Chương 41: Interlude I: Eleanor (Part Two)

Maker's eyebrow rose in surprise at her words. It was a small thing, barely a movement at all, and yet she could not recall the last time she had earned it from him. A feeling quite like shame took over, and she found herself unable to excuse this particular failure. She had never, not once, in all the years since her making, given him cause to look at her that way.

She had watched him look at other dolls with that expression, of course, when his constructs began to change and warp in a direction he had not intended. However, she had always been without flaw, the perfect, most beloved Eleanor, and thus had always had the comfortable certainty that whatever mistake could engender such a look would never be one of her own. It was only in hindsight that she could see that for the delusory arrogance it was. Especially since her mistake was one that could cause profound worry.

All mistakes that dealt with attachment were equally worrisome. There had been a doll once, an elder sister of years past, before Eleanor's time, that had been a governess-piece placed with a family in Bath, who had begun asking after the children in her care with a persistence Maker had found troubling enough to comment on. Eleanor did not know what had become of her afterward. She had never thought to ask, at the time, and found herself now wishing rather badly that she had.

Not because she suspected anything terrible on her Maker's part, honestly, but because the not-knowing bothered her a great deal now. And since Eleanor had not had the chance to meet this sister, not once, it was a reasonable assumption to believe her now defunct. But how? Maker did not answer for a long moment, leaving her to her own thoughts.

In the quiet, she was acutely aware of the empty space between them and she wished for a touch, a pat on the shoulder or on the head, anything that would ease the guilt she felt for confessing something so unruly and naive.

"You wish to know," he said at last, voice mild, yet as deep as still waters, "whether you are still fit to see this mission through." Eleanor's limbs froze and her body stopped its facsimile of living for a second. The breath she did not need but drew regardless, out of years of habit, caught and did not release. The small, constant motions that a human unconsciously made, such a gentle swaying or periodic blinking; all of it stopped at once, turning her once more into a simple and inexperienced doll.

It was not the question Eleanor had asked. She understood that clearly enough, and understood, too, that he had deliberately chosen which question to answer and which to leave standing unaddressed in the air between them. This choice was itself an answer of a kind, if she dared to read it as one. For now, she didn't dare. She feared disappointing her Maker too much.

"I do not know," she said carefully, "whether what I feel toward her still belongs to the role, or whether it has become something else. I am not certain that distinction matters to you," she paused, before continuing, "but it has begun to matter to me." The silence after this confession was not as long as she feared, but it frightened her all the same.

"Attachment is not a flaw in you, Eleanor," Maker said and she raised her head in astonished relief. Something gentle showed through his generally cold gaze and she recognized that warmth as the one he reserved for his most beloved daughters alone.

"It makes your reports richer than any of your sisters could give me in your place at this point. Continue as you are. Let yourself feel whatever this friendship asks of you to feel," he smiled.

"I would not take that from you." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! She let the words settle over her, and at once felt something loosen in her chest that she had not even realized had tightened.

Whatever else was true of the world, whatever the Devil's Physician had done to some nameless sister many years ago, a sister whose name she did not even know to mourn properly and whatever unspoken reason stood behind Maker's decision not to answer her real question, she was certain, with the same complete and unexamined certainty that all of his dearest daughters held, that Maker would never see her harmed. It was because of that certainty now that she felt she must ask the following question.

Even if it brought his disappointment upon her.

"And if it asks more of me than the role allows?" she asked, worried for a moment at her tone, for it seemed quite like a second moment of unruliness following quickly on the heels of the first.

"If I begin to want things for her sake rather than that of our cause, Maker?" Maker considered that, unhurried, as was his temperament. To many of his detractors, he came off as a man who lived on the assumption that time itself moved differently for him than it did for the rest of the world.

"Then you will tell me," he said.

"As you have tonight. And we shall discuss our options then." Eleanor nodded. Maker laid his hand against her cheek, his voice soft, as she leaned in.

"That is all I have ever asked of any of you, not obedience without thought, but honesty and reflection. You have given me that tonight. I am not troubled by it. What I would be troubled by would be its absence." She did not smile, for lack of expressivity had never mattered to her Maker. Still, she felt immense gratitude.

"Thank you," she said, not knowing how else to share the warmth that she felt in his presence, having his support. He inclined his head, just a small fraction in acceptance and opened his mouth to say something further, when the door at the far end of the library opened, interrupting them. Another doll entered at a hasty pace just short of undignified, skirts pulling against the polished floor.

"Please forgive my intrusion." The newcomer's curtsy was brief and efficient, her eyes already flicking toward Maker with a message that would not wait.

"The princess requests your presence. She was quite insistent." Maker sighed. It was a small, tired sound that Eleanor had always found faintly strange coming from him, as though even he sometimes forgot which habits were meant to be performed and which had simply become, over time, genuine.

"We will continue this some other time, Eleanor," he said, already turning toward the door, the warmth of a moment ago tucked neatly back beneath a more composed expression, and one far more suited to whatever waited for him elsewhere in the Palace.

"Rest, if you require it. You have done well, my child." She knelt once more as he passed, and stayed kneeling a moment after the door had closed behind him, alone in the library with the tall dark shelves and her own borrowed face waiting patiently in its box beside her. She was not yet ready to return. Not back to that mediocre life. The library was very quiet.

Somewhere above her, faintly, she could hear the sound of a door opening, a young woman's voice rising in complaint, and Maker's own voice, patient and low, answering it, the words themselves lost to distance but the familiarity of his tone and manner of speech carried clearly enough regardless. Her Royal Highness asked for much of her Maker's attention.

Perhaps too much, Eleanor thought ungenerously, even though she understood the princess' need for validation when she found little in her own family, however noble they were. She rose at last, and let herself out the way she had come. The walk back through the grounds felt longer than the walk in had.

The hedgerows stood black and still against a sky gone fully dark now, and somewhere beyond them the city waited, indifferent, full of a million small lives none of which had the faintest notion of the power plays that were brought about by beings that cared little for them. Eleanor herself did not care much either. Humans, she had found, were pitifully self-centered and short-sighted so it had taken her entirely by surprise to find herself feeling any measure of care for one of their ilk.

But Alice was somewhat different. Had always been so, whether at present or before her so-called amnesia. She idly wondered what Alice would have thought if she could have seen Eleanor, less than an hour before, wearing a different face, and knelt on the floor, asking her god whether her friend was meant to die. The thought amused her for a while. By the time the carriage reached Pell Street once more, Eleanor had, without quite meaning to, already begun rehearsing the shape of Nell's smile.