Ironskin (21 page)

“Charlie!” she screams, and she runs toward him.
I think I can bat the bomb away with my iron staff, I think—I do not know what I think.
Time slows, and over his shoulder she sees the fey that threw it, a thin blue light with a carefully formed human face floating in its center. The face is exhausted, gloating.

Charlie has time to turn and see his death before it explodes.

The world is suddenly hot then, and full of rage. Her vision goes red and smeary. She loses some time then, in life, in the dream. The next thing she knows she is bent double, spearing her brother’s chest with cold iron to destroy his killer. Blood drips from the left side of her face, and it seems that everything around her is very angry, though at that moment she feels nothing.

Nothing except for the weight of the cold iron in her hands. The battle has moved away, east across the moor, but she doesn’t want to let the stave go. She clutches it to her chest as her other hand touches the strange whirring light that buzzes around her cheek. Her fingers come away wet and carmine and glowing. Shouts and clangs ring in the distance as blood drips down her chin, through her fingertips and onto the early yellow cowslips that dot the blackened moor.

Now in the bedroom of Silver Birch Hall, in this waking dream, the vantage point swings around until dreaming Jane is looking down at kneeling Jane. The kneeling girl raises her face, her gaze. Half of the girl’s face is Jane’s, clean and perfect, serene and trusting. The other half is an inky void, a
nothing,
a bottomless pit like a night without stars.

One green eye blinks in slow motion, falling like the crash of a piano lid. The girl’s half-mouth moves, and words form in Jane’s mind. It’s a sentence, or maybe an echo of a sentence, repeated with the monotony of a ticking clock.

I am Jane, and you would be frightened to look upon me.

*   *   *

The room swam back into focus until Jane was merely staring at a mirror. Her fingers trembled.

She had to know.

Jane closed her eyes and unbuckled the straps of the mask as she did every night. The iron came away from her face, leaving little strips of cold where the edges had touched her around the cotton padding. The padding conformed to her face and it stayed there until Jane seized it at her chin and peeled it away, dropped it and the mask to the dresser with a cold thump. The mask rocked on the cheek plate, thrummed as it stilled.

If she was going to face the world like this, she had to know. No more hiding from the mirror.

This was the start of her new life, and from now on Jane would be strong. Would master the poison, somehow, or would learn to live with the anger she caused, or would learn to live alone. The image of herself flashed behind her closed eyes, the black nothingness splitting her face, and the girl repeating:
I am Jane, and you would be frightened to look upon me.

I am Jane, I am Jane, I am Jane.

She opened her eyes.

Chapter 12

WITHOUT IRON

The iron mask gleamed dully in the morning sun, glinting light from where Jane had dropped it on the dresser the night before.

Jane was fully dressed for the day, her hand on the doorknob, and still she could not make herself leave the room without the mask. She could not walk out the door with that face.

That face that no one had seen in five years.

She told herself she should be bold, told herself she should not be ashamed of an accident that was not her fault. There was no reason to feel naked and exposed, as though she were walking down the street without a skirt. Her face was nothing to be ashamed of, and she needed to see what her life would be without iron.

She must go.

Jane opened the door and then heard Nina’s drawling voice from the hall. “You can’t possibly expect me to be up this early—oh, just give me the cup of chocolate and go. No, I don’t want that leaden cow patty your cook calls a croissant.”

The servant’s reply was inaudible in the slamming of Jane’s door.

Jane leaned against the back of the door, hand curled cold against her good cheek. Dorie she could face. Cook she could face. Maybe she could even screw up her courage to face Edward without her mask.

But she could not face all those women. She didn’t really want to see any of the party guests, true, but she knew it was chiefly the women. The men were another species, out of reach, out of mind, but those horribly perfect women made her shrivel inside. Blanche Ingel with her heart-stopping beauty; Nina, who could be amusing one second and raze you with a single well-placed word the next.

Jane pressed her chest, willing her panic to slow. She would not put on the mask, but she would go veiled. Fair enough? She listened to her conscience inside, and it agreed: Yes. That will do to start.

Baby steps. Just like Dorie. Except no one would be Jane to her Dorie, so Jane would have to encourage herself, and not flay herself open over what she couldn’t do. One step at a time.

