The Victorian Travesty

The cobblestone street was dark and misty with the pouring rain, but inside Queen’s Convenience Shop, every brand label glowed under fluorescent light.

I stood behind the checkout counter, staring out at the empty shop. It was nearing six in the evening, closing time. My foot tapped the linoleum floor.

It was my birthday, and as much as I wanted to be happy, I wasn’t. I was dying to go home to see if a gift from my father had arrived in the post. Every year, he sent the most wonderful birthday present. If I didn’t desperately need the hours, I’d have sprinted home right then.

No one had set foot on the street in ages, but just then, a man in a top hat, carrying an odd, pointed umbrella, passed our window. He peered inside the store. As soon as we met eyes, he entered the store.

I blinked at the man’s strange ensemble. He wore an emerald frock coat with a ruffled collar and a white heather blossom on his lapel. He looked as if he was from a different era—Victorian, I thought. I wondered if the community theatre was putting on The Importance of Being Earnest.

The man shook the rain off his top hat, squinting at the brightness of the store, and started down the first aisle. He plucked a single tin of tea and brought it to the checkout counter.

“Turning eighty-one today, are we?” He eyed the gold balloons behind me: a one and an eight, for my eighteenth birthday, that had flipped to read eighty-one.

Mum had sent them. She hated that I had to spend my eighteenth birthday here working. She’d even begged me to take off, but I refused. We needed the money.

I gave a feeble chuckle and scanned the tea, trying to ignore that the man was staring at me. He was in perhaps his mid-forties, handsome but disheveled, with a dark five o’clock shadow and even darker shadows beneath his eyes. A faint scent of booze and smoke surrounded him. Oddly, I felt as if I’d met him before.

“Would you happen to have any cigars?” he asked. “Celborneshires—I’ve heard they’re only sold here in Celborne.”

Celborneshire cigars were one of the “attractions,” along with the town’s history, that drew a light crowd of tourists to my tiny town of Celborne. The cigars were supposedly first-rate, but I didn’t get the appeal—the town’s historic charm had long given way to fast food chains and kitschy boutiques. The most impressive relic in Celborne was probably the shop’s fluorescent lights from the seventies, which flickered violently with every rumble of thunder yet managed to stay on. Or my manager, Bill Queen.

The tobacco display behind the counter was out of Celborneshires. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, avoiding the man’s searching eyes. “We’ve just run out. We have other brands.”

“Celborneshires?” Bill piped up from the back room. “You’re in luck, sir! We’ve just got in a new box.”

The old man backed into the room with a large cardboard box in tow. He handed the man a pack of the famous cigars. A little lump formed in my throat, as it always did at the sight of those bright blue and yellow boxes. My father’s study had always been littered with them.

The box of cigars in the man’s hand made him seem doubly familiar. An old friend of my dad’s, maybe?

The man handed me the cigars, and I scanned them. “Eighteen pounds, forty-six pence.”

I could feel the heat of Bill’s scowl in my periphery. “What did we discuss this morning, Alair?”

“Eighteen pounds, forty—” I stopped to clear my throat, for the words had come out a croaky whisper. “Eighteen forty-six, please.”

I noticed the man cast a scornful look at Bill from under the brim of his top hat.

Bill’s scowl morphed into an eye-batting smile as he said to the customer, “She may not look it, but this here is local royalty.” He patted my shoulder a bit too hard. “Her father, Mr. Richard Faraday, was the best mayor our town ever knew. A man of class, and he only smoked Celborneshires. A mark of good taste, to be sure.”

“Pricy mark of good taste,” the man grumbled, fishing a twenty-pound note from his pocket. “There you are, Alair.”

I smiled stiffly, unnerved by the intent way the man said my name, that he remembered Bill say it at all. To most customers, I was no more human than a vending machine dispensing their toothpaste and Doritos. This man studied me like he knew the darkest truth of my soul.

