She formed four legs out of silk and rose atop them like a corpse being carried to its resting place. A silk arm opened her bedroom door, and her memory guided her to the bathroom.
Silk tentacles turned on a tap, and a flesh hand was held out to gauge the temperature. It was cold, the boiler was off. Stella considered it for a moment, then her clothes began to shift around her, removing themselves. They fell to the floor in a loose pile as she stood up.
Cold bath it was, then. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had plenty of those before. Her abilities had brought with them changes to her body. Her heart rate was lower, her senses improved, and her pain tolerance upgraded. Testing with her mother had revealed she could be immersed in ice water for almost nine minutes, so she didn’t gasp as she slid into the bath. She barely noticed the temperature as more than slightly chilled as submerged herself entirely before reaching for the soap. She passed the Pears soap and took the Vinolia. It would leave her hair smelling like violets and get rid of the acrid smoke scent the fire had left, and violets were lovely. She rinsed her hair after washing with lavender water and scrubbed her body with the Pears soap. It left a light, sweet floral scent she enjoyed.
She tied her long blonde hair in a Turkish towel, gathered her silks and a towel of thick cotton, and headed back to her room. The silks were dropped inside a hamper for her to wash later, and she dried herself, then moved to her drawers and began selecting the days clothing as if she was preparing for battle, or shopping. A silk chemise was first, and she chose one that was a pale pink colour. All of her clothes were new; everything had needed to be replaced after her birthday. This chemise was one she hadn’t worn before but had been looking forward to trying. It had drawers fitted to the chemise, making it all one piece like a swimsuit, though of course it wasn’t as tight as one. She had heard only fast women wore tight underwear; she’d asked her bibi-daj if they were fast because the underwear was aerodynamic, and her bibi-daj had laughed herself off the settee.
Stella pulled on a silk brocade corset and a silk corset cover. Almost everything after her birthday had been made with silk. Her petticoats were silk taffeta and rustled as she moved. She decided on ivory stockings, and silk ribbon garters, and over it all chose a silk shirtwaist and skirt. They were made to look as if they weren’t silk, but to her eyes that failed.
The shirtwaist was a pale blue, the skirt a pale green. It took her a moment of concentration, but she soon had the colours matching somewhere in the middle, slightly more green than blue. It looked very pretty.
Stella completed the outfit with her tan coloured leather boots that looked like they had come from a lion, but were actually calfskin, and a pair of kid leather gloves she tossed in a handbag. She put her hair up in a simple bun, which she hid with a wide-brimmed velvet hat. The hat had sprigs of heather tucked into its silk ribbons.
Almost perfect. She checked her handbag quickly: handkerchief, gloves, coin purse, mirror, hairpins, the slightly-lopsided but wickedly sharp knife she had forged from her birthday iron. After a moment, the handbag was the same colour as her shirtwaist and skirt. Now it was perfect, with everything co-ordinated.
Last, but certainly not least, she retrieved her evidence from the previous night. Her mother and her bibi-daj would know why the warehouse was receiving coal shipments from Europe.
She headed downstairs into the empty house and took an apple from the kitchen. As she left, she was cutting slices off it with her knife and eating them, the drawstrings of her handbag allowing it to dangle from one arm.
She took a tram down through Holloway, and then an eastbound one through the City, and a third to Limehouse. The trams were crowded despite it being late afternoon, and the people around her smelled of sweat and leather and unwashed wool. At least a few had already been into their cups, and she could smell cheap beer and cheaper whiskey, and a wonderful herbal scent from an old lady with a flask of some kind of tea.
Conversations flowed around her, and she found it easier than yesterday to focus on individual speakers. Her senses had once more developed as she was given new powers. Curious, she tested her heartrate, and found it had dropped to twenty-three beats per minute.
Hopefully the powers weren’t going to kill her. She needed her heart to beat.
There was a tram stop on Commercial Road right by St. Anne’s church, and she disembarked there.
“Fire, fire!” The voice startled her, but when she turned to the little boy who was shouting, he was simply waving a newspaper around. “Read all ‘bout it, fire right ‘ere in Limehouse,” he yelled.
He was standing before a wooden kiosk, where piles of newspapers were stacked. An older man inside the open-fronted booth was smoking a cigarette as he watched the little lad. After a second, Stella approached them.
“There was a fire?” she asked.
“Was there ever, miss,” the boy said. “Biggest fire in Limehouse. Biggest fire in London, even!”
“Surely the Great Fire of London was bigger,” she challenged. “1666? Three-quarters or more of the city burnt? The blaze raged for days?”
The boy considered this carefully. “Dunno ‘bout no old fires, miss, but this was the biggest blaze this century, swear on me mum.”
“Indeed?”
“Proper inferno, it was. Warehouse on Oak Lane, whole place went up, jus’ like that. Aint never seen nothin’ like it, miss. Smoke everywhere, proper chokin’. Fire brigade were run off their feet and the coppers are saying it’s ehh mal… mal-fees… deliberate, miss.”
“Well, I should hardly need to buy a paper now you have informed me of all that has occurred.”
“Jack,” the vendor’s voice was low, a warning.
The newspaper boy’s face paled. “There’s loads more other stuff in the paper, miss. Spain. Smalia. Siberia. We gots all the esses today.”
“Somalia,” she corrected without thinking, as she reached into her handbag for her coin purse. “I shall have a copy of the London Eye.”
“Ap’ny bit, miss, and a pleasure doin’ your business, swear on me mum.”
