He put Reason down, who wobbled unsteadily on her feet and then looked up, seeing Esmeralda and Jason.
“Bugger,” she said.
31
In the Air
I could feel something in the air. It made my skin crawl, the hairs on my body stand on end. A buzzing whine cut through my head. I was completely awake now. “Bugger,” I said.
Esmeralda and Jason Blake stood staring at each other. They looked dead, but the air around them was almost on fire. The ground beneath seemed to be moving, wavering like the air in the distance on a hot summer’s day.
“Yeah,” Jay-Tee agreed.
“What—” Danny began.
“Shhh,” we both said at the same time. We exchanged an “oh, bugger” glance. I wanted to move away, but I couldn’t. It was impossible to look anywhere but at Blake and Esmeralda.
“We should run, shouldn’t we?” Jay-Tee said.
“Can you run? Because I can’t.” My legs felt like concrete.
She shook her head, then turned to her brother. “We’ll explain later, I promise.”
“No, you’ll explain now. Why were you running away from me?”
“I wasn’t. We were running away from them.”
He stared at Esmeralda and Jason Blake. “Who are they?” I wondered what he saw, whether Danny could sense the electricity, hear the whine radiating from them. “What the hell are they—”
“I don’t know.” Jay-Tee shook her head.
“She’s my grandmother,” I said softly.
“Let’s just go,” Danny said, looking down at Jay-Tee. “You’re running from them, right? Then let’s go and you can tell me what’s going on. Why you’ve been hiding from me.”
Danny reached out to take Jay-Tee’s hand. He pulled her into a huge hug. Jay-Tee was crying. “Reason?” she asked. “What should we do?”
I didn’t respond. I was too busy recognising where we were.
Blake and Esmeralda were in front of the door that had brought me here. A man carved in the stone above, his moustache, eyebrows, and eyes crudely painted on. The moustache was bigger than I remembered, hiding any hint of mouth. He was sadder too, looked like he might cry any minute. Or maybe it was the horrible noise emanating from the two statues below him, the growing heat, that made him miserable. It was making me miserable.
The door was of a heavy wood; above it a half circle of stained glass showed a rising sun. I hadn’t noticed it before, yet I knew this was the door.
I looked along the street, recognising the houses, the fire escapes, the railings. I’d’ve known this street straightaway. Jay-Tee had led me to the wrong place yesterday. Yet another lie.
“Do you have the key? Is it hidden here?” Jay-Tee said softly, still in her brother’s arms. “Can we get through?”
“What key?” Danny asked.
I shook my head. “Lost it. Must’ve dropped it when I first stepped through.”
“Damn,” she said, pulling away from Danny.
“And if I had it? How were you planning to get past those two?”
Neither Jason nor Esmeralda had moved, eyes still locked on each other. It had started to snow, light, floating flakes like the first snow I’d ever seen, right here, only a few days earlier. The snow landed on the tops of their heads, their noses. Neither of them so much as blinked.
A woman walked past, pushing a child swaddled in sheepskin in a pram, shooting anxious glances at us all. Jay-Tee smiled, but the woman hurried past. She must’ve thought we were all mad.
Danny was pacing, looking about ready to explode. We definitely owed him a long, detailed explanation. I wished my head would stop pounding; the sound from the two statues, the pressure of their battle made my skull feel as though it were shrinking, pressing in on my brain, which any minute would start pouring out of my ears and nose. Did Jay-Tee feel it? She was still crying, trying to explain things to her brother, but was only managing to confuse him further.
Was it just me hearing them? If I didn’t get away or stop them, I was going to start screaming. I tried to take a step, but my feet wouldn’t move. Now I couldn’t even walk.
Someone was running towards us. Tom. I gave him the biggest smile I was capable of (not very) and then remembered that he’d been pleased to see Esmeralda. Which complicated things. My head hurt. It would be fabulous to sleep awhile, not have to think.
“Tom,” I told Danny. “He’s a friend.” I wondered if he actually was. “Danny.” They nodded at each other, which felt weird, like we were at a tea party, not freezing to death on a New York City street half paralyzed by two witches engaged in silent fireworks. I hoped they’d burn each other’s brains out before they burned out mine.
