by Penni Russon
When they were shopped out, they sat on the grass and ate sweet and sour pork with rice, and hot, crispy, sugared doughnuts, bought from the takeaway food caravans. Undine leaned back on her arms, looking across the grass, and the road that circled the market area and over to the warehouses opposite; behind them were the docks, where the strange events of the night before had taken place. Undine could still feel in her solar plexus what it had felt like to be pulled from one world to the next.
But it was the dream she’d had that was foremost in her mind. She could still hear that voice whistling through her, like a trapped insect nagging at her brain. Sister, it said. You must come. She tried to block out the dream, keep her mind on the here and now: Jasper and Stephen’s conversation, the taste of cinnamon on her tongue, the warm close presence of Lou on the grass beside her.
‘When I grow up,’ Jasper sighed, ‘I’m going to live in a caravan and make doughnuts all day long.’
‘A noble ambition,’ said Stephen, who was an accountant, which was a very sensible thing to be, though Undine knew it didn’t give him much joy. ‘But you might want a sideline, just in case the bottom falls out of the cinnamon doughnut market.’
‘I’ll sell jam doughnuts too.’
‘Ah. Now that’s diversifying.’
‘And at eleven o’clock,’ said Jasper, who had recently taught himself how to tell the time, ‘I will put a sign up in my caravan and I will come out on the grass and I will juggle and I’ll put a hat on the ground and people will give me all their money because I’m funny.’
‘But then they won’t have any money to buy doughnuts,’ Stephen pointed out.
‘That’s all right,’ said Jasper, biting into another one. ‘Then I can eat them all.’
‘You okay?’ Lou asked Undine. ‘You seem a million miles away.’
‘What? Oh. Fine.’
The girl is a skin you wear.
Undine jumped up. Suddenly she felt restless. She felt dangerous, as if the mere proximity of her put her family at risk. As if under her … her girlskin she was something violent, dark, treacherous. ‘I’ve got to go. I just remembered …’ But she couldn’t come up with an instant lie, and the words petered out.
Lou, Stephen and Jasper blinked up at her. The suddenness of her leave-taking was the direct antithesis of the slow morning, and the markets, and doughnuts.
‘You going to be home for dinner tonight?’ Stephen said. ‘I thought I’d make a curry.’
Undine hesitated. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she said, a shade wistfully. But what if she was dangerous? She steeled herself against her own faltering feelings. ‘Don’t count on it.’
Stephen shrugged. ‘We’ll set a place for you anyway.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll be making plenty. There’s always enough for one more.’
As if she were a kite, bound to the earth by a piece of string and being deftly drawn back in, Undine ended up back at the docks. There was a wooden bench just near where she and Jasper had entered and exited the world the night before, and Undine sat on it. She looked desolately at the point of egress, trying to figure out just what it meant for her now. For six months she had lived in this world and there had been no magic, not a glimpse, not the slightest scent of it. Nothing marked Undine as different or unusual. She’d been accepted here on face value, she’d been loved. No one questioned her identity, her actions, her inner workings. In this way it was as if she belonged here more than she had in her own world.
Her own world, where over a year ago, the magic had risen up in her and she hadn’t wanted it. It made her less human, less girl, and more … more like weather, or like … well, like an event. What had Prospero said back then? It was like a heart attack or a supernova. But it was bad to be a supernova. It sucked to be a heart attack. Trout had called the magic chaos, and that too seemed a dark, difficult thing to be – chaos. So she pushed it down, she pushed it away. But it wouldn’t stay down; it wouldn’t go away. It had only stirred and boiled beneath the surface, always tempting, always beckoning.
She hadn’t wanted it? That wasn’t completely true. Part of her longed for it. The power, the annihilation of self, the chaos, the ecstasy of the universe rippling inside her. It was as if … as if she’d been changing from one thing into another and she’d stopped somewhere in between, mid-metamorphosis, so that she was neither one thing nor the other, neither magic nor girl.
