Chapter Text
He locked the doors behind them, breath racing heavily as he leaned against it. They’d lost the man pursuing them several blocks back but he still didn’t want to take any risks. It felt as though someone was about to kick the doors in at any moment, that he’d feel the force of a boot and the man would burst in, waving a knife, and Isaac had very little to fight back with. He’d dropped the pineapple immediately after hitting the man in the face with it at full force, grabbing the girl’s hand instead and running, running, running, losing themselves in the crowds and making an escape. Only after they were inside did he let go of her hand, and she pulled away, retreating into a corner, knees pressed to her chin. It looked almost like she was sucking her thumb. How old was she? It was hard to tell; she was very, very skinny.
Her hair was long and blonde, and there was a clump of it missing, where the man they’d escaped together had been dragging her along. She had a black eye and a split lip, and there was a papercut-thin mark on her throat where a knife had left its mark. She stared out at him with big, brown eyes, terrified and child-like, and Isaac couldn’t help feeling protective. Sitting down on the floor, he smiled at her.
“Hey. I’m Isaac. Isaac Dian. What’s your name?”
The girl was quiet. After a brief hesitation she said, almost inaudibly, her high, sweet voice quavering slightly, “Miria.” She didn’t give a surname, she said nothing else. Just that. And then went back to staring at him strangely.
Isaac didn’t much like silence. Whenever he went anyway, he felt compelled to fill it, which had got him lectured several times in school, or after church services. He sometimes didn’t realise that questions could be rhetorical, and didn’t understand why people asked them if they didn’t want an answer. Even when he was alone, he would talk, reading out novels to his collection of toy soldiers - until he’d become too old for toys and they were taken away, and he found himself reading out novels to empty space, or sometimes just talking, to fill that silence. His family found this habit odd and tried to quash it, to no avail.
“Why’d you talk to yourself so much, Isaac?” his sister Aline had asked once.
“You practise singing all the time. What’s the difference?”
“ I practise singing to get better at it,” Aline had humphed. “ You , on the other hand, don’t need to get better at talking. You ought to practise staying quiet instead.” With that, she had flounced off to her room. Isaac had been the one to get into trouble over that. Isaac always was. His sister had the temperament of a prima donna and could be excused for murder because of ‘the art’ in her veins. Isaac would receive a tongue-lashing for reading novels instead as studying, and ‘making up stories’ when so far as he knew, he was telling the truth. He really didn’t understand his family.
The way he saw it, he was practising talking. Practising storytelling. Filling the silence with something else, something better .
So he started talking to the girl, partly to settle himself and fill that silence, partly to reassure her.
“Miria, eh? That’s a good name. That’s the kind of name a rich lady would have, no, a princess, the fairest in the land with the voice of an angel.”
The girl tittered slightly. “A princess? Like in a storybook?”
“Exactly, Miria,” Isaac continued, matter-of-factly. “A fair maiden in a storybook of old, living in a faraway land.”
The girl was quiet. “In a castle?” she piped up suddenly.
“Yes! In a castle, with a hundred servants waiting on her hand and foot!” He frowned, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “However, all our domestic help went with the rest of the family to Europe for Aline’s tour so...you’ve just got me. Never fear, Miria, I can labour as hard as a hundred thousand servants, you don’t have to worry with me here.”
Miria gave a watery smile. “Th-thank you.”
“No problem. Say, who was that man bothering you?” Miria was starting to uncurl from her protective ball, but the minute he asked that, she hugged her knees even tighter, eyes flashing with fear. “If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. But if I ever see the villain again, I’ll sock him on the nose with my mean right hook.” That was a phrase he’d seen in a book, and he thought it might make him sound strong and impressive to the birdlike girl. If he could protect her, maybe she’d be happy. Maybe she’d smile again. That’d be nice, if he could make someone smile.
“You’d do that?” she asked nervously, eyes wide in awe.
