Thea

I frowned at Paris from my bed, yawning while she stood over me and glared, “It’s time for our shift?”

“Our?” My mouth opened like a puzzled fish, “Our? Our? Who’s ‘our’? My shift has ended. It is time for sleep and dreams!”

She arched an auburn eyebrow at me, hands on her hip and jerked her to the right. Sighing, I turned my eyes to the window and the obsidian sky, dotted with twinkling stars and knew it was my shift, but I arched an eyebrow right back at her.

“I shan’t go! You can’t make me!” She gazed down at me, deep gloomy eyes narrowed with unseen knowledge, but I didn’t back down. In that state of hazy unawareness, I had no sense. “Go crawl back into the pit from whence you came, and leave me be!”

Hands slid underneath my back and legs, and I yelped when I was raised up, sheets falling from me and entangling further with my limbs, “Let me,” I gulped, gripping tightly onto stiff shoulders, “Down,”

She chuckled, a cold rich sound that made me shudder, “Get dressed,” She whispered into my ear, and I could feel the smirk on her lips, “Tonight’s a busy night—Lucy smells it.”

“Mademoiselle Lucienne can—” I coughed out the dust inhaled from my fluffy pillows and smooth sheets, “Burn in Hell, for what I care,”

Paris didn’t reply, striding towards the closet. The only way I knew she was having any troubles was by her laborious grunts and when she dropped me onto my bum in front of the closet, illuminated by moonlight and flickering candles. I glanced behind me, past Paris, to see Liza groan while rolling over and notice that Sebastian’s bed was empty. My heart sunk, but when I opened my mouth to inquire upon his location, Paris nudged me with her foot.

“Go on, now, go on. I haven’t got the morn and night tucked into my pocket.”

I made a face at her, but turned back to it, pulling out a sapphire tunic even if they were going out of style, and a bronze kilt. Ignoring Paris’s quizzical look, I scooted over to a darker corner, turning my back to her and pulled the shift off. Raising my arm in only the kilt, I sniffed under it and raised my brow at the scent wafting off of it. A bath would be calling my name in another name, and I pulled the tunic on, flinching away when her hand pulled itself through my hair. As I pulled my violin from its case with a gentle feel, I ignored her scorning snort. Still pushing me through the door into the hall, she tsked to herself.

“They didn’t cut it?” She inquired, but continued before I could reply, wriggling unsuccessfully out of her grasp. “I suppose they couldn’t, not enough time, but I’ll have to take care of it.”

My hand grabbed it away from her, while I turned around to glower back at her flushed, rosy face. Her small, hazel eyes burned down at me until she twisted away, her grip on my arm tightening as she raced me down the hallway. And, weren’t we a site, two beanstalk ‘boys’ racing down flights of stairs and halls, hand in hand. I grabbed a lady’s hand when we reached the area outside of that dreaded place, and smiled when her face flushed, pulling her along with us inside. Paris sent me a look from the corner of her eyes and I shrugged.

I couldn’t really care about the lady’s change of breath. Once I reached the stage, she wouldn’t be my problem anymore, would she?—Paris would have to deal with her. I, after all, wasn’t a whore. The policy, according to Mademoiselle Lucienne, was that I was a look-but-don’t-touch item, and that was just how I liked it. Spinning away from a hand reaching from the layers of hair sitting on my shoulder, I began playing and singing before I set foot on stage.

“All is well tonight, aye?!” I yelled over their intoxicated rowdiness, and couldn’t help but think the ale interested them more than I did.

It wasn’t a—pretty sight, staring into the crowd of Mollies all over boastful noblemen and Johns whispering into the ears of too-coy aristocratic ladies. So, I spun around and noticed the harpsichord that had been empty the other nights, but now had a familiar boy at it, a boy in a dress.

“Honey,” I whispered, twirling in a faulty attempt at a pirouette, but it wasn’t Honey. It was that other one from the first night. What was his name again?

I couldn’t remember.

“The rose is red, the grass is green
The days are past that I have seen
And there is another where I have been
Sweet William's a-mourning among the rush.”

He started in on my song, and I frowned, but when his eyes rose from the keys, he smirked at me. I’d been smirked at many times before—Peter’s taunting smirk, Liza’s pleased smirk, but he had one I knew so well—he owned Aderyn’s spiteful one. Hm, looks like he didn’t like me much. It was understandable. Mother once told me I just wasn’t a likeable person—tough love, I supposed.

It wasn’t a memorable night.

At least, not until a drunk climbed onto my stage, yes, it was my stage. I tried to kick him off, nudge him off with the bottom of my boot, but the fat man was resilient. He’d fall back but then bounce right back until I, backing away from his slobbering figure, gave up. The crowd loved it, but by the look the harpsichord boy gave me, he was enjoying my fear even more.

“C’m e’re, girlie,” He mumbled, “Pretty boy,”

“Sir, I am a girl.” I chuckled nervously, thinking that maybe he’d go for the harpsichord lad, “This one,” I even pointed to help, “Is an extremely lovely lad with an adoration for chaps like you.”

When he continued to totter towards me, I panicked. He smelled like cat piss and there was murder in his eyes. Come to think of it, maybe not murder, maybe just a foolish curiosity, but that didn’t stop me from readjusting my handle on the violin and swinging it had him like a club, my mother’s favorite weapon.

