Undine

by Penni Russon

  “Yum,” said Undine. “Your mum packs the best lunches.”

  “If she knew you were eating it she’d probably give me liver and arsenic.”

  “She doesn’t hate me that much. Does she?”

  “No, silly. She’s just worried you’re going to corrupt her little boy.” Trout tried to make his eyes say, Corrupt me, but Undine was looking intently at her sandwich.

  “Now,” said Trout, in what he hoped was a commanding tone. “We’ve got fifteen minutes until class. About this secret of yours…” He looked at her expectantly.

  Undine rolled her eyes. “Not here, Trout.”

  “Come on. I’m dying of curiosity.”

  “Trout!”

  “All right. I was going to show you something, but it’ll have to wait until after school. What class do you have now?”

  “Ancient history. Exam review.”

  “I’m off to see Ms. Hague.”

  “But you’re not even doing English lit this year.”

  “Well, aren’t I mysterious then?”

  “Oh, be like that. Give me a minute, and I’ll walk with you.”

  Undine patted her almost dry knickers, and pulled her phys ed shorts on. She knew she’d get away with not being in uniform—at this time of year, the teachers were pretty relaxed about it.

  She and Trout walked up to the humanities block together. Outside Ms. Hague’s classroom, Trout turned to Undine. “This is where I get off,” he said with a funny half wave, more a dismissal than a good-bye.

  Undine smiled and turned away, but after Trout had gone in, curiosity got the better of her and she glanced into the classroom through the interior window. Ms. Hague was wearing her oh-how-fascinating expression and they were both bent over, examining something quite small. Ms. Hague reached up and pulled an enormous book off the shelf. Undine knew which one it was straightaway.

  “Pff, Shakespeare,” she breathed aloud, dismissively. They were both mad about Shakespeare. No doubt they would be in raptures for the whole period. Undine shook her head and hurried off to ancient history, trying to make herself care who had won the Peloponnesian War.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the bus on the way home, Trout kept jiggling with excitement. Undine was hot and sticky.

  “Woof,” she said, fanning her face. “And I think I’ve got problems! Those poor Greeks, having to listen to Homer waffle on.”

  Trout stopped jiggling and looked surprised. “I like Homer.”

  “You would.”

  “Anyway, he didn’t waffle. He sang.”

  Undine groaned. “That’s even worse. Tra la la. And then the great hero Achilles went into an epic sulk and was boring for a very long time. Tra la la. And here’s the name of every ship, all one billion of them, and everyone who was ever on each ship, tra la la.”

  “Your problem is you don’t appreciate good poetry.”

  “I do appreciate good poetry. Just not boring poetry.”

  The bus pulled up at their stop. Undine ambled up Myrtle Street, relieved to be in the fresh air. There was something about kids en masse in small, enclosed spaces. Way too hot and stinky. Eau de sneaker. Trout jumped around as if he were about to explode.

  “Come on.” He pulled at her arm. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “All right, all right. Just let’s go somewhere cool. I’m cooking.”

  They grabbed juice boxes from Trout’s fridge and went down to the bottom of his garden, which at some point stopped being his garden and started being the rivulet. It used to be skanky and ditchlike, being downstream from the old tannery, but had been cleaned up and was now quite pleasant, though Undine wouldn’t like to actually come into contact with the water. Big trees swung over them, and the soil smelled damp and cool, making the air green and lush, though it was still warm.

  For a moment it seemed to Undine that she was underwater, somewhere on the ocean floor, looking up at, not trees, but swathes of seaweed, drifting in the currents and eddies.

  “You first,” Trout said. “Tell brother Trout all about it.”

  “Promise you’ll listen, though. Don’t go all scientific and skeptical on me.”

  Undine told him everything. She began with that lumpy feeling that had come over her on Tuesday morning and ended with the fish, manifested apparently from her dreams, glittering in the weak morning sun. Trout listened carefully, and when she finished took something out of the front pocket of his bag.

  At first Undine thought it was a cigar, but when Trout handed it to her, she could feel the lightness of the small cylinder and realized it was hollow.

  “It opens,” Trout told her.

  She shook it gently, and could hear something rustle inside. A small cap came off the top and she could smell a faint whiff of tobacco. It had been made to hold a cigar, then.

  There was a small scroll of paper inside. She unrolled it, took one look and exclaimed, “Trout! Is this Shakespeare? I’ve had enough of dead white males today. And living ones,” she added with a pointed glare. She was irritable and uncomfortable in the heat, and the tops of her legs were sore where her knickers, stiff with dried salt water, had been rubbing against her. “Is this some sort of joke? And if it is, is it one I’m going to get?”

  “Read it.”

  In small, rippling, silvery handwriting that looked like light on the surface of water was written:

  Full fathom five thy father lies.

  Of his bones are coral made.

  Those are pearls that were his eyes.

  Nothing of him that doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

  Hark, now I hear them: ding dong bell.

  “Okay, Einstein, so why am I reading Shakespeare? What’s it from? What does it mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “Trout!”

  “Humor me.”

  “Well, I don’t know…it’s about someone’s dead father, isn’t it? Drowned. And he’s turning into something else. Some kind of sea thing.”

