I Am Literally Just A Girl

The clerk lifted her eyes. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a neat braid and ink staining the side of her thumb. “Work, residence, family, trade, study, worship, or appointment.”

“None.”

A guard shifted near the inner door. His spear butt struck the floor once.

The clerk glanced at the ledger. “Everyone has one.”

Mara’s fingers tightened around her bag. Inside were two shirts, a comb with three missing teeth, the last heel of bread, and her mother’s silver thimble wrapped in a handkerchief. None of it could prove anything useful. The letter that had once carried her name and destination had been soaked through at the river crossing. The ink had run until the page held only blue veins.

“Write traveler,” Mara said.

The clerk’s mouth thinned. “Travelers require a lodging declaration.”

“I’ll find one.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The guard stepped closer. He was broad in the shoulders, his red coat buttoned to the throat despite the heat trapped beneath the stone arch. “You came to the city without a sponsor?”

Mara kept her gaze on the clerk. “I came to the city because I had nowhere else to go.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

The clerk turned a page. Paper rasped beneath her hand. “Family name?”

“Voss.”

“House affiliation?”

“None.”

“Guild?”

“No.”

“Employer?”

“No.”

“Purpose?”

Mara heard the gate machinery groan overhead. The portcullis had begun to descend.

She looked at the narrowing strip of sky beyond the bars. If the gate closed, she would be left outside with the night coming on and no shelter but the ditch road. The fields offered no warmth. The last village had turned her away when she could not produce a work seal. Bellwether was supposed to be different. It was the largest city in the province. There were always rooms in large cities, people had told her. There was always some door left unlatched.

The clerk tapped the blank line with her pen.

“Purpose,” she said again.

Mara leaned closer. “I’m just a girl trying to get inside before your gate shuts.”

For one second, the clerk’s expression changed. Not pity. Recognition, perhaps, of something too familiar to name.

Then the guard seized Mara’s arm.

His fingers closed above her elbow, hard enough to bruise through her coat. The bag slipped from her shoulder and landed against the stone.

“Unregistered,” he said.

The word moved through the waiting line like a draft. The seamstress took one step away. The sisters lowered their eyes. Even the old woman with the onions turned her body toward the city, as if distance might keep suspicion from touching her.

Mara pulled against the guard. “I’m not causing trouble.”

“Not yet.”

“I have money.”

“Then you can pay for a return road.”

“I’m not going back.”

The guard’s grip tightened. “That sounds like a declaration.”

“Let her go,” said the clerk.

He glanced at her. “Sergeant - ”

“I said let her go.”

The guard released Mara. Blood returned to her arm in hot needles. She bent to retrieve her bag, keeping her face lowered while the clerk studied the ledger.

“What is your mother’s name?” the clerk asked.

Mara straightened. “Why?”

“For verification.”

“She’s dead.”

The clerk’s pen paused.

Mara regretted saying it. Not because it was untrue, but because the truth had become another piece of evidence against her. A dead mother could not confirm a birthplace. A missing father could not vouch for a destination. The city wanted a woman to arrive already explained.

The clerk turned several pages backward, then forward again. “Mara Voss,” she murmured. “There is no entry.”

“I’ve never been here.”

“That is not what I mean.”

The gate dropped another foot. Its iron teeth now cut across the evening light.

Mara stepped toward the desk. “Please. Just stamp me in. I’ll find a lodging house. I’ll work. I can sew, carry, clean - ”

“Your purpose must be recorded before entry.”

“Then record all of it.”

The clerk’s eyes sharpened. “All of what?”

Mara swallowed. The road had left dust in her throat. “That I can do whatever is needed.”

A bell rang inside the gatehouse. The clerk flinched and looked toward the descending portcullis.

“Close the outer passage,” called someone from the tower.

Mara turned. “No.”

The guard reached for her again.

She moved first.

Her shoulder struck the clerk’s desk. The inkpot jumped, spilling a dark fan across the ledger. The clerk cried out. The guard caught the back of Mara’s coat, but Mara twisted free, leaving a button in his hand. She seized her bag and ran toward the inner side of the gatehouse.

“Stop her!”

The women in line scattered. The red-scarfed seamstress pressed herself against the wall. One of the gray-coated sisters screamed when Mara knocked into her, and that sound brought the guard’s boots pounding behind her.

Mara saw three exits: the main passage, already filling with iron; a stairwell leading up to the watchtower; and a narrow door marked SERVICE, half-hidden behind stacked crates.

She lunged for the door.

It was locked.

The guard caught her wrist.

“Down,” he snarled.

Mara slammed her free hand against the door. Once. Twice. The wood shivered but held.

The city bells began to ring in earnest, six notes rolling over the rooftops. The gate chain groaned above them. Through the gaps in the portcullis, Mara saw the road she had walked darken beneath the first blue of evening.

“Please,” she said, though she did not know whether she spoke to the door, the clerk, or the city itself.

The guard hauled her backward.

Something hard pressed against her palm.

Her mother’s thimble had fallen from the bag. Mara had picked it up without noticing. Its little silver rim bit into her skin.

