by Penni Russon
“I expected this from you! You don’t care about Undine, about your daughter. The magic always comes first.”
Prospero’s voice was subdued. “You know that’s not true, Louise. You know how much I do care about Undine.”
“But it’s too dangerous! It’s too reckless; there’s no place for it in Undine’s life. She needs to learn to suppress it. It’s the only way she’ll ever be happy.”
“Louise. Those months when you were with me. You were happy. After everything your parents put you through…it was wrong of them to make you turn away from who you are.”
“Everyone’s wrong, aren’t they, Prospero? Everyone except you. Haven’t you ever wondered if maybe it’s you that’s wrong, your obsession…” Lou stopped. When she started again her voice was thick with tears. “Happy? You think I was happy? You could never make me happy, not truly, Prospero. I was…drunk. On magic. I wasn’t happy.”
“Louise…”
Undine shifted against the wall. This wasn’t what she’d hoped. She didn’t expect Prospero and Lou to fall in love again; the very idea was absurd. In fact she found it impossible to imagine that they had ever been a couple, let alone had a baby together. But she wanted them to like each other enough that she could have a family: a weird, dysfunctional, broken family, but still one that could get together for birthdays and Christmas without…without this.
“Louise,” Undine heard Prospero say, “I made a promise to you. No magic, for me or Undine. All I ask in return is that you think about what I’ve said.”
She heard Prospero leave and Lou sigh. Undine stood conflicted, wondering if she should confront her mother, when Jasper’s high, excited voice suddenly filled the room, accompanied by Lena’s soft contralto. Relieved, Undine waited till she was sure Lou had gone before she let herself out into the flagstone courtyard. Lena was sitting out there, staring at the blue sky, sipping a coffee as thick and black as treacle.
“Hungry?” Lena asked, as if she had been waiting for Undine. “You must be.” Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back minutes later with a bowl of steaming soup and rice, thick with egg, flavored with lemons and garlic. It was filling and nourishing and Undine felt less strange and light-headed when she had finished it.
Lena directed her down to the beach where Lou and Jasper were playing. “Jasper has already made a friend,” announced Lena proudly, as if she had cooked up a suitable playmate in her kitchen with the same speed and skill with which she had produced the magnificent soup. Undine almost believed she could have. “Your father has gone walking in the village.”
Standing outside the hotel Undine saw Lou and Jasper playing with a girl with long brown pigtails and a bright green swimsuit. Lou waved, and Undine waved back. Jasper and his friend waved, too, Jasper so vigorously that he fell backward onto the sand, but Undine kept going. She wasn’t ready to talk to Lou yet. She wanted to see Prospero first.
She found him sitting on a bench at the pier, watching fishermen spread their nets out to dry. Pegged to a line strung between two lampposts were several squid, their long legs dangling in the warm air like washing hung out in the sun.
“Ew.”
Prospero smiled. “I remember scenes like these from when I was a boy.” He patted the bench beside him. “I’ve never kept up with the world very well; it seemed to transform so rapidly. It is reassuring to see that things don’t always change.”
Prospero pointed out what he could remember. “See that house?” He gestured. “A famous English author lived there. My father used to drink whiskey with him on Sundays, and he let me read his books. And there, the village square. We would play football there, and the women would come to fetch water from the fountain and gossip and give me grapes and figs and sweets. And there the men would sit in the evenings and drink ouzo and flick their worry beads….”
Undine was enjoying hearing Prospero talk about his childhood. It made him…fit more precisely in her life and made her feel like she was part of something bigger than herself—a family stretching backward through time.
“Tell me about your parents.”
“My mother was Greek; she was born in this village. You’re a lot like her.”
“Was she magic? Like me?”
Prospero smiled. “Undine, no one has ever been magic like you. You’re alone in the universe.” His voice was proud, but Undine felt a tight, uncomfortable knot form in her chest when he said it. “She was magic like…well, perhaps like your mother. When I stood close to her, I could hear it inside her, like listening to the echo of the sea inside a shell. Things happened around her; her garden always flourished, as if the soil was whispering to her and she was whispering back. She could cool the earth with rain—a light shower, nothing like your storms—or part the clouds to bring the sun. She hid it from my father—she knew it would frighten him—but never from me. Perhaps she thought a child doesn’t see, or perhaps she wanted to teach me…. When she was close I found I could do things, too, small gestures. That was when I learned to tame the wind—I made a pet of it, small whorls of air that could carry dust and seeds, and capture butterflies, and…”
Prospero sighed, and hesitated. His face had been golden and joyous as he remembered his mother, but now he turned to face Undine. “You must understand, I was a boy, brave and reckless. My father caught me, playing at my mother’s skirts—I was only a few years older than Jasper—and she was laughing at my games. He was English, and though he loved my mother, he never really understood her Greekness, her religion and her superstitions, her strange customs, her family’s intrusive and passionate ways, and now this…. He hated the magic, he hated especially seeing it in me. So I was sent away where he wouldn’t have to see me anymore, sent to live with my grandparents in England.” He shrugged. “They loved me in their way. Or at least they loved the English boy they tried to make me become. My mother died soon after I left her.” He held Undine’s hand tightly. “When I was a boy, I thought my mother had died because I had been taken from her. That she had died from a broken heart. Now I think perhaps she was broken, but because my father would not let her use her magic.