Danny turned to Jay-Tee. “Look, this is ridiculous. I’ve got a place where you can live now. Dad left lots of money. It’s yours too.”
“Would you just shut up for a second, Danny?” Jay-Tee cried, holding her ears. She was hearing the battle too.
Tom bent over, panting. “Are you okay?” he asked, while Danny continued to plead with Jay-Tee. He looked up at me. He frowned. “You look like crap.”
“Ta, mate.” He seemed unaffected by the two statues. Or maybe it didn’t hit you straightaway. “You were looking for me with Esmeralda?” I asked. “She’s the one I ran away from. She’s a witch.”
He nodded. “I know, but she’s not what . . .” He trailed off, catching sight of Esmeralda and Jason Blake, lowering his voice. “Who’s he? What’s going on? What’s that noise? Is he—”
“Bad,” I said. “He’s really bad.”
I had Danny’s attention too now. “Did that man do something to you?” he asked Jay-Tee.
She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.
Jason and Esmeralda seemed to be glowing. I could feel the heat. I wondered if it was real or not. Even the footpath under my feet felt warmer. Underneath their feet the ground was rippling, as if its constituent elements were breaking apart. It was spreading towards the footpath, moving towards us.
The whine had become more of a whirr. It was getting louder, more insistent. I had to concentrate hard to stop from screaming.
“If he’s so evil, shouldn’t we be helping Mere?” Tom said, as if it were obvious.
Jay-Tee had started to shiver. Danny pulled his arm out of one sleeve and pulled her into his coat. My ears were so cold I was expecting them to hit the ground any minute, yet there was a steady warmth radiating from Esmeralda and Jason Blake—the noise they were making was getting louder. I couldn’t think. I had to make it stop.
“Do you feel that?” Danny asked. “The sidewalk?”
If even Danny could feel it, then the heat must be real. We all stared at Esmeralda and Blake.
“Can you see it?” I asked Jay-Tee and Tom.
“Yeah,” Tom said. “All those shapes.”
“Huh? I meant under their feet. Do you see it glowing?” That wasn’t the right word.
“No,” Tom said.
Jay-Tee shook her head. “I feel it, though. Hear it too. I hope they both burn themselves all up. Dead.”
“Not Mere,” Tom protested, looking horrified. “She’s my friend. She’s good.”
“You like it when she drinks you?” Jay-Tee asked. Her upper lip curled.
“Huh?” Tom said. “What do you mean?”
Danny looked just as dumbfounded. “Drinks you? Someone’s been drinking from you?”
“She’s never done anything like that,” Tom protested. “Drinking me?”
Jay-Tee nodded, pointing at Jason Blake. “That one’s a regular vampire.”
Danny was looking at Jay-Tee and then at me. “Vampires?”
“What does Esmeralda do to you, Tom?” I asked, amazed that I could get the words out. The sound was louder, higher pitched; my brain was melting. The ground seemed to be dissolving, the crust falling away, revealing the solid mantle, rippling, glowing hot and red. The buildings around us should be crumbling; we should have melted. No one saw it b
ut me. Was this something to do with my magic? With numbers? Fibs?
“She doesn’t do anything to me. She teaches me about . . .” He glanced at Danny. “About, you know. How to be safe, use only the tiniest amounts. Live longer. Not go nuts. There’s no drinking. She won’t even let me have a glass of wine with dinner.”
“She’s never once tried to drain it from you?” Jay-Tee asked.
Tom shook his head. “Drain what? I don’t understand.”
“What if she’s just fattening him up?” I said, forcing myself to concentrate on my friends, not the strange illusions around me. “Like the witch in the story.” I thought about Hansel and Gretel. Esmeralda’s house wasn’t made of lollies and chocolate, but there were other temptations there.
The ground was getting steadily hotter.
“Jay-Tee,” Danny said. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t, Danny. I have to stay with Reason.”
I took a deep breath. “Danny, you’ve still got the ammonite?” I didn’t have to ask. I could feel it. “The stone I gave you?”
