by Penni Russon
‘But you don’t have to do it now.’
‘No. I suppose I don’t.’ Undine said apologetically. ‘It seemed something to do. And I’ll need to sleep in the bed. I had to clear some space.’
Lou walked into the room and gazed blankly at an open box. ‘I started,’ she said. ‘I tried. I thought it would be easier if I just packed it all away. Sealed it up. But I didn’t know what was important. It all seemed important. The bus tickets, the scribbled notes, the books with folded corners to mark a place. They all said, she was here.’
Lou looked up and blinked as if suddenly surprised to see Undine standing beside her. ‘I mean you. You were here. They all said, she was in this place, in this time, she passed through.’ Lou picked up a book of fairytales from Undine’s desk, opened it to where the page had been marked and unfolded the corner, smoothing it out absently. ‘She passed through. She stopped for a moment. She was here.’
Undine watched Lou, who seemed to have begun reading at the point where Undine, years ago, had left off.
‘I’m sorry, Lou,’ Undine said softly.
‘What?’ Lou looked up. She shut the book. ‘Oh, never mind.’ It was as if Undine was apologising for something quite ordinary – a broken cup or coming home late from school. ‘I came up to ask if you want dinner. Jasper and I are used to eating early now.’
‘I’m not really hungry. I’ll get something later.’
‘Fine.’
‘Is Jasper all right? He hasn’t said a word to me since I’ve been home.’
‘Give him time,’ Lou said. ‘Give us all time. It’s an adjustment.’ Lou handed the fairytale book to Undine. ‘He knew,’ Lou said suddenly. ‘He kept saying you would come home. I didn’t always believe him … Sometimes it was just too hard to keep hoping, just to sit around and hope, it was like picking at a scab … But he kept saying, she’ll be home soon. She’ll be home soon.’
‘Who, Jasper?’
Lou shook her head. ‘Prospero. He was right. Here you are. Too late for him though, isn’t it?’
Undine closed her eyes, pained. She was trying not to think about Prospero. ‘Lou?’ she said to her mother’s retreating back. Lou hesitated in the doorway. ‘It’s good to be home.’
Lou nodded, without looking back, and closed Undine’s door behind her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Undine dialled the number Mrs Montmorency had crisply given her. She had registered no surprise on hearing Undine’s voice – Undine figured Trout must have forewarned her. Or maybe she was a robot. Yes, come to think of it, that would explain a lot, including Trout’s inhuman love of maths. Suddenly, it was the only explanation.
A girl answered.
‘Hello?’ Undine heard her own voice echoing down the phone line. ‘Can I please speak to Trout?’
There was a pause. ‘Who’s speaking, please?’ the girl asked.
‘It’s Undine.’
There was another pause. Although she was silent, Undine could tell the girl was still standing there, with the phone to her ear. Then, ‘Hang on. I’ll get him.’ She heard the girl say, ‘It’s for you.’ Her voice was soft, as though Trout was standing close by.
‘Trout speaking.’
At the warm vibrating tone of Trout’s voice on the phone, Undine felt a fluttering in her stomach. It was not a reaction she had ever expected Trout’s voice to arouse in her. Suddenly Undine realised she was shy. Of Trout!
‘Hi. It’s me.’
‘Hi.’
Undine couldn’t tell if Trout was happy to hear from her. His voice sounded cautious, reserved.
‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to you earlier,’ she said. ‘Suddenly we were in the car and you were … Do you ride a motorbike? Anyway, I got your number from your mum. I can’t believe you don’t live next door anymore.’ She was filling his silence with words.
‘Yeah.’
‘So …’ Suddenly an enormous vacuum seemed to suck all Undine’s words away. ‘How have you been?’
Trout’s phone made a funny rubbing noise. Was he switching ears? He seemed fidgety. Undine wondered if the girl was still there standing next to him, listening. ‘Busy,’ Trout said. ‘Good.’
‘I was hoping if I could see you, maybe tomorrow. We could have lunch.’
Did Trout sound genuinely regretful? Or relieved? ‘I can’t. I’m working through lunch tomorrow. I have to leave work early.’
