Elodie Turquois

One

The Sorbonne stands across the street exactly as I dreamed it would – marble columns, symmetry, the kind of beauty that makes my chest tighten with anticipation – and I have no idea why they’ve sent me here instead. A narrow, easily missed grey block, more likely to house a dentist or an insurance
broker than the new life I planned. I uncurl my fingers from the slip of paper and check it again, as if the words might rearrange themselves if I stare hard enough. Professeur Lucien Lavigne, 16 rue de la Sorbonne, Office 6B.

My assigned supervisor – an admin mistake I intend to rectify pronto. Why is his office here and not with the rest of anthropology? Maybe this is where the Sorbonne puts the things it no longer knows what to do with.
Inside, a plaque lists departments: Hittitology, Egyptology, Assyriology. Minor disciplines quietly sliding towards obscurity. No anthropology. Still, I follow the instructions the secretary dictated in her dry, faintly contemptuous French.

The stairwell spirals upward, the steps creaking like the servants’ staircase to my attic room in the Marais. By the sixth floor my calves ache and the air tastes of dust. Paint flakes from the walls, half the lights have given up, and the noticeboard is cluttered with flyers five years out of date. Nothing here suggests a place where careers are made. A small library opens before me, empty except for a girl with purple streaks in her
hair, typing furiously beneath flickering light strips. She glances up, expression unreadable, eyes sharp enough to make me straighten without meaning to. As if she knows something I don’t.

I smooth my bob and clear my throat.

“Sorry to disturb you. I’m looking for Professeur Lavigne.”

She tips her head towards a corridor and returns to her screen.

The corridor lies in the peculiar hush of places that have been quietly set aside. The plaque saying Office 6B hangs crookedly from one screw. I knock.

The door swings open before I can gather myself.

Colour hits me first – garish greens, purples, golds – then the scent of tea leaves and marzipan.

Books dominate the room, spilling onto chairs and windowsills. Every patch of wall not claimed by shelving holds something. Nothing labelled or dated. A fox mask edged in gold. A marionette frozen mid-laugh. Paintings that shimmer when I blink. Winged things with too many eyes and teeth.

Light filters through gauzy curtains, catching dust motes like tiny wings suspended midair. For an instant, I could swear one of the paintings moves, and the absurd urge to catalogue it – pin it down – makes my fingers twitch.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Thompson! You made it.”

The man behind the desk rises – long-limbed, slightly rumpled, tie askew as if he’d wrestled it into submission. Too relaxed for someone in charge of my future. Even his precise bowl cut looks ruffled, messy.
I manage a polite nod.

He gestures to a velvet settee buried under papers. “Please, sit. Don’t mind the chaos. It’s organised… in its own way.”

I perch carefully, scanning for evidence of this system. I find none.

“Tea? Coffee?”

“Water, please.”

He disappears through a side door, leaving me under the collective gaze of painted creatures.

They’re not real, just pictures, I tell myself – the way you soothe a frightened child. Which is ridiculous, because I’m not frightened.

He returns with the glass and drags a chair closer, turning it around and straddling it with easy informality – so at odds with his three-piece suit it borders on parody.

“So,” he says. “The Oxford recruit. May I call you Olivia?”

“Liv. Only my mum says Olivia—when she’s cross,” I blurt.

Cross? How old am I, five? I don’t talk like this. Must be this place throwing me off.

“Liv it is. Call me Lucien. Never Luc.” He grins. “Luc sounds like a man who enjoys golf and drives a yellow sports car.”

Despite myself, I laugh – then sober.

“I think there’s been a mistake—”

“You wanted D’Aubigny, didn’t you?”

I did. It was the plan: come to Paris, write a dissertation with D’Aubigny so good he’d take me on for the PhD, then become a world-renowned anthropologist like him, making sense of human behaviour one case study at a time. It was guaranteed to work.

I flush. “He’s… legendary.”

