The Music Box: Chapter Twelve

Isabelle stood as still as she could. The wind dropped once more and the stinging flick of the scampering rain abated. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She held it in and opened her eyes, raising her palms before her, held upward and at chest height. She let her breath slide slowly out, dropping her palms to her side.

“Now,” she whispered.

A dazzling streak of lightning jumped from the thunderhead to the edge of the shore in front of her, prompting an unearthly crack like the sky itself had torn in two. A howling wind almost blew her off her feet and the wall of rain was upon her, but she dug her toes into the now muddy earth. The sea, which had until now been raised high and thrashing on its haunches, frothing and urgent as a dog straining at its rope as all manner of juicy looking hares raced by, tumbled forward at last, an unyielding wave that reached to the cloud itself as they both bore down upon her. Still Isabelle stood her ground.

The air was now so thick with rain it was more sea than sky, the ocean climbing out of its sea-bed and turning its hand to flight. Isabelle could no longer see; such were the torrents of bucketing rain lashing her, streaming down her face and merging with her eyes. Her ears were her link with reality now and, finely-tuned to the sea’s many voices, she knew her oldest and dearest friend was upon her. Picking her up off her feet it drew her to the very peak of the leading wave, where she was held aloft as the wall of water beneath her smashed through her childhood home. Still it travelled; with sky conquered it was seeking out land, marching until it reached the foothills through which Isabelle had wandered with Percival, Dorothy and Veronique, conspiring, hatching plans for a new life.

The roar around her, the burbling fever of hunger and power, began to quieten. The storm, its limitless rage, was growing sated. The sea, having reminded all who bore witness to its inland journey of its majestic might, was content to leave Isabelle in the field to which it had carried her, laying her more gently than her mother ever had in a grassy grove. For a fleeting moment she found herself wishing it had taken her with it, continued its embrace, but as she lay there on her back, her now open eyes taking in the sky, she felt a sense of hope for the future that she had never before experienced.

Isabelle watched the last of the storm clouds skim overhead, the last rumbling of the storm dying away. The sun, a helpless onlooker powerless to get involved in the drama that had played out under its watch, sent a few tentative exploratory rays beneath the tail end of the passing clouds. When it deduced it safe to come out it made up for its timidity with a dazzling show of its own, recklessly casting about light in decadent hues of gold, silver, peach and a deeply bruised purple that Isabelle felt was the colour of love.

She knew what she had to do. Without even a glance over her shoulder, as though the last 15 years had been swept out to sea like so much unheeded flotsam - the only years she had known in the only place she had known - she began to walk. She walked south, away from the village, away from her home, her family, her life.