The twirling of her skirts excited her. She spun and spun until she knew not which way was which or how to get back to the kumpania for being so dizzy. Her skirts floated about her knees, sometimes lifting as high as her waist as she spun so that she had to press her hands on them to keep them down. But that didn't impede her enjoyment, and she continued to spin until she fell down with dizziness onto the grass.
"Esma, don't go too far!"
The voice was her mother's, calling Esmeralda back to her. The girl gathered her yellow shirts up and stood, laughing. Her little brother - half-brother really - ran to her and she caught the three-year-old and held him close, spinning once more. Sabina, their mother, followed the boy in all her pregnant glory.
When Esma stopped spinning again and Brom was taken off her, she sat down on the ground and lay back. The grass was damp with dew from the night before, but she didn't care. She waved her arms and legs in the grass to flatten it, making the shape of an angel. Then she sat up to watch her momma lead Brom back to the kumpania, his father greeting them.
Sometimes she wished that man were her father too. Oh, he behaved like it and loved her like it, but her heritage could not be denied. When she was little, she'd looked into a puddle and seen her face. It wasn't the rich dark brown of her parents', but a lighter shade. Her eyes were a little different. Her features were more crude. So they'd had to explain it to her.
Esmeralda wasn't fully Tsingano. At seven years old, Esma understood more about the cruelty of men than a lot of children, but her parents hadn't explained to her in full what had happened to her mother. All she knew was that a bad thing had been done to her mother by an Alban man, and she had been born shortly afterwards.
She lay back and sighed. As she did so, a shadow fell over her and shaded her from the sun, sending a cold shiver running up her spine. She sat up straight and turned to look.
A pale face looked back at her, shrouded with dirt and dried tears. The face was curtained by thick, long hair the colour of blood partly dried. The hair was matted, the green eyes piercing but sad. The girl was beautiful, and Esma knew immediately she was D'Angeline. "Hi," she ventured.
The girl must have been about her own age. She looked hungry and dirty and scared. The mouth opened as if to say something, but no words came out. The little peach hands gripped a dirty toy dog tightly, like an anchor. Esmeralda turned back to the kumpania. "Mama! Papa! Maria!"
Maria, her mother's sister, came running at the sound of her distress, only to stop short at the sight of the D'Angeline girl. The girl stared at them with wide green eyes, even as Maria crouched down to look at her and speak to her, and even as Maria picked her up and, Esma following, carried her back to their two kumpanias.
Maria went inside her own and beckoned Esma to follow. "Your mama is sleeping and Brom with her, don't disturb them." So Esma sat down next to the girl and smiled while Maria prepared some broth for her.
Still, the girl remained silent and didn't understand when Maria handed her the bowl. Though the Tsingano tongue was not so different from the D'Angeline tongue that conversation was impossible, it was made more difficult, especially when none of their company could speak true D'Angeline. Esma showed the girl how to eat the broth, taking the spoon to her mouth and swallowing before allowing the girl to do the same, and eventually that way she got some sustenance.
They let her sleep after that, frowning and wondering what to do with her, until Esma's papa returned and her mama awoke. Then all the adults, Esma's parents, Maria and her husband, and also their eldest boy who was still only 11, talked about what to do about her.
"She must be a nobleman's daughter," Esma's papa said once they'd stepped outside. Esma stayed inside Maria's home, but from there she could hear them talking outside.
"But they're not looking for her," her cousin Dorn replied. She didn't know why he was allowed in the discussion and she wasn't - she'd found the girl, after all. Then she heard Dorn being told to collect wood for a fire, so he slouched off and left the adults to their talking.
"Perhaps they were killed by bandits and the girl got away?"
"Perhaps. But what should we do about her?"
"I suppose she must stay with us," Maria said. "I'll look after her, see if I can find out who she is. We'll just have to remain vigilant, make sure no noblemen in the area are searching for a missing daughter."
"The last thing we need is D'Angelines thinking we have kidnapped their children," Maria's husband said.
"Indeed." And then Esma heard footsteps coming back towards the kumpania and hurried back over to the girl's side in time for Maria to enter.
*
In time, though the lack of a shared language was a barrier, the girl began to look healthier. She had learnt their names and even begun to pick up some words in the Tsingano tongue, but had yet to speak a word if D'Angeline nor tell them her name. It was though a great trauma had purged the memories from her mind, Maria said. The girl began to be known as Velvette, and eventually she had picked up enough Tsingano to be able to hold simple conversations.
