Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “I’m meeting . . . that guy, you know. Like, later.”

  Candace looks amused. “No, I don’t know. What guy?”

  “The guy from the protest.”

  “The tall blond guy?”

  Ophelia nods.

  “That’s great! He’s so cute! Lucky you!”

  Is it Ophelia’s imagination or is Candace’s voice just a little too bright?

  “Well, it’s just for coffee.”

  “Good for you, girl. You haven’t dated in so long.”

  No, it’s not Ophelia’s imagination. Candace drums her nails on the table, looks around the school cafeteria.

  “So,” she says, “you got his number. Good for you.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Candace . . .”

  “Look, it’s fine. Just because I spotted him . . . But you know, he obviously liked you. That’s great!”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yeah. I . . . Yeah.”

  “Candace, what?” Is this just Candace’s pride at work? Ophelia has never, never, scooped a guy that Candace had her eye on.

  “It’s just that . . . Do you know him at all?”

  “Well, we just met . . .”

  “Because I heard some stuff from Julie. You know Julie.”

  Ophelia shakes her head.

  “Julie, from, you know . . . She goes to his school.”

  “Whose school?”

  “Rowan’s, silly!”

  “Oh. No, I don’t know Julie.”

  “And she said . . . Well, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Ophelia’s heart does a flippy-flop. “What?”

  “Well, just that . . . he’s a bit of a heartbreaker, that’s all. Julie said he left this chick Natalie high and dry. She was totally devastated.”

  Ophelia takes a breath. “Candace. Were you doing research on him?”

  Candace picks at her nails. “Well, yeah. I like to get my background checks all in a row.” She meets Ophelia’s eyes, smiles. “Look, it’s nothing. Just some bad feeling from an ex, right? And I’m happy for you. Really. You go have coffee and have a great time.”

  Great. Just great.

  But Ophelia can’t help it. She’s stoked.

  Just six hours to go. Then three. Then one. Then the final period, and the day’s over, she’s calling out goodbyes to friends and she’s out the damn door, and walking as fast as she can toward the coffee place, toward him.

  He’s already there when she arrives, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. He’s so tall he sits hunched over, in the shape of a question mark. And he has two black eyes and his nose has a cut across the bridge.

  “Rowan!” She almost trips over her own feet getting to him. “What happened?”

  He folds up the paper. “Fell off my bike.”

  “Really?” She wants to reach out and touch his face, kiss his eyes. She forces herself to sit down. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not really. Here.” He pushes a cup across the counter. “I got you a coffee.”

  “Oh! Thanks.” She sips it. Double cream and sugar; he remembers how she takes her coffee, from that night at The Spill. Her heart jumps a beat.

  One of his legs keeps jittering under the counter. He sees her noticing it and puts both hands around his own thigh as if to stop the movement. “I’m thoroughly caffeinated.”

  “You been waiting long?”

  “Most of the day. I skipped school.”

  “Oh.” She sips again. He looks sad, or angry, she can’t tell. She wants to ask if he’s okay, but then wonders: is she just putting her own feelings on him?

  She killed Pim.

  Her life is tearing apart.

  Sitting next to Rowan makes her feel like the sun is shining from inside her skull. She feels a fire burning inside her, wants to scream or cry or laugh until she pukes—it’s too much, there’re too many feelings.

  “Are you okay?” she bursts out.

  At the same time he says, “Is everything all right, Ophelia?”

  They pause, then laugh. He winces, holds his nose.

  “Oh, does that hurt?”

  “Yeah. Laughing hurts.”

  She puts on a sober face. “I’ll try to keep things serious then.”

  They both gulp at their coffees.

  She pulls his paper toward herself. “What horror grips the world today?”

  “Horror.”

  The front-page story is about the first return of NAU soldiers. In body bags. “Your mother have a piece in here?”

  “Not today. Um, wanna hear our horoscope?”

  She loves that he says that. Our horoscope.

  He reads it aloud, hunching even closer to the counter. “‘A time like this happens once a century, if that. The stars are aligned, and your destiny is clear. Will you hide from it, Aquarius, or face it head on?’”

