Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale

by Lenore, Lani

“I’m fine. I’m just tired,” she told him.

  “You’re upset about today!” he accused.

  “I’m not,” she insisted firmly, trying to calm him down before he got too loud and disturbed the others. “It’s been a long day, and we need our sleep for tomorrow.”

  “That’s a lie, and you know it. You wish those people had wanted to take us home.”

  Perhaps she had – wolf eyes and all – but at the same time, she was glad to have avoided that fate. She did not, however, intend to explain all of this to Henry. It was beyond him.

  “I never stop wishing for that,” she admitted. “But it hasn’t happened yet, and we have to accept it.”

  Henry twisted onto his back, his movements swift and restless. “We don’t have to be here, you know. We can leave whenever we want. We can go find our real parents and make them take us back.”

  They don’t want us, Henry! Even if she had screamed it at him, she didn’t think that he would have gotten it through his head. Wren resolved not to think about their parents, even though the subject had come up, but only promised herself that she would be a better mother herself – someday.

  “Life isn’t so bad here, Henry,” she said instead.

  “It gets worse every day,” he complained for the sake of the argument.

  At times like this, Wren wasn’t sure of what to do with him. It seemed like everything she said made him angrier – made their situation worse. No matter what she said, she couldn’t win, and likewise he wouldn’t relent.

  She did the only thing she could do.

  “You’re going to upset the others,” she told him sternly. It was avoiding the subject, but it was true. Some of the other children were already starting to stir in their beds, wondering why he was raising his voice.

  Henry and Wren stared at each other in a silent battle, and then he gave up with an angry huff. She could practically see the smoke venting out his nose and ears like he was a disgruntled dragon.

  “Well, you’re upsetting me,” he said sullenly, but he quieted down. Henry rolled over in his bed to ignore her, leaving her with a feeling of guilt in the pit of her stomach. It seemed that she couldn’t do right by both of her brothers at the same time.

  Wren sighed into the cool air, wondering if anyone would ever be bothered to console her as she tried to do for them. Would she ever get back the effort that she put forth?

  “Tell me a story,” Max requested, seeming to have already forgotten about Henry’s outburst – or perhaps his existence altogether.

  Wren began to feel more discouraged at that. She had once been full of stories for them and the other orphans. She’d thought that it would make their sad, lonely lives more tolerable if they could imagine that their hum-drum activities had some sort of fantastic significance – such as the coal dust being the scattered remains of evil fairies, and if they did not clean it up quickly, then the creatures would come back to life and curse them all. She had also told them stories of the adventures they might have if they left the orphanage, but had stopped long ago because she thought Henry and some of the others were becoming too deeply influenced by them. She feared that they might actually try to run away in search of a train that would take them to a mystical circus. Now, she kept all her fantasy ideas to herself.

  She gathered Max closer and rested her head against his, all the while staring up at the ceiling to remind herself of where she was. They only had this reality now. She could not afford to get lost.

  “I don’t know any stories,” she told him, and she recognized the defeated sound of her own voice. Before he could beg, she began to hum a quiet lullaby, and that seemed to work well enough. The boy was still.

  Wren closed her eyes and tried to shut down her swirling thoughts – to lose herself in the melody of her own tune. Tomorrow was a workday at the mill, and she knew she needed to be rested for the long hours ahead of her.

  Keeping her eyes shut, Wren finally fell asleep to the distant sound of a flute which crept in to mesh with her own song, calling her through the veil of a secret world.

  Chapter Two

  1

  That night, Wren dreamed of flying.

  It was fairly common for her to visit the sky in her dreams, soaring freely across the heavens, but this time was different. Her venture was in the dead of night, beneath a dark sky and over a black ocean. She flew low over the water, which was deep and endless, and the only light she could see was a small, dancing orb that frequently darted away from her.

  She had tried to follow the light, but it always slipped away, as if purposefully trying to lose her. Eventually, she had lost it completely. She was left alone in the darkness. After that, she could not find her way to wherever she was going, and also had no memory of what she had been looking for. She had gotten nowhere before she had woken up in her bed, where the daylight was peeking in through the window beyond the cloudy haze of morning.

  After pulling herself out of the thin blankets, she was still drowsy, the vivid dream having drained the life from her. It was as if she had indeed flown across the ocean in a single night and returned to her bed only when she had not found what she’d been looking for. The sound of a song played on wooden reeds was lingering in her ears, along with the notion of swirling whispers, and it left her feeling muddled.

  Once she had embraced the day, she found that it began the same way as the one before it – as if she had expected it to change because of a dream. She was still an orphan at Miss Nora’s, and as such, certain things were expected of her. She had to help usher the rest of the children out of bed and make sure they got themselves ready. Sometimes she had to help Nora with breakfast as well since the woman didn’t believe in bringing in outside help for tasks like that. All of them, even the young children, had jobs at the Home.

  Of everything Wren had to do in the morning, including getting herself ready for the day, she found that one of the most difficult was getting Henry to rise. He was particularly cranky, especially after a rude awakening, and everyone else had refused to deal with him. She was his sister. It was somehow made her obligation.

