Chapter Seven #2
“Wood spirits,” I echoed, recalling him saying the same words the day I met him. “Surely those aren’t real.”
“Ezra says they are. He says they’ll protect us when we need it. They’ll drive the wasting away.”
“I thought Miss Ainsley said you weren’t meant to be friends with Ezra,” I said, wondering if either of them knew what Ezra was capable of—and if that was the source of Ainsley’s cautions.
Henry’s eyes widened. “He only said that once, a long time ago. I always mind Miss Ainsley. And I’m not meeting him to go fishing. I don’t need anybody to help me.”
“I’m sure of that,” I said gently. “I’ll ask Ezra about the wood spirits myself, how does that sound?”
He gave me a conspiratorial grin and dashed off, calling out a hasty goodbye. The fishing pole bobbed, its thin line trailing behind him like spiderweb.
Ainsley answered her door quickly, as if she’d seen me coming. “Don’t tell me you’re already sick of that sour-faced boy in charge of your Mission. I can’t promise I’m better company.”
I blinked, torn between laughter and an odd impulse to defend Julian. “No, no. I came here to have some trousers taken in and hemmed, if you can spare the time. I can pay. Well. Soon.”
“Those are them?” Ainsley asked, nodding at the paper package I carried.
“They’re all the store carried.”
Beckoning me inside, Ainsley shut the door behind me and dusted flour off her hands and onto her embroidered apron. “With a growing boy in my house, I’m forever altering trousers. They won’t be as fine as your city clothes, but you won’t trip over them either.”
“Trip over them?” I asked, a little too loudly for my liking.
Ainsley gave me a strange look. “I imagine that’s the problem. Unless you simply prefer the feel of trousers.”
“Yes. No. I thought maybe …” Ainsley had told Henry not to talk to Ezra, so she had to know him.
I decided most of the truth wouldn’t hurt, as long as I left out how he helped me.
“I thought maybe the midwife’s apprentice already told you that I took a terrible fall.
It was mortifying. Ezra happened to see and help me up. ”
“Ezra has a way of being around at the right time, doesn’t he?” Ainsley asked with a tight press of her lips. They were definitely close enough for him to irritate her. But he’d managed to irritate me mere minutes after introducing himself, so that didn’t mean much.
“I’m not sure that witnessing my utter clumsiness was being around at the right time,” I said with a weak laugh, trying not to think about the other things he’d made me feel within minutes of meeting.
Ainsley made a noncommittal sound. She was already bustling around her small sitting room like a moth, opening a chest and drawing out measuring tape. “The dress will need to come off so I can get measurements. Off now, come on. I suppose you’ll want the top half refitted into a blouse?”
“Oh. Yes,” I said, realizing I had not thought that through. “Yes, please.”
“Turn around now. I’ve got a pie on and chores to do.”
“I was wondering what the smell was.” Sugar and butter and summer berries wafted from the back room.
“Like I said, I have a growing boy.” She helped me out of my black dress, careful with the buttons at the back of my high collar. “And a healthy appetite myself,” she added with an amused huff.
I turned to face her, and her eyes narrowed. I realized with a start that my bruises were exposed. My fingers rose to my throat, but it was too late to hide what had happened.
“Someone got their hands around your neck,” she said, brow arched.
“My train was robbed. I ran afoul of one of the bandits stealing supplies meant for the Mission.”
“Unwise of them to put their hands on you, I imagine,” she said quietly, beginning to take measurements.
My underthings went only to midthigh, but I didn’t feel any more exposed in front of her than I had with the other girls at the House. Legs were legs.
“Not really,” I said. “I was panicking too much to know what to do with myself. The one who got her arm around my throat would have killed me if one of the others hadn’t stopped her.” Despite the warmth in Ainsley’s little house, the hair on my legs stood on end.
Ainsley noticed, chuckling. She crouched at my feet, measuring my inseam. “Goose bumps? Someone must be talking about you.”
“No, I was …” I couldn’t explain. For a moment, I’d recalled something, but the memory had dissolved like a cloud of steam.
“I’m sure what you went through was terrible,” Ainsley murmured. “We’ve been lucky in Frostbrook. The bandits don’t bother with the town—only the trains. And every once in a while, they rob the work camps out along the conduction line.”
