November, 1801

Valeria Lockwood

I miss him.

The moors frighten me. Never would I have ever thought a new locale could really frighten me, not since I was very young. But this place is as foreign to me as Hong Kong would be to a country scamp I would imagine to come out of an estate named Thrushcross Grange - my new place of residence. I refrain from using the word 'home', because I have never really had a home, and never wanted one. Father always used to say, 'You cannot build yourself a house without beginning to build your own deathbed.'

I miss him. I cannot write it enough. Yet why can I not cry?

This fog is nothing like London fog. There is a scent in the air here that I have never smelled before. In my seventeen years of life and all of my travelling with my father, no city smelled anything like this.

Once, in Amsterdam, one of my father's associates told me about the fae that lived in the lands that laid north of England. He spoke of banshees and changelings in a drunken stupor, but I was a mere child of six and believed every word of it. Now I imagine that it must be fairy dust in the air that makes the fog so impenetrable, and soon the coach will be taken by a fawn, and perhaps I can outrun the fae and let them chase me all the way back to the ocean, where I can find the next boat out of this accursed country.

We were meant to travel to the Americas next year together. But the Revolt against the aristocracy in France led to his death. He felt he was fighting, not on either side, but trying to keep the peace as much as possible. If only we'd left when we were warned.

My daydream was merely that. No manner of fae or sprite in sight. We have arrived, and my uncle is waiting.