A Bizarre Encounter

[Xiao Walker Yu]

The feeling prickled at the back of his neck, uncomfortable, but strangely familiar. It settled into his shoulders as he traversed the streets, walking a little too straight and a little too proper, in spite of how he felt.

It had been over a week since he had seen the surgeon, and Xiao could almost go the day without thinking of him, but whenever he closed his eyes, Xiao could still see the bright gaze of Mortimer’s own looking back at him. Strangely sentimental, Xiao supposed. He was unable to define the terrible feeling in his chest that lingered when Xiao stalled for too long. He was not unaccustomed to the feeling of being haunted, he had long since grown used to the discomfort that would set into him when he thought of home, but the type that beset him now, because of a man was awfully foreign and terribly distracting. Xiao’s heels clicked against the wood of the docks. It was not the type of distraction he was usually fond of.

Fortunately, life went on and Xiao once again, found himself in the bazaar, though unaccompanied and without any responsibilities to occupy his mind as for once, he perused the market out of a sense of curiosity. Perhaps it would be wise to seek out another sort of endeavour to occupy his mind, seeing as how it had recently gone so terrible, but Xiao was, if anything, the sort of man that did not know what was best for him.

Besides, Xiao excused as he thought of the rest of the night, as images of the American he had turned to as the night grew darker and lonelier, it had not been for naught. Xiao was nothing if not resourceful.

So Xiao sought out something to calm the flickers of anxiety tight in his chest, reconnecting with some of the local vendors and tracing his hand over goods that spoke of home. Strangely nostalgic, he supposed he was prone to torturing himself. Xiao adjusted the collar of his coat, thumbing through the journal he kept in its pocket. Containing most of anything and everything that came to mind, Xiao found himself picking through a pastry recipe on one page before examining a crudely-drawn map on the next. He ached to fill the next page, to feel some semblance of productivity, so Xiao picked his head up to look around the market.

Which was thankful, as if he had kept his gaze to the ground for even a moment more, it was more than likely that he would have knocked into one of the other patrons of the bazaar. He spun on his heel, reorienting himself and closing his book with a slight thump. The woman was short, or at least shorter than him, with rich, long hair that had Xiao reminiscing about his sisters’ and his own hair, which had long since abandoned its length. It maintained a sort of curve to it Xiao had only seen few women possess, but her hair was hardly the most remarkable thing about her, even if it was what occupied most of his view. What Xiao had noticed quite quickly, and what had stuck in his mind, was the tilt to her chin, pride seemed to pour from her and wash over Xiao in waves. She seemed to move with purpose and that, along with the cut of her clothes and the step of her boots, had Xiao assuming that perhaps she did not actually mean to head where she was.

Which was, to Xiao’s understanding, the area of the market brimming with opium dens, rife with bodies and the sort of aura that Xiao dared not to ponder for too long. In the span of a couple moments, Xiao debated himself internally and considered the implications of interrupting the woman’s seemingly important quest to venture farther into the bazaar. Perhaps he was being nosy, but Xiao was rather familiar with people becoming lost in the red lanterns and the worldly spices that permeated the air.

And then his body moved before his mind could manage and his weight shifted between his feet, in a way that would appear rather clumsy, knocking into the woman’s shoulder like he would have only an instant earlier if he had not managed to catch himself. He prepared a grin, an easy smile with the right amounts of sheepishness to be deemed genuine. “Apologies, milady.”

Xiao turned to face her, hands out in front of him, sincere. “I seemed to have lost my footing momentarily.”

[Amira St. Clair]

It was a wholly unsettling thing to be as lost as she was. 

It was not just a physical sense of being lost, like when you turned left when you should have turned right, but an existential sense of being unfound, the sort of otherworldly coldness that creeps into your soul, inhabiting the forgotten and abandoned spaces until everything was empty and dark.

A dark, cold lostness. 

Amira awoke with a start, bolting upright in bed to complaints from the bed's frame and her own weary body. Her chemise was soaked through with perspiration, and her heart sped along to a thready tune even through several gasping, gulping lungfuls of air. She gripped the bedding with white knuckles, trembling until, at last, the sharp rush of fear subsided. 

