Winter Wind

The Factory, Summer 1900

When Big Boss Burgundy stomped his foot, all of Wistecher factory shook, from the tin roof-shingles to the dust drowsing in the basement where the singing mice slept, and the yellow butter-moths died. A second later Big Boss’s cuckoo clock, which had endured many such earthquakes, would crash to the floor, the hour hand frozen on the two and the bug-eyed wooden red bird flung from its ticking cage: free at last, free at last! This happened every time The Lady Pondanta was late. But never before had she been so late as today. Hearts bent over pricked fingers, the hemming girls whined that The Lady Pondanta wouldn’t come. What would become of them if The Lady should not come? Another week, and bread would be gone, dust would fill the saltshakers, and their silent husbands would find words with their fists. Even the ancient embroiderers with the restless hands stopped to run fingers through silver hair, too anxious to scold the “young’uns” for their impatience. Eyes empty like stones, swollen fists clutching spools of thread, all waited.

Poor Big Boss Burgundy didn’t have any hair to run his fingers through in such times of angst, so down from his perch on the top floor he stomped, yelling and screaming for a Missy Petunia to get him a cup of tea, for a Missy Petunia to shut up, get over here, and fix him a sandwich. None of the wide-eyed women moved, for there were no Missy Petunias at Wistecher factory. If there were, she would have not a tea leaf nor a slice of bread to give, not even from the depths of her empty belly.

But Big Boss Burgundy was not one to think about empty bellies. Then again, he simply was not one to think.

“WAAGH” he bellowed, snatching at the railing and gasping for breath. He had reached, after great toil and protest from the tortured stairs, the first floor. Rows of white, shivering faces swam before his sweaty eyeballs: specks of froth floating in the great, rolling sea of gears.

“YOU!” Boss roared, flicking the moisture from his meaty face, pointing a sausage-finger at one quivering little speck.

“You, Missy Petunia!”

She came forth, a white fishing rod painted in bruises. Her pale gray eyes glittered like the shells of geodes, but wet like a stream eroding its pebbles or clouds plump with rain about to fall. That stringy hair wanted so badly to curl in lemon-yellow ringlets, but the lank locks bled gray at the tips, just as the the summer sands waned to meet the cliffs for a kiss. If it were not for the transparent ash of her skin, which clung to her bones like a shriveled exoskeleton, she would have been beautiful. Instead, she stood before the puce-faced Big Boss Burgundy, withered and white.

“I asked you to fetch me a sandwich, Missy Petunia.” Big Boss swelled, violet veins popping in and out of his bald head like worms coursing through the mud. The plum of his chins only deepened as he expanded, his tangled chartreuse cravat choking his thickening neck. The girl stiffened in protest.

“But sir, I--”

WHACK. She was on the ground, a once-colorless face now burgeoned with a sunset. Blood ran from her nose. Crimson watercolor on canvas. She stumbled as a drunk ballerina would, back into the sea of flecks which flocked around her.

“Don’t cry, Anne,” they whispered. “Please, don’t cry.”

Big Boss Burgundy giggled at the sight of all the little women. “They be right,” he chuckled, flexing his flabby forearm. “You cry, you die. Ha!” He cackled at his cleverness. “You cry, you die! Ain’t that right, Missy Petunia?”

A knock at the door cut his chortles short. The whole room froze.

“The Lady Pondanta!” Big Boss croaked. His two chins gave birth to a third as he writhed, forcefully retracting a bright, sweaty skull into a nonexistent neck. The knocks at the door came again, prim and gentle.

“Everybody in their places!” Big Boss boomed. “Hide the girl!” The women circled obediently about tiny Anne, camouflaging the small purple face with their rags.

Big Boss waddled to the door. “Just a minute, m’lady!” he shouted. “I shan’t be a memento!” To the seamstresses he turned and made a slicing motion across his throat. So much as move, he mouthed, and off with your heads. Horrified, they nodded, they nodded, they nodded long after he had turned away, as if to ensure they had not yet been decapitated.

“Ah, if it is not The Lady Pondanta herself,” Big Boss crooned, as he swung the door open. “How may I be of service?” The seamstresses’s heads froze as a blue goddess ascended the room, alighting the dark iron walls like the the star Sirius would have, had he dropped from the heavens and rolled, ablaze, into the factory.

No queen could have been so elegant as she, no daughter of this simple earth so lovely. The Lady Pondanta was draped in silk dress the color of cornflowers, with a single yellow diamond clasped at her lacy throat; in the afternoon light the jewel seemed to pulse with a strange energy, as if perhaps the young woman’s soul were trapped inside, flickering and fading defiantly away. Around her wrists orbited little green emeralds that chinked sadly when she walked; every calculated step she took was a tragedy, for her movements were so musical that it was a crime to see her walk instead of dance. And her head! It looked to be wrapped in fire! There was never a color so brilliant to ever exist in this world--red as the dust on Mars, bright as a burning bush. Though pristinely pinned into a bun atop The Lady’s head, one got the sense that any moment, the hair would slip free and the dam would break, the thick lava plunging, unbounded, forever and ever. It hurt so badly to stare at it, but the sewing girls did it anyway--how could they not? They had never seen anything so heavenly, so terrifying.

“M’lady,” Big Boss Burgundy said, holding out his jiggling arm to hers. “You are beautiful beyond a pigment of my imagination, more than ever before!” The Lady laughed faintly, and smiled politely.

