Drift

by Penni Russon

  ‘You again!’ Undine said, but Phoenix didn’t seem to hear her. He turned around and walked the other way, a jaunty jiggedy-hop to his step that infuriated Undine. She didn’t quite know why Phoenix annoyed her so much, but she suddenly felt irate. He was appearing all over the place: the docks, her home, and now here.

  She walked to the kerb to hail a cab, raising one hand, when she changed her mind. Though it was hardly a conscious decision, if she’d thought about it at all it would have seemed crazy: to walk after him, to follow him through the darkness of the night. His step was brisk but she matched his pace. What was he up to? What did he want? From Lou, from Jasper, from Undine?

  He was slippery. A few times he turned a corner and seemed to vanish altogether, but then a shadow would move or a streetlight would flicker and his presence would be revealed.

  She caught sight of herself reflected in a shop window. She looked small, and kind of … blotchy. The t-shirt was the wrong colour for her arms, and it made her look pasty, unwell. When had she become this person? For a moment she remembered what it was to be in the centre of the magic, to have a whole storm at her command, to make wind swell from the ocean and walls of water crash down upon the earth. She’d felt the magic inside her ever since she arrived back in this world, coursing around under her skin, rippling inside her as if it were a land-bound sea, dragging and pulling and bucking: it might rear up at any time. But, as was her habit, she held it in, kept it leashed and hidden. She didn’t want to alarm people, spilling over the boundaries of herself. She didn’t want to be the box of hidden surprises. But just now, briefly, that seemed a sorry state – holding herself in, keeping herself bound. Like she was denying a part of herself.

  She had nearly caught up to Phoenix near the public hospital when he vanished again, seemingly into nowhere, but then she glimpsed a narrow crack between two buildings, just big enough for one person to pass between. She stopped to catch her breath a minute and then slowly edged her way down the dark path, feeling tentatively with her feet for obstacles and cracks in the pavement. Through the crack where Phoenix had gone, she glimpsed lights, flickering and intermittent in the sky. She crept in closer and realised where she was.

  It was from her dream, the one she’d had travelling back to this world about Prospero in the hospital. Phoenix had been in that dream too! She’d forgotten until now. She frowned. It seemed so important … why had it slipped her mind? Anyway, she remembered now and this was the dreamscape. The courtyard, disused, filled with rubble and rubbish where Phoenix had stood and those were the hospital buildings looming around. Somewhere up there, Prospero had sat, looking down.

  And just like in her dream, Phoenix was juggling a wheel of light. This was magic, she thought to herself. This was no trick, no shamming of the eye. This was the real thing, she could feel it, the force of it. Inside her her own magic bucked and kicked, more ferocious than ever, as if it recognised itself, its own wildness in the riotous air.

  And then there was a breathless, overwhelming force. The wheel of light that originated from Phoenix was dragging Undine inside, like a dust devil drawing things up from the earth into itself. She resisted the pull, pressing herself against the brick wall behind her. Nevertheless, part of her was seduced by the idea of it: handing herself over to its mysterious blank eye, a swirling vortex of magic. Where would it take her? Through the looking glass? Back to Stephen? She let herself think it: would it take her home? She was homesick, she didn’t want to be here anymore, in this pointy, difficult place. She wanted to be there. With them.

  But she’d decided. She’d already made this decision.

  She gritted her teeth. She rammed her back into the hard wall, feeling her shoulderblades jamming against the brick, and held on.

  Undine watched as Phoenix pulled his hands away. Even without him guiding it, the stream of light continued to spin, suspended in the air. Phoenix sat cross-legged watching it. He didn’t seem to be affected by it the way she was. No, that wasn’t quite true. She could see the wind whipping his clothes, his hair. It was dragging him too, but he responded with calmness. He lay down and closed his eyes, like a child curling up for sleep. A tug of recognition pulled in Undine so strongly that she almost cried out – briefly, he was familiar, she knew him.

