Paris: 1829



Eponine had often seen people give her father money, but never before had he sent her with them and said, "Bring her back Tuesday."

The boy was not a stranger. She'd seen Montparnasse around many times, and sometimes he even followed her when she went on errands. She also knew that he didn't usually have the amount of money he'd given her father.

"Where'd you get all that?" she asked as they walked through the streets.

"A job for a friend."

"Why'd you give it to Papa?"

"You're not so new to the street, 'Ponine. Why does a boy give a man money and take away a girl?"

"Oh. No good reason."

"That depends on your point of view."



"Oh, Eponine, what happened to you?" her little brother asked when he opened the door Tuesday morning.

"Montparnasse," she answered, grimacing because the bruises made it painful to talk.

"That where you've been?"

"Yeah."

"You look bad."

" 'Parnasse happens with all his strength."

"I thought you didn't like him."

"I thought you were too smart to say stupid things like that. I hate him."

"Then why?" He looked at her face again, and caught her gaze. "Oh. But you said you weren't going to, that you got enough from the errands."

"I didn't want to. It was Father's idea."

"Oh." The boy thought for a few moments. "I'd best be going again. I'll see you around, shall I?" He stepped lightly over her and into the street.

"Fare well, brother."



Eponine shivered and pulled the ragged cloth that served her as a coat closer around her narrow shoulders. She felt a tap on one of them, and turned, but no one was there. As she went to walk on, a grimy imp in a coat three times too big popped up in front of her and embraced her. She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

"How are you, 'Ponine?" the gamin asked, grinning, not noticing the pain on her face.

" 'Parnasse," she answered, and he let her go as quickly as he had grabbed her.

"Run away with me. It'd be good for you," he entreated. "I've a lovely little room, not Versailles, but comfortable. We'd both fit."

"But how would we live?" She looked at him with eyes empty of hope. "He'd find me. He'd know you were trying to keep me from him, and he might even kill you."

"Nah, not that. He knows how useful a boy like me can be in a tough pinch."

"He'd kill me, then."

"No. He wants you."

"You don't understand him. He wouldn't start by thinking to kill me. He'd just want to teach me a lesson and then he'd lose control. So, no, I can't run away with you. The streets hold no shelter for me." She looked around warily then, remembering that they were standing in a public place. "I must go. I have to deliver this." She held up a grubby letter that trembled in her hand.

"I will call for you tomorrow. I wish to take you to the theater, dear lady."

"I hope I shall be at home. If I am not- -"

"I will find you." He pressed a roll, not yet hardened with age, into her hand. "Take care." He skipped away as gaily as he had accosted her.

"I will try."



She was not sure at first whether the noise was inside her head or a knock at the door. It went on after the slap had to have been over, though. Montparnasse slapped her again, then stood by the door. "What?" he asked the person knocking.

"I want to take my sister to a comedy, 'Parnasse," cried a young, familiar voice. "Let her out."

"I paid for her time. You're not taking her today." The man opened the door and glared down at the boy scornfully.

"But she really ought to see this one. Let her go."

"I paid good money for this little tart. If you want her, you'll have to buy her from me."

"I have no money."

"Then she stays with me." Montparnasse moved to close the door.

"I could owe you a favor," the boy offered, taking a step into the room.

"A favor from you?"

"You never know when I might come in handy. Remember what you could do when you were my size?"

Montparnasse thought for a few moments, then waved a hand impatiently at Eponine. "Fine. You owe me a favor." The boy spit on his hand and shook Montparnasse's elegantly clean one. "Bring her back here tonight, before dawn."

Once they were in the street, Eponine said, "You shouldn't have done that."

"You shouldn't have to waste time and energy on him."

"He'll ask something even worse from you than what he wants from me."

"No, he couldn't. You're just used to what he does to you."

Eponine laughed at that, her hoarse voice making the pain sound even deeper. "Do you really think that? Oh, no, I feel it all the same as I did that first day when he gave our father the dirty money he earned from his first assassination and dragged me away from the meager safety of home and into his lair. Is it better now that it's been going on for months? Is it better now that he has clean sheets? Is it better now that he has enough money that there's no time for my bruises to heal? No. All the affluence in the world could only make Montparnasse more repulsive. He could not make me love him if he were made of gold." She shook her head. "Whatever he demands in return for this will be horrific. I should just go back."

"And have me owe him for nothing? No. Let's go to the theater. It's Lysistrata. You'll love it."

"No. But I'll try to enjoy it, for you."



