The Violet Hour

by Brynn Chapman

  His eyes steal to the rain, battering the window. “In this weather, sir?”

  I close the door on his inquiry and flip up the collar of my coat against the driving rain.

  The lightning blazes and my gaze shoots out to the sea, only barely visible through the break in the thick isle vegetation.

  A center bolt, raw and blazing-blue strikes the water again and again, while electrified tendrils shoot out on every side as if it seeks to expand its reach.

  “One, two, three, four,” I whisper. Not enough voltage.

  I hear the feline caterwauling begin in the forest and glance behind in time to see the predictable swarm of fireflies alighting from a thick Oak.

  Craaack! The sky lights as if the angels wage a heavenly battle.

  I jog faster, sloshing my way through the ferns and underbrush. A branch dislodges and I leap over it, running full-on toward the pond. Toward him.

  Mud forms and I skid to a halt, almost colliding with the lightning rods.

  Craack!

  My eyes shoot skyward as the black blustery clouds part to permit a cascading heavenly downpour.

  The thick bolt flashes, illuminating the pond and clearing in a luminescent blue, so that for single moment, night is day. Is it day where he is?

  A silence, a mere beat and—“Good word!” I step backward, fighting to catch my breath.

  From the storm’s center a violent flash erupts. A fiery string of lightning slashes the dark like a sizzling whip-crack and connects to the pole before me, setting it humming and vibrating.

  The current quivers and leaps across the rods, one by one, forming undulating thick plasma, like a comet’s tail.

  “Yes. Yes! Go you bloody monster!”

  The current races about the circle, till it reaches the initial contact-rod and a field forms—translucent and cloudy-blue, like some bizarre, electrified candy-floss.

  The surface of the pool ripples and bubbles. Images whisk across it. Tears fill my eyes. “Thank Providence. Finally. Finally.”

  I step into the current, barely feeling the sting and the smell of burning hair on my arms. For a few long moments, I levitate, stuck between this reality and the next.

  The current spits me out and I fall to my knees before the water, plunging my hand into the foam.

  The images, people, blink and shimmer on the surface.

  The cats stalk beside the pond, ten in all, circling the perimeter of blue floss, crying out to one another as the fireflies hover above the water, dipping and almost, but not quite touching the bubbling surface.

  The racing pictures slow, and halt. And he is there.

  “George,” I choke. “Oh, Georgie. I’m so sorry.”

  The pond skates through time like a revolving roulette wheel. I need it to halt and hold on where George is now. Not the ruddy past.

  He is only twelve; his brown innocent eyes stared up trustingly at my father, who brandishes a syringe toward his extended arm. My throat closes, “Oh, Georgie.”

  Anger burns every beat of my heart. That I was not there. Did not stop him.

  The images shift once again, and my chest contracts with the pain.

  George and Lucy, down by the bay. Lucy is tiny, perhaps three.

  George bolts after her, playing tag. George, at five, could not speak. Had only his hands to communicate.

  Lucy toddles towards a bridge, half-submerged in the swamp.

  George’s eyes widen and he dashes ahead of her, standing before the entrance, arms spread wide, not letting her pass.

  He inhales deeply, “Help!”

  The hot stings of tears course my face. His first word. His first word uttered protecting his sister. Providence, he is so good. Why did he not take me?

  A shifting of images again.

  George now. Yes. It is he, now. Where I wish to be, where I need to be.

  Simple, kind, adult George, with…someone I’ve never seen before.

  A tall, blonde beauty. She holds out her hand to him. My heart sears with pain.

  A minion sent by my horrible father?

  His face gives way into a huge smile as she slides her thin hand into his thick one.

  How can this be? The George I know is like a child. Not capable of…love between a man and woman?

  Something about his face; an awareness in his eyes, I have not seen since his childhood, since the accident left his mind wanting.

  My brow furrows and panic and rage pump through my veins.

