Ironskin

by Tina Connolly

  “She is gone, then?” Jane said softly. Unbidden she neared him, him and that wide window onto the choking forest. To live here would mean to live in its dark and tangled grip.

  Mr. Rochart nodded. “The last month of the war.” The words landed like carefully placed stones, a heavy message grown no lighter with repetition. “She was killed and taken over by a fey. She was pregnant with Dorie.”

  Jane sucked air across her teeth. The mother killed, the daughter still unborn—no wonder this child was different from any she’d ever seen. Her heart went out to the two of them.

  Mr. Rochart turned to Jane, looking down, down. In the filtered light through the window she could finally see his eyes. They were amber, clear and ancient, a whole history trapped inside of them just as real amber trapped insects. He reached to take her hand; she knew he wouldn’t—but then he did. “Will you help us?”

  She had not been touched like that, not simply like that, since the first year of the war. Unbidden, she recalled the last boy to touch her: a baker’s apprentice she’d loved, with blond hair and a smile of gentle mischief. She was fourteen, and he’d invited her to her first dance, taken her waist, whisked her around the piano and out into the garden, where her stockings had splattered with spring mud. Someone’s mother had stumbled on them laughing together and sternly ordered them back inside.…

  A touch and an unwanted memory should not influence her decision, but in truth her decision was already made. It was made from the moment she saw Dorie, from the moment she saw the clipping, perhaps even from the moment almost exactly five years ago when she knelt by her brother’s body on the battlefield, blood dripping from her chin. If this man would take her on, she would bend all her will to the task. She would help this girl. She would help them.

  “I will stay,” she said. “I will start now. This morning.”

  Relief flooded his eyes—almost too much. He pressed her hand and was gone from the room before Jane could decide what it meant.

  Chapter 2

  FEY LIGHT

  The enormous estate had all of three servants: the butler Poule (who was also in charge of the grounds and the pre-war motorcar), the cook, and one maid. When Jane, aghast, said: “One?” the maid merely nodded.

  “How can you clean this whole house by yourself?” said Jane.

  “Can’t.”

  “Just the laundry alone—”

  “Poule built scrub tank. Nice bits hired out.”

  The young maid’s name was Martha, and perhaps she was treasured more for her monosyllabic qualities than her desire for cleanliness. She was tall for a girl, rangy, with ginger hair closely braided to her scalp in defiance of any current fashion. Her dark dress and apron had clearly seen better days, though they were clean and neatly patched. She showed Jane an abbreviated tour of the house. All the open rooms were in the south wing, the undamaged wing. The sapphire curtains opened to a hallway that branched off to drawing room, dining room, sitting rooms. The kitchens were beneath them in the cellar. Martha did not take her through the curtains that led to the north wing, but she explained in words of one syllable that forest green eventually led to Mr. Rochart’s studio, and mahogany only to Poule’s quarters and damage.

  Jane’s rooms were on the back of the second floor, down the hall and around the corner from Dorie’s room. It was a family room that had been given over to the governess, so it was bigger than Jane had expected, and hung with a threadbare tapestry depicting a maiden taming a dragon. (A fanciful design, Jane thought critically, as the maiden was blonde, pink, and rather buoyant, but dragons had only existed—if ever—in the Faraway East.) A nearby spiral staircase appeared to go all the way up and down the house, but Jane reminded herself to check that to know for sure.

  During the tour, Jane pestered Martha with a flurry of questions about the house and its schedules, but the only time the maid offered more than a grunted yes or no was when Jane asked about Dorie.

  “All yours now. We told him no more. Had to get you to keep us.”

  “Is she so naughty?” said Jane.

  “Not a bad child. It’s what she does when she’s good,” said Martha, and shuddered.

  “Can you feel when she’s doing, um … not-quite-human things?”

  Martha nodded. “I’m not one to start at naught. Nor Cook. That’s why we’re here when the rest fled. Though some days the blue lights and air dolls make your hair rise.” She gestured at the iron covering Jane’s face. “Could be you’ll fare well. Since you’re a cripple too.”

