Looking closer, I saw fluttering drapes in the windows and two goats tied up in the side yard. The woman was round-faced and round-hipped, with white skin kissed pink by the spring sun. She didn’t look all that much older than me, but she carried herself with authority, and Henry dropped his stick and stood straight at her command.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I wasn’t sure what he’d said or done wrong, and for a quick moment, I worried he’d be punished. After life in the foundling home, I had nostomach for seeing children beaten simply for having the natural impulsivity and curiosity of youth. Henry’s grin soon returned, though, and he leaped onto her porch and threw his arms around her. “I’m taking the apprentice Conductor to the Senior at the Mission. I get two dozen eggs for showing her the way!”
“Don’t break them when you carry them back,” she said, laughing. Our eyes met, and her smile didn’t falter, but something changed in her pale brown eyes. She tucked her heavy fawn-brown braid behind her shoulder. “I’m Ainsley Vale. Henry is my ward.”
There was no mistaking the challenge in her voice. Something in me answered it, a flash of recognition. This girl refused to be underestimated. Was she also an orphan like Henry? Like me?
“I’m Josephine Haven. Thank you for sparing Henry’s time. He’s a good boy, and so strong,” I said, making sure Henry heard me.
“With an appetite to match.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Be home by dark, Henry. And we’ll feast on those eggs.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Be careful, Miss Haven.”
Henry skipped ahead, but her words rooted me in place. Was this a sincere warning or a threat?
In Sterling City, I’d struggled to comprehend why anyone could resent the House of Industry. But seeing where Ainsley lived, the way her porch sagged and her skirts had clearly been mended time and again, I wondered what she thought of me in my fine dress and finer scarf. I hadn’t wanted for food in more than a decade.
My lingering headache throbbed in time with the prickling threat of an ugly mood. If only people understood that with Progress came prosperity. For everyone.
I smiled despite her unsettling warning—despite knowing better than to try to make an acquaintance when I wasn’t supposed to be meeting anyone at all. The longing for someone to simply talk to was a quiet, unwelcome thing inside me. I wished I could excise theweakness, cut it out like rot from a spoiling apple. “I will. Thank you.”
When we were out of earshot, I asked Henry, “Ainsley cares for you? She hardly looks a day over seventeen.”
“She takes good care of me. I even call herMa,sometimes, when my belly aches or I’m real sleepy.”
“I hope your belly doesn’t ache too often.”
“Not anymore.” He looked back over his shoulder, smiling.
I shivered, recalling the foundlings on the streets of Sterling City who scraped and begged to survive. While a child in the countryside wouldn’t die in a piss-soaked gutter, they might be carried off by wolves or starve in the bitter cold.
“There’s nowhere kind in this world,” I muttered to myself.
Henry picked up a rock and threw it into a small thicket of vivid pink flowers. “Plenty of kind people here. You’ll see.”
It occurred to me that he might think I was questioning the integrity of the town within minutes of arriving. “Oh, I was simply being maudlin. I’m an orphan. When I think of hungry children, it makes me sad.”
“Did your parents get sick?”
Cold, unnamable guilt lanced through me. “I think so. Lots of people get sick in the city.”
“My parents worked on the railway. They strung up miles and miles of radiance lines, and they got sick and they died.”
“It was very brave of them to work on the railway. Radiance can travel far, all because of the hard work of people like them.”
“Ezra says the railway carries poison into Frostbrook, that it poisoned my parents and poisons the workers, and that’s why they get weak and have to sleep all day and can’t work anymore.”
My boots scuffled to a stop on the dirt path. I caught my breath, reminding myself that if scores of workers were getting sick, we’d have heard about it in the city. Shame on whoever was telling this boy such vile tales. “It sounds like Ezra likes to tell you stories to frighten you.”
“He likes to tell nice stories, too!”
“Is Ezra your friend? I’d like to meet him and hear his nice stories.” And ask him exactly why he was telling lies about the railway and radiance. These were exactly the kinds of rumors and conspiracies that prompted resistors to vandalize Missions and radiance lines and attack Children of Industry. To kill them, even.
“Miss Ainsley says he can’t be my friend. But we go fishing anyway. I caught a bluegill as big as my foot yesterday.”