  “George!” I scream, knowing he cannot hear me.

  I pause. The hesitation is not more than a few beats of my heart-but with each pulse in my ear, I see her. My desire and need and…love for her, hold me back.

  I hurtle off the bank and dive. Cold and heat rush past and envelope the length of my body like sinus waves. I open my eyes under the water. To utter blackness. I am too late.

  I swim upward, kicking, bursting through the surface, searching furiously left and right.

  “No! No.”

  A still pond. Deadened, lifeless silver poles. No current.

  No images.

  The storm moved on. And has taken with it, my heart.

  * * *

  The dream drives me from my bed once again. My mother, surrounded by Magnolias, dripping in them. They spread before her like a flowery path and when she begins to speak, fetid water, laden with white petals pours from her dead, open mouth.

  I sit up, trying to catch my breath. My eyes steal across the room to Sarah’s door and I stifle the sobs.

  If she hears me, she will no doubt comfort me, without any regard for her own fatigue. She has been by my side, holding my hand, through a countless number of these recurring dreams since my mother’s demise.

  As many as I permit her to see.

  My eyes flick back without my permission to my mother’s sketchbook and my hand reaches for it of its own accord. I hug it tightly and slide to the bed’s edge.

  Mother died here, in Charleston, the first time we visited.

  I shudder as the images flicker across my mind like a black-and-white photodrama.

  It was our second tour to the States, and mother had been so excited, without a trace of the melancholy which so often plagued her.

  I can still feel her hands in my curls, arranging my hair; her dark eyes staring gravely overtop the pile to pierce me in the mirror.

  “Play well, tonight Allegra,” she said seriously. “There is something…amazing about this place. I feel it. If they like your music, perhaps they shall ask us back again.”

  And she smiled so widely, I couldn’t help but believe it.

  But it did not end that way. We came back, but without her.

  She chose this place, over me. The lump in my throat clogs my breathing and I press my lips tighter, my fingernails biting into the sketchbook’s cover.

  That is why I chose here to flee Father’s yoke. To somehow, someway be closer to her. Or what was left of her, lost somewhere to the waters.

  I try in vain to shut the memory-door, but I’ve carelessly cracked it open and the images slip out.

  My father, his face red with rage, shaking all over, brandishes my mother’s parasol like a sword as I peer through the crack in the door. “She is gone,” he roared.

  His first officer, Mr. Barrow, shook his head. “Sir?”

  “This is all that is bloody well left.” He shakes it in his face. “The lunatic drowned herself.”

  I slam and bolt the memory closed, my hands and body shaking around her sketchbook, still clutched to my chest.

  Madness lies in remembering.

  I throw off the coverlet and pad toward the cottage door, sliding my bare feet into my boots as I hastily throw a day dress over my shoulders and wrestle it down to my knees.

  I rush into the night, blinking to clear the blur of tears. The bright white moon comes into focus and lights my steps.

  Mother’s horribly abrupt departure from my life; could it only have been two years prior?

 
For me, my mother’s death has altered time’s hourglass; in one moment, it seems only yesterday she was smiling and clapping, but if I reflect on all the events that have transpired since her passing—it seems a millennium.

  I clasp the book tighter, one of my few tangible proofs of her existence.

  There is some light along Fancy’s walkways, lanterns set ablaze for the security force. I pick up my pace; wanting to avoid the scolding I will undoubtedly receive if one of the guards happens upon me.

  I am a treasured piece of china, once again—trading father for Silas.

  But again, not treasured for myself. For my music. It is always for my music.

  How I might line another’s pocket.

  I stop beneath one of the lanterns and flip through the sketchbook and locate the picture.

  Mother had even drawn a crude map with a playful X, marking the spot. Two recurring themes are found within my mother’s sketches.

  The first being, water. Ponds, tide pools, waterfalls, the sea, rivers.

  And then, beneath each drawing, is a tiny mystery.

