The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-One

Emily had to get out. Somewhere in this book, she knew, must lie the answer to how she could get her life back on track, undo the damage she had done by going behind her mother’s back and seeking out the music box from Aloysius Crouch, knowing all along that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

She realised she was getting nowhere by simply being angry at herself for having led them all into this mess. She had to come up with a way forward and dwelling on the past was not going to help.

Placing the book in a pocket inside the coat, she looked around to see if there was anything else that might prove of any use. It was all pretty much as she remembered it, although something further down the bench did catch her eye. She wondered if it had been there the first time – a round, wooden, tubular device that looked like a small telescope.

Emily walked over and gingerly picked it up. It felt quite heavy for its size and as she turned it over in her hands, she saw that it did have an eyepiece – perhaps it was a telescope after all? On closer inspection it seemed more like a kaleidoscope, a glass dome perched at the other end.

Emily raised it to her eye, but couldn’t make anything out. She began to wonder what Crouch used it for and was startled to find his image suddenly appear. She almost dropped it, but realising he wasn’t in fact in the room she managed to keep him in sight. She watched as he picked up the device, placing it to his own eye, twisting it around for a few moments, then making some notes in his book with his quill.

Emily’s mind turned to Minerva, and Crouch’s image slowly faded to be replaced by that of Minerva at home in her subterranean sanctuary, deep in discussion with both Topkinses.

Lastly, Emily pictured her mother. As Minerva disappeared from sight, her mother replaced her. She looked happy and well, working on the garden of their home. Emily knew the image could be coming from any time, that she couldn’t be too certain that all was still okay, yet she felt a reassurance at having at least seen her mother after what felt like so long away.

She placed the ‘spyroscope’ (as she thought of it) in another coat pocket and turned for the door. There was much to be done and Emily had to get somewhere she could think.

***

Emily opened the door and stepped through into the empty shopfront, better able to see it than her first time through, her eyes far better adjusted to the gloom.

She saw now the shop must have once been a toy store. Along the wall there still remained shelves that held a few spinning tops, some books and a few troubled looking dolls. Emily wondered what those dolls must have seen, who they may have witnessed coming and going from this place, what secretive business they were here upon.

Making her way to the front door, Emily turned the handle and was shocked by just how bright it was outside. She lost her footing as she stepped over the threshold, not noticing the street was a little below door level. Her hat tumbled off her head and rolled a little way down the street. Leaning down to pick it up, she was surprised to see Trixie Sopworth, a girl in her year at school.

“Trixie!” she exclaimed before thinking, so pleased to see a familiar face after all this time. She realised her mistake just as she saw the petrified look in Trixie’s face. To be addressed by Mr Crouch would have been bad enough, for him to know your name would be truly terrifying. She knew there was little she could do to allay Trixie’s fears so she quickly dusted of the cap, placed it on her head as she regained full height and stepped quickly down the street.

Emily knew she was heading the wrong way, but catching a fresh waft of the harbour, she knew this was the place to go to clear her head and work out her next step. Passing the last of the street’s shops, she stepped out into the cobbled road, passed the whitewashed Pig and Whistle inn with its gently swinging sign and turned the corner, a blast of sea breeze stinging her eyes as she stepped onto the rickety pier.

Sea birds hovering nearby took off as she neared, their soft white feathers fleeing from the black coated intruder, circling warily and keeping a safe distance. Their harsh throaty cries layered and built with neither rhyme nor reason; a messy noise far from that of the tuneful twittering of those living further up the hill in the glens and dales she would occasionally wander when given free rein to disappear for the day.

She had often wondered at the life of the sea birds and how different it was to their cousins up the hill. They were separated by only a mile or two, but their worlds could not have been more disparate. The sparrows and starlings seemed to Emily very much home bodies. They may dart and dash here and there and poke about for bugs and worms when hungry, singing out their lovelorn whistling at others, but she knew they spent much of their time attending to fairly domestic duties, improving their nests, picking for it choice twigs and preparing it for laying.

Their colouring was complex – mottled, speckled, browns and blacks and reds and yellows and blues, while no two of their songs ever seemed the same.

These sea birds, on the other hand, the gulls and terns and cormorants, were almost uniformly black, white or grey. While they would hover in the same places, it never seemed to Emily that this was home. It was certainly their territory – Emily had seen some quite territorial behaviour by certain characters – but it seemed more like a marriage of convenience to a location that supplied them with enough fish scraps to fight over than any true link with the place.

Their cries seemed so base, greedy, always warnings rather than greetings, spiteful rather than playful.

She wondered at how little interaction there was between the two worlds, how rare it had been to see these sea birds up in the hills. Occasionally she would see them soaring high above them, but never landing and exploring, showing any curiosity about this green and brown world so differently textured and populated than their own grey and blue.

Once she had seen a lone sparrow hopping along the shoreline, as though looking for something it had lost – little sparrow spectacles or such. As the waves crashed into the beach and the suddsy wake washed up the shore, the sparrow looked so out of place, so dwarfed by the sea, she suddenly feared for its safety. It must have been innocent to the sea’s power, her ability to spring a fatal surprise as easily and thoughtlessly as a person might sneeze.

She watched it travel further and further up the beach, losing sight of it before she could be certain it would be able to return home safely. She wanted to follow it, to make sure it was okay, but knew she had to let it be, do its own thing regardless of the consequences.

Before this she had thought the sea birds somewhat simple and lacking in the charm of the hill birds, but seeing the sparrow up against the sea she realised she had been looking at the sea birds through unfair eyes. Now she saw their inner grace, the way they danced and tussled with the sea, the manner in which they were effortlessly at ease with her, in tune with her rhythms and pulses. She would watch them glide along invisible currents and soar with the updrafts, now almost disdainful of the hill birds and their nervous, stuttering flights that seemed in contrast so random, at odds with nature rather than one with her.

She never failed to thrill at that moment, that brave flash of courage and certainty, when they would soar up, up, up, and then plunge – a vertical missile ploughing through the sea’s barrier at break-neck speed, a precision dive that penetrated the unknown.

Emily had by now reached the end of the pier. She sat with her side resting against a white painted pylon, dangling Crouch’s long, thin legs from under the coat over the edge of the drop. The wind was a quite solid gale, lifting spray into her face as she kept her eyes open, smelling deeply of its freshening promise. There really was no better way to clear the mind, scour the jumble of thoughts and fears, except perhaps to plunge into her depths, feeling the buffeting waves tumble and toss you, all your thoughts spent on breath and survival and leaving no room for day-to-day trivialities.

While she longed painfully to run up to her home, throw open the door and confront Crouch for his wrongdoings, Emily knew this approach was impossible. She could try explaining to her mother what had happened, but how would she even get her to listen, let alone have any chance of convincing her?

And even if she did, what of it? She was still trapped in Crouch’s body, Crouch in full control of hers. There was no way she could ever hope to have her old life back if she lost her chance of drawing Crouch back to his chamber, finding a way to swap their bodies back. Emily closed her eyes, letting the sound envelope her. There was a guilty pleasure in all this, knowing her mother rarely brought her down to the sea.

She loved it here and she would often wonder at why they didn’t spend more time down by the harbour, or further along the coast where the village tapered out and only a few rough shacks, inhabited by silent, bearded men, shirtless, linen pants held up by a rough twist of rope around the waist, seemingly forever drunk on salt and sun.

Emily took a deep, salty breath, reached into her pocket, took out Crouch’s book and began to read.