“Even better than Helene Vestergaard,” I tell her, and yet the embers of a deep grudge suddenly flare up within me at the name. Helene danced her way into a status none of us at the Mill had ever dreamed of—onto the Danish royal stage and into the glittering ranks of the wealthy Vestergaard family through marriage. I never told Eve about my own bitter connection to the Vestergaards. How their mines were the ones my father died in. How the Vestergaards barely sent enough restitution to cover my father’s funeral, let alone the one that followed for my sister a month later. Instead I recited stories of Helene Vestergaard’s legendary rise and then held my tongue, with her name still sitting on it long after Eve had drifted off, and wondered at how the ballerina’s life was a strange mirror to my own: Helene left the Mill for a future with the Vestergaards and their mines—and the Vestergaard mines took my future and sent me to the Mill. A full circle of sorts, hers the light side of my own dark coin, this strange connection I could never shake.
“Marit,” Eve says. She pulls on her shoulder strap and shivers with anticipation. “It could really happen today.”
“It could,” I say brightly. I blink, trying hard not to think about what she looked like at age four, when she climbed into bed with me at night because the sound of the wind scared her.
“Which means this might be the last time we’re together . . .” she continues.
I turn away. I know what she wants from me, and I fumble with the ties on my apron, instantly uncomfortable.
“Please,” she says softly. “I deserve to know, don’t I? You promised you’d tell me someday.” Her worn shoes whisper against the wood floor.
Years ago, she overheard the older girls gossiping about things that she was almost old enough to understand. That her mother had magic; that it had killed her. I’ve never outright lied to Eve about having magic of my own. But it’s a secret I’ve never shared with anyone, holding it tightly to myself since the night my sister died. And talking about the Firn always sheared a little too close to other questions I didn’t want to answer.
“All right,” I finally say, focusing on a strand of hair that escaped her bun. “Yes, I suppose you’re old enough now to hear it. I do think your mother might have had the Firn. I overheard Ness talking once.”
Eve’s shoulders turn stiff. “My mother was too careless with magic?” She swallows hard, as if I’ve confirmed something she’s always feared. “When I was a baby? She . . . chose it over me?”
“It’s never as simple as that,” I say. I sweep back the wayward curl with a pin. “Try to think of magic as a strategy game with very high stakes.” I sigh. “And sometimes . . . maybe it’s worth the gamble. Maybe it’s the best choice out of two hard choices.”
“A game.” Sadness shadows her eyes, as if it’s pooling somewhere deep within her. The very thing I’ve always tried to keep away. “A game she lost,” she whispers.
I give her a tight nod and think, And my sister, Ingrid, too.
“Eve?” Ness yells up the stairs.
“Coming!” Eve calls. She suddenly looks up at me, her dark eyes blazing in the gray half light of the dormitory room. “But are you certain, Marit? Because . . . I don’t have magic.”
I suspected this but now relief floods through me, strong enough that I could collapse. “That’s good,” I say softly. She wraps her arms around me, and I hug her back, feeling the delicate knit of her bones.
“Marit, wait. You don’t either—right?” she asks, suddenly pulling away.
I remember her small, stunned face all those years ago when I handed her Wubbins back, miraculously healed. The feel of magic is finally receding from my fingers, the pleasant chill warming. I fight the sudden urge to look at my fingertips, at the thin skin on my wrists.
“Of course not.” I push her toward the door.
When she reaches the hallway, she turns back, shimmering. The light catches in the beads I took.
“Good,” she echoes me. She smiles. “Then we both have nothing to fear.”
Chapter Three
Downstairs, in the Mill’s sitting room, the rug is pushed back from the worn floor near the fireplace to create a makeshift stage. The rickety chairs are arranged in a semicircle to flank the seats of honor, two grand wingback armchairs with splatters of tea and sunlight faded into their arms. The scene is the same as when I grew up here: all of us forced into some sort of show whenever Ness caught wind that a potential parent was coming to visit. She tried to make us look as desirable as possible: sitting in dirt, weeding the Mill’s pathetic excuse for a vegetable garden for the woman who expressed interest in horticulture; positioning us with thick books around the hearth when an academic came to call. Most often, the girls with the golden voices were urged to sing while the rest of us sipped weak tea from the nice china and ate the flaky, cinnamon-flecked twists of kanelstænger. The children who could sing were always snatched up without fail.
