Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  Pim’s body has shrunk into her head. She’s all head now, and arms. Legs. Too many.

  Eight, to be exact.

  Pim is an octopus.

  It’s too horrible to even scream.

  Ophelia closes her eyes. She feels the octopus wrap its arms around her, clasping her body, twisting and turning her. Tentacles creep under her shirt, snaking up her spine. She feels a teasing touch inside one of her shoes, feels the shoe come off her foot and imagines it falling, falling through the water, into the depths.

  And then Ophelia feels the bones of her body turning under her skin. Her face is spreading, lips hardening. It hurts. She gasps. It comes out like a hiss. Her teeth are gone, and her lips push forward into a hard beak. Her bones are jelly, nothing, gone. She can feel her heart inside her body dividing . . . then there are three muscles beating within her. Her lungs dissolve. Her hands and feet fuse, elongate. She can feel the water, taste the water, with her arms and legs. She gasps. Her ears pop. No, they open, water and air hissing out of the sides of her body-head: gills. Her strange handless arms, her footless legs corkscrew, flexible and long. She supposes she has eight now, but it doesn’t matter. She can’t feel where they are in the water, not the way she could before; they seem to move roughly the way she wants them to, and partly of their own accord, like they have their own brains.

  Pim entwines her arms in Ophelia’s. They make a knot together, softness to softness.

  Strong. She could do anything with these arms. Pim whirls her around under the water. They tumble, wrestling. No matter how Ophelia swirls, she always knows which way is up. Her eyes swivel in her head, keeping her perspective upright.

  Sound is muffled.

  But Ophelia can see everything. Including the sharks.

  Pim springs away, white with fear. Ophelia feels water-wake jetting against her octopus skin.

  Ophelia shoots through the water, feeling it cool on her face, her skin. Feels herself eject something from her body—a liquid. It’s ink! Ophelia has never seen a live octopus before, but she knows they can do this. Thank God for Mary and her nature programs.

  She jets down, down, following Pim. Down, and fast!

  The sharks pursue.

  The ink seems to confuse them a little; most of them go off in the wrong direction. But a few follow, stabbing through the ink. Pim has reached the ocean floor now. She seems to be trying to lift a rock; what is she doing?

  No, she’s squeezing under it. Impossible—the crack is so tiny.

  Pim disappears—body first, then leg after leg. A final gesture, a flourish, and then that still-pale arm disappears under the rock, too.

  Ophelia knows there’s a shark close behind. She reaches a rock, sees a crack. Can she do this? She must.

  It’s easy, when you have no bones.

  She feels the snap of the shark’s terrible teeth as her last leg pulls itself under the rock.

  She waits.

  Overhead, a shadow hovers with predator’s eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  SpiralLing Down

  Ophelia will never forget the feeling of that hard, rubbery nose bashing at the crack in the rock, a hair’s breadth away.

  Those perfect, rending teeth.

  But the crack is too small. The sharks cannot get in.

  It takes a long time, but finally the sharks swim away to more profitable hunting.

  Finally, Ophelia senses Pim emerging from under her rock, and squeezes herself out, too.

  A prawn marches across the sand in front of her. Without thinking, Ophelia lifts herself up and engulfs the prawn with her beaky mouth. Then another. Easy.

  Pim swirls toward her on her several legs, twining patterns in the water. Patterns run across her skin, and colours. Her head has a shape that reminds Ophelia just a little bit of a moose: the knowing eyes, a bulbous shape that could be a nose. Tenderness fills Ophelia.

  The two octopuses come together and entwine. Ophelia wants to tell Pim how sorry she is for waiting so long to come to this place. They caress each other, dancing. Ophelia senses colour not through her eyes, she realizes, but through her skin. Colour and light are everywhere. It’s very beautiful, down here, the light filtering down from the fractured water’s surface.