‘Oh.’ Trout worked?
‘But … well, there’s this thing, tomorrow night. A photography thing. I was going to call you,’ he added hastily, and Undine wondered briefly if he really would have.
‘Okay.’
‘Do you know the Silver Moon Café?’ The name sounded like music, the opening words of a half-remembered song.
‘No.’
Trout gave her directions. ‘Seven o’clock?’ Trout said. ‘I’ll see you?’
‘See you then.’
As Trout hung up the phone, Undine tried to imagine the room he was in and the girl who stood beside him, but she couldn’t get a clear image in her head.
Undine went back into the sitting area, where the television murmured softly to itself. Lou was putting Jasper to bed. The house seemed to balloon around her with loneliness, as if it were holding its breath. Undine could barely stand it. Everything was so different. Had she really expected to fall back into her old life, for the hole she had left to be filled by her return?
She had. Lou’s storytelling voice carried out into the room, familiar and cosy and lilting. She admitted, she had.
In all the years of wandering he’d done, flickering in and out of space and time, sometimes visiting his past or future self, sometimes not, sometimes finding himself in places remote and unfamiliar, Phoenix had never done what he did tonight.
He had never sat outside the house on the steps, watching the flat, concealing, exterior walls. He’d never felt so completely outside. He imagined picking up a stone and smashing a window, rupturing the quiet blank surface of the house, making everything, everyone, spill outdoors to investigate the wound. But he couldn’t do it. Not to Lou or Jasper. Maybe not even to Undine. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her.
He dug a piece of chalk out of his pocket and pressed it into the ground. Sister, he wrote, and to him the word seemed to lean, as if it was about to topple over, as if nothing was holding the word upright. As if it was in danger of losing containment, of flying apart, of becoming nothing but a scattering of random letters, flung to the far corners of the earth.
On her way up to bed, Undine paused to look in on Jasper. She leaned against the doorframe, watching Jasper sleep. He lay on top of his covers wearing only a singlet and underpants – it was so hot! Lou said it had been like this for days, sweltering heat, bushfires smouldering on the edges of the city, swallowing huge tracts of bush in the highlands in the island’s centre. It was a mild summer where she had been, the lawns were sweet and green, the air smelled of flowers and lemonade icy-poles and swimming pools. The mornings were fresh, the evenings long and cool.
Exposed on the centre of his bed Jasper looked even smaller than he was, and thinner. She could see the nobbles of vertebrae snaking into his singlet. He hardly seemed to eat, Lou having to cajole, bribe and beg, mouthful by mouthful, at each meal. The heat had raised a moist slick across his forehead, as if he had a fever. He was coiled, as though even in sleep his muscles were tense – he was the snake hidden in the box, Undine thought. She was nervous of him.
Undine stared at the ceiling. In fragments, rising up like music, she could hear someone crying. Or she thought she could. It seemed to come from elsewhere, from a dream place, perhaps (she’d been half asleep when she first heard it), or floating down from Camelot Drive, but then she realised it was coming from beaneath her, within the house.
She padded downstairs. Lou’s bedroom door was ajar and the light from her bedside lamp was enough to illuminate the whole downstairs room. Undine’s skin was ghostly blue as she stood by the door. L
ou was sitting on the floor by the bed. Her legs were sprawled, her head was down, one hand clasped her frenzied blonde curls. Her shoulders heaved. She cried into the bedspread as though she were trying to muffle the sound of it. Undine watched for a moment, embarrassed by Lou’s tears. She wanted to comfort her mother, but suddenly she knew she was an intruder. She withdrew. She climbed the stairs, but halfway up she stopped and sat down, listening to Lou’s poorly muffled, grief-filled sobs tearing at the cloying darkness of the house’s night.
Later, Undine dreamed. She was in her room, and it had been completely cleared of everything – clothes, furniture, all vestiges of her. She was tearing a last poster from the wall. As it came away, swathes of paint started coming off, so she peeled that back too. Large chunks of plaster broke off in her hand and then the joists, so the skeleton of the house was revealed. But that was soft and spongy and her hand plunged right into it. She kept pulling parts of the house away until, finally, a crack appeared that looked out into the world. But instead of world there was grey: pitiless, airless, confining grey. And then, whistling through the fissure in the wall, came that voice: ‘Sister. Sister. Come home.’
