almost losing his balance. She was growing heavier much faster than he was growing stronger. His parents claimed not to be growing stronger at all, and both now refused to lift him over their heads.
‘Come the revolution,’ Prabir told Madhusree, checking for shells and coral before putting her down on the dazzling white sand.
‘What?’
‘We’ll redesign our bodies. Then I’ll always be able to lift you up. Even when I’m ninety-one and you’re eighty-three.’
She laughed at this talk of the metaphysically distant future. Prabir was fairly sure that Madhusree understood eighty-three at least as well as he understood, say, ten to the hundredth power. Looming over her, he counted out eight hand flashes, then three fingers. She watched, uncertain but mesmerised. Prabir gazed into her jet-black eyes. His parents didn’t understand Madhusree: they couldn’t tell the difference between the way she made them feel and the way she was. Prabir only understood, himself, because he dimly remembered what it was like from the inside.
‘Oh, you pretty thing,’ he crooned.
Madhusree smiled conspiratorially.
Prabir glanced away from her, across the beach, out into the calm turquoise waters of the Banda Sea. The waves breaking on the reef looked tame from here, though he’d been on enough queasy ferry rides to Tual and Ambon to know what a steady monsoon wind, let alone a storm, could whip up. But if Teranesia was spared the force of the open ocean, the large islands that shielded it—Timor, Sulawesi, Ceram, New Guinea—were invisibly remote. Even the nearest equally obscure rock was too far away to be seen from the beach.
‘For small altitudes, the distance to the horizon is approximately the square root of twice the product of your height above sea level and the radius of the Earth.’ Prabir pictured a right-angled triangle, with vertices at the centre of the Earth, a point on the horizon, and his own eyes. He’d plotted the distance function on his notepad, and knew many points on the curve by heart. The beach sloped steeply, so his eyes were probably two full metres above sea level. That meant he could see for five kilometres. If he climbed Teranesia’s volcanic cone until the nearest of the outlying Tanimbar Islands came into sight, the altitude of that point—which his notepad’s satellite navigation system could tell him—would enable him to calculate exactly how far away they were.
But he knew the distance already, from maps: almost eighty kilometres. So he could reverse the whole calculation, and use it to verify his altitude: the lowest point from which he could see land would be five hundred metres. He’d drive a stake into the ground to mark the spot. He turned towards the centre of the island, the black peak just visible above the coconut palms that rimmed the beach. It sounded like a long climb, especially if he had to carry Madhusree most of the way.
‘Do you want to go see Ma?’
Madhusree pulled a face. ‘No!’ She could never have too much of Ma, but she knew when he was trying to dump her.
Prabir shrugged. He could do the experiment later; nothing was worth a tantrum. ‘Do you want to go swimming, then?’
Madhusree nodded enthusiastically and clambered to her feet, then ran unsteadily towards the water’s edge. Prabir gave her a head start, then pounded across the sand after her, bellowing. She glanced at him disdainfully over her shoulder, fell down, stood up, continued. Prabir ran rings around her as she waded into the shallows, the soles of his feet slapping up water, but he made sure he didn’t get too close; it wasn’t fair to splash her in the face. When she reached little more than waist height, she dropped into the water and started swimming, her chubby arms working methodically.
Prabir froze and watched her admiringly. There was no getting away from it: sometimes he felt the Madhusree-thing himself. The same sweet thrill, the same tenderness, the same unearned pride he saw on his father’s and mother’s faces.
He sighed heavily and swooned backwards into the water, touching bottom, opening his eyes to feel the sting of salt and watch the blurred sunlight for a moment before rising to his feet, satisfyingly wet all over. He shook his hair out of his eyes and then waded after Madhusree. The water reached his own ribs before he caught up with her; he eased himself down and started swimming beside her.
‘Are you all right?’
She didn’t deign to reply, merely frowning at the implied insult.
