Drift

by Penni Russon

  ‘Paris,’ he said again, or rather he breathed the word out as if releasing it – the idea of it, the desire – from his tight lungs and throat.

  ‘So! You should totally come,’ said Reina, as if reading his thoughts.

  Trout laughed. ‘Sounds great,’ he said.

  Reina’s eyes burned bright. ‘No, seriously. You’ve got all that money saved up. You should come.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You can. Why can’t you?’

  ‘Because …’ The word floundered hoplessely. For some reason Trout couldn’t immediately think of a good reason not to go to Paris.

  ‘Hooray,’ said Reina. ‘You’re coming.’

  ‘I’m not coming. It’s entirely impractical.’

  ‘But it’s not like you’re going to uni. You didn’t get in.’

  ‘I didn’t get into the photography course, Reina,’ Trout said pointedly, wearily.

  ‘But … I thought you were going to have the year off. The letter you got from the coordinator guy …’

  ‘It’s not an offer, Reina.’

  ‘As good as! He told you to try again next year, to consider applying for the art stream. He told you to keep taking pictures, to work on your art. He thinks you’re an artist! He said you just needed life experience. There’s heaps of life experience in Paris.’

  ‘But I got an offer – a proper offer – weeks ago. It just wasn’t my first choice.’

  Now Reina’s dark eyes flashed angrily. ‘But you said … I thought you weren’t going to do medicine. I can’t believe you’re giving up.’

  Trout shook his head. ‘It’s med school, Reina. It’s a seven year course. I’ll be a doctor. It’s not exactly the easy way out.’

  ‘Of course it is. You know it too.’ Reina sat back and crossed her arms. ‘Well, your mother will be proud anyway.’

  ‘That was cheap, Reina.’

  ‘Just like me, hey?’ She dug some coins out of her pocket, tossed them on the table and picked up her ticket. ‘Come to Paris, don’t come. But don’t throw your life away because for the first time somebody didn’t give you what you want.’

  Trout looked away. ‘Second,’ he said bitterly, thinking of Undine.

  ‘You, Trout Montmorency, have led a charmed existence. You don’t even know how lucky you are.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Trout laughed, one short sharp, ‘Ha!’ He pointed to himself and raised questioning eyebrows. ‘Me? Not that lucky.’

  ‘We’ve all had people die. People die. They have heart attacks. They leave. It doesn’t make you unlucky. News flash. It’s not all about you. You’re way smart. You’re funny. Sexy.’ Reina was the only person Trout knew who could say the word ‘sexy’ without blushing. Mentally, Trout stumbled over it. But Reina wasn’t finished. ‘If you let them, people would love you.’

  ‘I’m not stopping anyone.’

  Reina shook her head. ‘You idiot.’

  ‘I thought you said I was smart.’ He’d meant it to be funny, to lighten the mood, but it came out sideways, even to his own ears, he sounded whining and childish.

  Reina strode away angrily. She stopped down the street and tied her hair into a fierce knot at the back of her neck, waiting for a car to go past. Then she ran lightly across the road, around a corner and was gone. Trout stared down at the gold dollar coins she had left behind, their shine worn away by use, dull and ordinary as spent wishes.

  Phoenix woke again. This time fresh air pricked his nostrils. His cheek rested on his soft leather suitcase. He opened his eyes.

  He was back, on the steps of the old hospital wing, in a disused internal courtyard that had once held a garden and now was rubble and weeds. Most of the windows that looked in on it were in the old wing, which lay empty, waiting to be torn down and built anew.

  He sat up, rubbing his neck, and a word came to him, so clearly today that he could almost see it written on the orange brick wall of the old hospital wing. It was her face he saw as he reached into his pocket and found his chalk. Before he left, he wrote it on the wall. The word gleamed in the morning light, Sister, almost seeming to speak itself aloud.