For as many times as Amira had been lost in London since returning, the nightmares had come. She could no longer recall which came first, but she would bet every shilling they were connected.

It was all connected. The tickets, Boston, St. Patrick's, St. Paul's. Amira was eternally exhausted, and it was beginning to show in the delicate creases around her eyes. Had she even slept through an entire night since her return to England? Her first night had been the closest to peaceful, and she had to thank the Good Father for that; his fathomless kindness, his generous smile, his eyes like the Maltese sky.

Amira pushed the reverend's face out of her mind before it poked and prodded at the ache in her chest, and then she pushed herself out of bed.

---

Was she lost again? The bazaar buzzed around her, a welcome distraction from a brain full of bees. For the time being, she had managed to replace her resonant grief with a willful insistence to seek out … something. She was still sorting out the gist of it, but thus far, her instincts had only steered her wrong in the more obvious ways, leaving the subtler clues to carve out a path only God could see the full of. 

But was she lost? Down one aisle, up another. Sights, sounds, everything was moving, and there were so many smells! Oh, but oh, those smells. Perhaps … had she known she would? No, of course not. She had had no intention of finding her way here … had she? 

The bazaar was hardly a bizarre place for her to find herself. Sure-footed, confident. That's what she looked as she cut a line through the throng, head held high as though her black straw bonnet were a crown of jewels and the small traveling suitcase in her left hand contained the world's secrets. Amira, Princess of the Bazaar. 

The dregs of dreams still lingered at the edge of Amira's consciousness, and she allowed herself to be guided by intuition. Down another street, around a stall, through these people, and— 

"Oh! Excusez-moi—" Amira's face immediately brightened as she shifted on a booted heel to turn and face the tall, slender man with whom she had collided in her thoughtlessness. Amira took a careful half-step back as she faced Xiao, her hazel-green eyes darting over him in a subtle, quick, but thorough scrutiny. Her smile didn't ebb, although the end of it curled a bit tighter.

As smoothly as though without further thought, she brought the valise in front of her and gripped its handle with both hands before tilting her chin up, the beginnings of a broader albeit lopsided grin forming. "Oh, no, Sir," she insisted with a quick shake of her head. In contrast to the flawless French that spilled out of her initially, she now spoke with careful, broad American intonation. "The fault is entirely mine. Please, allow me."

The woman swept an ankle under her in order to grant Xiao passage around her and her voluminous skirts, but she had barely finished saying, "Good-day to you," when she felt her gaze pulled sidelong past Xiao. The smells. The thick, musky smoke called to her from here, and her dark lashes fluttered under her uncertain stare.

[Xiao Walker Yu]

Xiao held his hands out in front of him, low at his waist as an easy smile graced his lips. He didn’t speak whatever language fell out of the woman’s mouth, but the way he nodded along did not betray any sort of lack of understanding. A loose acknowledgement, but it was a motion easily practised over his time in London. “I am glad that no harm had chosen to befall you,” Xiao insisted. ah, American. Though her accent held hints of Xiao’s own. His was not so broadly American, but it was the same sort of general… In a certain sense. What was he doing? Xiao blinked back his thoughts, focusing instead on the curls that outlined the woman’s face. Maybe he was overthinking. Xiao did not meet many Americans, aside from a notable couple, and he was probably projecting. A lot of effort had gone into his own way of speaking, but what did he know? “But blame is rather useless to place when it won’t serve anybody.”

How strange, he was definitely clouding his judgement, more high-strung than he should be. Xiao groaned internally, he knew the reason, but it was not one he wanted to focus on for longer than he had to.

No matter. Xiao bowed slightly at the acknowledgement. “It is a rather lovely day,” in spite of the cold that nipped at his nose and urged him to draw his coat tighter around his shoulders. He knew what came next, though. Xiao knew, so now, “Do you happen to want assistance at traversing the market?” Xiao gestured around the market and the patrons that surrounded them, stepping around them with a steady flow that parted as they drew closer. He did not need to smell the scents that permeated the opium dens and the darker regions of the market, Xiao had found they tugged at a certain sense of nostalgia that he knew was because that sort of vice reminded him of his homeland. Not in a way he would like, of course, but memories of home seldom were. Especially lately, but that was hardly his fault? Was it? It mostly was, but that was not something Xiao was fond of focusing on for too long.