“Your promise to Louise. I understand it, I understand her fears for you, but it worries me. It is a dangerous promise, to put away your magic, to let it simmer and seethe inside you. It should be given form. It should be allowed to sing. In this way only will it become something beautiful. Things that grow in the dark are dark themselves.”
Undine felt torn. She looked pleadingly at Prospero. “I can’t break my promise to Lou. I can’t. Anyway, it’s only for a year. I told Lou I wouldn’t use the magic till I finished Year Twelve.”
Prospero squeezed her hand. “Of course it is. Only a year. Now,” his voice brightening as if he was ready to change the subject. “What else can I tell you? That house there, that is where the American girls lived, two of them with long plaits on each side of their heads. They were very naughty girls; they taught me to swear. And there is a track up behind”—his finger searched the landscape—“that house. It is a steep walk, on a donkey track, up through the olive grove. We would go there and find things for ourselves and our mothers—flowers, tortoises, mushrooms, old clay pots and tablets and beads. Such a magical place, so ancient. Old forgotten stories buried in the land, fragments of people’s lives lost long ago.”
Undine gazed up the hill. “Is it far to walk?”
Prospero shook his head. Undine stood. “Want to come?”
“I am a happy old man, sitting here.”
Undine sat down again beside him. “You’re not old.”
“I feel old,” Prospero said, speaking out to sea. But seeing her worried face, he smiled. “I’m just tired. But you go.”
“Are you sure?”
Prospero nodded, his eyes drifting out to sea, to the horizon, beyond it, again.
Undine made slow progress up the slippery stony path. A herd of surprised goats regarded her curiously as she tried to maintain her
footing and gathered hurriedly to one side, protesting loudly to one another about her presence. But the climb was worth it. The air was warm and sweet and the hillside was thickly populated by butterflies—they brushed against her skin and landed occasionally on her shoulder, her bare arm, or in her hair.
She sat at the top of the hillside by a tiny church, only big enough for one person to kneel in. From here the view was overwhelming, sweeping right across the village and the bay. Far to the left, at the outskirts of the village, she could see Lena’s hotel, white and blue against the rocky cliff face behind it and the brilliant sky and sea beyond.
From this vantage point, alone on the hill, far above her family and with great swathes of air, sea, and land between herself and Trout, and herself and Grunt, Undine allowed herself to fully feel her remoteness. For half a year now she felt she’d been living every aspect of her life from a great distance, that when she spoke what might sound to others a quiet murmur, she was in fact shouting over a deep and dark crevasse, and when she touched, though she might appear quite close, she was actually teetering perilously over the same chasm, reaching to her very limits.
She had hoped that perhaps in Greece the feeling would leave her, that she would feel more bound to her family. But already she floated beyond them somehow, not anchored like they were—Prospero by his memories, Lou and Jasper to each other.
She closed her eyes. The magic tugged, like an eager child wanting to lead the way. What was it the magic wanted to show her here, in this ancient landscape, this place of history—history of people, history of her? Did she dare let the magic out…and if she did, could she drag it back in?
Lou said it was dangerous to use it; Prospero said it was dangerous not to. Undine no longer knew what to believe. Last year in the bay it had almost overwhelmed her; she had almost destroyed everything, even herself. But she hadn’t in the end, had she? And what would happen if she didn’t allow the magic to grow and develop? Would it eventually overwhelm her? Was she stronger than the magic she contained? Was she more girl than magic, or more magic than girl?
As she thought, she allowed herself to feel it inside her, the sensations she lived with and ignored every day. The magic was like giant swirling loops, like a golden, fizzing lasso made from the sparks of an exploded firework. It jerked and swooped and arced inside her.
Was she the magic, or was she the girl? There was only one way this question could be answered and that was to let the magic out. Holding it in, keeping it back like a dog on a tight leash, would never reveal anything about its true nature. She held the question in her head and suddenly, sharply, she gave the magic a little flick—releasing it, but immediately jerking it back in, like a fishing line.
At once she realized that in releasing the magic she was releasing herself—she had been so tied up, so bound by her promise to Lou, that it had begun to strangle necessary parts of her: now her heart beat easily, her breath flowed freely. It was similar to the peace she had experienced by Grunt’s side as she had filled the night sky with snow, but this time the feeling was far more powerful. Her body was flooded with bliss, prickling the tips of her fingers and toes like pins and needles, true and joyous and entirely encompassing. But with it came too a surprising pain, a dragging, clawing sensation that began deep in her guts and pulled violently upward as though it might actually wrench her into pieces.
Then something happened to the world around her; she felt the shift that meant the magic was working beyond the boundaries of her body. (Briefly she imagined the curves of herself—her hips, her lips, her eyelids, her ears, her breasts—as parentheses, encapsulating her body as a series of asides, digressions, afterthoughts.) She opened her eyes.
From the landscape she watched herself form, a girl with a skeleton of stones. Her flesh was earth, packed tight around the stone bones. Finally the girl was covered in a living, swirling skin of butterflies.
