The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully, more stories, more admiring gazes from people she shouldn’t have been spending her social time with. People younger than her. Not real friends, just a friendly human face to talk to, or rather at.
It wasn’t that Emma didn’t like to tell her webs of fiction; on the contrary. It was just that twinge of a memory it sparked, that night when her mother had told her to write, and never to stop. To spread her stories wherever she could, because she was special. Emma squeezed her eyes shut and reminisced of the long days spent stroking her mothers pale, fragile hand and telling her tale after tale, just to ease the pain.
Not the pain of the chemotherapy, no; that was dealt with by the hospitals drips, but the emotional pain of knowing she would soon be ripped from her daughter. Her life. Anything that had any meaning would be gone. For that purpose, Emma had always been a drug.But at the same time, she knew she had to carry on. Her mother had told her to, with her dying breath, on that scrubbed, antiseptic surface of the hospital. That mortuary slab of a bed. That was where her fate had been decided unintentionally. The fate of forever living in a dream, unable to wake up because you simply couldn’t. Because you were too afraid.But that was aside now, decided Emma. Of no importance at this moment in time. The girl picked up the pencil beside her on the oaken desk, and after contemplatively chewing the end for a moment or two, began to write.
________________________________
It was dawn. The sun rose wearily in the blood red sky, betraying its fatigue. The air was thickening, and the world seemed unbalanced, in a sense. What would have come so naturally before this time of impending darkness was now a strain, an effort. Holding her aching, rheumatic back, the old woman straightened with a stifled grunt and filled the pewter cauldron hanging over the dying embers of the fire, and picked her poker from the tiled floor. A small shuffling distracted her.‘Grandmother…?’
The girl stood, ruffle-haired and bleary eyed, rubbing at her face.
‘Its alright, darling. Go back to bed. We have a long day ahead of us today; you need your rest.’ The woman was deliberately vague. The more her granddaughter knew, the more danger she was in.
‘No,’ said the girl absently, but with a slight air of defiance. ‘I don’t think I need to. It’s early, but I feel more awake than I have in months. I feel as if I need to do something.’
The old woman shifted uneasily.
‘Grandmother…?’
‘Yes, yes, just get yourself ready if you’re going to be up and about. Lord, this back of mine…it’ll b the death of me.’
Turning away, she bit her wrinkled lip and wondered how long she could keep up these pretences for. Looking at the bleeding heavens, she said the same thing she always said when the thought struck her;
“Please come back. Not for me, for her.”
____________________________________
‘Emma! Emma!’ The shrill call awoke the girl from her daze, her literary cocoon. She roused herself and shook her left leg, which had gone to sleep during her latest session of frantic writing. Grabbing her notebook, ever carried with her, she stumbled down the stairs to meet the gaze of her father.
‘I’m going out to town, just to get a few things. As you might have noticed we’ve been living off of Chinese food for the past three months and I’ve finally decided to get my act together.’ He grinned rakishly. ‘Brace yourself, m’darling. I’m going to cook.’
Emma rolled her eyes in mock disgust, secretly brimming with joy. ‘We had better call the ambulance in advance then’ She teased. ‘We’ll surely all be far too stricken with salmonella to even lift the receiver once you’re done with us.’
For a moment, a warm smile was exchanged between the two. It was so normal, so average. Emma’s heart fluttered with joy at one of her everyday miracles coming true. But then the spell was broken and the stony, awkward silence had ensued. ‘Well,’ her father said after a time. ‘I’ll be - back in a bit then.’
She nodded. The door had already swung closed by the time she thought to blurt out ‘I love you!’
Wearily, she ran a hand through her tangled locks and sighed, letting her lips blow a faint raspberry.
Normality? No. Who was she trying to kid?
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Sing Your Sorrows
Sing your sorrows.
2 day ago
Sing your sorrows, little one
Sing them to the sky
Let them go, let them fly
Sing them to the sky
The same hauntingly ethereal tune wandered through the night’s air every evening to Isabelle, tucked up tight in her woollen blankets. The snow fell steadily and silently in the blackness, while her grandmother pottered around seeing to the fire. Isabelle watched with her almond shaped, unfathomable eyes until the fatigue became too much and they drooped, sending her to that other, dreaded realm.Looking at the young girls furrowed, damp brow often became too much for her grandmother, so she busied herself at the other end of their meagre hut, peeling potatoes and pickling enough fruits to see them through the winter.
If they got through the winter.
The promise was almost becoming too much for her…if only her mother would come back…her only daughter…her daughter who she hadn’t seen for more than a decade. Looking once again at the distant diamond like pinpricks of light in the heavens, the old woman clasped her hands one final time before uttering her almost ritualistic prayer.
“Please come back. Not for me, for her.”
_______________________________________
‘Rubbish!’
‘Is not, I spent ages coming up with that one!’ The girl scowled, her pretty freckled face becoming contorted with annoyance. The boy laughed.
‘You’re so full of crap, Atkins. Go back to your fairytales and leave the norms alone.’
The brown haired girl scowled again.
