by Shana Abe
“How dare you threaten me, you little tart!”
“I’m not threatening. You have no idea how easy it would be to, say, pour glue on your hair while you sleep. Cut up all your pretty dresses into ribbons.”
Chloe dropped her half-eaten chocolate back into its box, turning to her toadies. “You heard her! You all heard her! When Westcliffe finds out about this—”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” piped up Sophia. “In fact, I do believe that Eleanore and I aren’t even here right now. We’re both off in my room, diligently studying.” She sauntered to my side, smiling. “And I’ll swear to that, sister. Without hesitation. I have no misgivings about calling you all liars right to Westcliffe’s face.”
“What fun,” I said softly, into the hush. “Shall we give it a go? What d’you say, girls? Up for a bit of blood sport?”
Chloe pushed to her feet, kicking the chocolates out of her way. All the toadies cringed.
“You,” she sneered, her gaze scouring me. “You with your ridiculous clothing and that preposterous bracelet, acting as if you actually belong here! Really, Eleanore, I wonder that you’ve learned nothing of real use yet. Allow me to explain matters to you. You may have duped Sophia into vouching for you, but your word means nothing. You’re no one. No matter what you do here or who you may somehow manage to impress, you’ll always be no one. How perfectly sad that you’re allowed to pretend otherwise.”
“I’m the one he wants,” I said evenly. “No one’s pretending that.”
I didn’t have to say who.
She stared at me, silent, her color high. I saw with interest that real tears began to well in her eyes.
“That’s right.” I gave the barest smile. “Me, not you. Think about that tomorrow, when I’m with him on the yacht. Think about how he watches me. How he listens to me. Another stunt like this”—I held up the circlet—“and you’ll be shocked at what I’m able to convince him about you.”
“As if you could,” she scoffed, but there was apprehension behind those tears.
“Try me.”
I brought my foot down on one of the chocolates, grinding it into a deep, greasy smear along the rug.
“Cheerio,” I said to them all, and turned around and left.
• • •
It happened that a yacht was a big, sleek boat, although to call it just a boat would be akin to calling a peacock strutting around in full plumage just a bird. It was made of wood, it floated, like the ordinary punts I knew. But all similarity ended there. The duke’s yacht was three levels of hand-rubbed teak and glass and brass so polished I couldn’t look at it directly. Beneath the open sun it looked trimmed in fire, too dangerous to go near.
Yet there were people going near: menservants in snowy-white jackets, plus the duke’s other guests, a stylish crowd in cool linens and crisp straw hats poking about with walking sticks and parasols. They passed the other vessels moored at the village docks—the smelly rust-streaked trawlers, the battered rowboats, a handful of sailboats—as if they did not exist.
Armand and the duke stood by the plank that angled up to the yacht and watched as the motorcar they’d sent for me pulled in close. The chauffeur came around and opened my door and I scooted out, slammed at once by the wind.
I was beginning to realize that the wind was a constant here. In London we had days—weeks—of heavy, choking smog that ate up the streets and sky, trapped in place by all the buildings. But this part of the country was so wide and clean and open, the people so glossy and well fed.
Jesse was right. It was a land in a bubble.
I clapped a hand to my own straw hat, my same plain one from the donation bin. The brim flapped up and backward along an old fold, a line in the weave that was already cracked.
It was Armand who greeted me, stepping forward while his father only fidgeted in place.
“How good to see you, Miss Jones.”
That debonair tone, the friendly press of his hand upon mine. It was such a contrast to our final moments in the cottage that I couldn’t help but smirk.
“Thank you for having me,” I replied, loudly enough for the duke to hear.
“But I haven’t,” said Armand under his breath. “So far.”
I tugged back my hand. “Ever the gentleman, aren’t you?”
“I try. Come aboard, waif. Come and experience a gentleman’s world.”
First I curtsied to the duke. He wore no hat, so his hair blew stringy and long and the sun lit the jaundice yellow beneath his skin to a sickly sheen. He gave me a nod, his gaze twitching only briefly to mine.
“Have you been out to sea before?” Armand asked me in his public voice, escorting me up the plank.
“Once. But I don’t remember it.”
“I think you’ll like it. Most people seem to find it relaxing, but I’ve always thought it was more invigorating than not. Once we get going, I’ll take you to my favorite spot at the bow. With enough wind in your ears, it feels rather like you’re flying.”
We exchanged glances.
“Or so I’ve always imagined,” he said guilelessly.
Inside the boat—the yacht—twenty or so of the linen people had gathered in what resembled a formal salon, drinking and talking in clipped, nasal accents. The white-jackets meandered through them, bearing trays of tea and champagne and something darker, like sherry. The air was laden with gossip and jewel songs.
Armand snared a flute from the nearest tray. “Champagne?”
“Water,” I said, which earned me an arched brow.
“Really?”
I shrugged a shoulder. The champagne sparkled palest amber in its glass, scented enticingly of grapes and yeast. But I remembered how it went with Armand and the whiskey. I wanted to keep my wits.
“Well, then. I’m sure we’ve a pitcher around here somewhere.”
