Winnie felt guilty for ever having suspected Miss Blanche. She was just an old lady. Those few women who hadn’t worked at Hollyworth vacated the house after the news came out. People walked slightly on the edge of the pavement while passing their house, sometimes huddled into groups like their disrepute or their illness was contagious. Winnie sometimes wished it was. There were people out there who deserved to die far more than they did.

Sara withered day by day. She spent most of her time in her room, rejecting food and water. Winnie was the only one well enough to walk to the market, where she ignored the disapproving stares of the townspeople and bought groceries with what little money they had left. They didn’t need much either, with the non-existent appetites and their frail bodies.

Miss Blanche had put the house on the market, planning to move into her sister’s cottage in the country. It was obvious none of the girls would last long. Beatrice was buried in the cemetery at the outskirts of the city, her grave next to the others. Her final rites had been conducted by a pitying nun. Winnie wished she had the energy to visit, but she no longer did. There were only four of them left. Silvia hadn’t come out of her room in days.

Winnie would’ve worried, but she’d grown familiar with the stench of death, and none came from Silvia’s room. Sometimes when she stood next to her door, she could hear the slow rise and fall of Silvia’s breathing. Lucy spoke of going back home, although that was impossible now. Her parents had not responded to her letters for help once she’d stopped sending them money orders.

“A cup of tea?” Miss Blanche asked. Her china set was a fine one, from a time when the rift between the rich and poor was not so severe. It was a family heirloom, carefully kept but regularly used.

“No thank you, Miss Blanche,” she said, dropping the bag of groceries onto the table. “I think I need to rest.”

She needed rest. The eternal kind. The others had given in and given up. Something within her refused to. Her heart kept beating, her body hanging on by threads. She would be the final one, she thought. She would live just long enough to see all of her friends dead. Winnie walked to Sara’s room instead of her own. They were thin enough now that one bed was big enough for them to sleep by side, to embrace each other for the warmth and comfort.

Sara was cold in the bed, her skin pale and her lips white. Winnie had thought that an early death was horrible, but what was worse was when it was prolonged. A quick death was a mercy, almost a gift. Sara could no longer walk. Her bones were brittle twigs incapable of holding up even her slight weight.

“Are you asleep?” Winnie asked.

Sleep didn’t come easily. Pain overwhelmed their senses constantly, continuously. It made other thoughts, or the absence of thought, difficult.

“No,” Sara whispered. She turned around so they were facing each other, lying on their sides. “I can’t. I think it’ll be soon, Winnie.”

What did one say to their best friend looking forward to death? Hope that they were right, or that they were wrong? Winnie only smiled.

“I hope I’ll join you soon,” she said after a while. “Hopefully whatever is after this is better.”

She doubted it. None of the girls had been religious from the beginning. They did not offer tithes to the local church or go to pray often. Some of the girls went when they started to get sick, but they had been treated with derision, called sinners. None of them had returned. There were no priests to offer prayers for their ascension to heaven.

“Lister thinks we have a chance still,” Winnie said with a laugh. He was an eternal optimist. He was a fool. He wanted her to file again, to try until there was nothing left to do. She could not share his enthusiasm or his energy. There was no court in Tharn that would take them seriously, no judge who would give them a fair chance. Their fates were written the moment they signed a contract with Hollyworth. They were not sinners like all the people in Soverden thought, but they had signed a deal with the devil.

In the morning, she woke to Sara’s arm on her, her soft snoring. Winnie got up. It was strange, but she felt better. Mornings were normally difficult for her, with aching joints and a head full of cotton. Now, she got up almost like the days before. Heading downstairs, she didn’t need to use the bannister to support herself.

“You’re looking better, darling,” Miss Blanche said.

“Yes,” Winnie agreed. She felt more like herself. It was a risky idea, but she decided to test the limits of her strange new wellbeing and helped Miss Blanche with the morning chores. As she moved she felt things slipping back into place. Her pain receded, replaced by a wholeness she had missed in the months before.

For months, Winnie had felt like an old woman trapped in a young one’s body. Finally, she felt like herself. Her mother used to say that a candle burned brightest before it went out. It hadn’t been true for her mother, stuck in her sickbed even in her final moments, but perhaps it was true for Winnie.

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Sara walked downstairs a few hours later, leaning heavily on her crutch.

“Is there anything to eat?” she asked. “I’m starving.”

Winnie realized with a pang that she was as well. They made the most of their meager meals and drank Miss Blanche’s dark, strong coffee. It was almost like the old days, except there was no longer anywhere to go or anything to do. Instead, they helped Miss Blanche clean the house, trying to make up for the weeks of neglect, and went to bed bone tired and satisfied.

The next day was better. Sara left her crutches in the room and walked downstairs. Silvia emerged from her room and Winnie knew then that they weren’t going to die. Silvia glowed with health, the kind she’d never possessed even in the days before. They helped Miss Blanche resuscitate her dying garden and went to the market, all three of them.