“If I am not intruding, of course. I merely mean to be of service.” He knew better than to draw his smile tighter, but by the quality of her luggage and the way she kept it close, Xiao felt that this was not a woman that made that sort of substance a habit, at least not like this.

[Amira St. Clair]

The smells.

Amira's lids grew heavier, and her lower lip trembled under a shaky exhale. What if… he was there? It would have made sense… but she could not allow herself to linger on the idea that he was alive. She was already here, was she not? Here, to play someone else's games. Well. She could have her own games. 

Her hazel-green eyes snapped back to Xiao, and her slender brows rose in unison. "Indeed? I daresay blame usually serves someone." When he opted against making his way past her and instead chose to linger and loiter, her curiosity manifested through a scintillating stare that swept over and through him. "Perhaps I ought to blame you, after all." She delivered the quip on a dry tongue, her grin tempered back into a shy ghost in the corner of her mouth.

"Nevertheless," she continued, adopting a thoughtful tone, "I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the gift of assistance for what it is." Oh, but did she? The wheels in her mind were whirling, and she stole her gaze away from Xiao long enough to surveil the area, stepping out of the way of others as they sought to pass around the pair paused in prospect. 

She returned her attention to Xiao in time to avoid being jostled in his direction, her hands gripping her valise tight as a soft and uncivilized, "Merde," stumbled out of her. Amira's features had twisted as she shot the offending patron a withering side-eye, but blinking away the expression, she provided Xiao with an apologetic smile.

"I cannot imagine you are any more lost than I am... " she wagered aloud, her smile shifting into a wry smirk. "Nor can I imagine you to be intruding any more than this entire city." Amira tilted her head, her gaze narrowing subtly as she considered the man whose voice seemed as out of place as her own. With a respectful bow of her head, the woman added, "Mrs. Alice Johnson-Riley, at your service."

[Xiao Walker Yu]

Xiao pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth, cocked his head to the side and grinned. He would call it a smile, most would disagree, but it was rather easy to give into the quips that tugged at his mind, in the market, surrounded by his people. There was a sense of camaraderie to be found in London, when one was dubbed foreign, so even surrounded by strangers, it was easier to feel more at ease here than he was in certain crowds of his homeland, though perhaps the anonymity was a part of the appeal. A troubling realisation, and one that would stay not-fully-realised for as long as he could manage. “Perhaps you ought to,” Xiao agreed, eyes sweeping over the lady in a mimicry of what she had just done to him, though he would like it stated that his examination was not nearly as animated. He tucked his hands into his pockets, feeling the outline of the paper that stayed permanently in the lining of his coat. A habit, one that was meant to reassure, but to its efficacy Xiao would not attest.

His arm swooped out to the side, diverting someone at risk of running into the case that the woman had tucked so closely against her, an easy smile taking over his features as opposed to the unsteady aura that had her looking at him, then at the crowd, then back at him again. “I suspect it would be a rather spectacular feat, to be more out of place than you are at this moment.” He blinked, almost thoughtfully, “Please do not take offense, Mrs. Johnson-Riley.” A married woman then, out unchaperoned and unaccompanied. Did her husband know where she was? His lips pursed, he would have never let his sisters out of his sight before they were wedded off, especially not in a market of this calibre, and he hoped their husbands were of a similar mind.

Though…

He thought of his own future bride and supposed that exceptions could and should be made.

“And I am easily at yours, if you would allow. Mister Walker.” He bent at the waist, a bow, probably atypical of someone of his social class, at least here, but some habits are difficult to break, especially when surrounded by familiar sights and smells. Of course, not entirely reminiscent, as most who go West are those seeking to start anew, typically lacking any titles or resources that could be of use. He was the same as them, Xiao knew, but he hadn’t always been. Anyways, Xiao stepped farther into the market, cutting a more imposing form through the crowd than the woman in front of him. He tipped his head to the side, gesturing to the market that awaited, though (hardly) noticeably away from the part of the Limehouse that smelled of sweat and illicit substances, the sorts that beckoned one in with empty promises of bliss. If Xiao was a weaker man, there was little to no doubt he would have found himself among the bodies a lot sooner, but for now he was content with seeking out his own sort of distractions, which usually came in the form of rather ill-fated dalliances, or of interesting individuals that piqued his interest and tore him away from his own inner-monologue, like the woman who rested in front of him. “Shall we be off, then? There is nothing to see from in this corner, so if there is something you wish to grace your eyes, we best be departing from… Here.”

