Tales Before Slumber Bedtime Podcast Chapter: Darya (Copy)
Darya watched the water for days. It was a game her governess taught her when she was large enough to cause a fuss. If she focused and unfocused her eyes time blurs at the edges no longer sharp enough to catch, time can slide by unnoticed. It had been the only useful thing the governess taught her.
Every other lesson left them both red-faced and in a match of wills. Two tigers circling and nipping like the illustrations in her father’s books. The lesson, like most things Darya counted as learned and wise was not a lesson but a discovery. A brilliance that kept her from handing her precious mind and will over to long hours of languages she did not wish to speak and dances she had no intention of following. Still, the woman gave so much effort towards bettering her it was only right to credit her with something.
Now that governess was years and a continent behind. Now there was an entire ocean in front and behind her. Now she was being tossed in the air again and this time it hardly bothered her. America. A place full of wild and untamed. There was the matter of the boarding school her uncle was taking her to.
She might run off. There was even a circus where a woman performed tricks with a gun. Darya would love to do that. She found her father’s gun once. It might have been the only time he spoken with her. Though it was not so much to her as about her and not so much talking as yelling. She did not notice when he left.
She sat still on the bench facing a circle window imagining a different more varied life. Something that could live up to the excitement others had when they heard of her unconventional upbringing. There were so many places. An estate in the country gave way to a townhouse in the city that blurred into an appointment so far it required a ship, trains, horses, and even much to her delight an elephant. There were even schools. Schools that admitted her thanks to her parent’s money and her uncle’s position.
The other girls would clamor to her side to hear her romantic tales that shifted and glinted in new ways every time she told them. Parents dead of plagues or bangle tigers. A local village had adopted her as one of their own teaching her medicines, language, and dances that not even the most liberal dancing instructor could have dreamed. Her father who was caught stealing from the government wandered into a jungle never to return. Her mother dead from starvation, a brain fever, or even a murder plot. No one ever believes each facet combined made up the truth.
Her uncle was her only family left, and he was never amused when her antics interrupted his voyages.
She was with a disinterested governess her uncle hired on the continent heading towards the New World. A new place to be left until she dreams up a spectacular stunt to escape. The circus, a girl gunslinger, the Wild West, all of it so possible if she just put her feet on land. America the land of outlaws and adventure. A country she could form herself.
The box was where she found it that morning. Taking its’ space in her goldfish Moby’s bowl. Darya had yet to investigate, hoping to draw the mystery far out to eat the hours of boredom with possibility. An entire hour of waves felt as though her patience was proved and her ability to resist was laudable. She plunged her fingers in to pull out a perfect replica of a pirate’s chest. It rested in the palm of her hand. The lock was ornate and each piece of wood carved and fastened.
It took a sewing needle to pry the latch. A ring sized to her pinky finger. A pearl glowed set with a silver octopus tentacles that made the prongs. The new governess had the skill of stillness. Something Darya did not note until the moment she swung her door open. It was almost a vignette. An automaton waiting for a gear to turn. In the later years of her life Darya would wonder if she had heard the clicks of machinery.
Darya showed her governess the ring. The governess sucked the air threw her teeth. “Best to throw that over and be a good girl at the school your blessed uncle chose for you.” Darya had no interest in anything that had the possibility of making her a good girl and placed the ring on her finger rushing off to thank her uncle.
He shook his head seeing it. “You caught someone’s attention.”
“Didn’t you give it to me?”
“Did you not would be more proper. Do you learn nothing from the women I employ?” He held her chin in his hand shaking his head but with a grin setting the edge of his mustache up “No, minnow I did not give you the ring.”
“Do you know who?”
“I know that it means you have a big change of plans.”
“Don’t I get a say?”
“A say? You said yes when you put the ring on. The ring itself is a binding contract. You will be attending your mother’s old school. I will write to the Academy in America directly and inform them that you are enrolled elsewhere. It will greatly relieve them or they might just think I threw you overboard myself.” Darya saw the clench of his jaw. He touched the ring placing his large hand over hers. “You did not know my sister well little minnow and someday we will have to have a long talk about her, but not today and not now. She was happy at school. Possible happy for the first time. I could tell by how few letters she sent. Since you are so much like her I believe you will be content there as well.”
Darya made a rush back to her rooms. The governess was gone and Darya did not think to ask what happened to her. She sat opposite the fishbowl and tried to reign her mind in. It became hard to consider the details when she let her eyes go unfocused while watching Moby swim in eternal circles around a castle that appeared at the center of his bowl. It took longer than she would ever admit to pinpoint when she was no longer rocking on a boat following gold scales that flicker and flit and when she was sitting as she had been before not a muscle moved, but the view was of a forest far below and the windowsill was not a circle of wood but a high arch of stone from a tower in a fairytale book that was read to her when she was little and she still possessed something resembling a family. Two hands grab hers, and two identical faces with differing emotions are deep into Darya’s personal space.
“Deep breaths it will take a minute. I am Bridget and this is my sister Mary. It took us days but there wasn’t anyone to tell us what was what when we got here. We know loads now.”
“What is what?”
“Silly you are at school. You’re wearing the ring. You must have said yes.” Darya nodded focusing her eyes regarding Moby as the goldfish swam, adjusting to his new world without a sign of distress. She took his example deciding to like the two girls and follow them wherever they decided she should go. It was how every adventure should start and she was more than ready for her adventure to begin.