  Jane stiffened at the one word Martha had given two syllables to say, and perhaps the laconic, unimaginative maid saw that, because she fell silent again. More questions brought no more answers, and the only other piece of information Jane could extract was that Dorie’s supper—and thus Jane’s, for today—was at six.

  When the maid was gone, Jane unpacked her small pasteboard suitcase. It was not everything she owned, but near enough. Her trunk with her winter woolens and a few books and pictures was still at the boarding house in the rooms she’d shared with her sister—though by the time she returned to the city to retrieve it, it would probably be at Helen’s new home.

  As short a time as the other governesses were there, they had left traces of their passing, perhaps due to their hurried departures. A calendar from last year hung on the wall, stopped at November. A scrap of orange wool, a pen nib, a cinema stub firmly wedged between the mirror and frame—that one must be an abandoned souvenir; the films had stopped running in the first year of the war. Hairpins everywhere.

  Yet someone had put a snowdrop, surely the first of them, in a tiny cream pitcher on her dresser. Jane looked at its curved white petals as she thought: Well. Someone expected me to stay.

  She hung up her best dress and changed into a shapeless dropped-waist dress of dark wool, a pre-war hand-me-down a decade out of date and never in fashion to begin with. Changed her good stockings for a woolen pair she’d knit that winter while listening to the Norwood School girls recite poetry they didn’t understand or care to. The ribbed stockings were far too thick to be fashionable, but they were warm, a necessity in this house where the fires seemed few and far between. She put her few things in the drawers, checked her hair. The crimping had completely fallen out, of course. The white lock of hair was loose, torn free by him. She grabbed one of her predecessors’ hairpins and shoved it ruthlessly in place within the dark brown hair, the pin digging into her scalp. She nudged the leather straps that held her mask higher on her head, where they would start the long process of slowly dropping again.

  Jane was used to adjusting the alignment of the mask without really looking at herself. It was not her disfigured side that made her throat clutch and her anger rise; it was her good side. The reminder of how she should look. If she turned her profile to the mirror she could imagine her face whole again, as she hadn’t seen it since sixteen, when her life was normal and full of possibility. But that luxury was too costly. The times she gave into those imaginings, she wept, after, and was unsettled and resentful for days.

  So Jane glanced just enough to see that every bit of the scarring was hidden by the cold iron. Rage, she had told Mr. Rochart. Rage was her curse, and it coiled on her cheek, suffused her soul. But at least the iron stopped it from leaking to other people. She had not known that she was cursed, at first. There were so few survivors, and each of them stranded at different understaffed city hospitals, far from their country homes. Besides, when everyone was angry, afraid, miserable—who knew that the effects were emanating from these scarred people who refused to heal? So she hadn’t known, until an ironskin came through the hospitals, searching for people like her, and sent her to the foundry.

  But she knew how she looked. She’d known that since the moment it happened.

  Jane turned from the mirror and set off to find Dorie.

  * * *

  Jane found Dorie sitting on the kitchen floor. Oddly, there seemed to be more sunlight down here than in some of the
upstairs rooms. In the edges of the ceiling there were skylights that let light in somehow—perhaps with mirrors? Jane seemed to recall that as a feature of fey building. Regardless, the thin sunlight was an improvement over blue-tinged chandeliers and sconces.

  The cook was stirring a soup pot and flicking through an old magazine, clearly read many times. She was thick and sturdy, with reddened face and arms, and grey-blond hair that escaped in curling wisps from her faded cap. Her name was Creirwy, which is perhaps why she went by Cook.

  Dorie was on the floor, tracing the square tiles with the palm of her hand. When Cook wasn’t watching, Dorie painted the tiles with patterns of light. When Cook caught the blue flash out of the corner of her eye, she said warningly, “Dorie…,” and the lights disappeared.

  Cook looked up and caught Jane’s eye. “Oh, and you must be the new one,” she said. She left her soup long enough to clap Jane a friendly and floury pat on the shoulder. “I’m Cook.”

  “I’m Jane. Jane Eliot.”

