A View of the Open Sky by Elisa Oh

May 1791

Edith Eyles to Mercurius Patten

[Behind Dr. Johnson’s Dictionaries]

 Dear Mr. M. Patten,

Your audacity arouses both revulsion and a grudging kind of admiration in my breast. Thankfully, your mercenary attempt at blackmail, extortion, or whatever you want to call this epistolary hostage-taking, has fallen on barren ground and will produce neither sympathy nor money.

 In short, Mr. Winterhay’s infidelity as well as his weakness of moral backbone, chin, and prose style have lost him my affections forever, and you would please me well to destroy his last letter. I’d sooner lose two fingers on my own right hand than pay to have it back.

As for the contents of my reticule, I do wish for the return of two trifling things—the broken brooch and the mandarin duck-knopped hairpin. They have no monetary value, but since they were my great-aunt’s, they have sentimental value to me. By my calculations, you should consider yourself vastly overpaid for these two things already: the £5.6d you stole from me and the beaded reticule itself (which is the height of fashion right now, especially the dragon motif I copied from a Chinese screen) may serve as your reward for returning the brooch and hairpin by post to my address, which you already know.

You will pardon me for subscribing myself only reservedly yours,

Edith Eyles

P.S. Do convey my best regards to your scribe.

Mercurius to Edith
[Hand-delivered]

Dear Miss Eyles,

How you disappoint and shock me in your own turn! So grasping, fickle, and untrustworthy at such a tender age.

Have no fear for the fate of Wilmott Winterhay’s letter: justice was served to his words if not his person when I allowed one of my associates to use his letter for an office of nature too low to be described in a letter to someone of your delicacy.

As for your elegant silver hairpin and enigmatic brooch—I regard them here on my desk as I write—how felicitous for me that your reticule did contain something of sentimental value. Since your £5/6d will barely buy me ale this week (besides the offensive prices they are charging for Human Hand Delivery these days), and I refuse to rent a Part-Time Postal Dog just for you, I propose a revision of my initial bargain: £20 for the granny hairpin and brooch.

I do not wish to give you my return delivery code for obvious reasons.

Three blocks down Frideswide’s Lane from your house, at the corner of Candelwrithe Street, you will see the wrought iron fence is overgrown with a large lilac bush. If you reach into the bush and lift the fleur-de-lis head off the corner fence post, you will see the post itself is hollow. You may leave the money inside there at noon tomorrow and return in half an hour for your strange heirlooms.

I leave you with oaths of assurance upon my grizzled criminal beard that the items will be returned for the right price,

M. Patten

ELISA OH holds degrees in English literature from Smith College, the University of Virginia, and Boston University, and she is an Associate Professor in Howard University’s English Department in Washington, DC.  Years ago she sent a fictional letter to a friend as a provocation to coauthor an irreverent remix of C18th literature.  Her friend kindly declined, but the idea continued to meow at the kitchen door until it was fed it scraps and grew big and sprawling. 

A View of the Open Sky, which also shortlisted for the 2023 Mslexia Novel Competition, is an epistolary alternate history of 1791 London, where fathers govern daughters’ consent in marriage, nonwhite Britons may not inherit property, and animals deliver the mail.  Seeking her grandmother’s legacy of financial independence and the courage to escape a forced marriage, Edith hunts for hidden treasure with the charming thief who stole her purse.  The ensemble cast explores mixed race identity, the equal merits of all Englishes, and a kaleidoscope of breakups.