“I understand behavioural anthropology was your focus at Oxford?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Admirably dry.” His eyes glint. “You’ll find we do things differently here.”

Different how? Different from peer-reviewed, funded, taken seriously? I clutch the glass tighter. Surely this is still the Sorbonne, even if it’s hiding across the street.

“I’d like you to assist me with some research this semester,” he continues. “I think you’ll be very well suited for this. I may not have been your first choice—but you were always mine.”

I squirm, looking away.

He rummages through a paper avalanche and drops a glossy flier into my lap.

Gaston Beaulieu – Fairies in the Twenty-First Century?

Fairies.

The word crawls under my skin, tugging at something old and unpleasant. The memory of not being believed. Of children’s laughter, cutting like glass. Of adults with patronising, indulgent smiles. The man on the flyer beams up at me, white hair escaping from beneath a sailor’s cap. More Santa than scholar.

“Think of it as fieldwork,” Lavigne says lightly. “Beaulieu’s a self-taught folklorist.

Charming, but maddeningly secretive. He refuses to share his sources.”

“You think he’s hiding something like a private archive?”

“Maybe.” He leans forward. “You see, folklore is anthropology’s unruly child. It deals with how people explain the inexplicable—what frightens them, comforts them.”

His gaze lingers a beat too long.

“You strike me as someone who likes order.”

My fingers tighten around the glass. I don’t know why that feels like an accusation.

“I prefer things that make sense.”

“Of course,” he says gently. “But the world doesn’t always oblige.”

My pulse thuds in my ears. The marionette’s grin seems sharper. Something silver glints on his desk. The urge to catalogue, to contain, returns, fierce and illogical.

“If I do this,” I say carefully, “you’ll let me write my dissertation on behavioural anthropology?”

His grin is immediate. “Absolutely. Cross my folklorist heart.”

I exhale, slow and measured. “Fine. I’ll attend the talk.”

For now. Because this has to be a mistake.

I did everything right. Got a First, secured the glowing recommendation, took the correct modules, wrote the kind of undergrad dissertation people still mention in seminars. Everything to score the famous D’Aubigny. It makes no sense to get this far only to be sidelined, tucked away across the street in this whimsical purgatory.

“Excellent,” Lavigne claps, strangely childlike for a man of about fifty. “It’s tomorrow night. Remember to speak with Beaulieu afterwards.”

I stand, eager to leave before the fox mask decides to wink.

“Thank you, Professeur.”

“Lucien,” he corrects. “And if you need books, find my doctoral student, Toshiko—purple hair, eyes that see straight through you. She all but sleeps in the library.”

“I think I already met her.”

“Splendid. Then you’re practically part of the family.”

“Lucky me,” I murmur.

As I reach the door, something flutters past my shoulder – a paper bird folded from newspaper, gliding briefly before collapsing mid-flight.

Lavigne doesn’t look up. “Ignore that. The office has… character.”

Character? A shiver traces my spine.

The corridor air feels cooler. Safer. The paper bird lies on the carpet, its wings trembling faintly, as if trying to remember how to fly.

I tear my eyes away.

Still half-lost in thought, I push through the heavy door and nearly collide with a man. He sidesteps with impossible ease, catching my elbow to steady me.

“Whoa there,” he says, voice low and amused, his French rough-edged.

I’m still replaying the word folklore, prodding it like a bruise.

I look up into brown eyes crinkled with quiet humour. Oh no. He’s seriously charming. And, annoyingly, absolutely stacked.

“Sorry,” I stammer. “I wasn’t looking.”

“No harm done.” He releases me, his hand leaving behind a ghost of warmth. “First week?”
“Is it that obvious?”

His lips curve. “Welcome to the circus.”

I don’t think to ask what he means until he’s already gone, slipping inside with movements fluid and sure as a dancer’s. Like he belongs here.

I tighten my grip on my bag.

Time to find D’Aubigny and fix this before my academic career turns into a nightmare.