David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

She did not mean to cry out, but upon seeing the brute hit the child, she could not help herself. One of the overseers, a tall man, and an extraordinarily fat one, of early middle years came over to her. He was nearly bald, with only a little fringe of orange hair about the back of his head, which was both oversized and ruddy.

“What’s here?” he asked. “Come to bring me what to eat, have you, missy?”

Lucy held herself erect and thrust out her chin. “I am looking for Mr. Olson.”

He grinned at her, showing a mouth full of strong yellow teeth. “So’s every girl in the county. A grim enough gent, I reckon, but now that he’s got coin upon him, it’s a different story, ain’t it? But never you mind it. You want Olson, you come with me, miss.”

Lucy followed him into the mill, and at once she felt her lungs constrict, as though someone had put a heavy woolen cloth over her mouth. The workers looked up at her as she passed by, and she noticed the cloth covering the basket’s contents had come somewhat loose, and she felt dozens of eyes upon the bread that poked through. One little boy licked his lips.

“Something to eat, miss,” he said.

The overseer struck his frame, and the boy returned to work.

At the far end of the building, the overseer knocked upon a single door set into the wall, and opened it without waiting for a response. Inside, Mr. Olson sat behind an expansive desk, writing out a letter. There were numerous other letters drying upon the desk, as well as ledgers and open books. Behind him, a door that he might come and go without crossing the mill, and a very large window allowed natural light to brighten the closet.

“Found this lassie looking for you,” the overseer said.

“Yes, yes, send her in and close the door. I don’t want that filth getting in here.”

The overseer all but shoved her inside, and then shut the door tight behind him, leering at her as he did so. Lucy did not love being shut up alone with Mr. Olson like this, but the air was much cleaner and purer in here and the light was bright.

“Miss Derrick,” said Mr. Olson. There was something peculiar in his expression. It was not precisely pleasure, for that would have been out of character. Nevertheless, Lucy detected a distinct lack of displeasure, and an attentiveness that she had not before seen in him. For an instant he appeared almost attractive.

“I know you are occupied,” she said, feeling her face grow hot, “so I brought you your dinner.” The words sounded forced and stiff.

He looked at the gift, which she set down on his desk. “It is an unexpected kindness.”

Smiling somehow caused her throat to hurt, so she soon abandoned the effort.

“Please sit,” he told her, and gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Though my mill is no place for a young lady.”

“It seems an unhappy place,” Lucy said, listening to the clacking, the staccato coughing, and the occasional thud she now understood to be the overseers’ cudgels. She thought of her father’s claim, that mills were a blight upon the land. She wished she could leave right then. It seemed to her urgent that she do so, but she could not think of how she could flee without humiliating herself, so she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to breathe. Perhaps Mr. Olson would not notice her distress.

He did not. “It is a place of business and not meant for amusement,” he said slowly, as if explaining one of life’s unavoidable distresses to a child.

Lucy swallowed hard, trying to fight back the feeling of nausea that was overtaking her. “But conditions appear so beastly for your workers.”

“They must be so,” said Mr. Olson, “if I am to make money. It is the nature of a mill. I cannot change how such matters are ordered, so I do not see why I may not profit from them.”

It was certainly true that she knew little about the ways of business. The world was full of things better kept hidden—war, slavery, subjugation—and crying out against them would do nothing to stop them. And yet, for all that, she did not know how she could be wed to someone who chose to perpetuate what any feeling person must agree is wrong. It is one thing to accept that one is powerless to stop the suffering in the world, but quite another to benefit from what brings misery to others.

She said nothing, for three years at her uncle’s house had taught her the futility of arguing with a man a point that ran contrary to his interests. Instead, she said, “I hope you like cold chicken.”

“I do,” he said with the seriousness that suggested he liked cold chicken a great deal. “And whatever pleasure I derive from this meal, it will be nothing in comparison to that I take from your having brought it to me. I am not at all displeased that we are to be married.”

Lucy struggled to think of a response. As she considered what combination of words might best extricate her from this situation, she noticed that something had changed. It took her a moment to find the source of the alteration, but then she realized what it was. The quiet. There was no clacking of looms. There was no coughing. She heard only the muffled cries of the overseers and now the near-perpetual thump of their cudgels.

“Has work ended for the day?” asked Lucy.

Mr. Olson removed and examined his watch and, seeing the time, appeared grave. He pushed himself from the chair, and ignoring Lucy completely, threw open the door to the office. The dust from the mill filtered in at once, as did the gloomy silence and the heat of so many bodies in close proximity.

“Get back to work, you mutinous bastards!” cried one of the overseers.

Lucy saw the balding red-haired man shouting and swinging his cudgel at the shoulder of a child not twelve years old who sat perfectly still, his hands in his lap. The cudgel struck with a dull smack, but the boy did not respond. None of the workers moved or spoke or so much as turned their heads. They sat entirely motionless, rows of them, silent and still as the dead, a mute audience with glassy eyes.

“You must make him stop it!” Lucy cried. She could not believe what she saw. The strangeness. The cruelty. This was not the world as she knew it, but some terrible, alien place, and she wanted no part of it.

Mr. Olson did not hear her. “What goes on here?” he demanded.

None of the workers spoke. The overseer stepped forward. “They on a sudden stopped. No reason, and all at once.”

“I can have replacements for every last one of you before sunup,” said Mr. Olson. “Do not think to test me.”

No one answered. Somewhere within the building, a bird took wing. Mr. Olson balled his hands into childish fists. “This is Luddite business. These people have been put up to combining against me.”

Lucy managed to take a step closer. One of the women in the row closest to her suddenly turned her head in a sharp and twitchy gesture, like a startled squirrel. She studied Lucy briefly and then opened her mouth. She paused for a moment and then spoke. “Gather the leaves.”

The fear that had been building within Lucy now gathered its forces and engulfed her. The words spoken by the mill worker had been enough to stagger her, but there was far more here to terrify. Everywhere in the mill were dark corners, pockets of shadows. Every one of these seethed and pulsed with insubstantial creatures such as the one Lucy had seen when she’d removed Lord Byron’s curse. Like that shadowy presence, these beings were composed of darkness, but they had distinctive shapes. She saw legs, spindly hands with wispy fingers, flickering tails, and vile teeth that rose from open mouths to dissipate like smoke. They were visible only from the corners of her eyes, and the instant she gazed directly at one of these forms, it vanished in the shifting light. Still, Lucy sensed them moving and throbbing and swarming like great clusters of slick and pulsating insect larvae. Instinctively, she understood that she alone could perceive these awful creatures. She had been touched by something, and now she could see what others could not. Perhaps what frightened her most was that she understood these things had always been there, lurking and watching and pulsing, and she too had once been oblivious.