5 July 2994

The market wasn’t known for being a quiet place. Marie was used to it—the talking, the laughing, and the shouting were what she had grown up around—but there were times when it became too much. There were days when the noise was like fingernails on a chalkboard, grinding in her eardrums like rusted gears.

She was watching her brothers in the square, as their parents were occupied tending to the customers at their jewelry stand. They were blurs as they ran, the older two, Florian and Theo, chasing Archie, the family’s youngest. Still, she could see every unique detail about them, the images seared into her head. She could see the gaps where Archie’s front baby teeth had once been, the chip in Theo’s tooth, and the scar across Florian’s lip. There were no people she knew better.

“Just because it’s your birthday doesn’t mean I let you win,” Theo said, as he caught Archie, giggling and squirming, up in his arms.

Marie stood from where she had positioned herself on the edge of the fountain and went to stand beside Florian, as he stood, arms crossed, watching his younger brothers from afar. He looked at her, blue-green eyes curious. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she said, and shook her head. “I think I’m going to go for a walk.”

He nodded, and she made her way from the center of the market to the edge. She had wondered if her brother would ask questions, but she supposed he knew better than that. Noise bothered her—she’d never hidden that—and something about today felt louder than usual, even if the volume was the same. It was brighter, and there was more movement. Sometimes, it felt like each motion was a flash in her eyes just like each sound was a grate in her ears. When it became too much, her two options tended to be sitting in place, eyes wide, trying to drown it out, or walking away. She always preferred the latter.

She could have gone deeper into the village and made her way to the quieter area where her family’s home was situated, but she had gone the opposite direction instead, between houses to the outer rim of the village. This was the direction of the lake, the quiet water on the backside of the shadow of a palace that loomed over everything from atop its hill. There was plenty of security around, she knew, but it felt, when she wandered over to the sand and the docks, that she was entering a blind spot, a spot where she could see no one and no one could see her. 

The sunlight sparkled off of the ocean-like water, steady as the idle noise of people going about their business tying and untying boats from the dock and tossing barrels and nets from one position to another. Their conversations were, compared to the chaos of the market, calm and monotone, almost relaxing to listen to. But one voice was an exception. 

Not far off, someone was muttering a string of curses under their breath. It was a boy, she could see, struggling with a rope as he reached from inside his boat for the edge of the dock. He kept either losing his grip, tying the knot too loose to hold, or leaving too much slack in the rope, and with each failure, his motions became faster, more aggressive, and less effective.

She took her time wandering over to him, thinking of her brothers who would surely hate to have a young woman rush to their aid when they felt the roles should be reversed. Still, it didn’t matter how much time she gave him. Whether he wanted it or not, he needed help.

She crouched down and held her hand out for the rope. He hesitated but handed it to her, watching as she tied the knot with steady, unflinching hands. When she’d finished and gotten back to her feet, he scoffed, shaking his head.

“You’re good at that,” he said. “You make me look bad.”

“Well—” she grinned— “maybe I’m more than a pretty face.”

“Oh?”

“My dad likes to go out on the lake,” she said, watching him climb out of the boat to stand level with her on the dock. “So I learned a lot when I was young.”

“I see.”

The amusement on his face, the quirk of his lip and the twinkle dancing in his eye, made her stomach stir. She felt safe, yet she wanted to back away from him; it took everything in her to keep her feet planted.

He looked around her age, maybe a year or two older, with dark, windswept hair that she suspected was always a wild mess, windy day or not. His clothes weren’t formal, but they looked nice, too nice to belong to anyone who spent much time in the market like she did. She didn’t want to stare at him, but she couldn’t help it. He looked familiar.

“Thank you, really.” He was rocking back and forth on his feet, his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans. The satchel strapped across his chest rocked with him. “I went out and didn’t really think about having to tie back up when I got back… I’ve never done it on my own. Somebody’s always with me.”

A smile played at the edge of Marie’s lips. It was gratifying to know that she had done something helpful. “It’s a good thing I was here to help, then. It really wasn’t a big deal.”

“It is a good thing, isn’t it?”

He smiled to himself as if, somehow, he had said something remarkably witty. It was a look that fit him—that fit the look in his eyes, the dimples on his cheeks, and the scrunch of his nose—and that had a sort of innocence to it. He was about a head taller than her, her forehead barely reaching his chin, but he looked light, no tension in his muscles. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone so entirely buoyant and untroubled. 

