An Introduction 8 страница

Beatrice deduces from this that Miss Stone was previously unaware of Juniper’s little spectacle, that she has since become aware of it, and that she suffers from the mistaken belief that Juniper possesses a sense of prudence.

She further deduces that the next several minutes are going to be uncomfortable ones. She manages a faint “Oh, dear” before the bell chimes again and Juniper herself strides into the office with all the swagger and charm of a prize-fighter after a winning match, staff clacking merrily across the floorboards. Agnes comes slinking in after her, looking like a woman with deep misgivings about her choices.

The whispers wither and die. A dozen pairs of eyes land on Juniper. She gives them a beatific smile. “Morning, ladies. Bella! What are you doing here? ”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She grabs one of the spindly chairs by the window and perches on the very edge, knees wide and hands crossed atop her staff, still beaming.

The smile dims when she catches sight of the secretary and the swollen bruise along her jaw. “So you made it out alright. The others, too? ”

The girl nods, a furtive flash of pride in her eyes. “We think Electa’s got a busted rib, but she’ll be alright. ” It occurs to Beatrice to wonder how exactly they all escaped unscathed, and if perhaps the respectable members of the Women’s Association have a few words and ways they shouldn’t.

Guilt crosses Juniper’s face, a foreign expression, but she banishes it with a little shake of her head. “Well. I hope at least we can all agree. ”

Miss Stone—who has until now been standing perfectly still—clears her throat to ask, “On what, exactly? ”

Juniper apparently doesn’t hear the tension lurking in Miss Stone’s voice like an unsprung trap. She meets her eyes squarely. “That we aren’t going to get a damn thing by asking nice and minding our manners. That we need to make use of every weapon we have, or they’ll beat us bloody in the streets. ” Juniper leans forward, that swaggering smile returning. “That it’s time for the women’s movement to become the witches’ movement. ”

The silence following this statement is so profound that Beatrice imagines she can hear the veins pulsing in Miss Stone’s temples.

Juniper speaks into the quiet, heedless. “It was witching that saved me in the street yesterday, and it’s witching that will win us the vote. More than just the vote—back in the old days women were queens and scholars and generals! We could have all that back again. My sister—Bella, I mean; this is Agnes, our other sister”—a look of genuine horror crosses Miss Stone’s face as she contemplates the prospect of another Eastwood—“anyway, Bella has been doing some research about that tower we saw on the equinox. I think it’s…” Juniper’s eyes cross Bella’s, and Bella knows that Juniper has guessed what the tower is, what the sign of three circles must mean. “I think it’s important. That it might bring witching back to the world. ”

Juniper looks around at the stone-still women. “What do you say? ”

None of them answer. Miss Stone exhales a very long sigh into the silence and lowers herself into her chair. She leans back, regarding Juniper with an almost bewildered expression, as if she can’t understand how someone so young could be so powerfully irritating. “Miss West. The Women’s Association has no interest in your wild theories or dangerous ideas. ”

The smile slides off Juniper’s face like frosting off a too-hot cake. “Well, as a member of the Women’s Association, I think—”

Miss Stone produces a bitter ha of laughter. “Oh, you are certainly no longer that. ”

“Excuse me? ”

“I, as president of the Association, do officially expel you from our company, and deeply regret ever having granted you membership. ”

Juniper is standing now, fingers white around her staff. “How dare you—”

Miss Stone counts on her fingers, voice very cool. “You organized an illegal assembly against the will of the Association. You made a public demonstration of witchcraft. You endangered the lives of the six fools who followed you into your treason. Saints only know what else you did—the rumors are nearly too wild to believe. Perhaps you have a pair of black horns on your head. Perhaps you can fly. Perhaps you set a demon-snake on an innocent child. ” Beatrice flinches. No one notices.

