Two

“AND WHO CAN TELL ME THE TOP IMPROVEMENTS made during colonization?”

The professor teaching our Advanced Alben History course has every degree available, and is teaching for one year here as a special guest of the school. His owlish eyes peer out between round spectacles. Wisps of hair make a last desperate attempt to cover his shiny bald pate, and he is thin everywhere except a small paunch pushing out the buttons of his vest.

And yet, beneath the gradual wearing-down of age, it’s obvious he was once handsome. No matter how hard I look, I can see nothing of myself in him. And he has never, not once, so much as looked me in the eyes to try and find himself.

Oh, Mama, why?

A mousy girl shoots her hand into the air. “Improved infrastructure. Eradication of pagan superstitions and beliefs. Education. Increased safety with Alben police forces and state protection. Introduction of advanced medical discipline.”

“Very good.”

She beams, either besotted or trying to get a better grade. Please let it be the latter. “Anyone who follows your column on the theoretical benefits of Alben policies on Iverian continental countries would be able to say the same. The colonization case studies are perfect examples.”

I cannot stop myself and raise my hand.

Professor Miller does not call on me.

I talk anyway. “What about the steep rise in infant mortality for the period of twenty years after colonization? Taking Melei as an example, death rates among infants went from one in ten to one in five and have only recently begun to taper off.”

Professor Miller clears his throat, and the sound does not cover a blond girl on the end of my row sighing, “Island rat.”

“Why is she even here?” the mousy girl whispers over her shoulder.

“My father has complained to the superintendent about the decline in quality of students.” The blond girl does not look at me as she says it. None of them ever do.

Professor Miller, having finally cleared his throat but not his ears, which remain deaf to my comments, lists the chapters we are to study for our next class and then leaves without dismissing us.

I feel utterly dismissed nonetheless.

Leaving in a cocoon of silence amidst the chattering of my classmates, I find a bench outside and begin writing my calculations with fierce strokes. I’m not in a mathematics course, and barely have time to balance my actual studies with work at the hotel, but I don’t care. I will learn everything I can. I wish I were like the other students and that studying was my only task.

Fortunately for them, none of them are poor.

I have never been poor before. I had everything I needed on Melei, with a private tutor to teach me the hard consonants and neglected vowels of this language. Mama wouldn’t even let me speak Melenese at home. She sent me to classes on the manners and social customs of Albion. My friends got to learn traditional dances from their grandmothers while I was forced to memorize the stiff measures of this country’s music, the stilted, passionless steps to their waltzes.

Sighing, I pull out a paper and, balancing it on top of the library’s mathematics book, compose another letter to Mama, as always writing lies and telling the truth in my head.

Dear Mama,

I hope this letter finds you well. It contains all my love and affection. (It also contains all my questions about how you could ever have loved a man like Professor Miller.)

You asked about where I live. I cannot believe I haven’t mentioned it, but I suppose I’m so used to it now I don’t think of it. The dorms are small and plain, but as a student I don’t need much more. (I cannot afford the dorms. I do not live in them.) The food is dreadful, all heavy meat and sauce. I miss fruit! (I am always hungry; a supper with a strange man was the fullest my stomach has been since I got here.)

As I have mentioned in every letter, my professors are all interesting and I take copious notes during lectures. (If you do not bring up my father, I am certainly not going to offer you information on that louse of a man.) The course work is challenging but I am excelling. (I have to be perfect so they can find no excuse to dock my grades.)

I have delivered Aunt Nani’s package to Jacabo. He was so happy to receive it, and I take tea with him once a week. It is a great comfort to speak Melenese with someone. (I live in the hotel where Jacabo works. He saved me when I realized I could not afford room and board at the school. I work long, hard hours in the evenings to earn a tiny hole of a servant’s room and whatever scraps of food are left over.)

Please give everyone my love and tell them how much I am learning to bring back to the island as a teacher. (I will not fail, and I will use everything I learn here to make Melei better.)

Your affectionate daughter,

Jessamin

A large black bird lands on the bench beside me, brazenly close. “Hello there,” I say as it considers me with flat, yellow eyes. “Where I am from, you’re known as an acawl for that awful noise you make.”

It cocks its head reproachfully.

“No disrespect, Sir Bird. You cannot help your harsh voice any more than these Albens can help their love of ugly words and sounds.”

A boy walks by, not bothering to hide his snicker at the quaint island girl talking to the local wildlife. Sir Bird caws sharply at him. I approve.

“Anyone who shares my distaste for the men of this country can also share my lunch.” I break off the stale heel of my bread, crumble it in my palm, and then toss it onto the bench next to my friend. If birds had eyebrows, I’d swear it was raising them at me. “Spirits bless you, you arrogant little thing. I suppose I wouldn’t eat it if I didn’t have to, either. Good day, Sir Bird.”

Unaware it has been excused, Sir Bird continues to sit and stare until I have to report for my next lecture. Even the birds here are strange.

Two days in a row of the sun breaking through clouds, and while it isn’t anywhere near what a rational person would deem warm, it feels as though the whole city has sighed in relief. Everyone is shedding their outermost layers of clothing to sit outside and soak in the light they can.

I elect to stroll through Haigh Park, a lonely jewel of green adjacent to my school. Humming to myself, I wander a twisting path and play with the lines in the park, tracing imaginary triangles between points and calculating their areas based on estimated lengths.

