The Music Box: Chapter Thirty-Two

That was the last straw. Emily was on the verge of taking off from this madman (these madmen!) for good, when her ears pricked up.

“What did you say?”

“We were just saying, that although we weren’t quite sure how you get out, we know someone who might.”

“Who?”

“Oh, just someone. She doesn’t seem terribly fond of us mind you, for some strange reason.”

“Where is she?”

“Not a long way from here. She’s not easy to find though, you could walk right by her house and if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for, you would miss it all together.”

“Well could you take me there?”

Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins fell into a hushed whisper, each drawing a hand up to the side of their mouth to keep Emily from hearing.

They seemed in some sort of argument, and as the whispering grew louder and she could catch snatches of it, picking up “midnight” and “never get out”, but the rest was too muffled. Finally their little conference ended and this time it was Bernard who addressed Emily.

We have decided to take you to see Minerva, on one condition.”

“And what might that be?”

“That when we get there, you tell her what a splendid representative of the forest we have been, that you could not hope to have come across a finer or more handsome rescuer and that she should see it in her heart to consider our long-standing offer of marriage.”

Emily stared in disbelief. The thought of another moment with this pair was enough to give her grave misgivings – the prospect of a lifetime in their company boggled the mind. But she knew not to say any of this, and noted with relief that they were conveniently overlooking the thoughts she couldn’t help but have thought.

“Agreed.”

They set off at once down a path Emily had not seen before, perpendicular to the one along which she had been travelling. She had wondered how the Mr Topkinses would go about travelling, whether there would be much bickering over who got to lead, but she saw the arrangement seemed fairly simple – one would lead while the other snoozed. It seemed the only thing they liked better than talking was napping at every opportunity that arose. She realised they must be very exhausting company for each other, given how exhausting she had found them already. But now that they were moving, her mood improved substantially and she felt much happier just walking along with her own thoughts, grateful that she was being led by Oscar, who was now giving Bernard a rest having had his most recently.

As they briskly manoeuvred their way through the dense forest, Emily saw it was inhabited by a whole host of plants and creatures she did not recognise, not even from the books she would pore through at night - her father’s prize set of encyclopaedia, his most cherished possession. She realised that while many of the creatures here were ones with which she was familiar, many must be the weird and wonderful inhabitants of her vaguest dreams, the ones she had in the depths of slumber that she would not remember by morning, awaking with only the most recent dreams teasing the edges of her memory.

For Emily had not forgotten what Mr Crouch had said about this place, or how it had come to be. With its vastness and the seeming reality of its detail, it could be easy to forget that it was all somehow contained inside the music box, and that it had been empty until her own thoughts had poured into it. She could not, however, understand how there was quite so much here, and how there seemed to be no realisation that this is what it was – Mr Topkins, for instance, seemed quite certain it was a world all of its own, with a past and a future and all the trappings of any kind of reality that could be said to exist in a self-sustaining form.

She wondered at how such a place could exist with such little self-awareness as to how it had come to be, without some sort of inkling about the genesis of its existence. Yet surely Mr Topkins wouldn’t have been so mean to her if he had realised that without her he would not even exist, without her visiting Mr Crouch and having her thoughts sucked into his chamber and crammed into the box, none of this would be here.

Emily wondered suddenly about ‘her own’ world, the one she had lived in all her life. How much was there she didn’t know about it? How had it really come about? Was she simply the figment of a young girl’s over-vivid imagination? What would happen if that girl suddenly woke up, or grew up, or went away, or died, or any number of things that could snuff out her existence in the blink of an eye?

But all this was too much to really get her head around. It also made her panic, to think she had such a tenuous grasp on her own existence.

Emily tried remembering what Mr Crouch had said about the world of imagination and the realm of the possible that existed around their world. The way he described it placed them at the very centre of things, with this ‘other’ world wrapped around them, encompassing them. She wondered if he was right. How would this fit in with the possibility that the world they both knew, the one he placed at the very centre, was merely a projection of someone else’s thoughts? What did that do to his understanding of things?

She felt the key to her return must lie in there somewhere and that it was going to be up to her to come up with her way out. Emily thought back to the rock she had pulled from her sock. She had caught a glimpse of it before placing it behind her back, and knew it had been as dull and lifeless as ever at that point. It was only after she had pictured it as something more that it had become something else, something she had projected or conjured. She wasn’t sure exactly how this helped, but knew that an answer was nearby, that she was getting closer than she had been since arriving here.

The Music Box: Chapter Thirty-One

Bernard now took control of proceedings. He was still absently staring at the glowing rock, but managed to address Emily.

“We shall begin with a riddle. All good journeys begin with a riddle, if you know anything about these things.

“Tell us: What sleeps through a storm, rises afore dawn, shares thoughts with a fawn, is already torn and has never been born?”

Always one for riddles usually, Emily was crestfallen to find she had not the faintest clue what they were talking about. Sleeps through a storm – something to do with the sun perhaps? But that didn’t fit the rest of it. Rises before dawn? Birds do, but that still couldn’t be it. Shares thoughts with a fawn – this was the bit that was stumping her. She didn’t really know what a fawn thought, let alone who or what might share thoughts with it. She tried skipping that part but couldn’t imagine how something could be already torn but never been born.

This was terrible. She had stumbled at her very first hurdle – what possible chance did she have of ever getting out of here? It had not seemed so bad a place when she first got here – there were plenty of new and intriguing things to see at every turn, and in a better mood she may have even found the Mr Topkinses amusing. But as it was she was tired, hungry and increasingly ill-tempered with the frustration of it all. Emily felt exceedingly foolish that she had allowed Mr Crouch to trap her this way, had been lured in through her greed and selfishness and let her parents down so badly.

It didn’t occur to her that she had been expertly manipulated by a ruthless and cunning old fox with a wealth of sly tricks up his sleeve – she felt the full force of guilt sit in her tummy in a hard little knot. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself though, she realised, grimly determined to get home whatever the cost. None of this helped with the riddle.

“I don’t know. I can’t work it out. I’m usually good at these but this one doesn’t make any sense. What sleeps through a storm, rises afore dawn, shares thoughts with a fawn, is already torn and has never been born?”

“Oh we don’t know either – it’s been annoying us for weeks!” burst Oscar.

“We’ve got a small wager going with one of the bears,” Bernard explained.

“We have to tell him by the end of today or we’re out of pocket.”

“You mean to say that riddle had nothing to do with me getting home?”

“Well we wouldn’t put it that way exactly. We’d be much more inclined to go for something like dancing around the topic without ever actually addressing the crux of the matter, so we would never put it quite that way, would we Mr Topkins?”

