Excerpt: Madame Zee

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Chapter 1

1897

Edith Mabel Rowbotham lies contentedly in a lowland meadow in Lancashire County. Partially hidden atop a soft bed of flattened fescue and sedge, sweet vernal grass and cocksfoot, saxifrage and marigold, she and her older sister Honora stare up at the hard blue sky suspended overhead. A small, copper-toned butterfly lands delicately atop a spike of crested dogstail, and a brown hare races close, stops still and grinds its teeth in startled warning, then makes a quick zigzag around their legs to disappear as quickly as it arrived.

She giggles and nudges Honora as the hare bounds away, and then she settles back on the grass. A moment later, not knowing how it is possible with her eyes wide open, Mabel sees herself, perched atop a large boulder, facing water. Sharp, wartlike barnacles encrust the sides of the rock, but its smooth bald top holds the sun's heat and warms her from below. Salt air mingles with the odours of seaweed and fish, and gulls circle with their anguished child's cry. Waves -- greenish, greyish -- roil toward her, and when she turns her back on them the incoming surf roars up behind her as if it means to crush everything in its path. Bits of kelp and floating debris catch in the shoulder of each wave before it crests, and then they smash against an outcropping of rock with such force she wonders why the earth's surface doesn't shatter like glass beneath her feet.

She hears each explosion like a cannon shot and sees the resultant spray discharge in all directions. A splash hits her leg, as cold as a bucket of ice water, one tiny portion of one vast arc that might have drenched her from head to foot and sucked her out to sea.

The ocean is powerful in its attack. Rock is equally powerful in its resistance. But for all their fierceness, the waves, momentarily expended, lap the innermost shore like a gentle, healing tongue, so that as each one withdraws, she hears the pleasant rattle of shallow water draining off pebbles.

And then all the tin-plate colours of rock and sea -- all the sensory information she can't possibly know -- recede, so that once again she lies motionless in the meadow with Honora. Her sister's hot, familiar arm encircles and supports her neck and, rising from it, Honora's faint ocean scent joins forever in her memory with the smell of crushed grass.

"I had another daydream," she says, breaking the silence. Honora has explained that daydreams are like night dreams but easier to recollect.

"Just now? Was it good?" Honora rises on one arm so her face hovers over Mabel's.

"There were birds and the sea. It was warm, but the water was cold."

"Well, you're the lucky one. I never see anything, even when I want to."

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