curls and lifted her up. “You’re too stubborn for that, aren’t you? You don’t back down.”

Jane felt pleased by his accurate assessment—and that made her feel cross and prickly. She was not going to roll over like a puppy dog just because he seemed to be paying attention to her, Jane, and not her, the ironskin. She said, “How do you know I don’t?”

Mr. Rochart’s black eyebrows drew together at her tone, shadowing his eyes once more. “A less principled girl might’ve sought refuge in her sister’s new home,” he said, laying out his chain of thought for her. “And no one would’ve faulted her.”

“Except the new husband, who might not want an extra mouth to feed,” retorted Jane.

“So stubbornly this wisp of a girl seeks gainful employment,” continued Mr. Rochart, “and she will not be turned from doing it to the best of her measure. Not be frightened off by all the demons in hell.…” He looked down at Jane, and she took a step backward from the peculiar warmth in his eyes. “You are indeed determined to help us, are you not?”

“Of course, sir,” she managed, chin up. “Have I given you reason to doubt it already?”

He still studied her face, and she was surprised to find that it did not feel like he was judging her deformity, but was simply curious what made her tick. “When what you hope for appears on your doorstep, there is every reason to doubt its reality, Jane.”

She did not know what to say to that, but then from the front of the house the twisted doorknocker sounded, just as Cook bustled in with the potatoes.

“What, at dinner?” Cook said, but a glance from Mr. Rochart forestalled any other protest.

“Have them eat,” he said, setting Dorie down. He strode off toward the front of the house.

Jane took Dorie’s arm, guiding her back to the dinner chair, but Dorie wriggled free and was suddenly trotting after her father. Jane grabbed for her frock but missed, the cotton skirt slipping through her fingers.

Jane took off through the maze of rooms and halls after the fleeing girl, caught up with Dorie just behind the sapphire curtains that opened onto the foyer.

Dorie was peeping through. “Pretty lady,” she said, and clacked.

Jane stopped, looking at the foyer through the narrow gap Dorie had made. The short butler was saying, “An’ ye be human, enter,” and the woman swept over the threshold. Mr. Rochart bent to bestow a kiss on the visitor’s hand. “Miss Ingel,” he said. “The honor is mine.” She had kind eyes; she smiled and corrected him: “Blanche.”

An odd pair, Jane thought, for the woman, though more smartly dressed than Mr. Rochart, looked unformed next to him. Perhaps his hair stood up, perhaps his cuffs were mended, but still he wore his clothes and they did not wear him. Whereas the woman’s figure was good enough, and her coat and frock were smart, but she looked ill at ease, lost inside her fur and aquamarines, almost nervous. Her brilliant bobbed red hair was frozen into stiff pin curls that did not suit her face, which was plain, with pouched eyes and a large smashed nose like a prizefighter. Her eyes lingered on the sapphire curtains, then slid away, as Mr. Rochart ushered her into the red room of masks.

Mr. Rochart turned as he entered the garnet curtains. He glanced at the darkness behind the sapphire curtains, and even buried in shadow, Jane was suddenly positive his eyes fell on hers. Embarrassed at being caught spying, she drew back immediately, grabbing Dorie by the back collar of her dress and propelling her down the hall toward dinner.

Nerves made her wobbly on the worn soles of her old workaday boots. Dorie twisted free, scampering back toward the dining room, and Jane slid on the smooth floor of the hallway, which was poorly lit. Indeed, though there were rows of sconces, there was only one blue fey light left, at the far end of the hall. Dorie had already disappeared around the corner, so Jane set off firmly toward that, chin raised. She did not want to get lost on her way to the first good meal she’d eaten all day.

She was nearing the wall sconce when it suddenly winked out, and Jane found herself in the grey-black of a windowless hall at twilight. There was a dart of wind past her hair, as if dry leaves had flung past and departed, and a crackle that sizzled in the air like after-lightning. And then nothing, nothing to show that the fey technology had been there, except a bare copper sconce on the wall, barely visible as her eyes adjusted. She had seen the aftermath of fey lights or bluepacks winking out before, of course, but it was rare to catch one the moment when it fizzled and died. Always abruptly; no transition between something working and not—not like a candle that sunk into itself, giving you warning of its coming death.

And now here she was, in a black hallway, and no dinner in sight. Her jaw set, her teeth ground anger out as she willed herself calm. This was not the end of the world, just the end of a very long and trying day.

A small touch on her skirt made her gasp, almost shriek. In the dim light she saw a tiny figure with blond curls stretch out a hand.

At the other end of the hallway.

No smile crossed that doll-like face, but Jane’s skirt tugged again by that invisible hand, and Dorie turned and set off around the corner.

Patience, Jane counseled herself. Patience.

She followed the invisible tug on her skirt all the way back to a hot dinner.