The Story of Cirrus Flux Read Online Free PDF

front of him, “on the off chance they might one day be in a position to reclaim them. Their children, I mean, and not their tokens.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and gazed into the distance. “Though, I fear, this is seldom the case.”
    Madame Orrery opened one of the drawers and pickedthrough its contents. “How … tragic,” she said at last, dusting her fingers on her dress.
    She continued inspecting the drawers while the Governor busied himself with his paperwork.
    “And what is it precisely that you do, Madame Orrery?” he enquired after a while, pausing to dip his quill in some ink.
    She turned to face him. “I am a mesmerist,” she said. “I cure the body and heal the soul. It is a form of animal magnetism.”
    Mr. Chalfont frowned slightly. “I am afraid I am not familiar with that particular branch of natural philosophy,” he said.
    Madame Orrery smiled and walked over to the portrait of his dead wife. She stroked the likeness with her fingers. “I relieve the body of its physical suffering and ease the mind of its spiritual complaints,” she said. “I wipe the mind clean of its painful memories.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “Just one of my sessions, Mr. Chalfont, could alleviate whatever ails you.”
    Mr. Chalfont stood up and cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary, thank you all the same, Madame Orrery,” he said, his cheeks reddening a little. “And now, if you would be so kind.” He motioned to the form in front of him. “All we require is your signature and the girl will be yours.”
    Pandora felt her chest tighten. A hundred words tangled in her throat all at once, all pleading with the Governor not to let her go, but the man merely smiled when he noticed herdistress and she looked on helplessly as the woman sat down at the table and wrote her name in a seamless thread of ink.
    “Very good,” said Mr. Chalfont, clapping his hand on Pandora’s shoulder. “Child number four thousand and two, you are hereby apprenticed to Madame Orrery of Midas Row.”
    A maid arrived with a bundle of clothes, which the Governor pressed into Pandora’s hands, and then he escorted her out of the room and down a series of long dismal corridors to the front of the hospital.
    “You really must let me see to your gout,” said Madame Orrery as he limped beside them.
    “That is quite all right, Madame Orrery,” he said. “I am content to hobble on as I am. And now, if you will excuse me …” He bowed and hurried away.
    Pandora watched him go. Apart from a few years in the country, in the custody of Mrs. Stockton, the nurse who had mistreated her, she had spent most of her life within the confines of the hospital—rising early, attending to her chores and caring for the younger girls—but now the doors were opening up and flinging her out. She was leaving the hospital almost exactly as she had entered it: in the company of a woman who did not want her.
    She blinked away the light that greeted her eyes and made her way to the gate.
    Only once they reached the iron railings separating the Foundling Hospital from the outside world did MadameOrrery pause to consider her young charge. Her face registered her disapproval.
    “What a tiresome girl you are,” she said. “Have you no chest? No other belongings?”
    Pandora shook her head, her voice taking refuge inside her. What little she owned—apart from the change of clothes Mr. Chalfont had hastily thrown into her arms—she wore on her person. She had not even had time to collect her sole possession from its position beneath her pillow in the girls’ dormitory: a prize book Miss Stitchworthy, the instructress, had awarded her for her uncommon ability to read. She glanced at the windows high above her, but there were no friendly faces to see her off.
    “Very well, child. Come along.”
    Two carriages had drawn up to the hospital gate, and Pandora bundled herself inside the one with the silver timepiece enameled on its door. The