There was no single event that made Isabella’s attention turn to the blue mist but after many visits it did. No longer satisfied with the outer circle she began to wonder what lay beyond the blue mist and where Icarayus came from and returned to. She had tried to ask him but he never answered her. He referred to a big house from time to time without ever saying which big house.
One afternoon Icarayus had left her in charge of the Spectas and as he left Isabella watched him walk around the circle, but then disappear. She could not be sure that he hadn’t just gone round the bend and out of sight, but it seemed too sudden for that to be true, so she ran after him and found no sign of him.
What she did notice was a thicker blue line within the blue mist, like the point where two curtains overlap. As she went closer she could see that there were folds of colour, the blue mist was not all one thickness, or colour and that meant that there were places where she could peek through. This realisation made her jump back as she felt a shiver of fear as if she was about to break some unwritten code. She could not explain what prompted this reaction, nothing had been said about the house being a secret, but there was something about the mist that discouraged prying eyes and as much as Icarayus had been very attentive to her and her life, he had never really shared anything about himself.
After quite a while of, “Will I, won't I? Should I, shouldn’t I?” she pressed her face close to one of the transparent folds and saw in the distance the most beautiful and unusual house sitting in the centre of a sunburst of ancient fruit trees. Long avenues of gnarled, dark trees lined up before her, replete with colourful, but unrecognisable, fruit and perfumed blossoms that gave the air a slightly sickly scent.
She squinted her eyes to look beyond the trees into the centre where the house was, but it was difficult to focus on for it shifted its shape and colour all the time. It was like a fairground helter skelter made out of marbles that had been built under a waterfall. At times it shone like a diamond in the sun and then like a moonlight pool. There were no visible inhabitants and yet there was a constant feeling of movement and the cadence of harmonic conversation moving up and down the length of the structure.
In the orchard all was still except for some birds and a large sleepy and contented dog that had its head on its paws and was gazing rather sadly in the direction of the big house. At that moment she coughed and as the dog swung its head towards her and she backed off in fear. She waited to see if the dog would appear out of the blue mist and attack her, but nothing happened so she decided to return to her tree and see if she could see any more from that vantage point.
Back in her tree she realised she could see no more from there than she could on the ground, although in her imagination she found herself back in the orchard itself, walking through the avenues of trees and gazing up at the ripe orange, purple and red fruit. There was a feeling that this land belonged to the trees and she stepped quietly and daintily around their roots being careful not to disturb their silence.
Suddenly the canopy of leaves thinned out and she saw a white gazebo glinting in the sunlight and smelt the roses that climbed over its roof and walls and heard the bees buzzing. As she stepped closer she saw that a man and a woman were inside and her cheeks reddened as she became aware that she was intruding on a very deep and personal conversation. Their heads were close together and they were talking intently and, to her surprise, she felt a pang of jealousy. They seemed so intimate, so attentive to one another, rather like she would be with Raven and that evoked a pang of grief.
She watched their conversation, their intimate touching of hands, the closeness of their heads, their conspiratorial demeanour and she felt alone and sad and her eyes misted over. She felt strangely separate from their world for, if she had been spying on another couple in 'real' life, she would have walked away, but this couple seemed to exist in another world, a parallel world, visible but separate, and that somehow made her spying acceptable.
They talked for a long time and disconcertingly their physical forms, which were as fragile as gossamer shimmering in the sunlight, constantly changed colour and at times merged one with another to create another rainbow. It was like watching rain falling in sunlight, but more substantial.
The woman, when she was visible, was a natural beauty with long golden hair and a slim figure dressed in the lightest robe of blue and green. There was a texture and shimmer to her robe that gave the impression of the wings of a dragonfly and when she moved there was a slight rustle.
The man had his back to her but he appeared handsome and strong and familiar. His movements were very light and expressive and he was very animated in his speech, although all she could see was his dark curls moving as he spoke and his slender hands moving to touch the hands of the woman and hold them as he gazed into her eyes.
He was dressed in more modern flowing and colourful clothes which were a mixture of reds and browns, they were more opaque than the woman's.
After a very long time when Isabella was feeling sleepy just watching them he stood up to leave and turned to walk towards her and as he did so he looked up in her direction and smiled, as if he knew she was there and she recognised that smile with a jolt. It was Raven, but not the boy she knew and loved, it was Raven the man. His crooked smile and squint over one eye gave him away although everything else about him was different.
She felt a mixture of fear and sadness rise up inside her and she gulped to clear the lump in her throat. She felt pinned to the spot as she watched him walk towards her, but he did not emerge through the blue mist, he simply faded before he reached her and she felt her loss all the more acutely.
She looked behind him for the woman but she too had gone. Isabella had not seen her leave, nor the gazebo vanish, but it was as if the scene had been wiped from a huge blackboard and all that was left was the stain of the blue chalk.
For months Isabella did not return to the tree, she could not put into words what had changed but everything changed from that moment forward, she felt that Raven was getting on with his life, or at least another life, and that she should get on with hers. So she concentrated on her friends and family and for some months she felt she made progress. There were whole days where she did not think of Raven and where her mother would not mention him either, although his presence in the house never really vanished. One cold weekend she and her parents cleared out his room, they sobbed together and reminisced but there was also a positive feeling about accepting his death and moving on with life.
Raven had left them with two large problems, Bubble and Squeak, two Koi carp that were rapidly outgrowing their tank. So, over a long weekend of hard labour Isabella and her father dug them a pond in the garden and surrounded it with all the plants that Raven loved. At the end of the weekend, when they were both tired from their labours and exhausted from all their recounting of tales about Raven sometimes accompanied by laughter, sometimes with tears, they sat together with a drink and watched the sun set over their Raven shrine.
Once the pond had settled it was time to release the fish and so the whole family crowded round to watch how Bubble and Squeak would react to so much freedom, but no one needed to have worried they both acted as if space and foliage had been part of their everyday existence. In the sunlight their colours really came alive, the reds and ochres of Squeak and the blues and green of Bubble reminded Isabella of the colours of the clothes worn by the man and the woman in the gazebo and she found, for the first time in a long while, that the desire to return to the tree and talk to Raven was strong again.