His boots ground against the cobblestone and for a moment, dark blue and blood filled his thoughts. He pushed them away with an easy smile, one that filled his eyes with a mischievous sort of contentment.

[Amira St. Clair]

'Perhaps you ought to.' His words echoed in Amira's mind, the ends of her smirk twitching as she sought to subdue a broader grin. Very well, she mused; she might very well indeed blame this man before the day is up! It was another moment before she straightened from the unassuming tilt she had positioned herself in, and lifting her chin, her hazel eyes returned to Xiao to catch him stuff his hands into his pockets with an anxious purpose. Again, her smirk twitched, but still she kept its wider cousin at bay.

Her fingers flexed around the handle of the valise, and she slowly lowered it a few degrees, willing herself to unwind the coils that wove through her shoulders. "Oh!" she started with a quirk of her left brow. "Am I so obvious as a fish out of wahteh?" The deliberate emphasis, the way she slipped freshly back into the bits of New England she had picked up in her brief travels through the New World — an aegis with which she shielded herself from what vestiges of purpose whispered at her through the smoke and din of the marketplace. 

"Mister Walker," the linguist repeated, curiously stumbling over the letters and the way with which Xiao had spoken them, taking note of his underlying accent, his civilized tongue curtailing the perceived or feared flaws through practiced skill to deliver a name that seemed at odds with his appearance (an attribute to which she was keenly relating in that moment). "It is quite a delight to make your acquaintance," Amira continued, her tone trailing off as it drifted into an apologetic, "However …"

Amira's fingers tightened instinctively around her valise as she lowered it to her left side, the fingers of her right hand lifting to brush, as if distracted, for indeed she was affectedly distracted by something just past her new guide. "It looks like there is much to see over in this corner—"

She did not wait. She did not linger. 

She was, however, quite used to, and exhaustingly tired of, people, of men from every nation it would seem, finding themselves of the mind to tell her what to do, where to go — where not to go. Did he know the sort of game that he was playing at, trying so urbanely to steer her away from whim and folly? Away from the darker answers to her more deplorable questions?

Amira believed that he did, and blame him for it, she would! Off she went in a susurration of umber cotton bustle and ruffles. The widow dashed ahead, keeping the valise ahead of her like a leather-bound buckler, ducking under and around and through arms and elbows of the ebbing and flowing bazaar. 

And with a devious little grin, the would-be antiquarian dodged away from her would-be guide, aiming to disappear into the nearest dim and smoky shopfront, no glance given toward the broad brush strokes painted on the sign above. Would she find beautiful statues inside? Perhaps. Would those statues have once contained the smuggled dreams to something beyond London's smoggy streets? Perhaps.

[Xiao Walker Yu]

She reminded him of his sister. An odd realisation and one best left abandoned. He was not quite certain where it had come from. It was the oldest one, the one who filled Xiao’s earliest memories with the sort of love that would become foreign to him in his later years. She had always struggled to keep her face bare, when they were younger. She smiled as if she knew something, knew better and often, she did. Xiao pushed those thoughts from his mind, they would only serve to induce false impressions.

Besides, she was dead, because when it finally mattered she was nothing but a girl who was in over her head.

A trait that had been assigned to the dame in front of him as well, perhaps unfairly, but that remained to be seen.

“Not obviously, but beached nonetheless.” Xiao chuckled, hearing once again, the name that wasn’t really his spill from someone else's lips, though in a way Xiao found familiar. “Mrs. Johnson-Riley.” He dipped his chin in acknowledgement, though it was easy to view the woman as a bird occupying a very temporary roost, one that was ready to be departed from, so when she moved past him Xiao found his feet dragging his body over to follow her. It was perhaps, against his better judgement, but it was too easy to pull himself away from the valise-carrying foreigner, a stranger in every sense of the word, so of course it was only the most obvious thing to follow her farther into the market’s more darker domains. He had the assuredness to laugh at himself, though it was louder than it should have been, and light steps brought him towards one of the shopfronts. Smoke clung to dirty glass in a way that would wrinkle his nose if he could smell, grimy and thick. Incense burned to burn any other odours away, or at least to keep them at bay, all Xiao could do is hope the stenches did not cling to him too badly, so he would not have to explain himself to Alistair when he eventually returned home.

