“I feel grand, Bessie. In fact, I am reborn. Look!” She puts her hands to Bessie’s neck, and a beautiful cameo with a velvet ribbon looped through it hangs there suddenly.
“I don’t believe it!” Bessie shouts.
“Yes, I have magic,” Pippa says, glancing in my direction. “Gemma gave it to me. All the power of the realms rests with her now.”
Felicity actually kisses my cheek. “I knew you’d do right by her,” she whispers.
The girls have a million questions: Where is the magic from? How does it work? What can it do?
“I wish I knew more about it myself,” I say, shaking my head. “Sometimes it’s very powerful indeed. Other times, I can scarcely feel it. It doesn’t seem to last long.”
“Can you give it to us?” Mae asks, eyes bright, as if I can change their lot.
“I…I’d rather…,” I stammer. I don’t want to give too much of it away, I find. What if my power should diminish? What if it meant I couldn’t help us in our own world? The factory fire girls’ eyes are on me.
Bessie Timmons snorts. “No, course she don’t wanna share it wif the likes of us.”
“That isn’t true,” I say, but in my heart, I know she’s not entirely wrong. Why shouldn’t they have magic too? Is it only because they worked in a factory? Because they speak with an accent different from my own?
“We’re not ladies, like them, Bessie,” little Wendy offers meekly. “We shouldn’t expect it.”
“Yes, we can’t all expect it,” Felicity adds as if speaking to a servant.
Pippa leaps up from the weed-choked floor. “I will gift you, Mae. Here, hold out your hands.”
“Don’t feel nuffin’,” Mae says after a moment, and I’m glad that they cannot feel my relief. I like being the one who holds the magic.
Disappointment shows on Pip’s face. “Well, it’s only just come to me. If I could, my darling, I would gift you with it.”
“I know you would, Miss Pip,” Mae says, downhearted, and new shame takes me. Looking at the girls’ terrible burns and sorry state, how can I possibly be so callous as to deny them a bit of happiness?
“Right. Let’s have a jolly time now we’re here, shall we?” I say, and I join hands with every one of them but Wendy, who insists she doesn’t want to play. Soon we’re all brimming with a shining power and even the walls cannot contain our jubilant cries. They creak and groan as the vines tighten their hold.
Felicity and Ann show the factory girls how to turn their ragged skirts into sumptuous silks with beads and embroidery like those from the finest shops in Paris.
Everyone is merry except for Wendy. She sits in a corner, hugging her knees to her chest.
I take a seat beside her on the cold, weedy floor. “What is the matter, Wendy?”
“I’m afraid,” she says, holding tightly to her legs.
“Of what?”
“Of wantin’ it too much, miss.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “You said it don’t last forever. But what if, once I go’ a taste of it…” A tear slips down her dirty cheek. “What if I can’t go back to how it was?”
“A teacher of mine once said that we can’t go back; we can only move forward,” I say, parroting Miss Moore’s words. Back when she was Miss Moore in my mind and not Circe. “You don’t have to do it.”
She nods. “Maybe I could ’ave just a little? Not too much?”
I give her only a little, and when I feel her pulling away, I stop.
“So, Wendy, what will it be first—a ball gown? Ruby earbobs? A prince?” I swallow hard and touch my fingers to her useless eyes. “Or…I might…”
She nods. “Yes, miss, if you please.”
I cover her eyes and will the magic to its purpose. “Did it…,” I begin.
Wendy’s mouth settles into a thin line. “Sorry, miss.”
“You can’t see?”
She shakes her head. “It was too much to hope for.”
“Nothing’s ever too much to hope for,” I say, but my heart is heavy. It is the first limit to the magic: It cannot heal, it would seem. “Is there something else? Anything at all?”
“I’ll show you,” she says, taking my hands. Feeling her way, she leads me outside and around the castle to a small patch of grass bitten with frost. She kneels, pressing her palms to it. A perfect white rose snakes from the ground. Its petals are edged with a deep blood red.