Thornfield Mill’s din engulfed Eleanor as she stumbled to her loom, the morning a pall of smoke and dread. Her lungs rattled, dust a knife in her throat, and her bloodless arm hung heavy, its strength sapped by the shilling’s cost. The levers mocked her, cold and unyielding, and she gripped them, her blistered hands shaking as the threads blurred before her eyes. Cotton haze choked the air, a shroud that burned her chest, and she coughed—harsh, wet—staining her rag with crimson flecks she could not hide.

  The women beside her toiled, specters in the gaslight, their silence a dirge to her own unraveling. Her knees trembled, her breath a gasping thread, and the loom’s clatter spun her senses into chaos. “Keep up!” the foreman roared, his shadow a lash, but her body betrayed her—a sudden lurch, a wave of black—and she crumpled, her head striking the iron frame. The machine screeched, threads snapping, and she lay in the dust, a broken thing amidst the mill’s relentless march.

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  Voices buzzed—sharp, distant—as hands dragged her aside. “She’s done,” the foreman spat, his scorn a final blow. “No place for the frail.” She woke to dusk, sprawled by the gate, her sixpence forfeit, her dress torn. Wolthrope’s streets loomed, a maze of ash and mire, and she crawled home, the river’s chill gnawing her bones. Eldric’s bird song greeted her, faint by the hearth, and she sank beside him, her voice a husk: “Mama’s here.”

  Margaret rocked, heedless, “Rain’s coming,” and Henry’s stare pierced the gloom, blank. She lit a taper, its flame a faltering witness, and clutched James’s coat, its wool sodden with her sweat. The collapse had stripped her—work, wage, will—and left her a husk, her kin’s hunger a specter she could not banish. “I’ll fix this,” she rasped to Henry’s silence, a vow to shadows. But in her marrow, she knew: Thornfield had broken her, and the abyss waited, jaws wide.