Undine Read online

  “Wow,” he said. “They’re awesome. I can’t believe I never knew about this place. I grew up near here,” he added, “Back up the coast, toward Dunalley.” He pointed to the farthest angel. “Your dad says that’s where the Babylon went down. He’s taking me out on his boat tomorrow. He said at low tide you can see it clearly from the surface.”

  Undine followed the direction of his pointing finger, looking out at the bay. The sea still seemed to hum inside her. She felt it must be patently obvious, this extraordinary effect the sea had on her. Looking down to avoid his eyes, she saw a huge, sweeping circle in the sand and in it more circles, jumbled together, circles inside circles until the last one was just a smudgy smear.

  She caught her breath.

  “Wow,” said Grunt. “Check out that sand formation! Must be the wind or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Mmm,” said Undine, deliberately vague. All things considered, she doubted it was a natural phenomenon, but some trick of Prospero’s, a gesture of his talent.

  “You’re not easily impressed!” Grunt joked.

  Undine walked him back up to the car. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Grunt said. “Depends what time you get up. It’ll be early.”

  Grunt pulled his hand through his thick dreadlocks. They looked coarse and stiff, affected perhaps by sun and salt water. She had a sudden urge to touch them, to see if they felt as bristly as they looked. She clasped her hands behind her back and asked quickly, “Will Richard come?”

  “I don’t think so. He…”

  “It’s all right,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “He doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to.”

  Grunt raised his eyebrows, but not unkindly. “Well, see you tomorrow,” he said. Undine nodded tightly, but as Grunt drove off she relented and raised her hand to wave good-bye.

  Prospero had poached a fish for tea, dressed with a dill sauce and accompanied by roasted new potatoes and French beans. Undine had to admit to herself she was surprised. She’d expected bachelor food: tins of things, like sardines and baked beans and soup, and hastily rinsed dishes instead of carefully washed ones, and not enough green vegetables.

  Like Stephen, she thought wryly. When they had first met him both Undine and Lou had decided almost straightaway that he was lovely. Later Lou wailed, “But he’s hopeless in the kitchen!”

  Being with Prospero was doing strange things to Undine. She couldn’t help but compare him to Stephen, bringing back the raw, acute pain of losing him. And yet in some way she felt hopeful that the memories of Stephen could be…not replaced…just eased somehow by a relationship with this new, old father.

  But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t here for mushy reunions. Information. That was what she was really after, wasn’t it? Why was she too shy to ask?

  They ate in silence. Every now and then from the living room Caliban let forth a flurry of “language,” which Prospero stoutly ignored.

  Now or never, Undine told herself. “Prospero?” she blurted, her fork poised in the air.

  Prospero looked at her.

  “What am I? The things I can do? What are you?”

  Prospero placed his knife and fork carefully on his plate and contemplated her thoughtfully. She held her breath, waiting for his response. She was suddenly terrified of his answer. He resumed eating.

  “Finish your dinner. We’ll talk after.”

  Undine had to be satisfied with that. She ate her meal in silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The phone and the doorbell rang at the same time.

  Trout rushed to the phone but Mrs. M was standing right next to it.

  “Hello? Richard! How are you settling in? Are you warm enough? Do you have enough to eat?”

  Trout hovered at her, making what he thought to be urgent gestures to let him speak, but after asking Richard a barrage of questions pertaining to food, sleep, and daily ablutions, she hung up the phone.

  “What?” said Mrs. M impatiently. “Don’t be silly. He had to go. You’ll have a chance to speak with him next time. I don’t know,” she added. “I can’t keep up with you kids. You wouldn’t even talk to Richard yesterday.”

  Mr. M said from in front of the evening news, “Isn’t anyone going to answer the bloody door?”

  “’Cause you can’t possibly do it,” Trout grumbled. He sighed theatrically, “I’ll do it.”

  Trout was decidedly put out by the sight of Lou on the doorstep. It was like two completely separate elements of his world had collided (much like seeing Undine with Richard).

