The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Seven

Emily put the book down. So this was what Crouch was playing it. After all these years, he had discovered a way to be near her mother again. He had of course explained all this to Emily when first she arrived in the music box, but so overwhelming was the situation she hadn’t been able to understand what was really happening, the full ramifications of what he was saying.

And now, who knew how long later, he had been living in her own house – no doubt sleeping in her own bed – biding his time until he had a chance to do away with her father and... who knows what he planned to do with her mother? Clearly he had to get out of her form at some stage, but from what she had learned of Crouch at that point she would be highly expendable, from his point of view.

She had to act, and quickly. But there still remained the issue of how she could possibly get near the house while she looked like this, and what she could hope to achieve even if she were to try.

By now the day was growing quite warm, while the sea was picking up even more of a swell. Emily knew she had to revisit Crouch’s notes once more, to see what the final section might reveal. There was one more thing she needed to understand – the music box itself. How was it that Crouch had come to place himself in there? How had he learnt to come and go as he pleased, to treat it as a world into which he could pass and make anything he wanted happen – well almost anything, as he had clearly been unable to make her mother his own, even in there.

Loathe to pick the book up again just yet (it had once again grown very hot, threatening to burn her fingers as she touched it), Emily decided to have another look through the spyroscope.

Holding it up to her left eye – Emily was proudly left-handed, fondly wearing her ‘sinistrality’ as she had learned it was sometimes called – she saw her father leading her by the hand down the cobbled road just past Gould’s General Store. With a start she realised that they were only paces from the Pig and Whistle, and here she was, in full sight of anyone who might come around the corner.

Emily did not dare to take any chances and lowered herself over the end of the pier, hanging from its edge while her feet sought out something onto which they could latch. Thankfully her ankle knocked against a cross beam and she was able to gain a foothold and swing down. From here the sea spat angrily at her, white foam surging right up to Crouch’s boots, licking them as their peaks passed in a hissing froth.

Realising with a jolt that she had left the book up on the pier, she reached her hand up and poked about blindly until its cover heated her fingertips. Emily snatched it up, thrust it into her pocket and steadied herself, then looked around to appraise her situation. The beam on which she now stood ran from one side of the pier to the other. Worn from years of pounding by the sea, it featured deep grooves, where the weaker grains had been worn away sooner than the more resilient.

There was really no way to go other than back from where she had come, or down, into the rolling sea. Not enamoured with either scenario, Emily elected to stay put for the moment, at least until her sense of danger cleared.

Over the incessant hubbub of the sea, she began to make out voices. An incomprehensible murmuring to begin with, they grew a little more distinct. Two pairs of legs abruptly appeared from above and just to her left, and Emily almost lost her grip when she realised that the shoes sitting at the end of the smaller pair were hers.

Straining to hear over the fizzing and lapping of the water, the voices soon crystalised for her. Her heart leapt when she realised the man’s voice was irrefutably that of her father Percy. She could picture him as though he were right in front of her, his brow furrowed as he thought a little too hard. Her mother often told him he needn’t worry quite so much, but Emily knew he loved to think about everything there was to think about, to turn his mind to problems that others found too difficult, or never even thought to think about in the first place.

There had never been a question she had asked that he had not put his mind to working out. The simpler ones – why the sky was blue; why one never saw birds fall from the sky like stones, and where they must go to die – he would answer straight away, as though he had been thinking about that very matter when she asked and he was glad that she had taken an interest in where his thoughts were heading.

Others took a little more consideration, a little more thought, but he never shied away from providing some form of an answer. Emily had for some time suspected that these answers weren’t always, technically, the right ones, but she loved to hear him tackle them, cherished that twinkle his blue eyes gave, like the reflection of a campfire blazing back out at her, while he shared the secrets of what a dog was thinking about as it drifted off to sleep, how man grains of sand there were on a beach and what happened to us when, finally, we die.

As high as her heart had leapt when she heard her father’s voice – realised that he was alive and well and so close – is just how low it sunk when she heard her own voice, was reminded that Crouch was in total command of her and spinning his deceitful web.

