Ironskin

“Let’s drop the throwing part of it for now,” said Jane, after several more attempts resulted in utter failure. She paced over to the window, thinking.

 

Below she could see the hired servants setting up chairs and gay canopies for a tea party on the back lawn. She wondered if the fine ladies would be nervous so close to the forest. They “cared nothing for the war,” but surely here in the war-torn country it would strike home. Jane scanned the trees, as she always did, but she saw no tall dark form, saw no blue flickering lights. Just yellow and white ruffled swathes of silk, casting dark rectangles on the green lawn. Near the patio, two men were setting up a maypole. April was almost through, and that meant May Day, the last day of the Great War five years ago, the day the fey vanished. Of course the guests would enjoy the dancing and drinking aspect of the war holiday—would expect some sort of celebration. They just wouldn’t think about what it meant.

 

Jane turned and sighed. She was a lovely blue pond, who cared nothing about picnics on the lawn or thoughtless city-born guests. She picked up the Mother doll and held it in front of her. “Try pushing this away.”

 

Dorie fidgeted, frustrated, considering. Behind the obscuring layers of veil, Jane could not see the minute changes in expression she usually relied on, usually watched like a hawk.

 

Yet it was odd—half-blind, she seemed to have a better sense of Dorie’s mood shifts than she ever had before. Perhaps it was that she had grown close to the girl; perhaps she was picking up on body position, breaths, sighs—because she was sensing Dorie’s flickering changes, pinpointing her mute emotions with a sense that seemed eerily spot-on.

 

“If you work hard now, you can go to the tea party later on,” said Jane. The mandatory event made for good bartering.

 

Jane felt Dorie make the decision to try. She looked up at the doll.

 

Jane held the doll’s waist, readying for a small wobbly pressure as Dorie tried this new trick. “Just push it away.”

 

Dorie bit her lip, concentrating.

 

Blue light gathered on the doll in Jane’s hands, bathing its porcelain face in fey glow.

 

The Mother doll exploded in Jane’s hands.

 

Dorie’s face went to utter shock, then crumpled. She ran to Jane, flung herself into Jane’s arms, and Jane, as shocked by that as by anything, enfolded her in her embrace and stroked the fuzzy curls.

 

“There, there,” Jane said. “There, there.” She tugged her veil out from under Dorie’s fierce hug, freeing her neck. Despite the extra warmth of the cotton swathing her face, cold shivers ran up and down her spine.

 

What had she unleashed?

 

*

 

Jane backed out of Dorie’s room with an apronful of porcelain shards. Dorie had sobbed herself to sleep. In between sobs she had said once, quite clearly, “Put the gloves back on.” Jane held the girl close and did not comply.

 

A swish of black skirts on the right—Nina’s back, turning, closing her bedroom door. Jane turned to the left, pretending not to see, hoping to move quickly on noiseless feet, but the broken porcelain clinked in her apron, and anyway, Nina was ever too aware of who might be around her.

 

A black satin arm snaked through Jane’s bent one and Jane could not free herself without dropping the porcelain shards.

 

“Let me guess,” said Nina, nodding at the swathing white veil. “You’re a new widow with a fear of sunstroke.” She eyed the apron filled with pink shards and two unbroken blue glass eyes. “And you’ve dropped your husband’s urn. Pity about his blindness.”

 

A blue lake, a calm blue lake where no fire could burn.

 

“You’ll take me to Edward’s studio now, won’t you?” Though the words were a petitioner’s, submissive, the amused drawl belied that. “He truly is expecting me this time.” Nina produced a small calling card from her décolletage, one of Mr. Rochart’s. In black spiky ink he had written “3:00” on the back. As if in response, the grandfather clock far below began to peal the hour.

 

“That could be any day, any place,” Jane said, but only because Nina expected her to put up a fight. She wasn’t the guardian of his studio, and it wasn’t up to her to decide whom he should entertain there. She continued down the hall, leading them around the maze of stairs and turns into the abandoned wing.

 

“It was three a.m., and he wrote it in my rooms while lying blissfully on the chaise…,” parried Nina, but her words trailed off. She fell uncharacteristically silent as they went up the dark stairs.

 

Though Nina’s face was its usual mask of arrogance—haughty tilt of brow, sneer in the lips—somehow Jane knew, she knew that Nina was frightened.

 

They rounded the section where the stairs curved back and the hidden mirror startled them with their shadowy figures rushing in. Nina tightened her grip on Jane’s arm but calmly she said, “I can’t stand fey architecture.”

 

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