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Velvet doesn’t realize she is locked in a pretty dream. This is her reality, her’s and Laphicet’s. Laphicet was never sick, Celica never passed away, Arthur was never the person who took everything from her. It’s as if she and Laphi are heroes in a children’s adventure book, the plot shielding them from harm. They pick apples; she bakes pies out of them and he sticks his fingers in the batter. He spends hours in the winter air without developing a cough. She tells him bedtime stories full of pirates and lizard men and talking cats, her own imagination surprising her. He grows older than eleven.
Sometimes, Velvet experiences dreamlike skips in logic, the environment around her switching to somewhere different like a plot thread the author senselessly dropped and replaced. But she soon adjusts to the new reality and forgets anything shifted.
At age twelve, Laphicet shows her a book full of maps. He points to a page with an illustration of a city with high, rounded spires and homes that look like castles from fairy tales. The caption beneath it says “Loegres.”
“I don’t want any gifts for my birthday,” Laphicet says. “I just want to go there.”
He is so different from her, desiring big things while all she needs is this quiet life, surrounded by family. But she wants to be by his side more than anything else, so she tells him she will plan a trip. She wonders if he will grow out of the fantasy by the time his birthday comes around, but he doesn’t. She admires him for not changing his mind, for having a strong sense of self at a young age.
When she sees Loegres in full color and three dimensions, a déjà vu sensation swims over her. The buildings and the scents tumbling from the many restaurants are familiar. Maybe the picture in Laphicet’s book was just very accurate, and the chefs may be cooking things she’s eaten before.
The city’s bustle overwhelms her, the scents and sounds attacking her, but Laphicet looks as if he is in paradise, and that is enough to reassure her. Snow perches on the rooftops, startlingly white against their reds. The chill in the air shocks her system after Aball’s temperate weather. She didn’t know cold could pierce so deep.
They stop in a restaurant warm with bodies and steam from the kitchen. Laphicet orders Mabo Curry and says it’s the best thing he’s ever had. At a table behind them sit two men with the same black hair and olive skin, probably brothers. The déjà vu returns, their voices like a song whose melody she recalls but whose words she doesn’t. They laugh and tease each other far too loudly over drinks, and she nearly turns around to scold them for their unruly behavior in front of a child.
She and Laphicet get swept up in the crowd. Everywhere she looks, there are pairs of people with the same faces, people who could be twins, a recurring motif. The crowds recede, and they are alone, standing at the foot of a staircase taller than three Aball dwellings stacked atop each other that leads to a palace. Laphi, lost and tired, starts crying, which always triggers her to tear up. Someone near the bottom of the stairs turns around and hurries down towards them- a redhead dressed in a thick, poofy coat.
Velvet is certain she has seen this woman, so certain it terrifies her. Could she have passed through Aball? The woman doesn’t seem to recognize her.
A man and a woman with the same blond hair are halfway up the steps. The woman, her face buried in a tornado of hair, turns around and says, “We’re in a hurry, Eleanor. What are you stopping for?”
Eleanor. Velvet knows that name.
The redhead shouts back, “There is always time to help those in need.”
The man and woman whip themselves around and continue ascending the steps. Eleanor stops in front of Velvet and Laphicet and says, much softer, “Do you need help?”
Velvet doesn’t just recognize Eleanor’s outward appearance. She recognizes who Eleanor is. Similar to herself, from the soft manner of speaking contrasted by the sternness with which she delivers her ideals.
Eleanor directs them to the inn across the way, providing precise directions and detailed landmarks. Laphicet, no longer crying, barrages her with questions about the city’s attractions, and she answers patiently. A snowflake tickles Velvet’s nose, and she jolts the crook of her arm up to her mouth to cover a sneeze that never comes. Eleanor snaps to attention, offering her handkerchief, then withdrawing it when Velvet removes her arm. Velvet’s nose tickles again, and she quickly replaces her arm. Eleanor offers the handkerchief again, withdraws it when the sneeze recedes again. Their gazes meet, both of them blushing.
Velvet and Laphicet thank Eleanor and leave in the direction she pointed out. Velvet can’t help giving her a second glance as they walk away. Eleanor is also looking back; Velvet tells herself this is only because she is concerned that she is headed the right way, and that the sting of heat on her cheeks is because of the cold. She dreams of Eleanor that night, and when she wakes, the dream feels more like real life, her real life a fiction.
Eleanor is supposed to be a stranger, a minor character, someone who disappears into the ether of Velvet’s mind. But Eleanor appears again and again in those strange skips of time. Each time, Velvet wants to tell her, I know you, but she never does, because she can’t explain any farther than that. Each time, she feels lucid, on the cusp of grasping an abstract concept. Each time is a false awakening, a jolt from one dream into another dream. She never gets any closer to understanding.
She and Eleanor hunt prickleboars together, Eleanor wielding a spear. Eleanor sews her sweaters and she bakes Eleanor peach pies. They fight eternally, arguments over every little thing, unable to stop. Eleanor tells Laphicet stories where the heroes always triumph and evil is always vanquished. There’s a kiss beneath Aball’s falling leaves, a daze of yellows and reds.
It’s a delicious spiral, comforting and ritualistic, a warm and peaceful cycle. She can’t break out of it, and she doesn’t want to.