Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  I didn’t know what words I was meant to say, so I made them up. ‘Orange flame, we have reconvened our Circle. Heat us. Warm us. Help us. Heal us.’

  Almost as an afterthought, I nodded to Nikki.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Repeat after me. When I do the, um, chanting voice,’ I said.

  She looked blank, so I started again. ‘Heat us, warm us, help us, heal us.’

  The girls caught on slowly. ‘Heat us, warm us, help us, heal us.’

  I focused my Will into the candle, remembering what my mother had told me about Instruction when we were walking by the beach. You spend the first year staring into a candle.

  Now I could understand why: it wasn’t about controlling the movement of the flame, it was strength training. Staring into the fat orange candle as it burned, my skin tingled and my blood seemed to pump faster through my body. The energy I sent out was coming back to me as the candle radiated light and heat, but three times as strongly as what I was channelling into it. This was why witches had kits, I realised. This explained all the paraphernalia my mother kept around our house.

  ‘Heat us, warm us, help us, heal us,’ I repeated, as did the girls after me. Their voices grew louder. Light spilled from the candle in orange waves, waves that were building, stretching out towards the four of us in the Circle.

  ‘Heat us, warm us, help us, heal us!’ I said, sitting up straighter as the tiredness in my legs and shoulders was thawed by orange energy.

  ‘Heat us, warm us, help us, heal us!’ chanted the girls. They were sitting up straighter too. In the golden light it was difficult to see clearly but I thought I noticed the purple bags fading from beneath their eyes.

  ‘Orange flame,’ I said, improvising, ‘correct the imbalance of this room. Correct the imbalances within us. Flow light through our blood. Repair our Circle.’

  The girls repeated without having to be asked. ‘Flow light through our blood. Repair our Circle.’

  ‘We have woven this Circle three times thick,’ I began.

  ‘One for maid, one for mother, one for crone with a stick,’ chanted the girls. They seemed to be in a kind of trance.

  The words were coming back to me. ‘Now let our weaving come unspun,’ I said, picking up the knife. ‘Because it’s by our Will undone.’

  I stood up with the knife in my hand and started to walk anticlockwise around the Circle. At the first step I felt some kind of resistance in the air. Taking a second step was harder. The third was like walking into a fierce wind. I was stopped in my tracks. The girls didn’t say anything; their eyes were glassy, they sat statue-still.

  Breathe, I said to myself, and pressed into the wall of air. A force was holding my body back, a force that made the air around me thick as soup. The orange light was radiating through me, I felt stronger than I had in hours, but I couldn’t move. Momentary panic made my neck wet with sweat. ‘Come on,’ I said to the air around me. ‘Help me, candle!’ I muttered.

  Fear makes your spells weak, Ashley had said.

  Breathe, Soph, I said to myself again, and I closed my eyes. Against the resisting air I raised the arm with the knife in it. ‘Blue flame,’ I said to the glinting knife, its sharp tip pointing directly into the space, ‘our work is finished. Free us.’

  ‘Free us,’ echoed the girls.

  Knife forward, I took a step. The knife swayed in my hand like metal disoriented by a magnet. ‘Free us!’ I cried.

  ‘Free us!’ cried the girls.

  I swung my second hand onto the hilt of the knife. I pressed it into the air with another step. The blade swayed.

  ‘Come on!’ I heard something crackle. At the end of the knife, a blue light was glowing. I pressed forward again and I saw blue veins of electricity, like miniature bolts of lighting, ripple around the blade. I pushed again with another step. More resistance. More crackle.

  I am not weak. I am fearless with magic, I said to myself. I stabbed the air in front of me with the knife, stepping forward one more time. A sharp bolt of electricity lit on the metal blade and I felt it whip through my body like a punch. I gasped.

  All the candles on the windowsill snuffed out.

  I couldn’t breathe. The room was lit solely by the fat orange candle, and the flame was flickering as if in a strong breeze. Drawing an impossible breath, I said out loud, ‘I am fearless with magic!’

  Something in the room fizzled, making the sound of a television switching off or a power cable being cut. When I pressed forward again with the knife, I almost fell forward; the blade found no resistance. Recovered, I took another step. And another. I walked three times around the room, until I was back where I’d started.

  ‘Finished,’ I said.

  By its own accord, the orange candle snuffed out.

  71

  ‘Oh my God, that was so freaky,’ said Nikki in a rush. ‘Totally, like, the freakiest thing in my whole life, ever.’

  ‘How did that happen with the candles?’ asked Michelle, who was inspecting the stains on her shirt and then feeling her hair.

  ‘I need a shower,’ said Nikki. ‘I feel like I’m covered in yuck.’

  ‘Um, what did we just do?’ asked Kylie, inspecting the toilet paper clump she’d had held to her nose.

  ‘We closed the Circle,’ I said. ‘We didn’t do it the other night and I think it got us all screwy.’

  ‘Man, I totally blacked out or something,’ said Kylie. She looked at her school trousers. ‘Have I been to school today?’

  Nikki was looking at herself. ‘We all have. It’s Monday, isn’t it? It is Monday, right, Soph?’

  ‘Yeah, only Monday,’ I sighed.

