Undine Read online

  Grunt felt the air trying to tear him to pieces as he hauled himself toward the house. Wind whipped his eyes until they wept. He pushed on, but lost his bearings, unable to see the house through the squall. He stopped, struggling to orient himself. Wind rushed around him. He found himself caught up in the tunnel of air. Darkness descended over his already sore, struggling eyes. Just before the world went black he saw…Prospero?

  “Get out of here!” the young Prospero called. And then, as if he had seen something Grunt couldn’t see, “Oh my god. You idiots! What did you think you could do? Who’s going to save you?” He howled, “You fools. This was my chance. This was my time.”

  Grunt felt an overwhelming pull, as if he were being wrenched into pieces, and then suddenly the awful noise stopped and he was struck by utter silence.

  Am I dead?

  Small sounds began to reassert themselves on the world—the whirr of a cricket, a bird’s song, and the far-off hum of a car approaching. His vision cleared and the blackness began to dissolve into light.

  He was on the long tarmac highway, far up the coast. Alone, adrift by the side of the road.

  “Trout!”

  Undine watched in horror as Trout went under. What have I done? What have I done? She waited, frozen. But he didn’t reappear.

  She swam, desperate and panicky. She lost her bearings, and couldn’t remember exactly where she had seen him submerge.

  “Trout,” she was sobbing. “Trout. Trout.”

  She dived, searching with her hands; her eyes were open but only just able to make out shapes under the water. She no longer felt powerful. She felt weak, her limbs as soft and flaccid as noodles. The salt water scratched at her throat and eyes. The magic seemed to flow out of her, emptying into the sea. She surfaced, forced air into her lungs, and dived again.

  She felt him first, the slipperiness of his skin under the water. She heaved him upward to the surface, and then surfaced herself, struggling to drag air into her sore lungs.

  Trout was limp in the water, his head twisted, facing away from her. He was not conscious, but he was breathing. She held him with one arm and swam with the other, kicking back toward the beach.

  The magic was gone. The magic was nothing. Her muscles ached. She was desperately tired but she pushed herself. The water stung her eyes. Her nose and throat were sore from the salt.

  “Okay.” She was talking more to comfort herself than Trout. “I’m going to get you to the beach. And then you’re going to be okay. You’re going to be just fine. We just have to get to the beach. We just have to get to the beach and everything will be fine.”

  Undine believed it. While they were in the water Trout was in danger. But as soon as they were on land, he would be fine.

  Towing Trout slowed her down considerably, and it took her what seemed like hours but was actually only minutes to get back to the shore. She reached a place where she could stand and began pulling him out. At first it was easy, as he was weightless in the water, but then it became almost impossible. Using all her strength, she was able to drag him onto the firm sand just above the waterline.

  He twitched, then was still.

  “Okay,” she gasped. “Okay. You’re going to be fine. You have to be.” She bent down to him and listened for his breathing. Nothing. She felt desperately for a pulse.

  His heart had stopped beating.

  “Oh no,” she sobbed. “Oh my god.”

  Trout was dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Undine screamed. Time stretched and folded and shuddered inside that scream.

  She seized the magic that she’d released into the sea. It ebbed and flowed around her. She gathered it up and gave herself to it completely. She grew enormous and dangerous. The Bay became a fleck, a grain, a speck. She gathered the sky around her and set the earth spinning on its end.

  She screamed, to break the world in two.

  “Undine!”

  It was Prospero. He stood before her, enormous like her. She looked into his rejuvenated face. He seemed to be shifting before her very eyes, changing with the landscape, duplicitous and unreliable.

  But she was changing too. She could feel her different parts within collide, fracture, and pull away, like the movement of continents.

  Wind rolled around the Bay. The sea leaped up in fury, immense waves smashing against the sand.

  “Undine!” he shouted. Magic flickered around his young face, his body. But it was nothing compared to the magic she possessed. He was a pale candle and she stood poised to puff him out.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” she said, and there was a deafening rip. Undine realized that the Bay itself was literally being torn from the world. “You began it. I’m ending it.”