From gas-filled balloon to lead balloon, she was brought crashing back to earth in an instant; cold and alone, so near to what she wanted back more than anything in the world, yet so far.


*********************

to be continued

*********************

The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Six

The water was like ice. The swift-running current grabbed at Isabelle’s body and sucked it into its racing flow. What it was running from, where it was going, neither Isabelle nor the river knew. For a long while it dragged her beneath its surface. Her open eyes knew she was still facing upwards for she could see the way the moonlight fractured on the top of the running water, split into silver shards like a shattered mirror. She lifted her hands towards them, half expecting the shards to slice them open, spill her hot blood into the cool water, but of course it was just a trick of the eyes and mind, an associative conceit.

Isabelle remained resolute in her decision to have plunged into the hungry river and felt, for the first time in as long as she could remember, at peace. A voice at the back of her mind reminded her that she could not stay underneath the water forever, so she calmly set about drawing herself closer to that dancing light above.

When she finally raised her head above its surface and took in air, the sudden rush of sounds reminded Isabelle of where she was. Still she refused to panic – in all her time, her tangled life, apart from Percy and Emily it was water that she most trusted. But it was a strange kind of trust. She knew it would ultimately look after her, but she was uncomfortable admitting just what a hold it had on her, what a pull it had on her heart.

This was the reason she could rarely bring herself to take Emily down to the sea, though they both loved it so. If she was to be honest with herself, it was a form of greed, a jealous protectiveness. She did not want to lose Emily to this love, for it to capture her daughter in the way it had captured her own young heart, filled a spot in her that for others family completed. She knew she was being selfish, but so important to her were Percy and Emily that she could not bear to think that something else could take the place she held for her daughter, could draw Emily in under its unmatchable spell.

The river, Isabelle realised, was starting to lose the edge of its frenetic pace. She had been tumbled this way and that for who knows how long, whereas now she was able to feel part of its rhythm, moving with it rather than it simply tossing her along. Resting on its surface, drawn along on its merry dance but now well and truly in step, Isabelle saw that the river had widened since she jumped in, but that up ahead there was a peninsula of jutting land, slowing the water as it had to squeeze past and around into its next bend.

Near the end of this peninsula, just above the water line, she saw a fire was burning. Shadows played in the treetops as the fire danced and twisted, drawing in new breath as deeply and appreciatively as Isabelle herself was now doing. She felt the loose folds of her dress drawn across her body as a cross-current pulled her towards the side of the river, and is it passed into the small bay that the peninsula had created, she felt her feet touch the stony river bottom. She stood and waded through the water, feeling it tugging her back but this time resisting. She was loathe to disappoint it, but knew she had been brought to this particular place for a reason.

As she reached the river’s edge, water streaming down the hair plastered to her head and dripping off the clumping ends, Isabelle pricked her ears to see if she could hear anything that would alert her as to what she should do next. But apart from the ceaseless, whooshing, rushing of the water and the dry, raspy crackling of the fire, there was no sound at all. The birds had curled up under a warm wing for the night, while the nocturnal army of creatures that came out after dark were perhaps hiding in the trees, eyes drawn in slits so as to not let the whites give them away, but none was uttering a peep.

Isabelle clambered up the river bank and walked slowly towards the fire. It was only small, taking up no more room than a small stool, and was burning quite low. Maybe she was too late? Somebody must have been here recently, but there seemed no sign of anyone at the present. And anyway, why would somebody be waiting for her here? How would they have known she might come by? She certainly had not planned anything of the sort, so there was no way anybody could be expecting her.

“Now that’s where you are wrong!”

Isabelle jumped near out of her skin, her heart racing at the shock of the voice coming from out of thin air. Dropping from a branch that was hanging from the tree just behind her, a small red-headed man gave a low bow to the startled, dripping lady before him. Isabelle’s mind raced, trying to work out whether she had ever seen him before.

“You don’t yet know me, but you will be very glad to have made my acquaintance,” he smiled, replacing a green felt hat upon his head.

“My name is Oscar, you might say I am an acquaintance of Emily’s.”

