A Half Forgotten Song

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The wind was so strong that Dimity felt herself pulled between two worlds; caught in a waking dream so vivid that the edges blurred, and then vanished. The gale tore around the corners of the cottage, humming down the chimney, crashing in the trees outside. But louder than any of that was the sea, beating against the stony shore, breaking over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. A bass roar that Dimity seemed to feel in her chest, thumping up through her bones from the ground beneath her feet.

She’d been dozing in her chair by the remnants of the fire. Too old and tired to rise, to take herself upstairs to bed. But now the wind had wrenched the kitchen window open and was flinging it wide against its hinges, hard enough that the next bang might be its last. The frame was rotten; it had been years since the window was held shut by anything more than a wedge of folded paper. The sound came into her dream, and woke her, and she hovered on the verge of sleep as the cold night air poured in, pooling at her feet like the rising tide. She had to get up and wedge the window shut before the pane smashed. Dimity opened her eyes, and could see the gray outlines of the room well enough. Outside the window the moon raced across the sky, clouds streaking past it.

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