  “Undine,” he implored. “You have to stop it. You’ll kill us both.”

  “So?”

  The Bay shook. The angels began to crumble, turning to dust and falling into the sea.

  “What does it matter? Who cares if we die?”

  The sky ruptured, leaking black through the atmosphere.

  Prospero cowered. She hated him. He was weak. She felt strong.

  “Who cares if you die? An old man, out here on your own. No one ever visits. A daughter you’ve never once called, in sixteen years.”

  The ground rolled underneath them. Above them, the sky continued to ooze a thick liquid black. The blackness spread down toward the sea. It surrounded them until the only light was a small but rapidly declining orb around Prospero and Undine.

  “Undine,” begged Prospero, who seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Undine, please, make it stop.”

  “I will. Make it. It will all. Just. Stop.”

  “Undine. Please, I want you to—”

  “To what?”

  “—to live.”

  Her head dropped. The hard red fiery stone of anger inside her melted away. She felt numb with grief. But she wanted to live too. Despite it all. The loss, the hardness of life, the flintiness. She wanted to live.

  She could no longer see Prospero. The Bay had been all but overcome by darkness. One tiny pinprick of light the size of a grain of sand flickered.

  “End it,” she told Prospero, wearily. “Finish it.”

  “I can’t,” said Prospero. “It has to be you.”

  Her bones ached. “I don’t know how.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  “But what’s left? Is the world even there?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Prospero. “Is it?”

  And then from somewhere close she heard another voice. It was soft, warm, curved, female. It asked, tenderly, Will darkness or light be born? and then answered itself:

  Light. Light.

  Undine fixed her tired eyes on the grain of light. It blurred in and out of focus and almost vanished.

  She saw what that grain of light was made of. It was the rivulet, where she had sat with Trout a lifetime ago. It was making daisy chains with Fran on the hill above the school oval. It was swinging upside down on the monkey bars. It was a slice of watermelon in summer, crisp and ice-cold against her teeth. It was the first night after Stephen had died, lying between stiff clean sheets, listening to herself cry in the dark. It was the scarlet sunset the night Jasper was born, and Lou and Undine singing “Molly Malone” between contractions. It was Jasper’s vegemite smile. It was the first bite of an apple and the last bite of Mim’s fabulous chocolate cake.

  “End it,” said Prospero, gently.

  Undine ended it. The Bay tilted, slid, exploded in a bright burst of white. And everything was restored, regular and ordinary. Undine looked up. Standing on the path, at the zenith of the dunes that formed the boundary between the beach and the garden, a last haze of magic framing her like sunlight, emanating from her—soft, warm, curved, female—was Lou.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  That hug. The warmth of Lou seeping in. Undine closed her eyes. She wanted to reside there forever. Prospero hung back.

  Undine cou
ldn’t speak. Her voice was as heavy as lead, weighed down somewhere deep in her diaphragm, and she couldn’t bring it to the surface. The magic wasn’t gone. It was still there, inside her, but dormant, and safely contained.

  In her heart she cried for Trout. She led Lou down to the beach to find him. Prospero followed.

  It took Lou to say it, but as soon as she did, Undine could see it was true: “That’s not Trout.”

  It was a close approximation. But the hue of his skin, the shape of his face…they were not quite right.

  “End it,” said Lou. “It has to be you.”

  Undine shot Lou a nervous glance. “I don’t know if I can.”

  Lou took her by both hands. “Undine, listen to me. The magic, it doesn’t have to be like that. You’re strong. You can control it.”

  But Undine was still afraid. She turned to Prospero. “Can’t you do it?” she asked him.

  Lou answered for him. “This is your magic. You have to end it.” Her voice was gentle. “I’m right here,” she added.

  Undine laid her hands on the lifeless husk of almost-Trout. She could feel his body emptying of magic, could feel it drawing back up into her. It pumped through her like blood, and she felt the rush of power returning. Momentarily she felt the adrenaline, the threat of it, but she held it tight, thinking about that seed of light.