  He did speak it aloud. ‘Sister.’ He listened to his own voice and was surprised to hear longing in it. He’d expected animosity, sourness. He’d expected it to taste bitter, to sit in the back of his throat, but the word rolled onto his tongue and out into the world in such a way that he couldn’t have hung onto it even if he’d wanted to. He dropped the chalk. Today wasn’t a writing day. But it was a good day all the same. He was here, wasn’t he? He was where he wanted to be.

  He picked up his suitcase and left, pushing through the rubble and weeds, up through a thin corridor between the old building and the new, and out into the windless blue day.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Trout strode along the footpath, clutching Reina’s dollar coins tightly. He’d palmed them before settling the bill with a fresh ten dollar note. When Reina had run off, it had been homewards, so he felt on principle that he ought to walk in the opposite direction. He headed toward the market. The heat wave showed no signs of abating, the wind smelt singed, and in the hills around Hobart fires still burned. ‘Ablaze!’ read the Mercury headline on a stand outside the newsagent.

  He was still angry with Reina, angrier than he had any right to be, really, when everything she had said was true, but he was also suddenly furious with Undine. Why had she popped out of the air like that? Why had she popped back in again? He was fed up with her, he told himself. Why couldn’t she be normal? Why couldn’t she just be dead like other girls? Guiltily he bit that thought back.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ he asked the air savagely, as if Undine might be just beside him, matching his angry stride. Was he meant to look for her? Winkle her out of the air? He knew he was being petulant. He knew there was really nothing he could do; he could not rent a large rip in the universe like Undine could. But, he thought, if Undine was going to disappear, she should completely disappear. It wasn’t fair of her to drop in from time to time to remind him just how gone she was, how unattainable she had become.

  As Phoenix began his show, he realised he was keeping an eye out for Jasper and his mother. He had even taken longer than usual to set up, hoping they might arrive. His eyes scanned the crowd, but he couldn’t pick them out.

  He did notice an adolescent girl, though, around thirteen, at the peak of her awkardness with a mouth full of braces, long legs and slightly knobbled knees. She stood in a way that suggested she had grown quickly and was self-conscious about it, hunching her shoulders, her thin hair combed into a tight, high ponytail that seemed to strain her scalp. When she noticed him looking at her a blotchy redness crept up her cheeks and as he approached she giggled nervously.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Emily,’ the girl quavered.

  Phoenix brought his hands up to her face. He crossed his palms in front of her like a curtain and then opened them outwards, revealing her, and suddenly she was part tree, crowned with flowers, willowy branches of blossoms trailing down to her shoulders. She looked up to see and her mouth rounded into a perfect O. The illusion only lasted a moment, but in that moment everyone in the crowd could see in her what was already apparent to Phoenix – the woman inside the girl, who she might become when her body stopped being wild and unpredictable, and she could relax into herself.

  As he moved back to the centre of the circle, Phoenix heard Emily’s friend whisper to her, ‘You should so wear your hair down like that.’ Emily didn’t giggle – she raised a tentative, discovering hand to her ponytail.

  Phoenix considered the waiting crowd. They were all quiet for a moment as he scanned their faces. Most were alert with anticipation, but some were reserved and watchful, as if looking for the seams of his show. Phoenix had discovered there were people who didn’t want to be convinced by his illusions. Instead they desired to reveal to themselves the shammery, the trickery, the con. To Phoenix it seemed an unhappy way to live.
<
br />   But today one face in particular glowed expectantly, ready to believe anything Phoenix showed him. Jasper and Lou had worked their way in, so they stood in the inner circle of the audience. Lou caught Phoenix’s eye, Jasper waved.

  A story began to form at Phoenix’s lips: ‘Once upon a time there was a castle …’ and a miniature castle flipped up from the ground, made of corrugated cardboard. The crowd gasped; it seemed to come from nowhere. ‘And in that castle lived a princess and a dragon.’ From his left hand descended the princess, a paper puppet on strings, from his right descended the dragon, with a wire connected to each finger to move all the segmented body parts of the long painted puppet.

