The Music Box: Chapter Seventy-Nine

Percy reached for the bag and suggested that in the circumstances it was perhaps best if he took care of the final act. But Emily insisted so firmly that it had to be her that Percy, with a great deal of apprehension, relented. He stood up and let Emily take his seat, while he took the space she had left vacant.

Squeezing Isabelle’s hand tightly, Percy kept his eye glued on Emily as she reached into the black sack and drew out the box. Whether or not it knew what fate had in store for it or not, the box seemed to be going to great lengths to avoid it.

It was pulsing with light and had never looked more beautiful, the green glowing against Emily’s white dress highlighting the delicacy with which every corner, edge and figure had been carved. Six eyes rested on the box where it sat on Emily’s lap. Six ears began to hear the music that swirled around them, that seemed to be the sound of every mermaid in the sea whispering to the sky, every angel in the sky opening its heart to the sea.

Both Percy and Isabelle reached as one towards the lid of the box, desperately keen to take one final look inside. Yet before they could reach it the box was gone, hurled as far as Emily’s strength would allow.

With a blood-curdling shriek the box broke the mirrored surface of the sea, then sank from sight.

The water where the box had hit bubbled and hissed, a cloud of steam forming above. But little by little the steam spread and lost its form until disappearing completely, the ripples spread in wider and wider circles but then abated, leaving only the still, watchful reflection in the quiet waters of Emily, Isabelle and Percy, staring at the place all their troubles now lay.

As Percy returned to his seat and took the oars, they began gliding back to shore in relieved, exhausted silence. Isabelle suddenly realised what had been so familiar about the day – she recalled with crystal clarity her dream in which Emily had stepped out into the sea and they could never quite reach her. And surely enough, as she turned to her daughter, who was wearing the very same white dress that had appeared in her dream, Isabelle watched her staring wistfully back towards where the box had sunk into the fathomless depths below. She placed her hand gently onto Emily’s leg, feeling how tightly coiled she was, as though ready to spring in an instant.