  My mother very curiously sketched either a window or a tiny ornate door below each body of water.

  Some have magnolias, my mother’s favorite flower, dangling all about the pools in white, silky clumps. So true to life, I can almost smell their cloying sweetness drifting from the page.

  For two years this riddle has driven me mad.

  What did it mean?

  My mother was nothing but pragmatic. I have no doubt the riddle was intended for me. And me alone.

  Thus began my obsession with locating and visiting every body of water that had poured out of her talented fingertips.

  She had never let me see her sketchbook as a child, and I know this too is significant, as surely as I feel the thrum of my heart. I flick my fingertips, a nervous habit left-over from childhood, which drove my father mad.

  I smile and flick them all the harder.

  I hurry to the shore and walk quickly, whisking along the tree line.

  A movement catches my eye and my heart flutters in fear of discovery. I adhere myself to an ancient oak to peek around.

  A violent geyser surges upward like a frothing-white, upside-down waterfall as the incoming tide collides into the rocky shore.

  The burning on my chest lights and I scratch at the skin beneath my pendant.

  The tide pool. Just as mother depicted in her book.

  I run and in minutes am staring down into its depths, my eyes constantly flicking to the surf, minding the return of high tide.

  Orange sea-stars and scuttling crabs of every color litter the bowl and my breath catches and I choke, “Momma. Why. How could you leave me with him?”

  I sit on the bowl’s edge, taking care of the slippery stones and flip the book open.

  Below the picture, my finger slides down to caress the tinier picture.

  If there was any doubt as to what it was, beside it, in her elegant script, is the word, Window.

  I whisper the word, bending close to the water and it…ruffles. Like a breeze has blown across it.

  I feel my eyebrow arch and I scramble to stand as another wave hits, sending a volcano of seawater into the air. I bite my lip as the cold water droplets shower me…and say it again. “Window.”

  The water darkens, and the sea creatures disappear, melting away from view. The burning on my chest is excruciating, and I lurch forward but I cannot, will-not, draw my eyes away.

  Images glide across the top like ice skater’s on a winter pond.

  I squint, my hands covering my face and my open mouth.

  Is there a connection with Brighton’s pond? But it had something to do with the silver rods. Is this what he seeks at the water’s edge?

  I have no rods, so why is it happening here?

  A burly man, with arms like small tree-trunks, slams a hammer over and over again. A Smith. He’s a smithy.

  He’s sitting now, staring through an eyepiece, molding something very small, very delicate.

  A woman’s skirt is barely in view, but I make out the fine lace of its hem, though she is not fully visible. The image is like a moving photo, and she stands just at its border.

  Thunder rumbles overhead and the images falter.

  My mind grapples with the puzzle, but it’s just out of reach like the fading remnants of a dream. My chest. My chest is burning, itching—I bite down on my lip to stifle the cry.

  “No. Please, I don’t understand.” Panic tightens my throat as if my mother is in reach and an empty hole in my soul opens, that I will lose her once again.

  “Please!” I shriek, forgetting myself, forgetting the nearby security. The shrillness of my cry raises gooseflesh on my arms.

  Thunder again. Lightning flashes. The images flicker and die.

  I jam mother’s sketchbook beneath my dress and flee toward the tree line and…remember.

  The lace. Beyond that lace, to the right, was a Magnolia patch.

  That was the hem of my mother’s skirt.

  * * *

  One week later

  Allegra

  The heat on the veranda is stifling and I flutter my fan, though I know it to be futile.

  I stare and shuffle, marveling that a mere porch could be so very beautiful. I stare over the porch rail into a man-made Eden. Crepe myrtles and palmettos give the illusion of water on land as their fronds whisper and flutter in the salty breeze. Pink azaleas dot the stone walkways and magnolias flower and bloom at every turn.

  Silas’s ornate privacy door which leads to the midway is closed. People pass by; I see them, coming and going about their business, but not a one dares to glance up at us.

