By the light of day, New Fiddleham felt fresh and full of promise. The air was still crisp as I embarked on my trek into town, but the cold was a little less invasive than it had been during the night. I felt the tingle of excitement and hope tickle along my spine as I hefted my suitcase up the cobbled streets. This time, I resolved, I would find conventional employment. My previous and only real prior job experience had come from foolishly following an advertisement with bold, capitalized words like EXCITING OPPORTUNITY, and CHANCE OF A LIFETIME, and, probably most effective in capturing my naive attention, DINOSAURS.
Yes, dinosaurs. My father’s work in anthropology and paleontology had instilled in me a thirst for discovery—a thirst he seemed determined I should never quench. Throughout my childhood, the closest I had come to seeing my father’s work had been during our trips to the museum. I had been eager to study, excelled in school, and had anticipated higher education with excitement—until I found out that the very same week my classes were to begin, my father would be leaving to head the most important dig of his career. I had begged him to let me go to university, and been giddy when he finally convinced my mother—but now the thought of suffering through dusty textbooks while he was uncovering real history made me restless. I wanted to be in the thick of it, like my father. I pleaded with him to let me come along, but he refused. He told me that the field was no place for a young lady to run around. What I ought to do, he insisted, was finish my schooling and find a good husband with a reliable job.
So, that was that. The week before my semester was to begin, I plucked the EXCITING OPPORTUNITY advertisement from a post, absconded with the money my parents had set aside for tuition, and joined an expedition bound for the Carpathian Mountains. I had been afraid that they wouldn’t take a girl. I picked up a few trousers in a secondhand shop—all of them too big for me, but I rolled the cuffs and found a belt. I practiced speaking in a lower voice and stuffed my long, brown hair into my grandfather’s old cap—it was just the sort all the newsboys wore, and I was sure it would complete my disguise. The end result was astounding. I had managed to completely transform myself into . . . a silly, obvious girl wearing boys’ clothing. As it turned out, the leader of the dig was far too occupied with managing the barely funded and poorly orchestrated affair to care if I was even human, let alone female. He was just happy for a pair of hands willing to work for the daily rations.
The following months could be described as an “exciting opportunity” only if one’s definition of excitement included spending months eating the same tasteless meals, sleeping in uncomfortable cots, and shoveling rocky dirt day in and day out on a fruitless search. With no recovered fossils and no more funding, the expedition collapsed, and I was left to find my own way back from the eastern European border.
“Stop your dreaming and settle!” seemed to be the prevailing message of the lesson I’d spent several months and a full term’s tuition to learn. It was on the tails of that abysmal failure that I found myself at a German seaport, looking for passage back to England. My German was terrible—nearly nonexistent. I was halfway through negotiating the price of a bunk on a large merchant carrier called the Lady Charlotte when I finally understood that the captain was not sailing to England at all, but would be briefly making port in France before crossing the wide Atlantic bound for America.
Most jarring of all was my realization that the prospect of sailing across the ocean to the States was much less frightening to me than that of returning home. I don’t know whether I was more afraid of confronting my parents, having stolen away with the tuition money, or of confronting the end of my adventure, which felt as though it had never really even had a middle.
I purchased three items that afternoon: a postcard, a stamp, and a ticket on the Lady Charlotte. My parents most likely received the post about the same time I was watching the shores of Europe drift behind me, and the vast, misty blue ocean expand before me. I was not so naive and hopeful as I had been when my voyage began, but the world was growing larger by the day. The postcard was brief, and read simply:
Dearest Mother and Father,
Hoping you are well. As you had previously cautioned, a professional dig site proved to be no place for a young lady to run around. Currently in seek of a better location to do so.
Regards,
A. Rook
Now that I was here in New Fiddleham, I was not ready to abandon my foray into adventure, but I would compromise by taking a conventional job to sustain it.
My first prospective stop was a general goods store. A bell chimed as I entered, and the shopkeeper, a thin, older woman, looked up from a flat loaded high with flour sacks. “Good morning, dearie! Be right with you!” She heaved one of the heavy bags to a shelf behind her, but it caught the corner of the rack and threw her off balance. The parcel hit the floor and burst in a billowing, white cloud. “Oh bother! Would you wait, just a moment?” she said apologetically.
“Of course. Please—let me help you with those,” I said, setting my suitcase beside the door and stepping in. The woman accepted my offer happily, and I began lifting bags to the shelf while she fetched a broom and dustpan.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she observed, sweeping up the mess.
“I only just made port,” I confirmed.
“I’d say London, by the accent?”
“A few counties southwest, actually. A little town in Hampshire. Have you been to England?”
The woman had never left the States, but she was happy to hear my tale. We chatted pleasantly, and I made quick work of the heavy bags. When I had stuffed the last one into the shelf, she pushed the empty flat into the next room, disappearing behind racks of dry goods. She was still away when the chime rang and a bushy-bearded man with rosy cheeks stepped in.
“I’ll have a tin of Old Bart’s, thanks.”
I realized I was still behind the counter, and looked around quickly for the shopkeeper. “Oh, I’m not—I don’t . . .”
“It’s pipe tobacco, darling. It’s just behind you, there—the one with the yellow label.”
I pulled down a tin with a robust sailor printed on the front and laid it on the counter. “The shopkeeper will be back out in a moment, sir,” I said.
“Oh, you’re doing just fine.” The man smiled and began counting out coins.
The old woman finally reappeared, brushing her hands off on her apron. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Stapleton!” she called, pleasantly. “Tin of Bart’s?”
I slipped out from behind the counter and let the woman conduct the transaction. “I like your new girl,” said Mr. Stapleton before he left. He gave me another friendly smile as he opened the door. “Don’t worry, darling, you’ll get the hang of it. Just keep that pretty chin up.” And then he was off, the door jingling shut behind him.
“What was that about, then?” asked the shopkeeper.
“Just a misunderstanding.”
“Oh, well. I can’t thank you enough for the help, young lady,” she said, clicking shut the cash register. “Now, what was it you needed?”
“Well, actually—if you have any other work—that is, if you might be hiring . . .”