Pantomime

by Laura Lam

  "I taught myself to read with this," he said, stroking the cover.

  Not much else was on display. Clothes were tidied into a wardrobe, and all surfaces were bare and dusted. I worried about sharing a cart with him. I had never been the most tidy of people, even with a maid.

  "I'll make room for your things," Arik said.

  "Oh, no, I don't want to be any trouble," I said. "I can leave things in my pack here."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Of course. You've done more than enough."

  Arik nodded and began to disrobe for bed. His body was lean and ropy. "You've had enough excitement for one day, young one. Practice starts early. Breakfast at dawn." He lay down and closed his eyes. I appreciated him not prying me with questions. He appeared to fall asleep immediately.

  I was too restless to sleep. I had been away from home for almost a week, now. It felt like much, much longer. I had run from the authorities, feared for my life, and been hungrier and colder than I had ever been before. Though I might be safe for the moment, I knew nothing about what my new life would hold.

  I shifted on the pallet, the straw ticking digging into my back. I missed my down mattress at home and my warm duvet. I wanted to re-read an Ephram Finnes adventure and drink a hot mug of tea by gaslight, to joke with my brother as he reluctantly studied a law book, and feel safe and warm. I wanted to fall asleep with a cozy bedpan at my feet and Lia to wake me up with the same song she sang to me every morning. I missed my other friends, and wondered what they had thought of my disappearance and what my parents had told the others. I even missed my parents, despite all they had done to me. I wanted my old life back, but it was lost. My face was wet. I rubbed at my eyes, crying as silently as possible and settled down into my musty, uncomfortable pallet.

  It was a long while before I fell asleep, and when I did, I dreamt of falling.

  5

  SPRING: JUMP

  "A lady must remain dainty and demure at all times. Never should she raise a voice or a hand in anger or excitement. Never should she trot or run in the presence of gentlemen. She must always appear calm, collected, and effortlessly graceful."

  A YOUNG ELLADAN LADY'S PRIMER,

  Lady Elena Primrose

  I crouched on the tree branch.

  "Genie." My brother gazed up at me from the ground below. "Don't even consider it."

  "I told you, Cyril, don't call me Genie. It's Gene!"

  I jumped.

  My arms and legs felt only air, and then I wrapped my arms around the next tree branch and hung from it, bare feet dangling. Cyril looked at me in disapproval. Thank the Lord and Lady that the bark was smooth or I would have shredded my palms. Oswin, Cyril's best friend, a boy with messy hair and a ready grin, jumped up and tickled my feet.

  "Hey," I called, and kicked at him. He leapt away, laughing. I let go and landed lightly on the forest ground.

  "I still don't know how you do it, Gene," Oswin said. "You're like a squirrel in the branches."

  I swiped at the leaves tangled in my hair. "It's easy. I'm not a squirrel – you're merely a couple of timid mice."

  Cyril glowered. "More like we actually have minds in our skulls. Yours is full of lint and daydreams."

  "More interesting than what is inside your skull." I grinned up at my brother. He was a head taller than me, but I was catching up to him even though he was two years older. I was wearing an old pair of trousers and a tunic of his. I only had to roll up the legs and arms once now.

  I sped down the path. "Race you boys to the pond!" I called over my shoulder. Their footfalls followed and I quickened my pace.

  They nearly beat me. I jumped in and sank. Opening my eyes in the murky water, I watched Cyril and Oswin sink to the silt on the bottom of the pond. The chirping of the birds silenced and it was just us, the green water, the tadpoles and frogs.

  I burst to the surface and gulped a lungful of air. The boys followed and we splashed about in the water. I was a better swimmer than either of them.

  Afterwards, we sat on the riverbank and squished our toes into the mud. I sighed and lay down on my back, careless of the soil, tucking my arms behind my head and looking at the sky.

  "I wish we could come to the countryside more often," I said.

  "Me too," Cyril agreed. "A month or two a year in the Emerald Bowl is not enough time. It's a bit harder for you to jump off tree branches in the city, after all, isn't it, Gene?"

  I chuckled at the sky. "There's always scaffolding."

  "You haven't," he said, shocked.

  I smirked.

  "If mother ever saw you, she'd send you to finishing school quicker than a lager turns to piss."

  I shrugged. "I don't do it that often. And I make sure no one's around and that I'm dressed like a mudlark. She'll never find out."

  "She better not, little Miss Iphigenia Laurus."

  I threw a handful of mud at his face. "Don't call me that." I had the most hideous name. My mother was a sadistic woman.

  He laughed, his face and shoulder splattered with mud. Oswin opened his mouth.

  "Don't you dare call me anything other than Gene," I warned, hefting another fistful of mud.

  He put his hands up in mock surrender. "Of course not. Wouldn't dream of it, General Gene."

  I threw the mud at him anyway. It landed with a satisfying splat full in his face. He squealed and a brief but violent mud fight ensued. Within a few minutes we looked like clay golems.

