Amalia knocked on Mary's door, waiting with her hands in her skirt pockets as she heard footsteps within the room. The lock clicked and Mary appeared, offering a pleasant smile, but it quickly faded when she caught sight of the scratches and bruises lining Amalia's face.
"Nothing to worry about, you'll get used to it," Amalia stated, matter-of-factly. "A little swelling fills out my face quite nicely."
"But how did you get-"
"And don't ever ask me how I got them." Changing the subject, Amalia smiled brightly at her. "Do you fancy a walk?"
Mary had the uncertain look of someone not sure whether she was being asked or told, and she nodded, grabbing her coat and following Amalia down the stairs.
Walking through the yard, Amalia tossed a sideways glance at the workshop, noting the usual lights and an errant, concerning spark through the windows. Penance was no doubt making up for lost hours, reclaiming the time that she used to devote squarely to her work. Amalia had awoken in the girls' room that morning and padded silently back to her own bed, all but ambushing Penance beneath the sheets and keeping them past the alarms that signaled the start of their Monday routine. It had been worth the late start.
Once outside the orphanage gates, Mary's gentle ease dissipated, her limbs stiff with apprehension and her eyes darting from corners to open doors to closed carriages. Amalia wondered if even Lucy had managed to get her off the grounds, or whether their excursion to Lavinia's estate had been Mary's only time leaving the orphanage since her arrival.
Amalia pointed at two men standing at opposite ends of the lane, hoping to allay her fear as best she could. "Ms. Bidlow arranged for extra security near the grounds." With the confidence of an amateur boxer, she continued, "And if all else fails, then I don't mind a few extra bruises."
Amalia was pleased to see a hint of a small smile appear on Mary's face as they turned a corner, dodging a young newspaper boy. "Fear is quite powerful," Amalia stated. "But so is fresh air."
"I can feel it everywhere," Mary said, quickening her pace to catch up with Amalia, despite the fact that her legs were longer. "The fear, I mean. Like it's riding the wind, brushing against the entire city."
"Trauma isn't overcome in a day," Amalia recited. "Give yourself time."
Mary looked at Amalia, guilt in her eyes. "I feel my song on the tip of my tongue, wanting to calm myself, but I push it down. Sometimes I wonder whether summoning it will put people more at risk. I saw how Maladie reacted. It touched her, but it didn't help her in the end."
"Hope is not always the easiest thing to grasp," Amalia agreed. "Like trying to pluck vapor out of the air. Anger and fear are much easier to hold." She glanced at Mary. "When you sing, do you understand the words?"
Mary shook her head. "No, to be honest I feel a bit like Myrtle. It just comes through me, I can feel the words, but I can't understand them. There's so much I don't understand."
"So say we all," Amalia sighed.
Mary nodded, her hands clasped, her tall frame angled forward, as if searching for a path ahead. "Still, I want to summon the song it if it will be helpful to you all. To the girls. I just don't understand how you're so certain it is the right thing to do."
"I'm not at all certain it's the right thing to do," Amalia clarified, her chin high. "I am certain it's the only thing to do."
Her eye caught a glimpse of a shiny black mare waiting outside of a shop, ducking its head against the reigns that attached it to its carriage. "What a beauty," Amalia breathed, walking over to it and reaching out a hand, brushing her fingers along its mane, a ripple passing beneath her fingers: she rode a black colt, a patch of white stretching from its ear across its muzzle, and its muscles rippled beneath her legs, their power fusing together as if they were one animal racing toward a low, gray light. Amalia blinked, her hand snatching away from the mare as if had burned her.
"A ripple?" Mary asked, glancing at her. At the least, her time at the orphanage had made her quite comfortable with other turns.
Amalia blinked again, trying to shake the vision from her mind, but now that it had appeared, it was as if it was as familiar as her own reflection. She hadn't been pulled toward to a future that had yet to play out, rather it was as if she had peeked underneath a veil and seen something long hidden. "No," she said lowly. "A memory." She looked up, meeting Mary's inquiring eyes. "I love horses," she declared slowly, a revelation more to herself than to Mary, who smiled in agreement.
"They're lovely," she said, her hand running along the horse's muzzle. "You used to ride them?"
"I imagine so," Amalia said, turning and resuming her determined pace through the bustling crowd, preferring to shake off the uncertainty of the memory with equal uncertainty of the future. "I met Lord Swann again at church yesterday. He mentioned that you worked for him?"
Mary shook away a sigh of irritation. "I wouldn't call it that. I sang at his club a few times. It was good money and it was the only job I was getting where I could actually sing." She pursed her lips, contempt edging her voice. "Not that anyone was paying attention to me. I was wearing all of my clothes." She looked at Amalia with a defensive eye. "I didn't do anything intimate."
"I wasn't insinuating that you had, nor would I have had a problem with it," Amalia declared. "We all do what we must to get by, especially now. What sort of men frequented this club?"
"The Ferryman's Club," Mary clarified. "All sorts, really. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen."
"As I thought. Whoever is creating or distributing these masks for hire might be in need of an investor or two to fund the endeavor." Amalia treaded carefully with her next question. "You didn't mind working there?"
"Not really. I sang, it was a safe place, for what it was. Lord Swann seemed to understand that our well-being led to his own profit." Mary shrugged. "It wasn't terrible."
"Have you ever thought about performing there once more?"
Mary looked at her with an unsure eye. "Why?"
"Lord Swann mentioned it yesterday. At church," Amalia qualified, with a roll of her eyes. "Regular patron saint, he is." She eyed Mary. "Perhaps you could take along a certain woman in our stead who is very good at being intimate with people."
Mary let out a smile, catching on to Amalia's plan. "I thought Desiree doesn't remember anything she hears."
"She doesn't." Amalia's eye twinkled, as it tended to when she was plotting. "But Harriet does. And she can carry enough of a tune to harmonize with you." Amalia shrugged. "It's a thought." First, she'd want to understand Lord Swann's security arrangement, to ensure the girls' safety, but perhaps it would be wise to let him visit Mary soon. Or, she could always ask Mary for the location and go about getting information in her usual manner. But she doubted the gentlemen of the Ferryman's Club could put up a fight. She was so lost in thought that she missed Mary's question, turning to look at her with a blank stare. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"
"I asked about your family," Mary repeated. "I've heard the girls' stories, and some of them really are quite heartbreaking. What is your story?"