“Look, you wanted to get people’s attention, and we got it. If you’re going to get upset that I defended myself, I don’t—”

Miss Stone raises her voice very slightly. “Miss Wiggin, the head of the Women’s Christian Union—and, I might add, the adopted daughter of a member of the City Council—was injured in the riot. She claims it was an act of witchcraft, and I am disgusted to say I am unsure whether she is lying. ”

Juniper’s mouth is open again, but Miss Stone ignores her. She leans forward over the desktop, hands knitted. “I have dedicated the better part of my life to the uplift of women. I was there at Seneca, at the very beginning. ” Her fury seems to have blown itself out like a summer storm, leaving her winded and tired. “They laughed at us. Derided us, mocked us, printed vicious cartoons in every paper. We kept working. We built organizations all over the country, saw suffrage laws passed in three states, brought attention to the plight of our sex—but now they are no longer laughing, Miss West. Now—thanks to you and your accomplices—they are afraid. And we could lose everything. ”

Juniper strides forward and places her palms on the desk, wearing a look of such blazing intensity that Beatrice feels it scorch her cheeks as it passes. “Or we could win it all. If we stop worrying so much about what a woman should and shouldn’t do, what’s respectable and what’s not. If we stand and fight, all of us together. Imagine if there’d been seventy of us marching, instead of seven! ” Miss Stone looks faintly ill at the thought. “There’s this book Bella used to read us when we were little, about these three French soldiers—what’s the thing they said? ” She throws the question sideways to Beatrice.

Beatrice clears her throat, cheeks pinking. “All for one and one for all. ”

“That’s it. ” Juniper’s face is lit now by some internal glow, a passion like the sun itself. “It has to be all for one and one for all, Miss Stone. ”

Every eye is on the young woman with the crow’s-wing hair and the long jaw and the summer-green gaze—like and not like the feral girl-child Beatrice remembers—and for a wild moment Beatrice thinks they’re going to listen to her.

Miss Stone laughs. It’s not a cruel laugh, but Beatrice sees it hit Juniper like a slap. “Goodbye, Miss West. I can’t wish you luck, for the sake of the city. ”

Juniper straightens from the desk, all the glow gone from her eyes, face pinched tight, and gives the room a mocking bow. She limps out the office door without looking back. She never let their daddy see her cry, either.

Agnes follows. She pauses to hold the door behind her and looks up at Beatrice, almost as if she’s waiting for her. As if they are still little girls tumbling into the farmhouse, one-two-three, holding the door carelessly open behind them for the next one. “Well? ” Agnes sounds annoyed, whether with herself or her sister Beatrice can’t tell.

Beatrice feels Miss Stone’s eyes on her face. “I don’t know you, Miss Eastwood, but you seem a respectable woman. That sister—those sisters of yours will lead you astray. ”

Beatrice hesitates. She thinks about the fates of girls who go astray in all the stories, the hot iron shoes and glass coffins and witches’ ovens. (She thinks about St. Hale’s, a prison built especially for straying girls. )

But then Beatrice looks at Agnes still waiting for her, half scowling, and thinks about what else awaits those gone-astray girls: the daring escapes and wild dances, the midnight trysts and starlit spells, a whole world’s worth of disreputable delights.

Beatrice bows her head as she leaves. “So I hope, Miss Stone. ”

Agnes is just about to give up and close the damn door behind her, to hell with Bella and the suffragists both, when Bella finally makes up her mind. She goes sailing past Agnes, spine uncrooked, cheeks pink with some private pleasure. Their eyes meet, then slide away.

Juniper is already stamping down the street, clacking her staff with such aggression that passersby scuttle aside. “Those thrice -damned boot -licking shit -witches! Too cussed cowardly to take a damn stand—to hell with them! ” She spins to face the plate-glass window of the Association headquarters and crosses her fingers in a gesture of such exceptional rudeness that Bella chokes, “June. ”

Juniper spins back to face her sisters. Her eyes are bright and green as fox-fire. “So. What do you say? ”

“To what? ”

Juniper looks at Bella like she wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “To witching! To the Lost Way of Avalon! ”

Bella shushes her, casting worried looks at the genteel bustle of the street: mothers with their hats just so and children with their clothes starched stiff, maids with baskets of fresh white laundry and gentlemen checking their pocket-watches. It strikes Agnes suddenly how ludicrous it is that they should be plotting the second age of witching in the middle of a sunny, orderly street on the north end, surrounded by clerks and investors and clean limestone. Surely it calls for a haunted moor or a misted cemetery.

Bella says, low and urgent, “Juniper, I don’t know what you know or think you know about that tower, but I assure you I don’t have the secret recipe for Avalon stuffed in my socks. ”

Juniper crosses her arms, runs her tongue over her teeth. “I know you know more than you’ve told me. ”

“I—I—” Bella stutters, and Agnes marvels that she grew up in their daddy’s house without learning how to lie properly. “Yes. Alright. I found some… words, the day the tower appeared. I don’t know what came over me, but I spoke them aloud. And then…” She gestures upward, recalling the splitting seam of the sky and the dark tower.

