Chapter Eleven: And The Edges Blur

Molly stared out the window. It was getting dark outside; the end of her first day at the Laboratories, over so soon. She'd expected it to be a longer day, but it seemed to have passed in only a moment.

Mr. Swift had woken her up at what seemed like the very crack of dawn, and she had dressed quickly in the darkness before dawn -- Mr. Swift had helped her with her corset, and she had remembered to thank him. Then they had left the house, clattering through the nearly-empty streets in Mr. Swift's own carriage. She supposed that he did this because he wanted to give her a fair send-off . . . after all, she wouldn't have a chance to see him again for eight years, and she might never see him again.

But the carriage pulled up not to the drive in the front of the Laboratories, but to what seemed a servants' entrance in the back, and Mr. Swift waved her goodbye as she got out of the carriage, carrying, now, only her little carpetbag and the clothes on her back. And, of course, she carried the weight of Mr. Swift's expectations of her, but she felt that burden begin to lighten now that she stood here alone out back of the Laboratories-- he wasn't here to watch her, was he? So it was like he expected nothing of her . . . how would he know, anyway?

She waited there, in the coldish early morning out behind the Laboratories, for what seemed like hours and hours. But she didn't have a watch, so she had no way of telling what time it had been when she arrived and what time it was when she wondered how long it had been since she arrived. Instead she listened as the city gradually pulled itself out of sleep. Carriages began to clatter to and fro on the streets -- she could hear them, faintly.

But she had been waiting for quite a while when someone finally came out of the door -- and what was more, the someone noticed her sitting there.

"Hullo?" said the stranger, approaching Molly with a light step. "Come on, get up off the ground."

Molly shook herself out of the mild doze she'd slipped into and stood up, clutching her carpetbag protectively.

"Come on, come inside," said the stranger impatiently, ushering her in through the door.

Once Molly had come inside the Laboratories proper, the stranger shut the door and offered her hand for Molly to shake. "The name's Worth," she said after Molly had shaken her hand. "I'll be your mum until we get you to your dormitory. What's your name?"

"Molly," Molly said, suddenly feeling unsettled and a little sick. "Molly Free."

Worth's expression brightened. "Oh, I remember you!" she said brightly as she led Molly down what seemed a characterless corridor, carpeted with wood-paneled walls. "You tested higher than anyone has in seventy years on the test!"

"Did I?" said Molly, cluelessly.

Worth looked at her, curious. "You didn't get your results back, did you?" she asked. Then she sighed and waved her hand. "Well, you don't need to know your exact score. Here you are. Good bye."

And with that, Worth was off, walking purposefully off down the hall. Molly screwed up her courage, opened the door, and stepped inside.

The room was almost empty. It was a fairly large room compared to what Molly was used to sleeping in -- perhaps sixteen feet long by eight feet wide -- and there were only two other girls in it, both fast asleep in the top and bottom bunks of a bunk bed.

Molly made her way to the bottom bunk of the unoccupied bunk bed and set her carpetbag down on the neatly made bed. She glanced about. Yes. She could get used to this place.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, tapping her heels together. She was bored. And she was tired.

So she lay down on the bed (after stashing her carpetbag underneath, of course -- Molly was a sensible girl for ten) on top of the sheets, and she fell asleep. It wasn't really sleep -- she drifted in and out of it -- but at least it was rest, and it felt good to be resting.

And then, at some point, she actually fell asleep. And she actually dreamed.

It was very confused after she woke up, but while she was asleep it made perfect sense:

She was outside again, wandering through the park. But it was getting dark outside, and she was looking for a house to go into to take shelter from the storm she knew was coming because the air smelled sharp and full of lightning, but all the doors she tried were locked so she settled for sitting down under a tree while she waited for maybe the storm to start and for maybe someone to find her.

Eventually, someone found her and let her come into his house where she drank tea as it began to rain; it was dark outside with the coal-colored clouds hugging low down to the earth, and the lightning slamming and pounding sheets of tin somewhere in the sky, and the rain bucketing down out of those dark, coal-colored clouds and smashing itself to bits on the windows.

She couldn't remember his face but he had a kind voice and he gave her tea so he couldn't be all bad could he, and besides he was only a little bit older than her, a man with long brown hair kind of like hers and nice eyes. She wasn't afraid of him.

And so she talked to him while the storm pounded on the windows and the roof of the house; she talked about tea and he told her that he liked tea too, and she talked about the country and he asked her to tell him more, and she talked about how different the city was from the country and he lamented how busy the bustling city was, how hard it was to remember what the country was like once you got into the city, how hard it was to remember what you had been like when you were living in the country. And she agreed with what he was talking about, because it felt like she was being watched over her shoulder by someone kind of like God who happened to be all powerful, but someone who didn't deserve to have that power, who shouldn't be able to behave like he was God because he wasn't, who shouldn't have as much power as he did.

And the man she was talking to laughed and said that the man she felt watching her wasn't a man at all, it was just the government and that they watched people all the time but that they had used to watch people a lot more than they did, so really she was pretty lucky to be alive when she was, and then she woke up, still feeling the cold air, the cold wet air from the rain, still hearing the rain pounding on the windows, having no key but still demanding to be let in.