A Breath of Eyre (21 page)

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Authors: Eve Marie Mont

BOOK: A Breath of Eyre
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C
HAPTER
21
I
woke to a groaning stomach. Feeling an unfamiliar ache in my neck, I turned over and opened my eyes. Panic seized me until I remembered the events of last night and how I had come to be here. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and focused on the foreign terrain. A mist hovered over the moors, and sunlight was creeping through hazy clouds. I spun around in search of my mother and saw an empty spot where she’d slept. Maybe she’d gone up to the road to flag down a carriage.
I scrabbled up to the road and scanned in all directions. Where was my mother? A horrible thought struck me, of marauders coming in the night and kidnapping her. But why would they take her and not me? I roamed the area in search of her for almost an hour, calling her name until my voice was hoarse. She was gone, her trunk missing, too. Then it occurred to me—she hadn’t been kidnapped at all; she’d left of her own free will. And I knew where she’d gone: back to Thornfield.
When I returned to the spot where we’d slept, I found a note pinned to my trunk. It said: “Do not ever forget who you really are, and how valuable you are to those who love you.”
With tears in my eyes, I gathered my things and set out in search of her. I followed the road away from the sun and kept to the path a long time, stopping only when fatigue overpowered me. The valley on my right was full of pasture and cornfields and woods. A stream zigzagged through the fields, and civilization seemed near. I turned in the direction of the pastures and walked for about a mile until I heard a church bell chime.
I would go to this church and inquire about getting a carriage back to Thornfield. Surely someone there would help me. I walked another half mile until I came to a tiny village that looked like it had been built right into the craggy mountainside, the houses all huddled together with smoke plumes streaming from their chimney tops. At the bottom of the hill stood a lonely church, whitewashed and plain. I proceeded toward it in the hopes of finding a kindly minister who might direct me to the nearest inn and tell me how I might rent a carriage back to Thornfield.
I entered the tiny church through its simple wooden door and walked down the central aisle to the altar. There was no sign of life in the church, but the smell of incense lingered. I crept into one of the pews and sat down, wondering what to do. I had not been raised in a religious household, although my father did believe in giving thanks and asking forgiveness.
Now I said a simple prayer for help. I didn’t know who it was intended for—was I praying to a great Christian God to send me a guardian angel? Was I praying to Papa Legba to guide me back through the door between worlds? Or was I praying to the Universe to help me find the path of my own destiny? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I just knew I couldn’t make it on my own.
After several minutes, I felt faint with hunger and thirst. I had to find some food and drink before continuing. I stood up, grasping the back of the pew in front of me, feeling my head spin. A wave of nausea overpowered me, and I ran out of the church and into the graveyard that lay beyond, getting sick in some hedges that lined the perimeter. I felt a little better then, but still dizzy and flushed. I wiped my hand across my forehead, which felt warm and clammy. I glanced up at a sky of brilliant blue—unreal-looking, magical. I’d never seen a sky so blue. All I wanted was to float straight up and be cradled in one of its billowy clouds.
I crawled on the ground for a moment and then stopped, unable to go on. I laid my head down on the grass, feeling its green coolness soothe me. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at a headstone, overgrown with weeds, its engraving faded from years of weather. Crawling closer, I read its inscription:
To Laura, loving mother and wife. May you rest in the peace you could not find in life.
Laura. My mother’s name. This could be no accident. The gods were sending me a message, though I didn’t understand it yet. I tried to get up and resume my search for her, but I stumbled on a rock and fell. Something warm oozed from my temple, and I suddenly felt calm and very sleepy.
My recollection of the next three days and nights is dim. I know I was in a small room in a narrow bed. I took no note of the lapse of time, of the change from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed people entering and leaving the room, heard them call each other by different names, even understood for the most part what was said about me, but I was incapable of answering. A servant, Hannah, was my most frequent visitor. Two girls about my age came in less frequently and whispered worried phrases at my bedside. I think their names were Mary and Diana.
A man came once, examined me, and said my fevered state was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor since there was no disease. I think he was the girls’ brother, and they called him “Sinjun.”
After several days, I felt better, and by the end of the week, I could speak, move, rise in bed, and turn. The family who had rescued me was named Rivers, and the brother they called Sinjun was a minister at the church. I recalled that in
Jane Eyre,
Jane had stayed with the Rivers family at Moor House and had become one of their own. She had taken a position as a teacher at a local school, had become dear friends with Diana and Mary, and had even been proposed to by the minister, whose real name was St. John. It was here at Moor House that Jane would learn of her inheritance of a great sum of money from her uncle, which would make her, for the first time in her life, an entirely independent woman. All this good fortune awaited me if I stayed.
But I could not stay. My mother had told me:
Sometimes it takes courage to leave
. It would have been so much easier to stay with these people, to feel part of a family who would grow to love me, to wait for the inheritance that would free me from want and need. But this family was part of a storyline that no longer belonged to me. I had torn myself from the pages of Jane’s story the night I had escaped from Thornfield with my mother. I had to go back and find her.
I left Moor House as soon as I was well, thanking the family for their pains and promising to return when I was able, knowing I’d never see them again. St. John gave me money for the fare, and by four o’clock that Saturday I stood at the crossroads in Whitcross, waiting for the arrival of the coach that would take me back to Thornfield. It stopped when I beckoned, and I entered the carriage, feeling like the messenger pigeon flying home.