Jane pinned her second-best hat to her head and wrapped the cotton veil around her bare cheek—several times, more fully than she’d hidden the first day here. At last her face was completely obscured once more. Her breath came slower as she hid herself away, protected herself.

Out into the hall.

This time it was empty. Some of the guests were on this floor, some on the third. It was just her bad luck to have Nina billeted between her and Dorie. Of course, in most regular households the governess would’ve been in the garret, and she would’ve had to brave the entire household to wend her way down to her charge.

Still, she was glad to slip inside Dorie’s rooms without encountering anybody.

Dorie was in bed but not asleep. Jane saw with sinking heart that Martha had followed earlier instructions to put the gloves back on her at night. Dorie lay with her arms in iron, flat as a pancake, staring at the silver-papered ceiling.

Jane sat on the bed. Dorie did not move. “Here goes,” she said, and unlocked the mesh gloves, peeled them from the child’s pale skin. She rubbed Dorie’s arms down with her hands as if human touch could dispel the aftereffects of iron.

Dorie finally looked interested as Jane got the blood flowing through her forearms. “Off?” she said, and there was a flicker of light in her eyes.

“Today and more,” Jane said grimly. “I have a new bargain to make with you. You will work on your hands with me … and I will work on ‘mother stuff’ with you.”

Dorie’s blue eyes were wide.

“Only together, do you understand?” Jane seized Dorie’s hands, drew them close to her, her voice falling to a fierce whisper. “This is no game. This can only be you and me in this room. Otherwise you and your father are in danger.”

Dorie nodded, and there was gravity in the expression.

Jane breathed. “Now,” she said. “Lift your quilt in the air. Without your hands.”

Dorie spread her arms over the quilt and went silent. With a little tug and bobble, the quilt slowly rose. Then fell again, and Dorie looked surprised.

Jane nodded. “You’re weak this morning. That’s not surprising. Stop that for now and we’ll have breakfast and do morning exercises with our hands.
If
you work hard, we’ll come back to this before lunch. Understand?”

Dorie nodded. Then she smiled. “Yes, Miss Jane,” she said clearly.

Jane smiled, and the action felt strange on her cheek, the skin crinkling against the cotton veil like the cracking of a porcelain mask. Or maybe the strangeness was that she almost felt like she could feel the little girl’s emotions, and the strongest one was trust.

*   *   *

“I just don’t see why you have to go without it,” said Cook crossly. “Sure and if there’s something that helps you withstand them, you seize it. Even if it is wearing iron across your face.”

“But my worry is that it’s
not
helping me,” Jane said. She had offered to chop walnuts for that night’s dessert, but the conciliatory gesture didn’t lessen Cook’s temper.

“You’re still wearing a hat, aren’t you then? Covered all up like a beekeeper in June. Not like
that’ll
be normal.”

Jane knew that the normally friendly and cheery cook couldn’t help her reaction to Jane. She knew intimately how frustrating it was to react in anger when you didn’t think of yourself as an angry person. She hadn’t been, once. She’d been even tempered, patient with children, tolerant of others’ foibles.

Cook threw chopped yellow onions in the pot with sharp splashes. “It’s not right, and you not knowing how Dorie will react. Children need careful handling. You’ve got to be thinking of her.”

“I am, truly,” said Jane. She attempted a smile, though she knew it was obscured by layers of cotton. “It’s all part of the master plan.”

Cook folded bay leaves and long runners of thyme into a square of cheesecloth. She didn’t turn around. “There are plenty here who’d give nigh anything to stop their curses and you just let it out.”

“Plenty? Who?”

“Never you mind, missy. You just sit down and give it all a good long think, that’s what.” Cook tied off the bag of herbs with twine and dropped it in the pot, washed her hands of the argument. “Now I’ve said my piece and I’m done. You’ll be passing me the walnuts now.”

With the back of a butcher knife, Jane scraped them from the chopping block into a green bowl. “Did Mr. Rochart need careful handling, too? When he was young?”

“And how should I be knowing that?” Cook said. “He didn’t grow up here.”

“Oh,” said Jane, and then remembered Nina saying last night that he had grown up abroad. “But this house belonged to his family, yes?”

