Thornfield Mill’s iron heart pulsed as Eleanor dragged herself through its gates, the dawn a smear of gray above the chimneys. Her arm throbbed beneath the bandage, her blood’s price spent on a loaf now dwindled to crumbs. Cotton dust swirled, a bitter fog that clawed her lungs, and her cough tore free, a jagged hymn to her ruin. The looms loomed, relentless, and she gripped the levers, her hands—blistered, trembling—slipping on the threads. Each clack of the machine was a hammer to her skull, her body a reed bent near snapping.

  The women around her toiled in silence, their faces etched with the mill’s cruel script—eyes dulled, backs bowed—and she felt herself fading into their ranks. Her breath came short, a rattle in her chest, and sweat soaked her patched dress, its hem frayed as her hope. The foreman’s shout—“Work, you hag!”—lashed her, and she pushed on, though her knees buckled, her vision a haze of dust and despair. Sixpence gleamed, a mocking star, but it could not mend what Thornfield broke.

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  She staggered home through Wolthrope’s dusk, the streets awash with soot, her steps a faltering dirge. Margaret sat by the hearth, her voice a whisper: “I’ll keep us alive,” Eleanor murmured, though her mother’s blank stare answered not. She lit a candle, its flame a frail protest, and sank beside the pallet, her hands clutching James’s coat. Eldric slept, his bird still, and Henry’s wheeze filled the air, a mournful tide. The loaf’s remnants mocked her—a shilling’s worth, bled from her veins, yet hunger lingered, sharper now.

  Her chest burned, her spirit frayed—Thornfield had taken her breath, her blood, and now her will. She pressed her face to the coat, its wool a mute witness, and felt the breaking point near. “I can’t,” she whispered to the dark, a confession to shadows. The mill’s toll was a sentence, and she feared its final stroke would shatter her, leaving her kin to the void.