Rogue
He kept the talisman under his tongue for days after that. Embarrassed by his emotional outburst.
He left Italy, and as soon as he was free of hot climes, he debarked from the train in Poland to buy warm clothes for the rest of the journey.
By now, Victor could tell the speed of his descent by how people’s eyes skated off him.
In Italy, their gazes lingered. Women smiled at him, children waved, people tried to sell him things on the streets.
By the time the train passed through Austria, the gazes shifted from flirtatious to wary.
In Prague they changed from wary to concerned and people began to avoid his cabin unless it was too crowded for that.
When he stepped off the train in Breslau, riders had begun to give him a wide berth, and his cough had returned.
The chill hit him mercilessly, blowing through his linens as he stepped through the streets.
People were kinder here than on the train. An old woman, in frantic Polish, pulled him into a woman’s hat store to get him out of the cold.
Victor stood there, shaking while the shopgirls gathered around him. Asking him questions he didn’t understand. They puzzled out that he was looking for a place to purchase better clothes and dispersed to assist.
The store had a few customers, who looked at Victor in anxious curiosity as he was fussed over.
A mug of hot, strong tea was shoved into his hands.
A shopgirl who looked to be about Victor’s mother’s age noticed his difficulty holding it and cupped her hands around his.
She blew warm air from her own lungs onto his fingers and rubbed them.
Another, younger and red faced, draped her own coat over his shoulders. It was pink wool with fur at the sleeves. At any other time, he would have been too big to fit it. But, diminished as he was, it settled over his shoulders large and soft as a snowdrift.
The old woman kept asking him the same question over and over, but Victor couldn’t understand. He shook his head, and tried his best not to cry.
He had forgotten this. The press of women when their hearts were tender. Their soft, strong hands and the way they smelled of flowers and amber.
He drank the tea and willed it to thaw him. With him seated and well provisioned, the shopgirls left him to tend to other customers. The old woman stayed by his side, still asking him questions, her hand on his wrist in concern.
When Victor was able to move, he unfolded a few rubles and pressed them into her hand. She looked at them, then pointed outside and opened her hand for more.
Victor decided to trust. He handed the old woman a much larger sum.
She got up and went into the back of the store and returned in lush furs and tall boots.
She patted Victor’s shoulders and made him stand.
Then she measured her hands across his back, the length of his legs and arms, and even made him remove his shoes.
Then she said something resolute and left the store completely.
Victor waited awkwardly. The women had left him by the window. He looked outside at the people passing by. They seemed curious that a man was in this store at all, much less one dressed for a vacation in the south.
The shopgirls, crisis averted, had returned full time to helping customers. When anyone visibly asked about him, they talked quick and low, then turned them back to their shopping.
Victor had been sitting there for so long that he was starting to have difficulty not falling asleep, when one of the women made a small shout and dashed out of the store.
She returned carrying bags under one arm and the old woman leaning heavily on the other.
Victor climbed to his feet, stumbling across the store to help. The old woman handed him the parcel she was clutching and palmed the side of his face with her fur mitten.
“Mam dla ciebie pare rzeczy. Jak sie masz, trzpiocie?”
Victor thanked her profusely and hoped his face and body language translated his gratitude.
She had gotten him a thick wool suit, a fur-lined coat, fur-lined boots, some kind of underwear that Victor shoved back into the bag in embarrassment, a hat and mittens that matched her own, and a thick scarf to wrap around his face.
Victor hurriedly added more cash to her outstretched hand, then kissed her knuckles.
They let him change in the back where they kept large rolls of fabric and little dried flowers and feathers.
When he emerged, fluffy and so padded with warmth he was beginning to sweat, the shopgirls cheered and clapped their hands. They laughed and made him turn around and pose a bit. Which was a terrible use of the remaining strength Victor had, but he bore it happily nonetheless.
Victor gave each shopgirl a little money, thanked each of them individually, and then headed back to the train.
His veins hummed with satisfaction and joy. He’d never given so much away before. He didn’t know it could feel like this.
As he settled into his seat, he took the talisman out of his mouth for the first time in two weeks.