  “Face it head on,” Ophelia says immediately.

  “Ah.”

  Ah? What does that mean? Is she being too aggressive? He’s so hard to read.

  “You sit like a question mark,” she hears herself saying.

  “What?”

  “Like this.” She imitates his posture.

  He looks startled, then laughs. “You’re right. I do. That’s perfect.”

  A pause.

  “Rowan. Are you okay?” she asks again.

  “What’s your word of the day?”

  She casts her mind back to this morning; it seems an age ago. “Rend.”

  “Rend?” He seems excited. “As in . . .” He tears a phantom piece of paper.

  “Yes. It’s a really old word. Old English and . . . Sanskrit.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. To split or tear apart by violence. And the dictionary also brought up the whole . . . you know, the rending of hair and clothes, in grief or anger.” She loves the word. It evokes an old time, an ancient time, when you could signal cataclysmic feelings with this: a gesture, a transformation. There’s a directness to it she loves.

  “So one who rends would be a render.”

  His voice brings her back. She laughs. “I suppose. Well, not really. Render is really about melting something down, right? To extract. Or to deliver, give up, yield.”

  “Hm.” He seems lost in thought. “What about yesterday?”

  “My word? Pusillanimous.”

  “Pu-sill-what? I don’t know that one.”

  “Cowardly. But I didn’t get a chance to use it much, so I’ll probably forget it.”

  “Rend. And cowardly! Perfect, perfect,” he mutters. He drains his cup. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sure.” She glugs her coffee, burning her mouth a little.

  He really is jittery. Doubt burns through her. Is it her? Is he disappointed? She took a long time to pick out her outfit this morning, straightened her hair, put shimmer on her eyes, and gloss on her lips. But he doesn’t seem to notice. She hops off her stool, following his long strides out the door and into the sunshine.

  “Let’s walk around. Let’s find somewhere we’ve never been before.”

  They head off south, then east. They walk through a cemetery. Cherubs smirk on stony clouds, plastic flowers perch on newer graves.

  “A community of corpses. Goths would like it.”

  He doesn’t say anything for so long that she thinks he hasn’t heard her. Then he shakes his head and puts on a smile. “Ack! Don’t talk to me about Goths. My ex is a Goth.”

  “Really?” She thinks of what Candace said. Heartbreaker. More doubt, tinged now by jealousy, rises up. “Did she like cemeteries?”

  “She liked drama.”

  “What was her name?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Come on.” He takes off and she scurries after him. “Um, Natalie.”

  Good, that’s the name Candace fed her at lunch. So he’s honest. One ex, that’s not so bad, is it? So why does she feel suddenly cold?

  They weave between gravestones. “There’s a gate out,” he points, and they head for the suns
hine. “It was a long time ago.”

  “What was?”

  “Our breakup.”

  Hard, bright gladness fills her chest. “Good.”

  He glances down at her, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “Good?”

  “Yeah.” She tilts her chin. “Good.”

  “How about you?”

  “Oh . . .” She hesitates. “Nobody serious for a long time.”

  It’s a lie. There’s been no one serious ever. Candace teases her about this constantly. She’s been on a few dates but it’s never come to much. She’s just never met anyone who made her feel like . . . well, like this.

  Like Rowan does.

  They emerge onto a busy street lined with a motley collection of businesses: fabric outlets, restaurants, seedy bars, the kind of dusty coffee house patronized exclusively by old men from Europe. A sudden artificial grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary, plastic flowers littering the ground at her feet. Hair salons (All Types of Hair!!!) and manicurists. A newspaper box with a screaming headline: President Issues Final Ultimatum.

  She sees him reading it. “Scary, huh?”

  “I, uh . . . yeah.”

  He takes off so fast she has to practically run to keep up with him. “Dude, slow down!”

  He swings around, grabs her hand. “Sorry, I’m sorry! Come on, let’s go over there.”

  She loves the feeling of his hand around hers.