‘Oi, leave her alone Jeremy!’ Shouted one ginger, bespectacled girl, who had been temporarily transfixed by the schoolgirls dulcet tones and overly active imagination. ‘Jealous, are we? We all know who’s got to repeat their English test this lunchtime for getting seventeen percent.’
There was a general sniggering and the boy turned redder than a pillar box.
‘Whatever, Darcy. Least I don’t look like a carrot from behind.’
The girl rolled her eyes; it was a remark she’d gotten used to in all her eleven and a half years.
The storyteller was collecting her things up of the autumnally littered floor. ‘Thanks, Darce.’‘No problem.’ The girl smiled. ‘You know what a bigmouth that Jeremy is. He’s never been able to handle you being the smart one.’Emma blushed. She hated being referred to as “The smart one”. It was, however, an fairly accurate label. She had been transferred to the only school in her county willing to guide her through the cripplingly complicated (or so it seemed to the other children) curriculum that was originally designed for people four years her senior. In all honesty, Emma was quite literally a genius of her generation. Shuttled from one school to another, nothing had challenged her somewhat over active imagination and mind, so much to the extent that she had finished every book in one of the ill-fated school’s library within the first term of the school year.
But this school was different. Being the odd one out would always be a hindrance to Emma, but here she was more accepted than she had ever been before. Granted, most of her friends were eleven whereas she was fourteen, but otherwise it wasn’t too much of a hell hole. Almost bearable, save for the intermittent Jeremy’s who made it their mission for the week (or indeed however long their attention span was) to make her life as difficult as she could. On good days their pitiful psychological ploys were but small stepping stones, but today Emma was tired, for some reason, and had neither the energy nor the inclination to fight back, even if it was only a few sharp witted words to send her pre-teen demons packing.
A wide eyed, blond first year with wonky bunches gazed up at Emma. ‘Tell us more,’ she pleaded ‘Tell us more!’Emma sighed, scooped up the little girl and re-began her tale.
_______________________________________
The old woman remembered the night the moon has shone so bright…it had been the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the century. She could feel it in her bones. Her old bones that felt like they had seen centuries of time had been aching, not just from her rheumatism and creaking joints, but something else too. Something different. It had been the night her daughter had left too. Three successive nights of labour had gifted her with a child just a day previously, a beautiful, pale girl who was yet to be named. But as she stared with the deepest love one can find, a mothers love, she realised. She saw the white blond hair, and the large, translucently sapphire eyes, and she knew. She knew that her daughter, her only daughter, was a moon child.And she knew shat she had to do.
_______________________________________
‘Ah.’ Said the smallest girl in her high-pitched, all knowing voice. ‘But what is a moon child?’
‘Well,’ began Emma hesitantly. ‘A moon child, is, I suppose, a child who was born at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right place, and was therefore a gift from the moon.’
‘Ah.’ said the same girl. ‘Ah. But what do they do?’
Emma frowned. It had been a good three or four dozen books since she had read about the fabled lunar children. It had been several days since she had run over the facts in her head while constructing the frame for this story to cling to as it flourished. ‘Well,’ she said at long last, ‘ A moon child is just a normal girl or boy, until their first full moon, when -’ \She was interrupted by her dear friends Jeremy.
‘Werewolves? Moon children, aren’t they werewolves? And here was me thinking you were clever enough to believe in them stories.’ He sneered, his top lip curling in a feral grin.
‘Shut up.’ Chorused several people at once. Everyone was clearly weary of Jeremy’s constant interference.
‘No, never tell anyone to shut up, even if it is Jeremy.’ Reprimanded Emma. ‘He’s got the right to his opinion. And no, Jeremy, believing in fairy stories does not make you stupid, or any less intelligent than you really are. It just means…’
She bit her lip and trailed off.
‘It just means what?’ Queried a curious seven year old.
‘Nothing.’ Said Emma quickly, keen to avoid the subject. ‘Now, where was I…?’
The children merely saw an impatient storyteller eager to restart her tale, but inside, Emma knew it was quite different. No, she didn’t really let herself be taken in by the tales of princesses and curses, fairies, ghouls and beasts, but she longed to go back to the times when those stories were her world, the time when she was protected in a kind of womblike bubble from all the unpleasant realities of the world, longed to retain some of that long lost innocence of hers that vanished as fast as anything ever could the day the ECG machines electronic pulses faded into a black screen. She bit her lip and blinked, still raw from that memory even after eight whole years had passed. That day…so much like any other when it began…
The day her mother had died.
2 day ago
Sing your sorrows, little one
Sing them to the sky
Let them go, let them fly
Sing them to the sky
The same hauntingly ethereal tune wandered through the night’s air every evening to Isabelle, tucked up tight in her woollen blankets. The snow fell steadily and silently in the blackness, while her grandmother pottered around seeing to the fire. Isabelle watched with her almond shaped, unfathomable eyes until the fatigue became too much and they drooped, sending her to that other, dreaded realm.Looking at the young girls furrowed, damp brow often became too much for her grandmother, so she busied herself at the other end of their meagre hut, peeling potatoes and pickling enough fruits to see them through the winter.
If they got through the winter.
