The Music Box: Chapter Thirteen

Walking for days, eating berries, drinking from brooks still babbling with the rain from the storm returning to the sea, Isabelle slept where she could, curled in the bosom of gnarled trees or the dry straw of an untended barn. She passed a number of towns in which she could have begun again, but knew deep inside that none were for her. She found herself spending more and more time in the forested areas, talking with the small creatures who took time out of their busy nesting schedule to twitter back, to offer their comforting fur to the back of her hand.

As day gave way to each new day, Isabelle’s search turned from her outward trajectory and where she might go to a more inner journey, a search for her true self. She had always hidden her natural personality from her family, knowing such serious, God-fearing people would be shocked at some of the things that passed through her mind. She thought she was built the wrong way, was missing parts and had been built with others that didn’t work, for she had so many thoughts and dreams and desires that had never been shared with anyone she had ever met, knowing they would consider her quite mad.

There had been no books in her home, no visitors with whom she could discuss such things. Her brothers were too tired after their work to give her much time and she was shushed by her mother or father whenever she began to talk to any of them, told that they needed their rest and could do without the silly waffling of a cretin annoying them day and night.

But the longer Isabelle stayed in the forest, the more time she had to reflect upon her life and the life she saw around her, the gladder she was she had rejected the mistaken role that had been thrust upon her. And she knew, now, that such a role no longer existed; she had overheard a conversation that let her know there was never any going back.

She had overheard, about two weeks after taking off, a conversation between some villagers about a ‘family up the coast near Dorringdale’ who had been wiped out one and all in the storm, apart from the ‘poor ma’.

The story went that the father and his six sons had left as ever on their usual fishing expedition, but ‘something were wrong and they weren’t getting a thing’. Hour after hour and not a fish could be seen, not a trace could be found. The harder they tried the barer the cruel ocean appeared, the emptier their boat felt. When the time arrived that they usually upped nets and headed in to set up for the markets, they were still fishless.

At this point Owen Finnegan’s boat passed nearby on its way back to harbour.

“You coming then Jack?” Finnegan called across to them. Jack glared back without a word.

“I say are you coming in to market?”

“My, you’d mind yer business if yer knew what was best,” Jack growled.

“We ain’t caught a thing,” one of the boys had yelled; Finnegan had not been able to recall which, possibly the youngest.

“Eh you, shut it.” Jack warned the boy.

“Oh well, just askin’ - good luck with it then,” Finnegan had called.

He was the last to see ever them. Barely an hour later the storm rolled in and they never returned to shore.

It had been assumed, of course, that Isabelle had herself perished. Returning from the markets to find the home gone, wiped out by the storm and swept into the sea, Sonia had presumed the girl washed clean away with it. She would not have grieved for Isabelle alone, but knowing that there was little hope Jack and her boys had survived such a squall, that their wooden boat would have been little match for its destructive hunger, she sunk to the earth in racking sobs.

When Isabelle overheard the villagers talk about it, she did not sadden – she had not been surprised. A part of her had known all along. She had in fact dreamed the very thing the night before. Her dream took her flying over the barren stretch of sea, from upon high she could see the fish swimming in a wide arc away from the Bottomley boat, the frustration eating away at her pa. She had seen the clouds roll over the horizon, the rush to draw the nets up aboard on the boat, the way they tangled and slowed them down as they turned for the harbour.

She dreamed of the rain that soaked them to the skin and the oily look of the sea that now swamped them, the darkening sky lit in blinding flashes of lightning as they tried to make themselves heard over the almighty gale, the boat toppling from mountainous wave to bottomless valley. She saw, clearest of all, the fish that now swam around the boat, the fish that had been nowhere to be seen suddenly appearing in their scores, their hundreds, their thousands, a shimmering silver explosion like the night sky on a moonless night. Before long the fish were all there was to see, parting only to make way for the boat’s silent slide to the seafloor.

When she woke that morning she had almost believed that it had happened already, but the morning was still calm and cloudless and she said not a word to anyone.