Star's Crossing

7: Meant to be Broken

Mare remembered receiving his first letter so acutely, it felt like a particularly poignant Austen chapter-the memory worn soft, edges smooth, luster bright.

By the time his letter came, it'd been six months since the girls had written and sent theirs to Almagest Hall, a scant twelve miles north. The boarding school had been established at the turn of the century, its attendance steadily rising over the course of decades. Most of the boys at Almagest were from Star's Crossing, as the town's founder had also founded and funded the school.

Others came from up north and inland, whose parents perhaps thought their sons would benefit from a touch of the rustic or a path dotted with young elites. Mare often wondered what those souls thought of Star's Crossing and its strange letter-writing tradition.

It was nearly Christmas, 1855, and Star's Crossing hummed with life beneath a sheer sea of snow. Frost clung to the beaches and foamed the tides, and the quicksilver winter sky shone in the Atlantic's lacquered reflection.

Ships crowded the ever-expanding bay and passed the peninsula with harried frequency, while carts and carriages arduously cut lines through the snow. Messengers on horseback soared down the main thoroughfare, cleared of snow every few hours, and vanished into the woods with parcels strapped to their steeds.

It was a time of merriment and fervor for Star's Crossing; for Mare it was a time of surrender. Resignation.

She woke for the last day of school before the holiday, only to be stopped by her mother at the door.

"Mare, darling, you know I only wish the best for you." She smoothed Mare's scarf, straightened her coat. "The life you desire is possible, yes, but unlikely. No, not only unlikely-dangerous. Don't you see? These women of yours, Austen, the Brontës; they lived in a different time. And they suffered, dear. Terribly."

This is another kind of suffering, Mare had thought. She simply nodded.

"Oh, now, stop sulking. It does nothing kind for your looks. Off you go, then. Wouldn't want to be late for the last day of school, would we?"

Mare nodded and hurried out the door, chin ducked into her scarf against the cold. Her father was up north at the mines, and she missed him already, though he'd only left at daybreak. The night before, Mare had attempted something foolish. Over dinner, she'd told them: I want to be a writer.

Then, at twelve years old, it was no terrible secret, no thing to be hidden. She knew it was unlikely. Austen and the Brontës were outliers. Yet Mare heard their names everywhere, whether uttered in deference or horror. She didn't want for her name to be spoken in any way; she'd even write under a pseudonym, as the sisters had with their early poetry.

Mare merely wanted their freedom. Its sheer velocity came in every written word, each scrawled letter a victory, a rebellion. Mare wanted the heft of a novel she'd penned, clutched to chests or hidden beneath pillows, caressed with desperation and awe and simple, pure love. She wanted to give what these women had given her.

But when she'd told her parents the night before, she'd been met with cold, hard, impassive silence. Her parents had watched her a moment in perfect, unmoving synchrony, and continued eating in much the same way.

At long last, Mare's father met her eyes across the table. "When Homer wrote The Iliad-"

"No," said Mare's mother, punctuating the word with the clatter of silverware as she slammed her fork and knife to the table. She stared not at Mare, but her father. "No, Elias. Not another lengthy tale on the merits-"