Fish Out of Water (11 page)

If I’m in town, Sunday afternoon belongs to Mrs Tripe.

Lots of people think Mrs Tripe’s crazy, ’cause she claims to see things. I’m ashamed to say maybe I’d always thought she was a little crazy too. I guess life sends you lessons to teach you not to be so closed-minded. ’Cause now that I was an official member of the Seers’ Club, I wasn’t thinking she was crazy at all. And I needed to talk to her about it.

During our history together, Mrs Tripe has gone from active seventy-year-old to frail ninety-year-old, and moved from her cozy little three bed duplex to the Dirtwater Aged Care Home. Aldus wanted her to come and live with him, but his place just wasn’t set up for it, and his job meant he often had to be out and about at strange hours. Mrs Tripe needs round-the-clock care. Not that you’d know it. She was waiting in the parking lot when I pulled up in Ariel, hardly looking a day over sixty-five in a yellow dress covered with sunflowers.

“Afternoon, Rania,” she called cheerfully. “I hear you’re heading out of town.”

This damn town.

“Yeah,” I muttered as I unfolded myself from the Corvette and folded her up into a hug. She was a neat package in my heavily muscled arms, only a shade over five foot, but her eyes were sparkly and her tongue was scalpel sharp. Or maybe I just had scalpels on the brain.

“Yes, not yeah. Really, Rania, for such a bright girl you speak terribly.” But she smiled at me and returned my hug, holding me so close I could smell lavender and berries and feel the cottony softness of her cheek.

“Ah well,” I consoled her. “At least I can sing.”

Her eyes misted over at the thought. She always attends the recitals I organize with the local choir. “Below the belt, darling,” she agreed. “But true.” Never one not to have the final word, she felt obliged to add: “No reason you couldn’t do both, of course.”

With that, she looped her tiny sparrow arm in mine and steered me ever so gracefully to a little bench resting sweetly under a nearby oak. “Let’s chat outside this time, darling. The old people are acting up terribly inside today.”

I love how she says “the old people” like she’s not one. And I love how she holds my hand when we chat. She’s the closest I ever came to a Grandma.

We covered the usual things – the weather, the old people. Then I started to steer her ever so slightly onto something different, and she knew it, but allowed herself to be led anyway.

“She was quite amazing when she first came to town. I mean, truly amazing. As in, a thing which amazes. Not in the casual way the word is thrown about by young people these days to describe any vaguely interesting thing.” She sighed, remembering. “Yes, she was amazing, your ma. Not just the uncommon beauty. But the poise, the lack of artifice. And the mystery.”

Aha, there’s where I wanted to go.

“Anyone wonder what it was all about? The mystery?”

Mrs Tripe thought, stroking the soft, bubbly skin of her neck, eyes focused upwards and slightly to the right. “Most folks did, I guess. When she wasn’t there. When she was around, we just liked that she was there. Dirtwater just seemed less… dirty… with her in it. Woman like that…” Mrs Tripe clucked her tongue. “All those brains, that beauty. Coulda been Mayor of anyplace. Paris even. Why Dirtwater?”

We both sat, musing, Mrs Tripe stroking one soft finger along the top of my hand, like petting a kitten. Unconscious, affectionate. “I did ask her once. You know, in the early days.”

“What did she say?” Like picking at a scab, my mind often came back to worrying at the frayed gaps in my knowledge of my Mom and her mystery.

“A funny thing.” Mrs Tripe looked far away again.

“I remember it so clearly, word for word, because it was so strange. She said that sometimes you have to leave the things you love to make sure they stay safe. Sometimes you can be the most dangerous thing for them, even though you’d happily die for them.”

I felt a sudden cold hand clutch at my belly, and knew it was about to happen again.

Mrs Tripe’s words echoed through the walls of my still-aching brain, even as they started to dissolve and turn to something else. And there it was again. The same thing. From the bathmat. The dark shape, the cries. But this time my Mom’s voice was crying too, and Mom was swimming, fast, carrying something in her arms, but I couldn’t see what it was.

And then it was gone, and my mind was black and aching again. And Mrs Tripe had her arms around me, holding me while I shook and tears poured down my cheeks. She was talking but it took a few moments for her words to make their way through to my overheated brain.

“Shush, darling, shush. It will pass. Don’t fight it.”

And she waited with me while I made the slow and scary journey back from the abyss.