The seats were high above everything, where the audience around them was as engaging as the players far below. A group of scruffy college students sat just in front of them, and their antics overshadowed the stage. One of them persistently called out whatever line was next in Greek just before the actor said it in French. On his left, a pair alternately argued and rhapsodized about a girl named Musichetta, and completely ignored the stage. To his right, a drunken man continually tried to engage his companion in conversation, but the target ignored him and watched the play, occasionally glancing at the man to remark, "Shouldn't I see it so I know what I'm dreaming?" Next to that pair was a youth who wasn't looking at anything at all, but stared into space and dreamed about something that didn't seem to be in the theater at all. He was oblivious even to the drunken man's nudging him and pointing out pretty girls in the rows ahead of them.

The dreaming one drew Eponine's attention the most. He wasn't the prettiest of the group; the one who was actually watching the play was certainly that. But after the first scene, she found herself looking less at the stage and more at the mysterious boy.

Her brother noticed her preoccupation. "Those are the Friends of the ABC, 'Ponine. Half of them are in love with the other half, and they're all skirtchasers. They'll all be shot if they keep following their leader, who only cares about a Republic. You won't get anything but trouble making cow eyes at one of them."

"I don't think he's like that at all. Look at his face." She did nothing else for several minutes.

"I wouldn't if I were you. He'll probably go home with one of 'les Amis' tonight." The boy spit. "He'd not want any girl, even one without bruises all over her face."

"You don't know what you're saying. I know he's not like that." She kept staring at the dreamer. "He's not. I can tell."

"Why don't you follow him home, then, and see that I'm right?"

"All right." A thunderclap of applause greeted the end of the play, and she stood up at the same time as the dreaming youth and his friends. She trailed after them through the crush of people, leaving her brother behind.

"Wait, 'Ponine, no!" he called after her, but his voice was lost in the shouts of the crowd. She disappeared, pursuing the young man.



The door opened while Eponine still had her hand raised to knock, and before it swung shut again, she was on the floor. "You useless hussy, I'm going to kill that brother of yours. Where were you last night?"

She shook with the pain of new bruises growing on old. "Don't blame him. I left him at midnight."

"And went where? Where in the world could you have been when you know your place is with me?" The question was accompanied by a blow that left her speechless for a moment.

"Scoping out a prospective client." The lie scraped out of her throat, and she shied away from his raised hand, earning a kick in the side instead.

"I am the only client you should have worried about. Me. It's been almost a whole day since you left. Didn't I say 'back before dawn'? Didn't I?"

"You did. But I thought- -"

"I don't pay you to think!"

"You don't pay me for anything. You pay my father." Her lip was bleeding.

"You're his property."

"I'm no one's property."

"Is that so? I believe you're mine." He gripped her shoulder with slim fingers whose exterior beauty hid internal strength.

"No." It was difficult to defy reality, and it only made him angrier, earning her another beating.

After she stopped sobbing, he loomed over her where she lay on the floor and planted one foot firmly on her chest. "If you are not mine, you may leave." She did not have the energy to struggle. "You relinquish your foolish claim, then? Wise girl." He picked her up and threw her onto the bed, ignoring both her cries of pain and the blood seeping into the sheets. "You are mine."



"I hate him."

"I know you do. But what can we do? Even together, we are smaller than he is, and he has all his cronies behind him."

"There must be some way to get free of it all, 'Ponine. There must. Everyone doesn't live this way, fearing every glance from one odious person. How do they avoid it?"

"God smiles on them, and he spits on us. That's why they're happy and we are miserable. That's why they're free and he owns us."

"No, he doesn't own me anymore."

"What?" Her already pale face grew more so. "What did he do to you?"

"I freed Thenardier last night."

"Oh."

"I nearly stopped when I saw who it was. I thought of you. But it was too late then. And I did owe Montparnasse. I owe him more than he thought, or I'd never be here now."

"What could you owe beyond that?" She shuddered.

"I observed a robbery just the other night. He tried to take money from an old man."

"Oh, dear. Was the man killed?"

"I said 'tried,' my dear. The man bested him, gave him a long speech about thievery, and the purse 'Parnasse had been after. I had a pair of friends who needed the money more than our acquaintance, so I filched it from him and gave it to them. And then he told me about the incident. He thought it was some spirit of the streets. I suppose I am, in a way, but so is your dear Montparnasse."

"He's not my dear Montparnasse. He's a monster."

"Speaking of him, and we were, when is he expecting you tonight?"

"Midnight."

"I could offer him a favor instead, and you could sleep."

