Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  Babysit. Tomorrow night. No.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice.”

  The twins silently, in unison, disappear upstairs.

  “What tone?”

  “Look, I needs this one thing.” Her mother looks a warning over Darryl’s shoulder; he’s now asleep, sucking his thumb with his head nestled against her neck.

  Need, Ophelia thinks, you need this one thing. How could her mother have lived in Toronto this many years and still talk like a Newfie? And it’s not just one thing, her mother’s needs. Her mother’s needs are constant. Desperate, Ophelia tries to argue, although it never works. “Can’t the twins do it?”

  “We’ve talked about this. Darryl’s too young to be left with them. You knows that.” She pats Darryl’s back. “Look, love, it’s just that . . . I’ve got a little date.”

  A date? Her mother? Oh, this is just too ironic.

  Her voice changes, becomes that awful confiding voice she’s taken to using with Ophelia lately. A you’re-old-enough-to-be-friends-with-me voice. Ophelia hates it. “I met a fella and we’re having dinner over at that new place, you know.”

  I’ll be there, Rowan had said, and he’d leaned in a bit and his face was all serious, like he really wanted her to know something about him. If she isn’t there at the show he’ll never know that she . . .

  . . . likes him . . .

  Yeah, she likes him a lot.

  “It’s not fair,” Ophelia says. Childish.

  It’s never any use arguing with her mother anyway. She’s ignoring Ophelia, crooning into Darryl’s ear.

  Ophelia walks away, up the stairs.

  She can’t remember ever feeling this alone.

  Chapter Ten

  The Earth Twitching Its Skin

  The twins take one look at Ophelia’s face and know not to talk to her.

  She pulls the curtain that separates her bed from theirs and throws herself down on the mattress.

  Heat gathers behind her eyes, her throat swells. Her life is never, ever going to work out. She’s stuck in this horrible apartment with her fat mother who’s dating some new guy—oh, that’s wonderful. Suddenly the implications come home: will it be like when Darryl’s dad was around? He was always telling Ophelia shit like don’t talk to your mother that way, like he had any right to be a dad to her. If her mother brings some new guy into the house, she will leave. She will just run away. She’ll be finished high school in three months and she’ll just go.

  She thinks again of Rowan.

  But now it’s ruined. She won’t see him tomorrow night; she’ll never see him again. Her stomach twists, her hands go cold. Longing fills her up like an ache, she wants . . . something, she can’t even say what it is. And it’s all going wrong already. How can she feel so attached to him, so fast? But she can’t help it. Something about him felt both strange and terribly, terribly familiar. Is it possible to know a person you’ve never met?

  If only there was a way to skip over this part. The uncertainty. A way to punch through time and space and just leave this stomach-churning not-knowing behind.

  She remembers science fiction TV shows and books about wormholes: hypothetical tunnels that connect two different points in what scientists like to call “space-time.” Could something as energetic as this longing inside her create something like that?

  No. Probably not.

  Even when she was a kid these kinds of feelings would come nosing around, pushing at her from the shadows, emptying out her guts and heart, and curling around her eyes and throat. When it gets too much, that’s when she punches through, when she lets the world drain away and takes herself to her other place.

  It’s comforting, usually. She always feels like she’s coming home when she visits, somehow; maybe she comes home not to a place, but to herself.

  But this time, it’s different.

  One moment Ophelia is on her bed in her room, letting her mind go out of focus, sliding into the other place like a kind of sleep. The next, there is a strange, quick beam of bright white light. She feels a horrible thrilling all through her body.

  And she is in deep water.

  For an instant she hangs there, expecting to feel the sudden jolt of waking. But the water is cold and it’s getting hard to breathe.

  She’s not waking up.

  With a jerk Ophelia thrashes arms and legs, trying to get to the lighter part of the water. That must be up—she can’t tell in her panic. Up, to the light.

  Suddenly a dark shape zooms toward her and knocks into her side. Ophelia gasps, bubbles roughen the water in front of her face. She twists, trying to see what attacked her. The shape comes at her again; it is pressing against her, an animal. A shark? Ophelia’s breath leaves her, she’s thrashing.