“What a clever move,” He drawled from behind the safety of his instruments, fingers creating something in a minor key I didn’t appreciate, “What next, Daffodil? Will you stab Lucienne?”

I’d have stabbed him.

The audience didn’t seem to care much, shrugging my reaction away as crude common-people instinct. My eyes searched Honey—Elliot—out, maybe so he could smile at me to calm my aggravated nerves, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t sing for the rest of that night.

---

I had a nightmare that kept me up, curling onto myself and panting into the covers. It wasn’t about the drunk from the other night—the man was just an itch at the back of my mind by then—but about something stranger. I dreamt of something hazier, of black willow trees arching down towards me as their crooked branches reached for me, and of dogs with gleaming red eyes surrounding me from where I lay sprawled on the ground.

Father always said that dreams had a meaning.

When dark eyes stared down at me, I screamed, “Oh, mercy, no!”

“Calm d—”

“Not now, God,” I rolled out of my bed, and stumbled onto Paris’s, ignoring her squeal of frustration, “Oh, Mary Mother of God, no!”

“Daffy, calm down!” A bark resounded through the room as Paris wiggled around in her covers, entangling me and her in a mess of cotton. I blinked up at Honey, “S’wounds, lass, what has ye jumpin’?”

What has ye in trousers? I wondered, pushing her away from me. “Git this knot off.”

“Git out me bed!” She shrieked, thrashing against me, and I yelped.

“God in Heaven!”

I felt like running. Staring at the sheet, I wriggled and groaned, slapping away her convulsing form.

“Goddamnit,” She muttered under her breath and I made her stay still with my right hand, “Ye stoo-peed bitch,”

“Blasted hag,” I shot back, ripping a corner off her bed and throwing a mess of it off. “Had to be in my way,”

“Daffy?” Honey repeated over and over, “Why were ye screamin’?”
“I weren’t screamin’!” I replied, slipping from her bed.

I sprinted out the door.

Like I said before, I felt like running—in an oversized shirt and stockings full of holes, I raced down the stairs. The sun was setting, but I kept going, past Mademoiselle Lucienne’s respectable customers, the ones of the day, and out the door. It was so easy, as if she hadn’t expected me to just run. Really, I half wanted one of her goons to take me down to the ground, as if to remind myself why I hadn’t done this yesterday. Perhaps they only had a night shift. That was probably it.

That’d be it, wouldn’t it?

Something that idiotic would set me free. “Daffy!”

I almost didn’t hear it, and thought that it was my own mind imagining it, until, “Curs’t imp, artless, fool-born, haggard—Daffy, damn you!”

I slowed down and turned to see trousers and nothing else catching up to me. His face was flushed, maybe from the sudden exertion, but for some reason I was in a flighty mood. What if Lucienne sent him? He, to be critical, was her goon, and I’d only met him—what? Two days ago?—and that wasn’t long enough to create trust. It wasn’t long enough to create anything, really, except to remind to continue running, faster this time. Then, I realized the money I’d won from him, and then my possessions left in Lucienne’s place, and then the homespun bag strapped to his bare back.

“Daff—” He paused, maybe to breathe as my stride shrunk, “O-dil!”

“Give it to me!” I exclaimed, dashing towards him to grab the strap of it. “Why d’ ye have it?”

We were still in the city, well outside it, but too close for me not to be a bit jumpy.

“Ye ran.” He whispered, hair falling in front of his face, guarding it from me like a mask, “Ye won’t come back, will ye?”

“Will ye go back?”

“I belong to Lucienne.” He replied without pause, pulling the bag off him.

“Come with me,” I decided, and it sounded like a challenge when it came out of my mouth, as if I didn’t think he would. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was a challenge. “In what right d’ ye belong t’ her?—in rights seen by God—by the king or country?”

“No,”

“Then, come,”

“I can’t. It’s—It’s—I’ve been here too long!” He threw up his hands to the sky, perhaps asking God to explain the not-so-obvious to me. “To go out into the world, a strange and foreign land, it would be madness, simple madness.”

“Madness can be fun.” I didn’t take the bag from him, just looked from him to it and back. “Think of it, Huh-nay,” He couldn’t hide the grin on his face when I said it, and two days felt so much longer, “A whole, wide world and it’s waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you, for me, for us,” Half of what I was saying, I hadn’t believed, but the thought of him in a dress again, face painted and giggling in the arms of some smoky breath man—it made me reel on the inside. “Christ made it for us, seems like a shame—a sin—not to take it.”

“Hm,” He hummed to himself, strolling closer towards me, gnawing on his bottom lip, and I could feel his fear. That was okay, though, because I was terrified. “There’s point to that. Twould be a sin indeed to upset the Almighty.”

His hand began to tremble, outstretched towards me, and I gazed into his eyes, the color of almonds and no, I didn’t want to hold him. I didn’t want to chase away the monster, or the nightmares living in the back of his head. If I did that, they’d come back eventually, and maybe I wouldn’t be there to protect him. I wanted to hand him a pistol so that he could chase them away, chase them away and keep them away forever.

“Oh, yes, yes, aye,” I nodded, and only then did I take it from him, “Wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“No, not at all,” A sigh escaped his lips, as if he was dropping a load from his arms, “Where to?”

“The sea,”

I couldn’t help but I think I sounded like my father.