Free time—“Okay,” the teachers would say, “everybody off now, out of our hair, for the entire day!” and girls would rush to the bush, to the bathroom, to the lake.
Nighttime—“Okay,” the teachers would say, “lights off, everybody quiet!” and girls would cluster together for séances or smoking or climbing out through windows.
The clock radio, which they kept on the campervan sink, said 11:56 P.M. She had gone to bed at ten and was still not asleep. Only four more minutes until Friday, she thought sadly.
Then she realized that meant four minutes left of Thursday, and she had not yet done the next spell. The second-to-last spell in the book. She had been so distracted by the school camp she had forgotten it. Now it would be too late. She could never do a whole spell in four minutes.
Unless it was one of those short spells.
She took the book from under her pillow, and picked up her reading flashlight from the campervan floor.
In her sleep, Cath waited, hopefully.
Fancy looked up from her novel and remembered one of her favorite conversations with the Canadian next door. It had happened just after the snowstorm.
“Did I tell you my mother swept up the snow on her front porch with a dustpan and broom?” she had said to him one morning. “She tipped it into the kitchen tidy bin.”
The Canadian laughed. “Wait till I write home about that,” he said.
“Where is home anyway?” she asked.
“Canada.”
“No, but where in Canada?”
“Where is Canada?” He looked concerned.
“No, no! Where in Canada?”
“Oh!” He was relieved. “I grew up all over, but most recently Montreal.”
“Montreal? Does it snow in Montreal?”
The Canadian laughed again. “Does it snow in Montreal?” he repeated to himself affectionately.
“Okay, then,” said Fancy. “What’s it like, in Montreal, when it snows?”
Obediently, he reflected. “Sometimes,” he said, “you get as much as a two-meter snowfall. That’s not just decoration when that happens. That changes everything. It changes the terrain.”
“The terrain,” agreed Fancy, pleased, “It changes the terrain.” Then, since this reminded her: “I made a chocolate terrine last night. Would you like some with your coffee?”
He was surprised, but agreed, and they each ate a piece of chocolate terrine, sitting on their own front porches, watching the melting snow.
Of course, that was back when Radcliffe was having an affair with a woman in purple daisy socks. All that was over now.
She stood up and walked out of the room, not looking at Radcliffe on the couch. She could hear him breathing very deeply tonight, using up everybody’s oxygen.
A Spell to Make Someone Catch a Cold!
Simply place this Book under your Pillow, and Think, inside your Head, of Three Small Sharp Objects.
You can do the Next Spell—the Final Spell—tomorrow morning!
Listen did as the Spell Book said, just before the clock flicked to midnight. Then she fell asleep, thinking: bird beaks, thumbtacks, cuttlefish bones, bus seats, cabins, free time, nighttime, bird beaks, thumbtacks, cuttlefish bones…
Marbie fell asleep again, thinking, unexpectedly, of sharp little bird beaks, thumbtacks, and pieces of cuttlefish bone.
She sneezed and clicked her throat.
PART 18
The Story of the First Trip to the Seaside
One
Shortly after her father returned from Ireland, Fancy’s family went to the seaside and stayed in a house on the hill.
Each morning, the family gathered their towels, buckets, spades, sunblock, T-shirts, and beach umbrella, and tumbled down the hill to the beach.
Each evening, Fancy stood with her back to the mirror and turned her head to see her shoulders. She wore a purple sarong, which she tied in various ways: between her legs, over her shoulder, or around her waist so it flapped low against her ankle chain. Her shoulders, as she watched, turned golden brown.
But one day, Fancy’s parents told her to take her sister to the beach on her own. “We’ll just be doing some cleaning here in the house,” said Mummy, “don’t worry about us.”
“Only swim between the flags,” said Daddy.
“Or in the rock pool?” said Marbie.
“Right,” agreed Mummy. “And I’ve made you some buttered sandwiches, so you can buy hot chips for your lunch. Give them some money, David.”
“Stay at the beach until they take the flags down,” Daddy reminded them.