  The creature rolls around her, making her body roll, too. The thing is nosing at her neck, pushing at her back, teasing her legs and arms. She’s falling through the water—no way to know which way is up now. She is going to die. She can’t breathe.

  Dark, mournful eyes look into hers. There are whiskers. A seal. She’s head to head with a seal.

  The seal pulls back, then headbutts her.

  A blue surge fills her. This must be dying.

  And then Ophelia is able to see. And swim. And she shoots to the surface—it is so easy, how could she have thought she was sinking into the depths?—and takes in a deep, quivering breath.

  There is a big moon hanging in the sky overhead, and it’s an odd colour—pale blue—and in that light Ophelia can clearly see a fine set of whiskers on either side of her . . . snout. There’s a shoreline a way off. Trees are swaying, but there’s no wind. Her coming to the other place has dovetailed with an earth tremor, as per usual, like the earth twitching its skin.

  The seal surfaces next to her. It shoots up fast, smacking down on the water, then rolls. Its face is laughing. And then it gathers itself and disappears.

  A crazy happy feeling fills Ophelia. With a yelp she folds her body in two and dives. Her nose closes, her body is sleek and fast. No arms or legs, and who needs them? She straightens out and dives again, racing after the other. Her lungs compress and force the air in them into her upper chest, but it’s not uncomfortable, just odd. The water gets colder as she descends. She feels blood coming from deep inside her body to just under the skin, where she is covered with a dense layer of blubber; it warms as the water cools. She swims with sideways movements of her body, tail powering her, flippers steering. She can hear the seal ahead of her, making tiny keening noises. The noises are joy, diving is joy.

  Fish are joy! They flash in and out of shadow, and she snaps at them. Their cold taste fills her mouth. Everything is flickering blue-green. She follows the other seal, twisting through schools of fish. She snaps the stomach out of anything within reach of her snout. The fatty slipperiness of them is a come-on, an irresistible longing. Fish blood spurts thin and dark in the water, fish guts hang from shaken and discarded spines; her teeth are sharp, her eyes see everything. Silly silver-blue fish, darting all around. She eats and eats until she is sated.

  Somehow she knows dawn approaches. Ophelia and her companion swirl and ascend, come above the breaking waves to the pale blue of moonlight. She opens her nostrils and the scent is intoxicating: warm air from land, green things growing, salt. She follows the other through water suddenly warm, sluicing over sparkling blue sand. She can smell the other now, it’s a female. They hump through foam on the beach. The scent of plants is all through her now, with seaweed and the faint happy smell of rotting fish. Her body is heavy out of the water; she contracts her stomach and sides, muscles working, pulling herself forward by her flippers. She follows the other, they pant, laughing because this is so ridiculously difficult, this perambulation. They make it to the verge, lacy bits of shell and seaweed and dried foam marking the tideline; collapse, huffing with laughter; touch noses, tickling each other with whiskers.

  It is Pim. Ophelia knows this completely. She ro
lls onto her back and warbles, waving her flippers. This looks so funny that she starts laughing again, and Pim laughs with her. They curl together, delicious warmth and coolness and the sleekness of fat. The moon is sinking.

  The two seals sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Time To Get Up

  Ophelia opens her eyes.

  Blue sky above, and green, some kind of tree. Coconut palm, that’s it. She’s lying on sand. Something is tickling her hair and she touches her head. Then notices that she has a hand, an arm, hair on her head. She’s human again.

  The tickling thing has wriggling legs.

  Ophelia gasps and sits up, flinging the thing away from her with a high-pitched shriek. It scuttles away; only a crab, a tiny white crab.

  Something moves next to her. It’s Pim in human form, stretching her body full length.

  Pim is totally naked and so, Ophelia realizes, is she.

  She hugs her knees and looks around. They are on a beach, alone: the champagne-coloured sand and green verge of Doctor Bay.

