Ironskin

by Tina Connolly

  But he shook his head, and that dazed expression was in his eyes. “I didn’t find what I sought,” he said. “I don’t think. I have been losing time. There are large gaps, just like the time before that, the long time.…”

  Jane tugged on his sleeve. “Stay with me,” she said fiercely.

  He willed himself back to the present with a great effort. Strain showed around the corners of his eyes. “The forest has changed,” he said hoarsely. “When I knew it as a child, it wasn’t evil. You could still walk there by day, at least. It wasn’t a habitat.” He looked around, palms spread out as if trying to determine where he was by feeling the air around him. “But … closer to the creek, I think. If we walk…” His hands groped through the air as if questing for that spot. “If we walk through here…”

  Edward pushed through an unlikely looking pair of bushes and Jane followed on his heels. They spilled out into another clearing—the forest seemed to be nothing but round clearings linked by dense brush, which sent shivers down her spine. That was not natural growth, nor human-made—no, that was all fey.

  Habitat, as Edward had said.

  Edward felt forward with his hands, palms outward. “Most peculiar,” he muttered to himself. “I can almost feel the way with my hands.… This way or this way.…”

  “Is that—what is that?” She lunged for a scrap of blue just past Edward, down the first “this way.” Caught her toe in the fork of a fallen branch, went flying. Her veil caught and snicked tight around her throat and she pushed breathlessly, uselessly at it, tried to extricate herself from the wild and weaving branches that framed the clearing. Spots danced in front of her sight, silver and blue.

  Then strong hands were around her waist, hauling her upward, untangling her veil from the bush, and as they touched her she suddenly thought, He loves me, and in the next instant didn’t know why she thought she knew it. Once standing, his hands did not linger, but took the blue scrap of cloth from her to study.

  “It’s hers,” Jane managed, between catching her breath, trying not to look sideways at this man who had hauled her up so effortlessly. Not effortlessly in the sense of strength, though he was strong, but in the sense that he could touch her waist and recover, that it should so clearly not bother him when she could still feel the imprint of his fingers on her ribs.

  How could she think that he loved her? She knew full well he did not think of her at all. How could he, when he’d never even seen her face? He had no object to fasten on—she could only ever be a cipher to him, a shadowy governess form hidden behind cotton veils, behind an iron mask.

  “This way,” he said, and hurried past the bush, squeezing his lanky figure past it into the next open space, hands feeling forward in that strange testing, questing motion, as if they were drawn by a magnet.

  She was following him, and then she caught something out of the corner of her eye and she went that way, plowing through black branches that tore at her hands and dress and veil, pushing through leaves coated in sticky sap and spiderwebs, twigs with thorns and bark that raked her ankles and elbows. Her veil caught and pulled, but it had been unwound in the first tumble, and now it ripped free. Her hat came completely off and she felt air against her cheek, but she did not stop.

  In the clearing ahead—

  “Dorie!” shouted Jane, and then a blue-orange light blinded her.

  Jane’s cheek flamed hot and she stumbled, momentarily sightless. As she fell, groping for purchase, she wondered wildly if perhaps there were no fey in the woods at all. Perhaps she had misjudged the limits of Dorie’s abilities, perhaps—and her heart raced as she hit the ground, still waiting for the world to come back into focus—perhaps giving Dorie permission to work on her skills had changed her, developed her beyond their ability to control.

  That exploded doll. Shards of porcelain.

  Dorie’s stricken face.

  Perhaps Jane had unwittingly unleashed a monster out of this little girl.

  Vision was returning slowly, like the old fey cameras did, their blue-and-white image slowly revealing itself on the page. Dorie, she only saw Dorie, raising her hands against the sky.

  Jane rubbed her eyes, strained them trying to see in more detail than shades of twilight blue. Still Dorie, only Dorie …

  The thought flashed that this was what taking chances was—you always thought in the back of your mind that doing the right thing would lead you down the right path to the right outcome. But when it came down to it, you might still fail, and everything might end in disaster. Faith in your decision did not mean that the best was going to happen.