  Finally Pim pulls away. She fills her body with water—Ophelia can see it happening—and jets away, toward the land. Somehow, now, it’s easy to know which way the land is. And it’s fun, filling her boneless body with water and then sending it gushing out through a muscular siphon. Ophelia is surprised by how fast they can go.

  The water gets warmer. New sounds begin to drum inside her body: rocks rolling under waves, and the sound of debris on the water’s surface. She can see it, and taste it, too: logs and leaves and dead seabirds, and a swollen cow, long drowned, floating on its side.

  Something bad has happened here.

  Her hearts beat. She and Pim shoot through the water together.

  They have reached sand.

  They crawl slowly up the incline. As they come out into the air, Ophelia feels the hot, sunny air hit her skin. Pim seems very pretty to her now with her green and red hide, a beautiful batik. They drag themselves forward and forward, arm-legs working across the sand.

  There’s more debris: tree trunks, twisted palm fronds, dead birds.

  The two octopuses stop dragging themselves. Ophelia puts what could be described as her forehead to an analogous place on Pim’s face, and closes her eyes.

  The move back to being human is almost as painful as it was to become an invertebrate. The pushing hardness of bones under skin is maybe the worst part, and the feeling of her eyes sliding around on her skull is almost enough to make Ophelia toss her prawns onto the sand.

  Pim is lying on her back, perfectly still, her eyes open and gazing at the sky above. “I thought I was gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears in Ophelia’s eyes again. “I am so sorry.”

  Pim rolls over. “It’s all right. You came in time.”

  Ophelia’s body is shaking. “Man. Octopuses?”

  “Perhaps it would have been better to become birds. But I couldn’t think outside the water.”

  “Is this going to keep happening?”

  “What?”

  “These . . . transformations.”

  “They have been necessary.”

  “I don’t know if I can handle this kind of necessary.” Ophelia wants to stand up, feel her feet and bones again, know she’s human, but she doesn’t trust her legs to hold her.

  “You would have drowned before, if we had not become seals. And the sharks . . .”

  Ophelia holds up her hand. “I know. We had to do something. But really. Couldn’t you have warned me?”

  “How?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Years ago you could have said something like, ‘Ophelia, some day we will be octopuses.’ That kind of warning.”

  Pim doesn’t answer. Almost, infuriatingly, she looks like she is going to laugh.

  Ophelia gazes up and down the beach. As far as she can see, the sand is covered in broken trees, twisted feathers, debris . . . and then there was that cow . . .

  “Was there a storm?”

  Pim shakes her head. “Waves. From far out.”

  Ophelia sits up. “The tremor, and the volcano. It was a tsunami!”

  “The first one was all right. And the second. But the third . . .” She trails off, staring out at the horizon. “It was quite big. I couldn’t make it to the city in time.”

  “It swept you out?”

  Pim nods.

  “It’s amazing you survived.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are the waves done, do you think?”

  “I think so. We must go to Calabar now, Ophelia.”

  “I can’t!” She has to get back. She can’t leave Rowan like that: suddenly, with no explanation.

  “Why not?”

  Ophelia shakes her head. It would sound so trivial, I’m on a date with a boy. How can she explain the urgen
cy she feels? The longing?

  But of course, she never gets to pick when she leaves Antilia. She only chooses when to come in.

  Except this time. “You called me here, didn’t you?”

  “Is that what it felt like?” Pim feels her burnt face with careful fingers. “Ah. I was in so much pain. So tired. And then when the sharks found me . . .”

  “You need me to be with you, in order for you to transform into another creature. You can’t do it alone. Is that how it works?”

  Pim nods. Then, wearily, she stands. “Our worlds have lined up, come closer. The Mender will explain everything.”

  “Mender? You said that before. Who’s the Mender?”

  “We must go to Calabar, Ophelia.”

  She’s visited the city with Pim before, but infrequently. Mostly they played by the ocean, or explored the tropical forests, full of flowers like those Ophelia imagines might grow in the land of her father. But the city is beautiful. Ancient, made of grey stone and full of towers, terraced up and down seven hills. Red roofs. Spiralling streets.

