"Montfermeil? Is that what he said?"
"'Course. Didn't you hear him?"
A wall of silence cam between the two sisters. Neither dared to speak a word.
Eponine walked back out of the street, and around the corner. She casually went back to where they were supposed to be waiting for Gavroche. The marks in the snow were still visible, and she went to sit down. She was so deep in thought that she did not even notice a man hurrying briskly through the street. He knocked into her, and she just managed to put a foot down to stop herself from falling. She turned angrily towards the man, but he had not stopped, so he was already a considerable distance down the street. She sat down on the side of the street.
Azelma did not sit. She paced anxiously, taking few steps in one direction before turning to the next. Her face was all that was needed to speak of her anxiety.
"Montfermeil," Eponine muttered thoughtfully. She raised her voice so that Azelma could hear, "I never expected to hear of that place again. It's odd, the way places can disappear from your mind. Seems like a different world."
Silence returned. Montfermeil, where they had been born, hardly had ever been mentioned since the day they had come to Paris. It was a small village, surrounded by woods and fields. The water had come from a well, and there were few shops. It was different from Paris in so many ways. The two had adjusted to Paris, and the ways of life in the city. They had moved from a land of dusty paths and trees to a world of stone and brick.
But the worldly difference between where Eponine had once lived and where she lived now did not come from the places themselves. It came from herself. There had been a large change within her when she had moved.
The memories were blurred, as if she was looking through smoke. She remembered some things in such detail, but others were misted, and fragmented like pieces of glass. Those were fragmented so much that they looked as if they could shatter any minute. Some, though, were clear. She could remember the noise from the tables of the inn clearly. There were always the usual drunkards, the regulars who came to spend times away from theirs families. There were the casual travellers who talked and laughed, the person who came to drink away his depression, there was always one person who complained about the noise and accommodation of the inn, and then there were always the quiet people who never spoke loudly, but emitted grumbles about the prices. Living in an inn, she grew used to strangers and noise, and it had prepared her for moving to Paris.
Eponine had not been deprived as a child. In fact, she had not been aware of the growing dept, like a tower being added to each day, which surrounded threateningly her parents' business. The dept had engulfed them, and sent them away to Paris. The living her parents had made, although her father overcharged greatly, had been a normal job. They had a place in society. The police had no need to track them, as they were only doing their job, and because only a fool would complain to the police about being overcharged, however great the cost was. When she was younger, she had unconsciously met cruelty when she had used it as a weapon against the Lark, but now she met with the other side of cruelty. The harsh streets of Paris victimised her, and had no mercy.
"Well?" Azelma sat down beside her sister. She winced as the cold of the snow bit through her skirt.
"Well what? There's nothing to say about it, is there?"
"I mean… the illness. Oh, I don't know what I mean."
A voice came from a short way off. The voice was singing. The song was cheerful, and was not in the voice of a man, but a young boy. It was a voice which the two girls knew.
Gavroche came towards his sisters, but when Azelma scrambled up and walked over to him, Eponine glared. He shrugged, and motioned down the street. Without waiting for them, he began to walk, with a grin on his face.
"Gavroche! Where've you been?" Azelma asked, "We waited for you the whole time. Well, we did do something, after all." Her tone became firmer, "why did you just go off like that? We could have gone with you, or—"
"—why'd you leave?" Eponine interrupted. She kept the same constant glare, focused on her brother.
"Huh?" Gavroche paused, "you wouldn't have done nothing where I went."
"You should have told us where you were going. So tell us now."
Azelma turned. Eponine had neither moved nor spoken. She stood up, taking her time, and turned away.
"Come on," Gavroche called, slightly too loudly, "this is the story: I went to the end o' the street, and turned a couple of corners. I've been here a couple of times, and there was an old shop I knew. You not listening? Fine," he turned towards Azelma, and spoke to her, "I found the shop a while back. I thought 'if it's the same man there as before, then I may as well pay him a visit.' Yeah, 'e's still there and he sells bread an' stuff. He didn't remember me, the old lazy man, so I decided to remind him."
And then the gamin held out a loaf of bread. It was thin, but a good size, and just wide enough for the boy to put both hands around it and touch the tips of his fingers.
"Convenient, that," he added, "The way them shopkeepers like to put their finest stuff at the front. He was just a bit fat, so I thought I'd help 'im out."
Azelma was smiling by the time Gavroche had finished talking. At first she had frowned at the quality of the white bread, but then had shrugged. It was true; they did need the bread more than the shopkeeper would have. Gavroche pulled about a third off the bread, and handed it to Azelma. Then, without breaking his larger piece in half, he raised it and bit it. Azelma glanced cautiously at Eponine, who still stood her ground.
Eponine shrugged, "Fine," she said, "maybe it wasn't such a bad idea for you to go off like that. There, happy now?"
Her brother grinned without looking away from his meal, broke the piece of bread in half, slightly unevenly, and held the unbitten piece in her direction. It was the smaller one; he had made sure of that.
She took the piece of bread, keeping any sign of her gratefulness from showing on her face.
"Next time, next time you 'know a place' I mean, tell us. I will go with you next time. and it would stop us all from having to repeatedly tell each other of the odd things which happened."
There was something about the way she said this which made him pause and look up.
"Why," he asked, "what happened?"
Eponine described to her brother what had happened while he was gone. She attempted to bore him at first with her descriptions of the wrinkled parsnips and turnips in the man's baskets. She soon became bored herself though, so when she was satisfied that she had managed to drag the conversation on enough, she cut to the chase. His head was down, and intent on making sure that not a single crumb of bread fell, when one word which she said made him look up. Not even the illness or the 'stories' had affected him, he had simply shrugged, but every person has their own personal words which affect them. The word, Montfermeil, would not have affected any other beggar or gamin, but it affected Gavroche just as it had affected his sisters.
"Montfermeil?" he inquired eagerly, "not that old village! I hardly remember it, but I always liked a good story, like the crazy village rumours the man must be speaking about. And they're always that much better coming from the mouth of a lunatic," he paused, and added, "from the sound of it, there's more than one crazy person there."
Eponine and Azelma stared at him. this reaction was far form their own. He gazed into the distance, and began to sing something under his breath. It was another tune which was likely forgotten by all but the gamins of Paris. A song which is passed on from one gamin to another in the same way stories were passed on by word of mouth between our ancestors. There were a few moments when none spoke, and the only sound to break the silence was the boy's singing. Time passed, it could have been an hour, or it could have been two seconds. Eventually Gavroche spoke up.
"I say we go there," said he.
