Chapter Ten #2
“Not terribly.” Julian looked down at the bread in his hands, and a small smile twitched at the sides of his lips.
Seeming to recall himself, he cleared his throat and adopted the vaguely irritated expression I’d come to recognize as his resting state.
“We are meant to be fulfilled by radiance, Apprentice Haven. When we properly attune to our calling, there’s no place for loneliness.
I’m honored by my position here in Frostbrook. As you should be.”
“I am!” I said—before wincing. I sounded so defensive, so childish.
This was what I’d been trained for my entire life.
What I’d wished for. Now that I was here, I could hardly believe that I’d been so disappointed over my assignment.
In another place like Sterling City, I’d have never seen impossibly high mountains or rivers with clear water.
I’d have never learned what the color green smelled like.
I’d have never met a bewitching boy with magic too wild to be governed.
I wanted to stay, I realized. I wanted to stay here for a while and work and live and—and even get to know Julian. Was it really that important to be in charge of a Mission? Maybe all I really wanted was to belong somewhere. Take root like one of Ezra’s vines.
Julian tilted his head at me, like a puzzled cat. “Is your bread particularly spicy, Apprentice?”
I blinked until my vision cleared and the threat of tears passed. But not quickly enough to hide the evidence of emotions I could neither name nor contain.
“I was thinking about working at the rail yard today,” I said, after a long struggle to steady my voice.
“Did something happen after I left?” he asked sharply.
“No, no.” Starlight, I wanted to shove the rest of the bread into my face so that I’d never have to speak again. I could have picked a better lie. Now I had to pretend working made me cry like a child. “It was unsettling having everyone watching.”
“You performed complicated tasks in front of your entire class at the House of Industry. Many times. Surely a handful of uneducated—”
My face heated, and I found myself standing, my knees jarring the table.
A copper cup rolled off and clattered against the stone floor.
“They’re not uneducated!” I shouted. “Forewoman Alice knows as much of machinery as I do. The people in this town work with their hands, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. ”
Julian dabbed at the spilled water with a flour-sack napkin.
He took a long time before looking up at me.
A complicated expression made its way across his face before it settled on disdain.
“I hope you save these sorts of outbursts for within these Mission walls. There are some who believe Children of Industry are dangerous, and a temper like that won’t dissuade them of those beliefs. ”
My hands trembled. I pulled them into fists at my side, shame and anger mingling in a heady cocktail that loosened my tongue. “I know what people believe! There are people who say that we only do what we’re told and don’t question what we were taught!”
“There are certainly people who say that.” Julian let out a soft rueful sigh. For a moment, he almost looked fond. “Are you letting it get to you?”
He didn’t sound surprised.
Or concerned.
I sat down heavily, painfully aware of the steady drip of water from the table.
It was my mess to clean once I regained control of my limbs.
Hot emotion was already giving way to embarrassment that swept like ice water through my veins.
Apprentice Conductors had been dismissed for less, had been sent back to the House of Industry to live as servants, performing tasks any child could do. Endless monotonous chores.
“Please forgive my impertinence,” I whispered.
“You’re not the first apprentice Conductor to struggle to settle into a new assignment. But if you cannot control yourself, it is my duty to send word that I need a replacement. Do you understand what’s at stake?”
His calm, assured voice grated at me.
“Did you struggle to settle in your previous Mission?” I asked, wanting to crack his exterior and see how he could be so unwilling to question the rules that caged us.
“Is that why you’re here? You could have stayed in the city.
” He acted so superior to me, but he had to have made a mistake somewhere along the line.
Frostbrook wasn’t even an operating Mission.
Senior or not, this was a demotion to a promising Child of Industry.
“I requested this position.”
My jaw dropped.
“Does that surprise you?” Julian asked.
“Yes,” I admitted, before biting my lower lip until it throbbed. “There’s nothing here for someone like you.”
“There’s opportunity,” he said quietly, touching the edge of the spilled water, breaking the surface tension so it ran in a rivulet off the side of the table. “You’ll understand, someday.”
He had the power to send me away. To crush me to nothing by doing so. “Yes, Senior,” I said miserably, disbelieving. I’d never understand any of this, because I wasn’t meant to. It wasn’t my place to understand.