  But the wheel spun once more and then, shockingly, the courtyard was plunged into darkness, though the wheel of light was still burning on Undine’s retinas so she was dazed by it, still seeing it though it was gone. When her eyes finally adjusted she realised that Phoenix, like his wheel of light, had vanished. She was suddenly desolte. She wanted – oh, what did she want? She wanted to follow him. Absurdly she felt left behind. Abandoned even.

  The magic. The magic. Why didn’t you take me? Was that really what she wanted? To be carried away again?

  And then: Sister. The voice hissed: Sissster. It was sharp and savage and reverberated from the walls, a voice without voice; if an icy wind had a voice it would be this one. It seemed to whistle through Undine as if it originated in the hollows of her bones and though it was stiflingly hot in the enclosed courtyard – the bricks retaining and radiating the heat of the day – Undine felt deathly cold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Undine pulled her key out of her pocket to let herself into the house. She’d once had a whole set of them – keys – but she didn’t know where they were now. Instead Lou had given her a single, ill-fitting, spare key, and she dug it out of her pocket. She was exhausted, but her mind and body were buzzing, her hands shaking a little.

  Before she could jiggle the key in the lock, the door was flung open. ‘Where have you been?’ Lou cried. She was standing in the doorway and though Lou was short and small-framed like Undine, for a moment she seemed to fill it, her hair sticking up wildly, her face drained and anxious.

  ‘It’s not that late,’ Undine said, surprised.

  ‘Grunt rang an hour ago to see if you’d made it home safely. I’ve been out of my mind! I thought … god!’

  ‘I just … I left early. And then … Oh, Lou …’ Undine didn’t know how – or exactly what – to tell Lou about Phoenix.

  ‘Don’t you get it? You can’t just disappear like that. Not anymore.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Undine said. ‘But there’s a reason. I have to tell you—’

  ‘Sorry! Sorry! It’s just a word, Undine! It doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t change the past.’

  ‘I know. Look, next time I’ll file a flight plan, okay?’ Undine snapped.

  It was the wrong thing to say. They looked at each other, stunned at Undine’s poor choice of words, as if she was planning flight, as if there was already a next time. Lou slumped down on a kitchen chair.

  ‘Don’t you want to be here?’ Lou said softly.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Undine said.

  ‘Because if you don’t …’

  ‘I do! I came back, didn’t I?’

  ‘If you don’t,’ Lou continued, as though Undine hadn’t spoken, ‘then don’t hurt us. Don’t punish us.’

  Undine forgot Phoenix. ‘Are you … are you asking me to leave?’ Undine heard the words coming from her own mouth, but it was as if she was miles away, talking over a great distance.

  Lou wouldn’t look at Undine. ‘I just want you to know that you’ve got choices.’

  ‘Choices?’

  ‘You don’t have to stay. There’re other places you could go.’

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘Like Corfu. I talked to Lena on the phone today, told her you were home. She knows … all the circumstances. She mentioned she was going to Greece alone this year. Sofia’s staying in Melbourne with her father. You could go and help out for a few months.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t be till Greek summer. That’s months away,’ Undine pointed out weakly, but she was relieved that Lou wasn’t sending her away tomorrow.

  ‘I also talked to Stephen’s parents.’

  ‘May and Marv? About me?’

  ‘They’re going away, tra
velling around Australia for a bit at first, and then America. They go next month. But they said … they said that if you wanted, you could go with them.’

  ‘Next month! But where do they think … where do they even think I’ve been? I mean, it’s not like Lena, they don’t know about the—’

  Lou interrupted. ‘They think your biological father took you, lured you away from me in Greece.’

  ‘Lou! You let them think that about Prospero?’

  ‘What was I supposed to tell them? The truth? I don’t even know what the truth is.’

  ‘Do you want to know?’ Undine murmured.

  It seemed like Lou hadn’t heard her. ‘Marv has been having a few health troubles. It’s a lot for May to deal with on her own. It would work out nicely for them. Then you could leave them in April and join Lena in Greece.’

  It would work out nicely for them. It was all planned out – this improbable, exotic journey, handed over from one relative to the next as if she were a troublesome orphan from an old-fashioned children’s story. ‘Do you want me to go?’ Undine asked in a soft, perplexed voice.

