The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

extraordinary books then you must know.” She gestured toward Miss Vandaariff’s dressing closet. “So many are so tender, hungry, so deeply in need. How much of what you read—or indeed, what you remember—was most singularly rooted in painful loneliness? If a person could rid themselves of such a source of anguish…can you truly find fault?”
    “Anguish and loss are part of life,” Miss Temple retorted.
    “They are,” Caroline agreed. “And yet…if they need not be?”
    Miss Temple tossed her head and bit her lip. “You present kindness…where others…well, they are a nest of vipers. My companions have been killed. I am compelled here by force…I have been and will be
violated
—as surely as if your finely dressed mob were a gang of Cossacks!”
    “I hope that is not the case, truly,” said Caroline. “But if the Process has made anything clear to me, it is that what happens here is only the expression of what you yourself have decided—indeed, what you have asked for.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I do not say it to anger you.” She held up a hand to forestall Miss Temple’s announcement that she was
already
angry. “Do you think I cannot see the bruises on your pretty neck? Do you imagine I enjoy the sight? I am not a woman who dreams of power or fame, though I know there have been deaths—I do not presume to understand their cause—as a result of those dreams. I know there has been murder, around me and within this house. I know that I do
not
know what those above me plan. And yet I also know that these dreams—theirs and mine—bring with them…the opposite side of their coin, if you will—a bliss of purpose, of simplicity, and indeed…Celeste…of surrender.”
    Miss Temple sniffed sharply and swallowed, determined not to give way. She was not used to hearing her name so freely used and found it unnerving. The woman presented the Cabal’s goals in terms of reason and care—indeed, she seemed a higher level of antagonist altogether for not seeming one at all. The room was unbearable—the lace and the perfumes—so many and so thick—were smothering.
    “I would prefer it if you referred to me as Miss Temple,” she said.
    “Of course,” said Caroline, with what seemed a gentle, sad sort of smile.

    As if by some rotation of the gears of a clock, they no longer spoke, the room settling into silence and subsequently into contemplation. Yet Miss Temple could only think of the oppressive vacuity of the furnishings around her—though she had no doubt they were the heartfelt expression of Miss Vandaariff—and the low ceiling that, despite the luxurious cherry wood, still bespoke confinement. She looked at the walls and decided at least four prison cells had been opened up together for this room alone. Was it inevitable that
this
luxuriously impersonal lodging was her final refuge as a whole-minded person? As if her burdens had become at once too much to bear, Miss Temple’s tears broke suddenly forward, quite dissolving her face, her small shoulders shaking with emotion, blinking, her pink cheeks heedlessly streaked, her lips quivering. So often in her life, tears were the consequence of some affront or denial, an expression of frustration and a sense of unfairness—when those with power (her father, her governess) might have acceded to her wishes but out of cruelty did not. Now Miss Temple felt that she wept for a world without any such authority at all…and the kind face of Caroline—however much she knew it to represent the interests of her captors—only reinforced how trivial and unanswered her complaints must remain, how insignificant her losses, and how fully removed from love, or if not love, primacy in another’s thoughts, she had become.
    She wiped her eyes and cursed her weakness. What had happened she had not already known in her heart to expect? What revelations had challenged her pragmatic, grim determination? Had she not hardened herself to this exact situation—and was not that hardness, that firmness of mind, her only source of hope? Still the tears would not cease, and she covered her face in her hands.
    No one touched her, or spoke. She remained bent over—who knew how long?—until her sobbing eased, eyes squeezed shut. She was so frightened, in a way even more than in her deathly struggle with Spragg, for that had been sudden and violent and close and this…they had given her time—so much time—to steep in her dread, to roil in the prospect