Chương 26: Chapter Twenty-Six: A Most Pleasant Thursday

The thought of it was the worst thought she had had in either life. Worse than the demons. Worse than losing the leg. The idea that there had been other nights. Other conversations. Other moments where she had been close enough to the truth that he had decided to tidy it away, and she had woken the next morning and felt the sensation of almost having thought something, and had let it go, forgotten.

"How many times have I woken up and lost time… lost who I was… and never realized?"

"Miss Darling, I need you to–""Tell me it was once." She pushed herself up on her good arm with a strength she did not now from where it came. Her vision swam. She ignored it.

"Tell me it was exactly once and tell me why, and I will… I will try to understand it. But don't ask me to accept this without…" It was a lie. She would never understand it. Not this. Not tampering with her mind. With her identity. Never this.

"This isn't a negotiation," he said, and he said it gently, and that was when she understood that the gentleness was not tempered by ethics or morality or kindness or anything. Anything within her power. Gentleness, ha! It was constant, and entirely blind. She had spent years studying what happened when people who meant well became certain they were right. She had written papers about it.

The well-intentioned authority figure who had decided they knew better than the person in front of them, and who expressed that certainty with such warmth, such genuine concern, that there was no space to push back because the blind warmth occupied all the space. She had described it in clinical language, from a safe distance, in a well-lit office with a cup of coffee. She was in the middle of nowhere now, gravely wounded, missing memories, and she was looking at it.

"You find this kind," she said.

"What you're about to do. You genuinely believe it is a kindness." He was quiet for a moment.

"I believe it is necessary."

"That's the same thing, in your head," she looked at him. Her voice had gone flat, not because she was calm but because she was using everything she had to stay coherent and there was nothing left for more.

"That is more frightening than if you hated me. That is more frightening than being feared or loathed. You are going to hurt me and feel sorry about it and do it anyway, and you'll stand over whatever is left of me and call it protection." Something moved through his face. The tired, honest thing she'd seen before. He did not deny it.

"How do I know," Alice said, and this was likely not a question she should ask this man, but her voice almost broke and she said it anyway, "that you haven't already taken the version of me that wouldn't have needed your protection?" He was silent for a long moment.

"That," he said quietly, "is a question I cannot give you a satisfying answer to." She went very still. He moved closer and went down on one knee beside her properly, and reached out, and laid his hand very gently over her eyes, the way a person covered a child's eyes against something they shouldn't see. Careful. Warm. She didn't move. Not because she had stopped being afraid, but because she understood that there was nowhere to go.

"However, know that I will not let you," he said quietly, "lose hold of your original self." Something about the phrase caught against her, strangely, urgently, even as the dark behind her eyes began to widen and pull. She knew those words, in that combination, from somewhere. She reached for it and it slid away from her, the way the rest of the night was sliding away from her, and she did not get to finish reaching.

The lantern swung gently against her hand as she walked, throwing its small warm circle ahead of her on the path. She was annoyed with herself. This marsh run had gone quite longer than it should have, she'd stayed past sundown outside the relative safety of her room, for the first time in weeks, and Mrs. Hatch was going to have something to say about the hour even if she said it kindly. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

She'd have a bruise on her shin tomorrow, probably, from the gate's uneven step. Alice didn't remember catching it, but it itched mildly. She rubbed at it absently and kept walking. Somewhere in the middle of Greybell Lane she paused for a moment, and had the sensation of having almost thought of something… important. It was not a full thought, the shadow of one at best, gone before she could even phrase it properly. She frowned at the cobbles for a moment. It was nothing. She was tired. She kept walking.

The lantern was a good one, she thought. Better than she remembered buying. She must have splashed out a bit more than she'd intended at the chandler's. She would have to do the maths on that tomorrow. She let herself into Pell Street a little after the hour, found her soup still warm on the stove, and went to bed without incident.

Hyde had the fire going when she arrived on Thursday, which she had stopped being surprised by somewhere around the fourth week. She hung her coat on the peg by the door and sat in the chair by the window, and he put the kettle on without asking.

"The books," she said, as she made herself comfortable.

"The last one, Of Gifts Unsought."

"Ah." He was already pouring.

"You finished it already."

"I did." She accepted the cup.

"You said it had a reputation. I'd assumed that meant scandalous. A penny dreadful of some sort. It wasn't scandalous. It was uncomfortable, which is considerably worse."

"In what way?" She considered.

"Context. Not the theology, insomuch, though that too. The philosophical premise. The argument that a gift given without the possibility of refusal is something closer to a condition than a gift. I did some minor research, and seeing as it was written in 1791, six years after the Third Testament was settled, while both Churches at the time were still deciding how firmly to close the door on the question…" She turned the cup.

"The author must have known it would be suppressed. It reads like someone who wanted to write their last work."

"It wasn't suppressed, technically." He settled into the chair.

"Just… discountenanced. Both the Church and the Compact found it inconvenient for different reasons. It's survived by being slightly too literary to prosecute and slightly too philosophical to outright ban." A pause.

"What made you uncomfortable, specifically?"

"The people at the edges of it," she said.

"Not the ones who argued against the gifts openly. The ones who received something they had nowhere to put. Who weren't dissenting, exactly. Just… had no understanding for what they'd been given and no permission to say so." He was quiet for a moment as he often did when in deep thought.

"There were." He set his own cup down.

"There's a whole chapter of the Third Testament devoted to what it calls those who struggle against the Angel's Gifts, the theological framing for people who rejected or resisted their class assignment. The official position was that resistance was a form of spiritual pride. Telling God you knew better than his design." The corner of his mouth moved slightly.

"Which conveniently also meant that anyone who didn't want their gift was not just unhappy, but morally deficient."

"Efficient," she said.

"Nothing discourages dissent like classifying it as sin."

"The Compact's version was somewhat different in framing, identical in outcome." He turned the cup in his hands.

"Professional capacity rather than divine vocation. The argument being that a person's class was simply what they were objectively suited for. Not willed by God but evidenced by aptitude. Which meant that if you objected, you were objecting to your own aptitude, which made you irrational rather than sinful." A pause.

"The result was functionally the same. The person who said I didn't want this was unreasonable in either framing." Alice looked at him. He was giving her the accurate historical picture without any particular editorialising, and his face had no great expression about it.

"And now?" she said.

"Sixty years on. Does anyone still say it?"

"Much more quietly," he said with a small smile.

"But yes." He reached for the milk.

"The Vocationists say something adjacent to it, in their way. That your class is what you make of it, not what it makes of you. It's a more comfortable version of the objection, it accepts the gift while arguing about its meaning." He added milk without being asked, just a splash, which was the right amount.

"The people who genuinely don't want their gifts are still mostly invisible. It's a very difficult life to be visible when you stand against both God and country." She looked out the window for a moment. The Crane Street cobbles were wet with earlier rain. Class: Novice Thief She looked at her screen at the corner of her eye. Alice wondered what he'd say if she mentioned she was one of those people who wished to change her class.

It didn't exactly feel right for her, though it may have been right for the former Alice. Still, it was a gift she did not want, a generosity she did not consent to receiving, and thus she must change it. She left an hour later, in same way as every Thursday afternoon: slightly more informed than she'd arrived, and warm in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. She turned toward Pell Street in a somewhat better mood. It had been a good morning.