The Music Box: Chapter Forty-Eight

Isabelle woke with a start. Her unsettled sleep had been even more fatiguing than having been awake, suffering under the weight of exhausting, messy dreams. She didn’t want to remember them, but they were too fresh, too clear to avoid.

She was out on the sea in a small wooden rowboat with Percy and Emily. It was a calm day, the three of them sharing in the peace and tranquillity that can only be felt without the distracting influence of landscape. Gently bobbing on the slightest of swells, the sun was shining, the sky a deep blue perched atop the emerald ocean and a restful spirit hung lightly in the air.

Without a word, Emily stood up. She smiled at her parents, waved her fingers in a gentle farewell and stepped delicately over the edge of the boat. Isabelle watch in frozen terror as her daughter plunged into the sea, disappearing below the green surface. After a few moments passed she caught sight of Emily’s white dress billowing on the current and was relieved to see she was coming back to the surface. Emily broke through and reappeared where Isabelle could see her, her hair plastered to her head. She opened her eyes and looked into her mother’s, peaceful and free of the anxiety that one might have expected.

A trace of a smile played on the upturned corners of her mouth. She kept her eyes on her mother as she slowly began to drift away. Isabelle was unable to act as she wanted. She was prepared to leap into the sea and wrap her arms around her daughter, paddle her back to the safety of the boat, or sink quietly with her if need be, but for some reason she was simply unable to move. Emily had been quite near at first, but now drifted further and further away. Girl and boat seemed to be answering to two separate flows, cross-currents that tore the daughter from her mother’s life.

Isabelle turned to Percy to prevail upon his fatherly love to save Emily, but the same near-smile danced upon his lips as it had on the daughter’s. Isabelle was confused as to why he wasn’t helping, hating his indifference to his daughter’s fate, but also curious as to whether perhaps he knew something about what was happening that she didn’t realise.

Snapping out of her frozen state, Isabelle took to the oars. She rowed and rowed as fast as her slight form could, Emily drifting tantalisingly close, yet also too far for her to seriously believe she could reach out and draw her back in.

Long into the afternoon she rowed, while twilight soon smeared the sky with pastels stolen brazenly from the orchard. She rowed through until the stars in the sky seemed to outnumber the drops in the ocean. She let them guide her, for now she could not see Emily at all. She knew she was still nearby, but had to take the whispered word of the stars for it.

It was from this starlit striving that Isabelle woke, in naked despair that she had not reached her daughter before waking. It felt like a terrible omen, despite being only a dream. If only she had slept long enough to get Emily back in the boat.

Isabelle wondered at what had woken her. The wind was howling, but that wasn’t it, there was nothing unusual about that at this time of year. As though her question had summoned an answer then and there, she heard it again – the footfall in the hall that must have woken her from her uneasy passage through the night.

It sounded like someone was very carefully making their way down the creaking hall. She heard more footsteps, and one final creak just outside her bedroom door.

Isabelle waited for the crack of light to appear, for the door to swing open and reassure her that her daughter was indeed safe and well. But there was no light, the door remained closed. Isabelle realised she was holding her breath – the covers were pulled up to her chin, but her ears remained attuned to hear the faintest trace of sound.

An interminable time passed, then she heard the creak of the hall again. The footsteps were in retreat, heading towards Emily’s room. The mother pictured her child returning to her own bed, having decided in some internal struggle against turning to the comfort of her parents. Isabelle turned to the window, but shut her eyes tightly when they saw the stars, a painful reminder of her draining, horrible dream.