Juniper stares hard for another second, then grins. “You snake. I knew it was you. Why didn’t you tell me? ”

Bella fumbles for an answer, but Agnes perfectly understands why a person might hesitate to give a vicious, vengeful girl the key to a mysterious and boundless power. There were stories in the old days about whole cities put to sleep, kingdoms frozen over in endless winter, armies reduced to rust and ash.

Juniper waves away Bella’s stutters. “Doesn’t matter now. The real question is: why haven’t you done it again? ”

“Because it wasn’t a complete spell. It’s missing some of the words, and all of the ways. ”

“Then find them! What exactly have you and your lady friend been up to, all those late nights in the library? ”

A flush creeps up Bella’s neck. “She’s not my—Miss Quinn and I have been searching. We’ve collected some scraps, some possibilities, but we have nothing but theories, so far. ”

“So let’s test them. ” Bella looks doubtful and Juniper presses on, heedless. “Listen. Ever since the equinox the three of us have been bound together, haven’t we? ”

Bella tsks, sliding her spectacles up her long nose. “An effect of an unfinished spell, I told you. ”

“And how come the three of us were pulled into that spell in the first place? After seven years apart, what drew us together just when our oldest sister got stupid and read some words out loud? ” Juniper’s voice lowers. “And before that—didn’t you feel something tugging you toward the square? ”

Agnes remembers it: a line reeling her in, a finger prodding between her shoulder blades. She feels it still, an invisible hand chivying her toward her sisters despite her better judgment.

“Mags always said anything lost could be found. Remember that song she taught us? What is lost, that can’t be found? ”

Bella blinks several times and murmurs, “I do, yes. ”

“Well, I think maybe magic wants to be found. And I think maybe we’re the ones who are supposed to find it. ”

“What, like fate? ” It’s the first thing Agnes has said since they stepped outside, and both her sisters flinch from the venom of it. “Like destiny? ” Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.

She doesn’t much care for fate.

Even Juniper looks a little cowed by whatever she sees in Agnes’s face. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s just luck that Bella found that spell. That the three of us wound up in St. George’s Square. On the equinox. A maiden”—she taps her own chest. “A mother”—she nods to Agnes. Bella casts her such a baffled, owlish look that Agnes suspects she didn’t notice the swell of her belly until this very second. Her mouth makes a small, perfect O.

“And a crone. ” Juniper points at Bella, who makes a disgruntled sound. “Like the Last Three themselves. ”

None of them speak for a moment. Juniper limps a little closer, until they stand in a tight circle of three, heads nearly touching. “Maybe Agnes is right, and that’s all horseshit. But what if it isn’t? What if we could make every woman in this city into a witch, just like that? ” Juniper snaps her fingers. “No more reading witch-tales in books, Bell—you could write them yourself! And no more shit-work for shit-money, Ag. No more being nothing. ” Her voice thickens on the last word.

Juniper breathes hard through her nose and asks them a second time: “What do you say? ”

“Alright. ” Bella looks stunned by the sound of her own voice. “Yes. ”

Juniper swivels to Agnes. “And you? Will you help us? ” Her jaw is set, her eyes shining, and Agnes marvels at the contradiction of her: bright-eyed and black-hearted, vicious and vulnerable, a girl who knows so little of the world and far too much. A part of Agnes wants to say yes just so she can keep an eye on her.

Except she doesn’t get to choose for herself anymore. She smooths her blouse over her belly. “I can’t start any trouble. For her sake. ”

Juniper looks down at her hand. “Oh, I think you’ve got to. For her sake. ” She meets Agnes’s eyes, challenging. “Don’t you want to give her a better story than this one? ”

Agnes does. Oh, how she does—to see her daughter grow free and fearless, walking tall through the dark woods of the world, armed and armored. To whisper in her ear each night: Don’t forget what you are.

Everything.

Agnes’s throat is too full-up with wanting to speak. Bella offers, tentatively, “You know the Mother herself started all sorts of trouble, in the stories. I wish…” Her voice lowers. “I think it might have been better for us if we’d had a more troublesome mother. ”

Agnes looks between them, her wild sister and her wise sister.