“Sure.” He pulled it out of his pocket. “Ow!” he said, startled. I took the burning stone from him; spirals went spinning out from the stone in my hand, and the sound coming from Esmeralda and Jason Blake got even louder. I recoiled. My feet moved, suddenly unstuck.
“You okay?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t. “Are you really sure about her, Tom?” I made myself ask.
“Completely,” he said, nodding earnestly. “I trust her completely.”
“Tom believes he’s telling the truth,” Jay-Tee said. “Remember what he said to us? He said we had to make a choice. What if your grandmother really can teach us. Properly?”
“She can,” Tom said. “She saved me. She wants to save you too, Reason. We have to help her.”
The four of us stared at the two figures dusted with snow. I could see the cells that made up their skin and hair, the whirring of the blood through their veins, the movement of their organs. It all moved in waves like the swirling ground beneath them, yet they didn’t look any different, stock-still, eyes unblinking. The noise was blasting my head open, the air was crackling, the footpath underneath us growing even hotter.
I didn’t want to save Esmeralda. What about the teeth I’d found? The cat? What about everything Sarafina had ever told me? Stealing men’s vital energies, sacrificing animals, eating human babies? Everything she taught me to protect myself from magic—that had all been true. As far as I knew, Sarafina’s only lie was that magic didn’t exist. “We could just go with Danny.”
Danny nodded. “Of course. Both of you.”
“And if there are others like him out there?” Jay-Tee asked me. “How will we protect ourselves not knowing anything? You said it, Reason, we need to know. If she turns out to be just like him, we’ll run away again. We’re good at that.”
Danny started to talk, and Tom. The noise was so bad now it was doing my head in. I couldn’t stand it. I concentrated, thought of the stars above, just as Sarafina had taught me. I took a step towards the two statues and then another. The footpath supported me. I didn’t fall through to the earth’s core. The other three followed, only Danny with ease.
“All right,” I said, holding out my hand, not entirely sure what I was doing. Tom grabbed it, and Jay-Tee grabbed his other wrist. Danny grabbed her waist. I wondered what he thought was happening.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I reached forward and took hold of Esmeralda’s hand with my ammonite between our palms. White heat. Colours. The whirring was deep inside me, pumping through my veins, pushed along by my heart, in my blood now and up my arm and into the ammonite. It didn’t hurt anymore. I had stopped it hurting me. It felt good.
I saw spirals, but not Fibonaccis. These spirals were different. More erratic, slower. They swirled around me. In and out, like the petals of a flower. I looked for the pattern, but every time I thought I had it, the spirals changed, tighter, longer, then sharper, wider.
Both their patterns, Esmeralda’s and Blake’s, were so clear to me. I could taste the magic in them, metallic but somehow rusty on my tongue. It smelled like tobacco before it’s lit. A smell of earth, not metal. I could see it too, both sharp and hazy, woven into their skin and hair, their muscles, their blood, part of every cell.
And something else, something familiar. Something of my mother. In both of them. Suddenly I knew that he really was my grandfather. I recognised his pattern.
This was my magic.
Someone screamed. A man’s scream.
My head tilted up, met Blake’s eyes: saw his confusion, his pain. No spirals in there, no patterns, just chaos.
We all staggered. Blake had collapsed, holding his head. “You,” he said, not looking up. “You.”
Esmeralda was the first to recover. “Thank you,” she said, stepping past him, opening the door. Tom, Jay-Tee, Danny, and I followed. But Danny wasn’t with us when we stepped into my grandmother’s kitchen.
I was in Sydney again. I stumbled forward until I found the kitchen sink and then I threw up.
32
Back Home
We sat around the kitchen table, drinking tea, water, orange juice. Only this time it was night and there were no pastries, no cinnamon rolls to tempt me. Esmeralda looked pale, but not as terrible as I had expected. Of the four of us I was the only one who seemed close to dropping.
Esmeralda insisted I keep ice wrapped in a washer pressed against my forehead and nose. It actually made the hotness go away, lessened the throbbing, but did nothing for my fatigue. Before long it started melting down my face. That felt good too.