He murmured a few words to the waiter with the tray, who bowed and vanished into the crowd.
We were clearly the youngest people aboard. There didn’t seem to be anyone else even near our age, and there was no question that we were being noticed. Eyes ogled. Hands were raised to mouths to hide the whispers. A few of the older men looked me up and down with a bold combination of interest and speculation, but most of the stares were merely curious.
The duke’s son and the pauper girl. I suppose as a couple we were the most interesting thing in view.
I took the champagne glass from Armand and finished what he hadn’t. As Sophia had said, it wasn’t swill.
So much for my manners.
“Why am I here?” I asked curtly, handing back the empty flute.
“Because I invited you.”
I dropped my voice. “Did you find out anything about Rue?”
“Is that why you came?”
“No, I came because I simply can’t get enough of people looking down their noses at me. The girls at school are getting frightfully lax about it.”
“Are they? How remiss of them. We’re taught from the cradle how to look down our noses, you know, we rich sons of bitches. Perhaps Westcliffe’s curriculum is a tad too liberal these days.”
“Why, yes, my lord,” I said very audibly, “I would enjoy seeing the rest of the boat.”
“The yacht.”
“That, yes.”
He grabbed two more flutes of champagne and my arm, and we edged our way out of the salon to the wraparound deck.
To my surprise, the yacht was moving. It was very smooth and very quick; the dock had already receded to the size of a pencil, all the other boats dwindling to the size of toys. A cloud bank had mushroomed up beyond the hills and waterfront homes of the mainland, dove gray near the top, a darker pewter below.
“See those?” Armand gestured to the clouds, sloshing some of the champagne out into the channel.
I nodded.
“And see all the boats still docked? Even the fishing boats?”
I nodded again, uneasy.
“I believe it might rain,” he said.
&nb
sp; I had to keep a hand on my hat; all my pins were giving. “Why are we still heading out?”
“Oh, because it’s such ripping good fun.” He took a long gulp of champagne. “Being trapped at sea during a gale because Reggie wants to. What could be better?”
“Armand—”
“Don’t worry. If we sink, we’ll swim back together to shore. We’ll use your bewitching chapeau as a float.”
The nose of the yacht dipped hard, then rose. The wind began a low howl around us.
“I’m not blotto,” he said, in response to my expression. He turned to the railing and chucked the empty flute to the waves. “Not yet, in any case.”
I went to stand beside him. The flute had sunk beneath the surface already, on its way to an eternity of sand and tide.
“That’s good. Because I can’t swim.”
“Why did you go swimming in the grotto, then,” he asked too pleasantly, “if you can’t swim?”
“I wasn’t swimming there. I was smoke, at the ceiling, when you came in. Falling into the water was an accident.”
“You’re welcome,” Armand said.
I refused to ask for what. We both knew.
The clouds built. The yacht nudged farther into the sweep of blue.
“Jesse thought you might have questions,” I said at last.
His smile came sardonic. “Jesse.”
“He thought you might like asking me better than him.”
“Why does he call you Lora?”
I hadn’t expected that, and angled a glance up at him. He was facing the distance still, his profile sharp, his jaw set. The color of his irises exactly matched the far waters.
“It’s just my name.”
“Not the way I heard it.”
I pulled at some loose hair that had blown into my lashes, nettled. “Is that really what you want to know?”
“No, not really. I want to know if you’ve slept with him.”
Oh, if I could be any girl but me. A thousand responses flitted through me, a thousand different things to say, ways to behave. And from the thousand, all I could capture was:
“Why?”
He faced me. He said nothing.
I found, to my dismay, that I could not hold that burning look. I ducked my head and began to remove my hatpins, and when I finally spoke, I made certain my words remained beneath the wind.
“Did you locate Rue?”
“There was no marchioness named Rue listed anywhere in the history of the peerage,” he said tonelessly. “There was no name that even sounded like that.”
Without my hat on, the world seemed abruptly much brighter, and much louder, too. I took hold of one of the brass-fire rails as the yacht gave another dip.
“Have you ever wondered,” Armand said, “if anything around you is really real? What if it’s all made up? What if all this is just my mind playing tricks? Dragons and smoke and bloody gold stars. What if you’re an illusion, Eleanore? Wishful thinking?”
I couldn’t help my laugh. “Do you truly suppose you’d wish for me?”
His lips tightened. He shook his head, squinting out, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. His knuckles had gone white on the railing.
“I want to show you something.” Still clutching my hat and pins, I pushed back the cuff of my sleeve, lifted my arm before him so that my wrist showed. “Do you see that? That scar?”
Armand tossed the other champagne glass overboard—it whistled end over end before making its splash—then used both hands to bring my arm closer. “No … wait. Yes.” He looked up. “What’s it from?”
