Anne-Marie de Parthenay
Five Nations Territory (Modern-Day New York)
Day by day, the sheltered bud that was Anne-Marie began to blossom. Ripped open and laid bare by the terror of death, she endured. Battered by the cold nights spent surviving the wild, she endured. And each day that passed, her stem hardened, and her petals grew. During her days as Le Vicomte’s captive she would sit by the window, wishing for a chance to discover the world beyond her bedroom walls, to discover herself. Now, that discovery was thrust upon her—Pandora’s box had been opened, and despite all the hardships and the frightening uncertainty of the future, she looked forward to each coming day.
Truth be told, she found the euphoria of self-discovery addicting. Every time she came to learn something new about the world, she only felt the weight of her ignorance more. The world was infinite, in its size, in its depth. She could spend her whole life trying to learn it all, and still be left wanting. Yet the futility of that venture only endeared it to her more, and she found herself ravenous for anything new to sate her.
Thankfully for her, the young man she came to know as Black Bird was there to help her on this new quest for knowledge. More than that, he seemed delighted to teach her about the world, and especially about his people and culture. Each day he would show her something new in the world around them—a plant, an animal, a rock or stream. He would start simple and small, then extrapolate, illustrating to her how all these things were connected, and how the lives of the people born in these lands were informed by them. Slowly but surely, she came to understand these things—Black Bird was an excellent teacher. He spoke French with such a fluency that she was surprised he was not born in Nantes, and he broke every concept down in a digestible, accessible way. He seemed as well to enjoy teaching as much as she enjoyed learning, and Anne-Marie was happy to indulge him, if only to bring the light back into his downtrodden eyes.
There was some great misery in that boy, one that haunted his every waking minute, even through the reprieve of their dialogues. She imagined her eyes, too, might look the same, lost in the darkness of a horrific past. Whatever he had suffered, though, it must have been even worse, though Anne-Marie could not even imagine a fate grimmer than hers.
Still, as she spent more time with him, she became more certain that whatever it was destroyed him, or at the very least, changed him forever. He was so lucid and bright at times, during their lessons. He was inquisitive and curious, asking questions about France—its history, its government, its culture. He would hang on every word that left Anne-Marie’s lips, like his mind was a book of blank pages that he scribbled furiously into. At times the stream or river would end or lead into more dangerous territory, and the two would have to traipse through the forest on foot, carrying their canoe on their shoulders. And despite how arduous and engrossing it was (and even more for Black Bird, who took on most of the burden), he still took the time and care to watch out for her. More than once he had thrown himself in front of her before she stepped into poison ivy, almost falling in it himself in the process. And so Anne-Marie came to understand that despite his aloof exterior, this was just a hardened shell that protected the kind and compassionate young man within.
Anne-Marie wondered then, what pain so horrible could have formed that shell. At night, the two would take turns: one slept, the other kept watch. During her watch, she would sit by the firepit, having been put hours before for fear that raiders would see the flame or smoke. As she sat by it, holding her hands out to be warmed by the smoldering embers, she would watch her savior toss and turn restlessly in his bedroll. Most nights he’d be plagued with these terrible nightmares, so intense that he would cry out in the night. His words were unintelligible, slurred in some somnolent mess, but the fear and panic in his tone was unmistakable. Some nights he would shoot upright in an instant, panting and sweating like he had felt the shadow of death upon him. Like everything else about himself, he never spoke of it. While he would spend hours telling Anne-Marie of flora or fauna or culture, his personal history was kept in a tightly-sealed lockbox, its key tucked away in that impenetrable shell he kept around him.
Sometimes, she would get a glimpse of that past, or some new question would arise, piquing her curiosity. Yet she never indulged in it—sometimes to respect the man’s privacy, and sometimes for the dangerous consequences it could bring. Their trek was an odd one, their route winding erratically through the lands of the Iroquois. At times, they would stick to the furthest reaches of the territory, clawing their way through dense thickets and brambles not even wild animals passed through. Other times, they would tread the common footpaths the Iroquois themselves used, even coming close enough to see one of their villages. Whenever this was the case, Black Bird would seize the opportunity, and scout the village out.
“Wait here,” he would tell her, sequestering her behind a sandy bank by the river or laying her down between tall roots to obscure her. Each time, she would protest, and each time he would insist she stayed hidden here.
“You don’t have the technique yet,” he told her. “You don’t know how to step between the leaves, how to make yourself quiet, invisible. Stay here, where it’s safe. I’ll be back before long.”