I noticed that Ainsley didn’t call them resistors. Although I’d been certain they were common bandits, it relieved me to have my assumption confirmed. Julian seemed far too bookish to help me fight off resistors if we found ourselves under attack.
“I was working at the Mission this morning, and the forewoman told me the wasting has come to Frostbrook,” I said, trying to carry on the conversation, though it had begun to feel strange and prickly. My choice of topic didn’t help.
Ainsley stood and met my gaze. I felt as if she were still measuring me. “The wasting has long been in Frostbrook. It took Henry’s parents. It took mine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly, wishing I’d simply brought up the weather. “Truly.”
She snorted. “Enough of that. Go get the pie out of the stove. Use the quilted mittens, or you’ll burn yourself.”
Busying myself in Ainsley’s little kitchen eased the tension in my shoulders. The pie was beautiful. Sugary fruit bubbled through neat little cuts in the golden crust, steaming and daring me to scorch my mouth. “I suppose I should let this cool,” I called to Ainsley.
“Unless you want to blister your tongue,” she said.
When I returned to watch her sew, it looked as if she’d relaxed into her work.
While I sat on a cushion on the floor, she deftly disassembled my dress, before fashioning the top half into a long blouse.
Pausing occasionally, she’d ask me a quick question about whether I wanted any changes to the sleeves or neckline, but beyond that, we sat in companionable silence.
Every so often I’d glance toward the kitchen, my stomach giving an eager rumble.
“Go have some of that pie,” Ainsley said, her attention on pumping the pedal on her sewing machine and feeding the fabric through the little darting mechanism that mystified me. “You’re as bad as Henry, all but drooling.”
“Thank you,” I said with breathy sincerity, trying not to make an indecent sound at the thought of digging into the pie.
Ainsley’s kitchen was small and functional, with a modest set of tin plates and cutlery, and bins of dry goods on shelves against the wall.
I easily found a plate and knife. “Would you like a piece?” I called out.
“No. I’ll make a sticky mess of your blouse. Mind that you leave some.”
I laughed softly. “I don’t intend to eat the whole thing.”
“I wouldn’t judge you if you did. My pies would win awards, if we had that sort of thing.”
“I’ve heard of pie awards,” I said, returning to my place on the floor to eat a small slice with my fingers. I took tiny, careful bites, savoring each sweet-sour morsel. “They have them outside the city, at the summer festival.”
“You’ll find we have no festivals in Frostbrook.”
“Maybe you will when more people come, when the radiance line is finished and the Mission is up and running. People will flock to Frostbrook from all over. It’ll be a real city before you know it.”
Ainsley, without looking up from hand stitching a button, rolled her eyes quite spectacularly.
“Are you not excited for it?” Since she wasn’t watching me, I licked the plate clean. And then licked my fingers to try to get the reddish juices off.
“I have no reason to be excited. More people means more interference in our lives and how we live them.”
“But it also means schools! Commerce. Prosperity.” My radiance, as if responding to my passion, made my fingertips feel tingly. I clenched my hands into fists, willing it to settle down.
“Strangers.” Ainsley jabbed her sewing needle with force. “Rich fools.”
“What are you really afraid of?” I asked, taken aback by the anger in her voice.
Her fingers stopped moving. She looked at me.
“I’m not afraid of anything. I’m weary of wealthy men building their fortunes on the bones of good people.
I grew up in Sterling City. My parents came to Frostbrook with the first group of settlers to make their homes here in the foothills.
But it was already too late for them. Cities are full of rot and ruin.
So I hope I never see this town corrupted by Progress. ”
What she said was dangerously close to the rhetoric of the resistors who assassinated Children of Industry.
But on her lips, it sounded like truth, not the ravings of violent extremists.
I struggled to find the words to dispute her, so I sat in silence, cursing my inability to defend what I believed in. What I was destined to do.
“Does that make you cross with me?” she asked, her fingers once more flying along the fabric. It didn’t sound like she cared one way or another.
“How could I be cross with you when you’re being honest about how you feel?” I managed to say. “I don’t wish to see Frostbrook corrupted, but I believe Progress can come …”
What did I believe? That it could come gently? I knew nothing of gentleness.