Discussing the past wasn't a good use of time, in Amalia's opinion. She'd been asked again and again for her story by a parade of doctors at the asylum for nigh a year, and found the entirety of her mind disarranged in the process: non-linear memories tossed to and fro as if they'd been jostled about in an earthquake. Amalia glanced ahead of her, eyeing a florist stand on the opposite side of the lane. She moved to cross, dodging carriages, and Mary followed her. "I had a mother," she said over her shoulder, stepping onto the sidewalk. "A father." She continued toward the flower stand, but still felt Mary's unsatisfied gaze on her. "A doll."
Mary's expectant gaze faded into a slight frown as she realized that was all the exposition she was going to get, and Amalia stopped at the flower vendor and brought out a change purse. "Which of these do you like?" she asked Mary, pointing at the rows of color in front of them. "I've been told my taste in flowers lends itself toward the funereal."
Mary's face brightened, her eyes scanning the clusters of blossoms. "Oh, I love lilies," she breathed, pointing at a bunch. "They have so much life when they bloom, like they're reaching out with all their petals to embrace their short time in the world. I wish I was more like that." Her eyes turned to a smattering of blue and white hydrangeas. "And these are wonderful, all the buds coming together like the notes of a chord." She glanced at Amalia with the gentleness of someone who effortlessly bridged connections. "Like your orphanage."
Amalia watched as Mary kept gazing at the spread of flowers, her eyes finally free of fear. This colt of a woman, sweeping in both beauty and grace, had no idea the true extent of her talents nor worth, walking through life as if searching for her own value, and it struck Amalia that people were the poorest at conveying even the simplest acts of love toward one another.
Eyeing the florist, she swept her hand across the entirety of the front of the display. "We'll take all of these," she said.
He raised his eyebrows, surprised by his own sudden fortune and afraid it might disappear if he didn't jump on it. "You can carry all of these, Miss?"
"We'll manage." Amalia glanced at Mary, wondering exactly how the two might manage, but at the least they didn't have to walk very far. "Now I know why Lucy always brings Lila along with her on errands."
Mary gave her a questioning glance, then nodded. "Floating would be more of a helpful turn right about now."
As the vendor prepared their flowers, tying them in tight bunches, Amalia let her eye wander to the newspaper stand next to her. All of them competed with cataclysmic headlines, as if seeing which could herald the end of the world with the most conviction. The byline of a local opinion paper caught her attention, an article by one Peter Adair, Professor of Physics, visible above its top fold. Amalia picked up the paper and skimmed the article, the cheeriness of the morning suddenly coming to a slow, dreadful halt. "Oh no," she muttered.
"What?" Mary asked, already on alert, looking over her shoulder.
Amalia angled the paper toward her. "This is Miss Adair's brother," she said, pointing to the name. "As you can see, he is no fan of the Touched. Up until now, at least, he's kept his animosity to himself. Or, rather, kept it to his immediate family."
Mary frowned, and Amalia waited until the newsman was occupied with a customer before grabbing the stack of papers and depositing them in the nearest rubbish bin. She turned, catching the eyes of a boy in a newsboy cap, and ran a finger across her neck, daring him to squeal on her. He turned, frightened, and ran. Returning to her post at the florist, Amalia tapped her foot impatiently, knowing that as much as Harriet read, and as much as she scattered her wares around the house, Penance wouldn't be able to avoid the article for long.
"You almost done, then?" she asked him, and he turned an irritable eye on her.
"What, you got some place to be?" he jabbed. "A job or something?" He chuckled, taking his time.
Amalia's lip turned. "As a matter of fact-"
"Mrs. True, what are your plans with the recording?" Mary asked, interrupting, and Amalia looked at her, impressed at her ability to cut in at an appropriate moment. She'd clearly been spending time with Penance.
"Herald it throughout the streets," she said simply. "And open the gates."
The vendor turned to her, his arms full, and Amalia accepted the flowers hurriedly, taking as many as she could and leaving the rest to Mary. They made their way back to the orphanage at a speedy clip, their hands full and noses buried in blooms, the two of them making for awfully delightful bearers of bad news.
Inside the dining room, the girls were cleaning up from breakfast, and dishes floated through the air, which meant Lucy was most likely in another part of the house. Fortunately, Penance was nowhere to be found, hopefully still holed up in her workshop and blissfully ignorant of the morning papers and her brother's misinformed tirade against the Touched.
"Where's Harriet?" Amalia asked.
"Memorizing the news in the library, where else," Primrose replied, coming up behind her. "In ten minutes, she'll be worse than a radio program." Her eyes turned dreamy. "I wish she had a knob so that I could turn her down."
"You're in a mood, Prim," Lucy said, coming into the room from the main hall. "You sound like Mrs. True." She snatched a knife that was floating from the table and turned a stern eye to Lila. "We've talked about the knives," she chastised.
Primrose caught sight of the flowers in Amalia's and Mary's hands, her face brightening as if the sun shone directly on it. "What lovely flowers!" she breathed.
Amalia tossed them carelessly on the dining table, spitting a stray leaf from her lip, and Primrose quickly caught several tulips before they slid to the floor. "Do you mind taking them to Miss Adair's workshop?" Amalia asked, motioning for Mary to lay hers down as well. Then she was off to the study, her shoes clapping along at a hurried pace, and she was relieved to see Harriet curled up in a chair, her long dark hair falling over her daily reading material.
"Harriet, do you have today's Daily Opinion?" Amalia questioned, stepping over to her and rifling through the stack of papers. "I need it now."
"Why?" Harriet asked, looking up at her.
Amalia continued to fish for it, head down, impatient. "Just help me find it."
"What's in it?" Penance asked, and Amalia whipped around, catching her sitting at a bookshelf behind the door, like a scientific sprite tucked away in a corner.
"Um. Well." Amalia cleared her throat, agitated by a mess of her own making that she would not have had to deal with had she been more aware of her surroundings. Penance was staring curiously up at her, and Amalia hated to puncture the peacefulness of her morning. Still, she answered honestly. "Peter has an article in today's paper. It's not grand."