“You’re both different.” She was holding my face now, looking into me. “You, your ma Lunia. But I know you’ll be okay. It doesn’t matter what you are, you’re ours.”

She pulled back from me, and I noticed for the first time since arriving that she had a little blue-green bag with her. It looked sequined, and Mrs Tripe handed it to me.

“Your Mom gave me this, shortly after she arrived. Asked me to keep it safe, and I always have. I have no idea what’s in it, but she asked that I give it to you if anything ever happened to her. And that I must tell you not to open it until you need to. And that you’ll know when you need to. I’ve seen something, and I think maybe you’re going to need it soon,
even though she’s still with us. This journey you’re going on, there’s something different about it.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but she silenced me with a finger. “You don’t need to tell me, dear. An old woman like me, I don’t need to know. But I know you need something to keep you safe. But maybe you don’t need to tell your Mom I gave it to you. Not just yet.”

She passed the little bag to me, and as I turned it over in my hands, I realized it wasn’t sequined at all. The tiny, shiny, translucent things adorning it were scales. Scales from the larbra fish, which Aegirans believe are divine. There was a shell clasp on the top, and I ran my fingers over its impossibly smooth finish. “How will I know when to open it?” I wanted to ask a thousand things, but she stilled me.

“You’ll know. Of course you’ll know. You already know enough to know that.”

She held me a little tighter than usual as I made to leave, and I felt my heart thump against her frail body and my breath ragged and coarse in her hair. I wondered what she’d seen in her visions. I wondered if I should try to pump her a little.

Then I remembered that no-one had ever been able to make Mrs Tripe do something she didn’t want to do. And I doubted that I was the one to buck the trend. Doubtless she’d told me all she could, all she thought I needed. And I guessed that had to be enough for now.

I jumped back in Ariel, glad to feel the smooth kiss of the leather on my thighs and hold her reassuringly hard steering wheel in practiced hands. She was what I needed – familiar, real. An antidote to the cryptic rabbithole world of visions and secrets I seemed to have fallen into.

I was so tired. But I still had one more stop.

She opened the door and shrieked the instant she saw me, arms clawing towards me.

He was a heartbeat behind her, his arms around her, shushing her gently, leading her back to the couch as he motioned me to come in. My eyes swept his pad, impressed as ever.

Doug.

He’s this big man’s man that you assume will have mildew growing in his bathroom, but instead he has the whole thing gleaming and alphabetized. And you should see his armory. If some girl ever marries him, he’ll never need Dr Phil’s Man Camp.

He was talking so softly to her. “Ma, it’s just Rania. Remember?”

I waited for Doug’s mother to rail at me some more, but I was relieved when her brow cleared and she relaxed in the sofa beside me. “Oh.” She sounded uncertain, but friendlier than a moment before. Her soft, still-pretty face looked lost and confused. A child caught in grown-up things.

“Hi.” I stayed as still as I could, like Doug had told me, and eventually she relaxed completely, and her eyes cleared. It was like the last few moments had never happened.

“Hi Rania. Nice to see you, girl. I’ve been baking. You want some?” She motioned to the kitchen with eyes an all-too-familiar shade of chocolate that tugged at a place deep inside me.

I saw a charred black circle on Doug’s granite benchtop.

“No thanks, Mrs D. But it sure smells good.”

Doug rewarded me with a smile. “Aw come on, Rania.” He gave his mother a quick squeeze around her frail shoulders as he led me away. “I’m sure I can convince her, Ma.”

When we reached the privacy of his slick chef’s kitchen, I touched his arm. “Bad day?”

“Nah,” he smiled cheerfully. “We’re fine. Burnt bench-top better than burnt Ma.”

“Some pair, hey?” I punched his shoulder. “Both living with Mommy.”

He smiled ruefully, indicating the bench-top with his head. “Least you get brownies.”

I laughed. “Listen, D, I just stopped by to say ‘bye. And thanks, y’know, for last night.”

He offered me a mock salute. “Don’t mention it, Sheriff.”

I hesitated a moment, then pressed on. “I’m sorry… you know, when you tried to tell me something.” I waited, but his face gave nothing away. “Last night. You want to tell me now?”

Doug’s glance flicked to his mother, who had started keening to herself. “No, Rania. I can’t. Not here. Not now.” I was surprised by how disappointed I felt. What had I expected?