  Today, she waited until she had finished her duties in the kitchen before going after him.

  “Henry, get up,” she said before she’d reached the doorway. The rest were already downstairs, dressed and getting their rolls to eat on the way to the factory, and if he didn’t rise now, there was no way he would get there on time. “Please don’t be difficult. I don’t feel—”

  She stopped when she had come into the room, expecting to see him still asleep there in the empty dormitory, but he wasn’t there. The bed was vacant, the sheets disheveled, and her brother was gone.

  He’s awake? That’s a surprise.

  She wondered why she hadn’t seen him about, but was pleased that he’d taken some initiative. If she had hoped for perfection, however, he wasn’t quite there yet. He hadn’t made up his bed. The sheets were twisted and his pillow was on the floor. This wasn’t something that mattered much, but she couldn’t allow any of them to be so messy. Miss Nora did keep an eye on things, whether or not she associated with them much, and she would notice if they didn’t have their room as neat as they should.

  Wren went to the untidy bed, knowing that Henry would give her one of his looks if she hunted him down to complain about it. She would just do it herself and spare them both the argument.

  As she folded the sheets, she kept imagining how she might have nagged him – Why can’t you, for once, just try! – but she would never say those things. She was practiced at keeping them inside. She tucked the sheet back under the thin mattress – but halted when she felt an unusual lump there. Her brow creased as she settled her hand over the mass and drew it out.

  It was a small leather coin purse, and it was not Henry’s. She shook it and heard the jingle of a few shillings tapping against each other. Her heart sank as disappointment took over.

  Stealing, Henry? How many times have I tried to tell you that we aren’t thieves?
We’re better than this.

  She squeezed the purse in her hand, trying to decide what she should do with it when a voice rose up behind her.

  “I was going to do that,” Henry said, speaking of the bed, and Wren froze. “If you’d leave things alone every once in a while…”

  She hadn’t been sure of how she wanted to approach this before he came into the room, but she was suddenly so upset with him that she knew she had to confront him now. He started to approach the bed, possibly to take over the task, but dropped off when she turned to him and held up the item she’d found. His eyes widened and he went as white as a ghost.

  “What is this?” she wanted to know, though she didn’t need him to tell her. It was clear enough.

  “Gimme that!” he shouted and snatched it out of her hand roughly. It didn’t do much good for him to take it from her. She had already seen it and knew what it meant.

  “Henry! You have to stop this!” she urged, trying to keep her voice low. They were alone in the room, but a loud argument might be heard downstairs.

  Henry stared at her with their father’s firm gaze – the one that was so commonly seen when he was opposed.

  “I’m trying to help us!” he said, stuffing the purse in his pocket as he reached for his cap. “And you won’t say anything!”

  She was insulted that he thought she would rat him out to Miss Nora. She had her loyalty to her family first.

  “You’re going to get caught!” she tried to reason. “What happens when the man you’re stealing from notices and grabs you up? Do you want to be hanged?”

  “I’m careful,” he insisted heatedly. “Besides, I could get away.”

  “Really, Henry…” She shook her head. “It’s pointless! Everyone will know that the money isn’t ours if we try to spend it on anything!”

  Henry’s lips tightened like a fist, and she saw the truth in his eyes then. She could not control him forever. The things she had told him – the rules she made and advice she gave – didn’t matter much anymore. He was getting old enough to form his own opinions, and they were clearly different from hers.

  “One of us has to do something,” he accused. “Since you won’t, it has to be me!”

  Henry put his cap on snuggly and stormed away from her. Wren only hoped that her words had sunk in at least a little bit, but she doubted they had.

  He has gone so far away.

  Feeling discouraged and tired, Wren sat down on the bed to collect her thoughts. She lowered her head and sighed out in defeat for the moment. What was her family coming to?

  You can’t give up on him, she encouraged herself.

  Yes, yes, I know.

  Wren sighed, then sat up straight again and regained her composure. Henry did not know how he abused her, but she would roll with the punches. She had no other option. She opened her eyes to go on with her life, knowing she could not live in the darkness forever.

  A flash of light at the corner of her eye drew her attention to the window, but when she turned toward it, there was nothing. She was sure that she had seen a circle of light there.

  A spirit light? A will-o-wisp? Those were her first thoughts, but she decided she was being too whimsical. Perhaps it was a rare glimmer of sunlight shining in against the glass, but it had reminded Wren of her dream – of the light that had been trying to get away from her on the sea.

  It slipped from her mind after that. Her real life was confusing enough. There was no reason for her to be chasing fantasies.

  2

  The line of orphans dressed in gray ambled down the street in a line, off toward the large buildings where the smoke billowed out over the Thames. They knew the way by heart, and knew also that they shouldn’t be wayward, for being late would warrant a beating from the overseer. They wordlessly fell in with the masses that flooded the streets, marching to their jobs at the factories.