The news took a few seconds to register, and then Penance's face fell, like someone had tugged the corners of her mouth down with a string. She walked over to the stack of papers that Amalia held and fished through them until she came to the article. Reading it silently, she turned to the wall, her sinking shoulders the only sign of the article's effect. When she turned, her face was red, her throat tight with the effort of keeping her tears at bay. She swallowed. "I'm going to borrow this for a bit," she said thinly to Harriet, who nodded sympathetically at her. Penance nodded, too, as if convincing herself she could make it the few steps to the door, and she walked stiffly out, picking up her pace as she ran up the stairs. Amalia heard the sound of her door slam.
Left to just themselves, Amalia and Harriet stared at one another. Harriet had been a kindred spirt to Penance over the years at the orphanage, and Amalia pinned her with an expectant gaze, motioning to the path Penance had just made up to her room. "Do you want to talk to her?"
"Don't you think you should talk to her?"
"I'm more suited to bashing Peter's temples together and tying the folds of his brain into a nice, pretty bow," Amalia countered, ignoring Harriet's grimace. Her fingers brushed against one another. "What a fucking incorrigible excuse for a human, to make his only sister feel like that-" she motioned to the stairs "-to put her on blast in a fucking opinion rag. He's a coward." She pointed an aggressive finger, reiterating her point. "He's a fucking coward who doesn't have the talent in his whole body that Penance has in one eyelash. He'd be lucky if she spat in his eye, then maybe some of her brilliance might penetrate into his tiny, pea-brained skull." She stopped, inhaling, and spoke cautiously into the air. "Desiree?"
Harriet eyed her, getting to her feet. "Nope," she said plainly. "That was all you." She patted Amalia's arm. "I'm going to make Penance some tea. And then I'm going to distract her by helping her prepare for Mary's recording." As she stood, the papers scattered onto the floor, and Amalia prevented herself from asking her to pick them up before she left. "But you, Mrs. True, should go help her right now. When she's at her rawest." Harriet turned a helpful eye on her. "I'd suggest just getting her to talk about it. Maybe giving her some hope about it all. When all else fails, just sit there."
Harriet left her, and Amalia watched her go. "Sit there?" she repeated to herself, shaking her head. She made her way slowly up the staircase, knowing there was nothing in the world she liked less than a problem she couldn't solve. As she crested the stairs, she heard the sound of breaking glass come from Penance's room, and she winced. Penance wasn't the type to break things. At least not without a hypothesis behind it.
Amalia stood at the threshold to the room, which appeared as if it had been ransacked by literate raccoons. Books were strewn across the bed and the floor, some of them opened as if a ghost had rifled through them and found them dull. Dresses were draped across the wardrobe and washstand, as if they'd collapsed there after a long night in the workshop, and a rack held several clean petticoats that had yet to be returned to their rightful home. Amalia imagined if she opened Penance's wardrobe, she'd find it completely empty.
"I know you're upset," she began softly, "but throwing your things about your own room won't help. You're just going to have to clean all of it up and I can promise you that I will find an excuse not to help you."
Penance looked at her, confused. "It's just a little broken glass," she said, motioning to the dresser, where a framed photograph of her family, now cracked into several pieces, lay. "Nothing that can't easily be cleaned up. With my dirt siphoner."
Amalia eyed Penance and then the rest of the room, and then the broken frame, which she now understood as the only thing thus far that had actually found itself in the path of her discontent after reading the article. The rest was simply the natural order of Penance Adair.
Amalia covered her mouth with her fingers and hid a smile, which she thought would not go over well considering present circumstances, and stepped gingerly inside, still uncertain how to confront emotional discontent that had nothing to do with her. She cracked her neck, then stretched her fingers, her thumbs popping. She inhaled. "Penance, I know that article had to upset you. I'm angrier than a bull in a fucking bonnet about it. But I don't know enough about your relationship with your arsehole of a brother to know exactly what you're feeling, and I'm hoping that you can enlighten me so that I can give you whatever it is that will make you feel better."
This had an undesired effect, in that it made Penance stop in her tracks and turn to look at her with an accusing eye. "He's not an arsehole."
"He definitely is," Amalia emphasized, committing to her opinion. "Your brother is a prick."
"He wasn't always that way."
Amalia sat down on the bed. "Ah, here we go," she said, patting the spot next to her. "We're getting beneath the anger. You talk and I'll listen."
"Well, it's just that he taught me a lot," Penance started, sitting beside her. "My father was busy with his work, so Peter and I would sometimes go with him and figure stuff out on our own. Once he accidentally cut off the circulation in my pinky finger with telegraph wire." She held it up, and wiggled it slightly, too close to Amalia's face. "It's never really been the same." She sighed. "I know he had his own pressures, and once my father died he thought he was the man of the house. And he didn't think I belonged anywhere near University. He kept trying to pair me off and introduce me to society like a proper lady, and you can imagine how that went."
"The next time I need a moment of amusement, Miss Adair, I most certainly will imagine it."
Penance continued, on a roll. "We just butted heads like a couple of cats-"
Amalia cut in. "Cats don't butt heads."
"Yes, they do, it's pheromonal," Penance argued. "Can be gentle or hard, but it happens."
"I've never seen that."
"You're not a cat person." Penance reminded her. "You're not an animal person, even. Or a person person."
"Okay, back to your bloody brother," Amalia said, playfully hitting Penance's thigh. "I'm here to make you feel better, not to have you make me feel badly."
At the least, that got the smallest of smiles from Penance before she continued. "When my turn came, I could read his theorems and critique them in a matter of minutes, where it took him weeks to formulate them. I tried to hold it back, but it was hard and he could see right through me every time. It was almost worse, me placating to his ego."
"Fucking men. Sometimes you just want to scoop out their eyeballs with a soup spoon."
"Maybe not... that…" Penance replied, finding her place again in her story. "I applied to University without his knowing, but the scholarship letter came to the house and he discovered it." She looked sadly over at Amalia. "If only I had just kept better watch over the mailbox. I always think how it might have been different. What if I just slipped out. But he told the university about my turn and perhaps exaggerated some things, made me appear like a hysteric with electrical tendencies."
"My type," Amalia cut in again.
Penance eyed her. "Enough that they reneged the scholarship." Her anger returned, cheeks reddening, then heating her neck and the top of her chest. "But he's gone too far now. He can be angry with me, or envious, or whatever you want to call it, but why go after the all of us?"
"To ingrain himself with the conservative caucus," Amalia replied evenly. "Your brother may be an arsehole, but he can tell which way the wind is blowing."
