Ophelia opens her eyes.
Blue sky above, and green, some kind of tree. Coconut palm, that’s it. She’s lying on sand. Something is tickling her hair and she touches her head. Then notices that she has a hand, an arm, hair on her head. She’s human again.
The tickling thing has wriggling legs.
Ophelia gasps and sits up, flinging the thing away from her with a high-pitched shriek. It scuttles away; only a crab, a tiny white crab.
Something moves next to her. It’s Pim in human form, stretching her body full length.
Pim is totally naked and so, Ophelia realizes, is she.
She hugs her knees and looks around. They are on a beach, alone: the champagne-coloured sand and green verge of Doctor Bay.
She knows it like she was born here, every grain of sand and palm tree. Over that way, a long walk along the beach and up through the trees, stands the great city: Calabar. Then Cinnamon Lake, connected to the city by the huge tidal river, and foothills, forests, mountains. And beyond that, to the north, the snow-covered mountain peak, the great volcano.
The ocean surges, and surges again. Ophelia’s skin feels powdery, a bit sticky. She sniffs the back of her hand, tentatively tastes. Salt, from having been in the ocean.
The smells, the feeling of air on her skin, the sounds of birds, the way the light is falling. Pim, next to her, breathing. The faint taste of fish in her mouth. None of this—not the slide in, nearly drowning, becoming a seal, coming into shore, or waking here—none of this feels like a vivid fantasy. It feels real.
Pim murmurs, settling back into sleep. She lies on her back with one arm flung out across the sand, the other over her eyes. She’s tall—standing up, she’s over six feet—and slender, but not in a creepy starved sort of way, there’s muscle there, too. She has long, narrow hands and feet, and between her legs is an untouched thatch of black hair. Her ears are delicately pointed, tips bronze edged with pink. The patterns on her forearms are like tattoos, only they seem to be able to change. . . . Right now they’re a series of parallel lines, plain, from elbow to wrist. They’ve never looked like that before—they’ve always been elaborate curves, not these straight, straining lines.
Ophelia’s grown up with Pim. Ever since she can remember, she’s visited Pim. But at this moment Ophelia feels she’s never seen her—really seen her—like this.
There’s a feeling, then, like everything in the world has taken a breath and held it. And then the ground starts shaking.
Pim’s sits up in one smooth motion, small braids snapping around her face like tiny whips. “Do you feel it?”
“The shaking?”
“No. The volcano.”
Ophelia knows she won’t be able to see that peak from here, but swivels her head anyway. “What about it?”
Pim springs to her feet. “It is erupting.”
“Is that bad? It sounds bad.”
“We must get to the city.”
Ophelia remains sitting on the sand, hugging her knees. “What’s going on? How did I get here?”
“The same way you always do.”
“It’s different!”
Pim grins. “Yes. It’s different. I visited your world, and now . . .” she gestures back and forth between her chest and Ophelia’s “. . . we are even more closely connected.”
“You visited my world?” Ophelia’s voice goes up in a shriek.
Pim nods. “There were big buildings, and warriors dressed like beetles. And armoured wagons. And singing. I heard you. A song about the wind.”
Ophelia’s mind gaps, then leaps. “The protest!” It must have been the protest that Pim saw.
“I was only there for a short time. The membrane between our worlds is very thin now. Leaky. Like a basket.” Pim extends her hand. “Please. We must go.”
But Ophelia stubbornly stays put. “What in God’s name was all that seal business?”
“It was fun, wasn’t it?” Pim is pleading.
“It . . . Yes, it was fun. It was insane.”
“I need you to be with me, to transform.”
“You need me to . . . That happened because of me?”
“It happened because it is time.” The ground ripples. Pim grabs Ophelia’s hand and drags her to her feet. “We must hurry.”
“Why hasn’t it happened before?”
“It wasn’t time. Come on.”
They begin to run. Ophelia feels the sand on her feet, smells the air. Real, it feels real . . . the night-swimming in the ocean was real. . . . A cold feeling settles in her stomach and she jerks her hand out of Pim’s. The ground is moving. Her forehead is clammy, saliva rushes from the insides of her cheeks. She remembers with sudden clarity the feeling of snapping the gut out of a fish with her mouth, and another, and another—her stomach must be full of them. She stops in her tracks.
“We need to go. The volcano erupts.”
Ophelia’s body convulses. She braces herself on her knees and throws up onto the sand. Slimy fish parts . . . She heaves again, spits. She spits and wipes her mouth. “Will we be safe in the city?”
Pim barks a mirthless laugh. “It is not the volcano that is the danger.”
“What is then?”
“The Mender will explain everything. She will teach you about your power. She is waiting for us.”
“The who-whatsit? Mender?”
The ground shakes so violently that Pim staggers. Palm trees sway. Waves hiss on the sand, tide going out. Out, farther than Ophelia’s ever seen it. Seaweed in the sun, a fish gasping.
“She sent me to find you. The volcano erupts, you are here. It is the sign.”
Ophelia feels something pulling at her, like her head and feet are being pulled in two directions. Pim, the beach, the shaking—everything begins to seem as if it’s happening at a distance. Is she being pulled back?
Pim leans in. “Ophelia, no!”
It’s impossible, Ophelia can’t hold on, she feels herself being stretched. Again the horrible thrilling feeling claws through her whole body. Everything jolts, darkens—ah, it hurts. Smells changing, light failing, lungs compressing.
She can’t breathe.
She opens her mouth and a great sobbing breath fills her.
Light comes through a window. She is sitting on her bed, daylight, there’s knocking at the door. “Time to get up, girls.”
Her heart is hammering. She hears the twins stirring on the other side of the curtain.
Something in her hands.
When Ophelia looks down, she sees that she is sitting in the middle of sheets soaked with water—sweat? Salt water. And her hands are fists. When she opens them, she sees that they are full of pale, wet sand.
You can’t bring something back from nowhere.
Got to get the sand off her hands, it’s under her nails, too, like she clawed at the beach when leaving—no, it’s impossible. Ophelia flings her hands out, scrubs her palms on the wet sheets.
The sheets heave. There’s a person wrapped up in there.
Ophelia can’t even scream.
The sheets thrash, Ophelia scrambles up to the farthest edge of the bed. A long, fine brown hand reaches out, pulls the sheet from a high-cheek-boned face with big eyes. Pim stares at Ophelia. Her mouth opens. Ophelia can’t move, she is paralyzed.
And then Pim looks over her shoulder like she’s heard something. A white light shines out, blinding Ophelia, like a search beam. A blast of salt-laden air, a roaring sound . . . The sheets sink back onto the bed. Pim has disappeared.
“Girls! Get a move on!” calls Ophelia’s mother from downstairs.
In the growing morning light, sand on wet sheets sparkles like tiny, sharp little diamonds.