  ‘You might think this was an unhappy arrangement for the princess, but that was not so. She liked living alone with a dragon for a pet, far from visitors, distant from the world. But still, from high in the castle the princess looked out over the grassy plains and worried that the world would come and find her. So she took one seed from every plant in the world and scattered them out over the plains.’ The princess puppet scattered her seeds. ‘Some seeds were carried away by the wind, or eaten by birds …’ (paper birds pecked at Phoenix’s feet) ‘but some of the seeds burrowed their way into the soil and grew fast and thick until a great forest surrounded the castle.’ The paper forest grew.

  ‘How’s he doing that?’ a girl asked.

  ‘Shh,’ said her mother. ‘Just watch.’

  ‘Some dragons can fly, but not this one, her wings were too small to carry her. So the dragon watched as the forest grew and realised she had become a prisoner of the princess. The dragon was big, and she had a hearty appetite – she could have eaten the princess in two chomps, but she didn’t have the heart. The dragon and the princess had lived together for too long. Besides, had she eaten the princess, she would still be a prisoner. The dragon grew lonely, for though she had the princess, she had lost hope and hope had been a friend to her for many years. While the princess had stood in her castle and wished the world away, the dragon had kept her belly close to the ground, listening in this way for the vibrations through the earth of another dragon that might come whomping through the plains. But the forest was too thick for a dragon to come now. So though the princess was happy in her castle, surrounded by a forest, away from the world, the dragon cried dragon tears and soon a river was born.’

  A river now wended its way through the forest, shimmering silver foil.

  ‘One day, while the dragon slept …’ Phoenix slipped the dragon puppet from his fingers and laid it on the ground. A new puppet descended from his hand: a boat with a man in it travelling up the river.

  ‘The princess looked out and saw the traveller coming. Frightened, she collected the first handful of seeds she could find and threw them. But they were appleseeds, and as the trees grew—’ Phoenix’s apple trees leaned over the river, offering their fruit – ‘the traveller picked the apples and the sweetness helped sustain him for his long journey. As the traveller landed the boat by the sleeping dragon, the princess threw more seeds. These were lavender seeds. The flowers grew and their sweet scent and the drone of the bees they attracted put the traveller to sleep.’ Phoenix lay the man down amongst the purple flowers. A cloud of scent and the gentle buzzing of bees filled the air.

  ‘The princess was glad, but men do not sleep forever and twelve hours later he woke up, well rested and fortified for his journey. He approached the castle. A third time the princess threw down seeds. This time ivy grew, covering the castle, sealing the windows and doors. The princess was safe. She stood in the turret and watched the traveller circling the castle. She felt curiously disappointed that she would not meet him, though of course this is what she had wanted. But then the traveller clung to the ivy and began to climb. He pulled one hand over the other, scaling the castle walls. He climbed higher and higher.’ Phoenix’s hands moved lightly upwards as the man climbed. ‘But as he reached the princess his foot slipped. He fell.

  ‘The princess gathered up all her remaining seeds and threw them to the ground. A soft bed of flowers broke his fall. A tall tree grew beside the castle and the princess climbed on to one of its branches and down to the ground beside the traveller. She carried him to the field of lavender, where sleep restored him to health.

  ‘Ivy strangled the castle walls and the princess could no longer use the door to get inside. She stood at the bottom of the tree, looking up. She could climb it, return to her turret, but suddenly she found she didn’t want to. The traveller was kind and brave and he made her curious about the world she had shut out, so she decided to travel with him into the world and see what would become of her.’ The boat travelled down the river and then the princess, the boat and the traveller were discarded by Phoenix. He picked up the dragon’s strings again.

  ‘When the dragon woke she discovered she was alone, the princess had left her. The dragon could not leave by the river, as the princess had done, for her long heavy body was not made for swimming. The weight of her bones alone would drag her down to the riverbed below. So she stayed by the castle, and her heart grew more anguished as each long day passed.

  ‘One day she heard something. It was not the whomping through her belly she had once listened for. It was a disturbance of the air.’ The crowd heard it too, the rushing of air, great wings beating. Phoenix’s hands rose quickly and another dragon puppet appeared above his head. He made a quick movement as if he were grabbing its strings as it passed, and taming it, as if the puppet had a life and a will of its own.