And then, when she was in Greece on holiday with her family, finally she’d given herself over to the magic, taken it into her. She’d become the magic, or she’d tried to anyway, and she’d felt the girl spooling away … And then, here she was and she was just the girl and the magic was gone and everything was simple. It was easy to tell herself this was where she was meant to be. But now the magic wasn’t gone anymore. It was here. Nothing was simple. She shook her head in disbelief. How could she have thought it would be simple? The magic was here and she should have known that. She should have tried harder to return. She’d never tried. She’d just accepted … because she wanted to.
She’d left them all. Lou, Jasper, Trout, Grunt, Prospero … She closed her eyes. All of them, she’d traded them in for Stephen. And they weren’t the only ones she’d hurt. Somewhere in the layers, the strata of worlds that seemed to cling and crash together, that seemed to split and divide, there was a girl adrift, another Undine, who should be here, with her mother, her brother, her father, with her Trevor-Trout.
The water behind her sloshed greasily against the docks. Undine breathed in. The voice from her dream swirled darkly in her mind. You come from the same place as me, the cave of bones and hair and teeth … Who would call her ‘sister’ except Jasper? But it wasn’t Jasper’s voice, it was older, it was ancient, genderless, it was … barely human.
She thought about what Trout had said, about time working differently in other worlds. Could it be a Jasper from the future? Was that even possible?
The dark is closing in. Can’t you feel it?
Could she feel the dark? Maybe she could, this pressure in her chest, this sickness in the pit of her stomach. Maybe that was the dark.
It crushes against my skull like a hard, blunt, moonless night. I will not survive it. Jasper? Baby brother? Could it be him? Was he suffering? Was he alone?
Sister. You must come.
Trout sat on a bench at the docks, staring at the space where Undine had been. He hadn’t meant to come here, in fact he’d planned on staying as far away as possible. As he’d walked through the marketplace he’d seen Phoenix setting up and he’d avoided that too, rather more successfully, giving the busker a wide berth. He didn’t want to see Lou or Jasper, he didn’t want to conjure a memory, a vision, a girl. He wanted to forget about Undine.
So if he was so keen on forgetting, why was he here, where all there was to do was remember? Remember and remember and remember, an old, bad habit, as addictive as nicotine or heroin. He rubbed his face wearily. He thought about Reina, their fight, Paris. Was this the real reason he wanted to stay? Not medicine, but Undine? Was he still waiting for her?
Trout looked at the piece of air that to him was Undine shaped, where she had stood the evening before. ‘Stay, go,’ he told her. ‘Disappear, don’t disappear. But don’t half vanish. Don’t visit.’
So where was it then, this rent, this door between worlds? Undine stood where she thought it had been the night before. If there had been a door between worlds, now there was not. But Undine suspected it wasn’t as simple as that. Remember, she told herself, nothing is simple.
Confluence. Trevor-Trout had told her what it meant. It was a convergence of things, of people or streams or rivers. What if all of them, Undine, the two Jaspers, maybe Lou, Trout – even the busker, Undine added uneasily in her mind, though she wasn’t sure how or why he fitted in – had been drawn here? What if the convergence of them in this space, in that time, what if that had opened the door? If that was the case, Undine couldn’t hope to replicate it. So that was that. Right? There was nothing she could do
.
‘Yeah,’ Undine said out loud. ‘You just keep telling yourself that.’ But for all her bravado she was relieved. She was going nowhere. She didn’t know how to leave, which was only right, because she also didn’t know how to say goodbye. To Stephen. Or to Jasper and Lou. Or to her own self, the self she was here.
Deep in her own thoughts, Undine almost didn’t see him. His head was tilted downwards, a faint frown on his face, the sun on his back, his dreadlocks bobbing with every step. And when she did see him – their eyes meeting briefly – he didn’t see her. He half did, he smiled politely, distractedly, and kept walking.
‘Grunt,’ she whispered. She turned and watched his progress, unable to drag her eyes away from him even if she’d tried. She saw him cross the road and walk towards the marketplace, kept looking till he was out of sight, till his crown of dreads had completely disappeared from view. She looked at his broad shoulders, his strong back. She remembered the warm smell of his skin, the night she’d made snow. A calm peacefulness had descended over them. There was something about him, something that made the magic kind of … pure. Almost innocent. The night she made snow, it hadn’t felt like a heart attack. It felt like … breathing. Like swimming, pulling herself expertly through water, slicing it with strong arms, gliding between strokes.