"He didn't even write me to warn me he was going to publish this... trash." Penance swallowed. "I think about him so much," she said, her hurt like a thing she could hold in her hands. "I thought with everything getting so bad lately-" she wrung her fingers in her lap. "I thought I would hear from him. That he would write, just to see if I was okay, or even alive. I just expected something different." A shaky breath left her. "Wanted something different."
Amalia put a hand around Penance, pulling her closer until her head drooped onto her shoulder. "You deserve something different. I'm sorry he doesn't know that. But people make mistakes, and though they can't make up for them, they can overcome them. He may one day see the error of his ways and come back to you, begging for your forgiveness." She pressed a kiss against Penance's temple, her lips catching the tip of a curl.
"Did Harriet tell you to say that?"
Amalia felt Penance look up at her. "Not in so many words," she replied with a shrug. "I riffed a bit."
"It was good." Penance put a hand on her knee. "I feel ten percent better."
"Ten percent?" Amalia asked, disappointment.
"I'll feel better," Penance said softly. "I just need to put it out of my mind. I can't do anything to change him. It's not up to me to cure him from whatever it is that ails his soul. I don't have to prove to him that I'm worth his love." Her voice strengthened. "And I won't. I have my work, I have an amazing gift, I have the girls." She turned to Amalia with a raised, confident chin. "I have you." She nodded. "There. I feel much better."
Amalia watched as Penance stood, walking the few steps to her wardrobe and picking up the pieces of the broken frame. "Well, glad I could help," she said, breezily.
When Penance didn't respond, Amalia saw her shoulders shaking, her fingers clutching the photograph in her hand as if she was attempting to squeeze a pleasant memory from it. Amalia went to her, putting a hand on the small of her back.
"I lied," Penance said, her eyes red and her voice catching. "I don't feel better." Her chest heaved. "I feel very alone." Her voice was thick, as if her tears had drained into her throat. "Peter knows me, all of me, and I know him. I mean, he's my brother," she said, her voice cracking. "It's like a part of me, even though it's soured. But I can't get rid of it, he's like a hydrogen bond, you know?"
Amalia gave her a quizzical glance, but offered a nod nonetheless, wiping a tear from under Penance's eye. "Those hydrogen bonds, they are… really… quite... parasitic?"
Penance smiled, touching her cheek with a pitying glance. "No." Exhaling loudly, she tried again, in plainer language. "It's so much that he's willing to throw away, a whole history together, all because of something I can't control."
Her voice broke and Amalia wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close, letting her hand run over her curls, caress her neck, circle her back. "I'm sorry, love," she whispered, inhaling her, searching for the scent of faint embers always there. "You have life-saving work ahead of you today. Please don't let him get in your head. Your brain is too beautiful to allow him to worm his way inside of it."
"That's parasitic."
"Right." Amalia pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips. "You have a whole house, a whole family here, who loves you to pieces, no matter what. We can't make up for your brother, but it's a start."
"It's a start," Penance echoed into Amalia's neck, her arms gripping tighter, a last shaky sigh coming from her before her arms slackened. She wiped a fist across her eyes and let her fingers trace Amalia's collarbone. "Give me a few minutes and I'll be back at ninety percent."
"You're entitled to whatever percent you feel," Amalia said, kissing her and giving her another hug before taking her hand, a glint in her eye as she thought about the flowers she had bought. "I think I have something that may help take your mind off of Peter for awhile."
"Okay, but let's go to your room," Penance replied, taking her hand.
Amalia looked at her, eyes flashing with confusion, then with an irrepressible lust, and then with responsible disappointment. "No, I meant, I have something in your workshop that may help cheer you up," she clarified, in the most noncommittal voice she could muster.
"Oh," Penance said, nodding, a blush, this one not from anger, coming back to her pale cheeks. "Of course."
"Of course," Amalia repeated slowly, a question in her eyes as she looked at Penance. "Because you don't… have time."
"No, I have to get ready for the recording," Penance agreed, just as slowly. "And I'm sad."
"Right." Amalia angled her head at her. "I hate it when you're sad."
They shared another glance with one another, and then hastened across the hall, Amalia's door closing with a bang behind them.
A frenzied fifteen minutes later, Amalia led Penance across the yard and into her workshop, angling a prideful hand at the mound of flowers on the center table.
"Oh," Penance gushed, her voice trailing off uncertainly, taking in the blooms and blossoms littering her worktop, as if they'd been left there by a mad florist. "A pile of flowers." She gave an apprehensive smile, believing herself to be another victim of Amalia's horrid taste in floral arrangements. "This will get me back to one hundred percent, no doubt about it."
Amalia walked toward the flowers, undeterred, picking up a stray lily and pressing her nose into it. "I thought we could dress this place up a bit, make it look nice for Mary's song. I thought the girls might like it if we could make it special for them."
Penance's eyes shifted, glowing with a dawning excitement. "Are you having a nice thought, Mrs. True?"
Amalia demurred. "Well, they were so excited for us the night we went to the opera. And let's be honest, they would have been much better company than I was… they deserve a night at their own opera, don't they?" She caught Penance's knowing glance. "This is discipline through fun," Amalia insisted.
Penance beamed, and Amalia silently applauded herself as she realized she was back fully in the present, thoughts of her brother compartmentalized away for the time being. "I have to get ready," Penance said, pushing away clutter along a side workbench, taking in the entirety of her workshop with a directorial eye. "We can push it back to a matinee performance, that will give me time to tidy up and Harriet can help me put together a makeshift stage and the girls can pick out nice dresses and maybe Lucy can bake some biscuits…"
She poked her head out of the open door. "Harriet!" she yelled, cupping her hand over her mouth. "Primrose!"
"It doesn't have to be the equivalent of the London Opera House," Amalia reminded her.
"Hope not," Penance said, a smirk curling her lips as she looked back at her. "I know how much trouble you have keeping your dress on in public." She raised a finger. "Ah, speaking of which, I think I may have found something that will help me shore up your dresses with a coating to make them a bit more resistance to miscellaneous violence." She pointed to the electric eye that sat on the top of a workbench. "I think the secret ingredient is in here."
"Will it be that electric blue color?" Amalia asked curiously.
"Like you need anything to make you more conspicuous." Penance put a thoughtful finger to her mouth. "I could really use a whole one, you now. A whole mask. Then I could really do some testing." She glanced hopefully at Amalia.