“I trust you are well?” she asked. She touched her pale hand gently to his palm but did not take his offered arm. Boss, slightly disgruntled, wiped his sticky hands on his shirt, and grunted.

“Yes, yes, but truly, m’lady, you are unparalyzed by any other in your loveliness, I cannot begin to...er...I’m at a quiet loss for words, really.” Auburn eyebrows arched, The Lady took note of the poor Boss’s purple tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, and the spreading stains soaking through the fabric of his enormous shirt.

“And the girls? Are they well-fed?” The Lady Pondanta asked loftily. At last she looked upon them, a huddled herd in the center of the room, emaciated and yellow with hunger. The women cowered beneath The Lady’s piercing gaze; instead of the glowing eyes of a wealthy woman, there was sadness at the core of those frosty blue giants. They burned, cold and alone, unbelonging to the freckled galaxy of the rest of The Lady’s face, an infinite loneliness consuming them.

“I see you have not kept your promise, Calvin.” The Lady Pondanta said, turning to face the now drenched Big Boss Burgundy. “The girls are thin, their eyes are dark. You have not been feeding them.”

“M’lady, that just--that just ain’t so!” the Boss protested. He collected himself and wiped his palms along his pants, leaving two moist streaks to dribble down his calves. “Er, I mean to say that the money you gave us has clean run out! We’ve been going hungry for weeks since your last visit!” The poor Boss made a desperate attempt at sucking in his gargantuan gut, but to no avail. “I am very promiscuous, m’lady, as you know,” he said lamely. “There is not a man alive that can keep a promise better than I.”

The Lady Pondanta was not impressed. She began to walk towards the shivering group of women to examine the sallowness of their sunken faces, but Big Boss Burgundy waddled over to stop her.

“Why!” he nervously continued, eyeing the sliver of bruised face peeping from behind the circle of rags. That damned Missy Petunia! “I am the pineapple of generosity, the epi-dummy of good will!” he blustered. “Don’t you believe me, Lady? Another donation, and the girls will be as plump as butternut squashes in July!” A single glacial stare from The Lady Pondanta shut him up. The sweat turned to frost on his skin as she glided past him.

She entered the ring of women and took their hands in hers, asking how they fared while ignoring the sputters of Big Boss Burgundy behind her. The women did not answer her at first, but The Lady’s melodious voice and her gentle touch soon brought the laughter out of them.

“Your dress,” they exclaimed in awe, sliding their grimy hands over the liquid fabric. “Your gems! Oh, Lady, so pretty! So pretty!”

And The Lady Pondanta beamed softly and took off her bracelets, letting the glittering green ellipses pass between scarred fingers. She held out her silk sleeves for the seamstresses to stroke, but let her hair and the yellow diamond pin stay clasped firmly in their places.

The excitement had broken all order, allowing from the center of the crowd a little ashen figure to emerge. It was Anne. Her swollen eye hung from her forehead like a plum, and a sick explosion of blues and purples blossomed from it all along her small face. The Lady Pondanta’s great eyes grew round at the horrible sight, and the film of ice surrounding her pupils cracked with the heat of anger. She spun, facing the highly flustered Big Boss Burgundy with an almost inelegant redness flushing her speckled cheeks.

“Who is this?” she demanded, engulfing the girl’s tiny hand in hers. She brought the girl forward for Big Boss to inspect. It was a big moment for Big Boss Burgundy; for once from his mouth came words of truth.

“Dunno,” he mumbled. “Don’t know her, not one bit. Could be anybody.”

“You. You did this to her?” Like daggers, The Lady Pondanta’s words plunged into the vulnerable the crisp air. She wept a graceful arm and trembling finger to gesture to the swollen eye, the blackened brow. In her fury her nail brushed against a bruise, and Anne gasped with pain.

“Nuh-uh,” Big Boss lied. “She must’ve fallen down, hurt herself. Happens in factories, as you know, m’lady. Dangerous places they be.”

A bitter laugh exploded from the crowd.

“Ha! Nawww.” The huddled twigs parted, from their midst stepped a little silver-haired woman, bent with age.

“Nawww, that would be the little Anne Flee, m’lady,” the old seamstress murmured weakly. “She’s a hemming girl, the worst I’ve ever seen. Never keeps her stitches straight. But ain’t ever in danger round here. Worst that’s happened is she pricks herself with her needle or gets her sleeves caught in the sewing machine, which is about every day, I reckon.” She laughed some more, the freedom to speak as she pleased giving strength to her crackly voice. “Nawww,” she cried, straightening boldly, “the Boss did it, like he always does.”

The Lady Pondanta grabbed Anne to her side. “Consider the money gone, the factory closed,” she told the speechless Big Boss Burgundy. “My donations will go to the families of the girls. Hmmph.” From behind her pursed lips there trembled a smirk; no doubt, within that heart of glass there surged some current of joy: joy for justice, yes, but more than anything, hers was the joy of a woman saying no to a man. To Anne, she whispered, “You needn’t fear, little one. Come with me: I shall take care of you.”

“No, no, no!” the Boss bellowed, spit flying from his mouth. He could not believe his misfortune. “The old bird screeches nonsense! Nonsense, m’lady!”

“Good day, Calvin,” The Lady Pondanta said, and promptly glided out the door, still clutching Anne by the wrist. Big Boss Burgundy screamed and screamed until the dust rained down from the rafters, but they were gone.