“The truth about your life?” Jane says. “Aunt Magnolia, what are you talking about?”
“The truth about my work.”
“Your work! The pictures? What are you telling me? Didn’t you take the pictures?”
“I took the pictures,” she says. “I always took the pictures.”
“Then what?”
Aunt Magnolia is staring unhappily into her hands. “One day,” she says, “when I was taking the pictures, I discovered, by chance, a sunken nuclear submarine. A foreign submarine.”
“You never told me that.”
“I was forbidden by the United States government to tell anyone,” she says. “We salvaged it secretly.”
“You helped the US government salvage a nuclear submarine?”
“And then they asked me to help them with other things,” says Aunt Magnolia. “They offered me money. You were a child. We had no money and I was raising you alone, on the paycheck of an adjunct. I didn’t know what was ahead for either of us. I said yes.”
“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane says, piecing this out. “Are you telling me that you became some sort of underwater . . . spy?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Oh,” Jane says, flabbergasted. “What does that even mean?”
“There are underwater operatives,” says Aunt Magnolia. “There are people who salvage sensitive military wrecks like that submarine, and people who tap underwater cables. There are exchanges of goods and information that take place at the bottom of the sea. At first, I didn’t understand the extent of it. I got mixed up in things I now wish I hadn’t. Bad things can happen underwater, in the dark, where no one else can see.”
What Aunt Magnolia is describing is somehow more absurd to Jane than the existence of a fantasy world inside a painting where dogs can talk and rocks have feelings. “You never told me,” Jane says. “You never told me.”
“I wanted to stop,” says Aunt Magnolia. “They started to ask me to do things I hated to do. Bombs are disposed of underwater sometimes, did you know that? And eventually there began to be some confusion about my allegiances.”
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” Jane says.
“In time, I’ll tell you every detail,” she says. “I’ll confess every lie. It’ll be a great relief to me.”
“Not to me.”
“That’s my greatest regret,” she says. “I only ever wanted you to be safe. Did Mrs. Vanders tell you about the money? It’s yours to access, whenever you want it.”
Jane doesn’t want to hear about money. “Who called me from Antarctica?”
“A colleague,” says Aunt Magnolia. “A diving friend, another operative, who agreed to help me disappear, though I never told him where I was going.”
“You let me believe you were dead,” Jane says. “You were dead.”
“Darling,” Aunt Magnolia starts, reaching for Jane, but Jane is standing, Jane is pushing away from her.
“You were dead,” Jane says, tears running down her face.
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Magnolia says. “I didn’t have a lot of time to plan and maybe I did it badly. But I’m not dead. I came here. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve looked for you every day.”
“I might never have found you.” Jane’s voice is rising with hysteria. “I wouldn’t have,” she says, pointing to Steen, “if that dog weren’t nuts. I had a gravestone put up for you. Your friend sent me your things, your supposed Antarctica things. I’ve been sleeping with your fucking hat!”
Aunt Magnolia has always been the type to rush to soothe a person who’s upset. It’s instinct for her, she can’t help herself. Jane can see it now in the unfamiliar face and reaching arms of this strange but undeniable Aunt Magnolia.
The water bulges then under the dock at Aunt Magnolia’s feet. The head of a gray creature rises above the surface of the water, vaguely bear-like in appearance, round-faced with a long nose. It’s as big as a beluga whale and has flippers, whiskers, and a blow hole on the top of its head. In amazement, Jane stares into its face.
The animal’s mouth is set in an even line that gives it an aspect of patience and serenity. Its dark eyes are large and deep with pain. Jane knows as well as anyone that creatures who live in the depths of the ocean are sometimes bizarre to the point of challenging credulity; Aunt Magnolia’s work has taught her so. But just as Jane knows by looking at the people of this earth that they’re not from her Earth, she knows that this animal belongs only to this world.
It doesn’t speak, but gazes intently at Aunt Magnolia. Aunt Magnolia lies down on the dock on her stomach, her trousered legs sticking out behind her and her arms and head hanging over the edge. Her coat lies open, purple with flashes of silver and gold, like a nebula. She reaches out and places a hand on the bear-like creature’s forehead. She says nothing, and Jane doesn’t entirely understand what’s happening. But she recognizes that Aunt Magnolia has found a willing recipient for her soothing. With her touch, Aunt Magnolia is soothing this animal, which now has big tears rolling down its face.
Aunt Magnolia and the sea animal stay in that position for several minutes. Jane stands on the dock, tears dripping onto her cloak. Steen is pressing himself hard against her legs and glancing up at her frequently. Like Aunt Magnolia and the sea animal, he is silent.
The sea animal moves its head so that it’s looking into Jane’s eyes. Jane is locked in its gaze, lost in the well of its feeling. This animal has power, she finds herself thinking, though she has no idea what that power is.
The sea animal sinks away. The water closes silently above it.
Aunt Magnolia shifts to a sitting position again, her feet dangling over the edge. She doesn’t look at Jane. Jane interprets her shoulders. Aunt Magnolia is depleted from soothing someone else, and she’s ashamed for having hurt Jane.
Jane can’t quite get herself to sit next to her, but she sits a few feet removed. She dangles her legs again over the water.
“Steen,” Jane says, “that’s my strayhound’s name, Steen. He tells me the sea creatures are sick.”
Aunt Magnolia’s head dips, slowly, in agreement. “They’re called sea bears.”
“Were you talking to it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Were you giving it—some kind of medicine?”
“It was something much more elemental than that,” she says, “and less fantastical. They’re sick because they’re traumatized and grieving. A huge number of their population were killed by Zorsteddan hunters. Their meat came into fashion and for a period of time, they were massacred. The hunters convinced the government that the sea bears were dumb brutes—though how anyone could think such a thing of a creature like the one we just saw—”
Her voice breaks off, rough and choked with disgust. Jane watches her take one even breath.
“It was a long time ago,” Aunt Magnolia says. “Hunting them is illegal now. But they live a very long time, and Zorsteddan scientists believe their memory goes deep and heals slowly. I’m in a program organized by the scientists. I come out here in the morning and I wait. If one of the sea bears visits, and one usually does, I sit with it, and touch it with kindness.”
“What does that mean?” says Jane.
“I think you know what it means, sweetheart,” says Aunt Magnolia. When Jane doesn’t answer, she looks into her hands and says quietly, “Just being with the sea bear. Not trying to impress anything upon it. And just letting the sea bear be too. They have what we would probably call a . . . psychic ability. If I have the intention of simply being beside it, it will know that’s my intention. That they allow our company in this way now—for they haven’t always allowed it—is a sign that they might come to trust humans again. Until they do, and until the pain of their grief subsides, it’s as if the ocean here has a sickness in its soul. I can feel it, Janie.”
It’s hard for Jane to know how to respond. “This is your job here?” she says.
“Yes,” says Aunt Magnolia. “The government pays the scientists.”