Footsteps, and then a stranger’s face in the doorway. Pale blue skin, straight indigo hair, and lapis eyes. She was beautiful, short and curvy, and her round face reminded me of the moon. There was a glow in her eyes that put me at ease. “Come on out,” she said. “My name’s Imogen, and I won’t hurt you. ”
She crooned at me like I was a feral cat, and eventually, her voice lured me out onto the front porch, where I stood before the two women awkwardly, in a dress that felt like I was trying on someone else’s life, with my black hair in two tight braids. They studied me, and I shifted my feet under the heat of their gazes, butterflies alighting in my gut.
“She’s not full shine, is she?” Imogen asked.
“I don’t know much,” Annie admitted. “After what happened at the refinery… well, at some point he met a woman who’d come out here from the Union and got a child on her.”
They studied me, and I shifted under their penetrating gazes.
“Jasper says they’d have done away with her if she was a baby,” Annie’s voice was trembling. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “You know the law, but now she’s a girl and they’ll just have to deal with her, elsewise it would cause a stir that would likely go beyond the Boundary and nobody wants that. But being a half-breed, and the daughter of Christopher Hobson… I just don’t know what to expect. We’re watched close enough as it is, if only because I share his blood. She’s just a child. It’s not her fault who her father is.”
“Oh,” Imogen whispered. “Oh, wow.” She sat down, boneless and watery, as if the full implication of my presence was finally just sinking in. I didn’t understand what any of this meant. As a girl, I just knew I was on display and found wanting. “Well, there’s enough shine in her to give her our eyes, violet, like her pa’s. Like yours. That’s something.”
“Chris said he brought her through the Boundary,” Annie whispered.
“How did he manage that?”
“Don’t know. He refused to say anything about it.” Annie replied. “I think he’s sticking around, from what I gather. Likely going to stir up more trouble, which won’t help us at all, but he’ll do what he does. There’s no keeping him from it.” Then she colored and glanced at me, as though regretting what she’d just said. Regretting the hope they gave me.
“Tell people she’s from the Teeth. No one knows what they do up there, in the hinterlands of the Territory. Up by the shine mines,” Imogen suggested. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the idea seemed to settle in Annie, calming her in a way nothing else had.
“People will assume her mixed-blood, but no one can know for certain,” Annie whispered. She stared off at the nearby meadow. “She got through the Boundary, Imogen. Chris said she didn’t even take ill from it. She’s traveled through it twice, once to leave and once to come back, and is hale as a horse. ”
The silence that fell was heavy and uncomfortable. I did not understand these deeper waters, I did not know why they were so focused on the Boundary, but I knew it scared Annie, and that, in turn, frightened me.
“She’ll be harassed for who she is,” Imogen said. She was perched on the edge of her seat, staring at me with a socking intensity. I was frozen before her. “That’s just something you both will have to learn how to deal with.”
Annie sighed, a wounded sound.
“This isn’t an unclimbable mountain, Annie. We can figure this out. First things first, the child isn’t civilized. She needs to learn how to be a girl before we can let her out into the world. My daughter is of an age with her. They can play together. What did Chris bring with her?”
“Sleeping rolls, two pots,” Annie shrugged. “Not much else.”
“The dress she’s in is too big for her. One of Harriett’s?” Imogen didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll see if any of Ianthe’s fit her. I can get some cloth and we can sew up some shifts, some basics. Probably doesn’t have shoes either?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “She needs everything. Beautiful little waif, isn’t she? Probably better for Chris to leave her here. He has no notion of the things a girl needs.”
“It took us two days to teach her to eat with a fork without making a mess,” Annie replied. She sounded so defeated. “She knows knives, and she knows spoons.”
“Fate save us from empty-headed men,” Imogen said with a sigh. “My Ben is off digging for shine in the mines for the next fortnight. I’ve got time. I can help. She’s not a stupid child. She just needs some direction. Come here, Cassandra.”
I went to her. She had such a commanding air about her, she was impossible to turn away from. I went to her and let her clasp my chin, waited while she studied me. “You have such potential, child.” She whispered.
And that was the end of that.
I was to be remade.
Every day, after the house emptied, Imogen and Annie would take me through my lessons, teaching me how to behave at a table (take small bites, do not slurp) and how to act in a house (quiet, obedient, and always ready to be of service). To walk with grace, rather than clomping about. To say yes, and no, and thank you, and wait my turn. They were tearing me apart, piece by piece, and rebuilding me from the wreckage. Turning me into something that fit into the world I now found myself in.
I threw myself into my lessons with an abandon which quickly turned into exhaustion. I was anxious for their approval and eager to earn their smiles. Even so, I made mistakes. I had been in the wild so long, it was hard to smooth all my rough edges, but we all made a go of it and I dedicated myself to the task. However, not without frustration. I wanted to be a person who belonged in this world, but, much like I imagine a feral animal in a cage, I felt confined. I chaffed at my carefully controlled world and the tedium of my days.
I was a child. I wanted meadows and open spaces, and what I got were tables and chairs, afternoons spent in close quarters, and the anxious tittering of women I barely knew.
It wasn’t until nearly a month had passed, until a blanket of beautiful, orange foliage lay strewn about the ground, that Annie and Imogen saw fit to introduce me to others. Annie helped me into a dark blue dress with light blue flowers, a bonnet affixed to my head and braided my hair down my back, smiling all the while, her eyes dancing. Likely, she was as tired of her cabin’s walls as I was. Then, she stood back and studied me. “You’ve cleaned up well,” she said. “I’m proud of you, Cassandra.”
I will never forget that day. How uncomfortable I was with that bow tied around my waist, pinching and twisting each time I moved, the knot of it digging into my back or the way the dress caught on my legs with every step. The shoes she put on me pinched my toes. Yet, I hadn’t ever seen Annie this happy, and so I kept my discomfort to myself, afraid of souring her mood.
We left the homestead soon after my cousins departed, Harriet to school, and Jack to the fields to help with the harvest. Annie looped a basket over one arm and clutched my hand with the other, leading us forward, toward the house in the distance, across the meadow. Imogen’s house was larger than ours, painted white, with a wraparound porch. Large and majestic, I loved it. Behind, I could see farmland, a barn, a field, and further back, a forest. In the distance, purple mountains tipped with white scraped against the sky.