The Shadow Catcher

“Play us something, darling,” Clara’s father had said, leading her back inside to her piano. He had left the front door open and Clara lingered at the edge of night as the notes rose from her mother’s fingers and floated out across the city, an accompanying phenomenon to nature’s own.

The snow was followed by a day of freezing cold, the sky a blank slate like a block of sullied ice which pressed into one’s lungs and froze people in their tracks as they tried to shovel. Sitting in the downstairs while her mother played that evening, Clara thought she’d heard it, finally, that bafflement of snow, silent, calm and soothing, as if the house were cupped in mittens.

The next day, the eve of Christmas Eve, the sun had risen strong and stunning, drawing people from their homes where they’d been stranded, avid to start digging out, eager to be witness to the beauty that the storm had wrought. Once he’d cleared a pathway to the street, Clara’s father rounded up the sleds and, laughing and delighted by the unexpected balmy turn the weather had taken, the four of them joined others in their neighborhood in a motley parade toward the open land on Finland Hill.

“I brought my money with me,” Hercules had confided to her.

“Why did you do that?”

“Two days left to Christmas. There’s a chance that we’ll find some place open.”

And, indeed, they had. A funny little shop on a corner five blocks from their street, where, for whatever reason, none of them had gone before. A lot of work had gone into its presentation on that morning, the sidewalk had been cleared, a banner hung, and it was evident the owner didn’t want to lose another day of business in this Christmas week. Fronted by a brick skirt from which a story-high glass window rose, the storefront beckoned with a display of lacquer boxes, silks and rice paper scrolls of the kind generally associated with the China trade, but there were also moroccan leather books and inlaid marble chessboards on the shelves inside.

“I’m going in,” Hercules announced.

“We can do it on the way back,” Clara reasoned.

“You need to find a present, too,” he argued.

True: she hadn’t found the gift yet for her mother.

Ten minutes, Amelia shooed them, laughing.

“Don’t watch us — turn around!” Hercules insisted.

Inside a funny little man rose up from behind a glass display case, wearing a round felt hat shaped like a can of peaches.

Fresh in, all foreign, he promoted.

We’re just looking, Clara told him.

She had cast a glance over her shoulder at her parents standing with their arms around each other in the sunlight dutifully aiming their attention toward the street.

“Shiny gold, some pearls?” the man in the canned hat was asking her, but Clara’s attention had been drawn to a specific case. “Are those…music boxes?”

Yes, miss.

“Even that one?” She’d pointed to a porcelain enameled box, palm-sized and painted with a single violet on its top.

The man unlocked the case and drew it out. Handing it to her, he prised open the lid and a tinkling phrase began to play, like notes played with a silver spoon on icicles.

Holy cow, just look at that, is that a compass, mister, Dad would sure be pleased to have a compass—

How much is it? Clara asked.

Was ten. For you…I take eight dollar.

Her heart had skipped but she was careful not to show it.

She cast a glance back at her parents.

“Let me see this compass, mister,” Hercules plowed on. “Don’t you think Dad could use a compass swell as this one, Clara?”

Don’t show it to him, Clara told the man. Think, Hercules. Why would Father need a compass? When would Father ever use one? You want to see that compass because it’s just the sort of useless thing that you would like…

Outside, just then, Amelia had laughed at something that Clara’s father had just said. Clara looked at her again, the way she threw her head back, her laugh ascending upward from her throat, climbing like a chordal scale in harmony, all tinkling light, just like the music box.

I’ll take it, Clara had informed the man.

He had nodded, she had smiled.

Her mother had continued laughing, and then there’d been the sound of distant thunder, only brief, too brief, and then the floor had shaken, all the glass had shaken, all the tiny lovely objects on display and then the light had dimmed, then dimmed again, as if one cloud and then another, larger, one had edged across the sun. There had been a single uncomprehending instant when she’d stared into the man’s contorted face and then there had been an almost deafening great booming roar, her ears had popped and every surface in the building took the impact of a great unmaking. There had been an eerie light like doom and when she’d turned to look out on the street the world had disappeared behind a wall of snow and ice and there was nothing on the other side of the window but a bafflement of snow a story high and in it, at the height of Clara’s head, a single human hand, her mother’s, stretched out as if to reach above the octave.