The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Five

Emily pored quickly through more of Crouch’s notes, increasingly frustrated at not being able to find a solution to her dilemma. Muddling her thoughts was the dawning awareness of just how inhuman Crouch had become, the twisted experiments and the wild ideas he was spouting. She learned of how his chamber had been used to achieve all manner of frightful ends, reading with horror of his joy at chancing one day, in a walk through a distant forest, across a wolf that had wandered into a steal trap left by one of the local hunters.

The wolf had been there for days, unable to wrench its leg from the trap. Without food or water it had weakened dramatically, wasting away to skins and bones. It was left so weak that it could do nothing as Crouch dragged it back to his hidden laboratory in the dead of the night, securing it in a special cage he had built. Over the weeks Crouch tended to the wolf, feeding it and nursing it back to health.

Emily was nearly physically sick as she read a passage in which the wolf, nearing full strength, had been fed an old man Crouch had found slumped outside the Pig and Whistle early one morning. With a sadistic glee Crouch went into graphic detail about the way the wolf had picked the man apart piece by piece until nothing remained.

Once he was assured the wolf had returned to rude health, Crouch made his move. He had thought long about how he would be able to safely trade places with the wolf. If he was left in the cage, then Crouch wouldn’t be able to get out once the swap was made. But if he let the wolf out now, he was surely exposing himself to a danger that was too much of a risk. For though he had returned the wolf back to health, he knew (and admired) that the wolf would feel no debt, that there would be no regret or remorse if he did to Crouch what he had done to the old man.

While not perfect, he decided the only solution was to put the wolf to sleep, then open the cage. He could make the change while it was still under, then when he came to it would be he, Crouch, who was the wolf, with the wolf confined to one of his boxes.

Mixing up a sleeping draught, Crouch was shaking with anticipation. Emily read how he had never been so excited by the potential of an experiment, thrilling at the chance to finally achieve his ambition of running with the wolves. He mixed the draught into the wolf’s water and waited. It grew drowsy, closed its eyes and came to rest on the floor of the cage. Crouch made his move.

***

Much of the middle section of Crouch’s notes meticulously detailed his time in the forest, his experiences living as a wolf. From what Emily could work out, he spent years with them, and she wondered why, if he was so happy leading such a life, he had decided to return, to take up where he had left off in human form. Then she saw it:

She brought me back. I would, I believe, have never returned otherwise. I went in thinking I would learn their tricks, their ways, grow to think like them and then return to being Aloysius Crouch, with all I had learned. But the longer I lived as a wolf, the more I realised how perfectly their form was suited to this way of life, their sleek dark fur wrapped around pure, taut muscle, powerful jaws from which there was no escape.

Yet, deep within, as much as I was them, as much as I belonged, a trace of something else remained. I would never even have known if I had not seen her there, this beauty of the forest who appeared as though from nowhere one night and was to make the forest as much her home as I had made it mine.

I watched her, day after day. At first it was a balm, a soothing experience to lay my hot, hungry eyes on such a gentle, refreshing creature. But it grew too much – day after day I would draw near, but was unable to make the final step and reveal myself. It tore me up inside, these contradictory feelings when I was here to learn to let such thoughts go entirely.

It was no use. I had to meet her, discover who she was, what she was doing here. I should never have given into the temptation.

Shaking, Emily read on to discover how the wolves had, though Aloysius’ persistent arguing, taken her mother in. She experienced the scene she had witnessed in the music box, the confrontation in the Golden Grove where her mother and father had fled as one, through Aloysius’ eyes. Once he stood up to Jericho, taken him on directly in front of the other wolves, there was no future for him in their company.

Lucky to escape with his life, he fled the forest and resumed life as Aloysius Crouch, to all appearances an ordinary human being. But he burned inside with an uncontrollable fire. He was, as far as such a man could be, dangerously in love.

Vinyl Diaries XIV: Bridezilla

Bridezilla
The Mandarin Club
November 28, 2007

They're not quite there yet, but the kiddies in Bridezilla are on their way...

More such talk at Mess + Noise yonder.