She nods her head, once.

Juniper is whooping and thumping Agnes too hard on the back, already badgering Bella about the Lost Way, and Bella is shushing her to no discernible effect, when footsteps sound behind them.

Agnes turns to see the secretary girl from the Women’s Association, with her cornsilk hair and blue-bruised jaw. As she approaches, Agnes sees she’s not as mousy as she’d thought: her eyes are hard, shining with newborn conviction.

“Jennie? ” Juniper asks. “What—”

“I want to join. ” Jennie says it very fast, like a person diving into cold water before they can change their mind.

“That’s nice, ” Juniper says. “Join who? ”

Jennie frowns as if she thinks Juniper is making fun of her. “You. ” Her eyes skitter to Agnes and Bella. “Your new society. ”

Bella starts to say something calm and reasonable, like, There’s been some sort of misunderstanding! We’re not forming a society at all. Sorry for your trouble, but Juniper is already reaching out a welcoming hand, smiling with all the glee of a missionary contemplating a convert.

“Why, Jennie. You can be our first member. ”

Bella makes a wheezy, punctured-tire noise. “I’m not sure—I don’t know—” But Juniper has an arm slung over Jennie’s shoulder and Jennie is smiling a shy smile.

“Well. ” Bella sighs. “There were really four musketeers, anyway. ”

Tell your tale and tell it true,

Cross my heart and hope to die.

Strike me down if I lie.

A spell for secrets kept and told, requiring bindweed & blood

The Calamitous Coven. ”

“No. ”

“Eve’s Army. ”

“No! It ought to be about, I don’t know, sisterhood or union—”

“The Ladies Union of Giving the Bastards What’s Coming to Them. ”

“James Juniper, if you can’t be serious, at least be quiet. ”

Juniper subsides, slouching lower against the wall. As a clandestine society of would-be witches, Juniper had anticipated that their first order of business would be exciting and magical, like burning the Sign of the Three across City Hall or turning the Hawthorn River to blood.

Her sisters and Miss Jennie Lind apparently thought otherwise. The four of them have been stuck in Agnes’s cabbagey room at South Sybil for hours now, discussing safe houses and membership oaths and other disappointingly unwitchy subjects.

Jennie is even taking honest-to-Eve notes, sitting on Agnes’s bed with Bella’s little black book propped on her knees. She’s the one who suggested their society have a name, although she has so far ignored each of Juniper’s excellent suggestions.

“The Sisters of Sin. ”

Jennie’s pen doesn’t move.

“What about—” Bella begins, then bites her lip. “What about the Sisters of Avalon? ” It takes less than a second’s silence for Bella to begin backtracking and hand-wringing. “Perhaps not. It sounds a bit like the Daughters of Tituba, doesn’t it, and we hardly want to be mistaken for make-believe. And it’s so provocative to associate ourselves so openly with the Last Three—”

But Agnes is smiling and Jennie’s pen is moving across the top of the page, and Juniper can feel the name settling over them, shining in their faces. Juniper has a goosefleshed premonition that it will be printed in papers and on wanted posters, whispered through the alleys and mill-floors, passed like a lantern from hand to hand. The Sisters of Avalon, they call themselves. Did you hear? The looks exchanged, the flash of longing in their eyes.

“Excellent. ” Jennie finishes the last flourish of the name. “And what about titles and duties? Should they be elected positions, do you think? ”

Juniper finds that this somewhat dampens the shine of their new name. “Positions? ”

“Well, I mean—secretary, treasurer, president, vice president, press liaison, head of recruitment…” Jennie ticks them off on her fingers.

“Saints, there’s only four of us. ”

“Sounds like a problem for the head of recruitment. ”

Juniper flicks a ball of lint at Jennie and Jennie dodges without taking her eyes from her paper. Bella offers, tentatively, “I—I could be the press liaison. I have a—contact in the newspaper business. ” Bella doesn’t look at any of them as she says it, and Juniper wonders if she means that colored woman in the gentleman’s coat, and why that should cause her to blush such a vivid pink. She recalls a little uneasily that there were rumors back home about her oldest sister, too.

