I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

8 Emmy Jane

“Do you come here every time there’s a day off?” Emmy Jane asked as Luessa led her through the wide double doors of Bellea’s department stor.e

Luessa, who was laready gazing with adoring eyes at a mannequin dressed in a pink silk dress did not look away. “I suppose so,” she said dreamily. “Isn’t this one lovely?” Emmy Jane looked up at the dress in question. The bodice was lowcut and rimmed with lace; the skirt was a mass of lace ribbon dyed to match the shimmering fuschia fabric.

“What about that one?” Emmy Jane pointed to a second dress hanging from the blank faced body of a metal mannequin. It was a sleek dark blue, with glittering beads sewn into a pattern resembling fish scales cascading down to the floor.

“Too Pel,” Luessa said immediately. She looked at Emmy Jane and put her hand over her mouth suddenly. “Oh! I suppose it could be Ibai too, couldn’t it? I’m sorry.” She blushed, afraid that she had offended her new friend.

Emmy Jane shook her head. “No, we don’t have anything this fancy upriver.” It was hard to tell how the people of her region had acquired a reputation for being easily offended, but perhaps it was more to do with the personality of the people of Angiers. They so often spoke badly of the Pelagoans and their island origin—as long as no Pelagoan was listening—that they had come to view anything related to a boat as something bad. But then they badly wanted the Ibaians to join them against the Pelagoans, since they had built the city on the land that the people of the river and the people of the plains had shared as long as anyone could remember. Emmy Jane smiled at Luessa. “But it could be Ibai, if it were mine.”

Luessa smiled back. “Let’s go see if the girl I know is working at the perfume counter. She’ll let us try samples.”

They walked slowly across the tiled floors of the store, stopping to look at blouses and ribbons and shoes. When they reached the perfume counter, they saw that Luessa’s friend was indeed working that day. Dressed in the neat powder pink dress that was the Bellea’s uniform, she was setting out a row of fancifully shaped glass bottles on the counter for a man and woman to look at. The woman wore an extravagant coat of wine red velvet rimmed with a wide ruff of white fur around the collar and at the end of the sleeves. She had pulled back one wide sleeve to expose her wrist and, selecting a green glass bottle shaped like a swan, she undid the stopper and dabbed a little on her skin before holding it out to the man.

Luessa tugged at Emmy Jane’s sleeve, pulling her towards a rack of hats. “Don’t stare,” she hissed, picking up a cloche of cream colored silk. “That’s him.” She feigned a brief interest in the black lace wrapped around the hat then set it on back on its stand.

“Him who?” asked Emmy Jane. She picked up the hat Luessa had discarded.

Luessa leaned in close to whisper into her ear. “Jimmy Primrose.”

“Really?” Emmy Jane glanced back at the perfume counter. She’d only been looking at the woman, with her beautiful red coat. The man was not remarkable in appearance. A layer of fat beneath the skin stretched his face smooth, except for his nose, which was crooked enough that it must have been broken several times. He had taken off his hat to snuff the womans wrist without tapping her hand with the brim, and thus revealed a thinning head of dark hair, slicked back from a high forehead. He looked up at the woman and smiled, which crinkled the skin around his eyebrows until he looked downright merry.

Emmy Jane looked back at the hats. “That’s Jimmy Primrose?” she whispered back to Luessa, who nodded. “Who’s the woman?”

“Don’t you recognize her? That’s Lily Lilt.”

This time Emmy Jane could hardly hold back a squeal. She looked again, at the woman this time rather than the fine clothes she was wearing. Her fine features were familiar from the collection of well worn records that Emmy Jane had left with her younger sisters back in Ibai.