Undine woke, a coldness seizing her though the night was still roasting. She crept downstairs for the second time that night. Lou’s room was in silent darkness but it was to Jasper’s that Undine now crept. Though Jasper wasn’t unaffected by the heat, his curls sticky and damp and plastered to his face, he showed no sign of torment, and Undine was certain the source of the dream, and its voice, was not him.
Back in her bed, Undine slept fitfully, waking often. Who was calling her, if it wasn’t Jasper? Who else would call her sister? We breathe black. You’re savage like me. The girl is a skin you wear. What was she, underneath her skin? What was the magic, what did it look like? Sometimes she suspected it of sentience, of having a life, a will of its own. What did that will look like?
She lay awake all night, hearing that voice. Eventually, just before dawn, Undine passed out completely into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning Lou didn’t show any signs of her night’s tears and Undine, of course, didn’t mention it. In fact Undine thought perhaps she might have been overstating it, that the quiet night had exaggerated the magnitude of Lou’s sorrow. Lou seemed fine now, more comfortable, more at ease with Undine than the previous day. Even Jasper, though he still did not speak directly to her, seemed more accepting of her presence.
After breakfast, Undine asked Jasper, ‘What would you like to do? Shall we do a drawing?’
Jasper wandered into the lounge room and over to the low bookcase that was his. It was where his box of drawing things were kept amid puzzles and picture books. But without looking at Undine, he pulled a book off the shelf and began flipping through it.
Undine glanced nervously at Lou. ‘Jasper,’ Lou said, ‘Undine was talking to you.’
‘It’s all right,’ Undine said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘No, he’s being rude. Jasper.’
Jasper looked carefully at Lou. ‘I don’t want to do some drawing,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s okay,’ Undine said to Lou. ‘It’s okay,’ she repeated to Jasper, who still would not look at her. He walked to the coffee table, picked up the remote and turned the television on for morning cartoons.
Lou sighed. ‘He was just getting better. I was just getting through to him when …’
‘When I came back?’ Undine tried not to sound hurt.
Lou shrugged. ‘He’s just … there’ve been too many changes.’
‘Things will get back to normal soon, won’t they?’
Lou looked away, as though she were evading the question. ‘I suppose.’
‘You know what Jasper needs?’ Undine said.
‘What?’ Lou asked tiredly.
‘What that boy needs is a dog,’ Undine said, repeating Lou’s own words, or words she had spoken in another life.
Lou snorted in disbelief. She didn’t meet Undine’s eyes, but shook her head. ‘Like I don’t have enough on my plate. Like there isn’t enough responsibility in the world.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Undine said quickly. ‘I just thought …’
‘You weren’t thinking, that’s all,’ Lou said. She inhaled deeply, held the breath for a moment, then blew out a lungful of air, like Mim smoking a cigarette. ‘So, what are your plans?’ Lou asked, with a tired voice.
‘I don’t really know. I can’t believe how hot it is already. Maybe a swim.’
‘I didn’t mean today.’
‘Oh,’ Undine said, slumping back in her chair. ‘You mean like, life.’
Lou smiled faintly. ‘Yes. Like, life. School, for example.’
‘School? You mean university?’
Lou looked at Undine with deliberate patience. ‘You never finished Year Twelve.’
‘But I—’ Undine realised that, here, that was true. ‘It’s not fair!’ she said. She would have to do it all again – all the exams and assignments, classes, homework. Everybody else would be finished. She would be left behind. ‘Can’t you ring? Can’t you …?’
Lou shook her head. She was unapologetic. ‘I can’t get you out of this, Undine. This is nothing to do with me.’
‘But I …’ Undine said again and then stopped. She couldn’t tell Lou that she had finished Year 12, without saying the rest. Oh yeah, by the way, I was in this perfect world where Stephen was alive and you were a well-rounded person and Jasper didn’t look dead inside and I got into university. ‘High school,’ Undine said instead. ‘That sucks!’
