✶✶✶
THE matron led them to what appeared to be the orphanage’s infirmary, where she stepped in first, leaving them waiting just outside.
“Excuse me,” Margaret said.
“Yes?” came a female voice. “Ah, matron.”
“How is she?”
“Same as yesterday. Still won’t eat a thing.”
“I see.”
Sophie, Claire, and Raymond were then granted entry. Inside, on one of the many beds fitted with clean white sheets, lay Cecili—alone, curled up under the covers. Though Sophie had only seen her three days ago, Cecili was now so thin as to almost be unrecognizable.
Cecili looked up, clocked who it was, and immediately, big, glistening tears welled up in her baby blue eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“Please don’t arrest her,” she said.
She sat up, the action seemingly taking all the strength she had.
“Please don’t have Mairi arrested,” she pleaded again, fumbling weakly to push the covers off.
“I won’t,” Sophie said decisively.
Hearing this, Cecili let out half a breath. But then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed backward onto the bed.
“Ah,” Sophie muttered in alarm, instinctively moving to steady her. But the matron stuck out a firm arm, stopping her.
They watched as the woman who appeared to be the nurse carefully held Cecili, adjusting her into a more comfortable position. She pulled the blanket over her again, tucking it in securely. Only once this was done did the matron finally speak.
“Three days ago, in the evening, Cecili returned to the orphanage carrying her sister on her back—one shoe missing, her clothes caked in mud. Since then, she has neither eaten nor slept. Every time we ask what happened, she starts trembling, and we get nowhere. We’ve begged and pleaded—eventually, we stopped asking, just hoping she’d eat something. But still, she refuses.”
She sighed, glancing at Cecili’s frail form beneath the blankets.
“We tried asking Mairi, but the child is too young. What little we could piece together was…fragmented, at best. We know something had been broken at an estate or manor somewhere. But where and what exactly, we still do not know.”
The matron hesitated, then straightened, her tone turning careful.
“Had we known the circumstances, we should have come ourselves to offer our apologies. That you have taken the trouble to come instead is truly regrettable. I must ask, if it would not be too much trouble, whether you might share the details with me in my office.”
“Ah, you know what? Just remembered I gotta hand cookies out to the kids,” Raymond said with a smile.
“I think I’m going to go play with them,” Claire added cheerfully before they both sauntered out of the room.
Resigning herself to the fact that she would have to handle this alone, Sophie followed the matron to her office. The room was, despite being the office of the most important person in the orphanage, poorly lit and cramped. Besides the office desk and a small table for entertaining guests, it was a sparse, threadbare space—its only decorations were books.
The matron gestured for Sophie to take the guest seat, an unfamiliar position for her as she was usually the one on the other side. But after a few sips of the hot tea the matron served—its flavor oddly nostalgic—her nerves settled, and she let out a slow breath.
“Goodness, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I?” she said. “I’m Sophie Olzon. I run a little salon near the port.” Saying this, she produced a flyer for Sophie’s Salon, handing it to the matron.
The woman adjusted her glasses, shifting them up and down until the focus was just right, then read the flyer in full. Only when she finished did Sophie continue.
“After exchanging formal correspondence to confirm their appointment, Ms. Cecili, in tandem with Ms. Mairi, visited my salon three days ago as guests. While there, Ms. Mairi touched a small glass ornament and, quite by accident, knocked it to the ground. It broke, yes, but really, it was nothing important.”
At that last remark, the matron’s eyes glinted sharply behind her glasses. Sophie was beginning to think she bore a certain resemblance to a wise old goat.
“From Mairi’s description—saying it was, and I quote, ‘about yay big, sparkly, and you can see the flowers inside!’—one can only imagine that the ornament in question was a piece of Maille glasswork. Transparent, with flowers seemingly floating inside—undoubtedly treasured. Very valuable, I’ve no doubt. Even the smallest among them would be worth enough to cover this institution’s food expenses for three full months.”
Wow! Sophie mused internally. That is one hundred percent correct! The matron certainly has an eye for this kind of thing.
Externally, she said, “Then allow me to put it this way. We were well aware that we would be receiving young guests, yet we placed an object so delicate that a single fall would shatter it within a child’s reach. I must ask—is Ms. Mairi all right?”
“Not a scratch on her,” the matron replied. “She’s been running about as lively as ever today.”
Sophie let out a breath of relief. “The fault lies entirely with us. We invite guests to our salon—solicit them to come, in fact—yet failed in our hospitality by such an oversight. I sincerely apologize. If anyone is to be held accountable, it should be us. Rather than demand compensation, I’d rather demand that you allow us to make amends.”
“Please don’t arrest Mairi.” Cecili’s frail voice lingered in Sophie’s mind.
She hadn’t been able to apologize that day—not when Mairi had bolted again, this time out of the estate. Cecili had no choice but to chase after her, fearing she’d run straight into the road, where carriages clattered past without a second glance. A girl as polite and responsible as Cecili had surely wanted, perhaps too much, to catch her sister and drag her back to apologize.
“Please don’t arrest her.”
But the possibility that her little sister could be taken from her was too great a risk. And if Sophie had demanded reparations, how would Cecili have paid? With what money?
Left without the option to return and apologize, she had trudged back to the orphanage, Mairi on her back, tears on her face. Guilt gnawed at her, stealing her appetite and robbing her of sleep.
How desolate, how anxious she must have felt on that long journey home.
Please heal our burns. Cecili, six years old, and Mairi, three years old. Children.
That painstaking note—erased and rewritten, erased and rewritten with such care—and the long journey on foot should have led to a happy ending. Cecili and her sister would have had their burns healed and returned to the orphanage hand in hand, skipping with relief.
Instead, because of what happened, guilt and regret encumbered their journey home, their small shoulders bearing the weight of a crime they believed they had committed. It must have felt crushingly sad, frightening, and heavy.
To hope for something, to set your heart on it, only to have it torn away at the last moment—Sophie knew that feeling well. Like a hole ripped open in your chest.
“I don’t know if this will be enough to make amends,” she said, “but I would like another chance to heal Ms. Cecili and Ms. Mairi. Please.”
She stood, turned to the matron, and bowed deeply. Tears had surfaced at the thought of Cecili, and she wiped them away with a handkerchief.
“Please raise your head,” came the matron’s voice, quiet and reassuring. “And please, sit down.”
She did so, and the matron lifted up the flyer, pointing to a section of it.
“It says here that for the healing spell to work properly, one must, to the best of their ability, accurately recount the details of the accident that caused the scar in the first place.”
“Yes,” Sophie said.
“What exactly did Cecili tell you?”
Sophie hesitated, which only made the matron frown.
“She told you they’re princesses of a usurped kingdom with the mark of the lotus, didn’t she?”
Sophie nodded.
The matron removed her glasses and wearily pinched the bridge of her nose.
“She really is very solemn, that girl,” she muttered before beginning the story.