Stella tucked the paper under her arm, bid the lad and the vendor a good day, and walked on. She cut through the churchyard, but avoided the building and the teenagers inside, walking over the grass and around the old gravestones to the gate. The church had its own grounds, surrounded by grass and trees, and with monuments marking the dead that seemed far too grand to be referred to as gravestones, though not grand enough to be mausoleums. It seemed removed from the Docklands whilst being in the heart of them.
She entered from the north and left to the west and then she was heading along the Cut to Oak Lane. The warehouse was gone, the piled dark, wet ash still bearing heat. Any clues would have fled with the smoke, but she still had the letter.
A glance at the paper showed they had made the front page. Her mother was going to be annoyed by that, but the fire had been her idea. It was time to face her anyway, to find out what had happened with the kidnapped teenagers, and to confess about the mysterious Voice.
Well, if it was the Voice of God, at least the discussion of it would take place in His House, which she had slowly wandered back to. Wide, low stone steps led up to a single door, and the entire building was covered in white plaster stained grey with the London smog.
She opened the door and entered the building. This was a foyer, a door to her left leading back outside, a door ahead leading into the church proper. She went through that door and found the church empty, which was unsurprising on a Monday afternoon. She took a seat on a pew.
Stella had a complicated relationship with God. Her mother didn’t believe or, if she did, kept those beliefs to herself. She didn’t worship, at least, which wasn’t surprising given what Stella understood of her upbringing. Her bibi-daj believed and was the one who had taught Stella about God, but her bibi-daj held her belief as a shameful thing. God had cast her aside and didn’t want her, she had confessed to Stella one night after far too much brandy. So, she didn’t want God, although Stella suspected she did want God. She worshipped privately and taught Stella religion, at least, and her mother never looked askance at the lessons.
Stella didn’t know if she believed. She prayed sometimes, because why not? It might help and didn’t hurt. She didn’t worship, though, because she couldn’t see the point and no one had explained it to her.
It did seem like this was a point against the Voice being God, though, because surely God had some Christians who would be delighted to hear from Him, instead of Stella, who was less delighted and more… annoyed.
So, instead of prayer or worship, she sat on a pew in the church and read the paper she had bought. All the esses turned out to be the start of a five-day exposé on the Siberian Wastes between the remnants of what had been Russia and the Japanese Empire, starting with the Warlords of the Wastes; Somalian independence under the leadership of Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan; and the Portuguese consulate in Madrid had closed, and the staff had been evacuated. The Spanish Summer of Blood was getting worse.
“Is there anything I may help you with, miss?” a voice asked and she turned to see a priest watching her. He was a young man, pale-skinned and dark-haired, and he looked very easy to take in a fight. Probably wouldn’t even strike back.
“I am here regarding the situation with the children in the crypt,” she stated.
“I assure you, there are no children in the crypt,” he replied, smoothly.
She frowned. Where had her mother and her bibi-daj taken them? They had said they would bring them here. She didn’t think the priests would have refused them entry, and it should have been easy enough. A five-minute stroll up a dark canal bank in the middle of the night, no one would have spotted them. Anyone who did would avoid a party that large without getting close. “Are you lying?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, blushing slightly. The blush meant he was lying, right? Or he thought she was cute? Were priests allowed to think people were cute? She was pretty sure they weren’t, so he must be lying.
“Are you, a priest, truly so bold as to speak untruths in the House of God?” She couldn’t help the smile that formed at this delightful idea.
“God may, on occasion, permit a small falsehood, when it serves to shield a child from harm.”
“Huh. Suppose we were to speak of one hundred and sixty children, Father… should I call you father? Priest, my mother entrusted them to your care last night. I am here to render whatever aid may be required.”
“Are you Stella?”
“I am.”
The priest sighed. “Good, I dislike resorting to untruths in the House of God, even if they are required to shield children who have suffered much. You may address me as Mr Fields, not father, please. I am one of the curates here. Come, your mother awaits you.”
“So easily?” she queried. At his look, she clarified. “You trust my word so easily, Mr Fields?”
“You have a light about you, Miss Maris. You shine with it, as if God Himself has blessed your path. I do not worry if I can trust you, for I can see that you are righteous.”
She was silent as they made their way down to the crypt. Was this her new skill, heroic presence? It made her… shiny… to priests? How had the Voice known she would meet a priest today? The fireproofing, or whatever the second skill was, made sense since she had been in a fire last night. This one did not make any sense. Oh, here is a skill you might need if you ever meet a priest followed by bam priest to the face! Alright, not to the face, but how could the Voice know what was coming?
Could it tell the future? That was an argument in favour of the Voice being God, as she understood it. Or had it just inferred priests from sending the teenagers to shelter in a church? That was a logical progression, she supposed.
She dismissed the thought as she heard voices from up ahead. The priest bid her farewell and she continued on alone. The crypts were many rooms, but they were built along a massive central chamber with a vaulted ceiling made of individual bricks. She had sneaked in before, looking for places to hide food, but decided the crypt was impracticable.
Now it was filled with camping supplies, and the teenagers were spread throughout it in groups. Her mother was in the centre, with her bibi-daj, Diego, and the girl who could heal. Their conversation stilled as Stella approached.
“Congratulations, mama,” she held out the newspaper. “You have made the front page.”
Her mother glanced at the paper but made no move to take it, so Stella tucked it back under one arm, feeling foolish.
“How may I assist?” Stella asked.
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