In today’s episode we continue our adventure with Chapter 14 – The Sketchbook – where we get an exclusive, in-depth look into Magpie’s notebook where she records and sketches details from her mysterious visions.

Music: Nightbridge and Visions by Cannelle (www.cannellemusic.com)

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TRANSCRIPT:

Things with Wings Productions, with the support of Whimsical Productions and Collected Sounds presents: Episode 14 of The Skylark Bell.  I am your host Melissa Oliveri.  

In our last episode, Magpie finally came face to face with the mysterious Farfalla, who had a strange reaction upon seeing Magpie. 

In today’s episode we continue our adventure with Chapter 14 – The Sketchbook – where we get an exclusive, in-depth look into Magpie’s notebook where she records and sketches details from her mysterious visions.

Get comfortable… grab a blanket and a warm drink… and let’s get started

Magpie’s sketchbook is bound in dark blue leather with a gold hummingbird etched into the cover. Inside, the pages are completely blank, leaving her the freedom to write or sketch.   The book came in the mail about two years ago, right around Magpie’s birthday. Initially, she thought her mother had bought it for her as a birthday present, but her mother told her that, unfortunately, she couldn’t take credit for the beautiful gift, and the sender has remained a mystery to this day. 

Magpie gently opens her notebook to the first page.

Her scribbled notes describe the vision she had of the woman in the rocking chair, the one that ended up being her Great-Grandmother Elizabeth.  She runs her eyes over the shape of the rocking chair, the woman sitting in it, the green shawl over her shoulders… A short written update scribbled in different coloured pen provides an explanation for the vision and Magpie considers it resolved, but shivers a little none-the-less as she recalls the moment she found the photograph in the dusty, yellowing family photo album that identified the woman in her vision as the Great-Grandmother she’d never met.

Flipping to the next page she sees a sketch outlining several tall buildings, like the downtown area of a large city, with an old-fashioned car parked in front of a large department store. On the sidewalk in front of the store, a woman is standing, holding a little girl by the hand, both of them with their backs turned to the person viewing the sketch and facing the beautifully dressed display windows. Magpie clearly remembers the day she had this vision, it was a few years ago, and she was sitting next to her mother on a city bus headed downtown for the grand opening of a new art gallery. Magpie still has no explanation for that vision, but since it happened in a large city, she can only assume it has nothing to do with Pocket, so she decides to move on.

The next few pages detail visions she had while they were still living in the city, most feel irrelevant to what has been happening recently, but one catches her eye.  It depicts a dream she once had about a young boy, 4 or 5 years old, with wavy black hair and gray eyes, sitting by the side of a desolate country road next to a badly damaged car.  Could it be Lucas?  She has never asked him about his parents and he’s never brought it up, but since he lives with his grandmother, it would make sense that something happened to them – Was it a car accident?  Was he there?  If so, why had she dreamed about it, before even knowing him?!  She makes a mental note to try to find out more and keeps flipping through her notebook. 

A few more sketches of farmland follow the dream about the little boy, some resemble the area around Pocket, like the sketch of a white house with lace-like trim around the windows and a stunning array of colours in the flowerbed, and a couple of others with rolling fields ranging from bright green to yellow and the dry brown of autumn, but to Magpie they just seem to have predicted that she would move here, and there is no helpful information in them.

Magpie pauses on an illustration of an apple orchard.  She recalls having that vision the night before she and her mom left the city to move into the Farmhouse.  In it, rich fruit dangles from the branches of several trees, bright red apples. Under one of the trees she can see the silhouette of a large horse, but she recalls the vision had been blurry.  What really catches her eye, though, is the outline of a house in the distance, a two-story house similar to the one on Meadow Lane.  Could those stumps behind the house one Meadow Lane have once been a thriving apple orchard? The only note accompanying the sketch consists of two hastily-written words in the margin which read “Overwhelming joy” - words she certainly wouldn’t assign to the house on Meadow Lane today. Under the words is a small sketch, just a faint outline, that looks like a ring etched with a feather pattern.

Unsure what these things mean, Magpie turns the page and finally finds some notes detailing one of her first visions since moving to Pocket.  It is the day she and Lucas were walking by Meadow Lane.  Magpie was inexplicably drawn to the property, and had the beginnings of a vision where she saw two blurry silhouettes.  

 Suddenly, something clicks in Magpie’s mind.  She flips forward to the description of the vision she had day she discovered the secret attic, when Meadow Lane was all lit up and full of life. She skims through her notes and her finger stops on one sentence: “Two lights bouncing, like lanterns being carried by two people walking toward the woods.”  Two silhouettes in the first vision; two lanterns in this one.  She seems to be having recurring visions of the same two people at Meadow Lane, but who are they?!

Magpie turns the page, and sees a note about the vision she had of Charlotte Carnifex and her husband in the horse cart when they first arrived on the site where they would eventually build this very farmhouse. Then she sees a sketch and note about Scarlet, with a quick scribble in the margin describing the fireplace brick with the initials ‘C.C.’ 

The last page in Magpie’s notebook contains the description and accompanying sketch of her nightmare, where everything came together; Meadow Lane, Scarlet, and Farfalla. Every page beyond is blank, this is all the information she has.

 Closing her notebook and tracing the outline of the hummingbird with her finger, Magpie lets her mind wander for a moment.  Meadow Lane seems to be the central part of the story to which everything else is connected, the most important connection being the two mysterious figures she keeps seeing. Now, more than ever, she is determined to get some answers!

Thank you so much for listening.  Join me next week for our 4^th Fantôme Friday! Then the following week we will continue our adventure and read Chapter 15 of Meadow Lane and the Skylark Bell, where Magpie learns about the tragic event in Lucas’ past that shaped the course of his life.

Before I go, I’d like to thank Phaeton Starling Publishing for this fantastically eerie story, and Cannelle Elanion for composing equally fantastic and eerie music for this podcast.

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