Wolthrope’s mills rose like iron sentinels, their chimneys spewing dark torrents into a starless sky. Eleanor stood at the gate of Thornfield Mill, her shawl a ragged guard against the dawn’s edge. The agency’s closure had left her empty, three shillings vanished, and Eldric’s thinning frame drove her here—pride forsaken, she’d begged for the looms. A foreman, his brow etched with grime, growled her hire: sixpence a day, twelve hours of bor. She dipped her head, her hands already throbbing in dread.

  The mill’s jaws engulfed her, its din a monster of rattling gears and screeching straps. Cotton dust whirled, a stinging haze that cwed her eyes and coated her throat with ash. She manned a loom, its levers hard and unforgiving, and toiled—fingers torn by threads, shoulders sagging under the relentless beat. Women nearby hacked, their faces pale shrouds of weariness, and she glimpsed her doom reflected: a mere wheel in this ceaseless engine, crushing vitality to cinders.

  Dusk cloaked her return, the river’s chill kiss on her nape, her skirts sodden with sweat and fluff. Eldric sat by the hearth, his wooden bird gripped close. “Mama’s back,” she croaked, colpsing beside him, and tucked him in with quaking arms. “You’re my light,” she murmured, her voice fractured by dust, and he smiled, faint as a breath. Margaret prattled from her corner, “Thread’s all knotted,” her thoughts a jumble, and Henry’s gaze cut the dark, bnk.

  Eleanor struck a match, the candle’s glow a feeble defiance, and stretched her bleeding hands. Thornfield’s grasp tightened—sixpence bought crusts, not hope—and she felt its burden sink into her frame. James’s coat drooped on the wall, a silent mourner of her decline. She kissed Eldric’s forehead, tasting her own tears, and knew this drudgery was no savior, merely a cruel dey before the colpse that loomed, silent and inexorable.