"I'm not St. Nicholas," Amalia replied, but she duly noted the request in the back of her mind, already anticipating the challenge. "Penance, at the opera, when Mary sang, did you recognize the language?"
Penance thought for a moment, pausing mid-stride. "Honestly, I can't remember. The whole thing was cut so terribly short and all. I don't think so. I just remember I felt... fine." She paused. "Which perhaps was unhelpful because we were clearly in mortal danger." Continuing to a pile of wooden pallets in a corner, she looked over her shoulder. "Did you understand it?"
Amalia crossed her arms, thinking. "No, but it felt familiar. Like an old dialect or something, I can't put my finger on it." Wringing her hands, she shook her head. "I can't put my finger on a lot of things these days."
"Maybe it's divine," Penance brainstormed. "Maybe if you hear the full song, you can makesome of it out?" She placed her hands on her hips as she surveyed the space. "I think we can make a stage here." Pulling one of the pallets to the middle of the floor, she glanced curiously at Amalia. "Do you have your medical records from Strohman's?"
Pulling a petal off one of the daisies, Amalia stared at her. "The pace of your mind is exhausting."
"So you don't," Penance confirmed, unbothered by Amalia's attempt to dodge the question.
Amalia scratched her ear. "My husband had them, I assume, but they were lost in the fire." She gave the flower another unwitting pluck. "Along with him."
Her blank stare startled Penance. Even though she had grown used to Amalia's mundane descriptions of the more macabre parts of her life, it still surprised her how blandly she confronted tragedy. "You never wanted to see if by chance they still had them? Maybe they could enlighten you about the things you lost while you were there." Penance shrugged. "That may be easier than relying on a murderer to help you get your memory back, but what do I know."
"I didn't want to go back," Amalia clarified. "For anything." Again, she had the vacant look about her, and plucked another petal. "It's a dismal place."
Penance touched Amalia's arm, noting the agitation of her fingers, and safety removed the poor daisy from her grasp. "I'm sure that's an understatement." She squeezed Amalia's hand, searching beyond the glassy eyes for the version of her she was used to, wondering where she went in these moments that weren't quite ripples but that seemed to take her away nonetheless.
"Perhaps, you're right," Amalia sighed, movement in her eyes again. "Perhaps I should go-" She jerked with the force of a ripple as it pulled her forward and dumped her within pristine white walls. A nurse stared back at her with a pleasant smile, Strohman's etched in blue thread on her white coat. And then she was pulled away from it, her hand catching the table. "Hmm," she mumbled, glancing at Penance. "I've just had the most unhelpful ripple I've ever had. Doesn't it even count as a ripple if I've already decided?"
"You're not going today?" Penance pressed, disappointment welling up her chest and into her throat.
"Of course, I am," Amalia replied. "It's a good idea and you're right, I should have done it ages ago. I won't let fear delay me another day. I don't have that kind of time." She moved to press a kiss against Penance's lips, taking a liberty that Penance wholly enjoyed, but she put a hand to her chest, pushing her back.
"You've made it this long," Penance pointed out quietly, recognizing that dangerous urgency that ran through Amalia like an electric current, resigned to the fact that she didn't have the power to neutralize it. "Did your snippets, these pockets of memory, start up again after Maladie? Or after the song?"
Amalia looked at her blank confusion. "I don't know," she answered. "I don't know what set them off." She swallowed. "But we'll soon know, won't we? Another good reason for Mary to summon her song." She sighed shakily, attempting a smile "In the meantime, I'll take a visit down memory lane."
"I'll come with you," Penance offered, taking her hand. This wasn't the type of excursion that called for physical backup, and certainly not any that Penance could provide, but it could call for emotional support, and that she could do.
Amalia gave her hand a squeeze, but shook her head, pulling her in for a successful kiss this time. "You get ready for our opera, maestro. I'll be fine."
Amalia was not fine. Sprawled in the back of the carriage, her head swimming with five too many drinks, she let her eyes roll toward the dark, cloth-covered ceiling, which gave her a welcome reprieve from the city bustle whizzing by outside the window. "This place is so bloody LOUD!" Amalia yelled to no one in particular, slamming her fist into the empty seat beside her.
Her visit to the asylum would have most likely sent her to the pub had it gone the way she expected, but it had not, and she had left with more questions than she had when she arrived. That had frustrated her, which made her angry, which made her spend a short amount of time in a nearby pub consuming a rather disproportionate share of scotch. And the scotch had made her come to the conclusion that she needed to pay an impromptu visit to the Lavinia Bidlow.
"It's not just the scotch," Amalia mumbled, aware and unconcerned that she was now arguing with herself, and letting her mind drift to the unpleasant visit she'd had at Strohman's.
Anxiety had taken over on her way to the asylum, her fingers twitching, inexplicable ripplings pulling at her, and she hadn't even peered up at the building until she stepped out of the carriage, finally taking a look around at a place that she had never actually seen from the front. The grounds of Strohman's were a manicured green, complemented with spurts of colorful flowers that lined the front walk and the paths around the garden. That part of the journey had been easy, at least, because as a committed resident, Amalia had never laid eyes on the beautified places meant only for visitors, as if to ensure them that the loved ones they'd abandoned were in a serene but disciplined place.
The front hall was wide and grand, opening into a parlor of sorts with empty chairs and a lit fireplace, exuding charm and warmth that didn't stretch beyond the double doors leading to the wards. A Victrola kept low music coursing throughout the hall, an investment meant less for entertainment than for covering up the sounds of residents.
Amalia had walked towards the front desk, its counter almost as high as her chest, attempting to hold her chin in its rightful, confident poise. But her heart was beating too fast. The nurse turned a warm eye to her, which began to cool as she assessed the bruises and scratches on her face, and iced completely once Amalia told why she was there.
"Do you have identification?" the nurse asked, her lips pursing into a wrinkled bow.
"Yes, but that may not help," Amalia replied, her voice brittle. "My husband admitted me under a false name, but I do have his death certificate, should that help." When the nurse simply stared, she continued. "I was admitted under the name Molly Ash."
The nurse stiffened, as if someone had pressed some internal alarm inside her, closing her off. "I'm sorry, Ms. Ash, but we no longer have your records."
Amalia placed both hands on the desk in front of her, as if to push her way through it. "Why not?" she asked, attempting to keep her voice level. "Were they destroyed?"
Shifting uncomfortably, the nurse flitted a look at the security detail posted nearby. "No, Ms. Ash."
