Tina Connolly - Ironskin

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.”