Ironskin

The silly girl was unable to speak, fright at being scolded turning to tears in her eyes.

 

The rage rose up in Jane at the delay, broke through the calm pond. She was all hot rage and orange fire, so fierce and strong that she lost control. She could not feel her fingers pinned on the girl’s arms, she did not know what she was saying, only that she was shouting something about the idiocy of city girls who spent the war sheltered and foolish, who had never learned to use their brains.

 

Miss Davenport was completely unable to speak now, and something snapped in Jane and pushed through her rage. It was like a shiver of lightning, a force, something hot and fierce and fine, willing the girl: Tell me where Dorie is.

 

A pale blue light flickered across the elder Miss Davenport’s face, and her eyes went glassy, and she broke. “Into the woods,” she said, the words forcing themselves from her lips. She seemed unable to look away from Jane’s gaze. “She just wanted to look at the foxgloves.…”

 

Jane dropped the girl’s arms and flung herself past the foxgloves edging the wood, under branches, through brambles. Dimly she was aware of Mr. Rochart wresting himself away from the women to follow. The rage was white hot all through her, making it hard to think, hard to run without numb feet stumbling. This was no good; she would be as useless as the Misses Davenport if she could not bring herself back to reason.

 

There was a natural clearing a few yards in and Jane stopped, willing her rage to clear. The water imagery was useless in the face of that snapped bolt of rage—she could not think of anything except her anger at the girl who had done nothing more than looked the other way, not been on guard. Her rage frightened her, as well as that strange moment when it was almost as if she had bent the girl to her will.

 

The rage might not go, but she would not let it stop her from finding her little girl. Through the hot rage she turned around in the clearing. “Dorie?” she shouted. “Dorie?” There was no answering sound.

 

The already obscured view of Mr. Rochart’s lawn was the only bright spot in the trees around her; on all other sides the forest was green-black and dim. Well past the last ray of sunlight. Jane’s eyes flicked to rustles of leaves, small brown birds, a vole. At any moment there might be blue light slipping through the trees, back from a five-year absence to find her, to find Dorie. Blue, limning the silver birch, the parasitic mistletoe. Blue that came sharp and fast and hot, blue that whip-cracked your life like lightning striking a strong chestnut tree, tearing it in half.…

 

“Have you seen any trace of her?” His breath came fast.

 

Jane nearly jumped out of her boots. “No,” she said. The hot orange was giving way to fear. Anger and fright could make her do foolish things. She steeled herself, trying to find her even keel. “Should we split up?”

 

“Not a chance,” said Edward, and his hand clamped down on her wrist. “Stay with me.”

 

He ducked under a low-hanging branch and set off carefully but purposefully, as if following a trail only he could see. Several times he lifted his head, as if scenting the air or listening—something using a sense other than sight. Though he dropped her arm so they could navigate the narrow trail, Jane stayed close on his heels, trying to keep the ends of her veil out of the grip of brambles and twigs.

 

A blue light flashed in the clearing.

 

“There, over there!” cried Jane, and she took his arm as if she could physically propel him to his daughter’s side. She crashed past him, tugging, because for a moment he just stood there with stricken eyes.

 

“The Queen,” Edward said, and his amber eyes were black and wild.

 

She tugged on his sleeve and slowly he moved again, running after her to where the blue light had been.

 

“Nothing,” she said, looking at the empty clearing. “Nothing,” and suddenly she whirled, thoughts flying—“What do you know about this forest? You grew up here. You were out here last week, when I found you. Where would the fey likely be?” Even before the Great War, when the fey had been half-made-up tales, still there had been signs. Rings where they gathered, clearings where they were said to bask, trees they swarmed in. All the spots that when you were five you believed might truly be fey, and not just fireflies.

 

But he shook his head, and that dazed expression was in his eyes. “I didn’t find what I sought,” he said. “I don’t think. I have been losing time. There are large gaps, just like the time before that, the long time.…”

 

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