Saturday 5 June 2010

The Music Box: Chapter Seventy-Six

Emily experienced a dizzy sensation of spinning, with a sickening blur of colour swirling all around her, then a panicked moment of weightlessness. She was falling, where she could not say. Then suddenly, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped. But it took some moments before she realised where she was – back in her own room, lying on her bed.

Her tummy still hadn’t settled and her eyes were still adjusting when she realised she was being shaken.

“Where is she! What have you done with our Emily!” the voice cried, Emily slowly picking it as her mother’s.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s all okay. It’s me.”

“Hush Isabelle, step back and give her some air,” said her father, his blurred features slowly coming into focus.

“Okay. But remember, I told you, this isn’t Emily.”

“Oh mama, please!” Emily tried to sit, but fell back onto her pillow as it felt the room was still spinning around and around any time she moved. “I know it wasn’t me before, but I’m here now. Take my hand – you must know it.”

Emily felt a warm hand gingerly take her own icy fingers, then close around them tenderly. “Oh Emily, it is you! What has happened?”

“Shhh dear, from what you say we can’t begin to imagine what she has been through,” Percy said, taking Emily’s other hand in his own reassuring grasp. “We must not push her just now.”

“No, mother is right,” Emily said, trying once more to rise but not getting much further than up onto her elbows. “There isn’t any time to waste.”

“But you are not well. Your fingers are icy but your forehead is in fever. You just rest a moment, then when you have your strength back we can talk," Percy gently chided.

“Okay, but listen. You must do this. That box on the dresser-” Emily lifted a heavy arm and pointed over towards where she had last seen it, where it had been when she had lifted the lid and… but she must focus. “You must take it downstairs and throw it into the fire. We must do it now.”

“But Emily,” her mother began. “What’s…”

“I will explain,” Emily said, feeling herself slip out of consciousness, fatigue gripping her and refusing to let go. “But please, now…”

At this the last of Emily’s strength and resolve passed from her fragile, spent body. She slipped into slumber, a heavy, uneasy sleep in which all the events of the past few days swirled around her in a dreadful mix. She suffered terrible visions in which she was trapped in a glass bubble in a darkening forest, attempting to scream out but unable to utter even the hoarsest cry, watching helplessly as a wolf in a top hat leered at her, licking its lips, before dashing away with her mother under its arm.

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