  ‘The sky dragon landed beside her and stayed for three days, telling her of all he had seen from above. He had seen the princess win a great battle, he had watched her ride across deserts, he had even carried her himself, over a gap-toothed chasm of rock. After three days, the sky dragon asked the earth dragon to go with him, but she couldn’t follow. She showed him that her wings were too small for flight. She looked sadly at the forest that surrounded her, closing her in, and shook her head. But the sky dragon rose up on his hind legs. He breathed and instead of air, he exhaled fire. The forest burned …’ With a flick of his hands paper flames obscured the forest. ‘As the earth dragon walked, her hard scaled belly flattened what was left of the forest and extinguished the flames. The sky dragon chose to walk too, and the earth dragon felt the vibrations of his every step. Together they travelled far from the castle and into the world.’ Phoenix laid the puppets down.

  ‘As for the castle,’ Phoenix said, ‘eventually it crumbled back into the ground. The plants around it that had once cushioned the traveller’s fall grew thick and wild and after many years, when the dragon and the princess were long gone, no one ever remembered there had been a castle there at all.’ And soon the lawn in front of Phoenix was covered in paper flowers that he scattered from his hands. With a wave of his hand they seemed to become real in a flash, and then they were just paper again. The crowd blinked.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed the show. I have my apprentice here today.’ Phoenix pulled Jasper out of the crowd. Jasper beamed at having been chosen. ‘So if you want to make a contribution to his education, we like the clink of coins but we really like the rustling of paper.’ Phoenix rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and winked and the crowd tittered. Jasper took Phoenix’s panama hat and proffered it around. People chattered excitedly as the crowd dispersed, and Phoenix saw a number of them dropping money into the hat.

  At his shoulder he heard a quiet voice. ‘Thank you.’ It was Emily, the girl from the beginning of the show. She looked a shade less mousy, and she didn’t hunch over and talk to the ground but stood up straight and talked directly to his nose, which was an improvement. He grinned at her.

  ‘That was fantastic,’ Lou said. ‘Oh my god! Where did you learn to do that?’

  ‘Here and there. More here than there,’ Phoenix said, his eyes twinkling. ‘Let me pack up, then depending on how well your son does, I’ll buy you lunch.’

  ‘Oh no, I’ll buy lunch. I insist on it. You’re an overn
ight sensation. You’ve just transformed Jasper. I can’t believe it, he’s a different boy. He hasn’t stopped talking about you.’

  Phoenix and Lou watched Jasper. ‘We like the clink of coins,’ he was saying to one man. ‘But we really like the rustling of paper.’ He must have been convincing because the man pocketed his small change and drew a note out of his wallet instead.

  Lou laughed. Phoenix packed the puppets and paper flowers into his suitcase.

  ‘There’s more than a hundred bucks in here,’ Jasper said, bringing over Phoenix’s laden hat. ‘You must be the richest man in the world.’

  ‘That I am,’ Phoenix said. ‘Here, for all your help.’ And he pulled out a five dollar note for Jasper.

  ‘Wow! Can I keep it?’ Jasper asked Lou.

  ‘Sure,’ Lou said. ‘But I’m definitely buying lunch now.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Market day was a ritual for Stephen, Lou, Undine and Jasper.

  Stephen shopped for fruit and vegetables and honey, filling calico bags until they looked as if they might burst their seams. Lou and Undine meandered around the stalls, trying on hats or poring over jewellery, flicking through old books and holding vintage dresses against themselves to judge for fit. Jasper looked at the discounted lollies and the wooden toys; he especially liked the puppets on strings that hung from the metal frame of a market marquee. He’d been promised one for his birthday and every week he changed his mind about which he would get – a circus elephant or a clown on a bicycle? A long, silly caterpillar thing or a rather splendid butterfly with expansive blue painted wings?

  Today it was the butterfly. Definitely. Or the caterpillar. Jasper also had two weeks’ worth of pocket money and with it he bought three juggling balls made from red and yellow balloons and stuffed with millet seeds.