Going feral

A few weeks ago I was roped in by the lovely Angela Stengel as photo monkey for an article she was writing for Cyclic Defrost on Danny Jumpertz and Feral Media.

I was warned that I would be rendered fairly jealous by the Camperdown warehouse that is Feral Media HQ, doubling as a home for Danny and Feral Media co-runner Caroline.

The prediction came true. But putting the green-eyed monster to one side, I managed a few snaps, which can now be found over with Angela's delightful tale.

Farewell

He's gone.

After more than a decade of deceit and divisiveness, Australia can finally emerge from the long dark shadow cast by outgoing Prime Minister John Howard.

Acknowledged even within his own conservative party as a mean and tricky piece of work, Howard missed the perfect opportunity to retire at the top, steering the Coalition not only to utter humiliation across the nation in Saturday's election, but looking like being only the second prime minister in Australian history to also lose his seat.

A master politician, Howard held onto power as long as he did by preying on ignorance and fear and tapping into the worst aspects of Australian culture and parochialism, through dog whistling xenophobia, pork-barelling and cleverly milking any 'anti-' sentiment onto which he could latch.

This, at a time where the resources boom flooded government coffers with cash that they could use to selectively bribe key constituents in their desperate (and largely successful) bids to stay in power.

As with any election in living memory, it was not won by the opposition but lost by the government. The Coalition's extreme workplace laws and the disgraceful stripping of workers' rights - introduced without even the hint of a mandate - appear to have been Howard's undoing, along with his broken promises on interest rates. An ugly, sloppy campaign based on scaremongering and union-bashing failed to win back lagging support.

Pulling rabbit after rabbit out of the hat in previous elections, there was always the fear that Howard could do it again, but thankfully there was nothing left in the bag of tricks this time around.

The starkest reminder of what we have lived through for almost 12 years of his rule comes in the responses given when Howard or his fellow party members are pressed to point to highlights of his time in power. Again and again they raise his response to the Port Arthur massacre (a welcome tightening of gun controls) and the Bali bombings.

Not a single example is put forward of a visionary policy, a uniting moment, a symbolic or practical gesture that suggests he will leave Australia a better place to live for the trust he has been given.

It would be nice to imagine the landslide return of the Labor government from the wilderness was a vote for a return to decency, respect and caring for others - particularly those most in need. That it was to send a message that we will not tolerate a war-mongering, narrow-minded, lying leader who could share no vision for the future beyond preserving his own legacy.

It's far more likely to reflect the government getting a kicking for rising interest rates and costs of living, with the opposition finally putting forward a candidate that the Government wasn't able to undermine.

But for now there's at least a small window of hope. We have a new government that is not helmed by a climate change skeptic and ideologue on a crusade against 'political correctness', that has promised investment in health, education and tackling climate change, as well as a staged withdrawal of troops from Iraq. A party that will work closely with the US, but hopefully not hand over foreign policy for a chance to be considered George Bush's deputy sherriff.

Issues such as the life expectancy and living conditions of Indigenous Australians are still, as ever, likely to take a back seat - and new leader Kevin Rudd has given little hope to those looking for a more humane refugee policy - but at least we can finally look forward to taking one step at a time towards a brighter future and not feel like we're caught in an inexorable slide into a social, cultural and environmental abyss.

To steal Mungo MacCallum's recollection of Gough Whitlam's quotation of the last line of Dante’s Inferno:

E quindi uscimmo a reverder le stelle

And thence we emerged, to see the stars again.

The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Four

Isabelle felt her soft footfall lightly crunch on fallen twigs and drying pine needles, smelling the cool air of the approaching evening. She would need to be back to the shelter she had made herself fairly soon, the electric smell of an approaching storm was tickling her nose. To her left and right the forest appeared an impenetrable tangle, growing in a calculated disorder intended to discourage wayward wandering. The path along which she travelled would not have appeared to almost anybody else to be that, but Isabelle had been here long enough to recognise the telltale, if slight, signs that others had been this way. Small animals mostly, but occasionally a larger creature; man-sized but not walking on two legs as she was now.