  “Where is she, Trout?” Lou asked straightaway.

  “She’s not here,” Trout replied. “See ya.” He went to shut the door in her face. After all, it was partly her fault that Undine had run away: her lies, or half-truths, or withholding of the truth. And Lou had started that stupid fight. While he sat there like an idiot. It served her right.

  But Mrs. M had appeared by Trout’s side. She held the door open. “Louise,” she said with a nod. Trout knew that his mother, though always impeccably polite, was never going to be president or treasurer of the Louise Connelly fan club. But when it came to running away, the sisterhood of motherhood (whatever…he knew what he meant) would win out.

  “Undine’s gone,” Lou said unhappily. “Isn’t she here?”

  “Trout. If you know where Undine is, you must tell us.”

  Trout turned reluctantly. “I don’t know, Mum,” he said honestly.

  Lou’s shoulders sagged and her eyes filled with tears. It was how Trout imagined a volcano might look in slow motion, the solidness and permanence of a mountain melting away. It alarmed him.

  “I’m sorry,” Trout said, distressed. “I really am sorry. But we sort of…we’d had a fight. Or, not exactly, but I was angry with her. I wasn’t speaking to her. She didn’t tell me anything.”

  “You don’t even know where she might have gone?” Mrs. M pushed. “She’s very naughty, worrying Lou like this. Can you think of anywhere she would go?”

  Lou spoke, her voice trembly. “Please, Trout. I’m so worried. We’ve been fighting too. I was horrible to her, I said awful things.”

  Mrs. M managed to bring Lou inside and herd a very reluctant Trout at the same time, so they all ended up in the kitchen.

  “Now let’s see,” Trout’s mother said matter-of-factly. “She was on the outs with both of you. Maybe she has run away, to scare you perhaps. What do you think, Trout?”

  Trout sat at the table, shrinking into his chair like a deflating balloon. “I don’t know about running away. I don’t think that’s it exactly. I don’t know. But I know who does.”

  Both Mrs. M and Lou waited, the question on their faces.

  “Can you ring Richard? Do you have a number for him?”

  Mrs. M looked confused. “Richard? No.” She explained to Lou: “They’re camping.” She turned back to Trout. “You don’t think she’s with Richard, do you?” she asked him.

  “No. But I think he knows where she is.” Trout suddenly remembered. “What about Grunt’s—I mean, Alastair’s—mobile?”

  Mrs. M nodded and left the room to find the number. She returned carrying the cordless phone. “The recorded message said his phone was switched off or out of range, but I was able to leave a message.”

  Lou looked crumpled and forlorn, like Jasper when he’d just woken up. “So I have to wait?” she asked, as though it was the hardest thing she could do. Trout was surprised. She always seemed so strong, so self-contained. Now she looked as if she’d been disassembled and put back together, but with some of the important pieces left out. Mrs. M put a cup of tea down in front of her and patted her shoulder. She took another cup out to her husband.

  When she left the room, Trout tried to conceal his awkwardness at Lou’s fragility. Wanting to offer some comfort, he said, “I think Undine is okay. I’m sure of it.”

  But Lou leaned forward, almost spilling her tea, and there
was a sudden change of climate in her gray-blue eyes. Lightning flashed. In a low voice so Trout’s mother wouldn’t hear, she said bitterly, “There are things, Trout, that you will never, never understand. So you won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it. Because Undine is mine. And it is possible that she will never be okay again.”

  Mosquitoes droned in Undine’s ear. The moon was a full, fat golden globe in the sky. Through the boards of the veranda, she could see the glinting, slitted eyes of the cat she had followed that morning. It sat poised, listening to Prospero’s and Undine’s voices vibrating through the wooden floor.

  “It’s as if”—Undine was trying to explain how she felt about her newfound abilities—“I’m this thing, right? I’m a thing, like a key or a cup or a lake. Something someone’s laid aside for a while. Forgotten about. And no one told me, because you don’t tell a key what it is for, or a lake.”

