Moscow 1812
Anton had been watching her for some time behind the curtain. Her dimpled, bare back was exposed as she leaned away from her chair. Then she turned her head. Anton remembered the axioms, the precepts for being an immortal. Even though he was still quite young—only 2,381 years-old to be exact—he had memorized every one of the rules. Before the party, he had scribbled them down and tucked them in his coat pocket. And in that moment as he was looking out the curtain, watching Hermia, he felt the weight of the words press against his chest. Watching how her dark cheek and nose silhouetted against the light sent a strange thrill through him.
When the music crescendo, Hermia clapped noiselessly with her gloved hands, looking a little bored. Then she rose from her chair and saw Anton. Her large dark eyes seemed to carve him out. It was a look that lingered for longer than he liked. Longer than was expected.
He had to move out from the curtain. He was instructed to stop her. Detain her in the music room. Wait until everyone left.
So, when Anton approached Hermia, who was just slipping the braided strap of her little purse around her small wrist, he was surprised to hear her voice catching in her throat, "Do I know you?"
That was supposed to be his question. That is what he wanted to ask her. Or rather, he did know who Hermia was, which was why he was there in the first place. It was she that wasn't supposed to know him. Anton blanched.
Hermia pursed her lips together, answering his expression, "Yes, I do know you."
Then she burst into a peal of laughter
"Your face!" Hermia threw her head back. Her dark hair encircled her head like a dark halo, and Anton had a strange sensation of wanting to thread his finger through one of her curls.
But he found himself prickling. She wasn't at all frightened, and it irritated him: "What about my face?"
"I've missed that face," she reached over with her gloved hand still recovering from her laughter. Anton retracted his arm, and Hermia seemed to remember where she was. People moved around the two of them like water. But Hermia's lips could not help but stretch into a smile.
"What?" Anton hissed.
"Nothing."
"Why are you always so amused?"
"I'm glad you remember that about me."
"Remember what?"
"That I'm amusing."
"I've never met you!" He declared stiffly.
"That's right," Hermia rocked on her heels, pressing her secretive smile between her lips.
"What's right?"
"We've not met yet."
Then tilted her wide, laughing face up at him and smiled that secretive irritating smile.
"We're not going to meet! Ever!" Anton towered over her menacingly, feeling his cheeks flush a violent red color.
"You're much taller than I remembered you," Hermia's eyes refocused on him with a new expression. "Always the gentleman through and through."
"Stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Pretending like you know me."
"Pretending like I know you?"
"You're just trying to trick me."
Anton's last words made him sound distinctly petulant, and he turned a shade of purple and turned away from Hermia, reaching desperately into his coat pocket.
"I am here…" he stammered, turning back, and putting one square of paper behind the other, the blank ink that had been scratched onto each page seemed illegible, "I am here… a-a-as a third generation of t-th-the Immortalia—"
"—what is it that you have there?" Hermia tried to reach for Anton's notes, but he pulled his hands away from her.
"I am a part of the Immortalia!" He said softly.
"And?"
"And I have to kill you." He stared down at her, his hands, the cards, and his arms still twisting away from her.
"Well," her brows furrowed as she considered, "you don't have to."
Anton shuffled through his cards frantically. Hermia could see the sweat break across his temple
"You and those that practice The Craft manipulate what is natural for your own ends." His voice quavered.
"Here we go…" she turned in a little circle clasping her gloved hands together.
"As long as your kind are alive—"
"—my kind," she laughed. "We just like to travel, and you just don't know how to have fun."
She flicked her tongue out with that last syllable.
"The Library of Alexandria," Anton folded his arms.
Hermia's smile melted. "It was just one cigarette."
"So, you admit it," he pointed his long finger down at her.
"It was my first time time-traveling. I was just learning the craft!"
"Caesar?" Anton had shuffled through more notecards.
Hermia's voice was soft and even: "They didn't allow women in the Curia, so it's impossible--"
"—but you pretended to be a man." Anton folded his arms.
"Well, at least I can murder a man, but you seem to be stalling." Hermia's cheeks had also grown pink as she looked Anton up and down: who did he think he was?
"The French,"
"Revolution?!" She craned her neck forward in disbelief.
Anton's eyes widened: "It was you!"
"You're aristocracy?!" Hermia had gathered her skirts and now her jaw was set tightly.
"Your craft only causes chaos," Anton shook his head at her.
Just then, Hermia tried to move past Anton, but he blocked her.
