She nodded staring directly at Trevor. “I can see that. Nevertheless, I appreciate that

he was thoughtful enough to introduce us, however clumsy his methods may have been.”

“Undina,” Trevor began, testing the sound of the name which was obviously false. He

was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by her personality, and wished to engage her further. A

thousand sentences threatened to spill off the tip of his tongue, and tumble forth toward this

young woman warmly. He just wanted to speak to her—he just wanted to continue to hear her

carefully woven words, curled up in her rich accent. Yet he knew he could not. He cleared his

throat. “I’m sorry about this again. I’ll take him away and I promise he won’t bother you

anymore.”

As Trevor moved to pull his brother out of the chair in which he had collapsed, the

woman called Undina gently touched his sleeve near his elbow. Although her hand had not

even grazed his skin, he was startled by the intimacy and felt his whole body grow tense.

“Please,” she said quietly. “You and I have been sitting alone all night. Life has been

happening all around us. I would like to partake of it. Would you please sit with me for a little

while?”

He stared at her, searching for any sign of humor. She did not seem as put off by his

grey hair and his limp as he had thought she would be. On the contrary, she seemed to hardly

notice. “I have two younger sisters as well,” she was saying with a ghost of a smile on her lips,

“perhaps I could tell you about them.”

Against his better judgment, Trevor found himself using his foot to slide his snoring

brother a few feet away before seating himself closer to Undina. He could not believe she had

invited him to chat. A smile threatened to reveal his gladness, but he counseled it to desist.

“I enjoyed your dance so much. More than I can tell you,” Trevor admitted to her.

She looked at him appreciatively and nodded. “Thank you. It is so invigorating to

dance for an audience.”

“Where are you from?” he asked her.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise at his direction of questioning. “Not far from

here,” she answered. Then in a low voice which he imagined she thought he could not hear,

she added, “But also quite far from here.”

In fact, he could not hear those last few words, but luckily he had a knack for reading

lips. “I see,” he answered, “are you from Canada?”

She raised an eyebrow, hesitating before casting her eyes downward, “Uh, something

like that. How did you guess?”

“You have a slight accent,” he said. “I can’t quite determine what it is, but… never

mind. So, what brings you to these parts?”

Her slender shoulders rose in a carefree shrug and her eyes lit up as she smiled. “I have

chosen to follow the waves and see where they take me.”

“Well, they’ve taken you to a strip club in Soldotna, Alaska,” he said, leaning forward.

He studied the curve of her cheek and chin, and returned his gaze to her compelling dark eyes.

They were hypnotizing at close range. “Those waves may be mighty but they don’t have magic

in them, child. You need to master them and choose where it is you want to be.”

She looked up at him harshly. There was a flash of anger in her murky irises as she

answered, “I think you and I must be acquainted with very different waves.”

“How is that?” he asked.

“The ones I know do have magic and cannot be mastered.” Her serious expression

disappeared and her smile returned. “Anyway, I do not think you should be calling me ‘child’

since we already established that I am older than you.”

“I’ll be fifty next year,” he admitted in a crestfallen voice. “What are you, eighteen?”

“Six hundred and three,” she answered, wrapping a strand of her dark hair around her

finger. There was something whimsical about the way she moved.

“I see that you’re protective of your personal information,” he observed. “That is very

wise in a place like this. I didn’t mean to offend you, but compared with me, you are really but

a child, Undina.”