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son back with no recollection of having buried him. He was pleased to send his brilliant boy to London after all, to share his gifts with the world.
On the day Elly and Bran left for London, she smuggled a candle stump and a ream of paper into new brother’s chest cavity with her for the long train ride. She began to write somewhere past Leeds and continued until the next transfer, when she paused to pull at the levers with ink-stained fingers.
London, it turned out, was filled with temptations. Being a woman, Elly was not invited to join in on them herself. Instead, she was was forced to guide Bran through the gutters of the city. The world treated Bran differently than it ever had Elly and she allowed it to. It wasn’t the education she’d bargained for, but it was a type of enlightenment nonetheless. Bitter spirits and smoke passed over new brother’s leather-stitched lips, chased by the kisses of painted ladies. Elly caught them all in a china bowl from her dark perch and emptied it discreetly, but the smells made her retch. One night, in a smokey opium den in Limehouse the air became so thick that Elly’s head began to spin and she feared she may faint lest she crawl out through the hidden flap in the brother’s greatcoat. Prone, with no sister to guide him, new brother’s seemingly unresponsive body was discovered and sent home to Yorkshire the next day.
Elly did not return with the disguise. Lottie discovered her traipsing across the moors in the early morning a fortnight later, shivering and wild-eyed, clutching a manuscript to her bosom. When asked what had happened, she would only reply that she’d been delayed in London and didn’t want to operate new brother anymore.
Her sisters agreed that this seemed fair.