The mill’s clamor faded to a dull throb as Eleanor sat by the tenement’s hearth, its embers casting a faint blush on the warped walls. Her hands, torn by Thornfield’s looms, gripped a shard of wood scavenged from the yard—a splintered plank, rough as her days. With a blunt knife, she carved, each stroke a labor against the ache in her joints. Cotton dust lingered in her throat, her cough a harsh undertone, but she shaped a bird, its wings crude yet poised, a mirror to Eldric’s fragile dreams.

  He watched from his pallet, his bent legs tucked beneath a threadbare quilt, his hazel eyes—James’s eyes—alight with wonder. “For me, Mama?” he asked, voice a wisp, and she nodded, her smile a mask over the grief gnawing her chest. “For when you fly,” she said, pressing it into his small hands, and he traced its edges, his delight a dagger in her heart. She saw James in that act—his horse, his care—and felt the void he’d left yawn wider.

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  Margaret rocked in her corner, her white hair a wild halo, murmuring, “Birds in the barn,” a fragment of a past unmoored. Henry’s hands lay still, his breath a shallow tide, and Eleanor’s gaze lingered on them—her parents, slipping like sand through her grasp. She lit a candle, its flame a stuttering sentinel, and the room’s shadows deepened, mirroring the darkness within. The bird was no salve, only a gesture against the ruin creeping closer—Thornfield’s toll, the hunger they could not outrun.

  Eldric clutched his gift, humming a tune she’d taught him, and she pulled him close, his warmth a fleeting shield. “You’ll soar,” she whispered, though her voice broke, knowing he’d never rise from this squalor. The mill’s dust, the king’s decrees—they’d bound her wings, and his, and she felt the weight of that truth crush her spirit, a mother’s love powerless against the storm gathering at their door.