“That’s right Mr Topkins, that’s not really something I could imagine being so blunt about, given it would certainly not please a little girl to hear. Mr Topkins here may disagree, but what we would tend to do would be to try moving the topic right along with a neat little segue – if one were available or able to be easily enough manufactured – but as it is one does not seem to immediately become apparent, in which case we might just resort to whistling a little tune.”

At which Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins both began whistling, a two-part harmony that may or may not have been pleasant, but really had nothing to do with anything.

Emily was beyond livid. This was simply getting out of hand. Still they kept whistling, seemingly oblivious to her rising anger, which had her fit to burst.

“You two are simply horrible, you know that? Truly awful. You promised you would help me and here you are, whistling your silly tunes and leaving me most dreadfully upset. Well I can’t stay here and waste my time this way, I simply have to get out of here. And if you won’t help me, I’ll have to find my own way.”

With that Emily turned and began to walk away. She had wasted enough time and was feeling most cranky.

“Oh Emily, do wait,” Oscar called out. “We were simply having a bit of fun. We don’t get a lot of company these days and it is such a joy to meet someone new.”

“Not much company? That’s hardly a surprise if this is how you treat them!”

“Now that’s a little unfair, we were simply trying to cheer you up. But we are happy to help, aren’t we Mr Topkins? The thing is, there’s not really a lot we can do.”

“Then why did you tell me you could?”

“Well we figured we must be able to work something out. Like we explained before, this is the ‘Land Time Remembered’ and I can quite clearly see there is a time when you are no longer here, in which case you must get out somehow, otherwise you would be here then as well as now.”

Emily digested this, seeing there was a certain logic to what he was suggesting if it were true, but unsure how that helped her now.

“And how long is it until this time when I seem to no longer be here?

“How long? Oh we can’t tell that sort of thing. We might know everything that has happened or will happen, but we certainly can’t tell you when that is. Time may remember this place perfectly, but that’s quite differently to this place being able to remember time. Just because you remember a certain cupcake you ate doesn’t mean it will necessarily remember you – no matter how fondly you recall it. In fact, the more fondly you remember it, the less likely it is to want to really remember you at all. And you can’t really blame the cupcake for that – you did eat it after all.”

The Music Box: Chapter Thirty

Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins may have disagreed over all manner of things, but one view they shared was that you don’t give something away for nothing.

“We would be quite happy to help, little girl, especially bearing in mind that a girl will tend to always need all the help she can get.”

Emily bit her tongue, letting them have their fun.

“But the thing is, well, once word gets out that we helped someone simply because we could, would there’s be all sorts of folk lining up left, right, centre, over and under to ask us for things. And what good does that do us? Where did the kindness of anyone’s heart ever really get them?

“That’s a rhetorical question by the way little girl,” Bernard threw in for good measure, “which means you’re not actually expected to answer it.”

“I know what a rhetorical question is, thank you very much,” Emily retorted, her temper slipping again.

“And I’ll ask you not to keep calling me little girl, if you please. It is Emily Button, you may call me Emily.”

“Well, Emily, that is most gracious of you. Isn’t it most gracious of her Mr Topkins?”

“Why Mr Topkins I believe it is most gracious indeed. What a gracious little girl this Ebily Mutton is proving to be.”

“E-mmmm-ily Button! Not Ebily Mutton!”

“Oh dear, we do seem to have got ourselves muddled Mr Topkins. Perhaps if she spoke up and learnt to e-nun-ci-ate and not mumble so, then all this kerfuffle could be avoided?”

“Perhaps indeed. But I believe we have digressed Mr Topkins. Young E-mmmm-ily Button here has asked us for some help.”

“Oh yes, she did didn’t she? Well let’s see. If we were able to help you Emily, and I’m not saying we can or cannot, what exactly would be in it for us?”

Emily stared in disbelief. She felt she had made it quite clear what was at stake, but she was clearly dealing with hearts made of stone. Disconsolately rummaging through her pockets, she was gloomily resigned to admitting she had nothing whatsoever to offer. Suddenly an idea struck her. She knew it was likely to be her only chance. Reaching down to her sock, Emily was relieved to discover her lucky rock was safely in place. She let out a dark little harrumph at the thought of how useless it had been to her so far and felt few qualms about never seeing the silly thing again.

By now, she had developed a fairly good idea of how the minds of Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins worked. She was fairly sure if she simply offered the rock to them they would have little interest at all. She flashed a quick look at them to make sure at least one of them was watching – pleased to see that it was the more suspicious Bernard – and made a deliberately clumsy show of concealing the rock in a hand held behind her back.

“It seems I have nothing that would be of even the slightest interest to either of you. I suppose that means you won’t be able to help me after all,” she glumly offered, rubbing the toe of a shoe in a little patch of dirt at her feet. She knew she had to keep her mind as blank as she could, lest either of them decide to read her thoughts and catch her out.

“Don’t be so sure about that Emily. Pray tell – what is that you are holding behind your back?”

“Um, nothing.” She allowed a picture of the rock to come into her thoughts. But instead of the dull pink rock she knew she held, she imagined it as a glowing crystal shining with power and magical uses.

“Now Emily, we told you before – there’s no point fibbing to us, we know what you are thinking. Please hold out your hand.”

Emily did so, and to her amazement saw that the rock was indeed glowing just as she had pictured it. Staring into its bright light, she suddenly regretted her plan. She saw Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins were both very much taken with its dazzling promise, each struggling to turn to face it at the other’s expense.

“Oh yes, that looks like it will do just splendidly, doesn’t it Mr Topkins?”

“I think we can come to some sort of arrangement, yes.”

Emily was loathe to let it go, but didn’t see what choice she had. She handed the stone over to Oscar, watching his greedy eyes drink in the miraculous light.

“Well I’m not sure what it actually does, but I sure like the looks of it,” he said. “I suppose you will be wanting something in return now?”

“Well that was the idea,” Emily huffed, exasperated at how short an attention span these two seemed to possess.

“Mmmmm, and what might that be?”

“I want to go home!”

“Didn’t we already tell you? This is home!”

“No, my home. Seaforth. My home and my parents and my real life, not this...this... horrible place.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so? And you want our help? Okay, let’s begin.”

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Nine

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No,” Oscar repeated. “That’s not going to work.”

“And why do you say that?”

“Well, for starters, you’re a girl. Girls never know how to do anything properly.”

Emily turned red. She might be the stranger here, but he had no right talking this way.

“You take that back!”

“Nope.”

“I’m telling you, take it back.”

“But it’s true. Just think about it. If girls knew how to do things properly, they wouldn’t need boys, would they? But there are boys; which simply proves that girls don’t know how to do things properly.”

“Why that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. I could just as easily say that because girls exist, that proves boys don’t know how to do things properly. It would make just as much sense.”

