Ironskin

Chapter 3 Sequins and Bluepacks

The first month went very slowly. So did the approach of spring, which refused to fully commit itself to the moor. Wind and rain ground on outside of the nursery window, and Jane and Dorie’s days continued in a relentless impasse. It occurred to Jane that she and Dorie were circling each other like two wounded creatures wanting to drink from the same stream, each wary of the other’s intentions, each unwilling to either strike or run away. The stream was the house they had to share, or perhaps it was the positive regard of the man who ran it. Dorie adored her oft-absent father, and Jane … Jane wanted to do a good job in her new position, that was all, end of story.

Dorie was not interested in anything but being left alone to amuse herself with flying dolls and light pictures, as she had been for all the five years of her existence. She did not start the day stubborn, and if Jane did not try to make her change, all was well. But she resented any attempt on Jane’s part to make her do even simple activities with her hands. As Jane had said that first day to Cook, Dorie’s way of doing what she wanted was so much easier that she had no reason to try Jane’s.

There were, however, two neutral territories.

Dorie would cheerfully walk or run around outside on the moor, anytime the rain lifted—though Jane had to keep a strict eye on her whereabouts to make sure she didn’t run into the forest. And she liked dancing. The gramophone’s bluepack had long since died, but someone had rigged it with a hand crank. So Jane sat and turned the handle, and Dorie danced. And if she danced a little too gracefully for a backward five-year-old … well, Jane could ignore that.

But dancing ability seemed little compensation for everything Dorie lacked. Of course, what she might be extra clever in was the fey talent.

But that would not serve her well. She would be shunned the first time she left the house. If people could not stand looking at Jane and the other victims, what would they do to a girl who moved dolls with her mind? At the least she would be an outcast, at the most.… Jane had heard of a few fey captured, their flickering blue forms studied in secret as the scientists tested for ways to fight back. A gruesome thought when it was the enemy you were talking about. If the subject were a tiny five-year-old girl … Jane shook her head.

Each night, Jane ran through the days in her head, assessing where she’d gone wrong, considering where she’d gone right. Dorie liked new things, and so when Jane found new activities, there was a short window of time where Dorie would try the new game before getting frustrated. Small progress, though hardly sufficient to introduce Dorie to the world.

Jane wondered if there was something she could withhold from Dorie, but what would that be? Her meals? The child was used to having everything she wanted, just the way she wanted. And in the case of meals, that meant eating with her fey tricks—wafting food through the air to her mouth—and not with fingers or fork. Jane told Cook to start sending a set of silverware up with Dorie’s meals from now on, but so far Jane had only placed the silverware beside Dorie’s plate, and not insisted. She had not quite had the fortitude to go into that inevitable battle.

After one not-too-terrible morning of watching Dorie dance in time to the three-quarter beat of a waltz, Jane started to wonder if Dorie had any natural math ability. Sometimes children afflicted in one area were extra clever in another, Jane knew—there had been a girl at the Norwood School who could hardly speak or look you in the eye, but she could add sums with startling proficiency.

Jane brought up a jar of dried beans and tried counting. Dorie liked counting. She could count to a hundred, and Jane’s estimation of her human skills went up. But when Jane asked her about adding she shook her head. Bolstered by the good morning, Jane decided to find out what it would be like to try to teach Dorie something.

“This may be new, but I know you can do it,” said Jane. “It’s just like counting.” She had found two crystal buttons in her dresser and she brought them out now.

“Pretty,” said Dorie, and Jane perked up at this show of interest.

“Yes,” she agreed. She put the two buttons in Dorie’s palm. Dorie’s fingers did not close around them, but lay as stiff and unmoving as if her hands were porcelain. “Do you know how many buttons are here?”

“Two.”

“And how many here?” Jane put two green buttons in Dorie’s other palm.

“Two.”

Jane pushed Dorie’s hands together. “Now count how many.”

Dorie clacked and shook her head. She turned her arms till the buttons slid off her palms and clattered to the wooden floor.

“Let’s have another go.” Jane separated the buttons into two piles on the floor. “How many buttons here?”

“Two.”

“And how many in this pile?”

“Two.”

“So if you have two buttons and you add two more…”

Dorie threw the buttons across the floor in a flash of blue light.