  Color leaked into Jane’s sight and she froze, watching the clearing now with full vision.

  In the green-lit clearing, the little girl was both there and not there, shimmering like the gold and sapphire scarves of light that whisked around her. The old instinctive fear ran sharp and hot through Jane; her fingers curled, everything tensed, and her face was on fire.

  That was not just Dorie, and she was not imagining things.

  That was the fey.

  Chapter 14

  ATTACK

  The fey that hadn’t been seen in five years.

  The fey that would destroy you to claim your form—and you with no way to kill them in their natural shape.

  There was little Jane could do without a weapon. No way to even protect herself without iron. She knew this in her bones like she knew how to breathe. And yet she staggered to her feet, stumbled into the clearing, her human instinct sure she should do something to protect her little girl. The shimmers of blue-orange fey coalesced into one form, a form with a heartbreaking female face that curled in the air around Dorie.

  The fey looked at her. And then a wall of black fear swept over Jane, swept in through her face, and it was the nameless terror of her nightmares.

  It was a fey attack, though she had never heard of one like this.

  There was a strange feeling all through her—fear and attack all mixed up together—and Jane felt as though her thoughts were being scrambled away from her and into something else, some other thing.

  No, she protested, no—and she recoiled from it, while simultaneously it seemed to be recoiling from her. Disgust—revulsion—distaste—ugly, ugly—pull back, pullbackpullback … The attack of fear fell away, and Jane still stood, as the fey surrounded the translucent Dorie.

  Jane made her shaky legs go forward, heart galloping a mile a minute. She groped in her pockets for a nonexistent feyjabber, pushed her way into the clearing. Dorie stood in a circle of grey stones, a circle with a wall of hard air that Jane’s fingers would not go through. “Are you all right, Dorie?” Her voice was remarkably steady.

  Shimmering, Dorie came loose from the fey’s encircling light, bounced through the hard air past the stones to Jane, sweeping through her. Jane felt the touch thrum through her body like the pattering of rain, a distinctly opposite feeling from fey invasion. “My pretty lady,” Dorie said, and Jane felt those words like a smile deep in her body. Dorie bounced back to the fey, cradled herself in that light.

  The fey’s imaged face was calm after that first attack. Disturbingly calm, like the destroyed porcelain doll. She observed Jane. Studied the war-torn face that her people had caused. Her voice, when she spoke, was high and throbbed somewhere in Jane’s skull. “You. Must leave us. It is my child.”

  “No,” said Jane. “She is human.” She remembered what Edward had said. “Just because you stole her mother’s body doesn’t make Dorie yours.” She didn’t know why, but again she tried to take a step forward, as if trying to fight a fey without shielding or feyjabbers—madness. The fey had weapons with which they could destroy her in an instant. Wasn’t her cheek a reminder of that failed attempt?

  The fey said, “My small part-of-me,” in a voice that Jane felt rather than heard. The fey blazed up hot and gold and shaming, and Jane despaired, felt herself being frightened from the clearing by the sheer force of fey emotion. Before she could master her own emotions, she w
as huddled in the brush outside the clearing, weeping at her inability to act.

  Steps behind her—Edward coming up, coming past her. Her tears blurred her sight as the light dimmed, died, faded away to nothing. Jane sprang up, temper rebounding high, pushed into the clearing—but the fey was gone.

  Dorie lay on the ground inside the stones, a crumpled heap of silk dress and tangled curls. One hand curled around a broken foxglove whose orange petals were lit with fey glow.

  “Dorie,” said Edward, and his voice broke on the word. He knelt beside her, but Jane was already there, checking, waiting, dying—finding that slow pulse fluttering in Dorie’s neck.

  “She’s breathing,” Jane said, and the tears ran down her ruined cheek. She gently wrested the poisonous foxglove away from the curled fingers, threw it. “Dorie? Can you hear me?”

  Dorie mumbled something and scrunched her eyes tighter.

  “Dorie, sweetheart.” Pleading. “Wake up.”

  Dorie’s breathing became stronger, more regular, and her pulse strengthened under Jane’s touch. But she did not open her eyes.

