The Violet Hour (15 page)

He slides me down, and taking my hand, leads me to small room encased by glass. A conservatory.

A myriad of plants crawl the walls. Red, full blooms adorn the vines like flowery fingers reaching for the sky and white magnolias smile down from an inside arbor, draped across the ceiling.

Small palmettos dot every corner, providing a contrast of green against the colored pinwheel of the flowers.

It is truly magnificent; as if the beauty of the woods was bred and raised in this very room.

I stare up, and imagine it on a sunny day.

Rain lambasts the room in angry sheets, sliding down the glass to distort the view of the surrounding forest.

Flickering candles huddle in every corner. A table set in silver offers a creamed soup and thick crusty bread, and two glasses full of blood-red wine. My face flushes deeper and a scratchy tickle fills my throat. I clear it.

“For me?”

He nods, gesturing for me to sit. My hand fidgets with my necklace as he pulls out the chair when it becomes apparent I am rooted like the plants.

He takes his place across from me and ladles soup into my bowl.

Brighton snaps open a napkin, and spreads it on his lap. “We need to work on the new symphony. Silas has been breathing down my neck.”

I nod and take a small sip of the soup.

The constriction is immediate.

It tightens like a slip-knot, strangling.

My throat closes. My hands clutch at my neck. I wheeze—my mouth gaping, sucking at the air like a fish on dry dirt. My eyes seem to enlarge and bulge with the increasing pressure in my chest.

I
hear
his chair clatter as my vision flickers.

“Allegra. Allegra! Whatever is wrong?”

Face flushing. Heat spreading. I see nothing, my eyes open and blinking.

I point toward the soup and croak, “Oy-oyster.”

“Merciful Father. Shellfish. You are allergic! Barty!”

My knees crumple and a sharp pain like the clanging of a bell as the back of my head strikes the chair.

Brighton’s hands catch my arms and ease me down and I feel the cold stones against my neck.

Shuffling. “Sir?”

“Fetch the powder.” His voice is stricken with panic.

“No, sir. I shall not. You said—”

“Blast it, she will die! I don’t care what I bloody-well-said. Do as I say, man!” Scrambling, beside my head. “I will do it myself.”

Footsteps receding, returning.

My lips pry open. Drops, wetting my tongue, strangely acrid and hot.

Visions
instantly erupt. Blinding-white-lights, the sound of my cello. The foreground of sound, of every piece I ever played, jumbled in a distortion of deep chords and jangling notes set in the background of my sighs, my weeping.

Blackness presses. The weight of a cannonball on my chest.

“Uh!” The unseen fist squeezing my lungs eases a fraction. I gasp and pant.

The air is coming but too slowly—like water down a constricted pipe. I am drowning on the cobblestones.

Brighton pulls me to his lap, rocking me. His whole body trembling. “Please. Please. Too much horror. Do not let her pass. I beg of you.” Then quietly, as if to himself, “She is so very
good.
This time, take me.”

The invisible hand issues a final clench in my chest and all is blackness.

I know not how long I have been gone, but it feels as if I am flying, suspended in air. But a bumpy ride, I am being jostled every which way. I force my eyes to open a slit.

I am cradled in Brighton’s arms. He is running; the thick green of the forest rushes past on either side like a blurring whirlwind of jade.

My throat itches and burns as if scorpions jab and jag the length of it from my mouth to my gut.

Free-falling
. My stomach leaps.
How?

Splaaaash.
My head, beneath water. Warmth and wetness and pressure along the length of me. Like a massive, wondrously warm bath.

My face breaks the surface and his arms encircle me, floating me on my back, but keeping me close.

My chest slowly, slowly, slowly, begins to open—the invisible fist loosening its grip.

I gasp, my mouth open and working, beating back the flickering blackness. My ribs ache, fighting to expand against the dead-weight.

“That’s it, my dove.
Breathe
, Allegra.”

Lifting again, floating. Swirling.

The itching disappears. I swallow. My throat feels utterly normal. Better than normal.

I inhale deep soothing breaths, ignoring the light tap-tap-tap of the raindrops on my upturned face.

I open my eyes. Brighton floats me around a small pool, hidden beneath a canopy so thick the sky is almost entirely shut from view. A natural greenery tent of thorns and thistles.

His eyes are bright and terrified and his mouth a taut, hard line. I smile, trying to ease them.

“I’m alright.” I stretch my legs, my fingers, my toes. “I am better than alright.”

Any and all pain has fled my body. My finger is perfect, and I flex it against my palm in the water. A symphony
explodes
in my mind, my fingers twitch, automatically grasping at the notes. It is then I notice the smell. Sulpher.

And I see the pinpricks of light above the thistle canopy and had mistaken them for stars in my previous delirium.

My breath intakes as I realize the fireflies swarm over the thistle hut, their iridescent bodies sparkling like sunlight upon snow.

Brighton releases me and I try to find my footing as my head dips below the waterline. A bit of the bitter water leaks into my mouth.

It is continuously warm. How is that possible?

“There is no bottom, tread water and swim to the side. It’s…very deep.” There is something ominous in his voice. He looks angry.

“Brighton. I feel.” I search for the precise word. “Marvelous. Like I’ve never felt before.”

He sighs heavily, then the words pour out so fast I strain to catch them. “Yes. I had no choice. You stopped breathing. And I just. I just couldn’t let you go. Not yet. Not when I must get to know you Allegra. I may be no better than my father to intervene in your passing.” He shakes his head. “No. I’m through with half-truths. I must
have you
, Allegra.”

