Tidetown by Robert Power

art”.’
    â€˜Beautifully put, Mrs April,’ he smiles.
    â€˜Someone before me, methinks.’
    â€˜Isn’t it ever? Nothing new under the sun, but beautiful nonetheless in the recounting.’
    She looks out the arched window across the cloisters. The sun is setting, casting a long shadow across the deep green of the lawn. The heavy wooden door of the chapel opens and there stands Zakora, framed in the doorway. Their eyes meet: she smiles and he smiles. She waves and he waves back, both caught in a shared moment.

    Mrs April came from an unlikely home, but one bristling with potential and open minds. Her father was an eminent astronomer whose wonder at the mysteries of the universe turned him into an astrologer before Mrs April was born. His amazement at what he saw through the end of his telescope began to translate to patterns and destiny. By the time Mrs April was a toddler he was telling her stories of the alignment of stars and planets and how these would shift and shape the course of world events and individual lives.
    â€˜Do the stars tell us what to do?’ she asked one clear night as she peered skyward.
    â€˜Not quite,’ said her father, his long white beard caressing her cheek as he bent down beside her, ‘but they send out star mist that wafts around us to guide and protect us through each day.’
    â€˜I can feel it,’ her enthusiasm emphasised by her arms waving in the night air.
    Her mother was a poet, inspired by the Romantics in an era sorely lacking in romance. She was a perfect match and foil for her stargazer husband. On many a night they would sit on a rug high on a hilltop, their baby daughter between them. Together they would seek out the night sky: he looking for signs, tracing orbits; she imagining mystery, composing beauty. Each in their own way waxed lyrical on the movement and characteristics of the celestial bodies. Their baby, then toddler, then child, drank in their words as elixir itself and grew to wonder at the world and the stars and the poetry and language to phrase it all.

    Joshua stands at the crossroads, where once, in darker days, the gibbet stood ready for miscreants and the condemned to be dangled for all to see and be forewarned. Waiting for the stagecoach to arrive with letters for the mayor, he recalls a childhood memory of a distant cousin hanging by the thread of his neck as the crows picked at the soft tissue of his face. He shudders and slaps his leather gloves against his cheek to bring himself back to the moment. He hears the sound of a horse’s hooves approaching and then recognises the sizeable girth of Angelica sitting astride her True Beauty as they turn the corner and come into view. He doffs his cap and bows.
    â€˜How charming and elegant a sight. A graceful, and may I be so bold as to say, beautiful young lady and her ride.’
    The horse stumbles then finds its feet and balance under the considerable weight of its charge.
    Angelica turns up her nose at the sycophancy of this man she abhors. The horse neighs and rears up, nostrils flaring. If she had her way she’d like to see the full force of the animal come crashing down on this stupid man’s head. “What a terrible tragedy, Papa”, she would say, “and such a fine and noble fellow”. Rather, she pulls on the reins, turns a semicircle and then urges True Beauty to surge forward and leap the hedge into the freshly ploughed field beyond. Secretly hoping the horse would clip the privet and send the spoilt brat of a child to a cracked skull and a coma, Joshua smiles and waves them on their way. He flips open his fob watch to check the time, and precisely as he does so a rumble of thunder rolls in from the hills to the east. A single drop of rain falls onto the glass of Joshua’s watch. He wipes it away with his glove, puts the watch back in his waistcoat pocket and turns his collar to the weather. A sheet of lightning illuminates the spot