  Cyril rubbed ineffectually at his face and looked up at the sky. "It's getting late. We have to get home before Mother and Father want us for supper."

  Oswin made a face and looked down at his filthy clothing. "Me as well. I'm starved. Hope my brother and father caught something in the woods this afternoon when they went hunting." With reluctance, we took one last look at the surrounding forest and trudged up the path.

  We almost got away with it. Oswin had turned off the road earlier and headed toward his estate. Cyril and I stopped at the wood's edge and rubbed away the worst of the mud with blades of long grass. We had just slipped into the bath chambers and closed the door behind us. We exchanged a relieved grin and began to strip off our clothes.

  Creak. Our heads turned. Mother stood outlined in the doorway.

  A short and squat woman, she always wore dark dresses that covered everything but her face and hands. The latter she covered with immaculate white gloves that I doubt she wore more than once. She strode into the room and slammed the bath chambers' door behind her, sending the long, jet beads she wore around her neck swinging.

  We must have been quite a sight. We were both covered in mud aside from our pale torsos.

  "Someday, you two are going to be too much for my heart and it will simply give out on me." My mother's voice was cultured and refined, but I knew it for the charade it was. Her father had been a luminary – a chandler and a gas light specialist – a fairly wealthy member of the merchant class with the thinnest tie to nobility. When she was really angry, she would forget herself and slip, dropping consonants and twanging her vowels. That was when I knew I would get a thrashing.

  We looked down at the floor. "Sorry, Mother," we muttered.

  "Cyril, I know you're at that age where you want to push boundaries, but the time is coming for you to grow up. When we return to Sicion, I am going to speak to your father about your attending council or court with him more often. You are seveneen and are almost of age. We have been lax in your preparations." Cyril nodded, still looking downward.

  She sighed theatrically and turned to me. "And Iphigenia, I don't know what to do with you. The Couple knows I love you, but sometimes I think you were meant to be my trial in this lifetime. I give you everything you ask for. You're nearly of an age to enter society. Is a little respectability too much to ask for your poor mother?"

  In fact, she gave me precisely everything I did not ask for. The best tailored dresses, fine powders and rouges appropriate for my age, delicate porcelain dolls from Imachara, fancy
stationery, sewing and knitting lessons. The only things she provided for me that I actually enjoyed were the music and dance classes.

  I wanted to learn to fence and shoot. When I asked if I could, over supper once, she held her hand to her heart as if I had stabbed her with the bread knife.

  "Sorry, Mother," I said again, without much conviction.

  "Cyril, please use the baths upstairs to ready yourself for supper," our mother said. Cyril gave me a sympathetic look as he left. She did not seem to care that sending him away meant that he would track mud upstairs as well. That was what the servants were for.

  Mother clasped her hands together and gave me a speculative look. "Who were you with this afternoon?"

  "Cyril and Oswin."

  "And what did you do?"

  "We climbed trees, raced, swam, enjoyed the fresh air like the young growing children that we are."

  "Don't be cheeky. When you swam, did you remove any clothing?"

  "Of course not," I said, indignant.

  "I was merely being cautious. Oswin cannot have the slightest suspicion."

  "I know, Mother. I'm not an idiot." I crossed my arms over my bare chest self-consciously and looked away. At sixteen, my breasts were just now starting to develop, though they were little more than swollen nipples.

  "We're going to see another specialist when we return to the city next week," she said.

  "Mother, no!" I had seen far too many doctors already, and none of them ever seemed to know quite what to make of me. They liked to exclaim, poke, prod, and then write articles in medical journals about me, calling me "Patient X" or some other dramatic letter. I could not face it again.

  "There's a new specialist," she continued blithely. "Well, he's not new, quite. He's one of the best, apparently, but he stopped practicing for several years to focus exclusively on research out of the country. He's decided to open a surgical clinic again. He said your case sounds promising and he may be able to offer a solution."

  My throat closed tight and a pain stabbed my stomach. I felt dread at the thought of more tests, but also a strange, guarded form of hope. No one had offered a solution before.

  Even my oblivious mother could see that I was upset. She patted me with the tips of her gloved fingers on a mostly-clean shoulder. "Come now, darling, it'll all work out for the best. Now, wash up for dinner. Why don't you wear the purple dress tonight? We'll come back again to the estate in the summer. It's too early in spring for you both to be outside so much. It cannot be good for you. And you need your rest – there's the afternoon tea at the Hawthornes' tomorrow, remember?"

  My mother called the servants in to run the bath. As the water swirled into the copper tank, I looked wistfully at the disappearing sun resting on the tips of the trees and wondered what the morrow would bring.

  The purple dress was scratchy.

  It was the lace at my throat. It kept tickling. I tugged at it.

  "You never look quite right in a dress," Cyril said, toying with a silver fork.

  "Why not?"

  "You just don't. You look like you want to run but you can't because your skirts are too heavy."

