Education #2
“Anyway,” Floretta continues blithely, not seeming to notice that Deborah has stopped brushing her hair, is standing frozen behind her.
“The winter women glow, sort of silver-gold. You were glowing just silver. I thought I was imagining it, and then you came closer, and I wasn’t imagining anything at all.
Why do you glow? Are you a winter woman? ”
“I am not a Seasonal Incarnate,” says Deborah, sounding choked.
“And I understand why your uncle wants you, if you can already see them. Most people can’t.
They fit into the places where the world bends, and they’re invisible unless you’re looking from the right direction.
Usually, the right direction has to be taught. ”
“It can’t need to be taught to everyone, or no one would have been able to learn so they could do the teaching,” says Floretta, reasonably enough. Her reflection blinks wide, guileless eyes at Deborah. “Who taught you to look?”
Deborah swallows, hard, her throat working in the mirror before she puts the brush down and steps away from Floretta. “No one had to teach me. People like me, we just have to … open our eyes.”
“People like you?”
“People who glow.”
“Oh,” says Floretta, and that seems to be the end of that. She slides from her seat, turning to face Deborah. “I’d like my breakfast now.”
Deborah nods and leads her from the room, then down the stairs to the kitchen.
They don’t talk, but she can feel Floretta’s eyes on the back of her neck, measuring and weighing her in a way she’s not entirely comfortable with.
There’s a sharpness to the child, one that reminds her of ice in winter, frozen ponds ready to swallow the unwary whole.
Floretta seems sweet and innocent, but appearances are all too frequently deceiving.
There’s no telling what this child will be, given a little time in her uncle’s company.
Deborah only hopes that she can help to guide Floretta down a kinder path than the one she fears awaits her.
She can only hope that both of them survive the guidance.
John has been in the parlor for some time.
On any ordinary day, he would have finished his breakfast and gone downstairs to begin his work for the day, not seeing the surface again until lunchtime, assuming he didn’t work straight through to dinner.
He does, sometimes. He’s a single man who has yet to go the Pygmalion route for finding himself a life’s companion, and while he may one day weaken sufficient to become a sculptor, that day is not yet here.
Instead, he’s sitting at the table waiting for his newly found niece to descend, his eggs getting cold and gummy and his coffee drunk down to the dregs, beginning to wonder whether he made a mistake in bringing her back here.
Her fear and confusion had been well apparent during their drive, her eyes darting to the windows like a trapped animal, like she thought she could wiggle free and escape.
And then she had been in his home, small and grubby and out of place in his parlor.
But Miss Cottingsly had seen what he saw when he sent the girl to see her in the kitchens.
He spoke to the housekeeper this morning, when she brought him his breakfast, and she confirmed his suppositions.
“Power, yes,” she said. “Such power as I’ve rarely seen in a grown alchemist, much less in a child.
She’ll be able to remake the world when she’s old enough to focus her will and understand what she’s asking it to do.
I don’t know where she could have come from, but there’s a touch of the otherworldly about her. I’m sure you noticed.”
“I did,” he lied. He hadn’t. He’d seen the power in her small frame, the potential to change the world, but not its possible origin.
He had assumed, foolishly it seems, that the power was passed down by her mother, that Elisabet had been a potential alchemist in her own right.
He never met the girl, after all. She could have been virtually anything and he would never have known.
“I’ll have her properly trained by summer’s end,” she said, confidently smug as only a woman who knew her power and position could be.
Miss Cottingsly is one of his proudest creations.
The mind of the women she had been before her deaths, the soul of a beast, proud and faithful and willing to die in the defense of what she considers her own.
She doesn’t remember what she was before she met him, what she could have been had she survived to live her petty human lives; he broke down and remade her in the image of his own needs, and she serves now, content with the only life she can imagine.
“See to it that you do,” he’d replied, and gone about his business comfortable in his belief that Floretta—something had to be done about that name; it couldn’t be allowed to stand longer than was absolutely necessary, would need to be replaced as soon as he understood her nature well enough to give her something better—was soon to be brought properly to heel.