‘Don’t go too far.’ When they were alone, the rule was that Prabir had to be able to stand in the water. This was slightly galling, but the prospect of trying to tow a struggling, screaming Madhusree back to safety was something he could live without.
Prabir had left his face mask behind, but he could still see through the water quite clearly with his head above the surface. When he paused to let the froth and turbulence he was making subside, he could almost count grains of sand on the bottom. The reef was still a hundred metres ahead, but there were dark-purple starfish beneath him, sponges, lone anemones clinging to fragments of coral. He spotted a conical yellow-and-brown shell as big as his fist, and dived for a closer look. In the water everything blurred again, and he almost had to touch bottom with his face to see that the shell was inhabited. He blew bubbles at the pale mollusc inside; when it cowered away from him he retreated sheepishly, walking a few steps backwards on his hands before righting himself. His nostrils were full of sea water; he emptied them noisily, then pressed his tongue against his stinging palate. It felt as if he’d had a tube rammed down his nose.
Madhusree was twenty metres ahead of him. ‘Hey!’ He fought down his alarm; the last thing he wanted to do was panic her. He swam after her with long, slow strokes, reaching her quickly enough, and calming himself. ‘Want to turn back now, Maddy?’
She didn’t reply, but a grimace of uncertainty crossed her face, as if she’d lost confidence in her ability to do anything but keep swimming forward. Prabir measured the depth with one glance; there was no point even trying to stand. He couldn’t just snatch her and wade back to the shore, ignoring her screams, her pummelling and her hair- pulling.
He swam beside her, trying to shepherd her into an arc, but he was far more wary of colliding than she was. Maybe if he just grabbed her and spun her round, making a game of it, she wouldn’t be upset. He trod water and reached towards her, smiling. She made a whimpering noise, as if he’d threatened her.
‘Sssh. I’m sorry.’ Belatedly, Prabir understood; he felt exactly the same when he was walking on a log over a stream or a patch of swampy ground, and his father or mother grew impatient and reached back to grab him. Nothing could be more off-putting. But he only ever froze in the first place when someone was watching him, hurrying him along. Alone, he could do anything—casually, absent-mindedly—even reversing high above the ground. Madhusree knew she had to turn back, but the manoeuvre was too daunting to think about.
Prabir cried out excitedly, ‘Look! Out on the reef! It’s a water man!’
Madhusree followed his gaze uncertainly.
‘Straight ahead. Where the waves are breaking.’ Prabir pictured a figure rising from the surf, stealing water from each collapsing crest. ‘That’s just his head and shoulders, but the rest will come soon. Look, his arms are breaking free!’ Prabir imagined dripping, translucent limbs rising from the water, fists clenched tight. He whispered, ‘I’ve seen this one before, from the beach. I stole one of his shells. I thought I’d got away with it… but you know what they’re like. If you take something from them, they always find you.’
Madhusree looked puzzled. Prabir explained, ‘I can’t give it back. I don’t have it with me, it’s in my hut.’
For a moment Madhusree seemed about to protest that this was no real obstacle; Prabir could simply promise to return the shell later. But then it must have occurred to her that a creature like this wouldn’t be so patient and trusting.
Her face lit up. Prabir was in trouble. The water man lowered his arms and strained against the surface, forcing more of his body into existence. Bellowing from the pain of birth, baring glistening teeth.
Prabir turned a nervous circle. ‘I have to get away before his legs are free. Once you see a water man running, it’s too late. No one’s ever lived to describe it. Will you guide me back to shore? Show me how to get there? I can’t think. I can’t move. I’m too frightened.’
By now Prabir had psyched himself up so much that his teeth were chattering. He only hoped he hadn’t gone too far; Madhusree could gouge agonising furrows in his skin without the slightest qualm, ignoring his screams of protest, but she’d also been known to burst into inconsolable tears when anything else distressed him.
But she gazed at the water man calmly, assessing the danger. She’d been treading water since the creature
