Ondine's Dream

I stood at the bottom of a fish tank, my hair lifting and swaying around me. A school of bright green fish hovered in front of me, swaying back and forth, creating their own rhythmic current. Suddenly, with a swish, they became brilliant birds of paradise, blue and green and yellow, and just as suddenly as they were birds they were fish again. Another swish and they were violet butterflies. They continued on like this--fish, birds, butterflies--and I soon became mesmerized by their rhythm. It was like a heartbeat moving through the water and bumping up against me. I kept trying to watch carefully, but my hair kept flying into my face, covering my eyes.

I couldn’t figure out how they could change so quickly. I never saw.

But the rhythm lulled me into itself and suddenly I was inside the group of shape-shifting fish, surrounded by their undulating colors. They moved around me as if I wasn’t even there.

The water in the tank was getting lower and lower. I hadn’t noticed that before. But still, the tank was emptying quickly. The fish didn’t seem to notice at all. They were oblivious to their imminent death, and I realized I was scared and sad for them. Why didn’t they do something? I tried to get their attention, but how do you talk to fish?

And the more I watched them the more I realized they weren’t staying fish for very long anymore. More and more they were becoming birds and butterflies. Lower and lower came the water, and when the first fish hit the air, it flew off as a bright teal bird, circling up to the top of the fish tank and out. Soon the others followed.

I crouched down at the bottom of the tank, feeling the water’s surface coming closer and closer. Soon there were no more birds or butterflies, just me. As my head broke the surface, I found I couldn’t breathe.

All those fish had known. They’d known what was coming and had done something about it. They had changed and tried to warn me, tried to make me do the same, and I couldn’t see.

As the water fell away from my shoulders, my stomach, my ankles, I could only lie there on the tank’s floor, gasping for breath. I heard a voice and realized it was mine, my own thready whisper, saying just my name over and over.

Then I heard it as a shout.

“Ondine!”

Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was not in my bed. I felt the scrape of sand between my toes and the salty breeze whipped my hair into my face. I opened my eyes and saw the ocean’s edge just feet from where I stood. The waves were rolling into the shore and I was surprised at how dark the water was, almost black. But the rhythm of those fish in my dream was the rhythm the waves were making now, pulling me towards the water.

“Ondine!” I heard a voice call from behind me over the sound of the water and the wind. I turned and saw Rabiah standing on the back balcony in her nightgown and fluffy slippers. The moonlight bounced off her bright golden head. Even after having slept, her hair was perfect and shiny and smooth.

“Get away from the water!” she cried as she ran down the stairs waving her arms. I thought she might trip in the sand, but she seemed to float across it easily. I began to walk towards her, looking back at the sea. She put her arm around my shoulders and steered me towards the house.

“What are you doing out here?” she said. I didn’t have an answer for her. I had never been prone to sleepwalking before now.

“I was dreaming,” is all I said.

“About what? Drowning yourself in the ocean? It’s 2 am! And technically, it’s still winter in the North West. Let’s just hope you don’t get sick from exposure.” She rubbed her hands against my arms in an attempt to warm me up, but I didn’t feel cold. Or at least, I didn’t mind it. The breeze felt good, but I had the sudden feeling of drying out. My skin felt tight and itchy.

Rabi was still rubbing my arms as we climbed the stairs, but I shrugged her off.

“I feel fine,” I said. “Just tired, I guess. Stressed, or something.”

She paused on the steps behind me. “Do you usually sleepwalk when you’re stressed?”

“Yeah,” I lied, turning away from her so it would come more easily. “All the time. Finals week is the worst. One time I woke up in my neighbor’s dog house cuddling up to their labradoodle.” Maybe that was one step too far, but Rabi didn’t seem to notice.

She sighed. “Well, then,” she said. “Let’s just hope this doesn’t happen again, seeing as our neighbors are the woods and the water.”

I nodded and continued to house, but before going inside, I looked back once more at the ocean. The moon, the wind, the waves, all felt like they were saying something to me. They pulsated to the same rhythm, a rhythm that I now realized I could feel beneath my skin. I looked out at the dark water and, just before I stepped into the house, I could feel the water looking back at me.

Ondine Beginnings

I lay at my father’s side for hours after he died, inhaling the ghost of his scent. He always felt woodsy and warm and a little bit rough, like a bear. When I was little, I thought he must have been a bear before he was my father. He used to tell me stories of growing up in the forests of the California coast. I had never been there, but the way he told stories, I felt as if I had. He would describe early mist-filled mornings tromping through ferns across the dewy earth and knowing which way the ocean was just by the tang of salt on the air. Behemoth redwoods dripping with sap and dew, soft soils, and the promise of an expanse of water far beyond. All I ever knew was desert, but I would breathe in the dust, the smell of baked earth, and I would dream of a magical place where the air was always damp.

He took my face in his hands, told me I was strong, I was good, I looked like my mother. Then he exhaled and was gone.

When the aunts finally pried me away from his body, my fingers ached with stiffness from clutching his shirt for so long, and my face felt tight and itchy with dried tears. I had never met them, but they told me they had known my mother when they all were young. The three of them swept gracefully into my house the day before my father died as if they knew. As if they were called. They stroked my hair with their soft hands and hushed me to sleep on the couch, and I dreamed of smoke and water and flowers long dead.

The funeral was a warm blur, a shuffle of bodies pressed into our house and condolences murmured into my hair. Everything felt so close and cluttered, and I just wanted to be alone instead of corralled in my living room with a bunch of strangers. The aunts bustled in and out of the kitchen, looking sad and beautiful in their mourning garb. One of them--the youngest, the blonde--just sat and held my hand for the longest time until the one with a brilliant cascade of red hair told her she was needed in the kitchen. The blonde patted my hand gently and twirled gracefully away in her black cocktail dress. No one seemed to pay the aunts much attention and one woman even asked me how I was doing this all on my own. I just stared vacantly at her until she became uncomfortable and walked away.

When everyone finally left it was as if they had never been there in my living room, bustling about with pity on their faces.

The next morning, I found all my things packed by the door and the aunts were waiting for me with breakfast. All three of their faces echoed the same thing, and I felt an anticipation stirring in the air. As I finished my orange juice, the dark-haired one said, “We’re taking you back to California with us.”

I looked around at the house I grew up in and saw nothing that would make me want to stay.