  Edward cradled his daughter to him and stood. The shadow was dark on his face as he raised his eyes—and looked straight at her face.

  Her bare face with no veil, no mask.

  Jane swallowed. She knew what he saw. She felt his shock like a whiplash against bare skin. She crushed Dorie’s tiny hand in hers—could not let go of the charge she cared for, even though that meant she was standing a handsbreadth away from Edward.

  How could she have thought simply—he can’t love me as he’s never seen my face?

  Because he had. If Nina spoke true, he had made her face. Sculpted it, to see her as she should have been.

  So no, what she meant was—I’m not normal. He couldn’t care for her when she wasn’t normal. Even the fey had rejected her. Edward and Dorie were not her family. Ugly ugly unclean …

  “Jane…,” he said. Only that, holding his daughter close.

  “Go,” she said, hollow in her chest. “Lead the way back. You know these woods.” She dropped Dorie’s hand, walked toward him till he had to turn and she could follow, heart constricting in her chest. She retrieved her hat with its torn veil as they followed their path of broken branches and twigs back through the woods. Dorie’s legs hung limply from her father’s arms, jarred back and forth as he strode through the forest. The small limbs seemed as fragile as the porcelain doll’s.

  Poule was waiting for them at the edge, her lips set in a grim line. Her careful fingers touched Dorie’s cheek, neck, wrists. “I’ll send for a doctor,” Jane heard her tell Mr. Rochart.

  “Doctors won’t help,” said Mr. Rochart. He continued on toward the house with Dorie as though he didn’t know what to do but get her away.

  “No, but you’ll feel like you’re doing something,” Poule said. “Let him take her pulse and tell you not to worry.”

  Jane searched the back lawn until she saw the elder Miss Davenport. When their eyes met, the girl squealed and turned away. Jane swallowed against the sick feeling inside. And yet … she could not return to hiding behind her wall of iron.

  Poule was issuing instructions about the doctor to the nearest temporary servant. She turned to go, and Jane hurried after, fell in beside her. Before she could change her mind she let the words tumble out. “I need your help,” she said. “Please.”

  Poule looked up at her, her sharp eyes seeing through Jane’s hastily wrapped veil. “Better bring that book with you to satisfy your last debt. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”

  * * *

  Jane slid The Pirate Who Loved Queen Maud across the green glass tabletop to Poule. The dwarf’s eyes gleamed as she ran her fingers lovingly over the remains of the dust jacket—she could still make out the pirate’s grin as he valiantly fought a busty mermaid riding a sea serpent. With a show of great restraint Poule tenderly tucked the book inside her dressing gown without even cracking it open.

  “How much for this help?” said Jane. The hollow feeling was not going away. The fey had returned. The fey had harmed Dorie, had attacked Jane. Jane had attacked Miss Davenport. She cared too much for everybody, and everything was broken.

  “Provided I can, then it’s an even exchange for information about what you saw in the forest,” said Poule. “What help do you think I can give?”

  Jane rubbed her eyes behind the veil. But everything was broken meant start somewhere. Be the Jane who had come to Silver Birch to make things right.

  Fix one thing at a time.

  “You said you had tales of a dwarf cursed by rage, who started a war,” Jane said. “Moum.”

  Poule raised her eyebrows. “Three wars. But you’re not that bad.”

  “But what you said before that. You said ‘I’ve felt worse.’ Not ‘I’ve heard of worse.’ And before that, the first time we were talking about water imagery, and practicing controlling your emotions. You said you’d had a lot of practice.”

  Poule let out a breath. “Ah.” Her short fingers touched the book at her heart, fell to the glass tabletop.

  “Please,” Jane said gently. “You knew someone who was cursed. Didn’t you?”

  Poule stared at her fingers on the table. “My father,” she said. “On an ordinary trade mission.”

  “I thought dwarves didn’t use fey technology.”