  “A thing?” Prospero asked. He repeated incredulously, “A key?”

  “Yeah.” Undine was warming to her analogy. “A key. I’m meant to open something. To do something. But no one told me. Because you don’t tell a key what it’s for. It just is. Or does, I suppose. And so I just…sit about…on a table, or under a rock somewhere—”

  “Under a rock?”

  “You know, like a spare front door key. Or under the mat or whatever. The rock isn’t important.”

  “But the key is?”

  Undine looked at Prospero, frustrated. “Yes,” she said slowly, as if Prospero were a small child.

  “Daughter,” Prospero addressed her, looking out from under his thick eyebrows, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “The magic.”

  “Yes,” agreed Prospero. “The magic. But where on earth did you get this idea that you were a key?”

  “Well!” Undine cried, exasperated. “What am I?”

  “Powerful,” said Prospero. He thought for a minute and added, “Very powerful.”

  “Am I a witch?”

  Prospero laughed, long and deep. “A witch?” he repeated, when his laugh had ended. “Broomsticks and britches? No.”

  “A sorcerer? A magician?”

  Prospero waved his hands about dismissively. “Pick one, if you like. But none of them are really accurate. Sorcerer, magician, wizard, or witch…these are all just constructs—myths people have created to enable them to think they have some control over nature. A witch or a sorcerer, they use things, spells and instruments, to exert that control. But in reality, magic isn’t a single action. You don’t do magic. You don’t wave a wand. Abracadabra. It’s an event. Like—let’s see—like a supernova. Or a heart attack. You create a whole system of small events—a chain reaction—that makes one big event. It’s a very complicated process.”

  “But you made things happen. You deliberately, systematically—”

  “Undine. We are magic. We’re its source and its guide.”

  Undine frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Prospero sighed. “Magic isn’t just this thing, this stuff, hanging about in the universe, waiting to be given a direction. It’s generated. It comes from you. From people like you.”

  “Are there others like us?”

  “No one is like you, Undine. You are unique. And the power inside you? It is nothing I’ve ever dreamed of. It sings.”

  “But there are others, who can do…who can be…magical?”

  Evasively, Prospero answered, “Perhaps one. Or two. It’s not merely a human phenomenon. It can be connected to an object or a particular physical space. Like here, the Bay. It has its own magic. That’s why I stay here. I draw power from it, and so can you.”

  “And…and…what do we do?”

  He answered disapprovingly, as if Undine was asking all the wrong questions. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by that, Undine.”

  “Well…” Undine was hazy on it herself. “Do we have some kind of…job? Sacred duty? Protect the innocent? Fight the good fight? Feed the world?”

  Prospero shook his head. “You’re still thinking in myths, stories. There’s no moral imperative, no agenda. It just…is.”

  “Then what’s the point of it? Why us?”

  “There is no why. No point.” Prospero sipped his drink and said, sounding for a moment like an ordinary, cantankerous old man, “We don’t come with an instruction book, you know.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not about what we should do. It’s about what we can do. We have enormous power. We can use it. We can do anything we want. Normal laws, normal rules, don’t apply to us.”

  Undine thought about this. “That sounds…lonely.”

  For the first time Prospero answered uncertainly, as though he was surprised by Undine’s observation. Quietly he said, “It can be lonely, I suppose.”

  Undine asked, “Will you show me?”

  “What?”

  “Your magic.”

  “A trick?” Prospero sounded disappointed, as if Undine had failed to grasp some basic concept. “You want me to perform for you?”

  Undine could hear a tired whine in her own voice, but she wanted to understand. “Please. I need to see.”

  Prospero sighed again, but obliged.

  At first Undine thought he was going to do something to her, for she felt strange, a queasy dip in her stomach, like being pushed too high on a swing.

  But Prospero pointed his right index finger to the sky and moved it in circles. It was the same gesture girls at school made when they thought something was trivial or boring, and so it looked almost comical when Prospero did it, until Undine saw that something was forming at the end of his finger.