Grunt seemed to think the magic was something good. That it could be simply beautiful and soft and peaceful, a snowflake’s first kiss on human skin, and when Undine was with him, she almost felt that way too, that the magic could be gentle. Undine had never been sure how Grunt felt about her though, even if he did appreciate the magic. They were kind of friends, she supposed, but even then, she hardly knew him. He’d seen her at her most powerful and at her weakest moments, he’d witnessed the magic firsthand, the destructiveness of it, and he hadn’t shied away. But still, she got the impression that he avoided her, that he resisted getting close.
She willed him to look back now, to notice her, but he did not. As she watched him, she stood straight and tall, holding her breath. It was as though she had a rubberband inside her and someone was stretching it out as far as it could go. And then, when he was gone, it let go. She snapped back, her stomach seemed to cave in and she bent a little at her centre and breathed again sharply, because suddenly she knew.
It was time to find the way home. Whether she had the language for it or not was irrelevant, it was time to say goodbye.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lou sat cross-legged on the grass, watching Jasper play with one of Phoenix’s dragon puppets in the middle of the lawn. Phoenix fished another doughnut out of the large grease-stained bag and sat back to eat it.
‘It’s as if you looked at him and you saw a totally different boy,’ Lou said. ‘And then the boy you saw is this one, he’s become it.’
Phoenix shrugged. ‘I used to be just like him,’ he said, licking sugar off his fingers. ‘We just recognised each other is all.’
‘He lost his sister last year. It changed him. He became watchful. So quiet. Entering rooms so silently I wouldn’t know he was there. Except at night. The dreams …’ Lou’s voice trailed off. ‘And he wanders. He goes missing, sometimes for hours. I worry about him so much.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Phoenix said. ‘He’s stronger than you think.’
Lou looked at Jasper doubtfully. ‘Maybe.’
‘So are you.’
Lou shook her head. ‘I don’t know that I am. I don’t feel strong. I feel … tired.’
‘You’re strong. Trust me.’
Lou looked at Phoenix curiously. ‘I do trust you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’
They watched Jasper spin, the dragon chasing him. ‘I told him I’d teach him some tricks,’ said Phoenix.
‘It’s so generous of you to want to spend time with him.’
‘Like I said, he reminds me of me. I didn’t have anyone either. My sister …’ Phoenix shrugged. ‘We weren’t close.’
‘Jasper needs something. There’s such a hole … he’s been so lost. I’ve been lost …’ Lou smiled, embarrassed, and looked away. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m old enough to be your—’
‘Everybody gets lost,’ Phoenix said.
Lou started searching through her turquoise leather handbag. ‘You could come to our house. I’ll write out the address for you. Come tomorrow if you like. Oh no. I can’t tomorrow. Come on Monday instead. Come for lunch. I work at home and Jasper doesn’t have creche. It won’t be doughnuts. But I’ll throw something together.’
‘Monday, it is.’
Jasper strayed over; the dragon followed behind him.
‘I’ll just go and throw this stuff in the bin,’ Phoenix said, gathering up the rubbish from their lunch. He walked a little distance away.
‘Don’t fiddle with that,’ he heard Lou say.
‘I’m just putting his puppet away,’ Jasper said as he snapped the suitcase open.
‘Jasper! You shouldn’t open other people’s bags!’
‘Mama!’ Phoenix heard Jasper say. ‘Mama, look! It’s empty!’
‘Well, he’s a magician,’ Lou said. ‘It’s probably got a false bottom or something.’
As Phoenix turned back he saw Lou smile up at him apologetically. But Jasper was still staring into the dark cavernous interior of the empty case.
When Undine returned to the house on the steps, she found a sleepy, droning afternoon. Lou was reading, Stephen pottering between the kitchen and his computer. Undine trailed after him, back and forth, until Stephen complained, rather crossly, about her being underfoot. Undine tried not to look crestfallen.