Two lifeguards in yellow-red caps marched past the girls, flagpoles on their shoulders, and Marbie said, “Are the flags down now?”
Fancy, who was making Marbie’s towel into a shepherd’s veil, agreed, “Yes. Let’s go.” She frowned at her golden shoulders, which were peeling.
“Can I peel some of your skin?” said Marbie, swinging her shepherd’s veil.
Fancy allowed her to take three pieces of skin.
They washed the sand from their feet and ankles, and walked on the gravel road home. Fancy was carrying the sunblock, the flippers, and the beach umbrella, and Marbie was carrying her flip-flops.
“Put your flip-flops on,” said Fancy, “or you’ll kick your toe.”
“No,” said Marbie, “because my feet are wet and that makes the flip-flops slippery. Whose car is that?”
From the bottom of the hill they could see their house, but it looked strange and unfamiliar. A long silver car stood in the driveway. They approached slowly, and saw that the car was shiny, its windows dark. A sticker on the back window said, SEA LION. Another sticker on the bumper said, IF YOU CAN READ THIS SIGN, BACK OFF.
They ran up the stairs to the veranda and paused at the livingroom window. Inside, they could see their mother, sitting on the couch with a straight back and a small, interested tilt to her head. Next to her was their father. And seated in a row of kitchen chairs, their backs to the girls, were three men dressed in black. One of the men, Fancy saw, was tapping a polished shoe on the floor.
Fancy and Marbie stood at the window and watched as Daddy coughed into his fist, Mummy laughed, and the three men in black each picked up a briefcase from the floor. There was a scraping of chairs, a shaking of hands, and the front door opened so that voices and light spilled out onto the veranda.
“Oh!” said Mummy from the front door, seeing the girls.
“We waited till the flags came down,” said Marbie.
The three men stepped out and lowered their heads. One of the men said, “Girls,” but the others did not appear to see them. One man unlocked the car and opened three doors, politely. The men got into their car.
Then the Zing family stood in a mosquito-slapping row on the veranda and watched as the car slid away.
“Who were they?” said Fancy.
“Nobody,” replied her father.
Two
Shortly after her father returned from Ireland, Marbie’s family went to the seaside.
Each day, Fancy made Marbie’s beach towel into a turban, a crown, or a shepherd’s veil. She had to hold her head straight or the towel fell into her eyes, making the world a soft, speckled white. If she shivered slightly, it brushed against her shoulders like long hair.
One day, Fancy and Marbie were allowed to go to the beach on their own until the flags came down. Another day, they woke up and their mother was gone.
Their father was sitting at the head of the table waiting for them. He had placed the box of Coco Pops in the center of the table, alongside the milk. On the table: three bowls with spoons in straight lines beside them.
Formally, he explained: “Mummy had to go away for a few days. She will miss you very much.”
“Has she gone to Ireland?” said Marbie, and her father smiled.
The three of them went to the beach, as usual, and had fish and chips for lunch. Daddy wanted to participate in their beach games: He helped with a sand castle, but
wanted to build it higher than was necessary, and also wanted to decorate the castle with sea grapes and Popsicle wrappers. The girls grew bored and went for a swim.
As they walked home together in the cooling light, Marbie said, “Will Mummy be home when we get there?”
“No. Just a couple of days, and she’ll be back.”
In the kitchen, Fancy set the table for dinner while Marbie spun in circles. She bumped into a chair, spun away from the chair, and landed with her feet apart for balance. Then the room spun itself, the windows tipped, the couch capsized, and the clothes rack draped in swimsuits jumped.
She fell against the chair, which crashed to the floor.
“Marbie!” cried Fancy.
Daddy stood at the kitchen door and said, “Stop it, Marbie. You’ll make yourself sick.”
But it never made her sick.
They had sausages for dinner, which Daddy fried with smoke, a tea towel, and a frown. They pulled out their chairs and sat down quietly. Daddy took a fork and put sausages on each plate, then cut a tomato into three chunks. Fancy and Marbie looked at each other about the tomato.
