Kimberly Dumas's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Kimberly Dumas walked into the tavern in her best dress and no one looked up. Not the card players. Not the drunk by the fire. Not even the boy wiping mugs, who was paid to notice new arrivals. She stood in the doorway with her red hair loose down her back and waited for the small tilt of heads she had learned to expect since she was fifteen. It did not come. Her dress was gray wool, clean and shapeless, the kind a farmer's wife wore to market. She wanted to be the most desired woman in the land. She could not manage to be the most noticed woman in a room of twelve. She left before she ordered anything. Outside, the sky had gone the color of a bruise. Darkness came early now, and it came fast. She had one silver coin and the vague idea that a proper dress cost more than a silver coin. The dressmaker on the square had already shuttered her window. Kimberly stood in the street and felt the plain wool at her hips and understood, with a hot clean anger, that a body was not enough. A body needed staging. Something moved by her boot. A small fox-shaped creature stood upright on two legs, orange and white, watching her with a tilted head. It was the size of a housecat. It sniffed her hem, made a soft chirring sound, and trotted three steps down the alley. Then it stopped and looked back at her. Kimberly was not a woman who followed animals into alleys. But she had already been ignored once tonight, and the creature had not ignored her. She followed. The fox thing led her past the shuttered shops, past the well, to a narrow door she had never noticed between a smithy and a stable. The door was open a finger's width. Warm light leaked out. The creature pushed it wider with its snout and stepped inside. Kimberly followed. The room was a dressmaker's, but not the one on the square. Bolts of silk stood against the walls. A single dress hung on a wooden form in the center of the floor. It was deep red, cut low, with a skirt that fell like poured wine. She touched the fabric. It was heavier than it looked. "Try it," said a woman's voice from behind a curtain. Kimberly could not see her. "I have one silver." "That will do for tonight." Kimberly took the gray wool off and left it on the floor. The red dress fit as if it had been cut on her while she slept. She turned once. The fox creature sat on its haunches and made the chirring sound again, approving. She put the silver on the counter and walked back into the street. A man crossing the square stopped mid-step to stare. Then another. Kimberly smiled and kept walking. The dressmaker's door clicked shut behind her, and she did not hear it lock.