A strange label for a strange situation, but it brought him comfort.

The shop’s owner was one he had never met, Xiao had tried to avoid this side of Limehouse, afraid of what it could offer him, the ease it would take to slip, but what was he supposed to do? It would be a rather dreadful performance as a guide if he were to bow out now, as much as he wanted to.

Curiosity was one of Xiao’s most obvious traits, and while it was not necessarily the cause for most of his terrible decisions, it definitely helped, so into the shop he went, boots kicking off any scum from the soles as he kicked the toes against the steps. “Mrs. Johnson-Riley?” He called out before turning to the shop-keep to speak in his mother tongue, “Sir, have you seen a woman? This tall,” He held out his hand at his chest, “And… American, I think.”

[Amira St. Clair]

To call the shop "dark" would have been an understatement of colossal proportions. The moment Amira stepped over the threshold, the shadows and haze swallowed her up, pressing in on her from every angle with its spice and incense. And there, delicate but just as unmistakable as the passing whiff that had taunted her in the bazaar beyond — the deleterious undertones of saccharine disorder and burnt languor. It was the kind of scent that lingered in every nook and cranny of the shop, and seemed to be most potent in one particular corner of the front room: a door that had been left ajar when the shopkeeper moved to the front to greet them.

The shop itself was a compact maze of marvels, a few scattered shelves meant to display whatever mixture of items were deemed most profitable and distracting. It was the shopkeeper himself whose profile Amira slid a side-eye toward, but as Xiao came in hot in her heels, she melted back against the grimy walls. Uncertainty pulled at her lips, before they began moving in a voiceless litany, a few choice words she thought best not to utter aloud.

Her free hand grabbed at her outer skirt, the ruffles rustling as she tried to make her way down and around the short and narrow aisle, away from Xiao as he called out the name she had given him. From her new angle, she could just barely begin to peek through the slit left by the door, but the darkness enveloped the room beyond so completely she could only exhale with tense exasperation. 

Another step, and then another, and she paused, the sounds of someone adjusting the inner string of an erhu somewhere in the near-distance. Amira's lips twisted, and she chewed on them, her head canting to the side. Xiao's language was spilling out of him as if on cue, and the linguist in her tugged and teased. 

As she slanted her attention toward her would-be guide, a new grin formed, and she lifted a palm to demurely clear her throat against her gloved knuckle. "I do beg your pardon," she began, louder than was perhaps necessary, and full of that Americanized grandeur and naïveté. "What sort of items do you keep back here? Do you sell— Oh! What do you call them … well, they are these little figurines. Dolls? Delightful things, I saw one in a store in New York once. Do you sell those here? This does look just the sort of shop to sell those. What do you reckon? Mind if I take a look?"

Not once did she appear to draw breath during her sudden ramblings, and not once did she appear to pause to gauge the clear-headedness of such a plan as what developing wildly within that contrary mind of hers. But she had to know. She had to look! She had to see for herself. 

For the second time, she dashed off without Xiao, and it's remarkable how someone of her stature—and with all those skirts and the wire bustle cage swinging behind her like a lobster—can manage to move so quickly, and it's quite a sight as she does. Even before the shopkeeper has managed to figure her out, she rounds a stack of medicine jars and bursts through the doorway to the backroom. 

She's indelicate in her advance, and the smoke took advantage, curling around her like a familiar lover. Her head was spinning just from the sheer proximity. Is he here? Would she still recognize him? Her first step into the backroom was unsteady, her second more so, and by her third, Amira was frozen, terror welling up within her. For all her recklessness today, she found she could not move, troubled by questions she wasn't sure she wanted the answers to: What if she did find Henry? Did she have what it would take this time?