“Ah, but you didn’t, did you? You didn’t think to, because you aren’t as quick, because you’re a girl. Now don’t get us wrong, we have quite a soft spot for girls, don’t we Bernard?”

“Yep, we do,” Bernard called over their shoulder.

“It’s just that they should stick to certain things they’re good at – collecting flowers, skipping, being pretty. Leave the thinking stuff to the boys.”

“Is that so? Well if you’re so smart Mr Topkins, how about you tell me how I can get home.”

“Home? Why you are home my dear. This is as splendid a home as anybody could ever ask for. But don’t take my word for it, let’s see what Mr Topkins thinks.”

Mr Topkins turned a lazy pirouette, with Mr Topkins picking up where he left off.

“I trust, Emily, you have head talk of ‘The Land Time Forgot’? Well this is ‘The Land Time Remembered’! As such, it is a repository for absolutely everything. Everything that has ever happened, is happening and will ever happen is all found here – and all at once. So what you will find is that all you wish to find can be found, and many things you never thought to find are perfectly findable as well.

“This has a few consequences in which you may be interested, given your wish to leave despite just having arrived. The first of these is that you are not here as well as being here, for you were not here before you were here and that time is still here. Not only are you not here and here, but you have also already left. That time is here too, and might I say seems to be the time you are most interested in.”

“It is it is! But how do I find this time?”

“That’s more a question for Mr Topkins. I’m more an expert on the time before you were here, while he is more intimate with the time after you left.”

“Well can you ask him please?”

“I’m not sure I should, I think he’s having a nap and he gets quite grumpy if woken without a good reason.”

Surely enough, Emily could hear loud snoring coming from behind Mr Topkins. She was growing most confused and increasingly frustrated, but knew she best watch her temper.

“Mr Topkins, I think this is a special case. I have to get home and soon – I fear my family is in awful danger.”

“Oh, and do pray tell – what danger is this?”

“Well the man who tricked me into being here is now trying to get to my parents. I have to warn them before it’s too late.”

“Ah yes, Aloysius Crouch. He really is quite something. You know he was the first of you lot to ever come here? A funny chap, as I recall, exceedingly intelligent, but always a little... serious. Would never share a laugh. Mr Topkins never took to him for that reason, whereas I still had a certain respect for the man. Although I use the term loosely, for he was as oft a beast as he was man when he came by. All this wolf business, it’s funny that it took them so long to cotton on! Mr Topkins and I could pick it straight away, but then I guess that’s what comes of having the benefit of hindsight before something has actually happened.”

Emily puzzled over this a little, but found she was quite lost. She tried another tack.

“Well how does Mr Crouch come and go? I mean if he was here and is now back in my town, surely there’s a way for me to do the same?”

Mr Topkins pondered this, but simply shrugged. “Perhaps, but like I said, that’s not really my realm.”

“Well how about waking Mr Topkins and I can ask him?”

“Like I said, once he’s snoozing, that’s it.”

Furious, although decidedly out of character, Emily lashed out with her foot, catching Mr Topkins on the shin. “You mean old man!” she shouted. “How can you be so callous? You should be ashamed.”

As Mr Topkins bent to rub his shin, Emily leaned over and grabbed the other Mr Topkins by the nose. She held tight until he woke with a splutter, then let go and took a step back.

“I think you will find he is awake now!”

Bernard Topkins glared at Emily, but by now Oscar Topkins was wide awake. And, as Mr Topkins had warned, sounded most grumpy.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“It was the little girl, Emily Button – she woke you up!”

“Why would she do such a thing? Oh the wretch.”

“It’s true, she also kicked me in the shin!”

At this Oscar Topkins let out a rumbling bellow – Emily thought she was going to cop a blast, but realised he was laughing.

“Did she now? Sensational! You’ve been asking for a good kick in the shins for a long time you know. If I could do it myself I surely would. I bet you were taunting her.”

“I was doing nothing of the sort. I merely told her how you are such a grumpy sod when waken that she would be better of sticking her head in a canterjamoo’s mouth than dare wake you. Or words to that affect.”

“Did you now? How interesting. Especially coming from such an old sourpuss.”

Emily stared in disbelief as Mr Topkins and Mr Topkins traded insult after insult. At any other time she would have found it quite entertaining indeed, but now she simply needed to know how to get out of here. Leaving them to their bickering, she started to wander away.

“Hey! And where do you think you’re going?”

Turning around, Emily tried to work out who had called after her. It seemed to be the man in the green coat who, if she remembered correctly, was Oscar.

"Well you two are no help. I need to get going if I’m ever going to get out of here.”

“You won’t get very far without our help.”

“I’ve not got very far with your help.”

“True as that may be, we are your only chance. Without us, you’ll walk to what you think is the edge of the forest and as you take what you are sure must be the last step out, find that you’ve actually just stepped right back in. You’ll turn around to step back out and find, again, you’ve just stepped right on in. Before you know it you won’t know which way is in, which is out, which way up, which way down, for the simple reason it will be all the above and none of the above. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, the dice roll, the cards fall and the world goes round.”

“It will be the stalk all over again,” Bernard threw in for good measure.

Loath as she was to admit it, Emily knew they must be telling the truth. She turned around, placed her hands on her hips and eyed them carefully. “Well, tell me what I have to do.”

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Eight

With that Aloysius Crouch disappeared in a bright flash of light. By the time Emily’s eyes readjusted to the gloom of the clearing, all was quiet. She sat down, buried her face in her hands, and wept. Most of her tears fell into the folds of her skirt but some burst forth and toppled to the forest floor. Where they fell, bright green shoots sprouted from the ground, weaving up and touching the top of Emily’s head. She flinched in surprise, scrambling back out of their way as they grew and grew, feeling their way through the canopy to the night sky beyond.

Without really thinking, Emily grabbed hold of one of the tendrils as it shot past. In a sudden blur she was flying towards the canopy above. She crashed through in a shower of leaves, soaring up and beyond the top of the trees, up and up into the night sky. She held on grimly, her feet trailing behind her and swinging about. Up and up and up she soared, the air around her whistling in her ears and growing chilly. A moment later everything went white.

She thought she must have passed out but realised she had broken through the line of cloud. Still up and up she went, racing through the blanketing cloud that wrapped its wispy fingers around her as she passed. She suddenly broke through the cloud and emerged into the space above, finally losing her grip on the sprout. She fell back into the soft embrace beneath, her eyes closed. When she finally opened them, expecting to see a gentle field of unbroken white, she was dismayed to see she was in the very clearing she had been lifted from so long ago.

Not only that, but the sprouts had vanished entirely, leaving not a trace to suggest they had ever even existed. Emily rose to her feet and shuffled her way out of the clearing. She wiped the back of her hands across her eyes and sniffled, then headed off in the direction in which she had seen her parents flee.

