He did not. “It is a place of business and not meant for amusement,” he said slowly, as if explaining one of life’s unavoidable distresses to a child.
Lucy swallowed hard, trying to fight back the feeling of nausea that was overtaking her. “But conditions appear so beastly for your workers.”
“They must be so,” said Mr. Olson, “if I am to make money. It is the nature of a mill. I cannot change how such matters are ordered, so I do not see why I may not profit from them.”
It was certainly true that she knew little about the ways of business. The world was full of things better kept hidden—war, slavery, subjugation—and crying out against them would do nothing to stop them. And yet, for all that, she did not know how she could be wed to someone who chose to perpetuate what any feeling person must agree is wrong. It is one thing to accept that one is powerless to stop the suffering in the world, but quite another to benefit from what brings misery to others.
She said nothing, for three years at her uncle’s house had taught her the futility of arguing with a man a point that ran contrary to his interests. Instead, she said, “I hope you like cold chicken.”
“I do,” he said with the seriousness that suggested he liked cold chicken a great deal. “And whatever pleasure I derive from this meal, it will be nothing in comparison to that I take from your having brought it to me. I am not at all displeased that we are to be married.”
Lucy struggled to think of a response. As she considered what combination of words might best extricate her from this situation, she noticed that something had changed. It took her a moment to find the source of the alteration, but then she realized what it was. The quiet. There was no clacking of looms. There was no coughing. She heard only the muffled cries of the overseers and now the near-perpetual thump of their cudgels.
“Has work ended for the day?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Olson removed and examined his watch and, seeing the time, appeared grave. He pushed himself from the chair, and ignoring Lucy completely, threw open the door to the office. The dust from the mill filtered in at once, as did the gloomy silence and the heat of so many bodies in close proximity.
“Get back to work, you mutinous bastards!” cried one of the overseers.
Lucy saw the balding red-haired man shouting and swinging his cudgel at the shoulder of a child not twelve years old who sat perfectly still, his hands in his lap. The cudgel struck with a dull smack, but the boy did not respond. None of the workers moved or spoke or so much as turned their heads. They sat entirely motionless, rows of them, silent and still as the dead, a mute audience with glassy eyes.
“You must make him stop it!” Lucy cried. She could not believe what she saw. The strangeness. The cruelty. This was not the world as she knew it, but some terrible, alien place, and she wanted no part of it.
Mr. Olson did not hear her. “What goes on here?” he demanded.
None of the workers spoke. The overseer stepped forward. “They on a sudden stopped. No reason, and all at once.”
“I can have replacements for every last one of you before sunup,” said Mr. Olson. “Do not think to test me.”
No one answered. Somewhere within the building, a bird took wing. Mr. Olson balled his hands into childish fists. “This is Luddite business. These people have been put up to combining against me.”
Lucy managed to take a step closer. One of the women in the row closest to her suddenly turned her head in a sharp and twitchy gesture, like a startled squirrel. She studied Lucy briefly and then opened her mouth. She paused for a moment and then spoke. “Gather the leaves.”
The fear that had been building within Lucy now gathered its forces and engulfed her. The words spoken by the mill worker had been enough to stagger her, but there was far more here to terrify. Everywhere in the mill were dark corners, pockets of shadows. Every one of these seethed and pulsed with insubstantial creatures such as the one Lucy had seen when she’d removed Lord Byron’s curse. Like that shadowy presence, these beings were composed of darkness, but they had distinctive shapes. She saw legs, spindly hands with wispy fingers, flickering tails, and vile teeth that rose from open mouths to dissipate like smoke. They were visible only from the corners of her eyes, and the instant she gazed directly at one of these forms, it vanished in the shifting light. Still, Lucy sensed them moving and throbbing and swarming like great clusters of slick and pulsating insect larvae. Instinctively, she understood that she alone could perceive these awful creatures. She had been touched by something, and now she could see what others could not. Perhaps what frightened her most was that she understood these things had always been there, lurking and watching and pulsing, and she too had once been oblivious.
Without thinking, she grabbed one of Mr. Olson’s arms, but he shook her off as though she were an ill-behaved dog. The absent cruelty of that gesture helped her to clear her thoughts.
One of the other laborers, a little girl, also turned her head. “You must gather the leaves.” She spoke the words, and the shadow creatures writhed and shifted and leapt from rafter to rafter, like clouds of darkness that passed over Lucy’s head.
More mill workers now spoke. Gather the leaves. You must gather the leaves. Their sound was a cacophony, each speaking over the other, but all fifty of them said it again and again. An entire mill full of workers had ceased their labors to tell her something desperately important, and she had no idea what it meant. And while they spoke, the shadowy forms circled above them, all moving clockwise, as though forming a vortex that would suck them all upward, flying into oblivion.
“This is utter rubbish,” Mr. Olson told her, “but it is Luddite rubbish, and therefore dangerous. You must go.” He took her arm with an impatient grip and opened the outer door to his private room. Lucy cast one more glance at the mill workers, calling out as though mad, as though lost in religious ecstasy. She took in one more peripheral glance of the frenzied creatures, and then helplessly and gratefully let Mr. Olson lead her away. The cold air rushed into her lungs, the safety of the woods invited her. Lucy wondered if he had a private door for convenience or to allow for an escape should he ever face such an uprising.
“Have no fear,” Mr. Olson said. “The mill will continue to produce.”
He spared a brief look in her direction and then closed the door without further ceremony. Lucy stood in the cold, unable to determine what to do. The sudden silence, the stillness in the air, the absence of the host of insubstantial creatures now seemed odd and inexplicable. The quiet felt unnatural, like an accusation. How could it be that all those people spoke the exact words Lord Byron had said? How could those creatures be real? Was this truly—and she hardly wished to use the word, even to her herself—magic? It was like that moment, in the inn in Dartford when she’d seen her father standing by the fire, tears running down his face, and she’d understood, all at once, that the world was far different from what she had always supposed. Then, she had discovered the world’s sadness, and today, she had discovered its darkness.
Lucy forgot to breathe, and then, against her will, she sucked in a thirsty gulp of air.
With nothing else to do, Lucy began to walk from the mill. She was afraid, but also curious, and so she swallowed her fear and circled around to the still-open front door. As she grew closer, once more she could hear the mumbled chanting, the rustling non-sound of the creatures’ frenzied circling.