Jane sighed and picked them up. The one that went under the white chest of drawers came back covered in dust. The other one rolled to the windowsill, and Jane saw a flash of movement through the window, a shadow disappearing into shadows, as she stooped to retrieve it. She straightened up and looked more closely.

Dorie’s window faced west into the forest. The forest was dark today; it was always dark. Grey pine, blood-dark cedar, and black briar tangled through its undergrowth. Thin strips of the silver birches the estate must have been named for glinted in the darkness, but even they looked oppressed, their branches swallowed in poisonous mistletoe. The forest stretched across the entire back of the estate and curved down its sides as if it were encroaching on the house, year by year. A creeping arm of forest came so close to the damaged north wing that Jane was not even sure if you could walk between them. The forest had a foothold it would not relinquish.

So surely she hadn’t seen a tall form slip between those thorny locusts; surely no one would choose to be swallowed up by the dark.

Jane turned away from the window, painted buttons in hand. Dorie’s chin was lifted toward the window, her perfect face expressionless and smooth. “Father,” she said calmly.

Jane looked back, but the shadow was gone—and she was pretty sure that Dorie couldn’t have seen the shadow on the ground from where she stood.

“Let’s go back to counting,” she said, but the attempt at math had gotten Dorie’s back up.

“Father,” Dorie said mutinously. “Father, father, father.”

“Perhaps he’ll be at dinner,” said Jane, though truthfully he hadn’t been down in days. She looked out the window at where she thought she had seen the figure. Was that Mr. Rochart? Of course, the man was allowed to walk around his own estate. But to deliberately go into the woods, the dark woods where the fey had lived, hidden in the twists and turns of the dark branches, inside the knotholes, between the thorns of the locusts … No, the fey had not been seen for five years, since the war ended. But they had not been openly vanquished. Merely they had disappeared one day, leaving a breathless taut waiting for the next attack that never came.

“Counting,” Jane said firmly, turning back to Dorie.

But Dorie was gone.

There was one stone-cold moment when Jane thought the girl had literally vanished. Then she heard small feet pounding on the staircase and her heart came stuttering back to life. Jane took off from the room, shoes skidding as she hurried after Dorie. Most unladylike, she thought to herself as she hiked her skirts up to better maneuver the slippery stairs. Small wonder so many governesses had given up. It wasn’t the fey after all—it was the lack of dignity.

Jane chased the small creature out the back door. Her first shout of “Dorie” had gone completely unheeded, so she saved her breath and remaining shreds of dignity to run silently after the child, who was running pell-mell toward the black forest. The old saying sprung sharply to mind: Don’t go into the woods past the last ray of sunlight. Her iron mask threatened to slide around her head as she ran, so she held it with one hand and grabbed her skirts with the other. Jane pounced on Dorie about ten feet from the edge of the clearing. Her foot slid as she caught Dorie’s shoulders—Jane stumbled to one knee, nearly knocking Dorie off her feet.

So much for dignity. Jane held Dorie there, panting. “You are not to go into the forest,” said Jane firmly. “It is not safe. Your father would be worried.” She looked past Dorie into the dark woods, but saw nothing but trees, trees and the flat black shapes between them. Sunlight did not reach very far in these woods.

Dorie turned under her arms and twisted to look at Jane. With Jane on her knees, the two were nearly at eye level. “Father?” Dorie said wistfully, and Jane felt a small tender twist at her tone.

Jane squeezed Dorie’s shoulders. Through the layers of skirts her knees turned damp in the grass. “Your father is very busy,” she said gently. “He can’t always be around to play.”

Dorie’s shoulders slumped. She pulled away from Jane and went slowly back toward the house, kicking stiff legs through the clumps of wet grass. Jane heard a sharp clicking sound—Dorie clacking her tongue in frustration, in time to her steps.

Crossness rose as Jane stood and followed—but it was for Dorie this time. Where was her father, and why couldn’t he come down more often for Dorie?

The hair rose on the back of her neck as a low voice said behind her, “I thought she was going to run straight into the forest.”