  “So it would appear.”

  “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “First of all it must have fallen out of the fish when you threw it on the bed. It was in my room.”

  “That doesn’t mean—”

  Trout interrupted. “Second, hold the paper up to the light.”

  Undine held the paper up against the sunlight that dappled down through the trees, diffusing around them.

  “I can’t see anything,” she said crossly. “Really, you’re starting to get on my—”

  Then she saw it.

  “Oh.”

  Trout nodded.

  Inside the fibrous paper there was a watermark, like the ones on banknotes. But instead of the queen, the picture was her face, and the name Undine ran through the paper like a thread.

  “But who…I mean…I already know my father is dead. This is hardly a revelation.”

  “Do you know the story of The Tempest?”

  “No. We studied Hamlet in English lit.”

  Trout rolled his eyes. “You can actually just read Shakespeare, you know. It’s not outlawed outside of school hours.”

  “Yeah, all right. Just tell me the important bits.”

  “Well, of course. I wouldn’t want to bore you, much less educate you!”

  “Trout! What does it have to do with my father?”

  “Possibly nothing. However, this bit of the play is when Ariel—he’s a spirit—is trying to trick this prince guy, Ferdinand, into thinking his father is dead. There was a big storm and they got separated and Ferdinand’s stranded on this desert island. Anyway, at the end, Ferdinand’s father isn’t dead at all. They’re reunited.”

  The world paused. Just for a moment everything stopped. Except Undine. The water on the rivulet was motionless. The trees above trembled and were still. Even the sunlight, which a second before had been shifting in and out
of the leaves, appeared static. Trout seemed to flicker in and out of space. Then everything slid, in slow motion, back to the point of time she was in, and the world was normal again.

  “Are you saying…my father’s still alive?”

  “It is one interpretation,” Trout said. “I mean, he sort of could be, couldn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Trout proceeded nervously. “You’ve never seen a grave. Or a photo, for that matter. You don’t even know his name! All you have is Lou’s word for it, and she’s never been forthcoming with details.”

  “That’s crazy. Lou would never lie about something like that.”

  Trout shrugged. “It was just an idea.”

  “Well, it’s a stupid one. My father’s dead.” Undine got up, furious with Trout. “I don’t want to listen anymore.”

  “Wait. Don’t you want this?” The scroll had fallen into the grass when Undine so abruptly stood up. He held it out to her. “It’s a kind of clue.”

  “It’s not a clue. It’s just Shakespeare! I don’t want to hear another word about it. And don’t ever talk to me about my father again!”

  Undine pushed through the thick summery air, leaving Trout to recover the scroll and put the cigar case in his pocket for safekeeping.

  This time if Undine had turned around, she would have seen that Trout wasn’t watching her at all. And even if she had turned around, even if she’d seen his head bent to the ground, seen that one tear that threatened to spill, at that moment she wouldn’t have cared.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Undine came home to an empty house. There was a note on the table from Lou: Book group tonight. Where were you? Jasper at Mim’s. Home late.

  Crap. It was her turn to babysit. Undine rang Mim’s number, but there was no answer. She tried Lou’s mobile but it was switched off. She’d have to grovel to everyone later.

  It was still hot. The house was stuffy. She went up to her bedroom to change and, tucked up so close to the tin roof, it was like an oven. She retreated back downstairs and poured herself some apple juice, pulled the Iliad out of her bag and took them outside to the backyard.

  The air was still and dry, though not silent. It seemed to almost sing, but Undine couldn’t tell if the singing was really there, or if it was somehow emanating from her.

  She flicked through her book restlessly, then lay it face down on her lap. She had to finish it before her exams but she couldn’t seem to string the words together. Undine’s mind was churning up thoughts so fast she was nauseous. She felt bad about forgetting it was her turn to look after Jasper. And with the immediacy of her anger gone, she felt terrible now about the way she had spoken to Trout. She knew he had only been trying to help.

  The heat was becoming unbearable. It felt like an enormous weight, pinning her down. She lifted her hair from her neck and arched back to look up. There was no sign of a reprieve.

  Two clouds drifted ineffectually in opposite corners of the sky, with no apparent interest in each other, no ambition to combine their futures. All they needed, thought Undine, was to become one cloud, to draw into one thick mass, to weigh more heavily on the thin sheet of the sky. All they needed was to become something else, something other than their current selves, to bring some much needed rain.

  She longed for rain. To feel it wash over her, to clean her and the dusty old world, to make everything fresh and green and sweet.

  “Move,” Undine breathed, willing them to travel across the sky. “Make it rain.”

  At first Undine didn’t even notice they were moving. And when she did, it seemed impossible that she could be doing it.

  She felt strange. She was dreamy, disconnected. Her brain was no longer an organ for thinking; it appeared to have another function entirely. It seemed as if she had left herself behind, her body some absurd thing on a chair, in a garden…senseless nouns, describing a world to which Undine didn’t belong, had never belonged.