But today is Eve’s best chance to shine—because today, Ness has the girls dancing.
The girls who aren’t performing take chairs in the audience. The fire pops, and there’s a whistle of wind through the crack in the window. No one speaks to me, even though I’ve been gone for only three months. I know why. I am a reminder of a future they don’t want to think about.
Ness glances at the clock.
The tea grows cold.
I left Thorsen’s shop close to an hour ago and the seats of honor remain empty. Every minute I stay is reckless—another minute of idiocy. Eve has wrapped a long sweater around her to cover her costume and continues standing with perfect, expectant posture, even as the other dancers slump against the wall or slide into the audience seats. When she was seven, she spent hours flipping through a book of painted ballerinas, studying their poses until the spine shed its pages like leaves.
Helene Vestergaard was the one who sent that book to the Mill.
Now Eve bends to warm her muscles, and when she nervously taps a silent pattern into the wall with her fingers, I try not to think about all the wages I’ve just gone and wasted on the tutu.
“Perhaps they aren’t coming today after all—” Ness says, but Eve’s head jerks up at a cracking knock on the front door. A middle-aged man and woman step in, eyes bright. The man has a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache and expresses his regret about the hour. Ness brushes away his apology and leads the couple to the sitting room, where a pretty girl named Tenna presents them with hot teas and a curtsy. I begrudgingly admit that I like the woman’s smile, and my throat constricts as they take their seats in the wingback chairs. I check the clock again as they settle in to listen to a trio of girls sing a simple harmony with clear, high voices. Tenna reads a passage of Scripture from the Mill’s worn Bible, and then Ness gestures at the queue of dancers.
They trot out in a line organized by height, the smallest ones wrapped in mothy tulle with ribbon rosebuds sewn into their hair. I know Ness is doing the best job she can but it’s awful, to feel like a piece of candy displayed behind a window, picked out by someone’s particular taste, hoping that the person who wants you is offering a decent life and not a new kind of nightmare. I watch Eve as she strides out, her tutu still hidden beneath her sweater, and I flush with the sudden memory of the last time I used magic. It was two years ago, when I knew full well I was too old to ever be adopted. But in one last moment of desperation, I used magic to sew myself a new dress. I’ll never forget the look on Eve’s face when she saw me that morning and understood just how much I wanted to get picked—even if it meant leaving her behind. In the end it didn’t matter, because that family chose Anja, who had a cherubic smile and a horrendous penchant for temper tantrums, and I cried hot tears into my pillow that night that I’d used precious magic and hurt Eve for nothing. I gave the dress away in the morning, casting it off along with my final dream of ever being adopted.
In fact, I see the dress right now, the embroidered high collar looking only a little worse for wear, on one of the older orphans setting out biscu
its in the front.
And then Eve drops her sweater, and the entire room gasps.
I sit back in the shadows, a blush of pride and pleasure warming my face at the way she glows in her costume, but she doesn’t seem to notice the audience’s reaction; she juts her chin in the air, finds her pose, and waits, her muscles as taut as pulled string.
Elin sits at the toy piano to play something light and lively, and Eve waits behind the row of smaller girls. The tempo builds, and builds, until my foot is tapping along almost without permission; and when Eve’s cue comes, it is as though she has spent years gathering the music within herself for this very moment.
Eve finally unhooks the latch and sets it free.
She bends and lengthens, fluid and lithe. The room has a draft from the gap where the window glass doesn’t quite kiss the sill; there’s a faint smell of mothballs that even the brewing tea can’t conceal; but it is as though Eve steps out to dance in a space beyond it. Oh, I love her. She makes the other girls look as though their limbs have been hewn from wood and set on rusted hinges.