  “Jay,” said Dorie, jumping up. Her white frock was smudged with jam.

  “Miss Trouble is having that good of a day,” said Cook. “It’ll last a bit, if you’re clever with her. She got some lunch in her belly just now. I’ll be sending Martha with your tea in the late afters, but are you needing a bite now? Sure, and you haven’t had lunch, have you? Sit down, lass, and eat right now.”

  Jane’s stomach was vast with hunger. The sunlight fell on a half-empty jar of sliced peaches on the sill, on a dented tray of buns cooling on the stone counter. Yeasty steam scented the air. She had been too nervous to eat when she left the city at dawn—though a half-awake Helen had tried to make her eat a toasted stale crumpet—and she wasn’t sure she could do much better now. Besides, she was clattery with anticipation to try working with Dorie straight off, to see what it was like, to see what her new life would be. “No thank you,” she said, resolutely turning away. “I’d rather get started with Dorie.”

  She reached down for Dorie’s hand but Dorie eluded her, backing away and crossing her arms behind her back.

  “Sure and she doesn’t like to be touched,” Cook said over her shoulder. “I’ll be sending buns up with you. Wouldn’t do anybody good to have you fainting.” She packed several buns in a little basket with a chunk of sausage and a wedge of white cheese.

  Jane withdrew her hand and looked soberly at Dorie. Chalk up the first thing she wasn’t going to push on Day One. “Will you lead the way, then?” she said.

  Dorie smiled sideways up at her in the manner of children everywhere when they’d gotten away with something. Perversely, it comforted Jane to see a behavior she could label. Dorie scooted sideways through the door and set off down the hall, Jane after.

  Cook followed the two of them out into the hall, chattering about how the sourdough hadn’t been rising as it should, the early spring lettuce wasn’t coming quick enough, and entertainment wasn’t the same since the tech for the blue-and-white films died and you never saw the matinee idols anymore. Local talent on a hastily built stage just wasn’t the same as a lusty star-crossed clinch from Fidelio and Frida, now was it? Not that Jane would know, as that was nearly ten years ago now, and Jane probably hadn’t given tuppence for a good romance as a child. Despite Cook’s complaints, her casual manner was a welcome relief from the pervasive gloom of the rest of the house. She dropped two pieces of wax-wrapped taffy from her apron pocket into the basket and handed it to Jane.

  “Thank you,” said Jane, and she turned for the stairs.

  But Cook grabbed her arm. “You won’t be taking those stairs,” she said. “Those will be going to the master’s studio.”

  Jane looked in surprise at the stairs—and then, at the identical staircase at the other end of the room. “Oh,” she said. “All right.” She could not tell if Cook was cross or just curt. And what would there be to be cross about?

  Dorie scampered down the hall and led Jane up the correct stairs, away from Cook.

  Cook watched them until they were out of sight.

  * * *

  Dorie knew the proper way back to her rooms, and she liked stomping. Another positive trait in a child—Jane wondered how long she would treasure every disobedience as proof of humanity. Not that gleefully stomping up the stairs was particularly disobedient, but it was a normal behavior that parents expected governesses to put a stop to.

  Jane just followed.

  She thought back to her first day as a governess in the city. She was not quite seventeen; her mother had died a few months before, and with her, her small living. A neighbor had taken Helen in to let her complete school (in exchange for their cow, which amused Jane on the days she could find something to laugh about) and Jane found herself being pushed from the safety of the foundry. The Great War was over and the soldiers were slowly coming home, attempting to reclaim their former lives. War-scarred Jane was finally, begrudgingly, given a place with a long-ago friend of the family’s. They had three children, nine, seven, and four, and the first day Jane spent doing nothing but playing ring around the rosy and sardines with them until they were used to her strange face and would let her touch them and tickle them and tuck them in at night.

  Jane didn’t think any amount of playing sardines would help with Dorie.

  She sat down on the neatly swept floor by the white bed and watched her charge, hoping that by familiar association she would get used to Dorie. Sardines would have been helpful for the governess this time, she thought ruefully.