The journey took over six hours. When we came upon the lane where I had first met Rochester and Pilot, I asked to get out of the coach and paid my fare. I walked that familiar lane, stopping at the fence to recall Rochester’s horse clattering along the lane, Pilot appearing suddenly in the hedge, the crash on the ice, my rescue of Rochester. But instead of feeling a quaint nostalgia, I felt a wave of fear as I approached the house, intensified by a low roaring noise coming from beyond the hill. When I crested it, my fears were confirmed: Thornfield was a mass of flames.
I began running down the hill and felt heat pulsing from the building. The stones were groaning like they were alive. As I approached, I saw my mother on the battlements, her dress billowing, her long black hair streaming against the flames. Mr. Rochester emerged onto the roof behind her and called out her name.
I ran to the bottom of the building and called up to her as well. “Mother,” I screamed. “Mother!”
She ignored Rochester’s pleas and peered down at me. I thought I saw a glimpse of tender regret on her face. Rochester ran toward her, arms outstretched, and she yelled something I could not hear, then threw herself off the roof. I watched as this dark-plumed thing descended, wings outstretched, then shielded my face to avoid seeing her smash against the stones. I ran to the spot where she’d fallen, screaming wildly.
Suddenly, there was a great crash. The building seemed to heave and shudder. Servants dashed madly across the lawn. Walls collapsed, and the stone battlements where Mr. Rochester stood began crumbling.
I ran in after him, heading to the stairs. Smoke surged through the stairwell, and I held my palm to my mouth to shield my nose and lungs. I arrived on the third-floor corridor just in time to see a massive beam crash down from the ceiling, striking Rochester on the side of the head. I ran to him. A gash by his left eye was bleeding profusely.
“Mr. Rochester, I’m here,” I said. I took off my cloak and pressed it against his temple. “Are you all right?”
“I cannot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst.” He groped for me, and I seized his wandering hand. “Her very fingers!” he cried. “Is it Jane?”
“It is,” I said. I couldn’t help but cry at this unexpected reunion.
“Jane Eyre! Jane Eyre!” he shouted, then sputtered from the smoke. “It must be a dream.”
“It’s not a dream,” I said, stroking his head.
“Oh, Jane. I tried to stop her,” he said, losing all composure. “I tried to save her. I’m so sorry. I tried—”
“Quiet,” I said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”
Some men had entered the hall and stood waiting to place Mr. Rochester onto a stretcher. One came up behind me and said, “The engines have arrived from Millcote. The building is not sound. We must leave immediately. A carriage awaits Mr. Rochester.”
“We must go, Mr. Rochester,” I said.
“I am Mr. Rochester again? Please, call me Edward.”
“All right, but Edward, we must leave now.”
“Kiss me before we go,” he said. “Embrace me, Jane.” And because I knew I’d never see him again, I pressed my lips gently to his, then swept his hair from his brow and kissed his wound, too. He suddenly seemed to rouse himself. “It is really you, Jane? You are come back to me, then?”
I couldn’t crush him with the truth. “I am, Edward. I am.”
In the real story, Jane would come back to her Rochester, and she would forgive him for his transgressions. Finding him blind and enfeebled, she would agree to be his nurse, his guide, and his best earthly companion. All would end well for them, and Bertha’s death, while tragic, would allow them the happiness they could never have had while she was alive.
But my story had yet to be written. I held his hand as the men loaded him onto the stretcher, and he clung to me until the last. I stood in the hallway crying and choking until someone found me and led me downstairs and out of the burning house.
I walked to where my mother lay, all her life extinguished. I had come back for her. I had tried to save her. But I couldn’t. Why was I unable to change her ending?
I pulled myself away from the carnage and toward cleaner air, and that’s when I saw smoke rising from the stables beyond. The fire was spreading to the barn. I set off in a run.
As I got closer, I could hear the horses snorting and stomping. And I could hear something else—a low roar, like the sound of wind over the moors. Without thinking, I flew to the double doors and opened them, setting free pillars of black smoke that charged at me like wild horses. Heat as I’ve never felt before slammed against my body like a living thing, and a magnificent golden light filled the sky.
The horses reared and neighed wildly, the sound of their panic over the hiss and snarl of fire jolting me to action. “Help!” I called at the top of my voice. “Somebody, help!”
The flames were a fiery wall, a hot tidal wave advancing toward me, but I pressed through the heat and the smoke and began unlatching the gates of the pens, ducking my head under my arm to keep myself from choking. Some of the horses bolted right past me as soon as the gates swung open, but others reared back, afraid to move. I didn’t even think about what might happen once they were loose; all I knew was I had to get them out of the burning barn.
When I got to the pen that held Mr. Rochester’s best stallion, I released the latch, and he shot out like a dart, knocking me backward. My head hit the ground with a thud, and pain sliced through my body. I tried to sit up but found I couldn’t move. Blood pounded in my ears, and my heart thudded in my chest. Suddenly my heart seemed to stand still, as if it had been jolted by an electric shock.
A realization swept through me. I was going to die here in this barn on the same night my mother had died. I hadn’t been able to save her; why should I be able to save myself? I clutched my chest, feeling like this was going to be my last moment here on earth. Fumbling, I grabbed hold of my necklace.
I thought of Papa Legba’s refrain, but I knew it didn’t hold the key to my fate. In fact, it never had. The key had always been within me. I felt two tides pulling me, one toward life, the other toward death. I closed my eyes and felt an overpowering urge to surrender to the tide that was drawing me out toward the wide blue sea—a brilliant turquoise ocean sparkling under a full moon. I knew there was a shore at the other end of that ocean, and that if I let myself go to it, my mother would be there waiting for me. How I longed to give in and let myself go, to stop fighting against this relentless tide.
Then I thought of the words my mother had written for me.
Do not ever forget who you really are, and how valuable you are to those who love you.
I had to fight harder. I had to get back to the ones who loved me. To the ones I loved. I could hear their voices in the distance, calling to me. One seemed to be saying my name. Some inner force propelled me across the water toward that voice with a power I didn’t know I had.

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