“Why, Jessamin, are you following me?”

I look up, shocked, to see Finn sitting on a slatted bench ahead of me, his arm draped over the scrolling ironwork along the back. The sun catches in his hair, hat discarded next to him, and I’ve never seen anything quite so lovely as those shades of gold.

I blink rapidly, feeling like I’m coming up for air from the swimming hole behind the village. Speak, Jessamin. “I could ask the same of you, sir.”

“Ah, but I was here first, which makes you the follower and me the followee.”

“Following requires intent, and I can assure you that I have none where you are concerned. Good day.”

I hurry past, my boots kicking up gravel, and pull my most recent letter from Mama out of my bag for something to do. A few seconds later, he appears at my side, matching my determined stride. I read with a scowl, hoping to communicate how busy I am.

“Bad news?”

“No.”

“You seem unhappy with the contents of the letter. What does it say?”

I glance over and my resolve to be distant drifts away. I really am a shallow thing if a handsome face affects me so. “It’s from my mother. She informs me of the minute goings-on of a man she had hoped I would marry.”

“Aren’t you a bit young for matrimony?”

“On Melei, I was an old maid. It’s safer to be married.”

His eyebrows draw closer together. “Safer is an interesting word for marriage. But you did not want to marry this suitor.”

I wave a hand, but he is not Melenese and will not understand that it’s an unspoken gesture for “it doesn’t matter.” “Henry was a friend I tutored. I do not wish to wed him or any other Alben on the island she had her eye on. That’s why I left.”

“So.” His face is solemn, but an amused tone undercuts his voice. “You left your home to avoid being married to an Alben man and came to a country entirely filled with them.”

I’m torn between offense and amusement. Amusement wins, and I laugh at myself. “It made sense at the time.”

“I’m certain it did.”

We walk in silence, and I go back to the letter, waiting for him to bid me good day. He doesn’t. “I’ve never been to this park before.” He swings his cane at the tip of a bush. “It’s rather filled with children, isn’t it?”

As if on cue, a small, round thing runs in front of us, legs flying to keep from falling forward with momentum.

“Charlie! Oy, Charlie, you get back here before I tan your hide!” A harassed nurse runs past us, skirts held in her hands.

“Do you dislike children?” I ask, entertained at the little one’s cleverness in dodging capture attempts.

“I don’t dislike them, nor do I like them. I’ve never understood why one must love children simply because they are children. I don’t love people because they are people; in fact, I rarely like any people at all. If a child is somehow deserving of admiration, I certainly won’t deny it, but why hand it out like candy on Queen’s Day?”

I laugh, surprising him.

“Do you think me terribly cruel, then?”

“Actually, I agree. It is another great fault of mine my mother endeavored to correct. Children in general I’ve never cared for, though individual children I love very much.”

“I knew you had taste. Though your lack of hat is rather shocking.”

“Oh, fie on this country and its inordinate affection for hats. I would sooner love every child alive than I would wear a hat. My head is perfectly covered by my hair.”

“But the sun! We Albens have a terrible fear of letting it touch more of our bodies than absolutely necessary.”

“Which would explain the dour and listless spirit that pervades this country. Perhaps if you gave the sun a bit more attention, it would be flattered and come out more often.”

“Perhaps.” He smiles, cane tucked behind his back as he leads with his angular shoulders and long strides. Everything about him is graceful, from the cut of his suit to the curve of his brow. “Jessamin, I should very much like to call on you.”

I stop in my tracks. He turns immediately with his sly grin, as though he’d anticipated my reaction.

“I—I’m sorry, I—”

“But,” he says with a drawn-out sigh, “I’m afraid I cannot, simply because I do like you, ever so much. I should not have stolen this moment as it is. And so I’ll wish you safe wanderings, an utter absence of distasteful suitors, and many more days of sunshine for your hatless head.” He takes my hand in his and bends at the waist. A spark flames through me as his lips brush against my skin. I barely stifle a gasp.

“If things were simpler,” he says. And this time in his smile I am shocked to see the same ache I feel for Melei.

With that, he turns and leaves. I watch, bewildered as he walks away, his shadow stretching longer than any others around him, like it wants to stay.

I press my fingers to my chest. What nonsense is my heart pattering out? I barely know him, and I’m almost certain I don’t care for him in the slightest.

What an odd, beautiful man. I will never understand the customs of this insane country. Frowning, I find the nearest bench to rest on and another bird, as big and black as Sir Bird, lands next to me and caws.

“I don’t have any food for you.” I feel strangely melancholic in spite of the sunshine. The last two conversations with Finn are the most personal I’ve had with anyone since I left home. “That’s that, I suppose. Just you and me, Sir Bird.”

The bird answers with another loud caw, then a clacking attack of wings as it flies in my face. I scream and throw my arms up, trying to protect myself as it scrabbles for a hold on my shoulders. Standing, I twist and turn, stumbling down the path, but the possessed bird continues its attack until I feel a sharp burning sensation in my bun. It flies away, a clump of my hair and the blue ribbon that held it back dangling from its claws.

There’s a strange note of regret in its fading caws. Feeling the back of my head with probing fingers, I find a tender spot where the hair was ripped out.

I do not accept that blighted bird’s apology. I collapse onto another bench, warm tears tracing down my face, less from the pain than from the shock of it all. I hate this wretched country.