***

Emily woke with a start, taking some time to work out where she was. For one hopeful moment she thought she must have been caught in some terrible dream, but the sight of the forest slowly emerging around her told her otherwise.

“Oh the little girl, how marvellous - we thought you would never wake up.”

Spinning around, Emily’s still sleep blurry eyes made out what seemed to be a small man standing next to the nearest tree. As her eyes focused in she realised he was barely four feet tall, with red felt trousers, a green felt coat bearing gaudy gold buttons and a red felted hat with a vividly green feather emerging from it. His black boots seemed far too big for him, pointing out towards her then curling at the end in an ostentatious loop, coiling in on themselves in tight receding circles. He had large pointy ears, a bulbous red nose and bright pink cheeks, a rather round stomach straining the buttons on his coat to popping point and thick tufts of orange hair squeezing out from beneath the hat, as though trying to escape.

“Oh yes, we were thinking to ourselves that this Sleeping Beauty will be waiting a long, long time if she thinks any prince is going to be riding by here.”

Clearly amused at his own wit, the man slapped his knee and almost bent over double with mirth. He straightened again.

Emily looked around to see who else was nearby, making up the rest of the ‘we’. She looked first to one side, then the other.

“Looking for someone?”

Emily looked back at the man, but was startled to see he was now in green trousers and a red coat, with a green hat perched atop his head. The feather was so red she thought for a moment it had caught fire.

“How did he do that? That’s what she wants to know - how did he do that? Well, we’ll let you in on a little secret now won’t we? Are you watching?”

He talked far too quickly for Emily’s liking, but she gave a small nod.

“Okay. I’ll bid you adieu...” started the man, “and I’ll bid you salut!” he finished, spinning around halfway to reveal not his back as one would expect but in fact the first man she had seen. He smiled broadly, offering a brief attempt at affecting nonchalance but failing miserably. He obviously never tired of this trick, and Emily had to admit it was not every day that she came across a two-fronted man, or however one might describe him.

“Oh I don’t have two fronts, don’t go making that mistake,” the man said, frowning now at Emily.

“He has one and I have one – that’s still only one each. You might only be a girl but you will still have to learn to count one day.”

It was Emily’s turn to frown – she hated being told she was ‘only’ a girl and being treated as silly because of it.

“Excuse me Mr...”

“Topkins, I’m Oscar Topkins. That back there is Bernard, Bernard Topkins. Most folk assume we’re brothers, but the funny fact of it is we’re no relation at all.”

“Well Mr Topkins,” Emily was all ready to chastise him for belittling her so unfairly but suddenly realised what he had just said.

“Not related? How on earth can that be?”

“How on earth can that be?” he mimicked rather crossly. “Well, you tell me this. When you have breakfast where do you sit?”

“At the table.”

“And what do you sit on?”

“Why a chair of course.”

“So that chair is your sister?”

“Well no, but...”

“But what?”

Oscar turned around and Bernard picked up where he left off.

“Assumptions, my dear, will be the end of you. To assume simply makes an ass out of you and me. Now let’s make one thing clear,” he continued sternly, making Emily wish Oscar would come back.

“If you are going to stay here in our forest, you certainly need to begin paying a bit more care as to what you do, say and even think. That’s right, we know what you’re thinking, whether we like it or not. It pops up over your head as clear as that funny little nose you have on your face, and both of us are quite capable of reading it. Believe us we would often rather not know, but that’s just how it is. Comes with the territory of knowing what each other is thinking, sharing a cranium as we do, and seems just to go from there. Don’t believe us if you prefer, we’re really not in the least concerned. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve said quite enough. Oscar’s clearly your favourite so you may as well deal with him.”

With that he sniffed and spun away. Emily was getting quite dizzy with all this spinning around, and not a little confused as to what was going on. She noticed the sun was high overhead and realised she must have slept for hours. Who knew how long this Oscar/Bernard character had been watching her. But then again, the way time moved here, who knew what even it meant anymore.

All Emily knew was that she couldn’t get distracted, she had to keep a clear mind and work out how she could get home. She knew there was little time before her mother was in great danger, and nobody else could help her. She wasn’t at all sure how she could help either, but she pushed this thought to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on a plan to escape.

One thing she couldn’t work out was how this forest related to her ‘real world’. She knew she was somehow in the music box, but what did that actually mean? Where were its edges, its outer limits? By reaching them, could she force her way through to her world again?

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Seven

“So Emily, I hope you’re pleased. I’ve shown you exactly what you most wanted to know,” he spoke down to her.

Emily was too stunned to utter a thing. This turn of events was proving too frightful for words. The wolf put a paw on her tiny shoulder and Emily saw a flash of hurt in his eye when she shrugged it away.

“Have you worked out where you are yet Emily and what you have just seen?”

She shook her head. It was getting to be all too much.

“You are in the woods where I first met your mother, and where she first met your father. I’ve done exactly as I promised and fulfilled your wishes – your dream to know about your mother, your desire to discover where you came from and how it all began.

“But now; now it’s my turn. I explained to you that each choice we make will have an outcome, a concomitant consequence, and this is yours.

“The music box I promised you has been created. It is as you hoped, a most beautiful and wondrous thing, a revealer of hidden secrets. Everything I told you and promised you is true, although I left out one small detail. If you are wondering where this music box is, simply look around.”

Emily glanced around the clearing, looking for her box. A smile danced over the wolf’s lips, but was then extinguished.

“Oh Emily, do think. You seem quite unable to see the forest for the trees.”

At this, the penny dropped. The wolf must have seen the dawning surprise on Emily’s face.

“That’s right Emily, you clever little girl. Welcome to your music box, a most magical place.”

Her mind raced as she tried to figure out how this was all happening, what he could possibly mean.

“But if I’m in the music box, then what are you doing here, and why do you look like this?”

“Well Emily, that is a long story. What I will say is that everything you have seen up until now all took place a short time before you were born. As you saw it was indeed I who brought your father to this clearing after finding him in the forest, who first brought your parents together. It was I, too, who enabled their escape. Since that day, I have been unable to get out of my mind how beautiful your mother looked when she went to your father’s aid. I already loved her with a passion, but that look of utter defiance and her willingness to die rather than lose her love shattered my aching heart into a million pieces, each a broken mirror shard that to this days reflects my hurt over and over everywhere I go. I should never have let her out of my life then and I shan’t make the same mistake again.”

“But how can you be standing here now, as a wolf, when I know you are a man with a shop in a street in a village?”