“Of course I would!” Isaac exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “For you, dearest Miria, I’d do anything.” Never mind that he’d only met her less than an hour ago, that he only had a first name to go on, that he knew nothing about her circumstances or why she’d been in such a perilous situation to begin with, he was determined to protect her. To keep her safe. To make sure she was happy.
He looked back at her and saw she was shaking, sobs racking her body and he was unsure what to do. He’d never really had to comfort a crying person before.
“I’ll get you a blanket. You must be freezing. Did you want soup? I have soup. Only onion soup, but I didn’t have any onions so I used carrots instead, but I made it and it tastes good. I’ll fetch you a blanket, and a bowl of soup, and all you need to do is make yourself at home. Does that sound good?” Miria nodded. “Alrighty then! I’ll get on it! You just settle in!” Dimly he wondered how his family would like this, him bringing a stranger into their house, but he shrugged it off. Miria was nice. They’d have to see that. That she was a good person and deserved to be allowed to stay with them. He headed through to the kitchen, then a thought occurred to him. He stuck his head back around the door. “Hey, Miria? Do you like cocoa?”
Wordlessly she nodded, eyes full with tears of joy. Isaac darted back through to the kitchen and got to work.
-
They ate supper at the table, Miria staring at the polished silverware in awe. She was fascinated by everything, and so Isaac relayed a brief, abridged history of his family to her, adding bits in from various novellas to pad out the sections he was less sure of. There had to be truth in there somewhere, right? He was probably broadly speaking accurate, more or less. This is where his family would have told him to be quiet, stop lying, but Miria only listened in stunned silence, waiting until he had finished to say, “Wow, Isaac. You’re so smart.”
He glowed with pride. Nobody had ever called him smart before. In fact, he’d worn the dunce’s cap more times than any other boy in his class. The only subject he excelled in was English, however he had to be told to stay on topic, turning every essay into a rambling story of magical beasts or some such. And then he’d be caned for it. This never stopped him. He wasn’t able to change himself, nor did he see why it could be necessary. He didn’t understand why other people thought it was.
Miria thought he was smart.
That was something he’d never expected.
The look of wonder on her face was something else. She was hanging onto his every word, fascinated beyond belief. He told her stories he’d read in his father’s translations, tales from the East that he’d half-heard and only half-understood and they came out as an unintentional jumble he tried to string together and arrange them into a semi-coherent narrative (hard when you forgot the ending to one story and had to substitute something else instead) and Miria nodded and looked on in delight. She nursed her cocoa in her hands, sipping it occasionally and smiling.
She ate three bowls of the soup and finished the rest of the bread. He wondered how hungry she’d been.
Outside it was getting dark and Isaac couldn’t throw her out. Not that it had ever been an option, nor would it have ever occurred to him if Miria herself hadn’t started toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She fidgeted shyly. “I thought...well, I’ve been enough trouble. I thought I should go now, I don’t want to be in the way.”
“Perish the thought!” Isaac replied immediately. “You can stay here. As I said, my family are away. Aline is a famous singer, she has various concerts to perform. They don’t get back for months. You can take her room. She won’t mind.” How could she? Miria needed somewhere to stay. This was only generous.
“A-are you sure?”
“Naturally! Never let it be said I am an ungenerous or rude host. You may stay here as long as you please.”
Miria relaxed. “Hey, Isaac?”
“Yes, Miria?”
“You’re the best person I’ve ever met.”
Isaac reddened profusely. “I’m really not.”
“I think you are,” Miria said softly, and at that moment Isaac didn’t think he could get any happier.
So anyway, he showed her up to Aline’s room, which like everything in the house, rendered her speechless. She couldn’t believe the size of it, the softness of the mattress and the feather pillows, the sheen of the quilts, the gold-rimmed vanity desk, the elegant necklaces and earrings. When she opened the wardrobe her jaw dropped. The countless dresses Aline had left behind on their trip, the many, many absurd hats. Pulling a face, Isaac placed one of the sillier hats upon his own head and Miria collapsed into giggles.