  She knows it like she was born here, every grain of sand and palm tree. Over that way, a long walk along the beach and up through the trees, stands the great city: Calabar. Then Cinnamon Lake, connected to the city by the huge tidal river, and foothills, forests, mountains. And beyond that, to the north, the snow-covered mountain peak, the great volcano.

  The ocean surges, and surges again. Ophelia’s skin feels powdery, a bit sticky. She sniffs the back of her hand, tentatively tastes. Salt, from having been in the ocean.

  The smells, the feeling of air on her skin, the sounds of birds, the way the light is falling. Pim, next to her, breathing. The faint taste of fish in her mouth. None of this—not the slide in, nearly drowning, becoming a seal, coming into shore, or waking here—none of this feels like a vivid fantasy. It feels real.

  Pim murmurs, settling back into sleep. She lies on her back with one arm flung out across the sand, the other over her eyes. She’s tall—standing up, she’s over six feet—and slender, but not in a creepy starved sort of way, there’s muscle there, too. She has long, narrow hands and feet, and between her legs is an untouched thatch of black hair. Her ears are delicately pointed, tips bronze edged with pink. The patterns on her forearms are like tattoos, only they seem to be able to change. . . . Right now they’re a series of parallel lines, plain, from elbow to wrist. They’ve never looked like that before—they’ve always been elaborate curves, not these straight, straining lines.

  Ophelia’s grown up with Pim. Ever since she can remember, she’s visited Pim. But at this moment Ophelia feels she’s never seen her—really seen her—like this.

  There’s a feeling, then, like everything in the world has taken a breath and held it. And then the ground starts shaking.

  Pim’s sits up in one smooth motion, small braids snapping around her face like tiny whips. “Do you feel it?”

  “The shaking?”

  “No. The volcano.”

  Ophelia knows she won’t be able to see that peak from here, but swivels her head anyway. “What about it?”

  Pim springs to her feet. “It is erupting.”

  “Is that bad? It sounds bad.”

  “We must get to the city.”

  Ophelia remains sitting on the sand, hugging her knees. “What’s going on? How did I get here?”

  “The same way you always do.”

  “It’s different!”

  Pim grins. “Yes. It’s different. I visited your world, and now . . .” she gestures back and forth between her chest and Ophelia’s “. . . we are even more closely connected.”

  “You visited my world?” Ophelia’s voice goes up in a shriek.

  Pim nods. “There were big buildings, and warriors dressed like beetles. And armoured wagons. And singing. I heard you. A song about the wind.”

  Ophelia’s mind gaps, then leaps. “The protest!” It must have been the protest that Pim saw.

  “I was only there for a short time. The membrane between our worlds is very thin now. Leaky. Like a basket.” Pim extends her hand. “Please. We must go.”

  But Ophelia stubbornly stays put. “What in God’s name was all that seal business?”

  “It was fun, wasn’t it?” Pim is pleading.

  “It . . . Yes, it was fun. It was insane.”

  “I need you to be with me, to transform.”

  “You need me to . . . That happened because of me?”

  “It happened because it is time.” The ground ripples. Pim grabs Ophelia’s hand and drags her to her feet. “We must hurry.”

  “Why hasn’t it happened before?”

  “It wasn’t time. Come on.”

  They begin to run. Ophelia feels the sand on her feet, smells the air. Real, it feels real . . . the night-swimming in the ocean was real. . . . A cold feeling settles in her stomach and she jerks her hand out of Pim’s. The ground is moving. Her forehead is clammy, saliva rushes from the insides of her cheeks. She remembers with sudden clarity the feeling of snapping the gut out of a fish with her mouth, and another, and another—her stomach must be full of them. She stops in her tracks.

  “We need to go. The volcano erupts.”

  Ophelia’s body convulses. She braces herself on her knees and throws up onto the sand. Slimy fish parts . . . She heaves again, spits. She spits and wipes her mouth. “Will we be safe in the city?”

  Pim barks a mirthless laugh. “It is not the volcano that is the danger.”

  “What is then?”

  “The Mender will explain everything. She will teach you about your power. She is waiting for us.”

  “The who-whatsit? Mender?”

