She stared into the soiled white folds of her pinafore apron. They look like waves, she thought. An ocean of pearly ivory cream, caught in a still photograph. It’d be nice to dive into that rich sea of dressing and drown myself in it.
The breeze whipped a strand of tangled brown hair into her eyes, and she became aware of reality again. She felt a sob in her throat, rising up like bile, threatening to burst forth and alert the Hannibals of her location. They would take her back and punish her beyond her sanity; keep her as a slave for the remainder of her pitiful existence. She swallowed it back down, her eyes stinging with the protest of hot tears she would not allow.
Yet where could she go? Not a single reasonable option came to her mind as she sat, still as a fair waxen statue, on the edge of the stolen flatboat. She had come across the lake, and the territory beyond the grassy shore on which she rested was completely unknown to her. What would she find? An abandoned village? A town in the midst of chaos; of avid, worthless political battles like she had heard of? A grand metropolis, where she would be lost and in no better in standing than a bum? Or perhaps, worst of all, she would find nothing, and she would die out here in the marshes without having done a single significant thing in her life.
The rustle of grass startled her; her head snapped towards the inland and her gaze stayed, apprehensive, taunting further movement. The breeze whistled through them again, and she relaxed. Sighing, she stood, brushing down her sullied dress simply by habit.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
She very nearly fell backwards into the water. “For god’s sake, you ruffian, get back ten feet and tell me who you are if you do not wish me to knock you cold with this oar!”
“Ruffian? Is that what I look like?” The stranger shook his head as if in discouragement, but a trickster’s smile was playing on his face as he took a step closer over the boggy shore. He was handsome and foreign; long, disheveled bronze locks fell into his face and his attire was grungy. A man as unkempt as him would be objectionable in Fantin, no matter how impressive in semblance.
“You look no better than a sewage rat, I’ll have you know. Get back!” she shrieked, thrusting the sturdy wooden paddle towards him like a repellent, although she was backing away herself. The boat billowed dangerously beneath her feet. Still he advanced.
“And what if I was to tell you you look no better than a rotten, wilting flower in the inauguration of winter? When I have only just met you, my dear, and have no approximations whatsoever of your ancestry, your life circumstances, or the essence of your character, which in my personal opinion is most important of all. What if you were the Queen of the World, and ugly as a newt, and I insulted you in such a way? So I do hope you understand what I’m getting at here, that you really shouldn’t judge by appearances unless you want the most unwelcome of introductions in return.”
His waist was pressed against the tip of the oar by the time he had finished, the girl at the very edge of the raft and staring at him in startled captivation.
“Would you put that down? I have no intention to hurt you,” he attested, tapping the surface of the glossy wood with his finger. She stared at him for a long time; at his stubbled jaw, his smudged skin, and at his piercing black eyes which brandished nothing but sincerity. He was not a thief or a debaucher. A vagrant, perhaps, but an honest one. She lowered the paddle.
“Who are you?” she asked gingerly, a pleasant contrast in her voice compared to before. She seemed almost delicate, though a subtle fire burned behind every expression.
“Bonaventura. I go by no other name. I am a traveler.” Gently, he pulled the oar from her reluctant fingers, but they would not let go. “Won’t you walk with me? I can take you to whichever municipal requires your presence.”
“For a wanderer, why do you take it in your nature to be such a gentleman?” she questioned promptly.
“I don’t. If I was a gentleman I would have bowed to you and likely offered you a carriage by now. I am simply a man with enough civility to offer a pretty face a walking companion. Unless, of course, you’d like to use this boat, but I don’t reckon you want to go back where you came from.”
A faint blush had crossed her cheeks and she released the oar, and the unusual man set it on the floor of the boat. He stepped back up onto the shore, facing the presently setting sun. The orange light gleamed on his unblemished skin, contrasting his face from his rugged attire and making it seem for a moment that he could be a prince.
“The closest city is a few miles from here. If we begin now we can reach it just after sundown and get you somewhere safe. Sound reasonable?” he offered, turning his gaze back to her unsure form.
She glanced back at the water, reminiscing for a lingering moment. She wouldn’t be coming back to this place. Her family, friends, home...they didn’t mean anything now. They were from a life far away, long past. A life she could not return to even if she so desired to. Fantin was a distant dream.
When she turned back to him something inside her had changed; her crystal eyes were ablaze with a newfound determination. She smiled at him for the first time.
“If we’re going to go at all, I suppose we’d better make off immediately,” she announced boldly, setting herself beside him and kicking the boat freely into the water behind. If it found its way back, she would be presumed dead by all who ever cared about her, and those many who didn’t. She could hear her mother now, “Drowned herself, no doubt. Thick-headed, worthless girl.”
She pulled the scratchy bonnet from her head and threw it to the ground, releasing an alluring mess of wavy auburn hair to the wind. The dirty pinafore was discarded as well, and suddenly she felt incredible. She was no longer a servant or a child to anyone. She was independent and unrestrained. She was free.
“I never asked your name,” her companion ventured, taking the first encouraging steps of whatever journey they were to embark on together. They proceeded over the clammy rump that divided the shore and the mainland, and the girl’s eyes filled with wonderment at the sight of the boundless expanse before them. The sun’s generous rays dominated the plains, giving the grass a beguiling orange shine and outlining the dark trees in the distance. It made the end of the dirt road impossible to distinguish.
“Estelle Olivette,” she breathed, receiving only then the slightest idea of the adventure she had just undertaken. She didn’t know these lands. She knew only Fantin, and that knowledge was useless now. She was entering a new world, knowing nothing at all. It induced a deep fear in her, worse than before, and at the same time, a profound excitement.
“That is your surname?”
“No. Middle name.”
“And your surname?”
“I shall make a new one.”
He glanced at the girl in slight surprise. The expression on her face was that of sudden unyielding conviction, of fearlessness. She was ready. She was ready to leave whatever world she had come from, to relinquish all history of her ever being there, and to live out this adventure to the very fullest.
“Let’s be siblings,” he suggested, a short smile on his face.
“What?”
“Let’s both travel with the last name Dietz. At least, until we part.”
“But that’s... I’ve only just met you, Bon. That’s absurd!” She stopped entirely for a moment, her hands thrown palms-up in emphasis. The young man glanced back and responded with a friendly gesture of why-the-hell-not.
“Only just met me, and you’re already giving me nicknames.”
Estelle paused. Then, she returned to his side and held one fist up beside him, a spontaneous salute of companionship. Her knuckles only reached his shoulder, at the moment. He was at least a foot taller than her.
“Fine, brother. But I can’t promise that I’ll want to keep up the charade for long.”
He brought his own hand up to return the gesture, tapping his sturdy wrist against hers.
“Vallyn awaits us. Prepare for mischief and travesty.”
“Vallyn?”
An amused smile crossed his face. “The burlesque capital of the country. You haven’t heard of it?”
“Speaking of which...what is this country?” she asked, only mildly interested.
“Tut, tut. One step at a time, dear Estelle. You’ll only forget the name of the country if I tell you now.”
“You’re underestimating me.”
He paused for a long while, a content expression on his face as they walked, further from the lake, further on a wide dirt path heading directly into the sun. Estelle made a single glance backward, only to find the water half-hidden by the hill separating the marshes from the road they traveled. She was surprised to feel her heart beat faster, at the final realization that she had left. That this was not a dream.
“This country...it is called Lawrentine.”