I want to grab Mrs. Madsen’s arm and tell her that Eve’s never had a true lesson in her life. That she simply feels the music and translates it into dance, as naturally as speaking another language.
Only imagine, I want to plead, what she could be with a real home, actual instruction. What she could be with you.
Eve dances as though her heart has melted and is now pouring in golden, aching fire through her veins. I almost can’t tear my eyes away from her to observe the Madsens, who are watching with intent expressions. My heart knots in twin vines of hope and fear at the look that is dawning on their faces. A look as if they know they’ve seen their daughter for the first time.
As the music comes to a climax, Eve throws her legs into an effortless, improvised jeté. She finishes flushed and breathless and stares out at all of us with eyes that are fire.
The Madsens clap and the girls bow and drift into the dining room to set out dishes of meatballs, gherkins, dark slices of rye bread, chicken with brown sauce and rhubarb compote, gløgg flush with golden raisins. My heart is in my throat when the Madsens usher Ness over with a wave of their hands.
“We’d like to speak with one of the girls,” Mrs. Madsen says, and I follow her long, thin finger to the side of the room where Eve stands. I draw in a shaking breath.
“Eve?” Ness asks. Eve curtsies.
“No,” Mrs. Madsen says. “The blond one next to her.”
My breath catches. She means Gitte. Gitte, who wasn’t nearly as good as Eve, not by half. I see Eve blink rapidly. She has a smile plastered on her face that makes me hate them all, and myself, too, because if I’m honest, I am overjoyed.
“Gitte! Come here! Come speak with the Madsens, here, in the private foyer! And then . . . a feast!” Ness says, beaming.
I take a step toward Eve. I’m going to tell her my plan, right now. That I’m going to save up enough money so that maybe we could make our own future someday. That if no one picks us, then we can still pick each other. I’m halfway to her when I suddenly hear the sound of another woman’s voice.
“Ness,” the woman says softly, a whisper from the shadows behind us. The whole room turns toward her in shock. She must have slipped in when the girls were performing and I was distracted.
My head whips toward her, my heart pumping and pounding as I strain to see. The woman steps from the shadows into the light.
“I’d like to speak with one of the girls privately too, if I may.”
What I notice first are her long ballerina legs and the glittering pins in her hair. Her glass necklace catches the light to show a hammer and pick. The Vestergaard mining crest.
I turn in slow motion to watch Eve. She’s frozen, her breaths coming short and shallow. But I see the stunned look of disbelief on her face at the exact moment when she realizes who it is.
Helene Vestergaard.
The woman’s eyes trace around the room until they come to rest on Eve.
She gives a small smile, extends a graceful hand, and says softly: “You.”
Chapter Four
Helene Vestergaard’s eyelids are outlined with ink, sweeping up into a delicate point. She has thick hair the color of hickory pulled up in a pin gleaming with glass flowers. Her coat is a lush coal-black velvet embroidered with intricate golden and pink blossoms that must be worth at least two years of my salary. Once upon a time, she was an orphan here, sleeping in the drafty room upstairs. Now she has turned into a stunning beauty, a commanding presence that sucks up all the air in the room. And she is the richest person I’ve ever seen in the flesh. When Aleksander Vestergaard died a year ago, he left his wife of seven years everything—including his vast mining empire.
The sight of her resurrects the resentment I’ve tried so hard to bury over the years. It slips out like smoke between the teeth of a steel trap.
I stumble forward as Helene leads Eve to the private room near the kitchen. They disappear inside, and the door shuts behind them.
My blood pumps hot and fiercely in my ears, and a copper taste fills my mouth. The idea of the Madsens was hard enough.
To lose Eve to a Vestergaard is unfathomable.
The other orphan girls turn and scatter.
But I follow Ness to the little office set under the curve of the stairway, charging in after her.
“You moved the Madsens’ visit to today, didn’t you?” I demand, putting my hands on my hips. “You asked them to come early?”
