Free Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal Page A

expected it to be obscured by the glamour with which Mr. Vincent had hidden them. Certainly, all her prior experience with masking glamours indicated that the illusion would be visible even from the center. Jane turned to look back, but Mr. Vincent and the rest of the party had vanished again. It was most perplexing, for she could hear them exclaiming in wonder, but could not see them.
    And then Miss Dunkirk was there, without even a ripple in the landscape; she simply appeared between one moment and the next. She, too, gasped in astonishment. The illusion was so seamless that Miss Dunkirk’s passage made no disruption in the ether. She had thought that Mr. Vincent had dropped the glamour when they saw him, but the truth seemed to be more interesting than that.
    “Do you know how he is doing this, Miss Dunkirk?”
    The girl shook her head. “I am afraid that we are still working on basic colours and shapes. I had hoped you could tell me.”
    “I do not know either. Every vanishing charm I know is more cumbersome than this, and leaves traces in the ether. I am most curious.” Jane sank onto the nearest blanket and studied the place where Miss Dunkirk had appeared. She let her view of the physical world dissipate and concentrated on the glamour. At first, she saw nothing, and then, as MissFitzCameron and Captain Livingston stepped through, she saw a slight shimmer. Focusing on that, she let her vision go deeper as the rest of the party entered. Each entrance gave her a clue about the nature of the glamour, but the fold was so thin that it was almost invisible.
    The last to appear was Mr. Vincent.
    He instantly saw what she was doing and smirked, as if certain that she could not discern his craft. Jane would not tolerate that and, in a rare moment of pride, was determined to prove herself the equal of this haughty, silent man. She saw now the fold; a single gossamer cloth of glamour creating a canopy that stretched to the ground, covering the group.
    He was manipulating light itself.
    Jane began to work backwards to understand how it had begun. It twisted just so. When she thought that she understood Mr. Vincent’s methodology, Jane cupped her hand around a glamour of pure light, tied off a fold of it, and attempted to create a tiny bauble which sunbeams skittered around. Then, working carefully, she stretched the light out to a fine thin weave until it enveloped her. Most remarkably, by tying the fold off before she began stretching it, it took no more effort than working with a minuscule fold. The sunbeam continued on its happy journey, detouring around her so that no one observing her would be able to discern that it had veered from its course. It was a monstrously clever illusion.
    “Oh, well done, Miss Ellsworth, well done!” MissDunkirk clapped. “I knew you could understand it. I was certain you could.”
    In the protection of her bubble, Jane allowed herself the luxury of a smile of pride. That man thought she was incapable of following his trick, did he? But as her vision returned to the physical world, and she saw the others clapping for her, and the look of illness on Mr. Vincent’s face, she lost some of her pleasure in her accomplishment. What purpose had assaying to match his feat in front of the others served beyond stroking her own vanity? It would have been better if she had let him have his triumph, rather than making it seem as if anyone could do this pattern by simply sitting down and copying him. She had played a churlish trick.
    Jane released the ties on her bubble and feigned breathlessness as though it took more effort than it had. “I do not think I have the right of it, Mr. Vincent.”
    If anything, her subterfuge made his sneer deepen. “You did.” Without a word more, he strode out of the group and into his own bubble, vanishing back to his paints. As the others continued their exclamations, Jane stared after him, perplexed beyond all measure.
    When she returned her attention to the group,