Isabella by Fiona Mountain

Author:Fiona Mountain
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446441909
Publisher: Random House

Fifteen

I awoke that night suddenly, startled and confused, as if I had been disturbed by an unexpected sound. In the darkness I listened, my senses straining, but there was nothing except the melancholy moan of the easterly wind tormenting the trees, the branches of the creeper that clung to the side of the house tapping tentatively against the window-pane. I shut my eyes once more and eventually I drifted off to sleep again. Though it was not a deep or restful sleep, but the kind where you have the most vivid dreams and remain just conscious of what is happening around you. I was aware of the rough gusts of wind, sighing and howling around the valley, the way they dropped abruptly, died away just for a moment, leaving a silence that seemed louder than the winds had been.

Bishop Watson had explained this phenomenon to me once, on a spring evening when converging breezes agitated the fresh blossoms of the cherry trees in the orchard and lightning flickered above the purple summits of the Lang-dales. He described how the amphitheatre of surrounding mountains causes those strange and sudden flurries of winds, followed by moments of absolute stillness. How they deflect a gust, trap it, block its path then send it flying back the way it has come, ricocheting around the valley until it finds a release or its energy is exhausted. It is like the ocean, he said. The winds are like waves rolling into shore, pounding against a rugged cliff, colliding with those that have already broken against the rocks on the headland and have been thrown back, are racing once more out to sea. It is also the encircling mountains that cause the echoes for which the vale has become famous.

During a silence I heard it again, the sound that I was then sure must have been the one that had woken me. Low and sombre, there could be no mistaking it this time. The long, hollow note sounding out across the water, through the darkness, seeking me. I listened as its echoes rolled away and grew faint, only to return, just as clear, just as plaintive, each echo like a treacherous and invisible undertow, dragging me down, filling me with a strange mixture of elation and fear.

I waited in the darkness, counting the seconds, counting my breaths and the beating of my heart.

The wind rose up again, hurling itself against the unyielding mountains. It rattled impatiently against the closed window and a stray draught must have found a way in somehow for the pale blue silk curtains stirred and fluttered, almost imperceptibly, like the first wind in the sails of a ship that has been becalmed.

The polished oak floorboards felt cold beneath my feet as I walked over to the window and drew back the curtains. I lifted up the window and leant out, standing there in my thin white shift, letting the blasts rush over me, chill and prickle my skin. It was very dark outside.

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