He’d stopped rocking and was staring at her with a thoughtful look in his eyes. They were green, almost the same color as green glass. “Hey, um, I’m headed back toward the village, but if you were going that way too, maybe we could walk up together?”

The farthest her plan had gotten was that she’d walk down to the dock and eventually make her way back to her family when she felt like it, before sunset if she wanted to avoid getting chewed out by her mother. But she would never admit that to him.

“That’s funny,” she exclaimed, painfully aware of the octave her voice had shot up. She’d been working on that, keeping her voice steady when she was lying. “I was about to go that way too, but then I saw you and thought I’d better not hurry off so fast.”

“Perfect.” She got the sense that he knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful with him—after all, she had come from the wrong direction to have been on her way back to the village—but he didn’t seem to care. As he started to walk, his back entirely straight and each step even and gentle, his smile never wavered. 

Once they’d made their way off of the dock and onto the cobblestone path back up to the village, he slipped his hands out of his pockets and looped his thumbs through his belt loops, twiddling them restlessly against the fabric of his pants. His fingers were adorned with gold rings, and she wondered how rude it would be to ask him about them. Cheap jewelry was common in the village, but valuable jewelry was not. Her parents were jewelers. She knew real gold when she saw it.

“So, you live in the village?” he asked before she got the chance to question him. “You have family there?”

“Yes and yes.” Their shoulders brushed, and her skin tingled. “My parents work in the market; they run a jewelry stand. And I have three brothers, two older and one younger. I’ve got some extended family too—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—but you’d think they lived a lot farther away for as much as I see them.”

“That’s understandable,” he said, and their shoulders brushed again. She swore he had done it on purpose this time. “It can be hard sometimes.”

“It really can.”

She opened her mouth to ask him about his family, but he changed the subject quickly enough to send the message that he didn’t want to talk about them. “You like boats?”

“Love them.” A breeze brushed a few strands of loose hair into her face, and she reached up to tuck them back behind her ears. “It’s calm on the water. I like to bring a book and pretend the real world doesn’t exist. Sometimes I imagine just floating away and never coming back.”

Reaching into his bag and pulling out a book, he laughed. They had made it back up to the village, and the noise of the market was starting to reach Marie’s ears again. “That’s exactly what I was doing today.”

“Great minds think alike. Don’t they?”

“They really do.” He slipped the book back into the bag without taking his eyes off her. She knew he could hear the noise too, but he gave no indication of it. His face remained steady, only a slight flush of pink in the olive tone of his cheeks signaling his unease. “You from here?”

She nodded. They had slowed their pace. It was as if they could will the market to get farther from them if they just took as much time as possible to reach it. “You?”

This question, he didn’t try to get around. Nodding his head, he locked his eyes with hers. She thought he was going to comment on them—on the fact that they were two entirely different colors, deep brown and bright blue—as everyone else did, but he didn’t. “I’ve never really left here,” he said instead. “It makes me feel like a caged animal sometimes, a spectacle. I wish I could get away.”

She wondered, as she looked him over, what he meant by that. Calling himself a spectacle felt like such an exaggeration, but there was nothing unserious or sarcastic about his tone of voice. Whoever he was, whatever his life was like, he really did feel like he was on display.

His shirt was a black button-down, and with its top few buttons undone, the base of his throat caught her attention. A dark pendant rested on it, fixed with what appeared to be a black diamond about the size of her thumbprint. It was a jewel so rare in nature that she had never seen one in person, only in her parents’ books. She must have been wrong, but in combination with a chain that seemed to be a mix of silver and gold, the two woven together in an intricate pattern, she couldn’t help but wonder. 

“That’s pretty.”

He glanced down and grasped the pendant, looking it over as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “It’s an heirloom,” he said. “My father gave it to me.”

“Well, it really is beautiful,” she said, hardly managing to refrain from adding, “And it looks expensive.”

She knew now why he was so familiar to her. And by the look on his face, he knew that she knew. 

“Listen,” he stuttered. “It was nice to meet you—”

“Marie.”

“It was nice to meet you, Marie, but I do have to go.” He laughed nervously, his eyes darting away from her. “Thank you again.”

He didn’t wait for her to say anything in response, turning his back and darting away like he’d just seen a ghost. Speechless, she watched him go, unsure if she’d ever see him again. She doubted she’d ever know if she was right about who he was, and she couldn’t allow herself to be convinced. It was outlandish. She hadn’t even gotten his name. It was inappropriate to go giving him an identity that probably wasn’t even his anyway.

To be continued…