  I’d learned the hard way about the Southern custom; when one’s door was closed, it meant the occupants were not ready to receive guests, despite the fact the owners might be clearly visible from the street on their open porch. Southerners considered it the height of rudeness to disrespect this custom.

  One man, Tom, perhaps a foreigner like me, had ignored this crucial rule, gawking as some well-to-doers lounging on their piazza. He was promptly jailed…and earned the name, Peeping Tom.

  Silas considers me, breaking my reverie; his black eyes rove boldly without the slightest regard for propriety.

  I flush deeply and quickly hand him my symphony, fighting to keep my hand steady. The man smells weakness; imbibes and swallows and distills it for his own personal use. My heart picks up to a staccato rhythm, as it always does in his presence; which has naught to do with attraction and everything to do with survival.

  Being in his presence is like dancing around a jungle cat. One false word or move, and he will pounce.

  His face brightens as he scans the notes. “Marvelous. I assume you’ve penned a copy for Mr. Plimpton?”

  I automatically nod. He is tone deaf, what does he know of marvelous? I stifle the grin at his choice of words.

  I should be thrilled. My first original score—and an entire orchestra will play it.

  My finger throbs; a physical manifestation of all my hours of composition and practice. I fight not to flex my fingers, to give Silas any indication I may be a liability.

  Beneath my skirt, my legs twitch, anxious to vacate the piazza. Wild thoughts fill my head.

  There is a certain madness to Silas. That he seems to give free reign when I am alone with him.

  His nostrils flare as he stares out across the garden. I recognize lust when it’s before me. Father paraded a fair share of suitors, all tight as thoroughbreds, ready to bed me in a word.

  Fear that he will take me right here, right now, regardless of the passing workers is a distinct possibility. Daring them to glance up. To do something about it, if they dare.

  Sweat pops on my brow and my fan flutters in response.

  “Will you not stay?” He gestures to the lunch of fresh mussels, laid upon an ornate silver tray on the serving table.

  My skin prickles, thinking of the rash that will ensue if I touch
even one.

  “No, thank you, sir. I must make haste. Practice, you know.”

  He is beside me in a blink. My hands grip the piazza railing and I fight the swoon borne of fear.

  His finger wraps about my curl as he purrs, “Allegra. You are a most peculiar creature. Peculiar, but oh so enticing.”

  I swallow and inch away from him but he closes the gap once again.

  I hear a girlish giggle from the street below and feverishly wish myself there, inside that girl’s body and life, my voice issuing that innocent sound.

  Silas plants his lips in the small space below my ear and whispers, “I shall have you. One way or the other. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just consent. I will even give you the honor of becoming my bride.”

  I shudder as his fingers splay and trail down my neck which burns red-hot.

  “I do not think so—”

  “Do, remember, sweet Allegra, that soldiers search the streets for you this very night, and all it would take is a singular word from me to sending you packing.”

  I shift tactics. “I am, of course, highly honored by such a suggestion and proposal, sir.” My face blushes hot with the lie, but he seems to be even more enamored by the color.

  My breath is coming faster and I struggle to hide it.

  I choose my words carefully—he is a powder-keg of a man, and my words the ignition.

  “I.” I clear my throat to vanquish the fear. “I am so very honored, Mr. Boone…” I step toward the exit, never dropping our gaze. “But I need to focus on my music. I am a savant of sorts, unable to properly divide my attentions…”

  I have reached the door; I jump as the doorknob rattles against my back.

  His smile is lascivious. A jackal licking his lips. “Of course. I can see how I might become your obsession; distract you from your music. Which we both need. But one day, I fear my need for you, shall supersede even my need for the coin your music provides.”

  I curtsy and hurry out the privacy door, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I feel the impending swoon, but breathe deeply through my nose and out my mouth to ward it off.

  I cross the grounds, focusing solely on the warm sun, letting it burn away the cold remnants of his lust.