“My turn!” she cried, grabbing a hatbox and sending them tumbling all over the floor. Instinctively she jumped, shrinking away from Isaac. “I’m sorry! Please don’t be mad, I didn’t mean to-”
“Look, Miria,” he interrupted. “You made it rain hats! It’s a miracle!”
She perked up. “A miracle! It’s raining hats and dogs!”
“Now I think dogs is stretching it a little…”
They burst into laughter all over again. It was like finding part of himself he didn’t know he was missing. Someone who he clicked with intuitively, someone who understood him, even if he didn’t understand her yet. He knew she was scared.
And he knew he could make her less scared.
He showed her where the bathroom was (Aline, of course, had an en suite) and fetched some towels so she could clean herself up. He also fetched some pyjamas and a dressing gown for her to change into after she finished. Then he left her to it, heading down the hallway to his room, leaving her a note to tell her where he had gone. Just so she didn’t feel alone and worry. It was a big house. He didn’t want her worrying or getting lost. He wanted her to feel at home. Tomorrow he’d give her a tour of everything, they’d have to go to the library for sure. Maybe he could read to her. He wondered if she’d like listening to him read. Did she like books?
There, a plan for tomorrow. They’d go to the family library and read and it’d be wonderful.
She’d enjoy it.
That was all he hoped for.
That he could make her happy.
-
It was getting toward midnight when Isaac heard the timid little knocking at his door and got up, opening it to see an anxious Miria standing outside, trembling.
“I- I had a bad dream,” she managed, and he stepped aside to let her in.
“It’s alright. I’m here. Next time you have a bad dream, imagine me there. I can fight away whatever it is. I’m here.”
Miria nodded. “You’re here,” she echoed. “Do you ever have nightmares?”
He shook his head. “Let me tell you why. Whenever I have nightmares, I picture something that can stop the monster. If I dream of a minotaur, I think of Theseus, if I dream of a vampire I think of Van Helsing, if I dream of Moriarty I make sure to think of Sherlock Holmes. Do you understand? If you’re dreaming of a dragon, you have to think of a dragon slayer. And if you need a dragon slayer, then I’m here.”
She nodded. “You’re so brave, Isaac. I don’t think I’d be able to slay a dragon, but I’m sure if there was one here right now, you’d be able to sock it right in the nose, with your mean right hook!”
If there was a literal dragon here right now, he wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do, but Miria believed in him and believed he was her hero, which he was. So he nodded vigorously. “Exactly! Let me be your dragon slayer! Every princess needs one!”
She smiled now, seeming less scared. “Can I - can stay in here tonight? If it’s no trouble.”
“Certainly!” She moved to sit on the floor and he shook his head. “No, I insist, take the bed.”
“I wouldn’t want to-”
“I insist!”
“But I don’t want you to sleep on the floor…”
“This is truly a conundrum indeed,” Isaac mused, then jumped in the air abruptly. “I have it! Fetch pillows. We’ll build a great wall down the middle of the bed, like the great Chinese princess Hua Mulan did to keep out Genghis Khan. You take one side, I take the other. It’s the perfect solution.”
“Oh Isaac, you’re so smart,” Miria chirped, for the second time that evening. It didn’t stop feeling anything less than magical. They fetched more pillows and built the pillow-wall, each taking their half of the bed and curling up.
Isaac’s mother had stressed that sharing a bed with someone of the opposite sex with whom you were not married was tantamount to the worst possible sin, and would lead to pregnancy, tragedy and death. He was sure she couldn’t object to his workaround, the pillow wall. That would prevent any such things occurring, for sure. He was 100% certain of it. No, 110%. Or more. She couldn’t object to this. Besides, Miria was frightened. She’d had a bad dream. Isaac was just doing the right thing and being a gentleman. Hadn’t he been raised to be a gentleman?
Being cruel to Miria would be more than just ungentlemanly, it would be wrong. He refused to do it. His family would understand, surely.
He fell asleep thinking about this, pressed next to a wall of pillows.
The next day Miria told him he snored, but she hadn’t wanted to wake him up. Not because she’d been nervous about it or anything.
But because he looked too sweet while he was asleep.