  Lou sounded defeated, not like Lou at all. ‘It’s never been about what I want.’

  ‘What about school?’

  Lou shrugged. What, suddenly Undine’s schooling was so unimportant to her? ‘So you’d have another year off. It wouldn’t make much difference in the long run.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this.’

  Lou shrugged again.

  When had Lou become so hard? Undine had come home. She never imagined that Lou would want to send her away again. She breathed in. ‘But, Lou, I have to tell you about tonight. Phoenix—’

  Lou gave Undine a cold stare. ‘I’m tired,’ she said flatly. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

  ‘Lou, please—’

  ‘Drop it, Undine. If you care about me at all, just drop it right now.’

  Lou had never been as sensitive to the magic as Undine; initially she hadn’t even sensed it in her own daughter. It was as if Lou was able to just completely switch off that part of herself, living in steadfast denial. But still, surely with Phoenix … he flaunted it, with his conjury, his magic tricks. He wasn’t trying to hide who he was. Lou was choosing not to see it, just as, on some level, she had once chosen not to see it in Undine. Anything Undine said tonight, she realised, would be pointless. Lou wasn’t on Undine’s side. She was on Phoenix’s. Whatever Phoenix’s side was.

  Undine shook her head, defeated. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she mumbled.

  The attic was hot and airless. She lay in bed, trying to picture Phoenix’s face, trying to remember what it was about him that seemed familiar. Was it merely the magic resonating through him, so that he seemed like … family? Faces swam around her: Trout, Grunt, Richard, Phoenix, Reina, Lucy, Mim, Stephen, Jasper, Prospero. Finally it was Lou’s face, closed and joyless, that rested in Undine’s head. Undine stood up abruptly. She unlatched the balcony door and stepped out, seeking some cool relief. But the world outside seemed hot and airless too.

  Undine sat down on her balcony. Where had Phoenix gone tonight? Where had the magic taken him? With her toe she absently nudged a pot containing a withered nasturtium. The only things that had survived out here were the cactuses, and even they had been puckered and wizened by the heat.

  She looked out at the black night. The sky was crowded with stars but they seemed so far away, so unconcerned with human affairs. For a moment she thought she wanted to draw them in closer, those cool, silver, studded lights, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the stars she wanted. No, it was rain. She wanted to make it rain. She wanted to cool the earth as she’d done before, to soak down the flowers and trees, to let the island drink its fill.

  She closed her eyes. But after she had seen what Phoenix had done, with the astonishing circle of light in the air, her own magic seemed like the stars – distant, inattentive. She pulled it together inside her, amassing it, trying to focus it, to give it purpose. But it was like … like static … like … It was like the grey place, it seemed empty, lacking. The thought shocked her, that this grey place had somehow leaked inside her. For a moment she seemed trapped there again, trapped in that colourless, lightless place. Her heart pounded. She breathed, steadying herself. In denying her magic, keeping it contained, was she strangling it, turning it into something empty and grey? No, she told herself. The magic wasn’t like that. It wasn’t grey. It was hers. It was a thread. It was a glittering thread.

  She closed her eyes to try again, to use the magic to make it rain. But a scuffling sound caught her attention. She heard a voice. ‘Undine?’ someone called softly. ‘Undine!’ Someone was down on the steps. She peered over and saw Trout, barely illuminated by the ambient light from the street.

  ‘Romeo?’ she asked.

  ‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘Can you come down?’

  Undine shook her head regretfully. ‘Lou’s downstairs. She’s already wigging out because I was late home. She’ll freak completely if I leave again.’

  ‘You can’t blame her,’ Trout said, and she heard a faint accusatory note in his voice. Then: ‘All right, I’m going to attempt to be manly and climb up. Don’t watch.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

  The balcony wasn’t especially high, and Undine had seen Dan climb onto it once before when Lou had locked herself out and Jasper in. It had involved him standing on the high side of the house, jumping up and grabbing the protuding lip of the balcony, and then pulling himself up the iron balustrade as if were a monkey bar. Undine was amazed that Trout managed it. He dangled for a moment as if unsure what to do next, but he managed to pull himself up to his waist and scramble his legs over. It wasn’t dainty, but it was impressive nonetheless.