Her power, whatever its source, would be bent under his hand, and the world would be all the better for it.
With time, he might come to understand what Miss Cottingsly meant by “a touch of the otherworldly.” It could be almost anything.
Perhaps she was inclined toward a season, and risked being called at their next coronation.
Perhaps she was tied to some lesser natural force.
Whatever the source of the strangeness his housekeeper perceived, he would claim it, tame it, and turn it toward useful ends.
Footsteps on the stairs snap him back into the present, and he looks toward the door, waiting for the moment when his great-niece appears.
She’s wearing a grubby dress little different from the one she had on yesterday, but her hair has been properly brushed and pinned back: there may be hope for her yet.
She looks nervous, verging on terrified, like she can’t imagine anything good will come of her sitting down to breakfast. He watches her in silence, still waiting.
She comes closer, almost tiptoeing, and stops some feet from the table to drop an unsteady curtsey.
He nods in response, a slight dip of his chin, acknowledging her manners.
A dog will never learn not to bite if it isn’t rewarded for its good behavior, and he would prefer a well-trained dog to a biting one. It’s only reasonable.
“Good morning, Uncle John,” she says, and he adds her backwoods accent to the list of things he’ll need to have changed about her.
Really, that priest did her no favors by instilling so many things in her that he’ll be forced to unmake and redo.
He’ll need to send someone to show the priest the error of his ways, as soon as he’s certain he’ll be keeping the girl.
(He’s already more than halfway sure. For all his flaws, he did love his niece, and he never gives up on something he’s decided he owns.
He owns her now. She’s staying with him.)
“Do you always sleep so late into the day?” he asks.
“No, sir,” she replies, with respectable politeness. “The bed was strange and very soft, and the journey yesterday was very tiring. I slept longer than I intended, and more deeply than I think I ever have before. I apologize for my tardiness.”
“How can you tell that you were tardy?”
“Your eggs, sir.”
He frowns, and she sees the question in that expression, because she continues:
“Their tops have hardened, and the whites are all cloudy and gunky-looking. That only happens when eggs have been sitting out for longer than they ought to be. And your coffee isn’t steaming.”
John blinks, glancing to his cup. “Perhaps I prefer my coffee cold.”
“Perhaps,” she says, in a tone that makes it clear she knows he doesn’t. She looks around and, finding no serving dishes, takes a seat in front of the other place setting.
John picks up a small bell from beside his own plate, ringing it lightly. Miss Cottingsly appears in the doorway as if by magic, carrying a covered tray which she moves to place in front of Floretta before turning to go.
“Miss Cottingsly,” says John.
She stops, turning back to face him. “Yes, sir?”
“I need fresh eggs and another cup of coffee. I’m afraid I was distracted, and allowed my breakfast to cool.”
She sniffs, but doesn’t comment on what that distraction could have been, only returns to the table and removes his plate. “Right away, sir.”
“Thank you, Miss Cottingsly.”
She bobs, then slips away, carrying his rejected breakfast with her.
Floretta watches this play out with enormous eyes.
She’s never seen anyone speak so dismissively to another adult, and she wouldn’t have imagined the terrifying Miss Cottingsly taking orders so unflinchingly.
She doesn’t move to uncover her tray, only remains still, like she’s afraid of being noticed.
“Well, eat,” says her uncle, in a tone he probably considers encouraging, but which really comes across more as an order.
She removes the cover from her tray, revealing eggs and toast and a slice of ham, pink as a sunrise and glistening with fat.
Her mouth starts to water at once, and it’s all she can do not to lunge for her silverware and begin shoveling food into her mouth.
“Eat,” repeats her uncle. Agonizingly slow, she picks up knife and fork and begins carefully cutting into her meal. Every cut is a stab at her hunger, a line drawn across the ravenous need to be fulfilled.