  Calabar seems to be run by a group of women called The Virgos, a sort of ruling council. They remind Ophelia of nothing so much as a bevy of nuns, and maybe that’s what they are.

  But until recently, Pim’s never mentioned this Mender person.

  A flash of the White Witch with her black dress—the story she told the twins—comes into Ophelia’s mind.

  “They have called a council. The volcano is erupting. It is time.”

  Ophelia huddles, closes her eyes. From Rowan’s point of view, she’s disappeared behind that silken curtain. He will have given up on her, gone home. Left her in that tiny bathroom with the single electric bulb hanging from the ceiling on its black wire, its sink with the chipped enamel . . .

  . . . sink with the chipped enamel . . .

  . . . sink with the water spiralling down the black hole of drain . . .

  Ophelia feels herself spiralling, twisting, pouring through. It’s coming, the real world is coming closer! She can feel it.

  Pim’s face opens with dismay. “You cannot leave Antilia, not now!”

  “I always leave.”

  “Not this time. . . .” Pim yearns, reaching out. The blue sky, the pale beach, the sea, it all tumbles and shakes together and becomes small and bright and far away.

  —

  Ophelia is naked, covered in sand, and shaking.

  Her body convulses. She makes it to the toilet, pukes up a broken prawn body. The feeling of it sliding up her throat is horrible.

  “Ophelia? Are you okay in there?”

  Antilia. Pim had called the other place Antilia. She’s never done that before. Ophelia’s never named the island, not until Rowan showed her that map. How did Pim know?

  Ophelia retches again.

  “Can I . . . Are you okay?”

  It’s Rowan outside the bathroom curtain-door. Oh, Christ.

  “I’m okay,” she manages. “Just need a minute . . .”

  She hears a creaking sound, realizes it’s the old woman, talking to Rowan.

  Hears the word pregnant.

  “No!” she gasps. “No, I’m just . . .”

  “I am coming in,” creaks the old lady. There’s an authority to her voice that will not be denied. The silk curtain twitches and she hobbles in. Ophelia huddles in her nakedness.

  “Oh, dear, dear.” The woman clucks like a chicken. “What have we here?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Secret Place

  First Ophelia disappears behind that flimsy curtain into the bathroom.

  Then she’s dead quiet in there. Two, three, five minutes.

  Longer.

  She’d looked like she was going to faint; was she okay? Rowan goes to the curtain, calls her name. He hears her retching; she’s being sick.

  And the old lady pushes past him into the bathroom, then emerges with a horrified look. “Your girlfriend,” she says, like it’s all Rowan’s fault, “has disposed of her clothes.”

  “Disposed of her clothes?”

  “She has no clothes, boy.”

  In the end Rowan buys a cheap little cotton sundress for Ophelia, a green one. That will look nice with her eyes, he thinks. And a pair of plastic flip-flops.

  She comes out. She won’t look at him. But yeah, she looks cute in the dress.

  And the two of them leave the store as fast as they can, getting out from under the old lady’s hard, suspicious glances.

  “Really, I’m okay.”

  “But what happened to your clothes?”

  “Thanks for the dress, and the flip-flops. . . . I can pay you back. . . .”

  Rowan waves his hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How long was I in there?”

  “Five, ten minutes.” What happened? Did she pass out? Is she sick? She looks fine—he peers at her. Yes, she looks totally fine.

  “Really. That’s interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  She glances up at him, then away. Mumbles something he can’t hear.

  Her hair. It smells of salt water.

  He remembers the look on her face when she saw the world map with Antilia on it.

  He remembers that certainty in his chest when Ari said, “The Chosen ones—lovers—come from your world.”

  Could she . . . Is it possible?

  His heart starts racing. It would explain . . . what? The instant feeling of connection between them, the feeling he’s had ever since they met.

  “Ophelia, what happened?”

  She has the same imaginary world as he does. No, not imaginary. It’s real. And she goes there, too . . . Is that what he’s thinking? It’s preposterous.

