Then they start asking when I’ll come back to work, they start saying I’m their lucky charm, that they need me there in the mine. And I wonder if things would change if I was part of it—if I’d be a miner through and through instead of a hero’s boy pretending.
No. I’m not a miner. And I’ve lived up to my father, I’ve respected his work, I’ve helped his people. And now I’m moving on—maybe forever. But even if I never come back, I’ll be free. I’ll be happy.
I’m not afraid anymore.
When you’re used to the inside of a mine, even the dead of night seems brightly lit—the moon, the stars, they all cast bright blue light on the world. I wonder if this sort of light would hurt Ennor.
The mine entrance is a wall of rock, and there are warning signs everywhere—in front of the entrance, on the rocks, by the guardhouse. I approach the entrance and put my hands on the stone. The dust curls like smoke at my touch.
I don’t know what to say—talking to Ennor in the darkness was one thing. She felt real there. Out here, where everything is lit and my body aches, she seems imaginary again.
But she was not, she couldn’t be, because if she weren’t real, I wouldn’t be certain that I am not a miner. I wouldn’t be certain that I have to leave this place, that I have to stop being a coward about the world outside of Middleview. I wouldn’t feel so certain that someone else knows what it’s like to be trapped.
I ease myself to my knees.
“Ennor,” I say; her name sounds loud in the night. I feel a little like I’m talking to a rock. No, I feel a lot like I’m talking to a rock. I suppose before I was talking to darkness, but I knew she was there. I could sense her, feel her.
And so I close my eyes.
“Ennor?” I say her name, and it feels more familiar on my tongue now that the world is gone.
There’s a long pause, filled with crickets and stars.
“Will.”
I don’t know where her voice is coming from; it feels like it’s from everywhere, like it’s filling, warming my heart and lungs. I grin like a child, extend my hand just like I would have in the cavern, desperate for her to take it.
She doesn’t.
“You’re leaving,” she says, voice low.
I inhale, drop my hand; the grin fades, but the longing for her touch intensifies. “Yes,” I admit. I wait a long time to speak again, and it’s only when the words leave my mouth that I realize how true they are. “I want you to come with me.”
“But I’m a Knocker.”
“Only half.”
“Which half is it?” she asks, toying with the words.
“You’re the only one who knows that,” I answer. I feel her fingers, slight and smooth, brush the tips of mine.
She grows closer, and I squeeze my eyes shut to keep myself from opening them. I feel her breath on my cheeks, I feel her fingers wind around mine, and she presses against me. There are tears on her face, but she’s nodding, nodding slowly. She pulls her face back and rises, pulls me up with her—I wince as I put weight on my bad leg. We’re still, and I know that she’s waiting for me to open my eyes. So I do.
She is perfect where the light is.
Tessa Gratton
This Was Ophelia
In the darkness, I go mad.
It isn’t the heartrending, barefoot madness allowed to my sex, where I wander with bedraggled hair and dying flowers, wailing riddles of loss. My madness is the fierce melancholy of longing. It causes me to sigh through dinner parties and embroider hidden words onto bedclothes intended for part of my dowry. Mother offers excuses when I gaze out the window wishing to run past the horizon instead of making entertaining conversation; and when I don’t demur over tea but laugh at Colonel Chapman’s opinion, Daddy explains that my brother has always encouraged me too much.
But the sun sets. I strike a match and by candlelight don a tight suit of my brother’s. My breasts are easy to bind and I’ve little in the way of hips, as is best for the high-waisted fashions of New York. The vest cuts a lovely line under my black jacket, and pressed slacks I’ve only had to mend once fall perfectly hemmed to the shine of my borrowed shoes. I’ve stuffed them with cut-up stockings. Atop it all is a hat to hide my curls, though they’re short, anyway, to better show off choker necklaces and feathered headbands popular on women these days. And I wear gloves, of course, always gloves to disguise the delicate state of my fingers.
I sneak into Daddy’s library for a pocketful of cigars and five dollars from the hollow Book of Days. Plenty of cash for a single night’s escapades.
In the clubs nobody suspects who I am, because I’m tall enough, handsome enough, and my smoke is more expensive than theirs. I say that I’m a Polonius, let them guess I’m Lars or some visiting cousin. “Call me O,” I say.
“As in Osric?” asks a young man with a scarlet tie.
“As in Oliver?” guesses another with a swirl of his brandy.
I bare my teeth at them around my slim black cigar. Slowly, I pull it from my mouth and let smoke trickle through my teeth. “As in . . .” I lean toward them. “Ohhh . . .” I moan in a low voice.
They laugh and swoon, and from then on at Club Rose I’m called “Oh,” or “Oh, oh, oh!” or sometimes they buy me a drink and suggest other words the initial could represent.
I go once a week when I’m feeling mad, at midnight, to carouse with young gentlemen eager to ignore their home lives or futures or responsibilities, to dance with finely dressed but more common women and listen to the latest Rose. I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to arrive in a dress with my curls slicked to my cheeks and red on my lips. But one of these dandies from uptown might someday be my husband, and wouldn’t that crimp the engagement negotiations?
It’s late autumn, one in the morning. I’ve been here for nearly two hours, because it is oh-so-much easier to escape as winter approaches and the sun sets earlier, when the cold wind from Canada blows into the city, chasing upright citizens inside to fires and family. I can tuck my hat lower, wear a heavier jacket, and no one wonders why I hide my face while I wait at the cabstand two blocks from my family’s townhome.
I sit swiveling on a bar stool, my back to the liquor in order to watch Rose sing a song about steamy first kisses. A young man all in black, from his tie to his gloves, slides next to me and orders a bourbon and ice. He leans his elbows onto the bar, shoulder near mine, and opens a black-lacquered cigarette case. “Light?” he asks, and I lazily oblige without taking my eyes from Rose.
Her dress is the deep color of raw emeralds, with black fringe swaying as she twists her hips. I’m thinking how good she’d look with a tie around her neck when my neighbor asks, “What’s her name?”
I give him a poisonous glance. “Rose.”
He’s beautiful, though, and instead of curling my mouth I’m caught in a stare. All that black makes his skin glow in a ghostly fashion and his wavy hair falls over his forehead without wax to make it shine or slick back. Worst of all, I know him. Halden King, the son of our glorious mayor who died only five months ago.
“I’ve not been here this semester,” he says quietly, “and the last singer was Rose, only with darker skin and smaller tits.”
I take a drag to hide my blush. “They’re always Rose,” I say too harshly. The Roses are my favorite thing about this place, why I picked it over the myriad other downtown nightclubs. The patrons understand some kind of anonymity.