"That's not my name," Amalia said, her voice thick, as she clarified, "They weren't destroyed, but you no longer have them here?"
"Correct."
Amalia waited for a beat, impatience striking in her throat like a fist, and her voice came out mottled. "Did you give them to the police?" She heard the paranoia in her voice, saw herself from the nurse's view, and didn't like it. She paused, breathing in and out, her fingers clasping harder along the edge of the desk. Righting her tone back to its usual aplomb, she continued. "A detective with the look of an intoxicated Sherlock Holmes, perhaps?"
"No," the woman said, her expression morphing into one more sympathetic, and she almost looked as if she wanted to touch Amalia's hand. "Your custodian said this might happen. That you'd be upset and confused."
"My what?" Amalia stared back at her, baffled. "What the bloody hell are you talking about?" she asked, baffled. "I am a grown woman, I'm my own bloody custodian." She felt as if the room were tipping inwards on her and began to guide her attention to the bangs that swept across the nurse's forehead and underneath her nurse's cap.
"Ms. Ash-"
"That is not my name," Amalia repeated, slamming an irritated hand on the desk. "My name is Amalia True, I am my own legal guardian, and I run an orphanage."
The nurse gave her an appeasing smile. "Yes, and it appears that allowing you to continue with your therapy in a community setting has been very helpful. It's nice to see you people find a place outside of here. It so rarely happens."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Amalia breathed at her.
The nurse's eyes went blank, her manner suddenly stiff, as if she'd put a no vacancy sign on her forehead. "I'm afraid I don't have any information that I can share," she stated. "Your custodian is the one to answer your questions now." When Amalia didn't respond, the nurse gave her a questioning look. "Is there anything else I can help you with today, Ms. Ash?"
Amalia looked past her to the double doors that marked the entrance to the wards. She recalled the large rooms that held dozens of women at a time, those that weren't deemed dangerous enough to warrant their own isolation in a separate ward. "How many Touched girls are right through that corridor, here only because of their turns?"
"Ms. Ash, I'm going to ask you to leave."
"How many of them are actually dangerous?" Amalia pressed. "How many of them have your doctors ruined?"
Picking up a pen, the nurse turned a bored eye on her, as if used to vitriol from those she didn't need to bother over. "I suggest you leave now and speak to your custodian."
"And who might that be?" Amalia asked sweetly, clasping her hands politely atop the desk and pasting a smile onto her face, the place making her feel as if she were losing her mind all over again.
"I'm not at liberty to share any information with you at the direction of your custodian."
Amalia clenched her teeth, but it was a futile effort at keeping her anger inside, because she leaned over the counter, stretching an arm across it. "I'll gladly give you some direction-"
And then a hand was on her wrist, the security guard spinning her away from the front desk. Amalia jerked away from him, shoving him hard, and walked quickly toward out the door, only stopping when she flung herself inside the carriage and realized the low-grade, frustrated growl echoing in her ears was coming from her own throat. She pounced the button to get the carriage moving, desperately wishing that she had agreed to have Penance accompany her. But, she hadn't, and the only thing to do next was to drink herself into a stupor so that her utter confusion would dissipate into a more numbing nihilism.
Now, efficiently and effectively drunk, and at the very least proud of herself for that accomplishment, Amalia turned her head to look out of the carriage window. The noise of the streets dissipated as she turned onto the green lane that led to the Bidlow estate, made more expansive by her blurred and doubled vision. The scotch sloshed in her stomach, roiling only on itself with no food to soak it up, and Amalia made a mental note to ask Penance to stock the carriages with snacks in addition to the occasional parasol. Pressing her head against the window, she glanced at the estate looming in front of her. The sounds of the carriage had spoiled her arrival as it pulled up to the main house, and the maid was already at the door, the watching from the stoop as Amalia stumbled out into the driveway, righting herself with a hand against the box seat and grateful once again for her inanimate driver.
"Thank you, dear Chad," she said, patting the electric driver with her hand, sending it toppling sideways.
Amalia tottered up the stoop, stopping only when the maid continued to stare at her, blocking the door. "Mrs. True," she said primly. "Ms. Bidlow is indisposed at the moment."
"Splendid," Amalia gushed, pushing past her into the entry hall, weaving precariously close to a ceramic figurine perched on a side table. She waved a hand, presenting herself with a curtsy. "So am I."
Harriet hung a last flower from a hanging string that stretched from one side of the workshop to another and stepped back from the makeshift stage with a pleased smile. Penance leaned an elbow on her shoulder, taking it in with a satisfied sigh. "I think this looks beautiful, Harriet," she said.
Harriet nodded. "Yes, I think we really spruced this place up. You need some natural color here instead of just chrome and metal."
"I'm quite content with my elements, thank you." Penance bent to collect a few dropped petals and stems, scraping them into the bin.
"Tell me about the song," Harriet said. "I don't know what to expect."
Penance straightened, looking back at her. "I couldn't possibly relate it to you in words. And, by the way, I didn't get to hear it all in the first place, what with the terrifying turn the night took. But I've never felt anything like it." She pressed a hand against her chest. "It was like there were vibrations inside of me, like something in the song had connected directly to me, giving me a charge that let me see everything in a new light. The possibility in all of us, no fear, nothing to hold us back."
Harriet's eyes widened. "You're really building up my expectations here. You know what happens when you build up my expectations. Do you remember what happened with Felix?"
Penance laughed. "Poor Felix." Changing her tact, she said instead, "The song was absolutely dreadful. Really, worse thing I've ever heard, worse than Lucy singing a hymn in church."
Harriet gave a playful shudder and the two of them laughed. "Do you think it's prudent, to record it?" Harriet asked her. "I mean, if someone were to get their hands on it, that could be trouble. After all, someone wanted to get their hands on Mary."
Penance pushed a curl out of her eye. "Well, it's better than putting Mary at risk again. I'd rather harm come to a wax cylinder than to her."
"Were you afraid?" Harriet asked, a plethora of questions behind her wide eyes. "At the opera?"
"Yes," Penance answered, seeing no reason not to be honest with Harriet, who had always been her sounding board. "But, I was quite honestly less frightened of Maladie than I was of all of the others who sat and watched her. Because how they looked at her wasn't all that different than how they look at the rest of us. Amalia thinks I don't notice, but I see the fear in people's eyes when the look at us, when they talk to us and try to pretend that their mind isn't racing with fright and questions." She pulled a string and lowered their makeshift stage curtain. "But Mary's song gave me a place, a feeling that I was exactly who I should be and exactly where I should be. That's why I want the rest of you to hear it."
