Dot
id quod plerumque accidit
Dear Reader,
Merry Christmas!
It is always recommended that you be current with The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion before reading The St. Crispian’s Gazette.
x Beth
Dot
Dot tripped her way out onto Traitors Road.
Afternoon was drawing all the buildings in anticipatory light, the sort that glowed in promise before dimming for later variations of the theme—candles in windows, shop fronts with bright lamps and foil displays, gaslight reflections off glass and frost.
It was Christmas Eve in St. Crispian’s.
“Under foot, under foot, under foot,” she sang beneath the swing of her breath, invoking a perplexing yet mysterious condition often referenced by her mum. Her mum was quite old—twenty-seven years, if it was to be believed—and she sometimes spoke in curiosities.
But not the sort always understood by Dot.
With the whisk of a straw broom to her backside, Dot had been swept into the alleyway. “You’ve made all three of your brothers cry, broken a plate, and I think you need fresh air. Be back before full dark, now. Your father will be waiting. And remember?”
She waited for Dot to remember.
“St. Crispian’s,” said Dot, her gaze wandering the way of the birds.
“Stay in St. Crispian’s,” her mum repeated before she crouched low and lifted her hand, a coin caught between her thumb and finger. “I’ve a ha’penny for our Christmas. Might I trust you to find something special?”
Dot nodded as she watched her mum place the coin in the palm of Dot’s green mitten. She gripped her left hand round the coin and her mum said, “Away with you now.”
A cry from the baby, and with an answering sigh her mother stood. The door was shut.
And so Dot, with two thousand, seven hundred and nine days of lived experience, paused three quarters of a second to consider her route, and ended up choosing to follow the alley out to Traitors Road.
The winter light was touching a cold finger to each of the unlit lanterns—the ship, the fox & bird, the scroll, the hare—and Dot studied each furiously. Last year, when Mr. Harper’s glazed sphere had been cracked with a thrown stone, he’d rewarded Dot three biscuits for her having reported the incident. She had since sought every opportunity to repeat the apple and pastry windfall.
A pack of boots, coats, and a stylish cane had emptied out of The Cleopatra. Each attached to a Reprobate. There were five in all.
“Wassail, wassail—”
“Assail more like! You box my ear again and I’ll—”
“—all over the town! Our toast it is white—”
“You walked into a rather robust—”
“I say, my mother will have my neck if I don’t attend her dinner—”
“—and our ale it is brown! Our bowl it is made—”
“A hit direct!”
“I’d forgotten you had a mother.”