—You are the Undine.
—That’s correct. Partially. I am the water goddess and the ruler of this place. I was there when the world cooled and the elements formed, springing to life from the natural magic of this new existence. As were you.
—I was?
—Yes, Dane. You are my brother, and I am your sister.
The Undine stands, and an arc of water trickles from her position down to the floor at your feet. She steps into the arc as if it is an escalator, and travels the short distance to directly in front of you, her water conveyance disappearing into her form, reassimilating into her body. The barest touch of her fingers on your cheek and you are sobbing, though you can’t think of why. Her smile is beatific. You cannot imagine being a sibling to this goddess.
—I know, she whispers, a susurration that reverberates throughout your body, and all at once you feel exhausted, and the only thing you want to do is sleep in the presence of this beautiful woman, this creature who fills you with longing and shame. You sink to your knees and close your eyes, feeling her hand on your bald head as the world slips away and you sink into the darkness of dream.
~
You awaken in a large bed of silk sheets, surrounded by pillows, in a room decorated with Chinese characters and delicate watercolor artwork. It feels as if you have slept for days, your mouth gummy, your eyes crusted at the corners. Yawn and stretch, and there is a tureen of water on a table next to the bed which you drink from, greedily. You stop for a moment, suddenly struck with the notion that you are drinking the Undine, that this is her sleeping place, and you find that you don’t care, that you would drink her down completely if you could, in order to feel closer to her.
You roll out of bed, the tiled floor cool on your bare feet. The clothes you were wearing are stacked neatly next to the bed. You dress quickly, not bothering with the hiking boots, happy to feel the cool floor with your toes, and then step out of the bedroom and back into the main chamber. The Undine is nowhere to be seen.
Next to the fountain is a dining table for one, adorned with a shiny red tablecloth and laid out with an unusual meal of cooked fish, a lychee bunch stuffed in its mouth, and next to it a glass of pale wine. As you get closer, you identify the fish as one of the amphibious weasels swimming around in the swamps of Jurong. A slice has been cut and displayed on a bone china plate, the food still steaming, and the smell makes your stomach clench with hunger. Saliva springs into your mouth as you sit down to the table.
You alternate between pieces of the weasel and the golf ball-sized lychee, a mixture of fishy and sweet tastes that dissolve on your tongue. The wine is in actuality a type of mead, a powerful concoction with all the flavors of springtime, honeysuckle and jasmine and flowers in bloom, and you stop at half a glass, wary of becoming drunk on the ambrosia. After finishing the weasel and the fruit, leaving nothing but the head and bones, you sit back in the chair, pleasantly full, content. Happy.
Movement from behind you, delicate footsteps, and the Undine appears at the side of your table.
—Feeling better?
—Yes. Thank you.
—I suppose you have many questions. Let me start by saying that I wish your amnesia had not been necessary. Hurting you is the last thing I wanted to do.
—You did this to me?
—Yes.
—Why?
—You had become obsessed with the nature of this place.
—Jurong?
She nods. —You could not handle the reality of the situation, that Jurong is a prison, a fictive imagining. After an eternity of folly and trickery, it is my punishment, and yours as well. We were sent here by a man you and I both wronged, one I had seen die with my own eyes. But he was just the agent of retribution for a hundred thousand acts of pain and ruin.
—This is a prison? Is there any way out?
—No, and this is what drove your rage. I still see this rage within you, still burning, ready to leap out and consume us all.
You breathe slowly, but she is right, you can feel the frustration and humiliation rising again, like a living thing.
—And I take most of the blame for our being here. You always followed my lead, obeyed my commands, like a trusted lieutenant. But I was the one behind all our schemes, our reign of amoral terror, done for my amusement. If I had not ordered you to kill the one who sent us here, we never would have been enslaved in the first place.
You smell smoke, burning cloth, and realize you are scorching your own clothing. It is her fault that you are here, trapped in this jungle setting. Who is she to take your memory, to rob you of your identity?
Between gritted teeth, you say, —How long have we been here?
— It is impossible to tell. Time moves strangely in this place. Many years, if not centuries.
You explode.
The Undine throws up a protective shield of water, but it evaporates in seconds. She screams, a multi-harmonic shriek that would shatter glass, the sound ringing in your ears as her form is completely transformed into steam. The walls of the Undine’s chamber burst outward, and you see the waterfall in front of you, and it boils and evaporates with the power of your rage. Your feet lift from the ground and you pass through the hole in the chamber back into the outside air, your heat melting the spiral stairway on which you traveled, turning the rust and metal into slag, the anger unending now, expanding outward in all directions. You are a supernova, a hundred nuclear bombs, the Big Bang. The energy of your wrath sears the landscape, turns to ash any living thing in the Park, the trees, the plants, the birds, the insects, the fish.
Before you, the scenery becomes a wasteland, a charred and scorched destruction. You drift down and down, to the bottom of what used to be the waterfall, now nothing but blackened rocks and ash. You scream yourself hoarse, you sob uncontrollably, the tears misting as soon as they leave your eyes. Your muscles contract to the point of pain. It isn’t fair. The screams of protest carry to the skies, but there is no answer.
You sit, alone in your misery, emptied out, the ash of a million million trees drifting around you. You are immortal, and the only thing you want right now is to die.
Out of the smoke, nine figures emerge. The Undine, Ming Liu, Wayan, Kadek, and the five other Indonesian brothers.
—Well, says Ming Liu, —that was certainly unproductive.
You shiver, suddenly, uncontrollably.
The Undine puts a hand to your shoulder. —It is fortunate that I have some command over this place. Jurong will regenerate, and I can bring back all the plant and animal life, though it may take some doing.
