Linny put her long-fingered hand on Finny’s arm. Finny glanced at her sister and then slowly settled back into her chair.
“They’ll be coming soon,” Margaret urged. “We’ve got to leave, my lady.”
“But I have so many more questions,” Ellis protested.
“You know everything you need! All you need is Jenny and the Gate,” Margaret said quietly at Ellis’s ear. “Find a Soldier and you’re halfway home. Find Jenny and you can leave all this behind.”
“The Soldiers,” Ellis said to Linny. “They came in through the Gate so then they must know where the Gate is to go back.”
“Must they?” Linny asked.
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I would say”—Linny smiled without humor as she spoke—“that is entirely up to you.”
14
DOLLHOUSE
Ellis wanted to run but she held her steps to a quickened pace as she passed out the farthest door of the molding tearoom. The Disir sisters were just as disquieting here as they had been in Gamin—a symmetry that Ellis found reassuring on some deeper level. There was a consistency to the madness in which she moved.
Science is repeatable. Where there is consistency there is an underlying law.
She could not recall the professor’s name but she remembered his words clearly. She reminded herself that there were rules to this Game. She needed time … time to think through the apparent insanity to find the rules that governed it.
Yet Finny said that she had broken the rules—supposedly unbreakable rules of the Gate that governed everything here, wherever “here” was or meant.
There is an underlying law …
“Which way does your ladyship wish to go?” Margaret demanded as much as asked. Their exit from the room had left them on a landing at the end of a hall that appeared to extend for miles into the distance. Stairs on their left spiraled upward while to their right they spiraled down.
“What?” Ellis remained distracted by her thoughts. Minnie had said that Merrick had gotten rather good at hiding the Gate and Linny had intimated that whether the Soldiers knew where to find the Gate or not would be largely up to Ellis. The house itself was created by her, if the Disir sisters were to be believed, but how could she possibly have done so? Even if the Gate were hidden from the rest of the souls here, wasn’t it a fundamental rule that the Soldiers and demons had to be able to find their way out?
“Does your ladyship wish to go upstairs or down?” Margaret repeated, more urgently. “Which way?”
“I don’t know,” Ellis blurted out in her frustration. She was trying to think and Margaret’s badgering kept derailing her thoughts.
“But you’re the mistress of the house,” Margaret insisted. “It’s your Day!”
“My Day or not, I have no idea where to go in this madhouse!” Ellis shouted. It felt good to release the rage and frustration though Margaret shrank from it. “I haven’t since I set foot in this place!”
“But I can help you,” Margaret suggested meekly. “Just tell me what to do. Anything and I’ll do it.”
“But I don’t know what to do or where to go,” Ellis huffed. “That’s why I needed a guide, Margaret! That’s why I followed Jonas.”
“Do you want me to fetch him for you?” Margaret said in a quiet, cautious voice. “Do you trust him to lead you through your own house?”
Ellis blinked. My own house.
Ever since she had arrived in Echo House, the memories of her past had begun to rise to the surface of her consciousness. But she suddenly realized that it wasn’t just the memories themselves that were returning to her. The house itself was memory, each place turning like the terrible waltz to form meaning out of its very walls.
“I didn’t just create the house,” Ellis murmured in sudden, terrible wonder. “I’m still creating it.”
“Your ladyship?” Margaret asked, her voice still hushed.
“How is that possible?” Ellis said as much to herself as to her companion. She turned about on the landing, looking at the stairs and the long hallway as though they were new to her eyes. “Is this still my Day?”
“No, my lady,” Margaret said, shaking her head. “It is Merrick’s Day.”
“And yet the house is changing to suit me,” Ellis said.
“Do you still wish me to fetch Jonas for you, my lady?” Margaret asked.
“No!” Ellis turned a sharp eye toward Margaret. The memory of the last moments of the waltz was still with her. The pain of the memory and the betrayal of her trust in him remained keen in her mind. “But we do need to find a Soldier.”
“Wherever shall we find one?” Margaret asked with a slight quiver in her voice. “They are such frightful things and Merrick said that they had been put away in the furthest reaches of the house.”
“Margaret, there must be a way to … wait!” Ellis held up her hand. “Did you hear that?”
“I heard nothing, my lady,” Margaret replied.
“Quiet, Margaret,” Ellis insisted. “Just listen!”
It was in the distance above them. It echoed down the stairwell and was muffled but the sound was light and bubbling.
A laugh.
A child’s laugh.
“Come on!” Ellis said even as she rushed up the stairs. She could hear the hard soles of Margaret’s ankle boots pounding up the stairs behind her.
The banister of stained wood had a deep red hue to it as though it were made of cherry. As she arrived at the upper landing she could see that the walls were covered in a bottle-green wallpaper that had since faded closer to sage in color. There was a skylight overhead that had just begun to rattle under a fresh rain, making the sound of pebbles tossed against the glass. The lightning flashes were still far off as was, also, the distant rumble of thunder. There was a stained glass window on the right side of the landing, the distant flashes of lightning illuminating the glass sailing ship on a storm-tossed sea. A second window at the head of the stairs was a double-hung window that was partially open. It was the kind of window that was typical of the exterior of a home but when Ellis glanced through it, she saw that it only looked into another room. It was a completely insane choice of placement but, as she reminded herself, what in this house was sane?