  Dorie stood in the center of the room, looking intently up at the corner of the silver-papered ceiling. Her arms were slightly away from her sides. She clacked her tongue thoughtfully.

  The hairs on the back of Jane’s neck pricked up. “Dorie?” she said calmly. “Are you looking at something?”

  Dorie turned and smiled. “Mother was there,” she said.

  “Mother?” said Jane. “Your doll?”

  By way of answer Dorie looked around for the doll. It was hanging off the bed, arms limply flopping down the sides. The instant her gaze fell on the doll it rose in the air and began swimming around the room.

  Though the last thing in the world she wanted to do was touch that doll, Jane made herself calmly reach out and grab it as it flew by. “In this house we use our hands,” she said, quoting the girl’s father.

  The doll tugged in Jane’s grasp, but Jane held firm. She searched the room, looking for distractions. What would Dorie find familiar, comforting to do with the new governess? Was there anything she enjoyed besides flying the Mother doll through the air?

  There were puzzles and activities stored neatly on the shelves—so neatly that Jane doubted they ever saw use at all. A small alphabet book lay on top of a chalkboard, and it made Jane suddenly curious as to whether anybody had ever attempted to teach Dorie anything. Did she know any of her letters?

  Despite Dorie’s one-word answers and tongue clacks, Jane sensed that the girl was not stupid. Just … different.

  Whether any other governess had stayed long enough to find out how much Dorie could learn was another question entirely.

  The main obstacle to Dorie’s learning was revealed almost immediately, and it was obvious as soon as Jane saw it. When Jane handed Dorie the alphabet book, she didn’t reach out for it. Jane was looking at the bookshelf, so she thought she felt Dorie grab it. But when she turned, no one was touching the book. The book was being wafted through the air to Dorie’s lap.

  “No, Dorie,” said Jane, and she picked up the book. “We use our hands.” She held out the book and watched Dorie reluctantly take it, her hands clumsy like a toddler’s. “Open it to the first page.”

  The book opened, but not to the first page. Dorie tried to grasp the pages, but she could only grab several or none. She threw it down. “You don’t like to use your hands, do you?” said Jane under her breath. She brought the book back. “It’s okay. A little bit at a time. Page one is the letter A.”

  Dorie clacked. She tried again to grab
the page and turn, but her fingers were not used to fine movements. The page accidentally ripped. She bounced and clacked, her curls swinging. She threw the book down in frustration and Jane felt an answering crossness inside. She had chosen an activity that was far too challenging, and now she had Dorie riled up.

  Jane replaced the book on the shelf and sat cross-legged by Dorie. “How about a game?” she said. “Do you want to play pattycake with me?” No, that would involve hands. She groped for something less confrontational. “Ring around the rosy?”

  Dorie’s face stayed blank.

  “Maybe you don’t know it. Okay, I’m going to sing it for fun, and if you do know it you can sing along.” Jane sang, but there was silence from her charge, though Dorie’s feet twitched as if she felt like dancing.

  Frustration pricked behind Jane’s mask but she tamped it firmly down. No one had said this would be easy. She was here to make a difference in Dorie’s life. She was here to help her be normal.

  No matter how long it took.

  “Let’s play something else for a while,” Jane said.

  Dorie’s face creased into a mutinous scowl that Jane much preferred to blank porcelain.

  Jane amended, “Something fun.” She carefully did not mention that the activity was going to involve Dorie holding things. She brought a stuffed bear and stuffed monkey from the shelves and let Dorie point to one to choose it—a minor success. “Now, Mr. Bear and Mr. Monkey are friends.” The monkey was dressed in a scarlet felt coat and hat. Jane walked him over to the bear, which lay in Dorie’s lap. “Hi, Mr. Bear!” She said it in a squeaky voice, and Dorie laughed.

  “Now you,” said Jane.

  Dorie raised her arms. The bear levitated.

  Monkey gently pushed him back down. “Flying makes my tummy upset,” Monkey said. “Let’s stay on the floor.”

  Bear shook his head and rose again.