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The rain washes over him, cool and sharp and utterly unlike a kiss, though he wonders, briefly, why he’s thinking of a kiss.
And when Jacob Kowalski opens his eyes, he is confused why there is no one waiting for him at the entrance to the underground, and then puzzled at his confusion.
He shivers, for a moment - did a ghost walk by? - then wipes the rain (which is entirely unlike a kiss - why does he keep thinking of kisses? ) off his face, and walks home.
-
In his dreams that night, a tall, skinny man with an English accent smiles lopsidedly at him, and meets his eyes (green eyes, part of him thinks, how did he never notice his green eyes before?) and tells him he is his friend, and Jacob feels at once an intense affection for this man, and a deep, painful loss.
-
It’s back to the canning factory, and a dull, weary day that eats at his soul (it always eats at his soul) and with all his heart he wants to leave, wants to run, wants to break down the machines in his bare hands, but strange notes are filling his chest this day. He saw the foreman and his knuckles twinged, as if he’d punched something; the guy he sits next to at lunch walked a coin over his fingers absentmindedly, as he does when he’s got trouble on his mind, and he heard - or imagine he heard - a strange, tinny whimpering, like a small animal; a cockroach scuttled by his shoe and he thought of vivid blue feathers in the darkness.
So his head isn’t exactly together when a figure bumps into him, mumbles a ‘sorry’ and vanishes off.
Jacob would normally brush it off, but today he’s not in a great mood, so he shouts and then castigates himself. It was an accident, no need to lose his temper - but he always leaves work in a worse mood than he arrives, and today, with all the odd notes filling his chest like a strange, off-kilter music, well…
So when he goes to pick up his case and finds it heavier his first thought is to run after the man. But something says to open it.
And he feels this echoing sense of deja vu filling his head, like a rare perfume or the headiest alcohol in the world (and why does he hear a woman’s giggle and his own laugh as he thinks that?) as he opens the case, and he winces, suddenly, as his neck bursts with pain…
...but inside, there are only shining silver eggshells.
And a note.
-
In his dreams that night, a blonde dame, the sort Jacob could only hope would notice him, giggles over candlelight, her smile the most dazzling thing he’s ever seen, and part of him whispers he should feel scared, but he doesn’t: he has never felt so safe as in this instant. He is falling, and safely caught; his head is in the clouds, and his feet have never felt so firmly on the ground, and in an instant he realizes that she is the one he is kissing in the rain.
-
“And what do you have to offer for collateral?” sniffs the bank manager, and this whole conversation has been at once deeply mundane and shockingly weird because Jacob would swear by anything you cared to name that he had this conversation before, but he couldn’t quite name when or how (and in fact now, thinking about it, he had intended to go to the bank a few days earlier and hadn’t, and now he’s wondering where those last days went…).
Jacob pops the top off the case and turns it around.
“What are these?” asks the bank manager.
“Silver eggshells,” says Jacob, “A...family member used to make ‘em. For jewellery and stuff. I inherited them when he stopped.”
The bank manager is clicking away at his abacus, and writing hurried sums in his notebook.
“Obviously,” says the bank manager, “We will have to get these eggshells valued first, but…” and then his lips are moving quickly underneath his pencil moustache, and regardless of what else may happen, Jacob knows it’s a formality: he’s won.
-
His dreams that night are filled with open prairies, moonlit mountains, jungles of bamboo; the chittering and chirping of animals strange and wonderful, as eyes mammalian and avian regard him, and a bright, English voice, speaking with more cheerfulness and animation that Jacob had heard in the last twenty-four hours from it explains everything.
Then snow, and a shadow, and a sudden withdrawing; there is something dark and hidden here.
Like all his dreams, this one leaves him with only echoes, but this time, there is a foreboding sense of something left undone.
-
The first time he crafts a monster out of pastry, he stares at it strangely, half-expecting it to grow fur and move, before shaking his head, and making another.
“Here, boss,” asks one of his handlers, “What’s this?”
“A Nibbler,” he says, without thinking, and that becomes the title of these strange monsters he makes: Jacob’s Nibblers.
-
His dreams that night fill with a flurry of feathers and thunder and a mixture of both wonder and sadness.
-
There is a dame who has been coming into his bakery, and he wonders if she’s shy.
First, she just stands at the window, looking, face hidden by her golden curls and low hat.
Then, she manages to step foot inside, before spotting his Nibblers and letting out a tiny cry, as if he personally hurt her, and fleeing.
Then, she starts spending longer. She never buys anything, never talks to any of his staff, just waits, until one day, she slowly edges up to counter.
Her face, beautiful and sweet, reminds him of dreams of candlelight and feathers in the dark. Reminds him of open prairies, of strangely green eyes, of a bird with six wings and magic in it’s feathers. The strange scar on his neck that has been plaguing him for weeks tingles, not unpleasantly.
He wonders, suddenly, what she would say if he asked her out to dinner, and a smile blossoms across her face, and abruptly he realizes that her smile is a loud, shout of a YES because she can read his mind .
Gently, touching the scar that he realizes connect his presents to his past, to a part of his life he did not realize he was mourning, he reaches across the counter and whispers, “Queenie?” and watches as the woman he loves dissolves into happy, elated tears.