Thornfield Mill thundered with relentless vigor, its looms a cacophony of iron and woe as Eleanor toiled beneath the gas lamps’ sickly glow. Cotton dust swirled, a choking mist that seared her throat, and her cough grew jagged, a blade scraping her chest. Her fingers, raw from threads, faltered on the levers, snagging the warp, and the machine snarled, its rhythm broken. She steadied it, sweat beading her brow, but her arms shook—Thornfield’s toll carved deeper each day, a weight she could scarce bear.

  The foreman loomed, a hulking figure in a stained coat, his eyes narrow beneath a furrowed brow. “Faster, woman!” he bellowed, his voice cutting through the din like a lash. “No weaklings here!” She flinched, her breath hitching, and bent lower, forcing her hands to obey though they bled. The women beside her—gaunt, hollow—cast sidelong glances, their silence a mirror to her shame. Sixpence dangled before her, a cruel lure, but her body betrayed her, a vessel cracking under the strain.

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  She staggered home through Wolthrope’s dusk, the streets awash with coal ash, the mill’s echo a pulse in her skull. Eldric slept by the hearth, his bird cradled close, and she sank beside him, her cough muffled against her sleeve. Henry sat slumped, his gaze vacant, and she kissed his forehead, its chill a quiet wound. “Rest, Papa,” she murmured, though he did not stir—his mind a locked room, its key long lost. Margaret’s hum drifted, “Rain’s falling,” heedless of the dry dark, and Eleanor’s heart clenched, her parents slipping beyond her reach.

  The candle’s flame danced, frail against the gloom, and she traced Eldric’s cheek, his breath a faint tide. The foreman’s scorn gnawed at her—weak, he’d called her, and she felt it true. Thornfield was a beast, devouring her strength, and she feared the day it would spit her out, leaving her kin to the mercy of a world that offered none.