“I hope you are having a very happy birthday,” the man said jauntily as I scooped out his change, my fingers fumbling as I became aware of Bill hovering over my shoulder. He’d once seen me give a customer an extra five pence, and he never fully trusted me since.

I smiled my thanks to the man. As I dropped the change into his hand, my eyes darted to the clock across the shop. Five minutes until I could clock out.

Bill leaned on the counter, his untidy eyebrows furrowing at the man’s apparent interest in me. He beheld me, assuming a proud yet puzzled expression. “Yes. Eighteen today, aren’t you, girl? A woman! I hope she won’t leave me now that she’s grown.” He chuckled, casting an amiable smirk towards the customer. “Ah, but where else has she to go?”

The man raised a brow at Bill as he took his time arranging his change in his wallet. “There are always greener pastures, aren’t there? Especially for the young.” The man smiled at me, his eyes, the color of peas, twinkling. Again, I was reminded of Dad. “Mr. Faraday must be quite proud of you today. Tell me more about this interesting fellow.”

As Bill’s eyes lit up, my heart sunk. On slow days like this, Bill enjoyed regaling tourists on the town’s “history,” as he called it, which was code for gossip. He was bound to go fully into storyteller mode on this rare occasion that the customer asked for it.

“Yes, he surely is, wherever he’s gone…” Bill paused, assuming a coy expression. “You see, eight years ago, on this very day, if I recall, Richard Faraday vanished quite completely. To this day, we haven’t the faintest idea where he went or why. He’s never once returned since.”

The customer’s eyes fell on me, and he smiled a smile half-sympathetic, half-mysterious. “How very sad.”

I forced a shaky smile of gratitude. My eyes were drawn to the clock again. Three minutes.

“We all thought he was an honest, principled man… As I said, he was a man of class—or so we thought. To leave his wife and child without a trace…we were all left to wonder what—or who—could tempt a man to do such a thing.”

Every muscle in my body tensed, but I bit my tongue. Two minutes.

“Women have many methods of tempting men to uproot their lives, ones you could never fathom,” the man said diplomatically.

My heart ached as if both men had taken a turn striking it.

Clearly, the people of Celborne were quite privy to each other’s private affairs. What they didn’t know was that my father was a good man, and he hadn’t disappeared without a trace.

He’d left a letter assuring me and my mother that he loved us but had no choice but to go, that he couldn’t tell us where or why he was going yet, except that there was an “evil woman” called Fidelia and lives were at risk. What he emphasized above all else was that he’d left to protect me—from what, I had no idea. But I believed him.

Finally, he’d promised he would return as soon as possible if he could, and if he couldn’t, he’d contact me on my eighteenth birthday and explain everything—where he went, whose lives were at risk, who Fidelia was, and why it all had to be kept secret.

That was today.

For the past eight years, I’d waited for this day. For eight years, my imagination ran wild with theories as to what took my father. My online search history was full of fruitless queries for “Richard Alastair Faraday.” For the past eight years, I’d counted the months, weeks, days, minutes until this day, July the twenty-fourth.

All I wanted was to get home and see if a birthday present, a letter, anything had arrived. I couldn’t take the angst of wondering if he’d broken his promise. I knew the pain that would cause me.

All day, I’d fought to subdue my hope that I’d get the answers Dad had promised me. But Mum always said that hope was the stubbornest weed in my garden. And I hoped for nothing more in the world than answers.

Tears had pooled in my eyes. The clock read 5:59, but I couldn’t stay a second longer. I snatched my bag from under the counter and paced to the door.

“Alair?” Bill called after me.

“My shift is over.”

Bill’s tone lowered. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is it really six o’clock and not five-fifty-nine?” I froze, letting the tension hang in the air. “I would greatly appreciate a hand with closing up.”

The prospect of sweeping and stocking shelves for another thirty minutes flooding me with dread. Another thirty minutes of anticipation, of listening to Bill speculate on my dad’s disappearance while I obeyed his commands to straighten those bags of crisps and mop that corner one more time. But I took a deep breath and doubled back, nodding dutifully.

