The Lovers of Life

CHAPTER VII - CHILDHOOD

 "I watch the stars as they fall from the sky
I held a fallen star and it wept for me, dying
I feel the fallen stars encircle me now, as they cry"

Death of Seasons – Sing the Sorrow

A.F.I.

The room was small and dingy. Very dusty too. It had been very long since last it had been visited and the room reeked of neglect. The glass pane in the window was broken and snow fluttered inside the cold room, freezing on the walls and accumulating itself on the cracking wooden floor. The room was modestly furnished with a small twin bed, a cabinet and a footstool. There was a ceramic basin in which an abandoned bird's nest accumalted dust. The pillow had been eaten by mice and elected as their residence. The door of the room was hanging from its hinges as if someone had broken-through it. But nothing seemed out-of-place in the room, as if the intruder had been apprehended before touching anything.

Every piece of furniture in the rest of the house was covered with white drapes and the wooden shutters were closed to protect the paintings and carpets from sunlight. Weeds grew between the paving stones of the alley. The iron gates of the driveway were rusty and padlocked.

I saw the old attic room and I recognized it immediately. I did not remember I had made it my hideout. I simply felt as if I had been there before in a dream. I stretched out my hand towards the old bed, but as my fingers drew near the moth-eaten bedspread the room backed away from me and I soared out of the house. I saw its many rooms, the untidy gardens, the neighbouring properties and the street as I was pulled away.

Cool air rushed at my face and my lungs filled painfully with it. I could feel my nose aching, but I was struggling with all my will to get back to the house. I had to get back in that room. There was something very important I had forgotten in there and I must go get it. A voice was calling me forward, encouraging me to go back in the house, but another was pulling me back, away from the house and the room.

Both voices were insistent. But I could not stay away and go at the same time. I felt I must get in the room; there was something crucial I'd forgotten in there or about something that had happened there. I felt sure it would all come back to me, if I could just go back there.

The voice dragging me away from the house was stronger than the other one. And it pulled and pulled against my will until I allowed myself to be pulled back. The countryside flashed passed as I soared back in my bedroom where I jerked awake with a start.

I was lying in my bed under my red tester. There were several people in the room, but I took no notice of them. I wanted to get back to the small attic room, but I was still being pulled back towards this room. Suddenly, I jerked out of my body and raced towards the town, images flying by until I was called back and forced in my body. I tugged against the binds holding me in the room, but it was no good. Once again, I had failed to stay in the old attic room. There was a satisfied snigger in my mind of the voice that kept me away from the room and a sigh from the one I wanted to follow.

I twitched and struggled in my bed, but the binds holding me to the bedposts were too strong for me. The room around me zoomed back into focus and I saw the anxiously peering faces of my father and my governess. Doctors were ambling around the room anxiously. I could feel my pulse in my neck, it grew stronger and stronger. The energy that had just waned away came back to me in a painful stab and I struggled once again to get to the room, to leave this place. But I was weakening fast now: the doctors were bleeding me. My pulse slowed down, the voices grew dim and I fell limply on my cushions.

I awoke when I felt something warm and wet against my cheek. I opened my eyes and with the feeble candlelight of the chandelier, I noticed that my nose had been bleeding all over my yellow sheets and cushions again. I gave a raw cough. It felt as if I really had soared through the cold winter.