She understood that she was looking for something, but wasn’t sure what that might be. She wasn’t retracing her steps, of that she seemed certain, yet the feeling that she would know what it was when she found it was strong.

Isabelle felt an unnerving sense of being watched. She carefully looked around as she went, trying to appear nonchalant, but nothing caught her eye that betrayed the presence of anyone but herself. She was unable to shake the feeling, but was determined not to let the rising fear take hold. She had lived here before, she reminded herself, was familiar with its risks and dramas, and had met and faced them all.

Reaching a huge grey tree, its gnarled branches twisting to the sky like witch’s fingers, thick, coarse bark cracked like a the mud in a dry creek bed, Isabelle stopped. There appeared to be a fork in the path, the choice of which way to follow weighing surprisingly heavily on her, as though a momentous moment was resting on such a seemingly simple decision.

Once she chose one there was no going back. That much she knew. Unsure of what it was for which she was searching – but increasingly certain that it would be found, for better or for worse – Isabelle took a deep breath and looked up at the tree for any sign it might be trying to send. After a long moment, its uppermost branches began to stir, although there was very little breeze in the cooling air. The stirring grew into a twisting, tangling dance, the uppermost branches waving and turning with enchanting grace.

The few tenacious leaves that hung on to the occasional branch held on for dear life, although one that must have been surprised by the sudden activity, caught napping, fell from its previously stable perch. It began a slow flutter towards the forest floor, tracing a diminishing parabola as it fell. Instinctively, Isabelle put out her hand as it neared. The leaf settled neatly into her small cupped hand, a brittle aged leaf alighting like the ghost trace of an ancient butterfly.

Closing her fingers gently over the top of the leaf, Isabelle felt it tickle her palm. She opened her hand again and jumped as the leaf unfurled – it really was a butterfly! But not like any she had ever seen before – a grey-green colour when it had first landed on her palm, it was now a deep blue, the inky near-purple of twilight after a particularly warm summer’s day. It hovered in front of her, darting in small, dashing sweeps in a vaguely circular arc, then took off past the tree, darting to its left. Isabelle hesitated, but seeing the butterfly loop back towards her and head back down the path again – now a crimson flash in the shadowy late afternoon, she followed.

Isabelle had made up her mind to head the other way, but felt compelled to follow, taking it as a sign – of what, she had no idea, but it was too late to go back now.

She followed into a part of the forest she could not recall ever having seen. She had made it her own during her stay, explored what she had thought at the time was every twist and turn, every nook and cranny, so was surprised to be so disoriented.

It was growing cooler as she went on – the sun had dipped over the horizon some time ago and the brush here was quite thick and damp. Every now and then she lost sight of her guide, but just as soon as she was certain it had gone too far to keep up with, she caught another glimpse. Now that it was quite dark it seemed to have a glow of its own, a gently pulsating yellow light flickering with each beating of the wings.

She followed it until it reached a bend in the path that opened out onto a river. Wide and swift-flowing, there was a silvery-sheen on the surface of the water where the break in the forest canopy allowed the full moon to shine. Isabelle watched as the butterfly travelled halfway across the river, soared vertically, then exploded into a million tiny stars that scattered over the water in a blaze of light and colour, then vanished.

Without a second thought Isabelle drew a deep breath and plunged into the river.

Vinyl Diaries XIII: Machine Translations

Machine Translations + The Bank Holidays
The Gaelic Club
November 16, 2007

A handful of words over at Mess + Noise

The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Three

Something strange was happening. When Emily opened the book to read, she was met with a jumble of letters and images and sketches that bore no relation to anything about which she could make sense.

What could have possibly happened? She turned to the first page, the passages she had only just read, but was met by the same jagged junkheap, letters used and abandoned, crashing into the corner and jutting nonsensically.

“It knows,” she murmured. “It’s realised I’m not Crouch.”

Emily closed the book again and stared intently at the cover. She placed a hand on its leather front and boomed.

“It is I, Aloysius Crouch. Do you dare to defy me? Reveal yourself, be true to what you are!”

Emily was shocked to hear the cold, fearful voice, not sure where as to where the command had even originated. She had not consciously considered what she would do, yet here she was, bellowing at the book in Crouch’s chilling tone.

