The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

back, ready to hurl it at him. To the immediate shock of each woman, instead of running her through, the man stumbled back and then sprinted up the stairs as fast as the awkward helmet and apron would allow. All he needed was a set of bat’s wings, Miss Temple thought, to make a perfect shambling imp of hell.
    The women looked at each other, baffled at their near escape. The platform door was shaken again from the outside, and the stairwell above them echoed with shouts from the running man—shouts that were answered as he met their initial pursuers. There was no time. Miss Temple took Elöise brusquely by the arm and shoved her toward the open hatch.
    “You must get in!” she hissed.
“Get in!”
    She did not know if it had room for two, or even if the lift would carry their weight if there was, but nevertheless leapt to the brass plate of controls, forcing her tired mind—for her day had been more than full, and she had not eaten or drunk tea in the longest time—to make sense of its buttons…one green, one red, one blue, and a solid brass knob. Elöise folded her legs into the hatch, her mouth a drawn grim line, one hand a tight fist and the other still holding the orange bottle. The shouting above had turned and someone pounded on the outside door. At the green button the dumbwaiter lurched up. At the red, it went down. The blue did not seem to do a thing. She tried the green again. Nothing happened. She tried red, and it went down—perhaps a single inch, but all the way to the end.
    The door to the platform shook on its hinges.
    She had it. The blue button meant the dumbwaiter must continue its course—it was used to prevent needless wear on the engines caused by changing directions mid-passage. Miss Temple stabbed the blue button, then the green, and dove for the hatch, Elöise’s arms around her waist, gathering her quickly in, Miss Temple’s wriggling feet just barely slipping through the narrowing hatchway before they rose into the pitch-black shaft, their last view the black boots of Macklenburg soldiers limping down the final steps.

    The fit was incredibly awkward and, after the initial relief that first they were indeed climbing and second the men had not stopped their way and third that she had not been sheared of any limbs, Miss Temple attempted to shift herself to a more comfortable position only to find that the effort ground her knees into her companion’s side, and Elöise’s elbow sharp against her ear. She turned her face the other way and found her ear pressed flat on the other woman’s chest, Elöise’s body warm and damp with perspiration, her flesh soft and the cushioned thrum of her heartbeat reaching Miss Temple despite the dumbwaiter’s clanking chains, like a precious secret risked by whisper in a crowded parlor. Miss Temple realized that her torso was curled between the other woman’s legs, legs drawn tightly up to Elöise’s chin, while her own legs were cruelly bent beneath them both. There had not been time to shut the hatch, and Miss Temple held her feet tucked with one arm—the other close around Elöise—so they did not, with the jarring of the dumbwaiter, accidentally pop out into the shaft. They did not speak, but after a moment she felt the other woman tug free an arm and then Miss Temple, already grateful despite herself for the comfort afforded by the unintended and therefore unacknowledged close contact with her companion’s body, felt the other woman’s hand smoothing her hair with soft and gentle strokes.
    “At the top, they will try to reverse it before we can get out,” she whispered.
    “They will,” agreed Elöise quietly. “You must get out first. I will push you.”
    “And then I shall pull your feet.”
    “That will be fine, I am sure.”
    “What if there are more men?”
    “It’s very possible.”
    “We will surprise them,” observed Miss Temple quietly.
    Elöise did not answer, but held the younger woman’s head to her bosom with an exhalation of breath that to Miss Temple was equal parts sweetness and sorrow, a mixture she did not completely understand. Such physical intimacy with another woman was unusual for Miss Temple, much less any emotional intimacy—but she knew that their adventures had already hastened a connection to each other, as a telescope eliminated the distance between a ship and the shore. It was the same with Chang and Svenson, men who she in truth knew not at all yet felt were the only souls in the world she