The Printer's Daughter (Working Title)
an excerpt

The shop smelled like ink. It always smelled like ink. Some of Francois’s customers complained about it. Several of the writers he published couldn’t stand it, and would not hold consultations with him in his shop, preferring to visit the local pub and conduct their negotiations over a flagon of ale instead. Petty bourgeois ladies making their midday stroll through the town of Asile would pinch their noses as they walked by the store entrance, even though it was perfectly obvious that the smell didn’t make it that far out into the street.

Noelle loved the smell of the ink. It had served as a guide and comfort to her throughout her entire life, permeating every significant memory. The first book she read, the first time Father let her run the press, the first poem she wrote all on her own in a corner on an old composing stick with a worn-out fount of type…all of these remembrances were overlaid with the sticky-harsh smell of the soot, turpentine, and walnut oil that went into the ink.

Noelle couldn’t remember anything important that hadn’t been defined for her in the same way that the best quality black ink defines stories and pictures and actions in precise lines upon clean white paper. So while she could remember days when her hands weren’t stained black from working with the press, it seemed that at hint of darkness caught under her fingernails, and no matter how much she scrubbed at her hands with fine scented soaps, they would always smell faintly of turpentine. Or at least, Noelle liked to think so. She never actually tried to remove the scent of the ink from herself. She didn’t see a point.