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Yao woke up in the barn. He yawned and stretched, taking a sweeping glance around his surroundings. The smell of hay and grass threatened to suffocate him. He stood, brushing himself off, and went outdoors. Birds soared through the sky, an arrowhead across the blue empyrean.

He should have gotten that cabby a day ago. He had dreamt about it and planned, but something about it offset him. He could relinquish his destiny to the hands of fate and let the wind carry him wherever it pleased, leaving it to the gods. Before deciding what to do, he stepped into the field and walked to town.

People began to wake and the town stirred. The Austrians leaked from their homes, heading to their jobs or taking strolls in the clear, smooth morning air. Yao felt dirty among them. He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling a layer of dirt already forming.

He bobbed like an ugly catfish in a stream of glittering salmon. The women dressed in beautiful, lithe dresses. The men had their suits and expectations. Most didn't look at Yao—it did not help that he was only to most of their shoulders in height. However, one or two eyes did stray from their courses to grace Yao, as a foreigner, as an oriental. The sunlight enveloped the city like airy mist. Yao enjoyed it, digging several coins from his pocket. He stopped at the first bakery he saw and purchased a loaf of bread. Had he been in Russia he would have succumbed to buying black bread and openly giving the impression that he was a vagrant. Yet, he didn't find that he cared.

Ivan's features drifted in the back of his mind, a face bobbing in a pool of damp memories. The day before Yao had slept and nearly wept several times, all out of self-pity. He fasted, in hopes of achieving enlightenment, and only succeeded in getting hungry. His arms swung at his sides. If they were washed they could have appeared as porcelain dolls.

This very thought crossed the mind of a man who walked past Yao. He stopped in his tracks and turned to Yao, gently tapping his shoulder. Yao started, but turned nonetheless. The man began to babble on in a language unknown to Yao. He was tall with an elegant, long, smooth face and an unsightly beauty mark punctuating his chin. His hair was the color of a cello and pulled back. His spectacles balanced precariously on his nose and with every jerk of his jaw and every syllable of the strange garble of langue, they threatened to leap off.

Yao couldn't even bring himself to smile. He stood and stared at the man.

He began to point at himself and slowly said "Roderich."

Yao pointed at his chest and said "Yao".

He felt like an ape trying to communicate with another life form. Yao began to speak in hoarse Russian. The man raised his sharp eyebrows in response. He then answered Yao in the same language, albeit disjointed nearly beyond comprehension.

"You hungry, yes? I take you to home to eat and dress."

"Why?" Yao asked slowly, rolling out the sounds so Roderich could distinguish them.

"I want to help you."

"What do I have to pay you?"

"You help me later."

"With what?"

"I play music," he said, coupling it with a vicious miming of piano playing. "I need a dancer."

"Dance?" Yao asked meekly. He hadn't danced in front of an audience, not including the masquerade, since he was but a child at his mother's knee.

"Yes. I teach you. Then you leave. I help you go home."

Roderich gave him a smile that tried to be empathetic but only succeeded in looking forced. His eyes glittered like two hard rocks. Yao stared deep into them, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He searched for an ulterior motive, for murder, for a crime, but he found only hint 0f desperation. There was a different motive from simply creating an unforgettable music piece, surely, and it didn't seem impure.

Besides, Yao could run away again.

"Yes." Yao said.

"Good." Roderich said with a nod of his head. A gleam that only the insane and brilliant, it's hard to tell the difference, burst in his features. He ushered Yao along the streets. Yao caught a glimpse of a vast array of peoples, all of which intrigued him. He suddenly wanted to see Natalia and Katrina and, most of all, Ivan. But these feelings brought great discontent to him. He felt inane for even wishing to see the sight of their faces. They would go home, eventually, and Yao would be but a colorful character in the novel of their lives. He would be lost in the pages, in a cobweb of words. Maybe they would crack the book open to his chapter and relive it.

These thoughts saddened Yao to the point he had to be jerked to reality by a jab from Roderich's unyielding finger. Yao straightened his back at once into perfect posture. They entered a broad gate that appeared to be made of intertwining vines. The cobbled path to the house was dusty and dotted with tiny red flowers. Roderich continued to prattle on. Yao ceased listening, succumbing to a throbbing head ache within his temples.

Once inside, the men were greeted by a distinctly powerful woman. She stood before them and first glowered at Yao and then offered an even more furious one at Roderich. Her hair was a smooth brown color, rippling like a stream, and reaching the center of her back. She was cloaked in a fine green dress and had a kerchief around her head. She looked like a damsel, but her bulging muscles and powerful, Hungarian voice extinguished that appearance in a mere instant. She began to holler at Roderich until he muttered something in an utmost professional tone that at once soothed her visage. She proffered a hand to Yao, which he accepted, and began to follow her.

Yao shot a look over his shoulder. "Your wife?" he asked.

"Something like that." Roderich said with a vague wave of his hand, his features once again settling into stone. He turned and entered a different room, taking the route of a long, gilded hallway. Yao looked at the woman. She did not speak Russian and could not possibly convey any instructions to Yao, so he thought. Again, his assumptions were shattered by a jack hammer of surprising reality.

She pointed at his clothes, said something, and then jabbed her finger at a bathtub. She went to it and began to draw it. Yao pulled his clothing off, leaving himself as naked as the day he had been brought onto the earth, with an added layer of grime and soil. She looked once over him, like a mother, and ordered him to bathe. She took the clothing and Yao had a feeling she disposed of them.

After an hour of her struggling to clean him up and being placed in a comfortable nightgown, he was introduced to the rest of the household informally. The woman, who he knew now to be called Elizaveta, showed him to an empty room he called home for the following five years. Yao began to feel that fortune reared her beautiful head yet again in his direction.

Next, he was directed to Roderich. Along the way he caught a glimpse of a child in a small dress racing around the site. Her hair was in a white kerchief. Elizaveta doted over the child as if she were her own, babying her with sweets and dresses. For now the child was a ghost of the house. Yao bunched his night gown away from his feet. It was several sizes too large for him, having been originally Elizaveta's.

She led him to a large room with a single piano in the heart. Large windows allowed light to pour in. Roderich stared at the piano, holding a pile of papers under his nose and madly scribbling some notes. Elizaveta called to him. He raised his head and cleared his throat, adjusting his appearance to that of a sane man.

They conversed until Elizaveta left Yao alone in the room. Roderich beckoned him over.

"Langue barrier," he stated.

Yao nodded.

"Learn German."

"From whom?"

"From Elise." Then he politely asked Yao to leave, for the maids had prepared a lunch for him. Yao obliged, still feeling as though he were adrift upon a fantasy, a dream. At the same time he felt as though he was constantly falling into a bottomless, dark, bleak pit. The clock was ticking away time and yet it was on a completely different plane of existence.

Now Yao had to wonder who this Elise was and to whom she pertained to, but she would be his teacher, like the two comely maids of the past. Yao munched on the bread he had purchased, along with an array of cuisine before him, and wondered how long ago it truly was since he left home. He turned his eyes towards the ceiling and was delighted to discover a painting gracing the ceiling. He saw epic tales unfold. Women and men crowded around golden arches and seemed to call out laments or praises or both at one another. In the center a sun with a sage, wrinkled face gazed down at the hall. Yao then thought this was a place for a considerable amount of people to dine at once. Later he learned that his benefactor was a man of the arts, to say the least.

The following day he met Elise.

Surprise!

This story is now receiving a Part II, or rather a continuation-but not exactly a sequel.

I'll keep it attached to the original to make it easier and avoid confusion.

Why do I continue? Well, why not?

And I am well aware the time lines don't exactly match up, but this is a historical fiction story.