My eyes fell on the cardboard box full of those blue and yellow packages, which I knew would be my duty to unpack and display. Suddenly, I was a child again, curled up in the cracked leather chair in Dad’s study, one of the hundreds of Dad’s antique books in my hands, gentle wafts of cigar smoke meeting my nose.

I met eyes with the customer, who watched me curiously from under the brim of his strange top hat. His mouth pulled into a sympathetic smile, and he offered me a wink. I was surprised how the simple gesture warmed me. It was as if he understood.

Something inside me gave. On a whim, I snatched a pack of Celborneshires from the box, stuffed them in my apron, and ran for the door.

“Alair? Have you gone mad?” Bill called after me. “You must pay for those!”

I jerked to a halt, hand on the door, heart thudding in my ears. We’d need every penny in my bank account and my next paycheque to pay for groceries next week. And these were nineteen-pound cigars.

So, I ran.

Just as the beating rain hit my face, I realized stealing might have saved me nineteen pounds, but I may have just lost my job. Bill may have called me “local royalty,” but he treated me like his royal subject. And he was not a merciful king when it came to theft.

I ran anyway. At that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but Dad.

“Alair!” Bill yelled out the door, his voice cracking with bewildered fury. “If you don’t turn around this instant, your career at Queen’s Convenience Shop is finished!”

But stopping was impossible. The euphoria of freedom lengthened my strides as I darted over the slick cobblestones of the empty street to the end of the block. I turned down an alley and ran until the town gave way to trees, and I was so exhausted my whole body had a pulse, from my temples to my toes.

There was Gem, his reins tied to a tree, dripping wet. Gem was my black Arabian horse. He had been my father’s but became mine after Dad left. He was probably my dearest friend.

“Sorry, buddy. You’re dripping wet,” I said, untying his reins and petting his soaked mane.

A few months earlier, my mother and I had liquidated our second car, and Mum took our remaining car to work. My options were to walk three miles into town or ride Gem half the way. That was an easy choice for me.

Seeing Gem before and after work was the brightest part of my day. When my few friends went off to university in a couple of months, I expected Gem would be the brightest part of my life. Maybe that sounded sad, but it wasn’t so bad to me.

Every day, I left him here, in the woods dividing the town of Celborne and our property, where no one would see him. This proof of our financial woes would only reignite the eight-year-long gossip surrounding my father that had finally, graciously begun to die down.

When he left, Dad had left us a large sum of money, enough to subsist on for a decade at least. But a couple of years ago, Mum invested a big chunk of it into opening her flower shop in town, and Cynthia’s Florals hadn’t been as lucrative as she’d hoped. Between bills, repairs, and Gem, money had gotten tight.

Gem stomped his hooves, happy to see me. A smile rose on my face, thoughts of money evaporating at once.

With a big jump, I mounted, and we started through the woods. He knew the way well and picked up speed to a trot, then a gallop. As he picked up speed, the raindrops pricked my skin harder and faster, and a chill coursed through me. Gem’s hooves hitting the earth reverberated in my heart, which still raced with adrenaline. I leaned close to the familiar, earthy scent of his wet mane.

A four-meter fence separated the woods from the fields surrounding our property. Normally, we’d go to the gate, but in this weather, we’d take a short cut. I kicked Gem’s side, and he rose to full speed and jumped clear over it.

In Gem’s prime, he’d won a handful of prizes at equestrian competitions, famed for his strength and speed. Now, past his prime, he lived a more relaxed life, but I still gave him the chance to show off his fortitude every now and then.

Near the edge of the woods were the stables. I led Gem into the still dryness inside. The sweet scent of hay wet with rain filled my nose, prompting a tingle of nostalgia both warm and sore.

I led Gem past the empty stalls to his. Dad had once wanted to fill those stalls with more horses. That never happened. Most of our plans never happened.