That night Marbie lay in her bed and thought that the sound of the waves on the beach was the sound of the silver car bringing Mummy home. Daddy was out in the kitchen, clanking the plates, sweeping the floor, and switching off the lights to go to bed.
The next couple of days were similar. At the beach, they were allowed Splices, Chocolate Hearts, and Chiko Rolls. Daddy built his sand castles higher and higher. The girls swam between the flags, but returned occasionally to admire Daddy’s castles.
Mummy came home in a taxi at breakfast time one day.
Fancy and Marbie ran outside in their nighties, and Daddy emerged slowly behind them. The taxi driver was more excited than they were. He was chattering, laughing, and opening doors.
Mummy’s voice came from inside the taxi.
“Girls,” said Daddy, “wait a moment.”
He leaned down to Mummy. When he stood back up he was holding something like a pink shopping bag. Marbie thought it might be presents.
“Here we go!” cried the taxi driver. “Look what we’ve got! Look, girls, see what your mummy’s brought home for you!”
Fancy took one step and said, “It’s a baby.”
“Not just any baby!” cried the taxi driver, but he had to stop as Daddy wanted to pay him the fare.
“Whose baby is it, Mummy?” Marbie said. “Where did you get a baby from?”
“Just a moment, precious one,” said Mummy.
The taxi driver talked his way around to the driver’s door, “Congratulations! All the best! You take care of Mummy now!” He seemed to continue talking as he drove away.
Daddy said, “Do you think you can manage that box between you, girls?”
Fancy and Marbie carried the box, Daddy carried the baby, and Mummy carried nothing.
Inside, Fancy and Marbie sat on the couch and took turns holding the baby. Marbie grew bored: The baby simply lay in its blanket, and you couldn’t scratch your knee. But Fancy crinkled her eyes and sang, “Hello, little baby, hello, little cutie baby, hello, little baby.” Mummy sat beside her, leaning over, watching.
Daddy and Marbie opened the box, and it turned out to be a new bassinet for the baby. Daddy found baby sheets and diapers in a cupboard that Marbie had never noticed.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant, Mum,” said Fancy, grown-up and casual.
“That’s because I’m quite plump already,” explained Mummy. “It doesn’t show so much, see? Nobody knew, darling. Don’t worry.”
“Is it our baby?” Marbie said.
“Well,” said Mummy, “it is, and it is not. This is where you have to listen carefully, now.”
Fancy was on the couch with the baby in her arms. Marbie was sitting by the empty box on the floor, and Daddy was standing at the kitchen door with his arms folded.
“This baby,” said Mummy, looking closely at the girls, “is a secret baby. Do you understand?”
Fancy and Marbie said they understood.
“No,” said Mummy. “It’s more important than that. It’s more important than anything ever before. It’s a special Zing Family Secret. Okay?”
Fancy and Marbie nodded.
“This baby,” continued Mummy, “can only stay with us for one week.”
“No!” cried Fancy. “Only a week!” She kissed the baby’s forehead.
“I hope you will help to take care of her this week,” said Mummy.
“Of course,” said Fancy.
“Okay,” said Marbie, thinking: What about the beach?
“What’s her name?” said Fancy. “What’s the new baby’s name?”
Mummy looked at the baby and straightened the folds of the blanket. After a minute, she said, “I have decided to give this baby the gift of a normal life. So her name is Catherine.”
“Is it?” breathed Fancy.
“Yes,” her mother replied.
PART 19
The Story of Nikolai Valerio
Maude was making pastry when her husband, David, announced that he was leaving.
It was not surprising that she was making pastry; she was always making pastry in those days. She was determined to become a successful pie chef. Already, the local cake shop had said it would take a few pies now and then, and this had given her hope so she practiced whenever she could. She could no longer look at a circular object without thinking of its use as a pastry cutter: teacups, breakfast bowls, steering wheels, balloon baskets.
