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Life had been safe and warm then, full of Father’s manly elegance and Mother’s butterfly joie de vivre. How they had loved each other! If only they had been married, she thought in misery. If only tonight she could run away with the circuit company and never, ever come back to Yardley to be abused and beaten and called all manner of hurtful things.
    But she knew what would happen to Amy if she left. She had seen the way Mr. Reed watched the pretty child when he thought no one was looking. Miranda had made it her mission to see that he kept his distance, because she was the only person at Yardley School who dared defy him. Even if Reed and Brocklehurst ground out her spirit one particle at a time, she refused to abandon that vexing little girl the way she had been abandoned.
    Having handed down her sentence, Mr. Reed and Miss Brocklehurst marched out in haughty procession. When the door had shut and the girls were alone once more, there was a terrible, hollow silence.
    The only sound was Amy’s soft, mournful crying, until Miranda’s stomach grumbled indignantly, at which noise, Amy cried harder. “You can have my supper, Miranda. It’s all my fault—”
    “Oh, shut up, Amy. It doesn’t matter. The food is wretched anyway.” Miranda put her head down and quickly turned away to hide the tears smarting in her eyes. She lowered herself to her knees beside her cot and reached under the straw pallet, carefully pulling out her costume. She held it up and gazed at it in reverent silence. It made her heart ache, it was so beautiful, spun from ethereal gossamer muslin in the most delicate shade of pale lavender, embroidered with silver spangles.
    The other girls gathered around, staring at the costume in wordless awe, as though it were a mysterious artifact from another world. It was a gown for a fairy princess, a changeling child caught between the mortal world and the fey one, belonging fully in neither. Miranda shrugged off the haunting thought. Having washed up prior to her sentencing, she sat on her cot and quickly donned the flesh-colored tights that all the dancers and actresses wore beneath their costumes, then lifted off her workaday purple dress, rinsed the rest of her body with a washcloth, shivering in the cold, and slipped into the sleeveless muslin dress. At once, she felt herself transformed.
    Hurrying to the mirror, she tied her thick, wavy hair back with the matching lavender bandeau. The other girls looked on in growing wonder all the while. She dabbed a drop of rouge on her cheeks and rubbed it into her lips, then looked around for her slippers. She slid the sequined, satin dancing slippers out from under her cot, but pulled her worn, clunky half boots back on, for she still had a long trek through the snow to reach the Pavilion.
    Amy looked at her morosely as Miranda donned her mantle over the skimpy lavender gown. Miranda gave her fellow orphan a brilliant smile that she hoped looked fearless. Amy smiled wanly and opened the window for her. Jane stood on a chair and looped the rope that Miranda had stolen to serve as her escape ladder around one of the exposed rafters.
    Peering out the window, she assessed her escape briefly before climbing up onto the sill and grasping the rope. In short order, she shimmied down the side of the building, holding on to the line like one of Admiral Lord Nelson’s ablest seamen. The light snow crunched under her boots as she plunked down onto the ground.
    She signaled for the girls to draw the rope back in; then Amy tossed down her dancing slippers one at a time. The child waved woefully, her golden curls drooping.
    “Don’t forget to go down and unlock the kitchen door after everyone’s asleep!” Miranda called to her in a whisper.
    Amy nodded and waved. “Break a leg!”
    Miranda blew her a kiss; picked up her slippers, one in each hand; and ran. The winter moon shone on the snow-frosted roof of Yardley School, which sat on Coventry Road about three miles outside