“Well we are what we are Emily, and for some of us that is more than what it seems. I told you that I was never one to shy from following things through to their outer limits and beyond. Early on, in my studies and experiments, I discovered that we all have dormant tendencies and abilities waiting to be untapped. These lie deep inside us; most never discover them. Most never even look. But I looked Emily, I found mine. I discovered that I have within me the ability to take on a lupine form, to convince even the most suspicious wolf that I am one with them.

“You’ve no doubt heard of werewolves, people who turn into wolves when there’s a full moon and things like that? Well I have far more control over my transformations than that, and I have spent some time living among the wolves to discover their secrets, I have run with the pack to further develop my own latent potential.”

He smiled again. “That’s the answer to the question I know you meant to ask, but your query was a little different. You asked how I was standing here now, as a wolf, whereas I explained how I had been here all those years ago. As for now, well I’m not actually here at all. You will have noticed everything around us has stopped. This will all return to normal again and your music box will play out drama after drama, a little world of wonder for you to explore at your leisure. I have projected this little speech into it knowing you would reach this point, but I – the Seaforth shopkeeper Aloysius Crouch - am not actually in here with you as such.

“While you have been here opening doors on questions you have longed to have had answered, I have not been idle. I am still back in my shop but so are you, the other you. But not for long.

“You see while you are here in this box, the one my machine projected you into when your thoughts were taken into my chamber, I have taken over your form, as this is the form that will take me closest to my own wish and desire. I needed you to visit me so I could gain that exact form – your mother is such a wise, intelligent woman that I can leave nothing to chance. I needed to bring you to my shop to do this and I knew the best way of doing that was to play on your one weakness – your dream to know more about your parents and their past.

“This is what the music box meant to you, although you most likely did not fully appreciate that that is what its promise was. You were dazzled by its superficial beauty, but it was the promise that lay within that really drew you here. Your friend Tabitha, on the other hand, was easily pleased – she just craved something sparkly and indulgent. I provided her with that, and she provided me with you. It was all simple enough really.


“But how long will I be in here?” Emily forced herself to ask, not knowing what more she could say.

“Until I win your mother back.”

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Six

Without giving the matter a second thought, Emily followed. She kept up as best she could, worried on one hand that she would be heard but on the other not wanting to lose them. Her reason for following she would struggle to explain, but a voice inside her told her that this was all part of why she was here. She scampered after the wolf and the man, which was not as easy as it might sound as the wolf moved so swiftly and with hardly a sound. Luckily they seemed to be sticking to the direction from which she had come not so long ago (although who knew how long it was now?), and just as she was tiring to the point of almost giving up she realised the wolf had broken into the clearing she had been standing in at the end of that day.

She followed as far as the edge, but then skirted around the outside, looking for somewhere she could be so that she could see in, but not be so easily seen. She chose a gap between two trees that stood quite close to the grove, yet had some thick brush underneath. Creeping beneath this brush, peering into the clearing, Emily realised the wolf had not chosen this place by accident. There were at least a dozen wolves within sight, possibly more outside her view. They were standing around the black wolf and she noticed that they were all so solidly built that they nearly dwarfed the one she had followed. The man was still being held in the wolf’s front paws like a ragdoll, lying limp and unaware.

Although she hadn’t seen him stir, Emily felt he was still alive. She had never seen a dead body, but thought she would know one when she did. There seemed to be some sort of argument happening, with a dangerous whiff of disagreement in the air. The wolf finally put the young man down in the centre of the clearing, returning to continue discussing him with two of the more important seeming wolves.

The clearing had taken on the air of a small amphitheatre and Emily was transfixed by the drama unfolding as she watched. The other wolves had been off to the side but were now making their way over to where the young man lay prone. A sharp sound came from the wolf that seemed deepest in discussion with the black one and the wolves stopped, but then continued once they saw he was engrossed once again.

They prodded the man and poked him for a reaction and Emily saw he was slowly coming back into consciousness. With each jab he moved a little more, and soon seemed to have regained his senses. Emily’s heart felt a pang when she saw how startled he was to find himself face to face with a pack of now circling wolves. The terror on his face was too much to bear and she had to look away.

Their teasing was getting rougher. One wolf would roll him over while another would roll him back. Their prodding became more insistent and they were soon swatting at him quite viciously, although not yet with full force. They could have torn him apart in seconds, barely troubling their muscular shoulders and razor-sharp claws, but they weren’t going to go that far without the say-so from one of the leaders still in debate.

A conclusion must have been reached, as the three wolves that had been standing aside joined the others around the young man. One of the wolves who had been relishing the toying the most picked the man up and held him out for the wolf that the black one had been talking with, the one with the long silver stripe down his back. Emily flinched as she saw the wolf strike the man with the back of a paw, sending him to the ground again. Just as the other wolves moved in and began swiping at him, a bright flash from the corner of her eye made Emily turn around. She was startled to see a woman burst into the clearing and scream out, but astonished to see her resemblance to her own mother. Again she realised that she was too young, but the coincidence was simply too great. This must somehow be her parents.

It slowly dawned on Emily that she has stumbled not only into a place she did not understand, but that the tricks of time that she had experienced during the day must be somehow linked to this feeling that these were her mother and father.

The girl who had burst into the grove was fired with a passion that made everything stop. Though only a few years older than Emily, she burned with an intensity that suggested she had suffered years of despair and was finally fighting back. The girl seemed to single out the leaders of the wolf-pack, somehow knowing who she must win over with her appeals. She pleaded and begged and talked to the silver-back and his enormous offsider. Watching the scene unfold was the black wolf who had started all this by bringing the man here, standing off to the side but listening intently.

Her pleas were getting nowhere however and the wolves turned from her. Emily was stunned to see the girl race across the clearing and break through the line of wolves circling the fallen figure, diving down and holding him. She was shouting out again, pleading for his life to be saved, when the black wolf startled Emily by shouting out for them all to stop and get away. The silver-backed one turned on him and they looked as though they were about to tear each other to shreds, when Emily’s eye was caught by the sight of the girl helping her friend to his feet and the pair raced away through the gap in the clearing the girl had broken through earlier.

Emily wanted to follow them to see where they went, but she found she was unable to move. Her legs had gone numb and she could do little more than turn her head back to the clearing. Suddenly, everything was still. The silver-striped wolf had just gestured to the gap in the clearing, seemingly sending off his wolves to chase down the fleeing humans, but the scene froze as they were in mid-step. Emily looked on at the tableau in amazement, which turned quickly to terror when she realised that while the rest of the wolves were no more harmful than statues, the black wolf had turned her way.

“You can come out of there now Emily Button, you’re quite safe,” she heard it say, and suddenly everything came back to her on the back of that low soothing voice.

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Five

Opening her eyes, Emily realised she was still sitting. Her back was against something sturdy but rough and she turned to discover it was an enormous tree, whose upper reaches were so high that no matter how she craned her neck it was still not enough to find them. They seemed, anyway, to be disappearing into the clouds, which had an almost impossible fluffiness to them, just asking to be jumped all over.