Amira swallowed past the lump forming in her throat, and her hazel-green eyes slid behind her through the door to find Xiao's gaze in a bright-eyed panic.

[Xiao Walker Yu]

The shopkeep waved him off with pursed lips and the sort of stare that Xiao knew meant he was being examined, his prospects made out for him and his intentions assigned. In an effort to soothe, or to manage his own anxiety, Xiao found it in him to send the proprietor an easy smile, as easy as one could manage in the dim lighting and the cramped and crooked environment he found himself in. Xiao barely found himself enraptured by strange scents, pollutants wafting through the air, but he felt a certain weight lay itself on his tongue, as if he could taste the sweat and the perfume of this side of the bazaar. It rolled down his shoulders, sticking itself to his skin in a way Xiao cannot help but want to escape. He wasn’t quite certain how to, not without turning on his heel and letting his curiosity dwindle and die. At the moment, that option was practically unthinkable. He swallowed down the discomfort pooling on his tongue, turning on his heel as soon as that familiar, foreign accent called out. It was only a moment, and perhaps Xiao had become dizzy with the strange combination of familiar and foreign, but he found he almost needed to lean on the counter for support. The shopkeep opened his mouth to call after her, the tourist that had encroached on his territory, who seemed to need to advance even further on (there was a comment to be made, Xiao thought haphazardly, about America’s outlook on the rest of the world and how all of this was rather fitting,) but she was already picking the layers of her skirts up in her hands as she pulled herself away. Xiao apologized with a tip of his head, words spilling out from his mind and his lips easier than they ever had in English.

He said something about keeping her out of trouble, something he barely meant and something he doubted he could really live up to, with her wiliness and his incapability to keep his head on straight. He could hear his own breath in his ears as he slipped through the doorway after her, it picked up, the rhythm of his heart, he had half a mind to put his hand against his ribcage, as if that would do anything to return it to normal.

Smoke filled his eyes, his nose, Xiao could taste salt on his tongue and his hands found themselves slipping into his pockets. They squeezed the material of the lining before curling into themselves. His nails dug into his palms, little crescents as dark eyes made their best effort to pull someone into a sense of familiarity, darting around like spilled ink.

In China, amongst his sisters, they used to trade little jade figurines. For good fortune, for prosperity, for beauty. The bright green of a properly-crafted pendant did wonders for your fortune, did wonders for your reputation or relationship as a peace offering or a present, and Xiao had long-since managed to associate that shade with the sort of idea that it ought to be kept, ought to treasured, for it could only lead to good things.

And here he was, two steps through the doorway with bright jade staring back at him, like a deer who had managed to lure themselves into a hunter’s trap, Xiao could assume that she had done it on purpose, if not for the brilliance of the alarm in her eyes. His eyes flew down to her trunk, held against her frame as he attempted to close the distance between them. The air felt thick.

It was so strange, Xiao would think if his mind was not so intent on staying indecipherable to him, the comfort that being surrounded by his language and his people brought to him. It was even stranger, the way that this sort of market unnerved him, caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stick up and his shoulders to ache and shiver with uncertainty. They may speak the same language, but as Xiao recalled the gazes of the other patrons and proprietors of the shops around them, he could not help but feel alien. His steps were quick, but tentative, it made his breath fall in short pants as he paused, but Xiao could not lie to himself and say it was exertion. “Mrs. Johnson-Riley,” Xiao found himself calling out, his voice sounding strange in his own ears. It grated against his thoughts in a way he couldn’t place, sounding more uncertain than he thought he felt.

She had reminded him of his sister, Xiao knew he had thought that at one point, with the stubborn tilt of her chin and the way she moved without thinking, the way asking for permission wasn’t even secondary.

So he could not help but recall how his sister had died, how his mother had slowly wilted and collapsed in on herself and the smoke, or the taste of it on his tongue, the weight of the letter in his coat pocket. Deft fingers found it in his jacket, wrapping around the delicate paper as if to ground him. “Mrs. Johnson-Riley.” Xiao repeated, more for himself than her. His voice was stable, more stable than it had been the first time.

“I doubt that this is where you will find your dolls,” He smiled as he held his hand out, dipping his chin and nodding towards the door in acknowledgement, though he could not attest to how well the ease reached his eyes.