She would always ask for him to look for twin girls her age—she figured if Adah and Delilah were ever captured, they would be taken to one of these villages to be assimilated like the rest. He would nod, and promise he would. If she could watch from her hiding place, she did, and she would learn that Black Bird, of course, was right. He approached the villages each time with a cat-like grace, almost dancing between the trees. Anne-Marie wouldn’t have been able to notice him if she didn’t focus completely on him—he had an uncanny knack for blending in, and he made no noise as he walked. Watching him made her remember what Chretien had told her back in that tavern—that their father spent their days drilling him on how to become a shadow. She didn’t understand what he meant by it then, but now she watched Black Bird slink all the way up and even into the villages without ever being noticed.
Every time so far, he had returned. It was hard to know how long he was gone, but it always felt like a long while. He never saw any trace of Adah or Delilah, and he never seemed to find what he was looking for, either. When Anne-Marie asked why he risked his life to get so close, he would never give her a straight answer.
“Just checking for something,” was the usual excuse. Of course, this only emboldened Anne-Marie to learn what this something was, but she never pushed the issue. She knew that all good things came with time. For now, she was just happy to be in good company, and especially his.
There was something about him that captivated her, that fanned the flames of her curiosity until it burned inside her. She could never quite place what it was—his unexpected erudition and eloquence, his random chivalrous urges. Perhaps it was the way he looked at her, his dark eyes piercing through to her core. It gave her the feeling that he could decimate all pretenses, that he could learn every intimate detail of her soul just from a look. She got the feeling that he did not even intend to stare, rather that it was merely a result of his natural intensity. Still, it always made her face flush hot with embarrassment, and she was never able to return his gaze.
One day, as Black Bird rowed them down the river, she gathered the courage to test her limits with him, to prod and poke for more.
“Why do you always ask me about my home country?” She asked.
Black Bird shrugged, a typical answer when he didn’t want to give one.
“Can I not be curious?” He asked back. “You are curious about my people, the lands we travel through.”
“But you always ask very particular questions. You aren’t curious about the beaches of France, or the farms, or the castles. You want to know about the King, the nobility, our history, our relations with the other nations of Europe.”
“My people trade with the French. When the next war comes, and I fear it will soon, we may join the French’s side in it. I should want to know, then, every detail of the way they work, of the way they think. What other reason would I have?”
She could tell it was a half-answer, that he wouldn’t entrust her with the truth. Still, she was not done yet—she began to think of something else to ask. This was how it went, their game of questions they had devised to pass the time. It was quid pro quo—one would ask, the other would answer, and then they would switch. But the real game was more complex than that, of course. Here, Black Bird had not given her a real answer, which meant it was still her turn. Yet his answer clearly told her he was not ready to tell her, at least not yet, so she would gain nothing more from similar lines of inquiry. She decided to pivot instead into something completely unrelated, hoping partially to catch him off guard.
“So what will you do when we get to New England?” She asked.
Black Bird shifted in his seat on the wooden plank of the canoe. He was his usual caginess, but she picked up on the subtle intonations of his body language. This was not a well-guarded secret like some others, and he trusted her enough now to tell her.
“I have to meet a man,” he said cryptically, offering no details on who or why. “And I’m going to enroll at the Harvard college.”
His answer sparked ten more questions in Anne-Marie’s curious brain. This was certainly a surprise. Not that it was completely unexpected—he showed an obvious education, as well as sharing her own hunger for knowledge, and the only cargo the canoe carried was a leather sack of two dozen books or more. Perhaps it surprised her because it was the most she had been able to glean from him so far. It showed her just a glimpse of his true self, of his wants and ambitions, and she was dying to learn more. Still, she could not ask any follow-ups—it wasn’t her turn anymore. She minded the rules of the game, waiting as Black Bird thought of his own query.
“You said you have a brother,” he eventually said.
“Had,” she clarified.
“Well, you might still have him. You don’t know whether he’s alive or dead.”
“True, I suppose. What’s your point?”
“Well, suppose he was alive. Suppose you reunited with him. What would you do?”
Anne-Marie hesitated. Like many of Black Bird’s questions, this was one she had asked herself many times during their journey, and still she didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t really know,” she said. She found it was better to be honest with him—anytime she shied away from the truth, he saw right through it.
“That’s a bad answer,” Black Bird said. She figured it was.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It’s the truth,” Anne-Marie protested, a small vein pulsing on her forehead with annoyance. Within this game of questions, there was another. Each of the two had their carefully-guarded secrets, yet each of them wanted to know what they were. Thus, the game was to glean the secrets of the other while keeping your own protected. It was not a malicious, competitive thing that drove them, merely a shared curiosity, one that stood in constant conflict with their desire to shut themselves off from a world that had hurt them so. In this game, however, Anne-Marie found herself rather ill-equipped. Black Bird, on the other hand, was very judicious with his words, both in asking and answering. He had a knack for evading Anne-Marie’s prying into his past, while he could spur her on, touching on her delicate emotions to get her to reveal more of herself.