"I'm not going to be murdered by humorless member of the Immortalia. Especially while wearing this damn corset!"
And instead of leaving, Hermia started undoing the lacing and buttons of her dress.
"Stop that!" Anton's arms dropped. He wanted to run.
"Stop what?"
"Stop undressing, for God's sake!"
"Or what?" Hermia's dress was halfway down her waist as she turned to look back at him. She was positively sick of him at this point, and he could see that in her face.
"Someone could come in!"
"Oh yes, it would be a tragedy for someone to see a woman undressing, but certainly not a murder!"
"I'll shoot," And Anton finally pulled a pistol out from his pocket and pointed it directly at Hermia.
"You're shaking," she said with a shadow of smile flitting across her face. And as she was about to pull the rest of her dress off, Hermia realized that her purse was still around her wrist. She tore it off and tossed it at Anton. "Hold this."
Then with one long sweep, she pushed off her gown and stepped out of it. Anton tore his eyes away as though they were already burning.
"You weren't this bashful in Shanghai," Hermia sang at him as she began undoing the ropes that laced her corset.
"I was never with you in Shanghai." He spat as he stared at the empty corners of the room where the orchestra was.
"You will be!" Then she considered, "you may want to begin ambling down there before 1917."
Anton turned slightly.
"Think, Russian's do French Revolution but with trains and post offices and such," she shrugged.
Anton groaned and pressed his fingers into his tear ducts: "Stop undressing!"
"Make me," he could hear her smiling.
Anton cocked his pistol and pointed it away from him, to where he estimated Hermia would be.
"At least wait till I'm out of this corset! I don't want to die in this flesh prison!"
But when Hermia and Anton heard the approach of footsteps in the hall, their eyes met in alarm. Hermia advanced rapidly, her corset barely undone, the laces dangling around her legs, and her stocking-feet made her look strangely girlish.
"Do it," she said in a low whisper.
"What?"
"Shoot me!"
Anton turned pale still staring down at her.
"Oh, now you've lost your nerve," she said quickly and softly placing her hands over his and the gun, "as though you ever had any in the first place."
"I don't want to shoot you in your indignity!"
They were both shooting glances at the door.
They could hear someone calling for Anton.
"You're just making excuses!" Hermia grabbed at the gun.
"Get dressed!" He begged weakly.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're taking a shine to me," Hermia whispered, and as she tugged at his hands there was a sharp explosion. A man stood in the doorway, but all Anton could see was Hermia's wide dark eyes before she collapsed to the floor.
Shanghai 1937
Anton remembered to tuck the purse in his pocket before descending from the attic. The music, the cigarette smoke as well as the tang of spilt beer rose from below. The chaos of voices from a full bar deafened him as he came to the elbow of a young woman in an emerald-green qipao. But she didn't have to turn to know he was there.
"I don't see her," she droned. "And I don't think I'll see her for some time. If ever."
She glanced up at Anton who was surveying the room. He was looking for exactly what he had set the woman to do that evening, and every evening since he arrived in Shanghai ten years ago.
"She's a problem," Anton answered the woman's inquiring glance.
"To a man, what woman isn't?" And she unfolded her hand awaiting payment. Anton reached into his pocket and dropped a few coins into her hand. And with that, the woman threw her stole over her shoulder and walked out.
There was a sea of faces hollow and long under the dim, gold light. Nothing could be distinguished from under the smoke and pervading darkness. That was until there was a flash. It was subtle, but distinct—distinct to the Immortalia. A flash that Anton knew about but had never seen until that moment. He slipped out his lighter and began flicking it open and then closing it at a steady rhythm as he moved through the club, parting bodies that were sandwiched together with his own, deftly avoiding lit cigarettes and full champagne glasses that dangled precariously between ladies' fingers.
The woman at the bar was leaning over it, and once she had received her champagne and brought it to her lips, she coughed into it. And her large, dark, laughing eyes settled on the looming owner that had drawn up beside her.
"You found me!" She squeezed his arm.
But for all of Anton's anticipation, for all the times he was about to turn a corner waiting to look into that wide and amused face, for all the words he had arranged and rearranged in his head that he would say to Hermia, Anton was truly at a loss when she looked up at him at that moment.
There was nothing different about her. It was as though the last 120 years had dissolved instantaneously. Her hair was shorter, and she certainly wasn't wearing a corset… Anton looked down at his shoes.
Hermia's lips stretched into a wicked grin.