  The ground shakes so violently that Pim staggers. Palm trees sway. Waves hiss on the sand, tide going out. Out, farther than Ophelia’s ever seen it. Seaweed in the sun, a fish gasping.

  “She sent me to find you. The volcano erupts, you are here. It is the sign.”

  Ophelia feels something pulling at her, like her head and feet are being pulled in two directions. Pim, the beach, the shaking—everything begins to seem as if it’s happening at a distance. Is she being pulled back?

  Pim leans in. “Ophelia, no!”

  It’s impossible, Ophelia can’t hold on, she feels herself being stretched. Again the horrible thrilling feeling claws through her whole body. Everything jolts, darkens—ah, it hurts. Smells changing, light failing, lungs compressing.

  She can’t breathe.

  She opens her mouth and a great sobbing breath fills her.

  Light comes through a window. She is sitting on her bed, daylight, there’s knocking at the door. “Time to get up, girls.”

  Her heart is hammering. She hears the twins stirring on the other side of the curtain.

  Something in her hands.

  When Ophelia looks down, she sees that she is sitting in the middle of sheets soaked with water—sweat? Salt water. And her hands are fists. When she opens them, she sees that they are full of pale, wet sand.

  You can’t bring something back from nowhere.

  Got to get the sand off her hands, it’s under her nails, too, like she clawed at the beach when leaving—no, it’s impossible. Ophelia flings her hands out, scrubs her palms on the wet sheets.

  The sheets heave. There’s a person wrapped up in there.

  Ophelia can’t even scream.

  The sheets thrash, Ophelia scrambles up to the farthest edge of the bed. A long, fine brown hand reaches out, pulls the sheet from a high-cheek-boned face with big eyes. Pim stares at Ophelia. Her mouth opens. Ophelia can’t move, she is paralyzed.

  And then Pim looks over her shoulder like she’s heard something. A white light shines out, blinding Ophelia, like a search beam. A blast of salt-laden air, a roaring sound . . . The sheets sink back onto the bed. Pim has disappeared.

  “Girls! Get a move on!” calls Ophelia’s mother from downstairs.

  In the growing morning light, sand on wet sheets sparkles like tiny, sharp little diamonds.

&nb
sp; Chapter Twelve

  CoMing Back From A Long Way Off

  Ophelia decides that since she is going insane, she will pretend everything is normal. That way the impossibility will recede. Fake it ’til you make it, right?

  It sort of works, for a time. There’s breakfast to eat and dishes to do, and her mother wants her to come on a grocery trip as auxiliary childcare for Darryl.

  Her mother fries up fish sticks for breakfast. They smell so good.

  Normally, Ophelia hates fish sticks.

  A memory of a mouthful of raw fish, salt water . . .

  How can she feel hungry and nauseated at the same time?

  And she still has to babysit tonight, so she’s still never going to see that beautiful boy again.

  Ophelia is mean to the twins, and slams Darryl’s breakfast down in front of him, making him startle and cry.

  Her mother glares. “What’s the matter with you?”

  After breakfast Ophelia and her mother pile into the old car, Darryl strapped and yelling in the car seat, and rattle off to the store. Her mother’s cleaning kit is rolling around in the back, too, the bucket and mop and broom, spray bottles and sponges going every which way. It’s like being in a circus. “I can’t hear myself think!” hollers her mother, turning without signalling and getting honked at by a big SUV. She gives the guy the finger. “Kiss my ass!”

  Ophelia twists and makes googly faces at Darryl, but he keeps yelling.

  “Sing to him, my love, he loves that. Slow as cold molasses, Jesus!” She honks her horn at the car in front of her. “Is it possible to drive this slowly?”

  A memory noses at Ophelia, at the edges of her frayed self. A deep voice, the comforting scent of him. A man so big he’s almost a giant, the biggest, strongest man in the world. This man, she curls up in an easy chair with him, head nestled beneath his chin. He used to sing. And tell stories, memories like a whisper. His voice rumbling beneath her ear, deep in his chest. Sometimes she thinks she can remember things he told her, like a song across the water.