Ironskin

“She will wake.”

 

 

“I did not know there would be such a cost,” he said softly. His hands closed around Dorie’s.

 

Jane squeezed Dorie’s other hand, angry now, the rage coming out. You do not deserve this, she thought fiercely at Dorie. You’ve had enough trouble in your five years. You deserve to be normal. Jane’s head bowed, hot tears pricking the corners of her eyes as she held Dorie’s hand.

 

Silence. Blue, gold lights, a pattern on eyelids shut too tightly. And then …

 

“Dorie,” breathed Edward. “Dorie…”

 

The blue eyes were open.

 

A great lump of joy seized Jane. She reached down to hug Dorie just as Mr. Rochart pulled his daughter to him, cradled her tightly in his arms. Jane’s arms fell away.

 

Dorie yawned and stretched. “I saw the pretty lady,” she said. She gave her father one of her rare smiles. “She showed me pretty things.”

 

“What kind of things?”

 

Dorie yawned again. “Lots of pretty ladies. I like pretty ladies.” She was using full sentences now, and Jane noted it with pride even through the eerie fright the words provoked. Dorie twisted around to smile at Jane. “She said you’re a pretty lady.” Jane’s heart thumped in her chest as Dorie turned back to her father. “Is she?”

 

“Well,” said her father, at a loss for words, “well…”

 

Jane crumpled the bit of ironcloth around in her hands.

 

She wasn’t. But she could be.

 

Her hand reached out to touch Dorie’s dress, fell away. “What if,” she said, and she described what he might have done, watching his reactions, wanting to know. “What if you shaped me a plain mask. Not a face of surpassing beauty, like Blanche Ingel. Or what you’re doing for Nina. Not a face to attract all the men in the world.” She touched her scarred cheek, then all at once pulled her veil aside until the thin sunlight poured over her entire face, over the ripples that writhed through her cheek and jaw. “Just me. Me as I was.” She felt along the scar ridges that extended out, up past her eyelid, forehead. “Whole.”

 

If Nina had told her the truth, then he did not confess to it. “You shouldn’t risk it,” he said. “The process is dangerous.” His shadowed eyes met hers. “I do not speak lightly when I say that my past is unforgivable. You do not know what I have done, and my state of mind, my intentions, are of little excuse.” His arms tightened around Dorie’s body, his fingers locked. “The sins of the father are revisited on the child.” Eyes on her. “Do not make me compound my sins.”

 

“You said you were in my debt,” said Jane. “All I want is to look normal. To feel normal.” Fire burned hot within him. “Do you understand what I mean?”

 

He nodded reluctantly. “Jane…,” he repeated, and there was something so strained in that one word that she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to have him pity her, or dismiss her, or say anything to contradict the way her stupid wishful thinking wanted him to feel and she burst out:

 

“We should tell the guests to leave. They need to get out of here, now. Before sundown.” She looked at the lone button under the chest of drawers, at the silver wallpaper, at anything but Edward and his daughter. If he was going to deny her her own face she didn’t want to know just yet.

 

“No.” His knuckles were white as he gripped Dorie’s form close to him, and the fire inside him billowed out, turned to smoke, vanished. The girl murmured, protesting the grip, and Edward loosened his fingers, carefully, loosening words at the same time. More softly, “No. I’ve worked too hard to get them here. And they won’t be ready to leave by nightfall—you know these women—and in the dark on the road, they’d be in just as much danger.”

 

Dorie wriggled all the way free, and he stood and set her back on the bed. She looked from one tense face to the other. She squirmed off the bed, and though Jane assumed she was going to get closer to her father, she ran to Jane and threw her arms around Jane’s skirts. Touched, Jane held Dorie’s shoulders close.

 

“Jane?”

 

“Yes, sweetheart?”

 

Big blue eyes, confiding. “My mother’s coming to get me,” she said.

 

“What?” said Jane, and Edward stumbled backward, looking down at Dorie with horror in his amber eyes.

 

Dorie squeezed Jane’s legs tighter. “Do I have to go? I don’t want to.”

 

“Of course not,” said Jane. She knelt beside Dorie, hugged her little girl close, through the nerves, through the fear. “What do you mean, she’s coming to get you? What exactly did she say?”

 

“She said she’s coming to get everybody,” said Dorie. Her blue eyes unfocused, looked through the wall at the woods. “She said it’s time.”

 

Edward grabbed Jane’s arm and held it fast, but Jane hardly noticed through the terror. “Get the guests inside, I don’t care how,” he said.

 

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