Undine watched, fascinated and appalled. The goats bleated nervously and retreated down the hill, tumbling over each other and their own bony ankles, skittering sideways. She reached out her hand and the girl—the Undine made of stone and clay and painted wings—reached out her own fluttering, flickering one, but before they could touch, the butterflies dispersed into the air and the girl crumbled, falling to pieces back into the land.
Undine was left reaching to an empty space, and the emptiness echoed inside her, knocking against her hollow ribs.
On the beach Jasper and Olivia dug deeper and deeper in the sand, until the bottom of their hole filled with seawater.
Jasper said, “If I was a crab, I would get my pinchers and cut your hair like this, snip snip.” Olivia squealed and grabbed her pigtails.
“What would you do if you were a crab who was a boy?” she asked delightedly.
“I am a boy,” said Jasper. “I am a crab who looks like a boy.”
“I am a seashell, curled up and quiet,” said Olivia. “I am a sea horse, and under the sea I ride like this.” She showed Jasper.
“My sister is a girl, with butterfly hair.”
“So am I,” said the girl.
“No, you’re not,” said Jasper. “You’re a sea horse.”
“I am so a girl. You’re a crab.”
“I’m also a boy.” Jasper looked at Olivia for a moment. “You can be a girl,” he offered.
“I am a girl.” Olivia was getting upset.
To mollify, Jasper said, “Look at this.” And like a magician, first he showed Olivia that his hands were empty, palms outward. He closed them together like a clamshell. Then he opened them, and out flew a butterfly, spiraling upward into the empty sky.
“Do that again,” said Olivia. But her parents began gathering up their things—towels and bags and beach umbrellas and Olivia’s bucket and spade—and told Olivia it was time for tea. Jasper ran back to Lou; he had already forgotten his trick. But even when she was an old, old lady, Olivia never forgot the boy who made a butterfly appear from nothing, out of his hands.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Max took charge. While Trout stood frozen, she eased the study window open and slithered out with ease. For Trout it would be a much tighter fit. He stared doubtfully at the small space. Max’s head popped up at the window’s gap.
“Come on.”
“Why?”
“No time for why!” Max hissed urgently. “Just trust me.”
Trout stepped cautiously through the gap in the window. His legs dangled uselessly toward the ground.
“Drop!” ordered Max. “I’ll help you.” She bore his weight as best she could, but Trout still landed heavily, grimacing with pain.
“Can you run?” she said. “We have to go.”
“Stop. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I saw someone, walking around your house in the backyard, toward the laundry door.”
Which they had left open! Trout stared, horrified.
“But, my family…I can’t just leave them…. I have to warn them.”
“Don’t you get it? It’s you they’re after! You’re the one putting them in danger.” Max tugged his hand. “Come on,” she repeated. “We have to get back to my place.”
Trout hesitated. He jangled the keys to Undine’s house in his pocket. In the back of Trout’s mind, there was still doubt about Max. He was wary of giving her such direct access to Undine, to her private space. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to Max’s either. It was a long walk back, and his body was tired and sore from his injuries. All he really wanted to do was let himself back into Undine’s house, drag himself up the stairs, and collapse on the bed—to sleep, dreamlessly. “I know somewhere else we can go,” he said. He headed toward the front of the house, but Max stopped him.
“It’s too brightly lit under the streetlights,” she hissed. “There might be more than one of them.”
Trout stopped and thought. “There’s another way,” he said doubtfully.
He led Max through the side garden, keeping a wide berth between them an
d the rear entrance to the laundry. He was slow and clumsy, his leg dragging a little. Max in contrast was wound up, a tight spring of nervous energy.
He looked back toward the house. There was no sign that anyone was actually pursuing them. There was a light on upstairs—Dan’s room. As he watched, another light came on, and another, first in his parents’ room, then Richard’s. That was odd: Richard hadn’t been home at night for months.
“Max,” Trout whispered savagely into the darkness.
She appeared beside him; he could not tell from where.
The warm honey light radiating from the house was inviting.
“Let’s go back,” he said.
“We should keep going,” Max said. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to keep you safe.”
Trout stared at her. “What if they hurt my family?”
“And what could we do? You? Fight them? Look at yourself.”
Max was right.
“Look,” she said. “When we get up to the road, we’ll find a phone and call the police. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Trout looked at the rivulet that formed the boundary of his backyard. He could barely see a meter in front of him. “We have to cross this.” It wasn’t wide; there wasn’t much current. But it was too wide to do in one or even two jumps, and Trout knew from experience that the rocks were slippery.
“Is there a bridge?”
“Not for a kilometer or two up that way.” Trout felt pathetic as he added, “I’m not sure how far I can walk.”
“It’s okay. I’ll go first.”
Max stepped out onto a stone, and almost lost her footing. She peered at the shadows at her feet, then stepped again. Trout heard a splash. “Ugh! It’s freezing.”
“Are you all right?”
“My foot slipped. Oh, god, my shoe’s filling with water. This is disgusting.” Trout heard her jump again. Finally she said, “I’m over. Just watch that second rock; it’s slippery.”