  "They are too heavy. You should try wearing a dress sometime. I'm sure you'd look very pretty."

  He gave me a rude hand gesture just as our parents entered.

  "Cyril!" Mother said, holding a hand to her breast.

  "What did he do?" Father asked, his voice distant.

  "Nothing, Stuart. Do not trouble yourself." They sat down. I scratched under my collar again.

  "Iphigenia," Mother scolded. "Stop fidgeting."

  "Sorry, Mother," I mumbled. Cyril kicked me under the table, and we exchanged smiles.

  Father was staring off in the general direction of the centrepiece. When the servants set the food on the table, he seemed to return to our world.

  "So your mother is urging me to take you to court more often, Cyril," Father said. "What do you think of this?"

  Cyril looked taken aback. "I would like that very much, Father," he said. I didn't know if he was lying or not. Cyril would probably be good at law, which was lucky, I supposed, because he did not have much choice in the matter. Just as I did not have a choice except to hope that Mother could foist me off on some young innocent noble too naïve to notice my disfigurement.

  The first course was potato soup. The food we ate in the countryside was made with less exotic foodstuffs than came from the markets of Sicion, but with fresher ingredients. It was thick and creamy, and I was hungry from our afternoon in the woods.

  "Perhaps we can go next week and measure Iphigenia for her debutante gown. There's a new boutique opening on Jade Street."

  I scowled into my soup. The threat of the ball had been hovering over my head for the last few months. Mother would ambush me with dress designs, ribbons and beads and flowers to plait into my hair. I might have been the only sixteen year-old girl of standing in Sicion completely uninterested in the debutante ball in a few weeks' time.

  No mention was made of my impending doctor's visit. It was never mentioned, except in private, where the servants could not hear. I took another sip of soup, keeping my head down.

  6

  SUMMER: PARIAH

  "Cyrinx: A large feline, similar to the panther. Notable due to the dark purple sheen to its fur. Unseen in Byssia for hundreds of years, and believed extinct until 10766 when discovered by the esteemed explorer, Dr Redwood. Byssian legend states that the cyrinx has the intelligence of a man, and can shapeshift to human form at will. Dr Redwood began a conservation and breeding programme and they are now no longer considered near-extinct. No evidence of shapeshifting has been noted for certain, though many men and women in Byssia and abroad have claimed otherwise."

  "Cyrinx", THE ARCHIPELAGO BESTIARY, Royal Snakewood University

  My new education began at breakfast.

  Breakfast was an explosion of sound, sights, and smells. People pushed each other in the queue for food, quibbled with the cooks for another spoonful, and joked and insulted each other in the same breath. I found myself standing in front of the two dancers. I tried to avoid looking at them, but the dark-haired girl caught my furtive glance.

  "My, my, Tila, look at the newest chit of the circus," she said, licking her lips and glancing at her friend. "Doesn't he just look good enough to eat?"

  Tila laughed, looked me up and down. I squirmed under her gaze. "That he does, Sal. My, the poor lad's blushing! Look at how he looks at us. It's as if he's never tapped a pair of cupid's kettle drums before." She laughed and cupped her clothed chest. I swallowed hard.

  "Dear, we're not that frightening, are we?" Sal said, running a finger along my arm. I startled at her touch.

  "You eating or not?" the cook said. I had not noticed we had reached the front of the queue. Sal and Tila tittered again. My face could not possibly have been any redder.

  I held out my bowl. The cook looked me up and down and gave me one solitary spoon of porridge and a lopsided fried egg. The others had received far more. I was too afraid to open my mouth. I could hear the cook chortling as I went to my seat by Arik and Aenea.

  "You'll grow thin if you don't ask him to give you more food," Arik said by way of greeting. "And you've not much to spare. He does that to all of the new babies."

  "Oh," I said, feeling stupid. I wondered if they had seen the two women teasing me.

  "Your thin skin will have to thicken," Aenea warned.

  "My skin isn't thin," I said, aware of how defensive I sounded.

  She laughed. "We'll find out if you go home in the next month, I suppose."

  "Don't have a home to go to," I said, trying not to sound too sullen.

  "Then you'll go somewhere else."

  "Why does my skin have to thicken?"

  "We're a close-knit group in the circus," Arik said. "We're playing a joke on the world. Outsiders aren't in on the joke, and soon you'll start to see them differently, if you stay." The conditional hung in the air like an accusation.
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  "And so now, to the circus, you're still an outsider. You're still one of the 'normals'. You're going to have to prove yourself to all of them. Until then, they'll have nothing to do with you if they can avoid it. They may even be cruel to you. Don't take it personal, work hard, and you'll become one of us," Arik continued.

  I looked around at the circus. A few people would glance at me every now and again and then pretend that they had not. They must all view me as a spoiled, skinny little rich boy who had run away. They all, even Aenea and Arik to some extent, expected me to return home. I ground my teeth together. I would prove them wrong.