Thornfield Mill loomed in the pre-dawn murk, its iron frame a gaunt specter as Eleanor shuffled through its gates. The air thrummed with the looms’ ceaseless roar, cotton dust swirling like a plague, settling deep in her chest. Her cough had sharpened, a ragged edge that tore at her throat, and she pressed a stained rag to her lips, its flecks of red a secret she hid. Her hands, gnarled by threads, moved slower now, faltering on the levers, and the machine’s snarl mocked her frailty—twelve hours stretched into an eternity of ache.

  The gas lamps cast a sickly pall, illuminating women bent like willows—coughing, trembling, their youth ground to husk. Eleanor’s back bowed, her breath a labor, and she saw her end in their hollow eyes: Thornfield’s toll was no mere wage but a thief of life itself. The foreman prowled, his shadow a whip, and she pushed on, though her vision blurred, sweat and dust stinging like nettles. Sixpence gleamed in her mind, a cruel jest against the hunger it could not sate.

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  She stumbled home through Wolthrope’s dusk, the streets a blur of coal ash and flickering lamps. Eldric waited by the hearth, his bird still in his lap. “Mama,” he said, and she knelt, brushing his hair with trembling fingers, forcing a smile. “My brave boy,” she rasped, her voice a ghost, and he leaned into her, his warmth a dagger in her chest—she was fading, and he saw it. Margaret muttered, “Fire’s out,” though embers glowed, and Henry’s wheeze filled the silence, his hands idle.

  The candle’s flame wavered, a frail witness to her ruin, and she flexed her torn hands. The mill stole more than breath—it took her strength, her hope, leaving a shell to tend her kin. She pressed her lips to Eldric’s brow, tasting her own salt, and felt the toll deepen—a sentence etched in dust, her body a fragile dam against the flood poised to drown them all.