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Authors: Michael David Lukas
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James. “Just shy of my seventeenth birthday.”
“I believe that with the proper training and direction, Eleonora might be able to enter university in two years, maybe three. Not that I would want her to, but I believe she could.”
“How old is she?”
“She turned eight in August.”
“That would be astonishing.”
James trusted his bunk mate, he was an honest man with little pretense or pride, but it was difficult not to be skeptical of such claims. They spoke for a long while about Eleonora’s many achievements, the lessons Yakob had devised for her, and Ruxandra’s concerns about the child’s future as well as her fears of how the townspeople would react if they knew the full extent of Eleonora’s powers. James did his best to support his friend, but as much as he wanted to believe him, he couldn’t help but express some skepticism. Every time he did, Yakob would take a long puff on his pipe and shake his head.
“If only you could meet her,” he said. “You would know in a moment.”
Chapter Six
Pressed in on either side by a scratchy velvet darkness, her knees collapsed and arms folded into useless flippers, Eleonora stared into the blackness, unable to make out even the walls of the trunk she was trapped inside. Somewhere in the depths of the ship, the clack and groan of a steam engine rose, bellowed, and fell like a restless giant snoring in its cave. The paste between her lips tasted of stomach acid and coal dust. A needling cramp blossomed beneath her shoulder blade. And her thigh muscles fluttered anxiously, as if there were butterflies trapped under the skin. Wiggling her fingers, Eleonora felt a new cramp fan out from her shoulder. She closed her eyes against the pain and swallowed a greasy taste of bile. She had not eaten since noon the day before and her provisions were out of reach behind the cross of her ankles. If she could maneuver herself into a new position, she would be able to ease the cramp in her back, and it was possible she might find herself within an arm’s length of the provisions. Exhaling, she squirmed her left arm out from under her rib cage and canted her shoulder into the empty space left behind. From this new position, however, the best she could do was a desperate lurch into an even more awkward arrangement. At the end of it all, she was fortunate to be able to squirm back to her original fetal pose.
This was not how she had imagined her journey, not at all. Though what exactly she had imagined she couldn’t recall. As much as she had thought through the various and minute detailsof her plan, as many times as she checked and double-checked her list, Eleonora had never truly considered what it meant to shut oneself inside a trunk. When she had thought about it at all, she had always imagined that time would pass quickly, that, like the tedious parts of a novel, she could skim through the journey and arrive no worse for the wear in Stamboul. This, of course, was not the case. If anything, time moved more slowly, dragging its hooves like a weary pack horse forced to travel long days at the edge of its strength. If her estimations were correct, she had been in the trunk for a bit more than seven hours. In the grand scheme of one’s life, seven hours was not a particularly long period of time, but these seven hours felt like a week of years.
At first, she had been overcome with apprehension, worried that she would be caught, that she would sneeze or cough or swallow and her father or Ruxandra would discover her. Eventually, however, she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered she was being loaded into the luggage compartment of a hackney carriage and jolted down the hill. After waiting for a long while in what she assumed was a customs inspection line, Eleonora felt the luggage compartment open. There was a shaft of light coming through the crack in the lid, and she thought she heard her father’s voice. A bustle of men crowded about the
“I believe that with the proper training and direction, Eleonora might be able to enter university in two years, maybe three. Not that I would want her to, but I believe she could.”
“How old is she?”
“She turned eight in August.”
“That would be astonishing.”
James trusted his bunk mate, he was an honest man with little pretense or pride, but it was difficult not to be skeptical of such claims. They spoke for a long while about Eleonora’s many achievements, the lessons Yakob had devised for her, and Ruxandra’s concerns about the child’s future as well as her fears of how the townspeople would react if they knew the full extent of Eleonora’s powers. James did his best to support his friend, but as much as he wanted to believe him, he couldn’t help but express some skepticism. Every time he did, Yakob would take a long puff on his pipe and shake his head.
“If only you could meet her,” he said. “You would know in a moment.”
Chapter Six
Pressed in on either side by a scratchy velvet darkness, her knees collapsed and arms folded into useless flippers, Eleonora stared into the blackness, unable to make out even the walls of the trunk she was trapped inside. Somewhere in the depths of the ship, the clack and groan of a steam engine rose, bellowed, and fell like a restless giant snoring in its cave. The paste between her lips tasted of stomach acid and coal dust. A needling cramp blossomed beneath her shoulder blade. And her thigh muscles fluttered anxiously, as if there were butterflies trapped under the skin. Wiggling her fingers, Eleonora felt a new cramp fan out from her shoulder. She closed her eyes against the pain and swallowed a greasy taste of bile. She had not eaten since noon the day before and her provisions were out of reach behind the cross of her ankles. If she could maneuver herself into a new position, she would be able to ease the cramp in her back, and it was possible she might find herself within an arm’s length of the provisions. Exhaling, she squirmed her left arm out from under her rib cage and canted her shoulder into the empty space left behind. From this new position, however, the best she could do was a desperate lurch into an even more awkward arrangement. At the end of it all, she was fortunate to be able to squirm back to her original fetal pose.
This was not how she had imagined her journey, not at all. Though what exactly she had imagined she couldn’t recall. As much as she had thought through the various and minute detailsof her plan, as many times as she checked and double-checked her list, Eleonora had never truly considered what it meant to shut oneself inside a trunk. When she had thought about it at all, she had always imagined that time would pass quickly, that, like the tedious parts of a novel, she could skim through the journey and arrive no worse for the wear in Stamboul. This, of course, was not the case. If anything, time moved more slowly, dragging its hooves like a weary pack horse forced to travel long days at the edge of its strength. If her estimations were correct, she had been in the trunk for a bit more than seven hours. In the grand scheme of one’s life, seven hours was not a particularly long period of time, but these seven hours felt like a week of years.
At first, she had been overcome with apprehension, worried that she would be caught, that she would sneeze or cough or swallow and her father or Ruxandra would discover her. Eventually, however, she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered she was being loaded into the luggage compartment of a hackney carriage and jolted down the hill. After waiting for a long while in what she assumed was a customs inspection line, Eleonora felt the luggage compartment open. There was a shaft of light coming through the crack in the lid, and she thought she heard her father’s voice. A bustle of men crowded about the
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