  Anger lit Poule’s face. “We shouldn’t,” she said. “We mostly don’t. But dwarves are bloody arse-faced mules, and we don’t all agree on anything, no matter how crackbrained, how costly, how—” She breathed. “Pappa worked for the Steel Conglomerate, going back and forth between cave and sky. Things went wrong—it doesn’t matter how. He came home wounded in the chest.”

  “Was it also rage?”

  “Yes—no. Violence. Not just anger—brutality.” She rubbed her silver-grey head, and Jane thought that this must have been a long time ago. “There weren’t many curses back in those days, you know. I researched every rumor of a cure, pored through old books.… Well. During the Great War, I heard about ironskin and tried it on Pappa, though by then he was old and sick. It was just one more thing to try, I thought. But covering his curse with iron just made him sicker.” Her shoulders slumped inside her old suit coat. “I know he didn’t have much time left anyway, but…”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jane. But also … “It made him sick? The iron keeping the curse in?”

  Poule shrugged. “I didn’t think that might apply to humans, too. You all just kept wearing it.…” She looked at Jane. “But I am sorry, that I didn’t think of that for you.” She stood as if uncomfortable, went over to a nearby worktable, busying her hands by sorting pliers, recoiling spools of wire. “That’s why I’ve been working on these things since then,” she said. “The iron thread, like Dorie’s gloves. Her mesh was closely woven, to ape the tar or your mask. But I’ve been working on others.” She held a thin ribbon of ironcloth out for Jane to see. “Variants. More iron, less iron, farther apart, closer. Is there some level where the iron can boost the person with the curse, help them control their emotions? Help them dissipate the blight, without making them sick from the blasted fey poison?”

  “That sounds very useful,” said Jane. “But wouldn’t it take a lot of control from the individual?”

  “Yes,” said Poule. “Just like the dwarves practice. Like I told you with the water imagery. So who knows if it would work with humans—at least, not without a long apprenticeship, and the will to work their arses off.”

  “That’s the help I want,” said Jane. “I … yelled at one of the Misses Davenport. The elder one. I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was on fire. I can’t keep the iron on and make myself sick—but I can’t be afraid of myself, either.” Her voice rose on the end of the sentence, more shrilly than she had intended. Perhaps Mr. Rochart could help her, but perhaps he wouldn’t, and Jane couldn’t live with herself anymore. She was the lit end of a firework, a short fuse that would burst into a thousand stars. “Do you see what
I mean?”

  “Calm,” said Poule. “You can do this. A long apprenticeship, I said? You’ve been plugging away at it for five years, from what you’ve told me. All you need is a little more confidence that it’s working. A little more focus of mind.” She set down a spool of wire, rustled through the mess on the table. “Let me give you a bit of the loose-weave iron cloth.” She held up a linen mesh through which only a few iron threads glinted. “Put this on like a bandage,” she said. “See if the crisscross dampens the curse to where it helps you control what goes in and out.”

  Jane took the cloth, took several breaths to calm herself. “Actually it was rather odd,” she said, holding the cloth in her hands like a life preserver. “It almost felt like I was doing something with the curse. When I yelled at Miss Davenport. Like I made her do what I wanted.”

  Poule looked at her strangely. “Well, she is easily cowed,” she said. “I could make her do what I wanted.” She bent a bit of wire back and forth. “Tell me what happened in the clearing.”

  Jane summarized the terrifying event, including how the fey had attacked her.

  Poule nodded. “It felt like fear, you said? But you’re sure it wasn’t your fear.”

  “You know,” Jane said slowly, “it felt oddly like my rage. Like Niklas’s depression. Like … a fey curse attacking me, from the fey itself. I thought usually that came from the blue fey bombs.”

  “It’s the Queen,” Poule said grimly. “Maybe that makes a difference.”

  Jane shuddered, remembering. “It was almost like it was trying to get inside of me. If so, I’m not sure I stopped it—I think it stopped itself.” It rejected her. Ugly ugly unclean … “And then, like it was trying to get inside Dorie. Something made Dorie all shimmery, but I don’t know if that was the fey, or Dorie herself. And now…” What if Dorie didn’t wake up? Jane refused to consider that. Dorie must wake up.