“Josephine, you will practice reflection in the conduction room tonight. I hope that a night of silence will help you focus.”
“Yes, Senior,” I repeated, my eyes growing hot.
“Honor the radiance within you.”
“Pulse of the stars, steady my heart,” I murmured reflexively, the blessing I’d whispered thousands of times in the great hall.
“May Progress light the way to tomorrow.”
I was accustomed to hearing dozens of voices at once, the response repeated so often that the words had lost their meaning.
Julian’s quiet voice made it sound like a warning.
Excusing myself with a hitch in my breath, I clumsily cleaned the spilled water and gathered the remnants of our picked-at meal.
Julian looked as if he wanted to say something else, his lips pressed together tightly, his posture too stiff. He tried to help me tidy up, and I snapped, “Leave it.”
His chest rose and fell sharply, but he said nothing and let me make my way down to the kitchen to clean.
It was quick, familiar work. My hands were used to scrubbing.
My knuckles were used to bleeding. But I wasn’t used to being quiet in the dark, alone with my thoughts.
Dread settled heavily in my chest as I entered the cavernous conduction room.
The conduction chambers hulked on either side of me, as bulky as the huge train engine and smelling sweetly of clean grease.
They were utterly silent, but I imagined them trembling inside, waiting for the influx of radiance that would set their huge gears whirring and rumbling.
The conduction coils would glow, hot like sunlight and bright as fire.
Sinking to my knees on the cold stone, I began to cry.
I’d been punished countless times at the House of Industry, but I’d never imagined myself angering my first Senior enough to be sent to practice reflection.
It was a punishment reserved for great disappointment—for evidence that a Child of Industry might not appreciate their birthright, might not respect the authority of the House and the Elders.
Reflection meant looking within. Feeling the hum of radiance. Practicing gratitude for the opportunity to provide it to others. If I looked within, would I see my failures?
Would I see the curiosity that made me too quick to stray from the plain and simple rules everyone else followed without question? Would I see the anger that turned my radiance into a weapon?
Would I see the way Ezra’s touch set me aflame?
I closed my eyes, hiccuped with soft sobs, and felt desperately sorry for myself for a while.
I didn’t want Julian to be disappointed with me.
Not because he was my Senior, but because, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, I liked him.
He was strange underneath all his standoffishness, and strangeness was much more compelling to me than perfection.
I could tell by the way he swallowed back his smiles that he was hiding small joys, and I wanted to know what they were—and share mine in turn.
Surely that would not make either of us incapable of fulfilling our duties and destinies.
I couldn’t get to know him if he thought I was beyond rehabilitation and distanced himself from me. Or worse, sent me away entirely.
A louder sob caught in my throat as I recalled his threat to send me home.
I wiped my eyes and nose viciously and let out a few muttered curses.
My back ached, and the cold floor numbed my shins and feet, but my resolve to make a home here in Frostbrook only grew.
Perhaps here, in this wild place, I could find a way to tame myself.
When the Mission was finished, the people of Frostbrook would see that Progress could help them. Life would become easier. They’d have more time, more money, more people to trade with. I’d be part of that.
My tears dried and left itchy trails down my cheeks.
The story I’d always told myself about the future felt strangely hollow here in the dark now that I’d run out of personal failings to reflect on.
I considered Ainsley and her small home, her meager garden, her young ward.
I thought of the workers who slept in tents in the woods and would leave this place to build another Mission they would never see the glow of.
I thought of Ezra asking me to consider my role in the ruin of dead trees and dying people that I’d been trying to ignore.
If there was one thing I could do from now on, it was learn.
Ezra and Ainsley had both called me small-minded, though not in so many words, and they were both right. I only knew what I’d been told, and I’d never questioned how much was being kept from me.
Surely Julian would not fault me for opening my eyes to more than what we’d been taught at the House of Industry. He seemed to love learning.
“I don’t want to be a fool,” I whispered to the unfeeling machines around me.
The long night stretched on, and as the full moon crossed the sky, pale beams shone from the thin, high windows far above. I reached for the watery light, letting it play across my palm while a gossamer thread of pale blue radiance stretched from fingertip to fingertip.
I wanted to believe that it was beautiful, but for the first time in my life, I doubted something other than myself.