My heart expands in my chest, next to bursting. But a seed of fear burns at its beating center. “Brighton. Nothing would make me happier. But, what is this pool? I have so many questions. And I need the answers.”

My mind flutters to my mother’s sketchbook. Had she seen this pool as well?

We have reached the side of the pool and we clutch its stony sides, our feet treading below, hidden in the murky water.

His voice is so grave, gooseflesh rises on my skin. “I only wish to protect you. My secrets are dangerous. If I tell you, you too, will be at risk. That is why I resisted you; I never wanted to bring you into…” His eyes sweep the pool, the fireflies. “All of this. I will tell you a piece at a time, keeping you as safe as I can. Can you accept that proposal?”

“I suppose so.”

“These pools are the reason I am on the isle. No one knows of them. It is vital you not reveal their location. You may find you’ve developed…new traits from bathing in its water.”

A tingle of fear slithers up my spine. “How so?”

“It is different for everyone. Come to me with whatever it is, and I shall try to explain.”

He smiles widely. “Your hair. The water removed all traces of the Henna, and your eyebrows as well.” His voice is gruff. “It’s lovely to see you, as you—Allegra Teagarden. Your hair is the loveliest shade of strawberry-blonde.”

I smile in return but it falters. “My fingers are beginning to tingle.”

“Ah. We need to get out of the water.”

Chapter Eleven

Burning.
I feel as if I am on fire.

Heat begins in the small of my back and radiates up, tendrils extending over my arms, legs, belly and breasts, culminating in a searing cluster of pain—like a branding iron, on my chest.

I sit up too quickly and stars pop in my vision as I reach for the bedside water-pitcher, awkwardly spilling half down my shift. To douse the pyre between my breasts.

My teeth chatter violently—
the world is changed
. Something is off. Or wrong.

The moonlight shines through the window and outside the fireflies bob around my window like tiny lighted sentries.

Same guest room in Brighton’s cottage. My meager belongings at the foot of the bed.

I force my eyes closed and breathe deeply, feeling my nostrils flare.

I analyze my body, flexing and bending each part; the only pain is from the heat. I open my eyes and blink—my vision is unchanged.

A
blast
of music, an internal orchestra,
vibrates
the inside of my head, knocking me sideways with the force and I collapse to the bed, panting.

I had music in my mind every day, long before I could speak.

But it was always the cello which carried the melodies. It sang naturally to me, filling my days, lulling me to sleep at night.

To imagine the melodies of the other instruments was work. At times, it took months.

But now…

I force myself to listen. Listen to the inner workings of my mind.

Every instrument
sings
, in concert—violins, percussion, horns and chimes all meld and blend in a musical weaving of melody and harmony.

I slide from the bed and pace, frantic to find paper. To put it to paper before it leaves me. I think of Heir Mozart.

I have read everything about the man I could find. It was the only time my father ever honored a request, assisting me to every journal and paper he came across on the prodigy, assuming it would translate into coin for him.

Mozart began to play at three. I was closer to nine. I was gifted, but not a prodigy. But now…

I sway and twirl in a circle on my tip-toes, my arms raised to the heavens, astounded and awed by the sounds between my ears.

I whirl as a scuttling sound blasts the side of my head and cover my ears, crouching down, panting against its force.

My eyes tick across the floor. A mouse.

But how
? A mouse could not make such a terrible, ear-crushing racket.

I must find parchment. Brighton’s supply is exhausted, he has told me so just last eve.

I fling open my door and hurry across the darkness of the parlor and out the front door. A tiny voice beneath the orchestra screams,
impulsive,
but this compulsion to rid my mind of the music drives me forward.

The travel through the isle’s ferns to the water and across the bay seems a dream, and I awaken to find myself hurrying down the Fancy’s thoroughfare…toward the white, flapping tent.

It almost seems illuminated, like a ghostly specter in the inky Charleston night.

My heart flutters uncontrollably.

Sounds are deafening. Crushing. I wince, again and again—I hear too much.

The cicada’s call, the cry of gulls, the crunch of the stones beneath my boots…my eyes quickly flick to the Spanish moss dangling from the oaks. I swear I
hear
a spider
, crawling through its mossy tendrils.

That. Is not possible.

But is it?
Anything and all seems possible with The Elementi.

I struggle, erecting a barrier inside against them, against the pain.

They dampen slightly and I smile.

I reach the tent and sigh. It is almost dawn. Light’s pink fingers are showing at the horizon as if a giant, grasping the rim of the earth.

Silas insisted the instruments be left here in the tent, safely tucked in their cases for today’s rehearsal. Or to assure their owner’s would not be escaping this night, as rumors of war intensify.

I drop to my knees and click open the case. A violin rests inside.

I instantly
see
and
hear
and
feel
the notes of the symphony dance behind my eyes and across my skin like a million tiny musical breaths, waiting to be born.

My fingers twitch to touch the neck
. I know how to play it.

My eyes skip over the cases, one by one, and my fingers twitch out the notes, each instrument, each note, like a breath released.

I smile, but my lips tremble in a terrified quiver. I can play them all. Now.

I lift out the violin, slip it beneath my chin…and the dance begins.

The remaining night passes in a haze; my fingers upon every string, every neck, pounding out each beat like a musical debauchery.

Hours later, my fingers and shoulders sore and screaming, I collapse in the tent’s center. My white dress tangled across my stretched, empty form.

I feel warmth as I am cradled against a chest. I snuggle closer with the familiar smell as Brighton takes me away, back into the night.