Ness shrugs and riffles through her papers. “I invited all of them here,” she says dismissively. “I had a hunch Helene might take an interest in Eve. They are similar in many ways. And yes, I’ve found that a little competition never hurts to get one of you adopted.” Ness is shrewd, and I do think she cares for us, in her own way. She is always looking to throw us a bone. Never one of her own, of course—but she wouldn’t hesitate to pluck out someone else’s, if it might help one of us.
“It is all working out exactly as hoped.” Ness looks up at me, eyes sharp. “You should be happy for her.”
“Where does Helene live, Ness?” I ask. I can hear the desperation creeping into my own voice.
“North of Copenhagen.”
“That’s a full day’s journey from here,” I say, nerves making my voice climb even higher. “I’ll never see Eve again!”
Ness lets out an exasperated sigh. “Eat some bread, Marit.” She jingles a key and kneels in front of her filing drawers. “Don’t be naive. You know as well as I do that most parents in here took one look at Eve and didn’t even consider her.”
I noticed. But I tried to tell myself it wasn’t because she stood out in the sea of white orphans and parents. That it had nothing to do with the fact that her mother was West Indian and her father could have been almost anyone.
“I’ve never known you to be selfish, girl,” Ness continues. “At least try to think rationally.”
“Perhaps I can’t think rationally when it comes to the Vestergaards,” I say through clenched teeth and with a tone I never would have used when I lived under Ness’s roof. “My father died in their mines, remember?”
Her voice is frigid. “Yes, it was a terrible accident. Yet where do you think those linens on your bed came from last Christmas? Who do you think regularly sends money to pay for shoes—the king of Denmark?” She fixes me with the icy gaze that makes even the most grown orphans shrink back. “Marit,” she says, drawing out her words slowly and unflinchingly, “can you offer Eve something better?”
I take a sharp breath.
Ness finds Eve’s papers, stands, and ushers me out the door.
Eve and Helene are emerging from their meeting, and the look on Eve’s face is somewhere between triumph and terror. When Mrs. Vestergaard gives Ness a slight nod, I see the glint of glass around Eve’s neck.
No.
A hammer and pick.
The Vestergaard crest.
The wrong side of the coin, turning u
p in my life again.
Ness clasps her hands together and says, “A feast!”
Eve seeks me out as she and Helene walk toward me, and I can see in her eyes that she knows this is goodbye, this painful fissure of our old life and new splitting as clean as a rip. I swallow, trying hard not to cry. Instead I fix my eyes on Helene’s coat as it trails behind her, the embroidered golden coils of vines and flowers spilling across the floor, and a deep, guttural scream builds within me.
Don’t be selfish, something inside of me is pleading. Don’t be Agnes. But I’m so desperate I suddenly don’t care. Why do the Vestergaards get to keep taking the people I love?
At the exact moment the hem of Helene’s exquisite coat sweeps across a jutting piece of a half-rusted pipe next to the bottom stair, I have a sudden, brilliant, terrible idea.
I step forward, putting my foot down on the coat with the full force of my weight.
The fabric catches and instantly rips with a horrible sound.
“Oh!” Helene exclaims, turning.
I retreat into the shadows.
“Heavens!” Ness says. She kneels to the rip and clasps her wrinkled hands together. “Oh, it must have snagged on this pipe, here. What an unhappy accident.” She shoots me a look of daggers. “I’m so sorry, Helene. I’ve been meaning to have that pipe fixed.”
I look at Eve’s stricken face, her brief moment of happiness as ripped through as the coat, and I step forward to stand beside her. My emotions are fractals, turning wildly in a kaleidoscope. Sadness, fear, desperation.
“Excuse me,” I say to Mrs. Vestergaard, and give a deferential curtsy, “but I’m a seamstress by trade. Might I mend it for you?”
“Yes—Marit can help!” Eve says urgently, as if Helene’s misfortune might make her suddenly change her mind. “Marit is matchless. She’s the one who made my costume.” The curl I pinned earlier has slipped out again to graze the spattering of dark freckles across her right cheek.
Splinters of Scarlet Page 2
