TMIAP Chapter 2

Which is to say: it was on the outskirts of the capital, with children in abundance and staff in shortage. Converted from an old school, the building was cold and drafty.

On the days when patrons came, though, it looked respectable enough. The children fastened flowers cut from fabric scraps to the walls and tied hand-knitted ribbons in their hair.

The nobles and the newly rich would pat those children on the head, feel themselves suddenly, thoroughly excellent people, and leave money behind. And, rare as beans in a drought, someone would occasionally take a child home.

More often than not, it wasn't adoption they were after—they wanted a young maid, or a playmate for their own child. The resemblance to acquiring a pet was not slight.

Even so, the orphanage children desperately wanted it. Anywhere had to be better than there.

The people who took children always had the same requirements.

Smart. Well-behaved. And young.

Monica met the first two. Young, she was not. She had already been eight when she was brought to the orphanage. People preferred children who hadn't yet developed inconvenient opinions.

Even so, an opportunity came.

One of the semi-noble families that patronized the orphanage wished to adopt. The man who came to the director's office said his wife had been unable to have children since a miscarriage twelve years ago and had never stopped grieving it.

"Twelve years old. Smart and well-behaved would be best. A boy would be difficult... A girl, I think."

The director's recommendation was, naturally, Monica.

Monica was quick and perceptive. At twelve, she was already caring for children much younger than herself—washing in cold water the moment she rose, then waking the children sleeping in the beds beside hers and washing their faces in turn. She had picked up reading quickly enough to teach the others.

It was a slight loss for the director—but far better than sending an inadequate child who might be returned.

And besides:

"The hair... black would be best. She'll look dignified without much adornment."

Monica had black hair.

The director smiled broadly. "There is exactly the child you're looking for."

"Is that so? Excellent."

"Yes—her name is Monica, and..."

But as luck would have it, another child had been hiding nearby that same day.

Lizzie.

Lizzie Orphen.

Of all days, the two of them had been cleaning the room across from the director's office, and had heard every word.

Their eyes met.

Monica saw it plainly in that instant—envy and grief swirling together in Lizzie's gray eyes.

Lizzie was the same age as Monica, and had the same black hair. But where Monica was sharp and quick, Lizzie was slow and plodding. She had barely managed to learn her letters with Monica's help, and lacked the knack for most things. She had always admired Monica, and envied her.

"Lucky you..."

She said it and fell glumly silent. A few nights later, she appeared unexpectedly at Monica's bedside in the dark.

While the other children slept, Lizzie knelt beside Monica's bed, took her hand, and whispered through tears.

"Monica, please. Won't you give that place to me?"

Monica hesitated. The honest feeling was that she didn't want to. And besides, she wasn't sure her stepping aside would actually accomplish anything.

"Even if I step aside, I don't think the director would allow it..."

But desperate Lizzie grabbed Monica's nightgown almost as though lunging at her. The old orphanage nightgown was sturdy enough that Monica had never once imagined it might tear. In that moment, she was frightened it might.

Lizzie clung to her, sobbing.

"I'll handle it! I will! Somehow!"

"How?"

"There's a carriage coming for you tomorrow. All you have to do is look away—just for a moment. My brooch! The one you always wanted! I'll give it to you!"

Lizzie's brooch.

Monica's resolve wavered.

The brooch that had supposedly been with Lizzie when she was abandoned—to adults, a worthless fake gem, but to children as irresistible as oatmeal with honey. A small brooch with a round crest set in imitation stone. In sunlight, it scattered pink streaks across the orphanage's white walls, and Monica had always coveted it.

Whenever the other children wanted to see the light, Lizzie would produce the brooch with the air of someone doing a tremendous reluctant favor, affecting pride the whole time.

"Just play with the brooch for a little while—and I'll get on that carriage. Please. All right?"

'Would it really be that simple?'

"You're smart and pretty. The director scolds me every single day... I'll never have a chance. Because I'm a stupid, worthless wench! But you—you'll have another good chance, won't you?"

Stupid, worthless wench.

The director's standard address for Lizzie, delivered daily. If Monica could go back to that moment, she swore she would seize her past self by the collar and hurl those words straight back.

But the Monica of that time wavered.

Lizzie cried and murmured: "Everyone likes you. Not me. I'm ugly and stupid. I just want to be like you..."

Praise and admiration poured out in a torrent by a peer. Transparent flattery, wielded for obvious purposes—and yet children are susceptible. Even to that.

'Will I? I'm pretty and smart, so I'll be adopted again quickly. She'll have such a hard time without me.' Scattered, half-formed thoughts filled the young Monica's head.

And she did feel sorry for Lizzie, who would be left behind to be scolded every day once Monica was gone. Lizzie gripped her dirty apron whenever the director scolded her; the wrinkles in that apron never smoothed. Those round cheeks that had once been plump as candy had grown quite hollow in recent days.