I couldn’t keep my eyes from the door, as big and wooden on this side as the other but no stained glass rising sun above it and, of course, no sad-faced, droopy-moustached man. Instead of just Esmeralda’s coat, the door now held all our winter coats, gloves, scarves, and hats—a towel lay on the floor absorbing the snow melting from them. That was the only sign that New York City and winter lay on the other side. I hoped I would never have to return—then I thought of Danny. . . .
“Is Danny okay?” I forced myself to ask. Even with the horrible whirry noise gone, my head throbbed. He hadn’t come through the door. Where was he? I slid my hand into my pocket, feeling for the reassurance of the ammonite. It wasn’t there. Not in my left pocket either.
“I imagine so,” Esmeralda said with the same fake comforting voice she’d used when she picked me up at the airport. A week ago? “He’s not like us,” Esmeralda continued. “He couldn’t come through the door. For him it was locked. He’s still back there.”
“But so’s he,” Jay-Tee said. “What if he hurts Danny?”
“Will he?” I asked.
“Your grandfather is in no condition to do anything to anyone,” Esmeralda said. Her tired smile said that she knew that I’d already learned who he was, and I wondered how.
Tom’s mouth dropped open.
Most of the windows were open. The warm air smelled faintly of flying fox and jasmine. I thought I heard some squeaks coming from the tree, but my ears still tingled. I could’ve just been hearing what I wanted to hear. Outside, it was slowly getting lighter. Dawn was arriving though just a few minutes ago it had been early afternoon and New York City. What day is it? I wondered.
“Tom says you can help,” I said, because they seemed to be waiting for me to speak again. All I wanted to do was sleep. “Teach us about magic. But you won’t take it from us like Jason Blake did.”
Esmeralda sipped her tea and looked at the three of us. “Who are you?” she asked Jay-Tee.
“Jay-Tee,” she said. “I’m a friend of Reason’s.” She looked at me and I made the corners of my mouth turn up. It hurt. “I’d like to learn more about magic too.”
Esmeralda nodded. “Of course.”
“So you won’t take it from us?” Jay-Tee asked.
“I’ll answer that question,” Esmeralda said, looking at Jay-Tee and then at me, “but first I need to know
what you both know.”
“About magic?” Jay-Tee asked.
Esmeralda nodded.
Tom was watching us, eyes big but not saying a word. Jay-Tee kept looking around the kitchen and was now staring at the fruit bowl. I could see her wondering what the weird hairy fruits were. I still had no idea. In the morning, I decided, I’d try one. What would be the harm? Esmeralda had me now, might as well eat her food. There were three big mangoes too. They smelled ripe.
Jay-Tee peered out the window at Filomena, leaves shining palely in the moonlight. I wondered if they had fig trees like that in New York City. All the trees I’d seen had been more like skeletons.
“That it’s dangerous,” I said at last, wondering that I had the energy to coordinate tongue and lips. “That everyone seems to want more than they have. That it’s genetic, like being left-handed. That when I lose my temper . . .” I paused. “That it’s dangerous.”
Jay-Tee nodded. “That it’s a curse.”
Esmeralda smiled sadly. “I’ll tell you both what I told Tom. What I was told by my mother when I was young. Magic is in everyone. When someone hears a phone ring and knows who it is before they’ve answered, that’s a kind of magic. When people know they’re being stared at, even though the person is behind them, that’s magic too. Low level: the kind that everyone can do. In cities the air crackles with it. Certain objects, like this door, become imbued with it.”
I thought of my ammonite, hoped I had dropped it on the other side of the door, that Danny had picked it up. I couldn’t feel it now, thousands of kilometres and a day away, but I could remember how it had felt those few moments in my hand, burning with magic. And at the same time, the feel of it had been mixed with the feel of Danny.
“There are no coincidences,” continued Esmeralda, “only a great deal of magic. Not all of it low level. Some of us are as talented with magic as a top athlete is at running or a musician with their chosen instrument. It’s possible to be good without practice, but never as good or as controlled as you are with discipline and knowledge.
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