The promise was almost becoming too much for her…if only her mother would come back…her only daughter…her daughter who she hadn’t seen for more than a decade. Looking once again at the distant diamond like pinpricks of light in the heavens, the old woman clasped her hands one final time before uttering her almost ritualistic prayer.
“Please come back. Not for me, for her.”
_______________________________________
‘Rubbish!’
‘Is not, I spent ages coming up with that one!’ The girl scowled, her pretty freckled face becoming contorted with annoyance. The boy laughed.
‘You’re so full of crap, Atkins. Go back to your fairytales and leave the norms alone.’
The brown haired girl scowled again.
‘Oi, leave her alone Jeremy!’ Shouted one ginger, bespectacled girl, who had been temporarily transfixed by the schoolgirls dulcet tones and overly active imagination. ‘Jealous, are we? We all know who’s got to repeat their English test this lunchtime for getting seventeen percent.’
There was a general sniggering and the boy turned redder than a pillar box.
‘Whatever, Darcy. Least I don’t look like a carrot from behind.’
The girl rolled her eyes; it was a remark she’d gotten used to in all her eleven and a half years.
The storyteller was collecting her things up of the autumnally littered floor. ‘Thanks, Darce.’‘No problem.’ The girl smiled. ‘You know what a bigmouth that Jeremy is. He’s never been able to handle you being the smart one.’Emma blushed. She hated being referred to as “The smart one”. It was, however, an fairly accurate label. She had been transferred to the only school in her county willing to guide her through the cripplingly complicated (or so it seemed to the other children) curriculum that was originally designed for people four years her senior. In all honesty, Emma was quite literally a genius of her generation. Shuttled from one school to another, nothing had challenged her somewhat over active imagination and mind, so much to the extent that she had finished every book in one of the ill-fated school’s library within the first term of the school year.
But this school was different. Being the odd one out would always be a hindrance to Emma, but here she was more accepted than she had ever been before. Granted, most of her friends were eleven whereas she was fourteen, but otherwise it wasn’t too much of a hell hole. Almost bearable, save for the intermittent Jeremy’s who made it their mission for the week (or indeed however long their attention span was) to make her life as difficult as she could. On good days their pitiful psychological ploys were but small stepping stones, but today Emma was tired, for some reason, and had neither the energy nor the inclination to fight back, even if it was only a few sharp witted words to send her pre-teen demons packing.
A wide eyed, blond first year with wonky bunches gazed up at Emma. ‘Tell us more,’ she pleaded ‘Tell us more!’Emma sighed, scooped up the little girl and re-began her tale.
_______________________________________
The old woman remembered the night the moon has shone so bright…it had been the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the century. She could feel it in her bones. Her old bones that felt like they had seen centuries of time had been aching, not just from her rheumatism and creaking joints, but something else too. Something different. It had been the night her daughter had left too. Three successive nights of labour had gifted her with a child just a day previously, a beautiful, pale girl who was yet to be named. But as she stared with the deepest love one can find, a mothers love, she realised. She saw the white blond hair, and the large, translucently sapphire eyes, and she knew. She knew that her daughter, her only daughter, was a moon child.And she knew shat she had to do.
_______________________________________
‘Ah.’ Said the smallest girl in her high-pitched, all knowing voice. ‘But what is a moon child?’
‘Well,’ began Emma hesitantly. ‘A moon child, is, I suppose, a child who was born at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right place, and was therefore a gift from the moon.’
‘Ah.’ said the same girl. ‘Ah. But what do they do?’
Emma frowned. It had been a good three or four dozen books since she had read about the fabled lunar children. It had been several days since she had run over the facts in her head while constructing the frame for this story to cling to as it flourished. ‘Well,’ she said at long last, ‘ A moon child is just a normal girl or boy, until their first full moon, when -’ \She was interrupted by her dear friends Jeremy.
‘Werewolves? Moon children, aren’t they werewolves? And here was me thinking you were clever enough to believe in them stories.’ He sneered, his top lip curling in a feral grin.
‘Shut up.’ Chorused several people at once. Everyone was clearly weary of Jeremy’s constant interference.
‘No, never tell anyone to shut up, even if it is Jeremy.’ Reprimanded Emma. ‘He’s got the right to his opinion. And no, Jeremy, believing in fairy stories does not make you stupid, or any less intelligent than you really are. It just means…’
She bit her lip and trailed off.
‘It just means what?’ Queried a curious seven year old.
‘Nothing.’ Said Emma quickly, keen to avoid the subject. ‘Now, where was I…?’
The children merely saw an impatient storyteller eager to restart her tale, but inside, Emma knew it was quite different. No, she didn’t really let herself be taken in by the tales of princesses and curses, fairies, ghouls and beasts, but she longed to go back to the times when those stories were her world, the time when she was protected in a kind of womblike bubble from all the unpleasant realities of the world, longed to retain some of that long lost innocence of hers that vanished as fast as anything ever could the day the ECG machines electronic pulses faded into a black screen. She bit her lip and blinked, still raw from that memory even after eight whole years had passed. That day…so much like any other when it began…
The day her mother had died.
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