While she considered what might have happened, the book started to shake, suddenly so warm she almost dropped it off the edge of the pier, into the lapping waves below. Luckily it caught on one of Crouch’s bony knees and she was able just to keep hold. Tentatively, she reopened the book and saw –with a mix of relief and sickly fear – that the jumble had now rearranged itself back into Crouch’s carefully laid out hand; it was back to how it had been when first she picked it up.

With the same mix of fear and relief, driven by curiosity and urgency, Emily turned to the end of the first section and began to read from where she had left off.

As much as Man fears the wolves, Wolf cannot stand to be around Man. They recognise him for what he is – a weak, pale imitation of what he could be. They have no respect for this, and rightly so!

So how, then, can Man get close enough to Wolf to relearn what he must know?

Until now, there has not been a way. But I, Aloysius Crouch, have discovered a way to become what I need. My many experiments have led to a breakthrough. I have unearthed a process through which I can take the form of any subject of my choosing. At first I was unhappy with the process, unwilling to give my body over to those whose body I was to command. But I have devised a way that this need never occur.

I can keep them, their so-called ‘selves’, in a box as I take control of their form. I need only their body - the rest of them just gets in the way, dilutes my being and makes it difficult to achieve full command.

By sending them into this box, I free the only obstacle that ever stood between me and taking them over entirely. While this has now worked on a number of occasions with various, expendable urchins from around the village, I now need to find an appropriate form by which to get closer to the wolves who can teach me so much.

Which brings me to my greatest challenge of all – finding just such a wolf that I can become.

Emily had to stop again, feeling her tummy turn backflips as though she were going to be sick. This sick, twisted, cruel monster had so casually talked of using and discarding children in the village – she herself had witnessed just how readily he could sacrifice them.

This time, however, he wasn’t going to get away with it. The determination to put an end to Crouch’s evil-doing boiled Emily’s blood. She could almost feel the steam coming from her ears as she experienced anger and bitterness at those lost lives, all in aid of his sick depravities, this idea that we should live our lives as though beasts.

Emily didn’t have anything against wolves. Her experience in the music box showed her they were far from the kinds of creatures with which she would ever wish to associate, but she also knew that they simply were what they were, you couldn’t hold them any more responsible for that than you could blame the wind for blowing, the moon for rising.

She remembered a day when she could have only been three or four, on a forest walk with her mother and father. As her parents were choosing a spot for their lunch, she saw across the clearing what she had first thought was a funny looking dog. Black, long, large, it had met her eye as she watched it. Silently they stared at each other, her parents busy setting up a blanket and setting down their basket. She looked to see whether her parents had seen it but by the time she turned back to where it had been it was gone.

Emily hadn’t thought to say anything to her parents about what she had seen. She didn’t feel any fear – hadn’t known that she was supposed to – but merely believed it was just one of the forest’s many creatures and no different to have come across than a bunny or a deer.

But now she shivered at the thought of it, wondered if it really had been a wolf after all.

The Music Box: Chapter Fifty-Two

Isabelle dropped the brush she had just picked up, hearing only a faint distant sound as it clattered to the floor.

She had never told Emily about her time in the woods, or in fact anything from the time before Seaforth. Often Emily had asked about why the other children had grandparents and she didn’t, and where Percy and Isabelle had come from if they had not grown up in Seaforth, but they had always assured her that they would tell her everything when the time was right.

Her voice, trembling, caught in her throat, but she managed to get it out. “What did you just say?”

Emily gazed up at her with her piercing eyes and Isabelle suddenly felt like she had to close her mind off, that Emily was somehow reaching in there and seeing things without her saying a word.

“I asked about your time in the woods. I would like to hear about them.”

Before Isabelle could say anything, Percy came through the doorway. He had his hat in his hand and was just pulling on his coat, so Isabelle knew he was off to town.

“Percy love, why don’t you take Emily down with you? You know she loves a visit into town.”

“Hmmmm?” asked Percy absentmindedly, patting his coat pocket as though assuring himself that whatever it was he had in there had not mysteriously disappeared as he walked into the room.

