and tell these stories. They would be bricks in a wall to shelter the girls. It was what she’d so desperately wanted.
Just because the type burned like embers in her hand didn’t mean she had to stop.
THE LOST GIRLS SPEAK
THE FORGER
I WAS THREE YEARS OLD WHEN
MY TALENT WAS DISCOVERED
Forgery was not what I thought I was doing when papers were laid before me and I was told to copy them. At first, it was P L A Y. Then I began to think myself very fine. An A R T I S T. For wasn’t I doing what all artists did? Copying nature or copying a letter, what was the difference? When I was seven I would sit on a high stool in the apartment of my father’s distant cousin, who I discovered, later, was a forger himself. By twelve I was better than he was. I was like an apple tree to him, something he could pluck for its fruit. He planned to marry me, though it would be more accurate to say B U Y M E, and keep me working for him.
My hard work, stolen.
I don’t blame my parents. We were all so hungry. They believed I would be taken care of by the man who had taught me everything I knew. Almost everything. But I was only twelve years old. Two days before the wedding, I despaired. I walked into the river with stones in my apron.
The Lost Girls who live under the bridge stopped me. Instead of dying, they said, I might pretend I was dead. So when a corpse washed up on the banks of the Seine, its hair like mine and its face half-gone, we dressed it in my clothes and filled the apron with stones again, in case he came looking. And then we pushed that copy of me into the water.
IT SANK. I ROSE.
13
While Camille was caught up in the strange magic of telling the girls’ stories, Les Merveilleux had become decidedly more marvelous.
If Camille mistakenly called it a circus, she got a scowl from Sophie and a lecture from Rosier. Jabbing the air with his unlit pipe, he implored: “S’il te plaît, don’t say circus! Say instead: An Amazement! A Spectacle!” In only a week, it had transformed from something like a puppet show put on by street urchins hoping to earn a few sous to something resembling a dream. A fairy tale, all glitter and beauty, but with darkness underneath. At first, Sophie had insisted that the costumes all be red. But Rosier felt it was too bloody. “Is there not already too much gruesomeness in Paris?”
Only the most radical of revolutionaries would disagree.
Yesterday a frightened Adèle had told Camille a vagrant had broken into a house two streets over. A mob then dragged him into the street. When the police arrived, nothing was left but an arm torn off at the shoulder, its sleeve slick with gore. The girls too might be called vagrants, and it set Camille’s heart uneasily racing. After she’d comforted Adèle, she wrote to Lasalle, demanding to know if he’d heard anything about the girls’ eviction. There were only a few days left before they’d be out on the street. People do care, he wrote back. The pamphlets are a wonder. Send more stories. Subscriptions growing. Speaking to a friend in the mayor’s office tomorrow. News when I have it.
And so the red costumes had been sent back to Le Sucre to be reused in tricolor sashes and something new had been invented. Today they’d gathered at the workshop for its unveiling.
The puppet theater had grown, as had the height of the curtains. As they slowly parted, light snow made from tiny pieces of silver paper began to fall. The puppets came out, one by one, seeming to float in their white costumes. They too were taller, nearly the height of human beings. Behind the two lovers—or so Camille thought of them—lumbered a bear puppet, its large head swaying from side to side, snow sparkling in his fur. It was enchanting. And slightly spooky, which was just the effect, Sophie declared, she’d intended.
“They are beautiful,” Camille said. “The girl reminds me of a swan.”
“Hopeful as a blank slate?” Rosier said as he admired one of the puppet’s feathered wings. “A vision of the future?”
“Exactement,” Sophie said, pleased.
“And the story?” Lazare asked.
“Too abstract!” Rosier consulted his notebook. “We are rewriting it.”
“We’re moving the story to the forest, in winter. Do you remember, Camille, the masquerade