A gentle breeze wrapped its way around her, wandering through the forest as though looking for an old friend. “Have you seen her?” it seemed to ask, though Emily knew a breeze was not supposed to speak. It had all seemed quite peaceful – perhaps that’s how I came to be napping here Emily thought – but slowly the underlying life of her surroundings made itself known.

She was in the heart of a thickly wooded forest, with no concept of how she had come to be here. She had a teasing memory of a foggy room and a distant voice, but the more she tried to bring it into focus the more elusive it proved to be, darting behind a tree or slipping under a rock, only to shoot off when she went to inspect it again. So slippery was it and so impossible to grasp that she simply gave up, knowing that it would return, if it so wished, in its own time.

Emily was struck by a strange sensation that time was ebbing away at a rapid rate, but then suddenly skidding almost to a halt as well. Her ears were the first thing to become attuned to this, hearing the twittering of invisible birds lurking in surrounding bushes grow more urgent and higher pitched, with less time between songs. But just as she was trying to make it out it would drop to a low, drawn-out thrum that barely made any sense from a bird at all. But what else could it be, and where did the bird song go in the meantime of that was not it?

Her eyes soon picked up the sensation with the clouds, which one moment would skitter through what she could see of the sky beyond the canopy, but other moments hover overhead as though stopping to stare at this strange girl and try and find out what she was doing here. Though unsettling at first Emily soon grew used to this, falling into the rhythm herself as she explored the woods, darting here and there at times, stopping to closely examine a particularly intriguing flower or mushroom or claw-like fallen branch.

She was still unsure why she was here, what this was all about. But truth be told she was not particularly concerned with such matters, quite content to explore this place that was so unlike her home, with its cleared hills and windswept face, chapped and battered and crusted in flaking salt.

Here the air was a different type of fresh – the fresh of leaves and pine needles, a lived freshness rather than a scouring one. The ground underneath was also a pleasure, soft and almost bouncy, fallen leaves and needles returning to the soil so they could begin their long journey to the sky over and over, no less eager than a child on a slippery slide but far more patient.

A golden glow suffused a clearing into which she had wandered, the last rays of the day’s sun peering from behind a cloud and sneaking through a gap in the trees. Emily let the warmth caress her face, closing and softening her eyes so she could watch the silhouette show on the back of her eyelids, shadows of orange and black dancing and entwining in an ancient ritual. The black soon grew to outnumber the orange, although even after the warmth stopped tickling Emily’s face a resilient few golden trees of light still held their place. When she opened her eyes they were replaced with the solid black form of the real trees of the forest, the light having leached from them and spilt over the edge of the earth.

Something told Emily she should move on, so she set off to find somewhere safe to spend the night. It was growing cooler and she was pleased to be moving, sending warm blood through her body. She walked for some time more but could not really say how long or how far she had come. Spotting a small embankment with a large pile of pine needles collected up against it, Emily decided she would stop here for the night, then rested up she could decide on a plan of action at first light.

Just as she began smoothing the needles out to form a comfortable bed, Emily heard something crashing around in the woods nearby, emerging from the direction in which she had been walking. She sheltered behind the nearest bush and waited, emitting a small choked cry when she saw what it was. At first she had thought it was her father coming to have a stern word with her for being out after dark, but this man was far too young to be him. Yet he looked like him in so many ways, the lean body, the sandy hair, the serious look he acquired when deep in concentration.

Having deciding to stand up and reveal herself, asking this man who he was and what he knew about where they are, Emily was stopped in her tracks by the next thing she saw. Looming over the young man’s shoulder was an enormous black wolf, and he was heading their way! Riveted to the spot, Emily was unable to even cry out. Before she could find her voice the wolf was upon the man, battering him on the side of the head with a gigantic paw. He crumpled to the ground with hardly a noise, a look of shock frozen on his face.

The wolf scooped the man up in his front paws, rearing to his back legs. As he continued along the path in the direction from which Emily had earlier walked, she could have sworn the wolf had looked over his shoulder, straight into her hiding place, and smiled.

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Four

“I think, my dear girl, I have rambled on enough.”

Mr Crouch had calmed into his ‘charming host’ role and seemed ready to move on. “Now we both know why you are here, and you have been such pleasant company and such a polite listener that I shan’t keep you a moment longer than I must. Please forgive me, and step this way.”

Mr Crouch bowed graciously and humbly swept a hand towards the rear of the room. Emily looked to follow its line of gesture and the first item to fall in its path was the chair she had seen when she first surveyed the room, the one sitting in front of the glass chamber.

“Please, my young friend, follow me. I’m sure you are wishing to be on your way as expeditiously as possible. Well, you’ll be pleased to know, this should not take too much longer at all.”

Emily wondered just what it was that was going to happen next. It had all seemed so straightforward in her plan – Mr Crouch’s store would be lined with a choice of his amazing music boxes and she would simply have had to charm her way to one. Yet she now felt there was very little chance of anything as simple as all that. She had been a fool to even think it would be, admonishing herself and cranky at her naivety.

Her feet were thankfully able to move despite her rapidly rising nerves. She was a little unsteady at first, but managed to follow Mr Crouch down to the chair. She looked closely at the solid wooden seat, the high, straight back and a rather alarming looking strap dangling over the side of one of its arms. Mr Crouch must have caught the look in her eye.

“While I am certainly not going to tell you not to let your imagination run away Emily - that would be quite hypocritical of me after all I’ve said - what I will ask is that you keep an open mind. This is simply a feature for safety – my machine requires its user to be in a dream-like state, and it’s merely been designed to keep you secure during this time.”

Emily nodded. She was still unsure, but what choice was there? She realised she was going to have to trust Mr Crouch.

“Of course I will explain everything to you before we begin, to make sure you are entirely comfortable seeing it through,” he reassured her.

“Cast your mind back to Tabitha’s music box. Think about what it was that you saw and heard. Think about how such scenes could exist in so small a box and think too about how it could come to pass that this small wooden box could open to reveal so much.”

Emily did as she was told; soaring once again through the fields over which she had travelled, hearing the angelic choir ringing out in its glorious song.

“Every music box I create is different. There can be no two the same for there are no two people ever the same. What I was telling you before about the links between our pasts, presents and futures is important to remember to understand how each of these music box worlds comes to be.

“What you will end up with, ultimately, is a projection of your own self – your own mind, your own experiences and, most importantly, your own wishes and dreams.”

Placing his hand on the helmet-like object that sat in the frame above the chair, Mr Crouch explained to Emily that it was going to be placed upon her head so as her thoughts and wishes could pass into the chamber, where they would then help to create the right environment for the music box to take on its life, its individual aspects that would make it so right, so uniquely perfect for Emily Button.

