complain. Does not ask to go home. Does not cry for her parents, wherever they might be.
She is given a room where everything is too big for her. Clothes that fit reasonably well are found and one of the knitting groups provides her with sweaters and socks spun from colorful yarn. Her shoes are cleaned and remain her only pair until she outgrows them, the rubber soles worn through to holes then patched and worn through again.
They call her the girl or the child or the foundling, though the more semantic-minded residents point out that she was not abandoned, not as far as anyone knows, so the term foundling is inaccurate.
Eventually she is called Eleanor, and some say afterward she was named for the queen of Aquitaine, and others claim the choice was inspired by Jane Austen, and still others say she once responded to the request for her name with “Ellie” or “Allira” or something like that. (In truth the person who suggested the name plucked it from a novel by Shirley Jackson but neglected to clarify due to the unfortunate fate of that other, fictional Eleanor.)
“Does she have a name yet?” the Keeper asks, not looking up from his desk, his pen continuing to move across the page.
“They’ve taken to calling her Eleanor,” the painter informs him.
The Keeper puts down his pen and sighs.
“Eleanor,” he repeats, putting the emphasis on the latter syllables, turning the name into another sigh. He picks up his pen and resumes his writing, all without so much as a glance at the painter.
The painter does not pry. She thinks perhaps the name has a particular meaning to him. She has only known him a short amount of time. She decides to stay uninvolved in the matter, herself.
This Harbor upon the Starless Sea absorbs the girl who fell through the remains of a door the way the forest floor consumed the door: She becomes part of the scenery. Sometimes noticed. Mostly ignored. Left to her own devices.
No one takes responsibility. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, and so no one does. They are all preoccupied with their own work, their own intimate dramas. They observe and question and even participate but not for long. Not for more than moments, here and there, scattered through a childhood like fallen leaves.
On that first day, in the chair but before the bunny, Eleanor answers only a single question aloud when asked what she was doing out on her own.
“Exploring,” she says.
She thinks she is doing a very good job of it.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS finds himself in an elevator with a pink-haired lady with a gun who he’s pretty sure has just committed arson on top of the already committed crimes of the day and an unconscious man who might be an attempted murderer and his throbbing head cannot decide if he needs a nap or a drink or why, exactly, he feels more comfortable now in present elevator company than he had before.
“What the…?” Zachary starts and then can’t figure out the rest of the words so he finishes the question aimed at Mirabel with hand gestures indicating both the gun in her hand and the elevator door.
“It’ll render that door useless, hopefully it will take her a while to locate another one. Don’t look at me like that.”
“You’re pointing a gun at me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Mirabel says, looking down at her hand and then placing the gun in her bag. “It’s a single-bullet antique, one-and-done. You’re bleeding.”
She looks behind Zachary’s ear and takes a handkerchief printed with clocks from her pocket. She pulls it away more bloodied than he had expected.
“It’s not that bad,” she tells him. “Just keep this on it. We’ll get it cleaned up later. It might scar, but then we’d be twins.” She lifts her hair to show him the scar behind her ear, which he had noticed earlier, and he doesn’t need to ask how she got it.
“What is going on here?” Zachary asks.
“That’s a complicated question, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “You’re very tense. I take it teatime was not particularly pleasant.”
“Allegra threatened my mother,” Zachary says. He has a feeling that Mirabel is trying to distract him. To keep him calm.
“She does that,” Mirabel says.
“She meant it, didn’t she?”
“Yes she did. But that threat was attached to telling anyone about our destination, wasn’t it?”
Zachary nods.
“She has her priorities. Maybe stay down here for a few days, I can do some reconnaissance. Allegra won’t do anything