The high-pitched laugh was closer now, a bubbling sort of bright laughter coming from just down the short hall with warped floorboards and the same dull sage wallpaper curling away from the walls. Another double-hung window was at the end of the hall, rain now running in rivulets down its surface. There were two paneled doors at the end of the hall, both with peeling paint. The door to the right was slightly ajar, a dim, flickering glow coming from that room.
The light, quick laugh came again.
A baby’s laugh.
Ellis stopped. Something inside her was screaming at her to run, to turn and walk away from what was ahead of her. She pushed down the fear rising within her and started with careful, soft steps down the hall.
Margaret followed hesitantly. “Your ladyship—”
“Quiet!” Ellis demanded sotto voce.
The warped floorboards creaked and shifted under her boots as Ellis forced her way down the hall. The sounds of a baby’s delight were coming from beyond the slightly open door but she could not yet see into the room.
Ellis reached for the tarnished silver doorknob. The door gave way with reluctance. The sounds of the child silenced abruptly. Ellis knew what awaited her but she went in anyway.
“A nursery?” Margaret said as she followed into the room.
Ellis gave a deep sigh. “Yes. My child’s nursery.”
The shades of the windows were drawn closed, keeping the room in darkness. Only the light from the struggling fire on the hearth illuminated their surroundings.
It was all just as Ellis remembered it. The empty bassinet sitting unused in the corner. The rocking chair sitting in perfect stillness by the fireplace, its shine now dulled by a thin covering of dust. A hamper and a changing table. The wa
llpaper that she had chosen. She had been so terribly critical of Jonas’s handiwork when he first put it up and insisted he redo it to her satisfaction.
All for the child’s sake.
Their child’s sake.
Her child’s sake.
“Where is it, my lady?”
Margaret’s voice intruded on Ellis’s thoughts as though from a great distance. “Where is what, Margaret?”
“The babe, my lady,” Margaret insisted as she glanced about the room. “You said there was a babe.”
“There was.” Ellis drew in a shuddering breath. “Jonas had been struggling to find work since his uncle had lost his shop to the banks but, hard as it was, we so looked forward to bringing another life into our lives. Most of the nursery furnishings we had begged or borrowed from what friends we had remaining to us. I was cut off from my family except for the endowment my father left me for my education and that we could not touch. We were both under a lot of strain in those days, but I think that our anticipation of the child kept us together.”
Ellis looked again with longing at the empty bassinet.
“It’s exactly as I remember it the last time I stood here.” Ellis turned slowly in the middle of the room. “I, too, wondered where my child was, Margaret, even though I knew full well I had miscarried.”
“Is milady saying that this is a place from your life after you left the Gate?”
“Yes, a terrible, painful place.”
“But it’s not just a memory, your ladyship,” Margaret said in earnest excitement. “I’m here, too. You made this place. You’re changing the Day.”
“I can’t see how,” Ellis said, her mind still fixed on the bright pain that the nursery brought to her recollection.
“What else?” Margaret asked in a rush. “What else do you remember?”
“I don’t want to remember any more,” Ellis insisted.
“Please,” Margaret coaxed.
Ellis drew in another deep breath, trying to steady herself before answering. “I remember wondering what to do with the toys Jonas had purchased. We couldn’t afford them but Jonas was giddy and unreasonable about…”
Ellis stopped, her eyes fixed on the corner of the room behind the door.
She remembered the dollhouse that Jonas had built for their baby and had set in that corner but this one was different from the simple construction she remembered. Though half buried in tin boxes, balls and tops, its silhouette was strikingly familiar.
It was the miniature image of Summersend … the cottage in Gamin where she had last seen Jenny.
A box at the base of the dollhouse caught her eye. Like the dollhouse itself, the box was out of place here and not as she remembered the nursery.
She reached down and picked up the box. The label across the front read “Toys made by the Disabled Soldiers & Sailors at the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops, London, S.W.”
As Ellis drew open the top of the box, a strange smile came to her lips.
In the box lay six tin soldiers. Ellis noticed at once that despite the label on the box these tin soldiers were not British at all but were painted with Canadian uniforms and markings. She brought the box closer to her face, trying to see them better in the dim firelight of the room. She suddenly pulled back with a start.
“What is it?” Margaret asked with alarm.
Each of the tin soldiers had been formed as though it was wounded in battle. One had bandages on its face as though it was being treated for mustard gas burns. Others were missing limbs. Some were supported on their bases by crutches.
“I told you I would find soldiers,” Ellis said. The giggle in her voice had a hysterical edge. “What better place to look for toy soldiers than in a playroom? But why should anyone want to create such toys?”
“What do you mean, your ladyship?” Margaret asked.
“Well, just look at them!” Ellis insisted, holding the box out toward her maid. “They’re horrific toys!”
“What toys, milady?” Margaret asked deliberately.
“These in the box,” Ellis insisted, turning the open box back under her gaze. “No child should play with such…”
The box in her hand was empty.