"Maybe we're not the ones who need to hear it," Harriet pointed out. "Maybe those who aren't Touched need it more than we do."
Penance smiled at her. "You have a point. But I say we take our joy where we can find it." She put an arm around Harriet's shoulder. "Come on, let's check on Lucy and her cakes. Mrs. True should be back soon."
Having turned Amalia over to a groundsman, eager to be rid of her, the maid scurried back into the house and allowed him to lead her across the side gardens to the small outpost that housed Lavinia's therapeutic pool. Amalia found her inside, treading steadily across the water, strikingly mobile in her aquatic territory. She paused, looking up at Amalia. "Your unannounced arrivals are becoming quite routine."
Amalia ignored Lavinia's accusing eyes, mostly because from where she was standing, it appeared as if she had four rather than the usual two. Instead, she focused on the water, which looked cool and placid, a place where she could sink pleasantly along with her thoughts. Dropping to her knees, she peered over the edge and lapped water onto her face with both hands.
"How did your recording go?" Lavinia asked, treading closer. A white swim cap covered her hair, goggles perched atop it, making her eyes even more striking than usual. "I would love to not hear it someday."
"I'm not here to talk about the song," Amalia said quietly. "I went to Strohman's today."
If Lavinia was caught off guard, she didn't show it, instead keeping her usual level stoicism. She let her eyes take in Amalia's disheveled blouse, the top button ripped open in a drunken effort to cool herself after the heat of the scotch got to her.
"Before or after you went to the pub?" When Amalia didn't answer, she continued. "As your benefactor, I do want to talk about the song, as it impacts the orphanage and your plans for expansion."
Lavinia's steeliness sent a coldness sluicing up Amalia's spine, where it prickled at the back of her neck, like ghostly fingers tapping to get her attention. Lavinia was more than her benefactor; she had the power to put her back into Strohman's at the stroke of a pen. And as such, Amalia would be wise to choose her battles. "It hasn't happened yet," she answered, still perched on her knees. "Penance is preparing now, and we're inviting the girls to hear it as well. I have no doubt it will work, although Penance is a bit nervous. Something about the consistency of wax and the rotational axis of a cylinder..." She waved a sloppy hand, as if Penance were sitting next to her. "The girl has no idea the power she holds. The day she does, we're all in trouble."
"And you plan on attending this Touched cabaret drunk, is that it?" Lavinia asked. Not receiving an answer, she motioned to Amalia's boots. "Take those boorish shoes off and put your feet in the water. Perhaps it will sober you up to your normal intoxication levels." Her reprimanding stare may as well have been a disciplined whack with a ruler. "For the girls' sake, alone," she pressed. "Unless you're playing the role of Dionysus in your little opera."
Amalia couldn't argue with a good idea, nor a bad one in her current state, and she untied her boots, pulling them off along with her stockings.
"Pull your skirts up, for heavens sake," Lavinia admonished, saving one side from dipping into the water. "You will be the death of me with your casual regard to fine fabrics."
Amalia slipped her feet into the cool water, and felt as if she could continue sliding to the bottom of the pool, where perhaps she could find the answers that she had tried to find at the asylum, or perhaps the more permanent answer she sought before her turn, when she had slipped into the harbor.
Sensing the pull of her thoughts, Lavinia broke the spell with a question. "I take it the expansion plans for the orphanage will allow you to host the Touched that hear your recording?" She rotated her arms in the water, causing ripples to permeate from her. "How are you planning on sharing it with them?"
Amalia looked down at her, wanting to tell her, to get Lavinia's blessing, anyone's blessing but her own, but was afraid to do so because of her lingering and now growing mistrust. "I don't know yet," she tried, but Lavinia only scoffed.
"Keep your secrets, then," she said, with a wave of her hand. "You'll come to me when you need help."
"I'm not the only one with secrets," Amalia said curtly, but Lavinia was unworried, seeming to know the question that was coming. "Why didn't you tell me I was released from the asylum under your custody? Why have me think all this time, with Charles dead, that I was out on my own cognizance?"
"It was none of your concern."
Amalia threw her hands up, fighting a scream and instead opting for a childish splash. "Are you the clinically insane one?" she asked, pointing an incredulous finger towards Lavinia, but her aim was a bit off and instead she found herself accusing a potted plan. "It is quite literally my concern."
"Oh, Amalia, let's be honest. Your concern was in getting as far as away from your husband as you possibly could. I wrote a paltry enough check for him and he handed over his custodial rights, glad to be rid of you." Her eyes softened, as if calibrating against the harshness of her words.
"You didn't hire me to run the orphanage," Amalia prompted quietly, her foot tapping in and out of the water. "It was just how you got me released."
"Is that a question? It seems to me like you've already worked out the answers." Lavinia sighed. "I worked on your release because you had started to turn heads. All of the conspiracies you were espousing began to make some of the doctors nervous. And people talk. Recall, we had no idea the extent to the Touched's abilities nor the size of the population truly impacted. And do you know who is also obsessed with conspiracies? Every member of Parliament, especially those bent towards conservation of principle and tradition."
Amalia listened, but the words made little sense. She recalled Sarah, she recalled images, but there were too many holes that comprised her confinement in the asylum, her time there a quilt long beset upon by hungry moths. "What conspiracies?" Amalia asked, feeling dangerously close to something that she couldn't articulate. Perhaps the fifth scotch had been too much.
Lavinia looked at her sadly. "All that talk of missions and emissaries. You were causing people to look on the Touched with a new eye. One based less on pity and more on fear. And with Augustus and his bloody birds-" she cut herself off and pinned a steely gaze on Amalia.
Amalia leaned into her, a joke floating up in her like a bubble. "Be honest, aren't you a wee bit glad you can explain away his avian fetish?" She pinched her fingers together, holding them up to Lavinia's nose. "A wee bit?"
Lavinia moved her fingers away with a firm hand. "I can handle you. And the Touched. The rest of London, however, seemingly can't. I got you released on the notion that the orphanage would provide innovative therapy, one based in a community setting. At the time, it was the best option, Amalia. You were in dire straits. I hired a doctor and here we are."