Before we fell on hard times, I’d had my future all planned out. Dad encouraged me to go to university to study my favorite subjects, literature and history. I’d move somewhere beautiful and historic and meet all kinds of interesting people. Now I wasn’t sure if that would ever happen. If I’d ever leave Celborne at all.

Looking into Gem’s sage eyes, black yet clear as water, I smiled at my tiny reflection. I wrapped my arms around his muscled neck, patting his smooth coat, so shiny black it almost appeared blue. Mum had once broached the topic of rehoming Gem to save money. I thought of myself as generally agreeable, but that was one battle I fought. She never mentioned it again.

When I was with Gem, all my worries shrunk. In his mind, nothing really mattered—except that he got his nightly carrot. I dug it out of my bag and fed it to him, then brushed his mane and tail, the familiarity of the chore clearing my mind.

A weight on my hip brought me back to the present—the stolen cigars in my apron. The box seemed to weigh the nineteen pounds it cost. I turned the package over in my hands, disgusted. I had pictured myself lighting one out here, where my mother wouldn’t see, just to smell the smoke that used to fill Dad’s study. I’d thought it would make me feel connected to him. Now I realized that was ridiculous. All I’d managed to do was get myself sacked.

I knew I’d beat myself up about it later, but at the moment, I didn’t care about anything but getting home to see if a package from Dad had arrived while I was at work.

I gave Gem one last hug, threw my bag over my shoulder, and ran through the rain, up the grassy hill to our squat little house, buzzing with anticipation.

Dripping wet, my heart thudding from exertion and anticipation, I reached the front door.

There were no packages on the doorstep. It was dark inside the house. I saw no packages there, either.

My heart sank. I stood in the dark foyer for a full minute, disappointment coursing through me like icy water.

Dad hadn’t sent anything. Had he forgotten? Was he safe? There was no way to know. All I knew was that I was now jobless and, eight years later, I still knew nothing more about what happened to my dad.

Mum wouldn’t be home from Cynthia’s Florals for another hour, so after I dried off and changed my clothes, I started cooking dinner. Thunder rumbled overhead, rain pummeling the roof. I filled a pot with water for pasta, trying to distract myself from the disappointment and self-reproach settling in my chest like lead.

On the windowsill above the sink were several tiny bronze horse figurines. There were probably fifty or more of them scattered throughout our house. Dad used to collect them, among other antiques. My parents told me nothing of my ancestry, so I’d always found it weird that the house was filled with old furniture, portraits, jewelry boxes, and other heirlooms. Like we were commemorating people we could never speak of.

An hour later, just as the leftover mashed potatoes beeped in the microwave, Mum’s voice rang out, “I’m home!”

She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. We could have been sisters, sharing similar features, except her skin was tanned from hours in the sun tending to her garden, where mine was sheet-white from days working at Queen’s. Everything about us was alike, especially our frizzy blonde hair, except for my light green eyes. Those were Dad’s.

She eyed the stove. “Why are you cooking? It is your eighteenth birthday! We are going out to eat.”

I chewed my lip. It was unspoken, but we both knew we couldn’t afford to eat out. Now more than ever, after what I’d done. “It’s okay. It’s tipping down. The Mad Hatter will be closed.”

She sighed. “Fine. But tomorrow. Mad Hatter. No excuses.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

“I’m going to go change. Then I want to hear about your day. Mrs. Queen didn’t push any drinks on you, did she?” She walked off, cackling.

“Mum?” I blurted.

“Hm?” She stopped in the doorway, turning back with a warm smile.

I was surprised to feel my heart beating faster. “I actually…I know what I want for my birthday.”

She sobered, a look entering her eye that always did when I broached a certain topic. Dad was her one true love, and her method of coping with his absence was ignoring it—a habit of hers that infuriated me to no end. “I’d rather not talk about him today, sweetheart, okay? I’d rather today be a happy day.”