  ‘So, what’s the view like from up here, Juliet?’ Trout said casually, nursing sore hands. ‘And, by the way, ouch.’

  ‘Hi, Romeo,’ Undine joked back. But now that Trout was up here, she was shy – the joke made her shy, as if it revealed her new, tender, secret feelings. ‘Did you have a good time at your party?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Trout. ‘Yeah, I did actually. I’m sorry you didn’t.’

  Undine looked away. ‘It’s not your fault. And I did really. I liked your photographs.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They sat together for a moment, just long enough for it to become awkward. Then they spoke at the same time.

  ‘So, now you’re back—?’

  ‘When did you—?’

  They both broke off. Undine laughed and Trout said, ‘We’re hopeless.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Undine, boldly. ‘Then let’s stop being hopeless. Why were you avoiding me tonight?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Trout protested. Then he shrugged. ‘Well. Maybe a little. But I don’t exactly know why. My turn. Where were you?’

  Undine sighed. ‘You saw me that night. I was in another world, just on the other side of the air. It’s the only way I can describe it. Like this one, just like it. Except everything was different … Stephen …’ Undine faltered. ‘Everything was different.’

  ‘I saw you. And Jasper, only—’

  ‘It wasn’t Jasper. I know.’

  ‘But it was you?’ Trout asked.

  ‘Yes. It was me.’

  ‘You seemed … different. The way you looked at me. It was like … I wasn’t sure.’ Trout shrugged and said again, ‘You seemed different.’

  Undine said rawly, ‘I was different. I am. You’re different too.’

  ‘An alternate world?’ Trout said. ‘A world created by the magic?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I thought it was at first, that I kind of wished it into being. But then … no. I think it was always there. Without me in it.’

  Trout looked up at the distant stars, as if he expected to read the answers written in the constellations. ‘It’s called cosmic string theory. This idea of alternate universes, alternate infinities. Bending space.’ He looked at Undine – she co
uldn’t read his face, not in the shadowy night – and said, quietly, ‘I knew you weren’t gone. I mean, even before I saw you. I knew you weren’t dead.’

  ‘I knew you knew,’ Undine said. ‘You were there, weren’t you? That night – your day – that I left Corfu, left the world … You were under the Bay. I could feel you, touching the magic. That’s why I swam into the sea, how I ended up in the bubble. You were with someone. A girl.’ Undine could hear a twinge of jealousy in her own voice, but Trout was in science mode and barely heard her.

  ‘So Corfu and the Bay, they’re connected somehow? Maybe the magic’s like a net …’ Trout said.

  Undine remembered watching the men mending their fishing nets in Greece, laying them out, untangling the glistening damp criss-crosses of rope, weaving together the rifts and tears with deft fingers.

  ‘Or like a living roadmap. All these intersecting lines, in and out of worlds …’ Trout’s voice petered out and then he said, ‘Worlds. Plural.’ Trout shook his head. ‘It’s too huge. I mean, what’s the point of science? How could it hope to describe something so …?’

  ‘Chaotic?’

  ‘But chaos is a system,’ Trout argued. ‘The magic must be a system too. But it seems so …’

  ‘It’s magic, Trout,’ Undine said. ‘It’s not just science. It’s intuitive. It’s like it has its own thoughts, its own … voice.’

  Trout looked hard at Undine. ‘You’re not hearing voices again, are you? Because that doesn’t end well.’

  ‘No voices,’ Undine said, too quickly. She pushed on. ‘You and me, right? We’re biological organisms. We’re atoms, we’re molecules. Our brains are synapses firing. It’s all chemical. We’re like the sum of our processes. But we’re also more than that. We’re more mysterious than that. And so’s the magic. I don’t think it can be explained with nets or roadmaps or formulas. I think it’s … it’s living, breathing, altering … it adapts, like an organism. It’s in me. It’s part of me. It’s part of my mystery. It’s immense. It’s, like, profoundly beautiful. And it’s freaking scary.’