—What will you do to me? you ask. —Will you erase my memory again?
—No. This clearly did not work last time. And punishment seems to be out of the question. Instead, we will help you.
—How?
—We will teach you to accept, to see beyond the reasoning of events, beyond the fairness of the universe. To understand that things happen, such as our imprisonment, and that it is not for us to obsess over why, or to dwell on it, but to move on. We will teach you to live.
~
—Like this, Kadek says. —In through the nose, filling up your lungs, and out through the mouth. Good. Better.
You sit on the ground at the base of the newly grown Mother Tree, learning to breathe, to meditate. More and more mynahs populate the Mother Tree every day, mocking Kadek with their taunts. But he shows a vast amount of patience, not accepting their provocation, treating them with respect even as he stuns them with his sonic weapon, stores them in a canvas sack, and relocates them to other sections of the Park.
You have noticed a change in yourself as well, a feeling of increasing peace. Your mind relaxes and the memories slowly return, not stolen but buried, hidden away until you were prepared to deal with them. The actions of your past shame you, the lies, the pain you caused, the countless lives affected by the actions of you and your sister. With this gradual recollection, you can appreciate more fully the person you were, and the
person you wish to become.
The meditation over, Wayan slaps you on the back and smiles. He hands you the bag of groundskeeping tools, and you follow him to a northeastern area of the Park, the home of tens of thousands of flamingos. The Park becomes more familiar every day as you reacquaint yourself, the paths no longer quite so labyrinthine, the heat no longer so intolerable.
At Flamingo Lake, you trim away dead foliage, you plant new strains of lily, you dig a new pool for the specialized nursery, where the flamingos can raise their young away from the other birds in the park. You dig, the shovel solid in your hands, each thunk a verification of existence, the moistened soil and plants filling your nostrils with life, you dig and your thoughts of how to escape such a place vanish, and your worries about the nature of your imprisonment evaporate, you dig for the feel of the tool in your hands, for the productivity of it, you dig, you dig, you dig, and you are alive.
Notes
“Bogeymen” was published in Subterranean Magazine in October 2011, but saw print for the first time here. “Lion City Daikaiju” and “Paper Cow” appeared in their present form in The Daily Cabal, February and May 2009; “Dragging the Frame” and “Ikan Berbudi (Wise Fish)” appeared in condensed form in The Daily Cabal, March and June 2009, and have been drastically revised and updated for this collection; all four stories were published collectively (along with “The Crying of Kopitiam 419,” not presented here) as “The Red Dot Pentaptych” in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, vol. 9 no. 2, April 2010. “Hero Worship, or How I Met the Dream King” originally appeared on the Speculative Fiction Writers of Singapore group blog in September 2010. “Taxi Ride” was originally published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, vol. 10 no. 1, January 2011. “Coast” appeared in an anthology of the same name in October 2011, but saw print for the first time here. “In Jurong” was originally published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, vol. 8 no. 4, November 2009. “Bachy Soletanche” was first published in Scheherezade’s Bequest, no. 16, September 2012. “Kopi Luwak”, “Big Chief” and “Occupy: An Exhibition” are original to this collection.
Note on “Bogeymen”: I have taken considerable liberties with the nautical and geopolitical history of Singapore, Malaya, and Indonesia of the early to mid-1800s, though the actions of the characters above are based on actual historical events. James Brooke, the White Raja, did in fact exist, as did Captain Kennedy, and they were both legendary for their fiery tempers. More about the real men can be found in Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator by Gianni Guadalupi and Antony Shugaar (Carrol & Graf, 2001). A comprehensive history of the region, as well as of the Bugis, Captain Henry Keppel, and the use of betel nuts, is available in The Land of the Sultans: An Illustrated History of Malaysia by Ruud Spruit (The Pepin Press, 1995). Any factual mistakes are of course my own.
Note on “Hero Worship, or How I Met the Dream King”: Neil Gaiman, author of the graphic novel series The Sandman, the novels American Gods and The Graveyard Book, and many many other things, was in fact a guest at the 2009 Singapore Writers Festival, and I did get to talk with him there. It is up to the reader to decide which parts of this meeting actually happened.
Note on “Kopi Luwak”: Though this story may seem to stand out in a collection devoted to Singaporean fantastika, it is still related thematically and geographically. Singapore takes pride in being “A Little Red Dot,” a tiny island on the world map at the tip of the Malay Peninsula that is often indicated with a red dot that obscures the totality of the country, boasting economic prosperity despite its miniscule size. Bali, the small Hindu province within the enormity of Muslim Indonesia, could also itself be considered a little red dot; it is hoped that the reader will indulge my tenuous definitions herein.
About the Author
Jason Erik Lundberg is an American expatriate now living in Singapore, and the author of Red Dot Irreal (2011), The Time Traveler's Son (2008), Four Seasons in One Day (2003, with Janet Chui), and over 80 articles, short stories, and book reviews. He is also the co-editor of A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (2008) and Scattered, Covered, Smothered (2004). His writing has appeared in venues such as Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, the Raleigh News & Observer, Qarrtsiluni, Sybil's Garage, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, The Third Alternative and Electric Velocipede.
Lundberg's short fiction has been nominated for the SLF Fountain Award, shortlisted for the Brenda L. Smart Award for Short Fiction, and honorably mentioned (twice) in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. With his wife, artist-writer Janet Chui, he runs Two Cranes Press, a critically-acclaimed independent publishing atelier. He is a graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop and holds a degree in creative writing from North Carolina State University.
Discover more works by the author at Jason Lundberg dot Net.
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