“If you thought you liked Tabitha’s, you haven’t seen anything yet,” he said.

“Your own box will reflect your own desires in a way you are as yet unable to understand, for you do not truly know them. It will help to reveal them to you, will help you understand who you are and how to make your every wish come true.”

Mr Crouch’s eyes sparkled in the gloom, though his voice stayed low. He paused, giving Emily time to digest all that he had said.

“Are you ready then?”

Emily nodded.

“Well take a seat.”

Sitting gingerly in the chair, Emily felt the shaking take hold. Her breath had shortened and she tried to calm down, forcing herself to take a deeper breath. Mr Crouch spoke in his soothing tone, asking her to sit a little further back so he could draw the straps into place. Next he dropped the metal helmet, which felt lighter than it looked. It was quite cool too, as were the little pads that Mr Crouch now placed against each of her temples, linking her to the helmet and in turn the chamber.

“Okay Emily, we’re almost ready. I will be counting down from ten, and by the time I get down to one, I need your mind to be completely clear. Then, I need you to allow yourself to slip into dream, to let yourself go with whatever comes to mind. Don’t feel you need to hold back or hide anything, the more honest you are with yourself, the greater the outcome and the more unimaginably divine your music box shall be.”

Drawing her attention to the glass chamber, Mr Crouch pointed out to Emily the small wooden box that lay inside. He explained that this was how her music box began, but that as her thoughts and wishes mingled in the chamber, they would be drawn into the box and help to create it anew.

“Do you understand?”

Emily nodded once more.

“Then we are ready?”

“Yes Mr Crouch.”

She sat back in the chair and watched as he opened his book. He began with a brief incantation, the strange sound of which lulled her into a calm and sleepy state. She felt her grip on consciousness slipping and, as though from afar, heard a slow countdown begin. Emily’s eyes fluttered as she nodded off, but not before she finally caught sight of the writing on the front of the book from which Mr Crouch had been reading. Her eyes took in the long, careful script and the jumble of letters briefly floated into a comprehensible form before dripping away, melting before her eyes like everything else in the room, pooling into a rich molasses. And though it was her last lucid moment, there was no mistaking what she had read:

Metaphysical Marvels and Unlocking the Unknown:

A study by Aloysius Crouch

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Three

Mr Crouch was growing quite animated now, Emily noticed. He was speaking in great, passionate arcs which his hands would trace, spinning and pointing and sweeping his arms in gestures that illustrated what he was trying to explain. There was certainly no stopping him, she could see he had tapped into a vein of passion and urgent belief intrinsic to his very essence.

“Perhaps the saddest thing of all, the greatest tragedy, is knowing that we are all born with access to this world, it is there for the taking. We could shoot for the stars and travel far beyond them, discover things that would amaze and astound even the most imaginative of souls. As children we wander often into this world and are delighted to discover its hidden secrets, to venture fearlessly into wondrous places that nobody else seems able to follow.

“But it's never long before we are warned not to visit there, it’s declared off-limits if we wish to be accepted in this withered little kernel and we are warned - under pain of ostracision and worse - to quit our daydreaming, pull our socks up and get on with life in the ‘real world’.”

Mr Crouch let out a small peal of laughter, though it was without a skerrick of mirth. This seemed to have been welling up in him for some time. Emily saw he seemed almost visibly relieved to have got this all off his chest - she was reminded that he must have very few people with which he could talk.

“I decided, very early on, that I would not listen to these warnings,” he said, his voice far more subdued, his attention coming back to Emily. “I found nothing in this world that came close to the one at my fingertips, why on earth would I turn my back on it?”

He hung and shook his head as though in sympathy, but Emily was unable to tell if it was for everyone else or for himself. He began idly flicking through his book again.

“I have devoted my life to this wider world,” he continued. “I have sought ways to open the doors that lie locked in-between, to widen our boundaries and allow what I can to seep through. I have made discoveries the world of science could never hope to dream about, gained insights the world’s most renowned philosophers could never comprehend. I am tempted each and every day of my life to pass through one of these doors and never return. Only one thing has ever held me back.”

At this, he quickly clapped the book shut. His eyes had been bright and glassy and Emily knew that as he described it he was off in this realm beyond, but with this last admission they darkened and he seemed to come crashing back to earth with a resounding thud. Emily was thoroughly overwhelmed, yet nevertheless felt a thawing in her appraisal of this strange man. Throughout his speech he had undergone so many transformations, loomed in such stark and shadowy peaks, she was surprised that he now seemed simply himself. She realised she was holding her breath, waiting desperately to hear what had been holding him back, hoping to discover what this single line that had been left dangling with such tantalising promise would snare.

She needed to know so badly she had forgotten about anything and everything else, even the music box had left her mind for the first time since she had seen it. But the closing of the book seemed to signal, too, the end of his admissions.

The Music Box: Chapter Twenty-Two

“I don’t know what happened with my mother,” Emily told Mr Crouch, staring him square in the eye. “What do you mean by ‘what happened’?” she went on. “Why do you want to know? What has that got to do with anything?”

Emily was truly puzzled and her confusion had made her more querulous than she had perhaps intended. She didn’t like being uncertain about anything, so would often turn it around to put somebody else on the back foot; it was a good way to buy time while she put her mind to work.

But Mr Crouch simply curled his lip into that disarming smile and Emily realised she had been quite rude. He didn’t need to say anything, but she realised it so keenly she broke out in a hot blush.

“What I mean to say, Mr Crouch, is that I’m not quite sure I know what you mean. I had thought you must have realised why I came here, but we seem to be talking about all sorts of things other than the music box.”

Still he simply watched her, as though waiting for something. Emily felt compelled to continue.

“I certainly don’t mean to seem impatient or anything such as that, I was just wondering whether, perhaps, you might have forgotten after all.”

Although a statement, Emily inflected the end so it opened out as a question. She was unnerved by the way Mr Crouch was looking at her, again experiencing that feeling he was reading something behind her face beyond the words she was uttering, perhaps hidden thoughts of which even she was unaware.

She was therefore quite relieved to see him take a breath and begin to talk again.

“No Emily, I most certainly have not forgotten why you are here. I am well aware what has drawn you, no doubt without your mother’s permission, and what has kept you here despite your worries and fears.”
Emily hardly had time to digest this shift in tone and conversation before he continued.

Emily hardly had time to digest this shift in tone and conversation before he continued.

“You will learn, Emily Button, as you grow older, that there is a reason for everything. Nothing happens without a reason; in turn, nothing can happen without then triggering a correlating reaction. There is no instance that can be acted out or even so much appear somewhere as a thought without some form of mirror effect occurring.