“Hmm,” she said vaguely, when David made his announcement. She was rubbing butter into flour, her favorite part of pastry making, fluttering her fingertips as fine crumbs emerged, neither flour nor butter.
“I’m so sorry,” said David softly. (It was after midnight and the girls were asleep.)
Now Maude paid attention. “You can’t leave,” she cried.
He explained that he had no choice, and as he talked—about how he needed time alone to figure things out; how he hoped it would not take long, the figuring out; how he also hoped, when it was done, that she would take him back—as he said all this, Maude slowly sank into a kitchen chair, and thought: Of course.
Her pie-making must have distracted her. Her husband was fading into nothing. Where was the vibrant, vivacious boy with excited expectations of invention? She recalled how he used to spring down the aisles of department stores, looking for inspiration; then how he took to wandering, more slowly and thoughtfully. The wandering grew listless, and now he never wandered, except down the hallway of their home. Now and then he picked up one of Fancy’s or Marbie’s toys, turned it over distractedly, and put it back down on the carpet.
He had never lost his gift for electronics and gadgets, but he only used it to repair the girls’ clock radios or install deadlocks on the doors.
David’s talent had been consumed by family life, Maude saw now. And here he was, a grown-up Zing who had never invented a thing. His parents and relatives commented on this now and then, but were friendly and forgiving. “The inventiveness had to stop somewhere!” they said. “Why not with David?” He had, after all, created two lovely girls. That was enough for them!
But David spent hours watching TV, or playing Fancy’s Donkey Kong game. His vertigo grew worse instead of better—these days, he could not even go to the movies. The seats were at such a steep gradient, he said, he feared he would fall into the film.
Now, as he talked and apologized, Maude considered all this, and played with her flour-dusted wedding band. Eventually, she pulled it off her finger and dropped it on the table between them. David breathed in sharply, and buried his head in his arms. Maude regarded the wedding ring, imagining its use as a pastry cutter. Thousands of tiny pastry circles for thousands of tiny pies.
“Well,” she said, surprising him with the kindness in her voice. “Well, I understand you have to go. But we’ll say that you’re going to Ireland. We’ll say that you plan to paint pictures or wri
te poems, or maybe a novel.”
“Why Ireland?” David wanted to know.
Maude thought it was the romantic sort of place where people ran away to do creative things. “That way,” she explained carefully, “if you happen not to invent anything, you can come back to us, without—”
“But people will ask me about Ireland when I get back,” David pointed out.
“You can look it up in a library book,” suggested Maude. She stood up again, and returned to the counter where her pastry was waiting.
As a good-bye present for the girls, David hung a swing from the highest branches of the scribbly gum out back. This tree had no low-lying branches. He stood a ladder against it to reach the closest branch and climbed the rest of the way up. This was the bravest thing he had ever done.
Fancy, who was a formal eleven-year-old, waved him off in the taxi, wishing him the best of luck on his trip to Ireland. She hoped he would write a good novel. She hoped he would come back soon. She would miss him very much. But Marbie was only five, and didn’t wish him anything.
David quit his job in sales and found a small flat in West Ryde. He promised Maude he’d invent something quickly and make a fortune for the family. Maude told everyone he’d flown away to Ireland to write a novel, and immersed herself in pie making. The local cake shop had been replaced by a Laundromat so she had lost her only client, but she pinned notices to community bulletin boards, visited restaurants, and even set up a table on the front lawn, offering pies to passersby.
Unexpectedly, nobody wanted Maude’s pies. Not even the students or teachers from the school next door. By now, David had used up half their savings on his rent and equipment for inventions that never materialized; Maude had used the other half as a down payment on an industrial oven. They were living on credit, but neither would admit they were in trouble.
It was only by chance, while looking for a secondhand vacuum cleaner in the Trading Post one day—thinking she could try housecleaning for cash and finding her own vacuum was broken—that Maude came across the ad. “WANTED,” it said. “Twelve Pie Chefs for Short-Term/Full-Time Baking.” The pay was minimal, but it might just keep her afloat until her business took off.
The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Page 30