It was working again—Black Bird’s comments made Anne-Marie defensive, and though a part of her knew it was a ploy, she still gave into it. Perhaps she just needed someone to talk to, someone to confide these things in. Though he was still a stranger to her, he listened more thoughtfully than anyone else in her life thus far, and that compelled her to tell him even more, to unfurl the thick leaves she had wrapped around the tender fruit that was Anne-Marie.
“My relationship with my brother isn’t normal,” she explained, in part to refute Black Bird’s comment, in part to reconcile the truth within herself. “We were kept apart as children, and weren’t allowed to talk or play when my father was alive. It was like we each had to pretend the other didn’t exist. But I would always see him, you know… across the courtyard. Walking up the stairs, down the hall to my father’s study. Some nights he would sneak into my bedroom, just to talk to me. He’s always been rebellious in that way, I suppose…”
Anne-Marie trailed off, reminiscent and nostalgic for a time that made sense to her. Even with her father’s madness, what she endured back then was nothing compared to now.
Her eyes wandered, and eventually they found Black Bird’s. There it was again—that piercing stare that saw every part of her, even the horrid things she wished to hide or destroy. Every time he asked, every time she answered, she revealed a part of herself to him. And through it all, his eyes never bore a look of judgment or even pity. Just a knowing, and an intensity that shook her to her bones.
Anne-Marie felt her face flush hot, and she averted her eyes from Black Bird, as she always did.
“What I’m trying to say,” she continued, trying to distract herself from the whispers of her heart. “Is that in a way, I don’t really know my brother. Especially now. Even when I visited him last, he had completely transformed from the boy he was on the ship that brought us here. I fear that, if I should see him again, I would no longer recognize him. He would be a stranger to me, and I to him. What then, you ask, would I do or say? My answer was an honest one. I just don’t know. I’m not sure he does, either.”
Black Bird lingered on her face for a while, trying to glean something from her. After what felt like a lifetime of feeling his gaze, he nodded, and looked away. She had learned that was his way of accepting an answer, which meant it was her turn to ask something of him.
She wracked her brain for a moment, struggling to find some way to penetrate his defenses. The more she thought, the more she was certain she would gain no ground with the way things were—if she wanted to learn the details of his troubled past, she would need to get closer to him, to earn his trust. But how?
Then, a thought dawned on her. She looked at him, his eyes trained on the waters ahead as he rowed. Of course!
“Can I have a turn to row the canoe?” She asked him.
Black Bird whirled his head around, his brow raised, puzzled.
“Why?” He asked.
“Well, if you want to get into the college, it won’t be easy,” she said. “And if they reject you, it’s not like you can just try somewhere else. There isn’t another university in all the New World, and I doubt your canoe could cross the ocean to Oxford or Sorbonne. You absolutely can’t fail.”
“So?”
“So, you should be studying! We have all these books here. Have you even had any time to read them?”
A sheepish look that Anne-Marie had never seen from the young man crossed his face.
“No…” He admitted. “Not really. I… I’ve actually wanted to, for some time.”
“Well, let me help, then. I’ve just been a nuisance to you so far. It’s the least I can do.”
Black Bird hesitated for a moment.
“You don’t know where we’re going,” he protested.
“Oh, come on. It’s not that complicated, and I’m not that naive. We’re just going down the river. I’ll keep the course we’re on, and if we need to change it, you can always take the reins from me again.”
Though he still didn’t seem convinced, his eyes wandered down to the leather sack and the wealth of knowledge contained within. A small spark of white light twinkled within his black pupils like a star in the night sky. His own curiosity was getting the better of him.
“Fine,” he conceded. “Come here so I can show you how.”
Anne-Marie eagerly made her way to the front of her canoe. She sat down next to him, and he held the oar handle out to her.
“Put your stronger hand on the bottom,” he instructed. “You’ll need to reach down somewhat to push against the bottom of the river.”
Anne-Marie gripped the oar, but she must have done something wrong. Black Bird shook his head, and reached out to the oar. He took her hands in his, shifting them to the proper position. Only, realizing what he had done, he suddenly stopped. He backed away, his eyes darting around everywhere but to her.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have done that. It’s improper, in my culture, to touch a woman like that. I’m embarrassed—I didn’t even think about it.”
Anne-Marie let out a soft chuckle. In truth, she was embarrassed too, her face and arms flushed red-hot. Still, she found some strange courage she didn’t know she had. Her instincts moved her on her own, stilling the brief flutter of her heart and compelling her to speak.
“It’s alright,” she found herself saying. “Really. Come show me.”
Slowly, Black Bird returned to his awkward half-embrace of her, his arms wrapping around to hold the oar behind her. His hands rested atop hers once again. They were warm, and his touch was kind, like he was. He shifted uncomfortably on the seat they shared. She had never seen him this flustered.