And I also knew that Progress wasn’t free. Someone like Ainsley might never be able to pay the fees associated with running a private radiance line to a residence. And even if she did, what radiance-powered machines could she possibly afford?
“I want it to come without … spoiling anything here,” I finished, my words weak and hollow.
“Do you know anything but what you’ve been taught?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying not to sound as offended as the question made me feel. I knew plenty of things.
“At your famous school. The place where radiance comes from. Did they allow you to study literature or art? Did you read about history? Ethics?”
“We were taught how to control radiance and build Progress,” I said. “There was no time for the rest.”
She kept her eyes on her work. “No time at all?”
“We were busy. I was very busy. It takes years and years to become an apprentice. I worked nearly a dozen hours a day my final year to become proficient enough to assist a Senior at a Mission.”
“Staying alive keeps everyone busy, Josephine. Has it ever occurred to you that you were deliberately prevented from learning anything but what they wanted you to believe?”
A fine tremor ran through my body. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or sadness, but either way I hated how it felt. I hated that this talk of knowledge and Progress was driving a wedge between me and Ainsley before we’d even had a chance to become properly acquainted.
I hated that I wanted to become properly acquainted with her at all. It was forbidden. How could her words trouble me so when I was rebelling against the House in my own small, foolish way?
“Why are you saying these things?” I finally asked, my voice shaking.
Ainsley exhaled noisily, as if my question were preposterous. “I’m saying what I believe. This is my house, isn’t it?”
“It is.” I stood and took the plate to the butcher block in her kitchen, then wiped it clean with a pitcher and rag. When I returned, she was still working, calm as could be, while I trembled.
“You should get used to being challenged,” she said softly. “If you believe everything you’re told, people will treat you like a child for your whole life.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Ainsley laughed. “You already asked me that. Maybe I’m pleased to meet someone my age in this town. Maybe I’m hoping you won’t be an empty-headed fool.”
“Th-that’s rude,” I sputtered.
“It’s not rude if it’s true. I hope it’s not true.”
“I’d storm right out if you weren’t holding my trousers,” I said, flustered.
When she looked up to meet my gaze, her eyes sparkled with mirth. “It’s a clever way to hold your audience, is it not?”
Since we were having that kind of conversation, I huffed back onto the cushion on the floor and folded my arms tightly. “Why did you tell Henry he can’t play with Ezra?”
“He can’t play with Ezra because Ezra isn’t a little boy. He’s a busy apprentice healer who doesn’t need a child at his heels. Why do you care to know?”
My cheeks got hot. I wished I had long hair to cover them. “The way Henry said it … I thought—I thought it was for his safety.”
Ainsley snorted and shook out the trousers. “You’re imaginative for someone who wasn’t taught to read. Come and try these on.”
“I can read. I didn’t read frippery. That’s all.”
When I pulled the trousers on, I forgave Ainsley for everything she’d said. My legs were free. I shoved my feet back into my boots and gave a stumbling twirl.
Ainsley crossed her arms. “I can see how you nearly tumbled to your death.”
“I’ll have you know I’m quite graceful. Sometimes.”
Her laughter pulsed through me like the ringing of a bell, and I giggled in return, some of the lingering tightness in my chest softening. Every so often, Gertrude had made me laugh like that. More rarely, I’d made her laugh in return. I’d liked the sound.
Before long, Ainsley was helping me pull on the blouse fastened from the top half of my dress. “You’re sure you want the neck to stay high like this? It seems stifling.”
“Yes. It’s customary.” I retied my blue neck scarf.
“Customary,” she repeated with an eye-roll. “Then there you are. A properly mobile apprentice Conductor. Why do they send you off into the wilderness in such fussy dresses in the first place?” Before I could speak, she went on with a chuckle: “Let me guess—it’s customary.”
“The House contracts with a clothing mill nearby to provide uniforms for all the students. It’s a rite of passage, in a way, to get our assignments and have the opportunity to make alterations within reason.
I wasn’t sure I wanted trousers, to be honest. I never wore them at the House.
I didn’t know if they’d feel comfortable. ”
To my surprise, Ainsley was listening closely, her brow knit in a small frown. “That sounds difficult.”
“Which part?”
She adjusted my scarf a little too firmly at my throat. “Not being an individual.”
I resisted the urge to bat her hands away.
Her words followed me all the way back to the Mission.