‘Stop being a pest,’ Lou said, which wasn’t very fair since she hadn’t been pestering Lou. ‘Go out into the garden, it’s a beautiful day.’ Which was doubly unfair since how would Lou know what kind of day it was, lying on the couch with a book?
‘Will you play with me?’ Jasper asked Undine.
‘Sure,’ Undine said pointedly, looking at Stephen. ‘At least someone wants me. What do you want to play?’
They pulled out all of Jasper’s wooden people and his teaset and took them out to a far corner of the back garden and set them up for a game about Mrs Worthington and Punnel, the imaginary guinea pig, and cups of tea and bowls of dirt and sticks. Last time they had played this game Jasper had dug a river for swimming in.
Undine sat, breaking sticks into smaller twigs. ‘We could dam the river,’ she suggested.
‘Nah,’ Jasper said. ‘I know! We could build a nest.’
Undine made her eyes bug out in the same excited way as her brother’s. ‘Okay!’ she said. She grinned. ‘A guinea pig nest?’
‘No! Guinea pigs don’t have nests.’ Jasper thought. ‘A Jasper-sized nest.’
Undine looked doubtful. ‘Hmm. It’s going to have to be big. How will we start?’ They began laying the sticks out in a circle.
‘I like you,’ Jasper said suddenly.
‘I like you too.’
‘You always play with me.’
‘I like playing with you.’
‘My sister didn’t play with me as much as you do. But I wish she would come back.’
Undine sat back and looked at Jasper, brushing the dirt from her hands. ‘I’m your sister,’ she said carefully. But her heart was hammering.
Jasper said, still dropping stones in the river, ‘You’re not my sister. You look like her, but different too. Like your eyes are sad here, at the pointy end. And sometimes you look as if you come from very very far away and you’re trying to see back there.’
‘Oh.’ Undine tried not to look like it now, but she thought she probably did a bit. ‘Do you remember when—?’
‘One day my sister went to bed, and when she woke up she was you. And you came downstairs and hugged my daddy and hugged him and hugged him.’
‘Yes,’ Undine said quietly, thoughtfully. That was how it had happened. She had woken up here, in this world, as though it had been an ordinary morning.
‘Don’t you have a dad where you come from?’
‘No. Well, I do … but … it’s all different there.’
‘I know. I seen. The other Jasper. He’s all …’ and Jasper sucked in his cheeks. He said, ‘I don’t like him.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ Undine said. ‘He’s just got so much to be sad about.’
‘Like you.’
Undine nodded. Then she asked, ‘You said you’d seen him before – when? Where?’
Jasper shrugged. ‘He doesn’t know how to stay. Me either. I just see him like this,’ and he blinked and scrunched his face up and twitched it sideways, as if he’d just sucked on a very sour lemon. ‘And then he goes away. I seen him. There’s a place. Where nobody knows but me. My place. Where I go.’
Twice this summer Jasper had disappeared, run away. Once he’d turned up at Maddy’s up the road, his little girlfriend from creche, the other time he’d just come home around dinner time when he was hungry. Lou had never been able to get out of him where he had gone, even though the police had looked for him and everything. He hadn’t seemed naughty about it, just vague, as though he wasn’t sure what the fuss was about and the more questions Lou asked, the less he seemed to remember. After the second time Stephen had made him promise, very seriously, that he wouldn’t run away again. What if he’d seen the other Jasper then?
‘Where is your place?’ Undine asked.
Jasper clammed up.
‘Is it a secret?’
Jasper nodded.
‘Is it a dangerous secret? You have to be careful. It’s not … it’s not a game.’
‘Is the other Jasper dangerous?’ Jasper asked, frowning.
Undine hesitated. ‘No,’ she said, but how could she be certain?
Jasper dragged a stick across the dirt, furrowing its surface. ‘Where’s my Undine?’ he asked suddenly.
Undine looked pained. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Is she okay?’
Undine shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I wish …’ Jasper stopped.