“I could not agree with you more on that point, Ellis,” said the husky voice behind her.
She looked up from the box.
Six soldiers stood about them in the dark nursery.
Six maimed, horribly disfigured soldiers.
15
SOLDIERS
“Who are you?” Ellis demanded. Her hand that still held the empty box had begun shaking.
“You know us, ma’am.” The husky voice belonged to a strong man who was taller than the others. He wore a stained and worn-out field coat with the chevrons of a chief warrant officer. He had a striking, strong jaw and a generous mouth. His brown hair, in some places nearly four inches in length, stuck awkwardly out from beneath the bandage that wrapped around his head, hiding his eyes from view. The man stood very still, as though he were afraid to move from the spot on which he stood. “You know us all.”
“Ellis!” Margaret’s voice was delighted. “Did you make them?”
“Make them?” Ellis turned her gaze sharply toward her maid.
“Oh, I suppose you didn’t; not really,” Margaret gushed as she openly gaped at the mutilated men struggling to stand around them. “But aren’t they perfectly horrible!”
“Margaret!” Ellis felt disgust at her companion’s obvious delight in these men’s deplorable condition.
“I mean, of course I’ve seen Soldiers before.” Margaret could not stop talking. “Not up close, mind you, since Mrs. Crow has forbidden them outside the Ruins. Dr. Carmichael studiously avoided them and Merrick never had much use for them, either. But every time I’ve seen them, they were always so perfect and whole. These are deliciously broken, like they were in pieces or something.”
“Margaret, hold your tongue!” Ellis barked in a voice that brooked no disobedience. She had learned that commanding voice from her father and she suddenly recalled that it had gotten her through many difficult encounters with other medical students in her college. She turned back toward the chief. “I beg your pardon for my … for my maid, Sergeant Major. She … she does not get much out of the house.”
A wide grin split the blind sergeant’s face. “I do not suppose any of you, how did you put it, ‘get much out of the house.’ But if you don’t act soon, Ellis, we cannot stay.”
The door to the closet in the room suddenly burst open. To Ellis’s astonishment, beyond was not the small closet she remembered but a white room so brilliant that she could not see into it. Voices were calling in urgent tones from the brightness.
“Nurse! Get them in here right now! Stop gaping and move!”
The voice resonated with memory. That’s Dr. Mallory, she realized. It was my first day, and he was on duty.
“Nurse! For heaven’s sake, MOVE!”
“Margaret,” Ellis said at once as she turned toward the sergeant major, and gripped his arm firmly. “Help me get these men through the door. Quickly now!”
“Oh, it really is amazing,” Margaret gushed.
“Stop talking and help me!” Ellis demanded. “You go through and I’ll bring each of them to you through the door!”
Margaret did not have to be told a second time. She stepped quickly through the bright doorway. Ellis brought the sergeant major to the opening first, then each of the others in turn: the dark-haired, swarthy sergeant who had lost his leg, the young man nearly entirely wrapped in bandages, the barrel-chested corporal with the beard and both hands wrapped against his chest, the horribly burned young man with the badly disfigured face, and finally the red-haired, freckled young private with the bleeding ear who only stared into the distance as she gently pushed him ahead of her through the doorway.
Ellis blinked against the bright whiteness around her. Her eyes quickly began to adjust and the features of the room slowly emerged from the brilliant haze.
It was one of the open hospital wards at Massachusetts General. The walls were bright with fresh, white paint. Afternoon light streamed in through the windows. There were six hospital beds in the ward, three on each side, and each gleamed in the afternoon light. Five of the beds were already occupied. Margaret, now somehow dressed in the long gray dress and white bib apron of a nurse with her hair bound tightly beneath a white scarf cap, helped the man with the bleeding ear toward the final berth.
The door behind Ellis clicked quietly shut. She turned toward it, half expecting Dr. Mallory to emerge from the door and begin berating her for not caring for the patients in the manner he prescribed.
“Why are we wasting our time with her?” said the small private to her right. At least, she assumed he was a private given the lack of markings on his jacket that hung next to his bed. His head, chest and arms were completely swathed in bandages though in the areas that were exposed she could clearly see where the blistered skin from the mustard gas had been scraped away. His voice was that of a high tenor but was raspy and rough sounding.
“Don’t be that way, Mouse,” said the sergeant leaning against the foot rails of the bed across from the private. He was a swarthy man with black hair with naturally tight curls. He had an athletic build. He leaned heavily on a crutch as he was missing his left leg halfway up his calf. Ellis could see that the massive wound was soaking through the bandage.
“And how should I be?” Mouse asked in plaintive tones. “I thought we had agreed to avoid this woman.”
“The situation has changed, Private.” The blinded master sergeant was feeling his way around the bed.
“How do you figure that, Barry?” This was the barrel-chested man with the rough beard. Both his mangled hands were bandaged and bound against his chest. He lay propped up in his bed, his dark eyes fixed on her as he spoke.
“Because, Tinker, she came looking for us,” the master sergeant said. “You must admit, that is rather the opposite of the way we usually operate here, isn’t it?”
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