She turned the thimble over. Along its inside, nearly worn away, was a tiny stamped mark: three linked circles.

The same mark appeared on the service door.

Mara drove the thimble into the lock.

The metal caught.

For an instant, nothing happened. Then the lock clicked.

The guard swore. Mara threw her weight against the door. It opened inward with a shriek, revealing a passage barely wide enough for her shoulders. Cold air rushed through it, carrying coal smoke, wet rope, and the sharp scent of onions.

She slipped inside.

The guard grabbed at her coat again, but the torn fabric gave way. Mara stumbled into darkness as the service door slammed behind her. His fist struck the wood on the other side.

“Open this!”

Mara ran.

The passage rose steeply beneath the gatehouse, its walls close and sweating damp. Crates crowded the floor. A string of bells trembled overhead, each one tied to a different mechanism in the gate. Mara ducked beneath a hanging chain and nearly fell over a bucket. Behind her, the guard shouted orders. The sound followed her through the stone like a second set of footsteps.

At the end of the passage, a thin strip of lamplight showed beneath another door.

Mara pushed it open and emerged into Bellwether.

She stood in a narrow service court behind the gatehouse. Lanterns burned above stacked barrels. A boy in a flour-dusted apron stared at her from beside a handcart.

“Where did you come from?” he asked.

Mara pulled the door closed. “The gate.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I have.”

He glanced toward the gatehouse as fists struck the door behind her. “They’ll search the court.”

“Then don’t let them see me.”

The boy’s eyes dropped to her torn coat, her dusty boots, the bag hanging crookedly from one shoulder. “You’re unregistered.”

Mara stepped toward him. “Do you know a place I can sleep?”

He laughed once, without humor. “Everyone knows a place. Doesn’t mean they’ll let you in.”

The service door rattled.

Mara looked around the court. A stack of empty flour sacks leaned against the wall. Beyond it, a drain channel led beneath an iron grate into the city proper. The grate was narrow, but the bars had been bent outward, leaving a gap.

The boy followed her gaze. “That goes to Lantern Lane.”

“Can I fit?”

“You can if you don’t mind losing more of your coat.”

Mara dropped to her knees.

The stones were wet and cold beneath her palms. She shoved the bag through first, then turned sideways and forced herself into the gap. Iron scraped her ribs. Her coat caught on a jagged bar. Behind her, the service door burst open.

“There!” the guard shouted.

Mara pulled harder. The torn fabric tightened against her throat.

For one breath, she was trapped between the city and the road, between the rules written above the gate and the nameless dark behind it.

Then she let go of the coat.

The cloth ripped. Mara slid through and landed in a shallow channel on the other side. Dirty water soaked her sleeve. She crawled beneath the grate as the guard’s hand reached through the bars, fingers snapping shut inches from her ankle.

The boy kicked the grate down.

“Run,” he said.

Mara ran.

Lantern Lane opened around her, bright and crowded, full of carts, shouting vendors, bells, and women moving quickly beneath the signs of their registered trades. A woman in a green apron carried a tray of steaming cups. A pair of students argued over a map. A courier with a blue purpose ribbon pinned to her collar pushed through the crowd without apologizing.

Mara moved among them with her torn coat clutched closed.

For three steps, she was inside.

Then a bell rang from the gatehouse.

A smaller sound followed, sharp and official.

The clerk emerged from the service court with the ink-stained ledger tucked beneath her arm. She had crossed the lane faster than Mara expected. Two guards followed, scanning the crowd.

The clerk saw her.

“Mara Voss!”

Heads turned.

Mara stopped beneath a lantern. Light fell across her face, her ripped collar, and the silver thimble still clenched in her hand.

The clerk approached, breathing hard. Ink had dried along one side of her wrist. “You entered through a restricted arch.”

“You left it unlocked.”

“It was not unlocked.”

“Then your lock knows me better than you do.”

A murmur passed through the crowd.

The clerk’s gaze dropped to the thimble. Her expression went still.

Mara noticed. “What is that mark?”

The clerk looked away too quickly. “You are not permitted to ask questions here.”

“I’m permitted to enter, apparently.”

“You are permitted under review.”

The clerk opened the ledger. On the page where Mara’s name should have been, the ink spill had spread across several lines. Beneath it, in a fresh, narrow hand, she wrote:

MARA VOSS - ADMITTED PENDING PURPOSE REVIEW.

Then she pressed the pen so hard the nib tore the paper.

The guard took Mara by the arm again, this time with the clerk watching.

“Where are you taking me?” Mara asked.

The clerk closed the ledger. “Somewhere we can decide what you are.”

Mara looked past her at Bellwether’s crowded streets, at all the women carrying their purposes like badges, permits, or chains.

The clerk’s thumb remained over Mara’s name.

“Until then,” she said, “you belong to the city.”

Mara glanced back once at the dark mouth of the service arch.

Then the guards led her deeper into Bellwether, beneath the lanterns and the ringing bells, while behind them the clerk marked the page for review.

End of chapter one. 38 more chapters and about 83,610 words in the full book.