I opened my mouth to argue that what would make me happy was knowing more, that I was a legal adult now and could handle whatever truth about Dad’s life I’d always sensed she knew more about than she let on—but I shut it. It was a battle we fought often, and it never ended favorably for me.

I shrugged. “I’m going to find out eventually, you know. Where he is. Why he left. I’m getting answers. From you or from someone else. Somehow. And if I figure out where he is, I’ll go there.”

Mum sighed. “What’s got you back onto this? Was Bill telling stories about him again? You haven’t brought him up in months. I thought you might’ve…moved on.”

“Moved on?” I screwed up my face. “He’s my father. I don’t—how can I—”

My mother closed her eyes, sighing. I hadn’t brought him up in months because I knew it hurt her, but today I couldn’t stay silent.

“Sweetheart,” she said gently, “I know you still miss him awfully. But you have to learn you do not need him to survive. Know that he loves you, that he will always love you, and move on with your life. Find fulfillment in other things. Your friends, Gem, university someday—”

I huffed. For someone who’d gone through the same abandonment, she acted like she had no clue. “Are you telling me to just forget him?”

“No. Only to move on.”

“I can’t! Everything was a reminder today. This man came in. He reminded me of Dad so much. He even asked for Celborneshires.”

Her brows furrowed anxiously. I studied her expression, trying to glean some hidden meaning, but she erased it in her expert way.

My throat was beginning to ache with oncoming tears. “And…he was meant to contact me today. Remember? My eighteenth birthday.”

She sighed in defeat. “He did, actually. Your yearly birthday present from him.”

My breath froze in my lungs. He had sent something?

As Mum traipsed off to fetch the gift, my mind raced with guesses of what it could be. One year, it was a fancy saddle and reins for Gem. Another year, an original edition of a book he’d read to me when I was little, Alice in Wonderland. Every other year, he sent puzzles. Along with riding Gem and reading, solving puzzles was something we had done together. He engineered puzzle boxes and hid little treasures inside. They always took time and research to unlock, but I always managed to solve them. Well, except the one I got on my tenth birthday.

Dad’s gifts meant the world to me, not because of what they were, but because they assured me he still loved me. He had written in his parting letter that he wouldn’t be able to correspond with us often. For my safety, he said, he didn’t want the person he called Fidelia to find our address. It was this bit of information that tortured my curiosity most of all. Why was Fidelia dangerous to me? But alas, Internet searches for the name “Fidelia” were fruitless, too.

Still, Dad had managed to send me a birthday present every year and send my mother flowers once a month for eight years, without fail. I couldn’t trace any of these deliveries to a location. And I tried. I gathered he had some way to send post without including a return address on the package—some middleman whom I couldn’t identify. As for Mum’s monthly flowers, he struck a deal with a florist in London who was sworn to secrecy (which I only learned after many pleading phone calls).

Mum returned to the kitchen with a tiny package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string and a little origami rose. A small smile betrayed her show of disapproval. Though she hated dredging up Dad’s memory, she liked how happy his gifts made me. “Arrived this morning.”

As much as I loved Dad’s yearly gifts, thoughtful and unique as they always were, I had hoped that this year, his gift was more than a first-edition copy of my favorite book or an antique trinket. I had hoped, against my will, that it would be him in the flesh, but now I would settle for anything. Anything but silence.

I unwrapped it eagerly, excited to read the note. He always wrote long, heartfelt letters in his signature calligraphy. He managed never to give away anything about his life, only ever reminiscing on the past or telling me interesting scientific facts he’d recently learned. I wished I could write back, tell him that I was learning advanced calculus in school, or that Gem could still jump four-meter fences, or how Bill had annoyed me at work that day.

But there was no note inside this time. There was only a small golden emblem with a coat of arms engraved into it. A tiger and a black horse on either side of a deep red rose with a bright green stem. Above the crest were the words UNUM REGNUM, and below, a banner reading: Morior Omnes, Ultima Suborior.

I looked at Mum, who eyed the symbol meaningfully, but erased her expression when she saw me watching her. She shrugged.

