The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I dash through the throngs of people, but I can’t escape. The figures around me on the street are changing, hats disappearing, little boys vanishing from gutters, babies appearing pushed in funny little cradles on wheels. I throw myself into the city, faces upon faces swimming up together in the crowd, all looking through me. Do they even know I’m here? Do they even see me?

“Help!” I cry as I run, my feet flying across puddles and over curbs and through a honking cluster of horseless landaus.

“Outta the way!” someone shouts, and I flinch.

“Help!” I scream again, running up to an old woman in a long dress, making her way slowly on the arm of a nurse. Neither of them responds to me at all, and when I try to put my hands on the nurse’s arm, my fingers don’t touch anything. The two women just push their way along the sidewalk, each looking inward at her own worries.

“I don’t understand!” I wail, running away from them, dashing up to a man in a waistcoat, only it’s short in back and has no vest. He’s looking at his wrist for some reason, and takes no notice of the Masonic temple dissolving into dust directly behind him. I scrabble at his sleeve, screaming, “Help me! Somebody help me, please!”

But he shakes me off, indifferent, and then strides with purpose across the street with a crowd of other people. The landaus all stop and wait for him, though no one is waving to them to stop.

“Can you please help me?” I beg of a girl about Beattie’s age, who pays no attention to me, so absorbed is she in looking at some little object she holds in her hands, a few inches from her nose. She giggles at the object and walks away from me.

“What’s happening?” I scream, throwing my head back with my arms spread in supplication to the heavens.

The sky is blue and hot, like in summer, and instead of dirt and animal smells I taste something like brimstone in the air. Instead of roasted pears and hot corn, a cart on the street corner offers a sort of fried paste with spices I’ve never smelled before. The sign is gibberish: It says FALAFEL.

With a guttural cry of terror I tear off down the street, slamming into a young man surrounded on all sides by dogs yapping at his ankles. I fall to my hands and knees, my palms grating bloody on the pavement, and the young man hollers, “Hey, watch where you’re going!”

I struggle to get back to my feet, but my skirts are twisted around my legs, and the dogs are all on thongs of leather attached to the man. I’m trapped in a mesh of leather thongs, and the dogs all snarl and snap at me, lunging for my face. I cower, bringing my arms over my head. Then the dogs are pulled roughly off, and the young man goes away cursing at me.

I’m sobbing, and I look down at the bloody scratches all over my hands. I’ll never get home in time.

I’m lost.

I haven’t found Herschel’s shop.

I don’t recognize this street at all.

When I get home they’ll beat me raw for running off when I was supposed to be packing. I’ll make everyone late, and that could be dangerous, if the Brotherhood of Luddites come for us like they say they will. And Lottie will be upset that I’ve ruined my dress.

My dress . . .

I look down at myself, and I’m not in the dress I put on in the morning. I’m in the evening gown that Ed is supposed to be packing for me to wear to the opening of the canal, on the corporation barge one week from today. The one with the velvet flounce.

I glance up, looking around myself, eyes widening with bafflement and wonder.