  Lou whispered, “Remember, you can control it.” Undine focused. Though she drew the heady magic out of the body beneath her hands and into herself, so that it coursed through her blood and muscle and bone, she managed to push it down into her most secret self, where it would have to live for now.

  Under her hands, the packaging of skin and flesh that had been Trout was transforming into something else. It shrank to something smaller and smoother. It grew scales and fins and a blank gaping eye.

  Lou and Undine stared down at the slender, dead fish that lay on the sand where Trout had lain. It stared back at them, but the eye was dead and the body was still.

  “Prospero,” hissed Lou, venom and loathing stinging her voice.

  But Undine knew. “Not Prospero. I wanted to find Trout so badly, I made him. Trout wasn’t there to be found. Was he?”

  Lou shook her head. “No, sweetheart. He’s up at the car. I found him on the side of the road.”

  “Is he…?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Undine looked at the fish. “I killed it. When I brought it out of the water, it died.”

  They sat together in silence, mourning the death of the blameless fish.

  Behind them, Prospero grieved too.

  “Prospero,” said Lou. “You’re looking old.”

  Undine lifted her head and looked at Prospero, and he was looking old. The magic had drained out of him too. Undine felt almost sorry for him. He looked down and Undine saw shame and fear on his face.

  “What have you done to my daughter?”

  “She’s mine too,” said Prospero, sounding like a belligerent child. “She’s mine. I wanted her.”

  “You wanted her? When did you ever want her? You wanted her magic. Just like you wanted mine.”

  “Yours?” whispered Undine. “Yours. I never even thought of you.”

  Lou nodded. “You think you got magic like that from him?”

  “I was here. I was always here.” Prospero’s voice was plaintive and the shakiness had returned. “Everybody had forgotten me.”

  Undine felt a twinge of grief for him.

  “You didn’t care,” said Lou. “This was the way you wanted it. You never wanted to be a father. You just wanted her to emerge fully grown.”

  “You told me he was dead,” Undine reminded her.

  “Oh, Undine,” Lou said. “I was protecting you.”

  “But he’s still my father.”

  Lou put her hand on Undine’s face. “He didn’t want a little baby. He wanted you, as you are now. He wanted your power. He wanted mine.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the magic?”

  “I hoped I wouldn’t have to. I hoped I was…unique. And in the last week, well, I could feel the magic in you, the strength of it. It frightened me. I knew I had to talk to you about it, but it was like you were becoming…less mine. More of an adult, I suppose. I didn’t know whether to hold on or let go. In the end I did both, and neither.”

  Prospero rocked like a pendulum, and Undine jumped forward to catch him before he fell. “Come on,” she said to her mother. “We have to get him up to the house.”

  Lou hung back, as if reluctant to touch him.

  “Come on,” insisted Undine.

  They steered him toward the house, the three of them leaning on each other. Undine wondered briefly what it might have been like if they had been a family.

  “But who pulled Trout out of the Bay?” Undine wondered. “Was it you?” she asked Lou.

  “No,” said Lou.

  They both looked at Prospero.

  He said nothing.

  Trout and Jasper were leaning on Lou’s yellow station wagon. Undine dropped Prospero’s arm and ran to Trout. She punched him, quite hard (he rubbed his shoulder vigorously and looked vexed), and then she collapsed on him. He caught her but was almost knocked over by the sheer force of her, so they did what looked like a very clumsy dance around Trout’s large feet.

  Trout pushed her away gently. “Stop crying all over me,” he half joked. But it was his way of saying he was not ready to forgive her.

  “What happened to you?”

  Trout shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute I was swimming toward you, and then there was that monster wave. I felt…something kind of snatch me. All of a sudden I was sitting on the edge of the peninsula road, my clothes soaking wet. Anyway, I think I might have passed out, because then Lou was standing over me, and she put me in the car and here we are.”