Her dress suddenly seemed too warm for the foggy day, all hot and constricted around her wrists and throat. “She might have,” Jane said, and tried to sound calm and firm, a wise and skilled governess with no grass stains on her skirt. “But I caught her.”

The faintest smile hovered around the corner of his mouth—she identified it and it was gone. “I saw the tackle. You see you are our soldier; I hired you for your trim fighting form.”

“Father!” said Dorie, and she ran to him, even as Jane tried to puzzle out whether she should be flattered or made cross by the comparison.

Mr. Rochart dropped a kiss on Dorie’s head and steered the small girl back to the house. “Do not go in the forest, love,” he reminded her firmly. Dorie rubbed her head on his leg and did not answer. “Now march quietly back to your rooms with Miss Eliot.” Dorie went as bidden, twisting back every few feet to check that her father was following.

“You are settling in?” he said. “Your rooms are sufficient; the fire is lit, the floors swept; all ets are ceteraed?”

“They are,” affirmed Jane, suddenly at a loss. She offered, “The dinners are very good. Creirwy is an excellent cook.” Her fingers twisted in her skirt. Weren’t there things she had wanted to say? Truths to ask, riddles to unriddle? And all she could do was mouth bland nothings about the food.

She fell silent, and so was he, as they trailed Dorie up the stairs. He walked them to Dorie’s rooms as if escorting them back to a cell they should not have left, Jane thought.

He stayed in the hall, clearly not intending to come in. Dorie looked up at him with big eyes. Jane was sure she read behind that blank face the desire for her father to stay. If only some of that hero worship could be transferred to Jane! Then perhaps Dorie would try reading and adding and using her hands.…

Using her hands.

Lunch had been delivered while they were outside. Stewed beans and bowls of applesauce sat on two trays by Dorie’s room. Seized with a sudden impulse, Jane said, “We were going to try using a spoon today. Perhaps you’d like to watch.”

“Of course,” Mr. Rochart murmured. He did not come over the threshold, seemed poised to flee. But he stood, watching, and Dorie looked up at him expectantly.

“We’re going to try applesauce,” Jane said, and she set one of the blue-rimmed stoneware bowls in front of Dorie. She used the spoon to demonstrate eating a bite herself, then she held it out to the girl. “Now you try,” she said.

Dorie looked sideways up at her father, as if deciding whether to humor Jane. Mr. Rochart just stood, waiting patiently, so Jane carefully took Dorie’s arm and showed her how to lever her spoon into the applesauce and up to her mouth.

Jane let her hand fall away. “Now you try,” she repeated.

The presence of her father seemed to be the deciding factor in trying the new game. Dorie turned a look of intent concentration on her applesauce and carefully raised the spoon. As it neared her mouth she forgot to hold her wrist level, and the applesauce fell in a plop on her skirt. Immediately she turned her blank face to Mr. Rochart.

“Good try,” said her father. He reached down and wiped the blob from her dress. But to Jane he murmured, “I have seen her play the trained monkey before, when she wants something. But the minute your back is turned…”

“Baby steps,” said Jane firmly. She turned Dorie’s hand level again. The spoon still had applesauce clinging to it. “Try again.”

Dorie brought the spoon back, and after banging it into her chin, she slid it in. She sucked the applesauce off the end of it.

“Very good,” said Jane. “Much better. Let’s try it again.”

They got in two more bites, and then Dorie looked up at her father for praise.

He was no longer standing in the door. He had melted away. No doubt trying to avoid a parting scene, Jane thought in exasperation.

Which meant Jane was going to have to deal with the aftermath he shied away from.

Dorie’s face stayed blank, perfectly blank. Her hand opened and the spoon fell. Drops of applesauce spattered the clean floorboards.

“Oh no you don’t,” Jane muttered under her breath. She grabbed the spoon and put it back into Dorie’s hand. “Let’s continue to eat our applesauce,” she said. She attempted to close her charge’s fingers around the spoon handle, which was probably her first mistake.

Dorie glared, struggling to pull her palm out of Jane’s grip. She squirmed free and threw the spoon down. “Father!” she said.

“He’s gone!” said Jane, temper rising. “Let’s show him what a good job we can do.”

The bowl of applesauce rose off the floor and floated up to Dorie’s chin.