‘That’s life, Undine. We all have commitments. We all have to follow rules. There aren’t exceptions.’
‘I know.’
‘You can’t just—’
‘I know.’
Lou picked up the empty breafast bowls. ‘You don’t have to decide right now, Undine. But you do need to decide. Soon.’
Undine closed her eyes. She felt entirely unqualified to decide anything, particularly when it came to her own life, to her future. She felt a nudging at her elbow, as gentle as a moth alighting. She looked down and Jasper had laid paper on the table. He handed her a red crayon. She smiled at him but he looked down and was immediately absorbed in the page, making long, careful lines with his own crayon which was a vivid ocean blue.
‘Is it the sea?’ Undine asked.
Jasper gripped his crayon tightly and kept colouring the page vigorously back and forth.
Undine wasn’t able to tease a word, or even the trace of a smile, out of Jasper. But at least he seemed to be tolerating her presence. They drew side by side and when Jasper grew tired of that Undine followed him to the toybox and helped him assemble his railway tracks.
She was not prepared for the change in him when the doorbell rang. He leapt up and ran to the door, his face shining.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ Undine asked Lou.
‘Oh god, I forgot,’ Lou said, stricken, looking up from the manuscript she was working on. Lou was an indexer. ‘I haven’t been shopping. Hang on, Jasper, I’m coming. Do I look okay?’
‘You look fine. Who is it?’ Undine asked, mystified, but Lou had already opened the door, smoothing down her wayward curls.
Undine recognised the busker standing at the door. Jasper danced around his feet. She had another memory of him as well, but it was all confused, like trying to remember a dream and the more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t place him. But she did remember wondering if he’d had something to do with calling her back into this world that night on the docks. And now he was here. What did that mean?
‘Hi. Come in, come in,’ Lou said, flustered.
The young man looked up from Jasper to Lou. ‘You forgot I was coming,’ he said with an easy grin.
‘No! Well …’ Lou smiled back. ‘A bit. But it doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re here. Um …’ She turned to Undine, who had stepped into clear view. ‘Phoenix,’ she said, by way of introduction, tho
ugh it wasn’t Phoenix she was introducing. ‘This is my daughter, Undine.’
Undine wondered if Phoenix seemed to flinch ever so slightly, as though he wasn’t quite prepared to see her but wanted to seem as if he was.
‘Ah,’ said Phoenix. ‘Really?’ He gave Lou a measured stare, as if reading her state of mind, and then turned to Undine. ‘So, you’re back,’ he said lightly, more a statement than a question.
‘Yes.’ Undine wondered what Lou had told him about her. It felt strange that he knew about her and she knew nothing about him.
‘Back to stay?’
‘Yes!’ she bristled, defensively. It was as if he was implying flightiness on her part, as though disappearing were a lifestyle choice. ‘Who are you again?’ she asked pointedly.
‘Phoenix.’ His grin seemed infuriatingly knowing and yet his eyes were unreadable.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Undine!’ Lou said. ‘Now you’re being rude! I invited him.’
‘He’s my ’prentice,’ Jasper said in a small, stumbling kind of voice.
‘Am I?’ said Phoenix. ‘I thought you were mine.’
‘Apprentice?’ Undine asked Lou.
‘He’s going to teach me magic,’ Jasper said.
‘Magic!’
Lou was quick to interject. ‘It’s harmless. Phoenix is a performer. A kind of …’
‘Conjurer,’ Phoenix finished. ‘Hands faster than the eye.’ And he caressed the air, and then pulled a single red gerbera, seemingly from nowhere, wrapped in purple tissue. He handed it to Lou. Undine looked at him sharply but Lou gasped happily over the flower and stepped aside to let him in. Undine noticed he was carrying a small, shabby leather suitcase.
Jasper pushed his drawing into Phoenix’s hand. ‘I did it for you,’ he said. ‘It’s a sky. There’s no sea, no ground, no people. Just sky.’ Phoenix gazed at it, then folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.
‘I’ve got something for you too,’ Phoenix said to Jasper. He opened his suitcase and pulled out three sticks: two short and one long.
