“Are you in charge of the operation?”
“Good heavens, no,” she says. “My position is very junior. I’m receiving training, but I’ve only been in Zorsted a short while. There’s a program. Anyone with an affinity for animals can apply. You could apply.”
Jane blinks at this; she can’t answer. “How did you convince them you were from here? Weren’t they suspicious?”
“I keep to myself, and I pretend that I don’t want to talk about my past. There’ve been moments when I’ve gotten odd looks, sure, but there’s a high tolerance for oddness here. People seem to expect not to understand everything they see. Anyway, if you met someone who didn’t seem to know your customs, would you assume they came from an alternate reality?”
“I guess not,” says Jane. “Do you miss our technologies? Could you solve the problem faster with scuba gear?”
She flashes Jane a quiet, sideways smile. “Even in the absence of compressed air,” she says, “diving techniques here are pretty sophisticated. They have a sort of diving bell, with air tubes that extend up to the surface. Regardless, even if we had scuba gear, I doubt we’d use it. It does not help the healing of the animals for us humans to push ourselves into their homes.”
It’s a particular kind of confusion to be angry with the person who taught her about gentleness, respect; who taught her how to soothe herself. Jane watches the water dancing beneath her feet, conscious of Steen beside her. Carefully, she leans out until she can see her own reflection. Something about that strange face strikes her. Jane turns to study Aunt Magnolia and realizes that even in this world, she has Aunt Magnolia’s cheekbones and her nose.
“How are your umbrellas,” Aunt Magnolia says, “my darling?”
Jane’s lungs are a jellyfish, moving silently through a great sorrow. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she says. “I don’t know why I should have a strayhound if I’m from the other side. I don’t know why I came to Tu Reviens in the first place.”
Aunt Magnolia takes a minute to answer. “I don’t see why creatures from different worlds shouldn’t fit together,” she says. “Zorsted is full of strayhounds who haven’t found their people. Maybe it’s because those people are in different worlds.”
“Steen said the same thing,” Jane says. “But what do you mean, different worlds? Do you think there are more than two?”
“Well,” Aunt Magnolia says, “I used to think there was only one. Once there were two, I guess I began to feel there may as well be a thousand. You know?”
Jane smells the brackish air and hears the water slap against the posts of the dock.
Aunt Magnolia left Jane alone. Orphaned, with no money Jane knew of. Her plan to reunite with her niece obscure and unspoken, balanced on a pin.
“I need to think,” Jane says.
When I need to think, says Steen, I walk.
“Will you come with me?” Jane asks him.
Of course I will, if you want me.
“Of course I do,” Jane says, touching the place between his ears, then standing. “You’re my strayhound, aren’t you?”
Watching Jane, Aunt Magnolia rises to her own feet anxiously.
“We’re going for a walk,” Jane says carefully.
“All right,” Aunt Magnolia says, swallowing. “I’ll see you again, won’t I, darling? Please?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says. You’re not who I thought you were, Jane doesn’t say. You’re not who you pretended to be.
Aunt Magnolia’s eyes are bright with tears. She holds Jane in a long hug and kisses her forehead. She tells Jane she loves her. “Come back,” she says. Jane holds her tightly before letting her go.
*
“Where are we going?” Jane asks Steen.
Where would you like to go?
“Someplace that isn’t challenging,” Jane says, “for either of us.”
Steen walks her back up the staircase, then along a road crowded with small houses. A snaggle of children runs past. Someone is frying something that smells like bacon.
“I’m hungry,” Jane says. “Are you hungry?”
We could go back to your aunt, he says. She’ll have money.
“I’ll survive,” Jane says, “if you will.”
I know where there’s fruit, he says.
“Do strayhounds like fruit?”
This one does.
The street bends sharply to the right but Steen continues straight, into a patch of gnarled trees. He leads her through thick grass and fallen branches. Eventually the land begins to slope downward and they end up in a grove of stocky trees heavy with a rose-colored fruit that looks somewhat like, but decidedly isn’t, apples.
The Zorsteddan word for it comes to her. She speaks it aloud.
Yes, says Steen contentedly. The duchess owns the orchard.
“Are we stealing?”
Not with me here, he says. I live in the duchess’s mansion. She takes care of us. Her food is mine.
“Are you sure you’re still welcome in the duchess’s mansion, now that you’ve found your person?”
You don’t have a residence here, he says significantly, so I’ll still live with the duchess. If you establish a residence here, that will change.
He doesn’t look at her, and Jane carefully doesn’t look at him. She fills her deep trouser pockets with fruit and continues to follow him down the slope, which grows steeper. Stepping out of the orchard, she finds herself on a small, crescent-shaped beach of pale sand. The sun is strong and her Zorsteddan clothing blocks the chill of the wind. Steen trots to an outcropping of rock and shrubbery and settles in beside it. She joins him there; she sits beside him, watching the water rush onto the sand, then pull itself back. The fruit is crisp like an apple, but sweet, like a pear.
“It’s such a strange feeling, being in Zorsted,” Jane says. “I feel like I’ve died and been reincarnated in a different body, a different life, except they forgot to wipe my memory of the life that came before.”
I don’t believe in reincarnation, says Steen.
“Don’t you? If there’s more than one world, why shouldn’t there be more than one life?”
There are many lives in every life, he says.
“You and Aunt Magnolia are both very fond of obscure philosophical pronouncements,” Jane says. “Tell me, is there a market in Zorsted for umbrellas?”
It certainly rains. Though it never rains frogs.
“Another oddity,” Jane says. “Where would umbrellas be sold?”
In the public market, he says. If you sold enough umbrellas, you might be able to open a shop. Might I ask why you’re asking these questions?
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “Maybe because umbrellas are less scary than existential philosophy.”
Steen passes her a prim look. I saw a strayhound once with a curious umbrella hat, he says. I thought it was quite fetching.
Jane tries not to smile. “Would you like me to make you an umbrella hat, Steen?”
That’s entirely up to you, he says with dignity.
“Would I be making it to fit Jasper the basset hound, or Steen the strayhound?”
He hesitates. I guess that’s also up to you.
Yes. I guess that’s one of the big questions of the day, isn’t it? Tu Reviens or Zorsted?
See? he says. I told you you could talk to me without speaking out loud.
Yes, I see.
Do you— He hesitates, and she feels his eagerness. His vulnerability. Do you like it?
She lets out a breath. I can’t say yet, Steen.
He burrows his nose in the sand, as if it’s a way to stop himself from saying what he wants to say.
This inlet is an awful lot like the one you took me to at Tu Reviens, Jane says, after a pause.
I like to come here, he says.
Do you go to the inlet at Tu Reviens because it reminds you of this one?
I found the one at Tu Reviens first, he says. I guess I like this one because it reminds me of that one.
That’s confusing.
Yes, he says. Home is. After all, it’s one’s headquarters, one’s backdrop, one’s framework. One’s history, and also one’s haven.
Are you good at Scrabble, Steen? Jane asks, smiling.