Free Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

me go cold and dark inside, but when I looked at my new luggage and contemplated packing it with all the lovely flattering things Mildred had helped me pick out, oh my! I felt like Moses’ staff—like a dead stick miraculously bursting with new possibilities.
    I felt…happy.
    And afraid. And guilty, but excited as well.
    Yes. More than anything: excited.
    On the Monday before I sailed, I withdrew a great deal of money from my bank account. I had prepared answers to the questions I expected, but the teller had no clue that I was doing something wildly self-indulgent, nor would he have cared had he known. My next stop was the post office, where I gave instructions to hold deliveries, and felt compelled to explain, “I’m going away for a few months. To Egypt, actually.”
    “Oh, how nice,” the postmaster said. “Next!”
    Then it was on to the law office of Mr. Reichardt to make arrangements for my absence. I expected a lecture on thrift and the husbandry of my funds. “Do you a world of good,” he said instead. “Send me a postcard, Miss Shanklin.”
    In fact, no one seemed shocked or even very interested in my plans. That, in itself, was strangely thrilling. Nobody came to see me and Rosie off either, and that was rather sad.
    We boarded the eastbound train on a blustery, wet evening in early March. The bad weather chased us, arriving in New York City just as we did. The storm intensified as we transferred from train to steamship in a taxicab, its windows fogged and smeared by sheets of freezing rain.
    Things got even worse as we sailed, and the crossing was atrocious. Furious winds drove the rain with such force that it splashed down gangways and ran into corridors, bringing on panicky thoughts of the
Titanic
. Together, Rosie and I learned what “sick as a dog” really meant. I never ate at the captain’s table. Indeed, we hardly ever left our cabin, and when we did, I was definitely not wearing the silk charmeuse. When I had the influenza, I struggled to live, but seasickness made me yearn for a pistol.
    That’s what you get for listening to shopgirls and fortune-tellers,
Mumma said, satisfied to see me pay a price for my willfulness.
    Finally, as we neared the coast of Europe, the tempest blew itself out. My stomach, and Rosie’s, settled. One fine morning, we left our cramped cabin and walked out onto the promenade deck, feeling rather well. There we discovered that some confidence trick of climate and current had delivered us into a full and bracing spring.
    That night we steamed past Gibraltar: a towering black shape studded with tiny, twinkling lights. The next morning we slid by Spain, where the peaks of the Sierra Nevada loomed over the jagged summits of the Alpujarras. A day more, and the lavender rocks of Sardinia appeared. Forty-eight hours in Naples, to take on coal in the shadow of Vesuvius, and it was onward toward a dawn that revealed golden Mediterranean isles, shadowed in amethyst, set in a sea of sapphire and diamond.
    Gray winter weather, selfless good works, the opinions of others—all these faded like the dim memories of a fever dream.
    I listened hard but heard only my own thoughts, or perhaps those of my ancestors when they made the Atlantic crossing westward.
No one at home knows where I am or what I am doing. No one here knows who or what I am, or have been, or shall be.
    At last, the splendor of my audacity began to warm me. I lifted Rosie into my arms and turned my face east, toward a dazzling sunrise.
    I can do anything I please, I thought, and no one at home need ever know what I’ve been up to.
    “We’re free,” I whispered to my little friend.
    Free. Free.
Free…



          A CCEPT FROM ME, PLEASE , a bit of timeless travel advice. Should you inquire about a potential difficulty during a journey, beware the agent who assures you, “Sir,”—or Madam—“that will be no problem at all.”
    What he means is, “Sir,”—or Madam—“I personally shall not be