She awoke to deep grey skies churning endlessly into the distance over Cape Haven River.
Gazing out of the second story bedroom of her parents’ Bay Street home, Birdie wondered if she’d need to pull the storm shutters around. Autumn had arrived with its usual intensity, chasing the casual blue skies of summer south for refuge — Birdie, too, sought refuge and she’d found it here.
She felt a shiver run down her spine and pulled the afghan closer around slender shoulders. In spite of the sudden chill, Birdie felt solid reassurance from the broad pine planks beneath her bare feet. It was surprising, really, because of how little time they’d spent at Sommersong. It had been one of those mid-life spurts of spontaneity that had inspired her father to buy Sommersong to begin with.
In her eighth summer they’d been vacationing at nearby Smith Island, something her grandfather had insisted upon every summer since she could remember. They’d chase fiddler crabs and splash in the surf all morning, but by midday all the mothers (her own and Auntie Vera), were over-worried by the sun, so they’d all throw on cover-ups and straw hats and pile into the van for a ride into town.
Orton Isle was tiny, tucked pristinely along coastal Carolina where Cape Haven channelled its course from the Atlantic down to Wilmington. It consisted of a main road that ended right at the water — or, at Whittler’s Bench, as it were — crossed by a baker’s dozen or so of side streets running East and West.
Sommersong was the local gem, presiding prominently at the corner of East Bay and Moore — directly across from City Pier. Father determined to purchase her right away, which pleased Mother, but a vibrant law career in Louisiana kept them from getting to the East Coast much after that. Birdie had been once or twice since grade school, but college and a lucrative Midtown Manhattan career had erased Orton Isle from her mind.
Stepping lightly, Birdie crept downstairs. Besides her, the house was empty, but there was a sort of solemnity to the brackish morning that required she keep this reverential vigil. The usual tourists were hunkered down at their respective B&Bs while locals waited with something like relish — almost-but-not-quite-hoping — for some hurricane weather. But Birdie wouldn’t come to understand this for some time; for now, she was stranger to them all.
Yet, somehow, Birdie felt deep in her marrow that this was home. The murmuring wind whipping around Sommersong felt it, too, hinting at moments that lay far beyond this autumn— still unknown to Birdie. Skald-like, the breeze began to spin her lattice, layering the clouds that hung low and wide with a web of tales of the very depths Birdie would plumb to keep these moments alive. Gazing back at them over distances and years, Birdie would come to see that this was how it all began.
Sliding onto the piano bench in the front parlor, Birdie spun around and loosened a window latch, inviting the melancholy bellowing of the sea inside. The afghan fell from her shoulders, pooling at her sides. With a deep breath she began to play — slowly and intuitively at first, the plaintive waters her only accompaniment.
Closing her eyes, Birdie allowed herself to become part of the moment; but soon, the methodical grace and ease of Cape Haven’s lament became interlaced with the cacophonous bustle of all-too-familiar City chaos: its lights a gaudy mimicry of the starry heavens; its blaring taxis wild, mechanical gulls shrieking with greed, predatory as they circled ominously again and again —
Birdie smashed her palms down on the keys in discordant despair, her moan lost within the building squall beyond.
Fuel my work with Chai Tea Lattes! I’m hoping to — ACTUALLY! — create an entire novel from this Prologue and I run on Chai… so, if you’re feeling generous, feel free to leave a tip. <3 Thank you for believing in me!