“It’ll be the family house, sure, and we all knew the last Mr. Rochart. Cross old man, rest him—he paid his workers fair and just, but never a kind word for any soul. He died a good decade before the war, and the house sat empty till this Mr. Rochart returned. A grandson, you see. His da had run off when he was just a boy—some quarrel, and the old man never forgave him.”

“Then when did Mr. Rochart come back?”

“Just after the Great War started,” Cook said, “but that’s enough asking into your master’s business.”

Jane thought it better not to point out that Cook frequently volunteered similar innocuous gossip, common knowledge that had been in the village for decades. “I liked the croissants you made this morning,” she offered, like an olive branch. “With the chocolate in them.”

“Sure and you got one of mine,” Cook said, flicking flour into the bowl. “I’ll tell you, none of these girls from the village knows how to make a decent pastry, never mind it’s a skill every mother should’ve taught them. But no one has enough time to fold a thousand layers of pastry, let alone the cost of the butter to go between them, and it does cost, because no one has cows any more than they have the cinema, nothing is the same at all.…”

Detoured on the new rant, Cook briskly dumped honey and eggs into the walnuts, preparing the filling for the tart. Her treatment of Jane brought a sour feeling to her stomach. This is how it had been five years ago, hadn’t it? It was as if all her time with the mask had been undone. And yet, was she wrong to try it? If one way brought frustration to Jane and one way to everyone else, what was the morally correct thing to do?

She sighed, wishing there were a third way. Poule had suggested that her water imagery was the right path, but was it really helping, or was that just wishful thinking? She would have to be pretty darn watery to counteract this curse. But it wasn’t like she had anything else to try, and there was no one inside her head to see the silliness. So why not? She would be a cheerful sparkling pond, drowning the orange flames of her cheek before they could even spring up. So cool and watery that fish could swim around inside her skull, as if her head were a glass bowl. The ridiculous image cheered her.

Poule came through the kitchen door with mail in hand—circulars and a letter for Cook that the woman seemed pleased to get. She silently handed Jane a thick cream-colored envelope. Then, leaning closer, she stared at Jane’s veil. Jane was surprised to realize that she did not instantly take offense at the impertinence. No, she was perfectly calm and interested, a cool still pond, wondering what Poule’s reaction would be. The woman had seemed to withstand it the other night, but … Well. Jane didn’t think she could bear it if
everyone
in the house hated her.

Poule’s nostrils flared and Jane remembered how she had scented after the fey in the woods. The short woman spread her hand wide and reached high, high to Jane’s face, briefly touched the crook between thumb and index finger to Jane’s chin, as if she were measuring it. Jane managed not to flinch. Poule’s silver hair streamed loose, iridescent in the sun, rippling like the waves on her imaginary Jane pond.

“I’ve felt worse,” Poule said at last. She dropped her hand and turned to go, treading heavily across the grey kitchen stone.

“Wait,” said Jane. “What do you mean?”

Poule stopped at the door. “I mean we have tales of a dwarf named Moum who got cursed with rage. He started three wars, and his children tore each other to bloody bits.” She shrugged. “Say what you like, but I don’t have any urge to rend Creirwy.”

The cook laughed as she beat the filling. “I should hope not.”

*   *   *

Jane pulled her paper knife from a drawer and slit open the heavy stationery that Helen favored. Four heavily written-on pages fell out, plus a thin blue-and-white photo of Helen in a dark gown, and a scrap of rose fabric.

She skimmed the parties and balls. Alistair had one of the last working fey-tech cameras, and here she was before opening night of a new production of
A Midsummer Night’s Tragedy
. She had a new afternoon tea dress, and here was a swatch so Jane could see how it would complement her complexion. Jane laughed, imagining Helen sending a swatch of complexion as well. Then she sobered as she started on the last page.

“You asked me point-blank what I meant by ‘Ironskin or no.’ My ever-blunt Jane! And also you wondered if my fine friends care nothing for the war, think little of it, &c. I assure you it is true, and I am only reporting to you what I see around me. I try to be as cynical as the next woman about the malingerers who yet line our hospitals, and I try to accept it when my bosom friend Gertrude steers us clear of a begging ironskin in the street. I know she knows of you and has only pity for me, but I don’t think she understands what it means, and how that iron leg she reviles is at least the common decency of that poor boy to cover up a horrible curse. And yet she thinks he should go one step farther, and shut himself up so he is not seen at all.