We sat together in front of the fireplace embroidering napkins. Una was much faster than me, her stitches neat and uniform. “It’s a shame,” my mother remarked as she held up my work, “Your buttonhole stitches look square. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Everything I do is cornered,” I tried not to look up and failed.
“You don’t have to do it,” Mother crumpled the napkin, letting it fall into the basket of scraps, “Una could finish the set for you.”
I waited until she left the room to retrieve my napkin, “I like my work.” Folding it into quarters, I placed it on top of Una’s three, the buttonholes perfect yellow suns in each corner.
“Work puts the song in my heart,” Una began to hum. Her voice was a bird-like soprano that made mine sound like a child playing violin.
“Well, you’ll have lots more of it coming your way with the prince’s bal masqué. It will be, ‘Una, polish the doorknobs. Una, take in this bodice. Una, clean the fireplace.’ Because you know, the prince will somehow see our cinders,” I stuck myself with a needle and winced.
“I would love to see a bal masqué. Perhaps I should attend,” Una finished another napkin.
“If you wore gloves and a very high-necked gown I suppose you could,” a smile pricked at the edges of my mouth, “Oh, and if there’s a conversation you don’t understand, giggle and fan yourself.”
“I will understand.”
“What if it’s about shipping or smithing? I can only follow conversations about clocks. Last dance I told William how to fix his pocket watch. He wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. I should have giggled and fanned, but he makes all my edges come out.”
“I will court the prince and rule the world.”
I set my half-finished embroidery on the arm of the settee and fished the key out of my pocket. “Could you pick up the green floss?”
Una leaned forward and I slotted the key in her back. “You always keep me well wound,” Una’s fingers closed around a skein of floss, “Do you need this color, or are you giggling and fanning.”
“Ah,” blush crept into my cheeks, “I have been found out.” I turned the key anyway. At least she hadn’t noticed that I always wound her when she said strange things. I’m going to subjugate all humankind. Wind. Someday I will open up Father and see what makes him tick. Wind.
“William,” Una’s voice slurred, “Will he be at the bal masqué?”
“I suppose.” Just thinking of him made me feel sharp. A week ago he had given me a glove, the button torn off the cuff. It sat neglected underneath a half-stitched handkerchief.
The glove stayed there over the remaining months, and I forgot its presence as preparations for the bal masqué reached a fever pitch. The entire house was cleaned from the eaves all the way down to the root cellar. Una had no time to do anything other than chores. Even the last-minute alterations had to be done by me and Mother so Una could continue scrubbing.
So it was with regret that I took my place across from my parents in the carriage. Una would not be able to attend.
The carriage rattled its way over the cobblestones, the inside lit like a giant jack-o’-lantern. Children waved from windows, standing on tip-toe to catch a glimpse of a feathered mask.
The castle rose out of the skyline, its turrets towering over the surrounding buildings. We rumbled onto a drive that circled a statue of a lion, its head thrown back mid roar. Carriages halted, one behind the other, and a footman opened the door and placed the step. Between the darkness of night, my skirts, and the edges of my mask, I could see very little until we arrived at the ballroom.
The ballroom seemed to throb with color and voices. I recognized no one, and I found myself staring at the shed feathers that lay on the floor. I was counting them when a man approached me.
“May I have this dance?”
“It would be . . . “ I stopped mid-curtsy. He wore only one glove, and through his tri-color mask, I could make out the sparkle of recognition in his eyes. “You could have worn another set of gloves,” I took his hand.
“I am still waiting for a certain lady to repair my other one,” William rested his other hand on my waist.
“No gentleman would want a glove repaired by that lady. Somehow she will get your button crooked.”
William laughed. “I shall wear it anyways because her stitches show her esteem,” he waltzed me over to one of the grand staircases. There was a woman descending it and her costume caught my eye.
“Oh look,” I gasped, “Her dress is clock themed.” Interconnected gears were stitched all over her gown and her mask was made of moving clock parts.
“At first I thought that was you,” William steered me under the stair, “but it was only Una.”
“Una?”
“Yes, I spoke to her.”
“Oh no, I didn’t bring her key. What if she winds down and can’t move?”
“Then you can fetch her,” William tightened his grip on my hand, “but for now you are my partner and there’s something important I’ve need to tell you.”
“Important?” My eyes were on the man to whom Una was speaking. I couldn’t be certain, but he had a royal bearing.
“I have been thinking about . . . is that a clock?” William wasn’t the only one who turned. Everyone swiveled, their eyes searching for the source of the bonging.
Out of force of habit, I counted them. “Twelve o’clock,” I stepped on Williams’s foot as the crowd shifted, “It isn’t though.”
“Una’s gone,” William looked to the door, “Let’s go.”
We pushed through the crowd, past the prince, his hands cupped around a shoe made of watch bezels and domed glass. Una was waiting for us under the lion, posed on the bare mechanism of her unshod foot, the other lifted in the air. William helped me load her into his carriage.
He didn’t remove his mask until he sat on the carriage seat across from me. I cradled Una’s head in my lap.
“I have been thinking about who you fancy,” William rapped on the top of the carriage. It moved forward with a jerk.
“No one.”
“No, there’s someone you think of always. And I realized I’m jealous of Una,” he shifted on the bench, “I wish that you thought that often of me.”
“But William, have you thought of how it is to be her, to be stuck in a body that must constantly be wound, to be regarded as an item instead of a person?”
“I think,” he rested his head in his hands, “that we should not speak again for a while.”
“Yes,” I blinked hard, the cogs on Una’s gown blurring until they resembled a series of squares, each stitch a repetition that I could not escape, “we bring out the worst in each other.”