Page 9 of A Slipper in the Smoke
“I’m not… I can’t…” Elena buckled. “I’m not one of you.”
Snowdrop backed off, slumping against the wall and slowly sliding back down again. The bots circled around her, crawling into her lap. One of the bird-like ones perched on her shoulder, nipping at her cheek with something like affection. They were remarkable creatures. Elena wanted to take them apart and explore their mechanisms. The thought calmed her, the soft ticking of their limbs like a heartbeat.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Snowdrop said, stroking the long jointed tail of the cat-like automaton. “I just… I don’t know. I wanted to say I trust you.”
“You want me to spy on the palace.”
“You’re sharp.”
“I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity if I were you,” Elena said under her breath. She ducked down to pick up the loose coils. “I understand that you’re desperate,” she continued. “That you’ll do anything to achieve your dream. But I have dreams too, and I can’t risk anything that would get in the way of them.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Snowdrop bow her head. “I get that,” she said, voice muggy. “And what are they? Your dreams?”
“Home,” Elena whispered. “Back to Navarra. I don’t care how long it takes. I’m going home.”
Snowdrop said nothing to this, and a few minutes passed by silently. “Can I sleep here?” she asked eventually. “There’s another place I could go, but I’m tired, and my leg’s hurting something fierce.”
“Sure,” said Elena. “I don’t have anything—”
“Don’t need anything,” Snowdrop said promptly. “Thanks, ‘Lena.”
It was probably just the exhaustion, but the way she said her name so casually reminded her of how long it had been since she heard it. When was the last time someone had called her by her name, let alone any sort of nickname? She’d had friends in Navarra, friends who called her that, but her childhood was a ghost to her.
Elena. Lena. That was me, once.
She chanced a look at the rusty cylinder where she kept her coin.
And one day, that will be me again.
The repair did not take as long as Elena initially feared, and within a couple of hours she was on her way back to the Baroness’ apartment. Snowdrop was fast asleep on the filthy floor, with nothing but her bag for a pillow and her cloak for a blanket. Elena left her a morsel of the food Ivanka had bought, just in case she was hungry when she woke.
Too exhausted to think much about the night’s events, or the job Ivanka had lined up for her, she fell into her bed the second she returned, and sunk into a complete slumber.
She rose mid-morning, thin, watery light lying in bars across her bed, drifting from the high, narrow window above. Her room was a former pantry or utility, a space for extra things, rickety machines, brooms and mops. Her stepmother had “refurbished” Elena’s old room and suggested she move into the cupboard while repairs were underway, but instead had created a new parlour. She’d insisted that Elena would be happier there, that she’d find it easier when she came in late, not having to drag dirt all over the rest of the place. The message, however, was clear, and it had not gone over her head.
You are not one of us. You are a tool. I will treat you as such.
To begin with, Elena had wondered why her stepmother seemed to hate her so, if it was misplaced resentment at her father, some twisted form of grief, or whether or not she truly did see her as another burden she was forced to contend with. She had since given up wondering, shelving all that despair and funnelling it into her work. It did no good to dwell on why others didn’t like you.
“That’s more their problem than yours,”her mother told her once, when she’d complained some girls at school had taken to teasing her over the grease stains on her clothes.“Not everyone is going to like you. But some will. Some will adore you. Hold onto them tightly, and don’t worry about the rest.”
But now there was no one in the world who adored her. No one that even really liked her, although she supposed Mariah was kind to her the few times they were able to speak at all.
Maybe that was why Elena had let Snowdrop stay. She’d seen something of herself in the wounded girl and wanted to befriend her.
Silly. Foolish. Stupid.
“You are a good person, mija,”her mother had continued,“Kindness is forever undervalued. As long as you are kind, do not worry what others think of you. The right ones will find you.”
She’d been right, of course. She’d found good friends easily enough. Three of them. Clara, Jane, Maribel. They had been friends throughout school, praising her inventions, sticking up for her when others dared to comment, braiding each other’s hair for balls and parties. All three had come to the station to see her off on her journey, and cried beautifully.
They wrote to her every week, telling her of everything that was happening back home, of new festivals and friends, of things that made her homesick and laugh in the same breath.
Then when the money started running out, her stepmother said they didn’t have the funds for frivolous things like stamps. Her father, when he was alive, argued, and they came to the compromise of sending one letter per month. Elena poured her heart into that singular letter, writing half a book of her daily life, with sections for each friend. But when their fortunes worsened, she found she had less to say, and after her father passed…
Dear Clara, Maribel and Jane. Nothing ever changes here. I feel scooped out and hollowed, like my father took half of me with him to the grave. I am a ghost inside a sack of meat, and nothing more. I am becoming clockwork, and there is no one to wind me up.
She would not have written even if her stepmother had told her she could. They wrote back, of course. For months, a year, even. But finally, the letters had stopped.