"Good, we have met before," Hermia waved to the bartender and waved over the bottle of champagne. The bartender cast a hesitant glance in Anton's direction, and Anton nodded at him.
Hermia began filling an empty champagne glass: "You'll have to tell me everything!"
Anton had stopped carrying a gun five years ago. He abandoned the hope that Hermia would ever come to Shanghai. She had tricked him that night in Moscow, he told himself. The woman he paid… well, she was the best spy and lookout for the club. The Immortalia was not without its troubles. Time travelers, or the Craft, were a scourge and Hermia was its main offender, but not the only one.
And as Hermia slid the glass in his direction, Anton had at once remembered his gun but also thought, how could anyone eliminate a time traveler—a manipulator of time and fate?
"Everything," he echoed sitting down.
"Well," Hermia had taken out her cigarette case and snapped it shut, considering, "not everything. That would be terrible for me and for both of us."
"Why?"
"You're not the only one a part of an organization that has rules," Hermia said through her cigarette that she had inserted between her lips. Then she glanced up at Anton. He was absently opening and closing it again. He hadn't recovered from the sight of her. Then Hermia gestured to his lighter. Anton seemed to jolt and immediately offered his flame.
When Hermia pulled back, she was still looking at him. Those eyes were still laughing at him, and Anton suddenly felt 2,381 years-old again. Not that 120-something years would change much. But he had grown a handsome pencil-mustache, and he had moved most of the Russian Immortalia conglomerate from Moscow to Shanghai after what Hermia had said.
Anton was a hero. Prescient and shrewd. And he had been given access to all he wanted, which was his own establishment a stone's throw from the Huangpu River. Even The Green Gang had even cut the Immortalia in on its opium trade thanks to him.
But now, for the first time, Anton felt like a child in too-big clothing, pretending to be important in front of Hermia.
Anton had been staring at his shoes when he reached for the little purse that Hermia had tossed to him all those years ago in Moscow. He gently set it down at the bar. Hermia was just blowing a cloud of smoke above her dark hair when her eyes settled on the purse and its drawstrings.
"I think it's yours." Anton tapped the purse lightly with his fingers, reluctant to relinquish something that had been with him for so long.
"Mine?"
"From when we first met."
"Iceland?" Hermia furrowed her eyebrows.
"What?"
"Oh!" Hermia waved her hands in front of him, as though wiping away the words that she had spoken, "nevermind! Forget I said Iceland!"
Anton searched her face while trying string his words together. The words that he had so carefully practiced for all those years, but while he did, Hermia carefully pulled open the purse. She smiled down into the bag.
"What?"
"What do you mean what?" She was still looking into it.
"What's in it?"
"You've never opened it?!" She glanced up at him, but without waiting for an answer, Hermia pulled out a little golden bird figurine and placed it between them.
"Well," she then reached into her clutch. She reached inside and pulled out an identical bird. She placed them side by side. Hermia watched Anton's face.
"I don't understand." Anton shook his head vaguely.
"A totem," Hermia took another drag. "It's what the Craft imbue their traveling powers. You gave this to me when we first met."
Hermia was gently rocking in her seat with excitement. Anton blushed and snatched the bird and purse away, embarrassed.
Meet again. It meant that he would have to see her again some other time. That there would be a point where she disappeared again. For how long? She would never divulge. There would be another departure. An escape. A foiled attempt at eliminating this particular problem once and for all. It meant that he would no longer set a watch for her, and that the purse and the totem became doubly precious: they were no longer a trophy or souvenir from Moscow. It wasn't supposed to sentimental, but an integral part of Hermia. And he was entrusted to give it to her in the future. But that meant losing Hermia again.
Hermia reached out to stop him, "why are you so irritable all the time?"
"It's best you leave," Anton rose swiftly and was making his way through the crowd—to where, he didn't know. He just wanted to get away from Hermia.
"Why?" Hermia chased after him and finally grabbed on to his coattail. She asked again, why?
"Because it seems whenever I try to eradicate you, you pop up somewhere!"
Hermia looked startled, as though that weren't exactly the answer she was expecting. "Well, you could be wildly evil and not give me my totem when we meet again."
"I'm tired of meeting you again." Anton tried to sound cool and detached, but there was a tremor of hurt in his voice and burst from the club doors with Hermia in tow. Fuzhou street was ablaze with lights, and the balmy June air was softened by a cool breeze from the river.
"Well, you don't have to meet me again," she came up softly beside him, looping her arm through his. But Anton didn't tear his arm away, as much as he wanted to.