“No!” said Jane, and she pulled the bowl away. “No applesauce unless it’s with a spoon.” She wiped dust off the spoon and put it back into Dorie’s unwilling hand. Keeping her hand closed on Dorie’s, Jane maneuvered Dorie’s stiff arm toward the bowl. Carefully Jane scooped up one spoonful of applesauce with Dorie’s spoon and put it in Dorie’s mouth. “Good,” said Jane, letting go. “Now you try again.”

Dorie stared obstinately at the spoon in her hand. Then she threw it down, mentally yanked all the silverware off the tray, and set it whirling above Jane’s head in furious clanks.

“No!” Jane shouted. She pulled Dorie’s tray away, shoved it out into the hallway, and shut the door. She sat down beneath the whirling silverware and plucked it out of the air, one by one, until she had a fistful of spoons and forks. She kept her hand tight on the silverware and stared down at the little girl. Yanked the bowl of applesauce back in front of Dorie. “Try again.”

Dorie lifted the bowl of applesauce and dumped it on Jane’s head.

There was absolute silence in the room as Dorie stared blankly and stubbornly straight through Jane, and an angry Jane counted to thirty, willing her temper to calm.

I am not on fire, she told the hot orange rage that licked the mask around her cheek. I am cool water, putting out the fire. This little girl will not beat me.

Apple mush dripped around her ears.

At long length Jane rose slowly and went to her room. She changed her dress, ran a washcloth over her face and hair, drank a glass of water. Stared out the window for a while, considering her options.

When she returned, Dorie was standing at the window, looking into the forest.

“Dorie,” Jane said, then stopped.

The applesauce was neatly wiped off the floor and piled back in the stoneware bowl. All the silverware was tidily stacked next to it.

Dorie turned from the white-trimmed window. Jane could not tell if the blank expression was guilt or pretend innocence. She decided not to push it.

“Let’s listen to your gramophone,” she said.

A week later, Jane sat on the stairs for a while after her charge had gone to bed, leaning against the railing and thinking. In the twilight the foyer chandelier burned half-blue. One of its two mini-bluepacks had fizzled that morning, so half the foyer was dim, while the other half was decorated with blue sparks from the hanging crystal prisms. Jane absent-mindedly rubbed the bridge of her nose where the iron weighed down on it, watching the sparks dancing across the walls like tiny lights. Helen would like the way the chandelier sparkled. So would Dorie.

Dancing and walks. It was little enough to build trust out of, and Jane was reluctant to turn their only positive times together into rewards to be dangled overhead. She wondered if Mr. Rochart would have any ideas. She wanted to ask him—but he was always gone, and when he was there, like the day with Dorie and the applesauce, he melted away as soon as he’d appeared. Day after day he shut himself in the attic studio, or was mentioned casually as being “away,” though the motorcar remained in the carriage house. She knew all too well how much Dorie missed him. He had been at dinner twice during the month, and Dorie was much better the next day.

Down below in the foyer, Martha emerged from the forest green curtains, dragging a ladder backward that scraped on the stone floor. She wrestled it into place on the rug beneath the chandelier, tucked the hem of her skirt in her waistband to keep it free of her legs, and went up.

Jane did not speak, not wanting to startle Martha on the ladder, or embarrass her about her hiked-up skirt. But she wondered what the maid was doing—bluepacks didn’t have an empty container, a shell to remove. When they were gone they were gone. And with the rationing nowadays of the final stores left from before the war, when the bluepacks were gone they were generally gone for good. Hardly anyone had spares left to replace them. Mr. Rochart himself had said they were on the last of the big ones—the ones that would run a motorcar.

But Martha pulled a small bit of wiggling blue from her apron pocket and tucked it into the power source on the chandelier’s right side. Jane watched the motions that used to be familiar to everyone—pushing the blue stuff into the copper container (never iron, of course, or it wouldn’t work) with one finger, clapping the lid shut to keep the squirming substance in. It wasn’t that bluepacks tried to get free, exactly, but they did thrum and move in your hands.