Voicing it felt wrong, like speaking about their recovery would break a spell. They felt right, completely alright, to such an extent that it felt wrong. They hadn’t eaten properly for months, but there was no weakness. Their dresses hung on near skeletal frames, but they did not tire from their work.

They worked the garden in the mornings and went out looking for work in the afternoons. Their story had faded out. Hollyworth had hired new girls, and Soverden had forgotten the drama of their court case, of their friends who had died. When it became evident that their recovery was not temporary, they walked to the cemetery on the outskirts of Soverden.

A row of simple gravestones marked where their friends rested. They’d been a strange kind of sorority, brought together by fortune first, followed by tragedy. They laid flowers on the barren ground above their graves and walked back. The disadvantage of living was that they now had to survive.

Winnie found work at a butcher’s shop. It wasn’t like the clean, neat workspace of the factory. There were no other women she could speak to, but it paid enough, and her butcher let her take the leftovers home. Their appetites had returned with their health, and she knew that her new job would not last long if she didn’t gain back her muscle and her strength. Sara worked as a nursemaid for a merchant in the Azul district, and Silvia was a waitress at one of the gentlemans’ clubs downtown. Lucy worked as a maid for one of the city’s rich families. They settled into a rhythm similar to their past, working and going home, making money and saving for a distant future. They no longer celebrated freedom and independence, knowing the cost it often brought along with it. Their lives were more demure, more understated. They lived with their heads down like so many in Soverden did.

Sometimes Winnie saw the new Hollyworth girls, girls fresh from the villages and surrounding parts of Tharn. They lit up the city like Winnie and her friends had, once. They covered themselves in paste jewelry and artificial silks. They reminded her of the fireflies from her village. Pretty, but short-lived.

“Don’t forget to take the leftover chicken,” the butcher said, pushing a wrapped parcel of meat into her hands. He was a blunt man, not suited for conversation and rough around the edges. He was kind, though.

“Thanks, boss.”

Winnie walked home well after sunset. It wasn’t safe in Soverden, but women couldn’t always only do what was safe. Her cleaver rested in the pockets of her skirt, and she knew how to use it well enough. In front of their house, there was a figure in black. Winne paused. They didn’t have many visitors, and certainly none after the slander Hollyworth’s lawyer had put them through.

The man turned around. It was only Lister. It’d been months since she saw him. He was disappointed in her for dropping the case, as if there was any chance of them winning. He was an idealist, and she was a realist. He was the child of a rich merchant, who could afford to have a son who worked for the poor and made no money. His father was content to boast about his philanthropist son. Winnie had the unfortunate responsibility of having to feed herself, and now as she recovered, of feeding her family in the village as well.

“Winnie,” Lister said in greeting.

“How are you?” she asked. It was a pleasantry. He would be fine, she knew. She heard of him through gossip. There was always one person or another who needed a cheap lawyer in Soverden. Lister was better than cheap, he was often free. He had won some minor cases and made a name for himself. Newspapers took his interviews, and it looked like the government was looking into hiring him as a public defender.

“I’m good. You?” he asked.

For her, it wasn’t a pleasantry. Lister was generous in a tactless way. She saw him reach into his pocket, probably wanting to offer her a few bills.

“I’m doing well,” she answered. “Four of us have recovered from the illness, and we’re all doing well.”

“Ah.”

He seemed surprised. She couldn’t blame him. He’d seen some of the other girls in their final days, documented their illnesses and their deaths.

“I just came to see how you were doing,” he asked. “How Miss Blanche was doing.”

“Would you like to come in for some tea?”

He walked into the house gingerly, as if looking for the remnants of the suffering they’d gone through. New girls had started to rent at the house, replacing those who were gone. Winnie was friends with some of them and made sure to warn them away from Hollyworth. A few hadn’t heeded her warning. He took a seat at the kitchen table while she put a kettle on.

“I met one of the other girls,” he said. “She came to my office and asked what happened to the case.”

“One of the other girls?”

“She went back to her village before we filed the case,” Lister explained. “She recovered too.”

Winnie wondered if many of them had survived. She hoped so. She remembered some of the girls, so afraid, running back into their parents’ arms.

“I’m glad,” Winnie said.

“She wanted the file.”

“What for?”

Lister shrugged, took the cup of tea she offered him. “She seemed different, Winnie.”

He paused, breathed onto the wisps of steam of his teacup.

“How?”

“Just different. I gave her a copy of the file, of course. She seemed like she had a plan for it.”

“Her name?”

“Rose Blackman,” he said.

Winnie remembered Rose. She’d been one of the first girls to go back home, her parents picking a fight with the manager before leaving with her. They had looked like simple people. Rose had never considered fighting back or protesting. Winnie never thought she’d hear about her again, let alone hear of her coming back and seeking Lister out. In the days they were falling ill, Rose had acted like their illness was punishment for them exercising their freedom.

“Did she say anything else?” Winnie asked.

Lister paused. “It looked like she wanted to.”

“Like she wanted to?”

“Like she had something to say,” Lister said. “Not to me, though. To you, maybe.”