  Since Wren and Henry were of age as far as the labor laws were concerned, they were sent to work at Winchester’s cotton mill with several of the others from the Home. The work was hard and tedious, but it was what they had to do if they were to stay at Miss Nora’s, though Wren often wondered if it was a fair trade.

  The mill was hot and muggy inside, with no cool breeze for relief. Dust in the air often sent workers into coughing fits, and she had seen more than one or two carried out because of it. The machines were so loud that she often left with a dull roar in her ears, but the worst thing about the mill was the overseer, Reynald Worthy, who made the rounds on the floor, keeping an eye out for any who did not seem to be working hard enough.

  Worthy was a large man, both in height and girth, with a shining bald head and a deep frown set in his face beneath a black mustache. He would often take heavy steps behind them as they worked, waiting for one of them to slip up, fall out of line or make a mistake. It seemed to Wren that he was not only trying to keep them alert, but silently hoping to make them nervous so that they would falter – so that he would have an excuse to make them bleed. He carried a club on his belt, but sometimes he held it in his hand as he came close, reminding them of what would come.

  They were not allowed to address the overseer, but most wouldn’t have dared. He was a dark shadow in their midst, and the workers referred to him amongst themselves as The Devil.

  Wren couldn’t count the number of other children that she had seen beaten by him – especially if they had come from the workhouse. She was lucky that she was one of Nora’s, who at least insisted that they come home in one piece at the end of the day. Nora’s arrangements with the factory owner made things a hair better for them, though Wren often felt sorry for the ones who didn’t have those rules to protect them.

  In the past, their days in the factory had provided a framework for some of Wren’s stories. She used to tell them that they were spinning threads for the bridal gowns of princesses, and that every strand was important. The minders and piecers were descendants of leprechauns, who embedded each strand with gold. The smaller children who worked the dangerous job of scavengers beneath the running machines were in fact from an ancient race of rat-people, and it was their job to brush out the stray cotton because none could be wasted. The overseer was a wretched general who, if he had known about the gold, would want to use it for himself. They had to stay clear of him and make sure that he did not discover their secret.

  When a poor little scavenger had gotten much of her hair – and part of her scalp – ripped off by one of the machines, Wren couldn’t bring herself to tell those stories anymore.

  Wren and Henry both worked at the mill at least four days out of the week, sometimes five, and yet still they were among the lucky ones. Miss Nora’s arrangement dictated that they only worked half days because Wren was needed back at the home and Henry was not yet fourteen. It was an ease of burden that most of the factory children didn’t get, some of them working from morning to night without rest.

  Today was not any different. Wren’s machine was spinning rapidly beneath her and Henry was across the oil-slicked floor in his bare feet, doing his job as piecer for one of the other lines. Nora’s children were often divided up over the span of the room to discourage familiarity with one another, but also so they could be easily replaced at the end of their shift and the lines would never have to be shut down.

  Standing there now, Wren knew that she was not as rested as she should have been. The dream had drained her as if she had not slept at all. She could feel her head growing heavier, her knees getting weaker. Even humming to herself didn’t seem to work – as if she could hope to hear it over the mechanical roar.

  I have to stay awake, she scolded herself as her eyes fluttered. To slip up could mean death if she fell into the machine. Just a few more hours…

  She tried to keep focused on her work, to keep herself alert, but the streams of white sweeping by her were hypnotic. Soothing whispers were drifting all around her, and though she couldn’t understand the words, she knew that they were trying to comfort her. They said it
was alright for her to be tired. She could sleep if she wanted to – right here, right now…

  Wren felt dizzy. The room was spinning as rapidly as the cotton mules beneath her. She saw a flicker of light and then she was falling forward, straight down into the machine that would tear her apart.

  There was a shriek, but not from her own mouth, and then Wren was jerked up by her apron and thrown backward onto the floor. Knowing she shouldn’t have fallen, she tried to pull herself up quickly, but a hard blow across her face knocked her back down. This time, she stayed there.

  Her cheek was throbbing, and she could feel it filling with fever as it began to swell. When she dared to look up, the Devil was standing over her, his large hand still raised from slapping her face.

  “Fallin’ asleep, are ye?” Worthy bellowed, and somehow his voice was louder than the machines.

  “N—no!” she stammered. Wren was already shielding herself, knowing what was to come. She had never been beaten before – was always much too careful for that – but she had seen more than her share of children forced to continue work with broken bones, or left to lie there on the floor with blood running out their ears.

  “I don’t care whether you’re Nora’s or not. No one falls asleep on my watch!”

  The man was apparently in a foul humor today and didn’t care for rules. He wasn’t supposed to hurt her. Didn’t he know that? But Wren could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t care. She must have been too clean – her skin too smooth. He wanted to remedy that, give her a few scars.

  He raised the stick and Wren knew that it was coming down on her, going to break her arm as she tried to protect herself and beat her senseless until he felt she’d learned her lesson – if he stopped before he killed her. She was trembling as she clenched her eyes shut tight and held her arms over her face –

  A roar of rage echoed through the room. From out of nowhere, Henry sprang forward and tackled the overseer, leaping up on the man’s back and wrapping lissome arms around his thick neck.