“Your visit today, which you may believe to have been on a whim, is a case in point. You may see it as emerging out of the blue, as an idea of your own formulated in your mind, then transmitted to your feet to get you here. Yet it, like anything else, cannot be said to have come into being so simply. It is an occurrence with precedent and antecedent, significance and consequence.

“Each of these elements has its place in a vast yet balanced system, a system at once numbingly chaotic and beautifully ordered, seemingly random yet always falling into place.”

Once again Emily experienced that feeling that Mr Crouch was talking as much to himself as to her, that he was musing aloud in a way that he would continue to do regardless of whether she were to stay or vanished into vapour.

As he talked, Mr Crouch walked over to the bench. He casually picked up the book which had earlier caught Emily’s eye. He flicked through it distractedly, but seemed not to be looking for anything particular. Emily's head was spinning as she tried to keep up with his speech, but she knew she must pay attention as she felt she was now closer to her music box than ever. As she expected, he picked up his loose thread and carried on.

"The seemingly unexplainable is merely the misunderstood; the realm of mystery is nothing other than the realm of the yet-to-be-determined. As true as it is that nothing can occur or be created in isolation, so it is also the case that outside of the admittedly immense world of the known and verifiable there exists a far vaster world of the unknown.

"This, Emily Button, is the world of the imagination, the maligned world of the daydreamer, the whimsical, the crackpot - and the visionary. Now everyone knows about this world of course - but what nobody seems to realise is that far from standing off to the side, somehow separate to and detached from the world we know so well and go about our dreary day-to-day lives in, it is in fact wrapped snugly around the one we call home.

"It both embraces the known world and exists far beyond its furthest reaches, stretching on into infinity in any direction one cares to look. The known world is nothing but a seed hidden in the heart of a greater existence, one which most people are too afraid to discover.”

The Music Box: PART III: Chapter Twenty-One

Now of her father and mother’s arrival in Seaforth and hence her own arrival in the world Emily Button knew very little. Isabelle had long fretted over when the best time was to be honest with her only daughter, to fill her in on the long story of how she and Percival had come to be together, how they had come to call Seaforth home.

Despite knowing she would have to tell her one day, something had been holding Isabelle back. She was wavering, however, and had in fact been toying with the idea of taking her daughter down to the seaside and explaining all on the night that she suffered her ‘turn’, about which Mr Crouch was now asking Emily.

The trouble for Emily (and nosy Mr Crouch) was she had not been told the full story about this either. As far as she knew, her mother had been taken ill and arrived in such a fever that she had seen things that could not have possibly been there. As a precaution, she was taken to the hospital where the doctors could make sure she was going to be all right. Emily knew this much, but had not been told what it was that Isabelle was certain she had seen - the coal-black wolf at the kitchen window, whose sudden appearance had startled her so badly she dropped the pot of soup that was to be that night’s supper.

Percival had found her standing cemented to the spot, her eyes black as the inside of a chimney and staring blankly ahead, fixed on the window. All around her the soup ran, scalding her toes without her even flinching. He rushed to her and tried to get her to speak, but her jaw was rigid. Percival looked to where she was gazing, seeing only the dark of the night at the window. Nevertheless he ran to the door, which finally snapped Isabelle from her trance.

“Don’t!”

“But why, what is it?”

Still she could not say. It was the last thing she said all week. She would not talk, would not eat, would not catch anybody’s eye. Isabelle was wasting away at an alarming rate and her husband simply could not get through to her. In his despair, though it broke his heart, Percival took his beloved to Edgewood, where people were sent from all over the countryside when suffering diseases of the mind.

For six long weeks she stayed in the stark, antiseptic ward in which she had been placed. Percival would visit her every day after he finished work and, slowly, much to his eternal relief, Isabelle began to relate to him what she had seen. Her voice sounded like it belonged to a little girl; moreover, like it was coming from some distance away. It seemed detached, hollow, like she was speaking up to him from the bottom of a well. She told him of the wolf at the window, the way his right paw had pressed up against the glass as he peered in. Percival did not dare admit it, but his blood ran cold as she described the wolf’s thick black coat, his cunning snout bellowing steam that pooled on the glass then evaporated almost as quickly, the dreadful whites of his glowing eyes and the fiery reflection of the hearth dancing in his wide pupils.

His teeth had been bared, she said, his pink tongue lolling hungrily out to the side. Even though he must have known he was being watched, the wolf steadfastly maintained his ground. The bright moonlight lit him as well as if it was day and she realised with a sudden jolt that it was not the first time she had seen him. The shock of recognition startled her more than his actual presence and it was then that she dropped the pot, at which point the wolf snapped out of his own mesmerised state and fled – leaving his breath on the glass and the imprint of his presence etched deep in her mind.

It wasn’t that Isabelle was fragile or that she had merely succumbed to fear. Far from it; she was as strong and forthright as ever. But standing there in the kitchen, confronted by this ghost of her past she had somehow slipped into her old self, a self that was so far from where she was now that it may as well have been someone else entirely. In being whisked violently back to the woods and her life there she had been confronted by her past, and hence her old self. The biggest shock lay in this dawning awareness of how much she had changed. For some time she felt miserably lost between the two selfhoods grappling for her attention – she couldn’t go back, but nor could she bear to once again give up what she had lost.

Neither Isabelle nor Percival really wanted to think about what the visit of the wolf meant. They knew that the past they thought they had safely left behind – so much so that days could now go by without a single thought harking back to that terrible night he had stared death in the face – had somehow caught up with them. As much as he wanted to believe that she must be mistaken, that she had simply seen a reflection or that it was a trick of the light, Percival knew deep down that Isabelle had seen what she said she had seen.

Then there was Emily with whom they must contend. After taking Isabelle to Edgewood Percival had told Emily that her mother was away visiting an old dear friend, but had to change his story once he discovered that she had overheard him talking with Dr Hopkins when he came to the house to discuss Isabelle’s ‘progress’. And progress she was making, at least in the doctor’s eyes. Isabelle knew that to be able to come home, she needed to convince Dr Hopkins that she had just had a silly fright and nothing more. Just as the sixth week turned over she was back home, but it would be a mistake to say it was back to anything like normal.

The lingering sense of disquiet dissipated over time into a kind of underlying unease, with Isabelle deciding that whatever it was that may be happening to her, she would not be a prisoner to her fears. As day by day passed and the immediacy of her encounter slowly faded, she began to wonder if the visitor of the night really had been there after all; whether she had merely projected something about her inner self into which she was now afraid to delve. But this didn’t really sit with her – even though it might hold a kernel of truth she knew there was more to it. She knew, one day, if she was to ever truly move on, she would have to find out what it was all about.