And so, the next morning, Monica hid in the attic early, just as Lizzie had told her to. Lizzie's pink brooch in her hand.

She held it up to the window light. Pink streaks scattered across the wall. Beautiful, shimmering light.

Strangely, it produced no feeling at all.

Monica opened the attic skylight and looked down.

She still remembered what she saw from that window.

The director was nearly losing her mind—the grand carriage had arrived early that morning and Monica was nowhere to be found. Then Lizzie came quickly, dressed in her best clothes, and presented herself. Still gripping her skirt.

The director hesitated for a moment. Then she seized the hesitant child by the shoulder and thrust her toward the man standing at the carriage door.

Lizzie got in without looking back.

That day, Monica was beaten by the director until her legs nearly broke.

"You made a fool of me! Stupid girl! Did you think there'd be a next time?"

She cried herself to sleep, and the next morning cried harder when she saw the bruises on her legs. The bruises seemed to last a month.

The hope that someone would come and adopt her had, over time, quietly shifted into the hope that Lizzie might return. She even dreamed of it—the man in his fine hat appearing again: 'We made a mistake. The girl we want is Monica.'

But the director had been right. There was no next time.

The director might have been furious with the two scheming girls, but if anyone else had wanted Monica, she would have sent her. No household appeared wanting a girl over twelve. And Lizzie never returned—not in all the years until Monica left the orphanage at eighteen, practically driven out.

She let out a sigh.

Looking back on it now, maybe Lizzie had been the clever one.

'She seemed slow. But she was quick enough when it mattered.'

Not that it did any good to think it now.

Monica rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

In the early summer heat, the taffeta dress with its wrist-length sleeves was rather warm. But it was the only good dress she owned. She had to wear it again tomorrow, which meant walking carefully.

La Spezia's commercial district was nothing like the capital—the roads were still unimproved, and dust rose in grey clouds with every step. Mistress Oraingne had passed along the detail that the child Monica would be tending was a boy: the second child and youngest, born late into a family that had previously had only one daughter. Sickly from birth, requiring constant care and someone capable of handling emergencies.

The family's title was nothing more than a third-class barony, but the money was reportedly vast, and the mistress of the house treasured her son as something that might go out if held too tight or fly away if breathed upon. Any servant who showed the faintest hint of illness was dismissed immediately, lest they infect the boy.

'A cold would be catastrophic, then.'

The most famous things in La Spezia, she'd been told, were the sea swimming competition and a nearby lake—connected to the sea but somehow freshwater, packed with boaters all summer long. She'd idly wondered whether, tending to a young noble boy, she might catch a glimpse of it all. Apparently not even worth dreaming about.

"...Hm?"

Monica blinked. The surroundings had become unfamiliar without her noticing.

She had meant to head back to the inn near the station.

The harbor?

When she collected herself, she was walking among sailors.

Her mouth fell open.

Salt came thick on the wind. In the stinging sun and the salt air, several great sailing ships rode at anchor in the distance, tall masts on full display. The dusty road was gone; underfoot was rough stone. Water-stained canvas awnings flapped here and there, and sailors with sun-blackened skin moved briskly among them.

"Move along, move along!"

"Hey! You swindler!"

"The payment for this voyage—"

Men in fine hats. Workers with rolled sleeves. A young boy leading a pack horse. A street vendor drawing a crowd with a parrot and various assorted nonsense—

Only then did Mistress Oraingne's warning come back to her.

'La Spezia station wasn't in use during the war, so the area in front of it has rather gotten away from itself. People get lost there constantly. The streets are quite bewildering.'

She'd been told the harbor was right near the station. Lost in thought and walking alone, she had apparently simply drifted all the way to it.

Monica looked around, flustered. A harbor was not, in any case, a particularly suitable place for a young woman to be on her own.

"Excuse me—I'm sorry, but the direction of the station—"

"What? Out of the way!"

The busy people had no time for her. A sailor carrying a large crate glared at her. Monica, startled for no particular reason, stepped aside.

Fortunately, scanning her surroundings, she spotted it in the distance: the very tip of the clock tower in front of the station—the one she'd seen when she arrived.

'If I can just get there, I'll manage.'

Monica sighed and turned toward it.

She turned—and something was already there.

Before she could form so much as a startled sound, she had walked her forehead directly into it.

Oh.

Fortunately or otherwise, she understood at once that it was someone's chest. This was partly because the person she'd run into had caught her by the shoulders immediately.

A solid chest beneath soft fabric. The dense scent of a person, mingling with salt.

The hand that had caught her set her aside with surprising lightness. Monica looked up, dazed.

"Are you all right, miss?"

The ground tilted under her. She couldn't have said what was dazzling her—the afternoon sun glittering on the harbor, or the young man's golden hair.

Remarkably beautiful blue eyes looked down at her.

Monica's lips parted slightly.

"...Sol?"

The man's face blurred.