Ellini used her experience of moving undetected through the tunnels of the fire-mines to sneak back into the Faculty. The creaking stairs gave her some trouble, but she was light-footed, and a very experienced climber, so she was able to get up to her room without putting her feet down in many of the usual places.

It was a lot of trouble to go to, but she knew she couldn't have faced a talk with Jack just yet.

She was so successful in avoiding attention that she had been back in her mysteriously wrecked room, with her mysteriously fixed doll, for over an hour before Jack rattled the handle of the door, expecting to breeze right in, and found it locked.

He tried the handle again, as though he couldn't quite believe it, and then called out, "Mouse, let me in."

"I'm changing," said Ellini, in the steady voice she had been practising all afternoon.

This was technically true. She had struggled out of her mint-green dress and unpinned her hair as soon as she'd come back. They were the second and third things she had done – after locking the door.

But she couldn't bring herself to put on her beautiful white gown yet. It was too intimately associated with hope. So she was pottering about the bedroom in her corset and petticoat, trying to avoid the smashed ornaments as best she could. She didn't want to let Sarah in to sweep up, but, at the same time, she didn't much feel like doing it herself. The ruined bedroom seemed to be an ideal metaphor for her ruined life, so she wore it like a dressing gown.

On the other side of the door, she heard Jack give an impatient sigh. "I've seen you naked before," he pointed out.

Ellini fixed the doll with a withering glance and said, "That is such a male objection."

"Look, I need to talk to you."

"Honestly, I'm not decent," she protested. "I'll meet you at the River Club later."

This seemed to pacify him. He had obviously not expected her to keep their appointment to go dancing tonight. There was a moment's silence on the other side of the door, and then he said, in a voice that was half-sulky and half-sheepish, "Mouse, I only kissed her."

Ellini shut her eyes.

"And if it helps," he went on, "she's even angrier with me than you are."

"I'm not angry with you," said Ellini, in her clearest, calmest voice.

"Oh." There was another pause, while he turned this over in his mind. "That's much worse."

He rattled the door-handle again – apparently just for something to do while he thought about what to say next.

"I'm sorry about your room," he ventured at last. "Danvers tried to attack me."

Ellini looked up in alarm. "Is he all right?"

There was an irritable silence on the other side of the door. "Yes, he's all right. Your concern for him is very touching."

"Well, I know you can take care of yourself," said Ellini. She hadn't meant it to sound reproachful, but it probably had.

Jack didn't linger on this subject anyway. Perhaps it was his short attention span, or perhaps he was casting about for a subject that would cause her manner towards him to thaw.

"Did you see I fixed your doll?"

"Yes," said Ellini. "Thank you very much."

This cool civility seemed to be the last straw. "Could you try being angry with me? I really think it would help."

"I'm afraid I'm not very interested."

There was an impatient sound on the other side of the door – a sort of growling groan. "Look, I don't have to put up with this, you know. I told you it was a friendship marriage – I told you I was doing it to save your life. And, if you look me up in any decent encyclopaedia, you'll see that's not exactly what I'm famed for."

"I disagree," said Ellini calmly. "You saved the new-breeds in the prison colonies. Do you think they care that it was out of character?"

There was a pause on the other side of the door, while Jack tried to work out whether he'd been complimented or insulted. "My point," he went on, with slightly uncertain anger, "is that I'm not a high-minded philanthropist – I'm the barbarian war-lord, and my life is supposed to be fun!"

"I hope it is," said Ellini. "It might as well be."

She heard the tread of his feet on the floorboards as he stormed off – and then a slower, softer step, as he came back.

"We're meeting at the River Club, yes?" he said, in a sulky voice. "At eight o'clock?"

Ellini was surprised. And, through the sulk, she thought she could detect a trace of surprise in his voice too. Neither of them had expected him to be the patient one.

"I believe I've already answered--" she began, but Jack's voice cut through her, and it sounded as though it was coming out through clenched teeth.

"No. Don't talk to me as though I'm at the far end of a very polite dining-hall. I just – want you to say yes."

"Yes," said Ellini, frowning at the door.

Jack didn't say anything else. She heard his footsteps retreat down the landing and up the stairs. For a while after that, she could hear him pacing around his own bedroom, which was directly above hers. That was puzzling too. She would have expected him to have gone out and had a drink. Perhaps he'd found another of Sergei's concealed bottles of Schnapps.

Ellini busied herself getting ready, doing everything – even her hair – before she dared to put on the white dress. She was basking in one of those otherworldly moments of calm that followed hot on the heels of strong emotion, and she tried to explain this feeling to the doll, while she dabbed rouge on her cheeks in front of the cracked mirror.

"It's all right, you know," she said matter-of-factly, like a child instructing a younger sibling. "There is such a thing as love in the world, it just isn't where we've been taught to expect it. When men say they'd die for you, and worship your body like a graven image, that's not it – even Violet told me that. But there is love, little--" She blinked, and frowned at the doll in surprise. "Have I never given you a name, little girl? Well, you shall have one now. Be--"

Ellini cast her eyes around the room, seeking for inspiration. Then her eyes filled up with tears, because she had found it.

"Be little cricket," she said. "I'm leaving that name behind me now, so you can have it. But it comes with a warning, little cricket. Don't idealize people. Don't count on anyone to save you but yourself. You're stronger than you kn--"

But she had to stop there, because she was finally crying.

And it was strange but, after she'd cried a bit, and spoken soothingly to the doll, she wasn't angry with herself anymore. She didn't say that she hadn't been stupid – nobody would say that – but she was back on course now, doing what she could for the people she loved. And that even included Jack, who would be a free man now until the day he died.

She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand, and gave the doll's motley, patched-up face a kiss. 

"Remember," she said quietly, "you may not be as pretty as the other dolls, but scars give you character, and interesting stories to tell. Besides, the prettiest thing of all is when you rise above them. Love isn't what they say it is, and beauty isn't what they say it is, either. Never forget that, little cricket."

***

At that moment – or the moment of this kiss, anyway, because a kiss is a very powerful magical act, in the right circumstances – something that had been standing silently in a glass case in Christchurch meadow opened its eyes. The eyes were actually blue marbles, and because it couldn't see through them, the creature groped around in panic, drawing great, ragged breaths, but encountering nothing but walls. After a few, desperate minutes, it punched through them.

***

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