Ophelia will never forget the feeling of that hard, rubbery nose bashing at the crack in the rock, a hair’s breadth away.
Those perfect, rending teeth.
But the crack is too small. The sharks cannot get in.
It takes a long time, but finally the sharks swim away to more profitable hunting.
Finally, Ophelia senses Pim emerging from under her rock, and squeezes herself out, too.
A prawn marches across the sand in front of her. Without thinking, Ophelia lifts herself up and engulfs the prawn with her beaky mouth. Then another. Easy.
Pim swirls toward her on her several legs, twining patterns in the water. Patterns run across her skin, and colours. Her head has a shape that reminds Ophelia just a little bit of a moose: the knowing eyes, a bulbous shape that could be a nose. Tenderness fills Ophelia.
The two octopuses come together and entwine. Ophelia wants to tell Pim how sorry she is for waiting so long to come to this place. They caress each other, dancing. Ophelia senses colour not through her eyes, she realizes, but through her skin. Colour and light are everywhere. It’s very beautiful, down here, the light filtering down from the fractured water’s surface.
Finally Pim pulls away. She fills her body with water—Ophelia can see it happening—and jets away, toward the land. Somehow, now, it’s easy to know which way the land is. And it’s fun, filling her boneless body with water and then sending it gushing out through a muscular siphon. Ophelia is surprised by how fast they can go.
The water gets warmer. New sounds begin to drum inside her body: rocks rolling under waves, and the sound of debris on the water’s surface. She can see it, and taste it, too: logs and leaves and dead seabirds, and a swollen cow, long drowned, floating on its side.
Something bad has happened here.
Her hearts beat. She and Pim shoot through the water together.
They have reached sand.
They crawl slowly up the incline. As they come out into the air, Ophelia feels the hot, sunny air hit her skin. Pim seems very pretty to her now with her green and red hide, a beautiful batik. They drag themselves forward and forward, arm-legs working across the sand.
There’s more debris: tree trunks, twisted palm fronds, dead birds.
The two octopuses stop dragging themselves. Ophelia puts what could be described as her forehead to an analogous place on Pim’s face, and closes her eyes.
The move back to being human is almost as painful as it was to become an invertebrate. The pushing hardness of bones under skin is maybe the worst part, and the feeling of her eyes sliding around on her skull is almost enough to make Ophelia toss her prawns onto the sand.
Pim is lying on her back, perfectly still, her eyes open and gazing at the sky above. “I thought I was gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears in Ophelia’s eyes again. “I am so sorry.”
Pim rolls over. “It’s all right. You came in time.”
Ophelia’s body is shaking. “Man. Octopuses?”
“Perhaps it would have been better to become birds. But I couldn’t think outside the water.”
“Is this going to keep happening?”
“What?”
“These . . . transformations.”
“They have been necessary.”
“I don’t know if I can handle this kind of necessary.” Ophelia wants to stand up, feel her feet and bones again, know she’s human, but she doesn’t trust her legs to hold her.
“You would have drowned before, if we had not become seals. And the sharks . . .”
Ophelia holds up her hand. “I know. We had to do something. But really. Couldn’t you have warned me?”
“How?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Years ago you could have said something like, ‘Ophelia, some day we will be octopuses.’ That kind of warning.”
Pim doesn’t answer. Almost, infuriatingly, she looks like she is going to laugh.
Ophelia gazes up and down the beach. As far as she can see, the sand is covered in broken trees, twisted feathers, debris . . . and then there was that cow . . .
“Was there a storm?”
Pim shakes her head. “Waves. From far out.”
Ophelia sits up. “The tremor, and the volcano. It was a tsunami!”
“The first one was all right. And the second. But the third . . .” She trails off, staring out at the horizon. “It was quite big. I couldn’t make it to the city in time.”
“It swept you out?”
Pim nods.
“It’s amazing you survived.”
“Yes.”
“Are the waves done, do you think?”
“I think so. We must go to Calabar now, Ophelia.”
“I can’t!” She has to get back. She can’t leave Rowan like that: suddenly, with no explanation.
“Why not?”
Ophelia shakes her head. It would sound so trivial, I’m on a date with a boy. How can she explain the urgency she feels? The longing?
But of course, she never gets to pick when she leaves Antilia. She only chooses when to come in.
Except this time. “You called me here, didn’t you?”
“Is that what it felt like?” Pim feels her burnt face with careful fingers. “Ah. I was in so much pain. So tired. And then when the sharks found me . . .”
“You need me to be with you, in order for you to transform into another creature. You can’t do it alone. Is that how it works?”
Pim nods. Then, wearily, she stands. “Our worlds have lined up, come closer. The Mender will explain everything.”
“Mender? You said that before. Who’s the Mender?”
“We must go to Calabar, Ophelia.”
She’s visited the city with Pim before, but infrequently. Mostly they played by the ocean, or explored the tropical forests, full of flowers like those Ophelia imagines might grow in the land of her father. But the city is beautiful. Ancient, made of grey stone and full of towers, terraced up and down seven hills. Red roofs. Spiralling streets.
Calabar seems to be run by a group of women called The Virgos, a sort of ruling council. They remind Ophelia of nothing so much as a bevy of nuns, and maybe that’s what they are.
But until recently, Pim’s never mentioned this Mender person.
A flash of the White Witch with her black dress—the story she told the twins—comes into Ophelia’s mind.
“They have called a council. The volcano is erupting. It is time.”
Ophelia huddles, closes her eyes. From Rowan’s point of view, she’s disappeared behind that silken curtain. He will have given up on her, gone home. Left her in that tiny bathroom with the single electric bulb hanging from the ceiling on its black wire, its sink with the chipped enamel . . .
. . . sink with the chipped enamel . . .
. . . sink with the water spiralling down the black hole of drain . . .
Ophelia feels herself spiralling, twisting, pouring through. It’s coming, the real world is coming closer! She can feel it.
Pim’s face opens with dismay. “You cannot leave Antilia, not now!”
“I always leave.”
“Not this time. . . .” Pim yearns, reaching out. The blue sky, the pale beach, the sea, it all tumbles and shakes together and becomes small and bright and far away.
—
Ophelia is naked, covered in sand, and shaking.
Her body convulses. She makes it to the toilet, pukes up a broken prawn body. The feeling of it sliding up her throat is horrible.
“Ophelia? Are you okay in there?”
Antilia. Pim had called the other place Antilia. She’s never done that before. Ophelia’s never named the island, not until Rowan showed her that map. How did Pim know?
Ophelia retches again.
“Can I . . . Are you okay?”
It’s Rowan outside the bathroom curtain-door. Oh, Christ.
“I’m okay,” she manages. “Just need a minute . . .”
She hears a creaking sound, realizes it’s the old woman, talking to Rowan.
Hears the word pregnant.
“No!” she gasps. “No, I’m just . . .”
“I am coming in,” creaks the old lady. There’s an authority to her voice that will not be denied. The silk curtain twitches and she hobbles in. Ophelia huddles in her nakedness.
“Oh, dear, dear.” The woman clucks like a chicken. “What have we here?”