Jennie writes something in the notebook. “Full name? ”

“Beatrice Eastwood. ”

Jennie hesitates. “Why do your sisters call you Bella? ”

Juniper says, “Because that’s the name our mama gave her. Beatrice Belladonna Eastwood. ” Bella shifts uncomfortably and Juniper sighs at her. “Honestly, if we can’t use our mother’s-names in a secret society of witches, when can we? ”

Jennie finishes writing and turns an expectant eye to Agnes, who looks very close to rolling her eyes. “I can… ask around, I suppose. ” She makes a circle with her index finger, indicating either the South Sybil boarding house, the neighborhood of West Babel, or the entirety of New Salem. “Does that make me in charge of recruitment? ”

“Name? ”

“Agnes Eastwood. ” Juniper tosses a second ball of lint at her. “Oh, fine. Agnes Amaranth Eastwood. ”

Jennie records this, too, then says brightly, “And who’s president? ”

There’s a brief exchange of glances between the sisters. Juniper asks, “What does it mean to be president, exactly? ”

Jennie makes a seesaw motion with her head, cornsilk hair swinging. “Not much, really, if we agree to a collective decision-making process. ” The phrase recalls the endless meetings of the Women’s Association. Juniper gives an involuntary shudder.

“But in the Association… Miss Stone was the heart of us. ” There’s a gray note in Jennie’s voice, like regret, and Juniper shrugs away a prickle of guilt. It was Jennie’s own damn choice to follow her out the Association door. “She was our direction. We all steered the ship, but she was our compass. ” Jennie looks at Juniper as she finishes, frowning a little.

Juniper looks away. “Well, we can vote on it later. Let’s talk about getting some girls signed up, O head of recruitment. ”

But Bella says anxiously, “I’m not sure how many people we ought to recruit. What would we be recruiting them to, exactly? ”

Juniper says, “Hell-raising, ” just as Jennie says, “Yes, we’ll need a constitution, and a declaration of intent. ”

Juniper considers for several consecutive seconds and offers, “To raise hell? ”

The other Sisters of Avalon ignore her. She tries again. “To bring about a second age of witching. To get back what was stolen from us. ”

“That might be a little… much, don’t you think? ” Bella clears her throat over Juniper’s muttered you’re a little much. “How about: to restore the rights and powers of womankind? ”

Jennie writes it down while Bella frets, because Bella always frets. “Without the Lost Way we don’t have any powers to restore. I’m not sure anyone would sign up for the sake of m-moonbeams and witch-tales. ” Her hands are twisting in her lap, chapped and ink-stained.

Agnes is standing by the window, looking out at the gray alley. “You’re forgetting a whole street full of people just saw a woman set a viper on a boy because he gave her a little trouble. ”

“A little trouble—”

Agnes continues. “By now the city will be rotten with rumors. People will be scared, scandalized… but some of them will want to know more. They need to know more, if what June says is true. ”

Juniper had told them about the shadows at the riot and the sick shine of Miss Wiggin’s smile. She doesn’t know how convinced they are, but she had seen them sidestepping shadows and looking twice at dark doorways in alleys.

“And who knows? ” Agnes continues. “They might have some witching of their own. Every woman has a handful of spells from her aunt or cousin or mama. ”

Jennie objects. “Not every woman. ”

“Well, most women, then. ”

There’s a stiffness in Jennie’s face, a wordless denial.

Bella is watching her. “And how did you and the other girls escape the riot, exactly, if it wasn’t witching? ”

The stiffness cracks. Jennie chews her lip, cheeks pinking. “It was nothing. Just a little spell. ” Her cheeks slide past pink and head straight for scarlet. “To… tie shoelaces together. ”

Juniper cackles, because the image of dozens of rioters tripping over their own feet is delightful, but Bella asks, boringly, “That sounds like men’s magic. Or boys’ magic, at least. ”

Jennie isn’t looking at any of them, face draining to blotched white. “I… had… a brother. ” Even Juniper hears the past tense and shuts the hell up.

Agnes wades into the hush. “Well, wherever you learned it, I think your friends are grateful. ” Jennie gives her a twist of a smile. “And even a boys’ prank had some use. Maybe our words and ways don’t seem like much all scattered around the way they are, but if we put them together…”

Agnes trails off, but Bella continues in a hushed voice. “I could collect them. Record them. The first grimoire of the modern age…” For reasons that are obscure to Juniper, the prospect of so much writing and reading makes Bella’s eyes shine and her frets vanish.