“Oh yes, why not? Come along Emily, we’ll not be out too long and then you have the rest of the day.”

Isabelle watched Emily and saw she frowned her brow, before quickly forcing on a false smile. She knew Emily normally jumped at the chance to get down to the main street, so was perplexed at the cloud that passed over her. But if she had blinked she would have missed it, for Emily was now nodding at the idea, though a furtive glance thrown over her shoulder told Isabelle that her daughter seemed quite displeased at the prospect of being out with Percy.

“Go get something warm on Emily, so you don’t catch a chill.”

Emily slipped from her seat, and without further a word slipped out through the doorway.

“Percy?” Isabelle began. “Have you noticed anything at all… strange about Emily?”

“What? Oh no, not really. I mean she seems a little quiet at the moment, but then I daresay that’s not all that unusual, she definitely goes through these patches.”

What neither of them would say, but each must have known the other was thinking, was that Percy wouldn’t really have been able to tell if Emily had grown a second head and was speaking fluent Chinese. Percy knew as well as Isabelle that he could be a little vague and distracted while in one of his writing periods, but Isabelle was so proud of him that she did not dare burst his bubble with too much worry, particularly with him so close to being finished.

“Oh, never mind, I’m sure it’s just something that has happened with one of her little friends or something, I’m sure it will all blow over,” Isabelle said, not sure whether she was trying to convince Percy or herself.

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek just as Emily returned through the doorway, now wearing her scarlet cloak and a woollen hat. Percy patted Isabelle goodbye on the arm, took Emily’s hand and walked through the door.

“Your hat!” Isabelle yelled, seeing he had put it on the table while he pulled on his coat. But the sound of her cry was met with the slamming of the front door - they had already gone.

For the first time since she had returned home, Isabelle felt deeply troubled. Everything had seemed as though it were getting back to normal, and now this. What could Emily have possibly meant? Perhaps she had confused the question, so Isabelle wracked her mind for whether she had been on any recent outings into the nearby woods that Emily may have been confused about. But, hanging over this, was the brightly lit world ‘lived’ – Emily had definitely asked about when she had lived in the woods.

Had she said something to Emily about it after all? During her turn perhaps, and that’s why she didn’t remember? But that didn’t seem right, it was some time now that she had been home and Emily had only just sprung it on her, just like that.

Making it hard to work any of this out was the pull her memories of that time were now having on her. While she valiantly tried to stay in the present, to work out what was going on, and what she could possibly say to Emily when she came back – she was not prepared to lie to her daughter – she was drawn down an increasingly slippery slope to that time, to her forest life.

For the last few days it had been so close, somehow within arm’s reach everywhere she went. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but now felt that there must have been something in this strange proximity that had led to Emily’s probing query.

Absentmindedly, Isabelle fiddled with Percy’s hat. Its soft felt contoured to her fingers, acquiesced as she spun it, feeling its familiar shape in her hand. Without really thinking she placed it on her head, feeling it fall over her ears where Percy’s wider head must meet its band. She thought about how good Percy had been to her, keeping things going while she was away in the hospital, looking after the house, after Emily, still working to keep bread on the table and still finding time to come and see her.

She felt bad for having told him about what she had seen, as though it betrayed a weakness that she couldn’t deal with it herself. But she knew he would have wanted to know, knew that they shared absolutely everything; that they had done so ever since...

It was pointless trying not to think of the forest any more. Isabelle had long tried to bury that part of her life, but there was no way she could pretend it had never happened. Not least because that was where she had met Percy, the love of her life, the man for which she had risked everything, and who had now only recently saved her in return.

For a long time it really had seemed like a dream, or a particularly vivid story – somebody else’s – that she had read. Her parents had never read her any stories as a child, but Isabelle had still been in possession of a strong imagination. At times she could feel that this was the realm to which her time belonged, but now she knew there was something holding her back that was in there. She had to go back if she wished to move on.

Isabelle pulled the brim of Percy’s hat down over her eyes, allowing the curtains to be drawn on her present self and entering the memories that had been banking up and seeking release.