Amalia's gaze deadened, her insides feeling hollow. "Horatio."
Lavinia, to her credit, at least looked as if she knew what a blow this was, and looked cheerlessly up at her. "He turned out to be a friend, I may remind you. A godsend, if I do say so myself. He took a big chance working with us."
"He's not working for me," Amalia said. "You just said as much." Focusing on the feel of the water, rather than the sour feel of betrayal pulsing in her stomach, Amelia put her hands to her temples. "Let me see my records."
Lavinia pushed herself out of the pool with surprising force, her arms wiry and strong, sitting herself beside Amalia as she settled her legs. "My dear," she said, panting with exertion, looking over at Amalia. "I destroyed them."
Amalia couldn't meet Lavinia's eyes, afraid that her own would betray just how hurt she was, and how stupid she felt for trusting someone so much. Turning her head down, she saw her shimmering reflection against the water, all moving current, transparent, and hard to pin down as if she were staring at a second self. She imagined that reflection sinking, sinking, sinking. And then she had the distinct notion, like a tickling at the back of her mind, that she had seen herself sink before, on the day of her turn. "Why would you do that?" she whispered.
Lavinia was silent, and Amalia looked over at her with a shortness of breath that made her feel as if she'd just crested a mountain, rather than simply meeting her eyes. Lavinia peered at her as if seeing something she had long predicted. "You asked me to."
Amalia heard the words, but because they made no sense, she let out an animalistic moan of frustration, and if her stomach had been cooperating enough to let her stand, she would have begun to pace. But the water felt good on her legs, something to help ground her. "I can't abide these fucking riddles, Lavinia," she said, feeling like a foundation was crumbling beneath her. Her fingers twitched at her skirts. "If I were fucking insane, then why listen to me when I asked you to do something so bloody stupid?"
The blue eyes looking back at her had shifted back to their usual brightness, as if they had regenerated. "It wasn't stupid, it was defensive. Those records would make you public enemy number one if they got into the wrong hands. It was a protective measure. Not only for you, but for all of the Touched. It was the one good idea that came from all of your babbling."
"Tell me what they said."
"I didn't read them. I didn't want to read them. The less I knew, the dumber I could play when people asked me what I thought about the Touched and tried to parlay their own conspiracies onto me." She ripped her goggles off, and then her swim cap, her hair falling around her shoulders. "And you shouldn't want to read them, either. Might I remind you that the doctors who assessed you are the very ones that you call 'quacks'? Whatever notes they kept on you are most likely harmful and dangerous opinions."
"Why are you mixed up in all of this?" Amalia asked, feeling an inexplicable pity for her. "You take on all of this for Augustus' sake? You could have been the savior of the Touched without me. I don't buy your reasons."
Lavinia laughed at her. "That's right, you think everyone's motives fit neatly into two baskets: deplorable and evil." She let her laughter die out, her expression morphing to sadness startlingly fast. "And Mathilda," she said, tiredly. "That's my reason."
"Mathilda's dead." Amalia said it cruelly, and the side of her who loved Amalia felt badly about it. And yet still, she had said it. Sometimes she was angry, sometimes sad, sometimes numb, her emotions like a ball pinging back and forth on a squash court.
Lavinia nodded. "Yes." She looked at Amalia with a raw sadness. "She was like a daughter to me. Her suicide destroyed me. I knew you loved her. That you saw the whole of her as she was meant to be, that she hid from the rest of us because she was scared. And she had a right to be frightened." Lavinia swallowed, taking a moment to level her voice. "That's why I came to visit you. You knew and loved the part of her that everyone else hated and I wanted to know that part of her, too. But they were slowly frying her memory out of you, and I didn't want that to happen. She at the very least deserved the person who loved her to remember her."
Amalia put her head on her hands, pressing tears back into her eyes. She remembered Mathilda: her lopsided smile, one side of her lip curling higher than the other; her love of ice cream and daffodils; the way she dreadfully licked her finger before turning the page of a book. But Amalia knew there were so many other parts of her that had faded and were lost to her. The person she had been with Mathilda had faded, too, and sometimes she struggled to recapture the joyful spirit she'd once had.
As if reading her thoughts, Lavinia let out a scornful laugh. "I would visit you at Strohman's to talk of Mathilda and you would rail on about your mission, like you were some sort of discipled soldier of bloody Christ himself. They'd turned you into an entirely different person."
Her head still bowed, Amalia listened as if she were merely a rag doll, which by all intents and purposes, she was, considering how little memory she had of the things Lavinia was saying. But there was something she was sure of: "I do have a mission," she stated.
Lavinia laughed again. "Mission. Grand design, what grand design do you see, Amalia?" Her eyes were pin pricks. "Life is chaos, some of us get lucky and some of us don't. There is no grand purpose. You just meet the mission that finds you, whatever you can grasp in the short time you're here. So whatever rubbish Maladie is spewing into your brain since her release, it would behoove you to distance yourself from it. We already went through this before at Strohman's."
"What?" Amalia asked. "What do you mean?"
"She was the bargaining chip." Lavinia glanced at Amalia. "Her glow, her turn. It was poisoning your mind almost as much as their electric shocks. You wanted to be free of her."
"And I agreed to this?" Amalia recalled the comfort she found in Sarah, at least at the beginning. "She was my friend."
"Amalia…" Lavinia looked at her as if she were only half a person, wondering where the other half had gone. "It was your idea."
Amalia slipped her head back into her hands, letting it throb. Her voice was muffled through her fists. "Did you destroy Sarah's records, too?"
"No, I attempted to use some connections, but her records disappeared when she broke out of the asylum. When she became Maladie."
Amalia was so close and she felt it all slipping away, her entire body hollow, expectation and hope draining away and leaving a vacuum inside her. And then she felt it all come up again, and she jerked her legs out of the water, leaving wet footprints on the tile as she scurried over to a potted fern and heaved scotch, bile, and frustration into its soil. When she was finished, she was depleted, and slouched against the pot, looking over at Lavinia, who simply sighed, her expression returning to its usual icy confidence.
She leaned over for her robe and rang a small bell, its dainty chime summoning the groundsman, who helped her into her chair while Amalia watched. Once settled, she came closer to Amalia, reaching a hand out to her. "Let's get you to the water closet," she said softly, sympathy set deeply in her eyes. "You have a show to catch, Dionysus."