Jane had dropped one, once, when she was young and changing the porch light. The old bluepack had fizzled that morning, bursting out of the copper cylinder that screwed into the light bulb, leaving the lid rattling on its hinge. Jane balanced on a kitchen stool that really wasn’t meant for balancing. She leaned wrong and had to grab the base of the light, opened her fist, and there went the bluepack. It hovered pretty much where she had let it go, as if it knew she owned it. But it was that pretty much that was the trick, since it made feeble darts up and back, as if attached by elastic to the spot in the air. Jane knocked the stool over twice more before she finally caught the bluepack and put it into place.

The foyer was fully lit again. White-blue light glittered crazily from the jostled prisms as Martha descended the ladder and clapped it shut. She shook out her skirts, and as she did so Jane saw her apron quite clearly.

Her apron pocket was full of mini-bluepacks.

Martha hoisted the ladder up and headed back through the curtains, the ladder’s feet catching on the velvet.

Jane suddenly stood. Quietly she went down the stairs, following the silent maid. She did not know exactly why, except that the question: How many bluepacks does Mr. Rochart still have? was uppermost in her mind. Why, he could sell them on the black market if he’d a mind to—certainly the various attempts at replacements were nowhere up to speed.

Jane slipped through the forest green curtains and saw that the hallway, which had gone completely black that first night she was here, now had every sconce lit with white-blue light.

Martha strode down the hallway, ladder under her arm now, and Jane followed her down the stairs and around the cellar as she replaced one, two, five more bluepacks. Jane was about to give up out of both boredom and feeling ridiculous when Martha stacked the ladder against a wet stone wall, left the house by a back door, and struck out down a paved walk that led to the carriage house.

Jane waited a cautious interval before following her. She felt rather silly at this point—why was she following Martha back to some closet where they kept supplies? But on the other hand, Martha had replaced a good twenty bluepacks this evening—still had some in her pocket—and Jane had not seen anything like that in ten years.

It was the deep blue of twilight. They were almost to the spring equinox, and though the days were chill, at least they had been getting longer more and more quickly. She longed for summer, true summer on the moor, when there would be perhaps a full month of sunny days, days that lasted well past dinner, when you could run around outside with bare arms. Between the war and her time in the city, she had not had a real country summer in years. Her best memories were all from childhood, when both her parents were alive. Memories of finishing her chores and being allowed to play tag with Charlie and Helen and the other children late into the night, well past when they should have been in bed. But summer only lasted a month, and they all went a bit mad for it.

She wondered what summer would be like here, at Silver Birch. Almost, she could not imagine that she would still be here when the days lengthened and the sun warmed the grass. It did not seem a place for summers, or perhaps it was just that she was still uncertain that she was doing any good at all. They would dismiss her well before summer, and Jane would be on her own again.

She shook her head, clearing her gloomy thoughts. The walk to the carriage house was not used as much now as it had been, as it took you straight between the ruined wing and the forest. Jane watched as Martha glanced side to side, then hurried through, her elbows at sharp angles as if they would ward off trouble in the night.

Jane hurried after. Grass grew thick between the uneven stones. The air was crisp on her arms and the wet grass left cold imprints around the tops of her boots. She had seen Mr. Rochart at the edge of the woods, hadn’t she? That day from Dorie’s window? The iron mask was chill through the padding—she touched it with one finger and shivered.

Where had Mr. Rochart gone slipping through the trees? There—no, there, perhaps. Past that thorned locust, although that wasn’t a good reference as the forest was thick with them. Locusts and birch, and the silver birch were dense with clusters of mistletoe, which Jane knew would kill the trees if left to spread. Still, who was going to wade into the woods, these woods, in order to peel a parasite from the trees? No one with sense.

Martha was vanished now, out of sight around the ruined wing of the house. Jane moved more slowly, cautiously following the flagstone path as it curved around the black and shattered walls. There were broken stones here that had fallen and never been moved. A blown-out window with sharp glass teeth, ragged curtains silent behind it. Mr. Rochart’s studio must be up above this somewhere, a workroom perched on crumbled stone, black gaps, decay.

Far ahead, at the end of the curving path, the door to the carriage house cracked open. The twilight was quite dim now, and Jane stood silently next to the house, hoping she would go unnoticed if she did not move. A figure emerged.

But it was not Martha.