  It was a small cone of wind, like a miniature tornado. It pulled things into itself, dust and moths and mosquitoes, growing bigger, until Prospero lowered his hand and released it into the garden, where it moved in an elegant figure eight around the lawn. It was like a small animal, something half tame and half wild, in the glowering dusk.

  They watched in silence as the small twister curled and spun, dancing across the grass. Eventually, like a child’s spinning top, it began to lose momentum, and it slowed, swaying slightly until it finally collapsed, puffing soil and dust into the air and then disappearing.

  There was a pause; silence ballooned between them.

  “We’re not…evil, are we?” Undine asked.

  Prospero sounded like he was losing his patience. “I told you. Not good. Not evil. We just are.”

  “Prospero, why am I here? Why now? Why did you call me?”

  “Your magic. It sings. For the first time, I could locate you, pinpoint you. The noise of you came together. Isn’t it enough…?” His one good eye looked at her directly. “Isn’t it enough, that a father should want to see his daughter after so many years?”

  She desperately wanted this to be true, for Prospero’s motivation to be simple paternal feeling. But why now? Undine thought. Haven’t you ever heard of a phone book? She knew there was more to it, that he had some other intention, some other agenda. But if she pushed him now, she might not get the other answers she was seeking.

  “And what can I do, exactly?”

  “Undine,” said Prospero, and his voice was gentler. “You, my dear, can do anything you want.”

  It was such a typical thing for a father to say to his child, affectionate and normal, yet totally uninformative. Undine felt simultaneously frustrated and absurdly pleased by it. She listened to the drone of crickets while Prospero dozed, his half-full glass tilted at an alarming angle. Gently Undine removed it from his hand and placed it on the boards beside him. The movement roused him.

  “Hey,” he said, fiercely. “What’s that?” He woke properly. “Oh. Time for bed perhaps.”

  “Yes,” Undine agreed. “I think I’ll go in.” But she didn’t move. She needed some time to think about what Prospero had told her. Prospero hadn’t really been illuminating—the nature of the magic still eluded her. She suspected the only way of dis
covering its true nature was to test its power, here in the bay where the magic was strong. The idea terrified her, and thrilled her.

  She watched her father raise himself from his chair. As he stood, his age seemed to perceptibly alter. He started in the chair as a very old man, but as he pulled himself upright he appeared to grow rapidly younger, until he was quite a young man, spry and resilient. Then the youth in his face seemed to slide away, and he was old again, and tired. His shoulders drooped as he picked up his glass and shuffled slowly inside.

  Trout logged on to the site every chance he got during the day, but Max wasn’t around. Finally, after everyone was in bed, Trout logged on again to find Max’s name appearing on the left of the screen, indicating that he was online. Trout opened up a private box and messaged him. Picking up straightaway where they had left off, Trout typed, “I know someone who has done real magic.” His heart pounded as he waited for Max to respond.

  Max appeared.

  MAX: Really?

  TROUT: She made a storm.

  MAX: Your girlfriend?

  TROUT: No. I wish.:(

  MAX: She really made a storm?

  TROUT: Yes. But she didn’t mean to. It just kind of happened. I saw it.

  MAX: That definitely sounds like chaos magic. I’m jealous!

  TROUT: Don’t be. It was kind of…weird. Big. Scary.

  MAX: Yeah! That’s the excitement of it. Chaos magic is scary because it’s huge. No holds barred. No limitations. Anything can happen.

  Max made Undine’s magic sound like an extreme sport. What was that thing Dan wanted to do? Base jumping, where you put on a parachute and jump off a cliff. The sort of stupid fun that’s fun because you almost die.

  MAX: There are limits in traditional magic. You know, there’s always a big deal about consequences? Return to the power of three times three and all that, meaning what you get back is worse than what you give out—it’s all to do with the balance of the universe. But chaos magicians don’t believe in consequences. They believe magic is morally neutral.