That night, lying in bed, I fiddled with the puzzle box I had been gifted on my tenth birthday. It was a tin box with a floral design. The puzzle was on the top. Three questions were embossed in the metal, answered by dialing in the correct letters or numbers, like on a briefcase. If you got them right, the box would open.

First, it asked for your birthday (I always got that one right), then your greatest loss, then your greatest hope. The last two questions had been lost on ten-year-old me and even on sixteen-year-old me, but now I gave the questions serious thought. First, I entered my birthday—24-07 for July the twenty-fourth. The second answer required six letters and the third seven. With a chuckle, I remembered, at ten years old, entering “DINNER” and “EATFOOD” on a night Mum sent me to bed without dinner as a punishment.

I jotted down options for both mystery questions. Only one word was true for the first: “FATHER.” For the second, I tried “BE LOVED,” “FULFILL,” “PURPOSE,” and any other seven letters that fit. The truest answer was “REUNION,” but still, the box didn’t open.

Then I noticed a hollowed-out shape below the dials. It was the same shape as the bronze emblem! Thrilled, I jumped out of bed, got it, and fit it in perfectly.

My heart sank when nothing happened for a moment. Then, I heard rotors slowly turning. The lid clicked open an inch. Heart in my throat, I lifted the lid.

All that was inside was an old, flattened pink rose. The dry petals crumbled at my touch. I had no idea what it meant. I was almost frightened by it.

My chest ached with disappointment. My eighteenth birthday was over, and all I’d gotten was more confusion.

Had he broken his promise?

I knew my dad. It wasn’t like him to lie. He’d always been honest with me, treating me as more intelligent than I was with his answers to my questions about the world. There had to be a good reason for this silence. I just needed to know what it was. I just needed to see him again.

I closed the box and laid down to sleep. At long last, an unsettled sleep swept me away from my sadness.

A loud thud woke me. My phone read 11:29. Floorboards creaking. Someone was downstairs. I turned on my lamp and got out of bed, my heart rate picking up. I peeked into Mum’s room. She was asleep, her face illuminated by the white-blue glow of her TV. “Hello?” I croaked from the top of the stairs, but I was so scared, it came out hardly louder than a whisper. I went back to Mum’s room and shook her. “I think there’s someone downstairs.”

She groaned. “’s nothing. G’ back to sleep.” There was another creak, clearly a footstep. I dug in my closet for my old tennis racket, dialed my phone to 999, and crept down the stairs. Each creak in the stairs sounded amplified.

A familiar scent reached my nose, and my stomach leapt into my throat. Cigar smoke. Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw an orange glow in Dad’s study, warped by the glass panes of the French doors. I held the racket in front of me, heart thudding in my ears. My body went rigid with fear—there was a fire in the fireplace, and a man was standing in front of it. I couldn’t identify him, as he was silhouetted by the fire’s glow. But we didn’t know any man well enough for him to be in our house, uninvited, at night. Besides Dad.

For a moment, I entertained the idea that it was Dad. He had said he’d contact us on my birthday, and it wasn’t yet midnight. This man was about the same stature, and he was even smoking a cigar. I stood before the door. He still hadn’t noticed me. My heart beat so hard and fast I feared it would burst.

I thought of my father, as I did whenever I was afraid. Throughout my childhood, he had always managed to be serene in scary situations. I was terrified to ride Gem at first, scared to fall. Dad’s reassurances gave me the bravery to try, and now I loved riding Gem more than anything in the world. I didn’t ever want to lose that bravery. What else would I miss out on if I always listened to my fear, frequent and persistent as it was?

Death-gripping the racket, I opened the door and stepped inside.

What if it was Dad? What if it wasn’t? The man turned around. It wasn’t my father, but the odd man with the strange outfit from Queen’s. He held a Celborneshire cigar to his lips with that same look in his eyes, like he knew my greatest secret. He bowed, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Miss Penvellyn.”