“Stop your dreaming and settle!” seemed to be the prevailing message of the lesson I’d spent several months and a full term’s tuition to learn. It was on the tails of that abysmal failure that I found myself at a German seaport, looking for passage back to England. My German was terrible—nearly nonexistent. I was halfway through negotiating the price of a bunk on a large merchant carrier called the Lady Charlotte when I finally understood that the captain was not sailing to England at all, but would be briefly making port in France before crossing the wide Atlantic bound for America.

Most jarring of all was my realization that the prospect of sailing across the ocean to the States was much less frightening to me than that of returning home. I don’t know whether I was more afraid of confronting my parents, having stolen away with the tuition money, or of confronting the end of my adventure, which felt as though it had never really even had a middle.

I purchased three items that afternoon: a postcard, a stamp, and a ticket on the Lady Charlotte. My parents most likely received the post about the same time I was watching the shores of Europe drift behind me, and the vast, misty blue ocean expand before me. I was not so naive and hopeful as I had been when my voyage began, but the world was growing larger by the day. The postcard was brief, and read simply:

Dearest Mother and Father,

Hoping you are well. As you had previously cautioned, a professional dig site proved to be no place for a young lady to run around. Currently in seek of a better location to do so.

Regards,

A. Rook

Now that I was here in New Fiddleham, I was not ready to abandon my foray into adventure, but I would compromise by taking a conventional job to sustain it.

My first prospective stop was a general goods store. A bell chimed as I entered, and the shopkeeper, a thin, older woman, looked up from a flat loaded high with flour sacks. “Good morning, dearie! Be right with you!” She heaved one of the heavy bags to a shelf behind her, but it caught the corner of the rack and threw her off balance. The parcel hit the floor and burst in a billowing, white cloud. “Oh bother! Would you wait, just a moment?” she said apologetically.

“Of course. Please—let me help you with those,” I said, setting my suitcase beside the door and stepping in. The woman accepted my offer happily, and I began lifting bags to the shelf while she fetched a broom and dustpan.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she observed, sweeping up the mess.

“I only just made port,” I confirmed.

“I’d say London, by the accent?”

“A few counties southwest, actually. A little town in Hampshire. Have you been to England?”