The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch Read Free Book Online Page A

taller than I am.”
    I looked. “No, nothing. Are you waiting for someone?”
    She turned back to me. My first impression of her was that she was distracted and faintly bad-tempered, as pretty girls can be if they are not emptily sweet, but then I realized something else was going on. There were tears in her eyes. “Yeah.”
    I had been walking toward her but stopped now, leaving a tithe of space between us. “Is everything okay?”
    “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, tucking a dejected strand of hair behind her ear. Almost immediately she was crying. She wiped her tears away more quickly than they came with the heel of her hand.
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    “I’m sorry, I’m not ever like this—”
    “No, don’t apologize. Do you want to sit?”
    She sniffled. “Why not.”
    When we were on the chairs I was silent for a minute or two. She had been throwing bread to a family of black birds with red bills, and she started again, smiling weakly when they took it. Finally I asked, “So are you in Fleet? Are you in the Cottages?”
    “Yeah, I just got here. Number five. What about you?”
    She had a lovely, lilting accent, posh but with sweetness at its edges and a faint heaviness in its vowels that I learned later was from Yorkshire. Even in her vulnerable state there was something imperious to her.
    “I’m in three.”
    “You must think I’m nuts.”
    “No. Everyone gets this way sometimes.”
    “But not me.” She studied me for a second. “I’m breaking up with my boyfriend today.”
    I smiled and said, mildly, “On a boat?”
    “He was supposed to pick me up.” She sighed with her whole body. “But he’s always fucking late, or he ditches me, even for things like this. God, I hate him.”
    “Then congratulations. Right?”
    “Listen to me.” She gave her head a quick, sharp shake, took a deep breath, and smiled a smile set with the determination not to be foolish. “So what do you study? What’s your name? I’m Sophie.”
    We shook hands. “I’m Will. I do English. What about you?”
    “French.”
    “A master’s, too?”
    She shook her head ruefully. “Probably for the long haul, actually, the DPhil. Are you American?”
    “Yeah, I’m from New York.”
    Unlike most people, she didn’t rush to prove that she knew the city. “Oh, lovely,” she said and looked down the river again.
    “Have you met anyone yet?”
    She looked back at me. “Not a soul. I only just got here on Tuesday.”
    “I think a bunch of fun people are going out tonight, if you want to drown your sorrows.” I was referring to myself, Tom, and Anil, so “a bunch of fun people” might have been misleading, but who cared. “To the Royal Oak.”
    “I wish I could, but my department has these introductory seminars every evening this week. Refreshers, they’re supposed to be, vousvoyering. It’s an insult, but they’re mandatory.”
    “What about next week? There’s the opening Formal Hall in First Week.” There were three terms at Oxford, Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity, each with nine numbered weeks. Just then we were in Noughth Week, as it was called, when the students arrived and settled in. First Week would be the formal commencement of the fall term, Michaelmas.
    “Oh, I’d love to go to that,” she said and looked genuinely pleased.
    In a formal tone, I said, “If you come you may tutoyer me.”
    She laughed. “Seems hasty.”
    “I feel as if I’d known you for decades. I’ve known you in a relationship and single, and I have to say I prefer—”
    She laughed and was about to speak when from not far off a voice barked out her name. “Soph.”
    It was her boyfriend, I guessed; he was sitting in the stern of a scull for two, handsome and very tan, shaggy-haired, an instinctive smirk in his expression. After he had called for her he set about the work of turning the boat, so we had a moment before she went to him.
    She stuck out her hand again. “It was nice to meet you,” she said. Then,