I said, very steady, “That’s what happens when you tell other people about the foolish things that live in your head. When you begin to wonder aloud about illusions and reality to those around you, when you have none of the power and they have it all. You become dangerous to them. You’re a threat, even if you’re only a child. We hear the songs. They don’t. But they’re right and we’re wrong, and when they strap you into the electrical-shock machine, they use these leather restraints, see, and they strap you in hard because they know that when the lightning shoots through your body, you’re going to buck and scream. So they gag you, a special gag so you don’t bite off your tongue. And you jolt against the board, and the leather binding your wrists and ankles cuts into you until it’s actually red with blood. Red red, always stiff. And that is why, Armand, you should shut the hell up about the nature of illusions. Forever.”
His face had gone, if possible, even paler than before. There was none of the horror I’d expected to see; I’d been trying to provoke it, because horror was more tolerable than compassion. But, once again, Armand did the unexpected. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the inside of my wrist, right up against the scar and my hammering pulse.
My fingers opened. The pins clattered to the deck and my hat floated free. Out to sea.
“I hope the Germans get them,” I said. “I hope they blow that place to hell along with everyone in it.”
“I hope it, too,” he said.
• • •
The rains did catch up with us, but not before a group of the linen gentlemen had a chance to cast their lines off the back of the yacht. That was about all they did with them, too. They stood in the shade with their drinks and laughed and told jokes while three of the servants sweated and baited the hooks and minded the nets and everything else, calling, “Here, sir, if you please,” should any of the strings hitch.
Then the gentleman in question would come up, grab the pole, and reel in his fish. Easy as pie—for them, at least.
The sky began to lower upon us. The clouds simmered black and grim. From a place that seemed not all that remote, lightning flashed and the thunder that accompanied it rolled in a deafening boom! across the waves.
The yacht started turning about. Everyone was packing it in, but then one of the lines snapped hard, lifting up from its dragging angle.
“Sir! Sir!” summoned the servant, and a man bustled up to take over the rod.
He couldn’t spin the reel against it, whatever it was. Even with the manservant struggling to help, it wasn’t working. In the white wake of the boat, the creature fought ferociously for its life, thrashing and twisting, trying to break free.
It took three men and a brace to reel it in. Two men to net it. There were cries of excitement and hands thumping backs in congratulations, and all the cheery fellows shouting, “A shark! A shark, by gad!” as it spasmed on the deck and gradually bled to death in the confusion of netting. Before it was completely lifeless, they hoisted it up by its tail on a hook and let it hang upside down while they all postured by it, still grinning.
I stood far back from the commotion; Armand had become swallowed in the crowd. I don’t know how, I don’t even know if it was true, but I felt that shark’s dying gaze, its cold flat eye fixed on me.
I couldn’t look away from it, all the blood and silver skin. An unspeakable thought had entered my mind and it would not leave.
This is what they do to monsters. This is what they’d do to me.
Chapter 25
Try thinking about something else after witnessing that.
I couldn’t.
We’d landed back at the wharf in the pouring rain. I’d been driven back to Iverson in the pouring rain. I’d dragged myself out of the motorcar, along the driveway, wrenched open the castle doors, all through the pouring rain, and all I could see the entire time was the gasping death of that fish.
I’d bet that someone was eating it by now. I’d bet they sautéed it in chunks. Chopped off its fins, stewed its head. Tossed its guts to the cats. Hacked free its jaws to mount on a wall, good for drunken reminiscences for years to come.
I buried my face in my pillow. A scream was building within me, but instead of freeing it I dug my fingers into the sheets and pushed it lower and lower into my chest, until it came out as a rasping moan.
Why did you think there aren’t any dragons around anymore? whispered a voice inside
me—not the old voice, the familiar fiend, but one of plain ordinary common sense. What did you think happened to them? That they all died off of old age?
I hadn’t thought of it. I hadn’t considered it once, to be honest.
But the history of Europe had always included dragons. And knights. And lances. And lots and lots of stabbings through hearts.
I remembered what Rue had written about a drákon council and their rules about secrecy. Despite her obvious disdain for them, perhaps those rules had worked somewhere. Perhaps somewhere what was left of her tribe still existed, huddled and human-looking, like me.
But in a bottomless-pit-fearful part of me, I knew it wasn’t true.
Don’t worry about it. You’re not really even a dragon, are you? All you are is a girl who’s sometimes smoke. No one’s going to stab that.
I sat up. I dragged the pillow to my lap and bit my lip and stared hard into the darkness of my room. I hadn’t lit my lamp or candles.
Rain pelted the diamond window.
Just a girl. Just smoke.
It pelted my hands, then my arms as I opened the hinge.
Just an orphan. Just a guttersnipe. A nobody.
“No,” I said out loud. “I’m a dragon.”
For the second time ever, I Turned in the tower and flowed out the window, but I wasn’t headed for the stars or even Jesse’s cottage. I was going to the far woods, the ones that ended at the cliffs overlooking the sea, where no one lived, and no one worked, and no one would be.
Raindrops shot through me, but they didn’t hurt. I might well have been part of the mist that curled up from the ferns and grass, that reached wraithlike arms up through the boughs. I skimmed lower and lower until I was the same, except that the mist was wet and I was not. Smoke is always dry.
I didn’t really choose a place to Turn back. I was simply going until I wasn’t any longer, vapor until I wasn’t, and then I was standing in a small clearing. I was skin now. Definitely getting wet.