"No! Weren't you telling me about a pair of boys you were shepherding?"

"They've gone into the streets again. I'm free to follow you."

"You can't go with me."

"Why not?"

"I won't drag you into Hell again. You can't help me, no one can."

"Eponine."

"I must go."

"Please, don't. You can never be your own person if you go. Even whores have some control of themselves."

She became angry at that, and drew back her hand to slap him, then relented and sighed instead. "You're right. Then what am I?"

"Dirt, to them. To me, you're my beautiful sister who should never have to be around scum like 'Parnasse. Stay away from him."

"And live where? In your elephant? He'd find me."

"You don't know until you try."

"WellÉ"

"What could he do that would be worse than what he's already done?"

She paused and thought. "You have a point about that, at least."

"So, come with me. If he were going to kill you, he'd have done it by now."

"All right."

"You mean it?" He gave her an exuberant hug, trying to be careful of her bruises. "Oh, 'Ponine, we'll have such fun."

"Is that what you call it?"

"You've never been in my little room, have you? You wouldn't understand. Just come on before you think the better of it."



The bruises had healed by the time Montparnasse next called for Monsieur Gavroche at the elephant of the Bastille. "Where's your sister, brat?" he called as soon as the boy peeped from the hole in the statue's belly.

"I don't know. Ask my father."

"I did. She's not been home for weeks."

"Oh dear! I wonder what's become of her. They didn't nab her and put her in the can, did they?"

"No. I was thinking she was probably a bit closer to hand than that." He rapped on the side of the statue, listening to the booming echoes that created. "Eponine, are you at home?"

"She's not here. Do you really think she'd fit in here?"

"Yes. And so would I." He shoved the boy aside.

"But not without getting grubby," Gavroche pointed out, making another attempt to keep him out.

"She means more to me than my jacket."

"Liar."

Gavroche found himself in pain on the ground, the elephant swirling above him with Montparnasse disappearing into the hole that was the only door. He tried to sit up and stop the intruder, but he was too dizzy. A moment later, Montparnasse stuck his head out of the hole, completely furious. "What have you done with my Eponine?"

The boy had recovered enough to laugh. "Didn't I tell you, I don't know. Why should I lie to you, my friend?"

"I'm not your friend and I know it." Montparnasse dropped to the ground next to the boy. "Where is she? I own her. I've paid her brideprice a hundred times over. She is mine."

"You can't marry her."

"And I don't want to, fool. But I will not allow her to be out with some boy. I will kill him."

"I don't know where she is any more than you do. Let me be. You saw that she's not here."

"I'm warning you, boy. If I hear that you two were together before I see her next, your injuries will be the least of your worries." He stormed off, fuming.

Five minutes later, Eponine walked into the plaza and found Gavroche sitting on the ground rubbing his head. "What happened to you?"

"Montparnasse."

"Is he gone?"

"A few minutes ago. Where have you been?"

"With Monsieur Pontmercy." She smiled happily, forgetting the terror

Montparnasse's name had sent through her.

"You ought to know how much trouble you'll get from him and stay away."

"I walked him home from a cafŽ," she said, not listening. "He lives next door to our parents."

"What if they'd seen you?"

"They wouldn't have recognized me. You know that. And I went in with him. He's a baron, you know."

"And I'm king."

"I'm not lying."

"Neither am I. Just ask my royal court. You'll find them on any respectable street corner around here."

"You're not funny. My Marius really is a baron. He has cards that say so and everything."

"I could have cards, too, if I had money. All you know is that he had money and he spent it on cards that say he's a baron. He can't have much now if he lives in the Gorbeau house."

"He looks like a baron."

"How many barons do you know?"

"Just him."

"Well, then, there you are."

"But he is. You don't understand. And he and his friends want the Republic back, and all the people on the street to be free."

"Right. You and your friend are mad."

"But we're right."

"That is what you think."



June 5, 1832 Rue de la Chanvrerie

Eponine saw a familar silhouette in the darkness by the Corinth wineshop. She ran to him, against every instinct. "'Parnasse, what are you doing here?"

"I am hunting a baron. Have you seen one about?"

She cringed away from him. "No. The only one I know here is my brother."

"Don't you lie to me, Eponine. I saw him coming through the streets to join his foolish comrades, and you coming to them instead of me. He's dead."

"No!"

"Yes." He strode away from her, and she followed after, then saw M. Pontmercy walk away from the group, surveying the streets away from the barricade. Montparnasse put up his rifle.

She put her hand on the barrel.

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