  He drags her across the road toward a store with pots and pans in the window, and a great green plant that takes up half the space, pink flowers pressing themselves thin against the glass like paper kisses. The sign above reads Kitchen and Spiritual Supplies. “I will not rest until I know what Spiritual Supplies are.”

  She giggles and lets herself be dragged.

  The store has a bell on the door that jingles when they walk in. It’s quiet inside, and dark, like being underwater. Sunlight filters dappled green through the leaves, and the smell hits hard: cheap incense, wood polish, perfume, plastic. Shelves line the back wall, floor to ceiling, displaying big, unlabeled glass jars filled with herbs and roots. The cash register is the old-fashioned kind: no electricity, beautiful.

  There isn’t anyone behind the counter.

  They walk slowly forward. One side of the store is taken up with racks of cheap, brightly coloured little sundresses and crocheted shawls, a shelf of plastic flip-flops. On a table is a display of tall, narrow glass jars holding votive candles, religious pictures on the outside. Rowan picks one up. Christ on the cross, a spear, a ladder, a bag with silver coins spilling out, a skull, a snake, an apple, the sponge on a stick. Rowan indicates it. “When I was a kid I always thought that was a baked potato.”

  Ophelia smothers a laugh. She grabs a package of incense from the display and waggles it at Rowan, raising her eyebrows.

  “‘Black Love,’” he reads, then actually blushes. “Oh, God.” They fall against each other, laughing.

  “Can I help you?”

  An old woman has materialized behind the counter.

  “You want to buy incense? A dress?” She looks Ophelia up and down.

  “Sorry, we’re just looking.”

  “Sure, sure, dears. Look all you like.” But the woman won’t stop staring. She gestures at Ophelia. “Come here, dear.”

  “Me?”

  The woman nods. Ophelia takes a few reluctant steps to the counter.

  The woman leans in. Her skin is the colour of mahogany, shiny, her breath smells like smoke. “You want to keep that one?” she says in a hoarse whisper.

  “Um . . .”

  “That one? You want to keep him? He’s a handsome one.” She leans in closer. “Love mixtures.”

  With a thrill Ophelia realizes the woman is offering some kind of potion. If Rowan wasn’t standing right there and probably totally able to hear everything, Ophelia thinks she’d want to know more. Is this some kind of magic? Something that could guarantee Rowan would stick around? She thinks of the White Witch, the bad magic she supposedly used to work her will. And Ophelia has no one to guide her through that kind of thing since her father is gone. A shiver goes through her. “Thanks, but that’s okay.”

  The woman sighs, shakes her head. She picks up a paperback novel. “I’ll just be reading here. You look around.”

  Ophelia backs away, pretends to be looking at the dresses.

  It’s very quiet—even the sound of traffic out on the street can barely be heard. The woman snorts from behind her book, and lights up a cigarette. The smoke rises lazily, twisting in a sunbeam. The air is close, the sunshine gets caught in the dust. Gradually, without being aware of it, Ophelia shifts closer to Rowan. Their hands meet. They clasp. The feeling of his hand touching hers runs through her like electricity.

  Paper flaps. The woman is staring right at them.

  Rowan lets go of her hand. He moves to a shelf, examining some lividly coloured crystals with studied concentration.

  She watches him, hungry. It’s the first time she’s been able to look at him without him looking back. His bright hair, the way his shoulders push at the fabric of his shirt, his strong forearms, even the bruises under his eyes—all of it, it slays her. She feels literally weak at the knees.

  Is this what love feels like?

  And then she feels something else. A tug at the corner of her mind, her heart. A sound of waves, the call of sea birds.

  Pim.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Going Under

  The thing Ophelia has been pushing to the back of her mind since last night comes crashing in so hard it takes her breath away.

  This has never happened before. She’s never felt called by Pim. Pim is calling her now. Ophelia takes a deep, trembling breath. Push it down, away. It’s not real.

  The pull increases.

  She tries to speak. Her mouth opens and no sound comes out. Salt on her lips, and pain, so tired . . . No, that’s not her, it’s Pim.