Velvette wasn't stupid, they quickly began to realise - far from it, she was a very intelligent child, which was clear once they could communicate fully with her. And she could dance. Esma and she quickly became very close, best friends and cousins both, especially as they both loved to sing and dance. They bonded over their not being Tsingani or fully Tsingani.
Soon, Velvette fit in perfectly in their travelling kumpania, and though she did not have the rapport with horses the others did, she nonetheless enjoyed riding and learnt quickly how to tell a good horse from a bad. Were it not for her incredible beauty and pale skin, that is to say if she looked like them all, Velvette would have easily passed for a born Tsingano.
However, Maria and the other adults never forgot that the girl was D'Angeline. They loved her dearly, but desired her to know her heritage, far more so than Sabina had ever wanted Esma to know anything of her Alban heritage. And so, when Velvette was 8 and Esma 9, they would stray nearer to towns so that Velvette could relearn her own mother tongue, which she still had yet to speak and swore she could remember none of.
"It is different though," Velvette said to Esmeralda one day, after she'd been into the nearest town with her. "You live with your family, whether you have the blood of a man who isn't your father or not."
"So do you. We are your family."
"Still, I should like to know where I am from. Really, I know nothing of my own people."
Esma understood, but it felt a little like a betrayal. Truly, they were cousins of the heart if not of blood, and the kumpania was Velvette's family. Maria had become Velvette's mother and Dorn and Tansy her siblings. But as Velvette learnt more of the people she came from, the more she began to drift away from the family in opinions.
As a D'Angeline, Velvette had no laxta - the virtue that was to be saved by Tsingano women for their wedding day, not to be shared with any one not of Tsingano birth, the virtue stolen from Sabina by a young Alban man with thick, hit blood coursing through his body. But it worried Maria that the girl delighted in stories of the D'Angeline Court of Night Blooming Flowers. Esma's aunt sat with them and paled when she recognised a D'Angeline word, while men and women, young and old, told tales of concubines, prostitutes, whores, or as the D'Angelines called them Servants of Naamah.
Esmeralda was fascinated, but not in the way that Velvette seemed to be; hers was a morbid fascination with the horrific, while Velvette's eyes lit up when she heard tales of its 'noble' calling. Until one day, Esma heard the adults talking.
"It is what is best for her," Sabina was saying, "She will never feel truly at home with us."
"To leave her in a world such as that!" was Maria's outraged reply.
"Do you not see how she lights up? Whatever we may say for the place, Velvette belongs on Mont Nuit. It is her calling."
Eventually, the adults were decided, and Esma did not know what to say to her cousin. But she did not have to, for Velvette soon realised as they travelled from the province of Kusheth and into L'Agnace that they were going to the City of Elua, and then she wanted nothing more than to see Mont Nuit for herself.
*
It wasn't long before ten-year-old Velvette was given a choice.
It was to Eglantine House that Maria and Sabina took the two girls, while the other children waited in the outskirts of the city with their fathers. Eglantine House's most fabulous feature is their performers - tumblers, dancers, singers, jugglers, musicians, and all other kinds of performers entertained the girls for an hour or more while Maria and Sabina spoke with the Dowayne, the woman in charge of the Household.
Finally, they three women emerged from the Dowayne's office, and they all approached the girls. Neither wanted to be distracted by the tumblers, but eventually allowed themselves to.
"Velvette, I have to ask you something," Maria said in the Tsingani tongue, having taken a deep breath. Esma stepped back, standing close to her mother, and watched the exchange. "You must understand this does not mean we do not love you. You were a gift we never expected and we would never change that. But it has become obvious that you wish to learn more of your own heritage, and we want you to be happy."
Velvette watched, listened, and nodded at the appropriate times. She did not glance back at the tumblers, though on they tumbled, and she did not play with the pretty, bright blue skirts around her legs. Finally, before Maria could take another deep breath, Velvette opened her mouth to speak. "I think I would be happy here," she said. Maria was visibly relieved. "You will still be able to visit me, and when I am older I will be able to visit you also."
And so it was decided. The kumpania stayed two more days in the City until eventually they had to say goodbye. Esma and Velvette cried to part, but the older girl grinned and whispered into her cousin's ear. "I will see you when you have made your Marque, cousin. It will not be overlong." And they both knew Esma had seen it was so in the Dromonde and took it to be true.