  “How much do you remember? From…before that?”

  “Enough,” Trout said, and wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She looked at him. “I’m so sorry. I want to hug you.” But she didn’t. He kept his arms stiffly beside him.

  “I’ll get over it,” Trout said.

  Undine’s mouth twitched downward.

  “Look,” said Trout. “I really will get over it. Just not for a while. Besides”—he gave her a shove—“I still haven’t forgiven you for kissing Richard.” She caught him midshove. It was all right. It would be.

  Jasper tickled her side. “Hello, bruvver,” Undine said, and gave him a squeaky kiss.

  “Here comes Grunt,” Jasper said.

  Undine realized that the Fiat was parked in front of Lou’s car. But Grunt was walking from the opposite direction, down the dirt road.

  “Forgot my wetsuit,” he said laconically.

  “Right,” said Undine.

  “You okay?”

  Undine nodded. “You?”

  Grunt smiled.

  The four of them walked back toward the house.

  Trout, in the solitude of his bedroom late at night when he had put away his textbooks and his scientific calculator and turned off his bedside lamp, had often imagined what it would be like to rescue Undine.

  In his mind, it would be Undine who was drowning, or threatened by sinister assailants or attacked by wild dogs. Trout would be the hero, the one who pulled her from the water or fought off her attackers. In his fantasies the rescued Undine would turn breathlessly to face him and suddenly realize how much she loved and desired him. In the light of day, he had always felt a bit ashamed of how masculine and sexist his fantasies were. But now he was not sure who was the rescued and who the rescuer. Who was the assailant, and who the assailed?

  It was a strangely surreal and yet almost idyllic scene. Prospero sat, solitary and rigid, on the veranda, where Lou had deposited him. Trout and Undine sat together—it was as if Undine was reluctant to let living, breathing Trout too far from her side. Grunt, a small distance away, was being assailed equally by Jasper and Ariel the woolly dog. Lou stoo
d planted in the garden, surveying plants that had once been her own.

  Undine watched Lou with an attentive, even quizzical expression, as if she was seeing Lou for the first time after a long, long absence. Trout watched Undine. Trout smiled. His heart ached. His heart aching, that was in the smile. He didn’t mean for it to be, but somehow it crept in. Undine smiled ruefully back and looked away again.

  It frustrated Trout that to Undine he was an open book and she could skip to the last page. He didn’t want it to be this way; he wanted to hold something back, so he had something to reveal later when she, rescued and breathless, looked up into his eyes.

  “It’s never going to happen,” he told himself firmly, but old habits are hard to break and he only half believed it.

  “What are you mumbling?” Undine asked.

  “Oh…” Trout was caught off guard. “You know. Shakespeare.”

  Undine smiled. “Yeah, right. You are so weird.”

  “What now?” Trout asked her. “The magic? What are you going to do with it?”

  “I was thinking about it,” Undine said dreamily, because she knew she had plenty of time to decide. Lou had kept her magic hidden for all these years—concealed even from her own daughter. So it was possible to keep it pushed down, safe and tidy, where no one would see it. But to Undine it seemed kind of wrong too, to turn her back completely on her magic. Yes it was frightening and hard to control, and yet she admitted to herself, she was still intrigued by it, by its immense possibilities. “What if I studied the weather? Learned about weather systems? Then I could use it, learn to use it. To help people. I could bring rain and calm oceans.” She laughed self-consciously.

  Trout smiled sadly. It was a nice idea. But ecosystems are so complex, so fragile. What could happen? A butterfly flaps its wings in Japan…He could see no place for Undine’s magic in the natural world.

  He remembered Max, and the Chaosphere. He knew now that Undine’s magic hadn’t been his secret to tell. He had put her at risk; his instinct to quit the Web site had been right. He still felt that pull, that scientific urge to dissect the magic, to analyze its parts. So Trout would still get to protect Undine. He would rescue her a little bit every day, from his own desire, and she would never thank him for it.