  The clouds drew closer. She focused her energy on trying to knit them together, and the two clouds became one. She felt the pressure in the air rising, and the cloud grew enormous and dark. The wind chime that had been hanging limply from the beam of the veranda only moments before began to sway and resonate through the electrified air.

  Without understanding what she was doing, and still distant, as though she were someone else watching from afar, Undine made it rain.

  At first it was just a light froth, droplets suspended in the air, surrounding her like a fine mist. Then the rain came faster and harder. Lightning flashed in the sky, thunder rolled. A theater of war, hard bullets of rain exploding on impact. Undine was playing the weather like a savage instrument, but it seemed the instrument was becoming the player, performing its own dangerous music.

  She swayed. She was losing control of the storm. She became aware that she was standing in the middle of the garden, though she had no memory of having left her chair.

  Garden, chair, her mind grabbed at everyday objects, trying to reorder her universe. She grappled with the slipperiness of her own name—Undine, Undine—and felt as if she might lose the meaning of it altogether. In that moment she was less girl than storm; another moment and she would be gone. Undine, it’s time to come home.

  She felt someone grab her upper arms. “Undine!” Trout was shouting over the noise of the wind and rain. “Undine! Stop it! You’ve got to make it stop!”

  As she focused on the sound of his voice, the weather subsided. The rain slowed, and again formed a fine mist around her. Gradually, the wind dropped. The chimes hung lifeless and ordinary in the dense air.

  Undine looked up at Trout, who stared back, terrified.

  Then everything went black and she fell.

  Trout swept Undine into his arms. He carried her about two meters and then—mortifyingly—dropped her. So much for valor. He half dragged her up to her room; she was awake enough to help by doing a strange and not entirely convincing imitation of walking.

  He left her on the bed and went downstairs to make her a cup of tea. It seemed a useful thing to do. The phone rang and Trout stared dumbly for a few shrill rings before answering it.

  “Um…hello?” he said. It was Lou and she seemed peeved. She was cool and businesslike and Trout dropped the phone back on its cradle with relief at the end of the call.

  Undine was awake when Trout returned to her room.

  “That was Lou. The car won’t start, so she’s staying at her book club friend’s tonight. She left a number.”

  “What about Jasper?” Undine asked tiredly.

  “Mim’s going to keep him.”

  Undine closed her eyes. For a moment Trout thought she’d gone to sleep when Undine opened them and asked in a small voice, “What did you tell Lou?”

  “I said you weren’t well and you’d gone to bed.”

  “With you still here?”

  “I said I was looking after you.”

  Undine stared at the still surface of the tea. “How did you…?” she began weakly, but faltered.

  Trout shrugged. “I didn’t, not really. I just…I could see the storm from my bedroom window. At first it was localized, I could see it over your house. Then as I was running up the stairs, it spread out over the city. When I saw you…it’s impossible. I know it’s impossible. But I could see the storm coming out of you. I don’t know how to describe it. And besides, you were standing in the middle of it, in a deluge of rain, the wind whipping around you, and you were dry. The calm inside the storm. When I touched you, it was like…well, what I imagine a vacuum is like. Like we weren’t even in space.”

  “I think it was me. But I can’t describe it either. I mean, one second I just felt so hot, and I was wishing it would rain. And then somehow…” Undine shivered. To Trout, she seemed to be a different, smaller person, so unconnected with the Undine she had been in the garden, the Undine who made it rain, who he had seen almost overpowered by weather she had brought into existence from nowhere, from nothing.

&nbs
p; “How are you feeling now?” asked Trout, concerned.

  “Tired. Really tired. Oh!” she exclaimed, remembering. “Oh, Trout. I’m sorry I was so awful to you before. Those things I said…”

  Trout waved his hand, flicking her apology away. “Don’t mention it. I was being too pushy. But still, don’t you think it’s about time you had a talk with Lou? I mean, after today…This…this power has got to come from somewhere.”

  “You think…my father?”

  Trout shrugged.

  “Am I a witch? It was a pretty witchy thing to do, don’t you think?”

  Trout looked helpless. “I don’t really know. I don’t think so. I mean, it’s got to be some kind of…reaction, I guess. Science has to fit into it somewhere. You can’t just bend the laws of physics. They’re not guidelines. They’re immutable, binding facts.”

  “You’d think it would start with something smaller, wouldn’t you? You know, a little cumulonimbus in the kitchen, a light breeze in the bathroom. It was a bit…kaboom, wasn’t it?”

  “No kidding.” Trout gazed off idly, then frowned to himself a little, like he was working on an equation.

  “What?”

  “Well…it’s just a theory. But maybe it did start small. Do you know about the butterfly effect? Chaos theory? You know, if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, then the weather in South America…”

  Undine closed her eyes and nodded weakly. Trout gave up.

  “Do you want me to go home? You look wiped out.”

  Undine’s eyes flickered open. “Can you stay? Just for a while? Until I go to sleep?”

  Trout nodded and within minutes Undine was asleep. He went downstairs and rang his mother, took the duvet from Lou’s room and spent the rest of the night, sleeping fitfully, on Undine’s bedroom floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Undine woke early and abruptly. The faintest smell of salt air hung in the room. She sat up, breathed deeply, and it was gone.