The rest of the evening is a series of debates and schemes. Jennie recalls that the Women’s Association ran regular ads in The New Salem Post encouraging interested parties to visit their headquarters, and suggests the Sisters do the same. Agnes notes dryly that they don’t have headquarters, that they wouldn’t want anyone to know where it was if they did, and that The New Salem Post would never run an advertisement for witchcraft anyway.

Bella makes a hmming noise and mutters that there may be “other reputable papers” in the city, if they had some means of ensuring their invitation reached only sympathetic eyes. A thought seems to strike her. “Do you think ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ could be altered for mass-production? ” She snatches her notebook back from Jennie and sinks for some time into her own notes, murmuring to herself.

By nightfall the members of the Sisters of Avalon have gone their separate ways: Bella to present their proposal to Miss Quinn and the staff of The Defender; Agnes to rustle up witch-ways from someone called Madame Zina; Jennie to check on Inez and Electa and the other members of Juniper’s small rebellion, and invite them to join a much bigger one.

Juniper lingers in Agnes’s room. She steals a handful of salt from a pot on the table and tosses a line of it across the threshold and window ledge, thinking of Mags. Honey to keep things close, salt to keep things out. She thinks, too, of those wrong-shaped shadows rolling and oozing through the streets, prying at shutters and sliding under loose-hung doors.

Juniper limps to the bed, where Bella’s little black notebook lies open. She flips through the pages and squints at Jennie’s tidy writing.

Beatrice Belladonna Eastwood, Press Liaison.

Agnes Amaranth Eastwood, Recruitment.

Jennie Gemini Lind, Secretary/Treasurer, with the mother’s-name written in a shaky, uncertain hand, as if she wasn’t sure of the spelling.

And, at the very bottom of the page, neat and firm:

James Juniper Eastwood, President.

As a rule, Agnes walks out of the Baldwin Brothers Bonded Mill and keeps walking. She doesn’t linger to chat or laugh, she doesn’t head to the dance halls or evening sermons or markets with the other girls; she keeps her eyes on the pavement and walks the hell home.

But on the eleventh of May, just as the afternoon is softening like butter into a warm evening, she waits.

She leaves the dim tomb of the mill and leans against the heat of the brick, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, trying to lift the baby off her bladder. Mr. Malton isn’t the sort of boss to grant extra privy-breaks to a girl just because, as he says, “she can’t keep her knees shut. ” He’s been eyeballing Agnes’s belly as it grows, pressing hard against the bar of the loom. Just this afternoon he tapped it with his red-sausage finger. “You get three days for bearing. When she’s four she can work in the rag-pickers’ room. ”

Agnes closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see the white lick of rage in them.

Her daughter will not grow up in the sunless dark of the mill, breathing dust and fumes, huddling next to the steam pipes in winter to keep warm. Her daughter will not be nothing.

Agnes unclenches her jaw in the alley. There are knots and strings of women gathering nearby, but she doesn’t look at them. Instead she looks at the thin stripe of sky above, the hungry green of the weeds reaching thin fingers between the cobbles, crabgrass and chickweed and dusky deadnettle. Agnes can’t recall if there were this many weeds last spring.

There’s a cluster of women forming down the alley, a copy of The Defender spread between them. None of them, Agnes imagines, are regular subscribers to New Cairo’s radical colored paper, but the Sisters of Avalon purchased several dozen extra copies of this particular issue and distributed them through the boarding houses and mail-rooms of the west side.

Agnes catches a raised voice. “It’s nonsense, is what it is. Pure fancy. Somebody’s idea of a joke. ”

“Or, ” suggests another, conspiratorially, “it’s a trap. The police never did find that snake or the witch who made it, did they? Maybe they think they’re being clever. ”

There are low, doubtful mutters at this, and Agnes figures this is more or less the opening she’s been waiting for. She wishes she had wit or zeal to convince them, but she’s not her sisters, so she merely stalks toward the gathered women and waits for them to notice her squared shoulders. “It’s not a trap, ” she says quietly. “Or a trick. ”

All of them stare at her the way you’d stare at an alley cat that suddenly sang opera. Agnes understands why; she hasn’t spoken a single spare word to them other than “bobbin’s busted” or “watch your shuttle” in five years of working shoulder-to-shoulder.

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