  “Hey,” she manages.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m just going to . . .” What is she going to do? She has to get somewhere alone now. Ophelia turns to the old lady. “Are there some facilities I could use?”

  The woman gestures at a silk sari hung over a doorframe.

  “I’ll be right back.” She can’t look at Rowan, doesn’t want him to see the insanity that must read in her eyes; she gulps, turns, and walks through the whisper of fabric.

  The washroom is tiny, lit only by a single electric bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. Ophelia leans over the sink and splashes water on her face. The room spins. Again, the sound of seabirds. It’s crazy. She’s crazy.

  The water runs and runs. The tugging, it hurts. Pim has never called her before; it’s always been her that decides to go to the other place. Ophelia feels her mind going out of focus, the familiar slide.

  When she was a kid, she had a toy rabbit that she’d named Pim. It looked nothing like Pim, being small, grey, and made of plush, but it had served as a sort of go-between. She’d hug the rabbit, close her eyes, and slowly find herself in the other place. She’d grown up with Pim; they’d been little ones together, then Pim had gone all tall and leggy. Ophelia had never caught up. Pim’s so tall. . . .

  Ophelia can’t remember what happened to the Pim rabbit. Did her mother take it?

  The pulling, the thrilling, terrible feeling. A flash of bright light. An ocean, waves tiny like wrinkles in silk, coming closer, closer. A smudge on the horizon that is land.

  Pim’s in deep water, and now, so is Ophelia.

  She thrashes her arms and legs. A wave—probably not much if you’re above it, in a boat—swells, terrifying, over her head. She kicks to meet it, crests it. It’s hard to swim in clothes and shoes.

  And there she is, within arm’s length. “Pim!” The sun beats down. Pim’s lips are cracked, her eyes are dull.

  Another wave. Pim nearly goes under.

  Ophelia swims to her friend, gets an arm under Pim’s neck.

  Pi
m croaks. “Finally.”

  Ophelia’s crying. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” How could she have done this? Stayed away. Who cares if this is insane? Pim needed her, Pim’s almost dead. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Pim tries to lick her lips. Her tongue is swollen and dark, dry; her face is horribly burnt.

  Ophelia tries to sound reassuring. “It’s just over . . .” Christ, she’s lost it, lost sight of land, and she has no idea which way they are facing. She claws frantically to the crest of a swell. Nothing. Salt water gets in her eyes; it stings.

  Something brushes up against Ophelia’s leg. A little involuntary scream; she tries to look down through the water and a wave hits her in the face. Water in Ophelia’s mouth, bitter, bitter salt. She coughs. Pim has been enduring this for how long?

  Another brush. It’s not Pim, it’s something else.

  A harder shove, then the sensation of rough skin sliding over Ophelia.

  She meets Pim’s eyes.

  “Sharks,” croaks Pim.

  She can see them now, brown shapes the size of large dogs. A lot of them.

  She and Pim are amidst a shiver of sharks.

  “But you are here. Now I can . . .”

  Pim leans in, nestles her head against Ophelia’s neck, runs her hands down Ophelia’s spine. Her body convulses. Ophelia feels Pim’s skin moving under her palms.

  Another shark circles them, just under the surface.

  Pim gasps and arches backward. Has she been bitten?

  No, something else is happening.

  Pim’s body softens under Ophelia’s palms. She’s arching back and back, impossibly flexible.

  And now Pim’s head is too big.

  Her eyes open and open, change shape, get darker. Her burnt skin is turning grey, then green, then red and mottled. Her wet hair is streaming close to her neck . . . her neck disappears, her hair is gone—it’s become part of her strange, patterned skin. Her face spreads, nose retracting, and her eyes slide around. Her mouth goes round, pushes out, hardening like a parrot’s beak. Her arms stretch out, her wrists and elbows bend backward. Her legs writhe, twisting . . .

  Ophelia sees pale, round circles on her friend’s forearms. They push out; Pim has suction cups on her arms and legs. Her hands are gone, her feet. Her limbs taper into points. She writhes, arms and legs swirling in a strange boneless dance.