But he pulled me to him in a rough hug. I smelled salt and cinnamon in his skin and tried to quash the memories of how good that skin tasted. I felt him pull himself back as he started to press into me. He drew a circle around my face with a calloused finger.

“I don’t know where you’re going, and I’m not gonna ask. But just stay safe, huh?”

I was sure as hell gonna try.

Chapter Five

Rick Astley and Other Old Friends

Gadulan Precinct, Aegira

I watched, kinda detached, as tiny bubbles popped like childhood dreams around me and Mom. All the pieces of me weren’t back together yet. My eyes, and the rest of me, were still adjusting after their heady, scattered flight through space and water. But I was getting there. We were suspended, floating, in The Eye of the Goddess, the site of tomorrow’s wedding, re-forming before what looked like a thousand eyes, antennas and various other ways of checking you out. I’d done this often enough to know that we were also glowing burnished gold, like idols.

Helluva way to make an entrance.

I knew I was a novelty for those watching. A dark, muscular Aegiran, only my breasts breaking the steel. Mermaids, honest-to-goodness ones, don’t look quite so badass. They manage to look like a Waterhouse painting even though they’re hard as nails.

Every time I came to this vast marine cathedral I imagined The Awakening. I knew from the legends that the piazza on the island of Hlsey had been the epicenter of Aegir’s storm. And now, in its place, a still, underwater lagoon, the eye of a magical tornado, framed by the rush and suck of mammoth protective walls. The Eye of the Goddess. This tornado, and the temple-like bubble it wrapped itself around, was all that was left of Aegir’s wrath. And it still swirled and broiled ten thousand years later at the centre of a bustling city-state refuge.

Aegira.

A place of peace and hope for all who breathed water.

I couldn’t see Aegira’s golden peaks here in The Eye of the Goddess, but I could picture them. After the sunken buildings of Hlsey had withered, a supple coral hybrid had been used to rebuild. Almost impenetrable, it allowed water through and burned with a fierce golden glow.

As my brain started to wake up properly, I wondered again if it was Aegira’s glow that had birthed the legend of Atlantis. I blinked a couple of times to release my little-used inner-eyelids and swept the scene before me. I don’t think I’d ever seen such an exotic menagerie of Aegirans and other sea creatures, promenading together in this giant bubble of warm water.

My eyes roved over the teeming life caught in the golden light of The Eye. Creatures of all the treaty nations of the deep, and refugees from other, more brutal states. Brilliantly colored fish, who made me feel insipid and small beside them. Massive rays, floating like ghostly liquid through the throng. Squid, eels, some of the more peace-loving sharks. Even a handful of junior dolphins (I guessed the leaders would be at the main event tomorrow).

Also the covert ones, known only to Aegira. Silent at the bottom of the sea, and grateful for Aegira’s veil of secrecy. Gynomarls, silver-blue snake creatures with women’s faces, midwives to generations of Aegiran women. The displaced Leigons, whom Aegira had adopted, carrying gifts of pearl on their broad, faithful shoulders. Like oxen with fins. Sand Seeders, shifting masses of pure energy that rose from the seabed and could form and scatter at will. Brilliant, but ephemeral. And then the Aegirans. Beautiful to a man, woman and child.

There were many children here tonight.

As the thought settled in my brain, I saw her. Swimming skittishly on the spot, looking like she was studiously avoiding gawping at us the way everyone else was as we came back together after the hydroport. The Princess Lecanora.

All silver blonde hair, floating around her like a halo, and serious grey eyes.

She was standing close to some children cavorting in the water with a group of young fish of the Resicalian Dynasty. Like peacocks of the sea, the blue-green fish flashed and shone as they played tag in the golden pool with the Aegiran children. I thought for a moment I caught a blast of bittersweet longing in the Princess’ eyes as she watched them.

It was not in Lecanora’s destiny to have a child. For that, you needed a man.

And Aegiran men did not choose with those without a line. Not even their Princess.

I tried to focus as the High Triad, the Queen’s key advisers, moved toward Mom. I could see she was still shaking off the hydroporting detritus, the shards of other places still clinging to her mind and body. Lecanora was holding back, even though she was the Princess. She knew the drill. There would be a moment, soon, when etiquette would demand she greet the newcomers. But there was a strict protocol, and for now she had to wait her turn.