  But . . . Wasn’t her hair sort of straight when they met at the coffee shop? It’s wavy now, curling around her face in adorable corkscrews.

  Almost like her hair has somehow gotten wet. And that scent of the salt . . .

  She stops walking. “You will think I am entirely insane. I should just go home.”

  “Please. Don’t.”

  “Rowan, I . . . I’m . . .” She looks like she’s going to cry. “There’s something wrong with me.”

  Rowan looks around, desperate. “There’s a park near here. Let’s get off this street.”

  The day is warm and the park is full, people really beginning to believe that summer is coming. Rowan leads Ophelia away from the crowded centre of the park to the place where the land falls away, overlooking a gully lined with trees. The ground is dry; they sit, looking out over the trees, the sky, the city. It feels good here, like a secret place.

  All day he’s been trying to imagine telling her about the yellow letter. It’s been burning a hole in his pocket ever since he fled his house that morning. But now, there’s this.

  Rowan feels with all his heart that Ophelia goes to Antilia, too.

  If he’s right, how can he get her to tell him? There’s something wrong with me. . . . You will think I am entirely insane. . . . Funny, it’s never occurred to him to wonder about his own sanity. His time with Ari always feels infinitely more sane than his life here, with his parents and the crazy war and everything else. But this one—she’s different.

  What was her word of the day yesterday? Pusillanimous—meaning cowardly. The opposite of that is courage, right?

  Rowan takes a deep breath. “I got a letter today. It’s . . . here.” He pulls it out of his jeans pocket and hands it to her. “I’ve been called up.”

  She gasps.

  He sees himself, his deliberate creation of a dramatic scene, handing the letter over like a theatrical prop, hates himself for it. But he can’t stop now. It all seems unreal, like a dream, like he’s watching himself do this from far away. “So I’ll have to go. . . . They say the training starts in three months. But there’s something . . . Ophelia, there’s a place I can go. In my mind, I guess.” Maybe she’s right; this does sound insane. He sees her looking at the letter out of the corner of his eye; he stil
l can’t look directly at her either. “But lately it’s been . . . more real. This happened—” he gestures at his face “—because I sort of tripped out of what felt like a . . .” His voice cracks. He keeps talking, can’t stop. “It felt real. A bloody real ocean voyage. I’ve come back soaking with salt water. I’ve been almost drowned by a big wave.”

  She whispers something. He thinks she’s saying, “You could go there.”

  “I could what?”

  “You could go there. You could stay there.” Her voice gains in strength. “Then you wouldn’t have to go fight in this war, this ugly, pointless . . .”

  They’re both shaking. “You do, Ophelia, you do go there, too. . . .”

  “But it’s dangerous, Rowan, there’s a volcano—like on that map, right?—and it’s—”

  “—it’s going to erupt,” he finishes.

  He meets her eyes.

  They are huge, round, and her lips are trembling.

  “Antilia.”

  She nods. “Yes. Antilia.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Very Far Away From Anywhere Else

  The island, the place on the other side.

  The strength of the emotion Rowan feels on telling someone, someone who understands, makes him almost weak with relief.

  Their islands are subtly different, however. Or maybe they have different parts of it they visit.

  “Is there a city?”

  “Yes,” she says, “on the south coast, on a tidal river. Calabar.”

  “Calabar?”

  “Yes.” She spells it for him.

  “Mine sounds almost like that, but with a K: Kalmar. In the north.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Well—” he brings it to his mind “—I’ve never been into it. I’ve only seen it from the outside.” Ari has always skirted it, taking care that they stay hidden. He seems to have a lot of enemies, does Ari. “It’s very old, older than any city I’ve been to here. Built near the water. The stone is grey, but the roofs are all red tile, and when the sun comes out it’s beautiful, nestled in the fjord like that.” He sees it in his mind, the ruddy peaks of many round towers, some of them limned with gold, against the steep, gorgeous grey and emerald cliffs.