Even in the twilight, Jane could tell it was a man, an older man with a stoop and a cane. He held something small—fiddled with it and tucked it into his back pocket—it looked like a wallet. Then, with a nervous glance over his shoulder at the forest, he moved off down the long driveway that led back to the road. Jane wondered if he was headed all the way back into town, for that was a long road for a man with a cane. He must be some visitor—perhaps Martha’s father, and the girl had just been meeting him to hand over her wages. Still, Jane could not imagine why such a rendezvous would happen at this time of night. She kept her eyes peeled, looking for Martha, but she did not see the thin figure emerge.

Night was coming up faster now, blue-black fuzzing the outlines of the sturdy carriage house, the black and crippled wing of the estate. She should go.

A crack behind her and she whirled, but saw nothing. Another noise—a crackle, a bzzzt—a fey noise, she was imagining things—! Jane cursed herself for a fool. No sane person went even this close to the woods at night, especially not to satisfy some silly curiosity about the state of her employer’s supply closet.

Jane turned back. She left the curving path and struck out straight across the lawn, skirting flowerbeds on a direct line to the house. There was nothing behind her, nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing. Another crackle—she turned around—and he was suddenly standing where she had been a moment before, as if he had been following her, unseen.

“What are you doing out at night?” he demanded, and he took her elbow, crushed her against his side, moved her forcibly across the lawn and into one of the back doors to the house. Inside the entryway he freed her from his grasp but not his gaze.

Jane drew back, crumpled into her shell, a thousand things whirling through her mind so not one of them was able to get free on her tongue. He was here, when she had wanted to see him. He had too many bluepacks. He was right to be worried; and of course she knew better than to wander near the forest, like some sort of witless city girl.

He locked the door behind them and stood, his amber eyes intense and black. Then he sighed and said with a self-mocking lilt to his tone, “I am sorry. I am a beast; I roar.” His hand went to her shoulder, and the gentle touch, the apology, disarmed her. She would have to watch herself—it was not right to be undone every time someone casually touched her. “Yet I cannot afford to lose you, and you of all people should know not to tempt fate.”

But that made her angry, and the anger tangled up with the embarrassment, leaving her further tongue-tied. From her tongue spilled the thought: “Perhaps if you were around for me to ask questions about Dorie, I wouldn’t have to come looking for you.”

“You were looking for me?” He had still not released her shoulder.

“For Dorie,” she repeated, firmly. It was true. She had been, earlier. Further, he should be around for Dorie; she shouldn’t have to hunt him down.

He glanced upward, as if he could see back to his studio. “I have someone waiting just now,” he said. “I only left her because I saw you on the lawn.”

Someone.

“A client,” he amended, as if he could hear her thoughts. “I would put her aside if I could, for you.”

“For Dorie,” she said.

“Yes.”

She suddenly thought that he meant it, that she had a momentary power that meant he would stand there until she told him yes, it was okay to go, yes, she could do without him just now, just at this moment. She looked at him and still he stood, his amber eyes studying her thoughts and waiting.

“Go,” she said.

He nodded. “We will speak later.”

And then he was gone, and she was not sure that she believed his promise, though he probably meant it as much as he could. She could not puzzle him out. He seemed to put up barriers—old walls, formal language. A man who seized every opportunity to melt away to his world of work—his masks, his clients.

But then—he had come down from his studio for her? Was that because he cared about Jane—or cared about what she might see? Did he know, all through that conversation just now, that she had been shadowing the maid? For that matter, what door had he come out of? She pulled aside a curtain from a back window, looked back toward the walk that led to the carriage house. But it was dark now, too dark to see.

Jane walked slowly through the fully lit halls, back to the foyer, brushing the dust from her skirt—sitting on Dorie’s floor did little for her dresses, old as they were. She had not even received any help from him for Dorie. All she needed was a way to reach her—

And then she saw a glint of blue-lit gold, just near the garnet curtains. She crossed the foyer and picked it up. A coin-sized sequin, no doubt fallen from one of the pretty ladies’ dresses.

Jane pulled the crystal buttons that she had tried the other day out of her pocket and considered them as she wandered down the hall and into the kitchen.

Shiny buttons. Sparkly sequins.

Rewards.

“Cook?” she said. “Do you have any aluminum foil?”