Eye of the Raging Storm

Eye of the Raging Storm

           The melody she sang was so hauntingly beautiful that it entranced the waves. They crashed against the shore desperate for her. They longed to reach her and drag her into their embrace, but they knew she was a creature of the sky and that to do so would doom her. The waves wept with sorrow as she sang, the rain splashed against the tin roof of her dwelling and the wind pulled restlessly at her shutters. Still she sang, oblivious to the torment she caused.

           Lightning forked across the sky, brightening the late afternoon sky to midday. At the boom of thunder her voice wavered and finally stopped. Her pale eyes peered from the window, she cocked her head towards the waves as they raged and screamed their own lament, for although her voice was painful to listen to, the silence was simply agony.

She stepped away from the window and the curtain fell closed behind her. Lighting flashed again and the waves battered the rocks in frustration. Inside the house she set a kettle on her small stove, the burner clicked three times before the spark caught. She would have to mention it to the rental agent. This place was old, it smelt of brine and old floor polish, but it was solitary. That had been what she wanted after all. A few days alone before she was sucked back into the life of a lounge singer, making minimum wage and hoping she didn’t get lung cancer before she was forty. Her sister had told her the whole thing was foolish, singing wasn’t a real job. It was just something kids did; adults got real jobs. Like accounting. They got real jobs and met real men (like Brian), they bought real houses and had one child (Sarah) and one dog (Chewy). They did not spend their time in little apartments with next-door neighbors who complained when she practiced or wondering the streets at night after the rain to hear the whoosh of the cars as they carried on through puddles. No rational sane person chose to do those things.

Her sister told her so. Grace told her that she was coming up from North Carolina and that when she got there the apartment would be packed up and they would move her moved back to the suburb she had so desperately tried to escape from. She would live with Grace until she got her head on straight. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had told her sister that she was an adult now and perfectly capable of making her own decisions. Her sister was always…always right. There was no arguing with Grace, not since their parents had died and she had been left in charge at least.

She hardly remembered her parents. She had been so young when they had died, the little mistake, the child no one had planned for. A child nearly ten years younger than her sister. The child who ran through the rain laughing and sang to birds in the spring.

The kettle started to whistle and she crossed to it, pouring the water into a waiting cup and letting the smell of defusing herbs wash over her as the storm raged outside. The weather had been unexpected, on the way up here her driver had said the forecast called for sunny skies all week. Perfect beach weather, if autumn hadn’t come early.

She sat in the living room’s only chair and curled her legs under her as she blew on her tea and listened to the thunder booming. It rattled the old window glass and sent a shiver though the floorboards. The power sizzled once before it went out. Absent the humming of machines she listened to the rain outside.

A sudden pounding on the door surprised her. She jerked and the tea nearly scalded her hand as she placed it shakily on the table. The knock sounded again and she got to her feet slowly, padding across the room to place her hand on the knob.

“Who is there?” She called though the wood.

The knock repeated, but no answer was forthcoming.

With the voice of Grace scolding her recklessness she opened the door. The smell hit her first. It was the smell of the ocean on a clear summer day, salt baking in your nostrils and the sense of cool water all around you.

“May I come in?” He had a rumbling voice, so low she felt it in her chest as he spoke. He was dripping wet, the droplets pinging off the floor as he stood in the threshold. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew that her sister would scream at her, should she know, but she stepped back and allowed the man in. “I have never been inside one of these before.” The man mused as she shut the door behind him.

“A rental house?” She asked, wrapping her arms around her chest, suddenly unsure why she had let this stranger into her home.

“A rental house…” The man repeated, “how charming.”

“I thought so when I toured it.” She muttered and the man rumbled a laugh that slapped into her and nearly stole the breath from her lungs. “Um not to be rude or anything, but who are you and why are you here?”

“Who am I.” The man repeated again. Anger started to spill into her blood, and colored her cheeks.

“Yes, your name and what you’re doing here at night in the middle of a storm.”

“Storm. I like this name, you may call me Storm.”

“Okay…Storm, why are you here?”

“I am here because I heard you singing and I could not stay away.”

“Look, I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I specifically asked the rental agent for a place where I could practice without bothering anyone.” She spoke curtly and was beginning to regret her decision further.

“What is your name?” Storm asked abruptly.

She opened and then closed her mouth again, “Prudence, but call me Pru.”

“Do you often use good judgment or caution when making decisions?”

“What? Oh you’re making a joke right, because prudence…yeah. It’s just my name, if you ask my sister I don’t have much sense at all.”

She shouldn’t have told him that. That wasn’t something you said to a stranger who you invited into your house…your solitary house, in the middle of nowhere.

“Then it seems to me that you need a different name. Might I suggest Song?”

“That’s not how it works. You can’t just go around changing your name.”

“Why not?” Storm asked. The squall outside had lessened as they talked and now rain pattered softly on the tin roof.

“It’s like a legal thing you know. You need to pay someone to write some document or whatever. I don’t have money for that.”

“Do you not get paid to sing?”

“Yeah, but…” Pru paused and then sighed, “Not really enough.”

Strom sighed deeply, the sound rumbling around her and invading her lungs. “Why must all beautiful things be ruined by money?”

She just shook her head. “I suppose it is because the appreciation of money excludes the appreciation of beauty. You cannot truly pine for something unless you know it can never be yours.”

“Do you wish you could see?” Strom asked suddenly and Pru jerked so hard that her hip cracked against the side of the table. It scraped across the floor loudly.

“Why would you ask something like that?” Her voice was breathy and cold.

“Because you are blind.” Strom’s voice held no pity or apology, but a kind of open curiosity.

           She pressed her lips together tightly, “I don’t need to see to take care of myself.”

“I do not doubt you.”

“You’d be the first.” She muttered and Strom crossed the distance between them. The smell of ocean was closer now. The smell of deep, clean salt water washed over her.

Everyone had always asked her if she wanted to see or if she missed sight. She did not. She had been born sightless, her world was so full of sounds and smells that she couldn’t imagine that it could be made more complete. She couldn’t imagine she was missing anything.

Now though, she wanted nothing more than to lay her hands on this stranger’s face. She wanted to feel the shape of his mouth and his nose. This was not something she had ever done, never had she wanted to before, but now here with Storm…she felt the need to be physically close to him. He was warm standing beside her, like he had been in the sun and not soaked to the bone. She could still hear the sound of water dripping from him and onto the floor. Her breath had caught in her chest as they stood so close she could have easily reached out to him. She held her hands clasped in front of her.

Her sister’s voice was still screaming in her head.

Maybe she had gone insane and this was just her mind’s dream. Maybe none of this was real at all. “Why did you come here?” Pru asked, her voice so soft that Storm could barely hear. He leaned towards her.

“I came because you called me. You sang so beautifully I was compelled to come. Like a siren, your voice drove me to madness, but I cannot regret hearing it.”

She could feel his breath on her cheek, she could have reached out to touch him, but she was afraid suddenly. “You are very kind to say so.”

“Would you sing for me again? The song of how the sea fell in love with the sky.”

She began to sing then, the words pouring from her chest and filling the air between them. The song was a sad one, a song of love forbidden by nature.

She could feel the salty tears sliding down her own face as she sang.

The rain outside had stopped. Everything was quiet except for the music she made with her soul.

The sky and the sea were forbidden from touching for the sacrifice of the space between would be sacrifice payed by all life. None would survive their union if the sky were to fall into the sea’s embrace. So they pined for each other from afar; they looked on knowing their love was both beautiful and horrible.

She finished the song and she knew he was gone. For the storm outside had stopped raging.