He took their hands together on the oar, showing her how to push it downwards. The motion brought him closer to her, his head protruding over her shoulder from behind. His face was two inches from hers, and she froze, trying to keep her own parallel with his, and to bring it no closer.
“The waters are shallow enough here that you can reach the bottom,” he said, a subtle wavering in his voice. “So instead of paddling, you’re actually pushing us forward by pressing against the riverbed.”
“What if it gets deeper, and I can’t reach?” Anne-Marie asked.
“Then you will have to paddle, but you shouldn’t have to worry about that now. This is a smaller stream, and the waters are easy.”
Unable to bear the discomfort any longer, he pulled away from her, until he stood a solid foot away.
“Try it yourself,” he said. “I’ll watch and make sure you’re doing it right.” Even as he said this, his eyes still wandered from her.
Anne-Marie did her best to hide her coy smile, turning back to the water. She took the oar in her hands and let it sink down into the water, until she felt the soft sand of the riverbed. She pushed hard, using the riverbed to propel the canoe forward. It worked—she could feel the force of the oar against the sand, the fluid movement of it all as she repeated it a second time. It was not an easy task for a frail little thing like her, but she was determined to do it. If it would bring Black Bird to confide in her, it would be well worth it.
“That’s not bad,” Black Bird remarked. “Your technique’s a little awkward, but it’ll improve with practice. Remember—don’t push straight down against the riverbed. Angle the oar to your direction. Push forward to move forward. If you find we’re straight too far left or right, alternate the side you put the oar down into.”
“I’ve got it,” Anne-Marie said. “Don’t worry about me. You’ve got a lot of reading to do.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Black Bird set upon the leather sack, grabbing one of the books from it and sitting down in the middle of the canoe. He opened the book and began at the first page, scanning through the lines with a voracious speed. Within a few minutes, he was completely engrossed in his studies. It was like he had been immersed in a labyrinth of esoteric knowledge, only he was not content to merely wander and enjoy. He sprinted through its halls and around its corners, not recklessly, but merely with the urgency of one who knew the stakes, and who had as much to lose as they had to learn.
It was this fire that Anne-Marie admired the most about her strange new traveling companion. Always devoid of her own voice and ambition, she had been drawn to those who were so sure in their own, hoping that some part of them would rub off on her. Yet she had found so far that the ambitious towed the line between drive and greed, between desire and hedonism. Le Vicomte, Le Marquis, Jeannine—they had become slaves to those ambitions, letting it corrupt their minds and poison their hearts.
Black Bird was different. His ambitions were not of money or fame or power. He desired, above all else, to understand things better. To learn, not only about science and history and politics, but about what it meant to be a person, how to be a better one. And though this desire compelled him more than anything else, he never let it obscure his humanity. Even though Anne-Marie had been nothing but a burden upon him and his journey, he accepted her presence with open arms. It was like the thought of abandoning her to her own fate would never occur to him. Even Gusteau and Ezekiel, benevolent as they were, always had doubts about helping her. For him, it would not even be a question. He saved her life, hunted for twice as much food, and threw himself in front of patches of brambles and poison ivy, all for a stranger. For so long Anne-Marie had accepted despair into her heart, believing that the world was wicked, that its cold brutality bred nothing but selfishness and resentment. All it took was the kindness of one man to change her mind forever.
“Can you read Finnish?” Black Bird asked suddenly. The question caught Anne-Marie off-guard. The game was still going, it seemed.
“Alas, I cannot,” she told him truthfully. “I can read and speak English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and a little Latin, but that’s it, I’m afraid. Why do you ask?”
Black Bird didn’t look up from his book, feigning a nonchalance, though her answer seemed to disappoint him. His brow furrowed ever so slightly, a subtle sign that she had started to pick up on.
“No reason,” he said.
That was the best answer she was going to get for now, it seemed. Still, Anne-Marie was not discouraged. Rather, she felt emboldened now. The young man who called himself Black Bird was a puzzle to be cracked, a challenge more complex and more intriguing than any she had faced in her life. She was determined to strip away his calloused and tough exterior, to find the truth of him inside. What made him the way he was? What kept him going, kept him kind and curious, despite the horrors of the past and the cruelty of the present? She had to know. She would know. If she carried no other goal or ambition than this one, so be it. But she would know.
She focused on the waters ahead, trying her best to not get cocky. That puzzle would not be solved in a day, or a week, and she would need patience and resilience above all else, especially with the new task she had given herself. The rowing was tough, and her thin arms began to burn and ache. Still, she continued at a steady pace, and she could not help but smile. She had won today—a small victory perhaps, but a victory nonetheless, in the game of Anne-Marie and Black Bird.