August 10th, 1816

The world seemed to be narrowing to a pinprick, closing in around a singular, dark future.  There were more riots and less food everyday.  Jenny’s stomach was constantly churning with hunger and fear.  And it was too cold to collect seashells, so Jenny’s anxiety went unabated.

It was on a day like this, morose, thick with the expectation of rain, that Jenny entered her room and found that Elsie wasn’t there.  She nearly dropped her broom in surprise. 

Elsie was always there.  All she ever did was write furiously in her bed, ignore Jenny, and sometimes cry softly at night.  She had stopped helping with chores, ate very little, and insisted that she needed all of her attention to be on her work, work that seemed to never end, which she refused to show to anyone. 

It worried Jenny a great deal that Elsie was isolating herself again.  This, she had discovered, was what melancholy was, and it terrified her.  The nights when Elsie cried were awful, but worse were the nights when she said nothing at all.  Jenny didn’t even try to speak to her; for some reason, she couldn’t. 

Feeling foolish, Jenny scanned the small bedroom, on the impossible chance that Elsie was hiding somewhere.  There wasn’t anything to worry about, there couldn’t be.  But Elsie hadn’t been acting like herself at all.  The diary entries Jenny never should have read went flashing through her mind.  A sudden terror seized her.

Jenny dashed from the room.  She found her mother in the kitchen, slicing open a disappointing cod.

“Where’s Elsie?” Jenny asked.

“Hello to you too.”

“Where’s Elsie?”

Caroline sighed, turning to face her daughter.  “She said she was going to the Cliffs.”

Jenny’s heart leapt into her throat.  “Why?”  She remembered what she had said flippantly, a full month ago, about pitching one’s self off the Cliffs, into the sea… 

“Jenny, I don’t know,” said Caroline, exasperated.  “Why don’t you go ask her?  And tell her to come home.  A storm is starting.”

She barely heard the last part of her mother’s words.  Jenny was already out the door, letting it slam unceremoniously behind her.  Her stockinged feet were sprinting past the pasture, cutting themselves on the old stone path.  She hadn’t thought to put shoes on.  All she could think of was Elsie’s journal, the things she had written in the throes of her melancholy.  Jenny had thrust her back into them. 

Trees, buildings, animals, people were a blur.  The crash of thunder was far away.  Her skinny arms pumped, propelling her through the wet, stinging air.  Her vision of the future narrowed.  It darkened into a tunnel.