  ‘Were we drinking?’ asked Michelle. ‘What’s this … crust on our stuff? I’m covered in dirt.’

  ‘You might want to get upstairs and clean yourselves up,’ I said, already starting to stuff the equipment back into the plastic box. ‘We should get back to school – if we hurry, we’ll still make the end of lunch.’

  ‘Was I in detention?’ asked Nikki.

  I nodded. ‘I think you’re technically still there,’ I said. ‘The casual teacher who was supervising you fell asleep, so Fran and I just sprung you out.’

  ‘That’s so funny!’ said Nikki, holding her hand to her mouth in surprise.

  ‘Was I crawling in dirt?’ asked Michelle.

  I’d almost finished packing the box. ‘When we get back to school, the story is that Kylie was in a car accident this morning, spent the morning in sick bay and now feels fine, and …’ I really didn’t know what kind of excuse there was for Nikki’s or Michelle’s behaviour. ‘You guys just make something up,’ I said.

  ‘I was licking meat off my arms!’ Nikki cried, laughing at herself.

  Michelle, I noticed, didn’t mention she had almost scratched Dan Rattan’s face off.

  ‘Man, I’ve had a serious nosebleed,’ Kylie said, touching her nose.

  The box was almost full and I was just pulling the black cloth off the television when I heard someone shriek.

  ‘What’s wrong, Ky?’ asked Michelle, touching Kylie’s shoulder.

  Kylie’s hands were slapped to the sides of her face in shock. ‘Tell me I didn’t, tell me I didn’t!’ she muttered. ‘I couldn’t have. I love Steve. I truly love Steve. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Nikki.

  Kylie looked at me desperately. I dropped the black cloth into the box.

  ‘Please, Soph,’ she said, with plaintive eyes, ‘tell me I didn’t kiss Brody Meine.’

  72

  There was still no message from Joel, so I was a lot calmer when the girls and I went upstairs – them to get cleaned up, me to help Fran clean up. While they busied themselves in the bathroom and Nikki’s room, I plonked the white box on the kitchen table and rinsed out some filthy cleaning wipes in the sink.

  ‘Is Joel still outside?’ Fran asked.

  ‘As far as I know,’ I said, hanging the cleaning wipes over the tap.
>
  Fran frowned.

  ‘You’ve done an amazing job in here,’ I said before she could say anything. Fran was tying up a garbage bag.

  ‘That I got through what Michelle had done to the bathtub was the amazing part,’ she said, ‘but I have no idea how Nikki is going explain what happened to the food. Her parents are going to come back to a completely empty fridge and most of their bread and stuff missing.’

  ‘I’m sure Nikki will think of something. Giving it to a homeless shelter or the priest or something,’

  Fran scrunched the knot she’d made on the garbage bag and shoved it into the kitchen bin bay. ‘Well, I have no idea why they all got so crazy but, thanks to you, they seem to have returned from wherever they went.’ She sighed, a sad glimmer on her face. ‘The Kylie and Steve situation sounds bad, though. Belinda texted and said he’s devastated.’

  My mind saw, so clearly, Kylie leaning forward, Brody’s lips against hers. I wondered if, in my fury, I had unconsciously channelled a magical reaction onto Kylie’s face.

  ‘That reminds me,’ I said. ‘Want to learn some Morgan family homeopathy? I think I know how to fix Kylie’s lips.’

  I headed towards the door and Fran followed. ‘Let’s keep the door open a bit,’ she said as we walked into the garden. ‘There are smells in that kitchen no one should have to come home to.’

  I rustled past the lemon balm bush and rubbed my fingers on its leaves to give myself a boost from the smell it left behind. Fran copied me with the lemon balm and I saw a smile spread across her face as she inhaled the scent.

  ‘Feeling better?’ I asked her.

  ‘Weirdly,’ said Fran. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Lemon balm’s under the power of Jupiter, and good for your heart,’ I said – and realised that I was quoting my mother, and almost in her own voice. It made me stop still. Fran looked puzzled. ‘Hippie mother,’ I explained.

  I picked some lavender flowers and we came back inside, leaving the door open. Asking Fran to get a bowl, I took some kitchen scissors out of a drawer and took a single white tea light from the magic box and set it on a saucer. It occurred to me that there was enough equipment in the box to serve as a temporary ‘kit’ until I found the time to go through what Mum was sure to have stashed around our house. I had a dark realisation that repeating my energy-depleting activities of the past couple of days could make me very, very sick.

  ‘Kylie!’ I called when I’d snipped apart the lavender flowers and dropped them in the bowl. ‘I’ve got something to put on your face.’

  ‘How does this work?’ asked Fran, looking curiously at the bowl when Kylie came into the kitchen. Kylie’s eyes were red and her skin was still bleeding.

  Fran and I were both staring at her face.

  ‘Steve’s not answering my calls,’ Kylie said.

  ‘Dude, he’d be in class,’ said Fran kindly.

  ‘But they’re calls from me,’ she said, dabbing her nose with a fresh wad of paper.

  ‘Give him time,’ said Fran.

  ‘And I’ve got herpes from Brody Meine,’ Kylie said. ‘Or leprosy.’

  ‘You don’t,’ I said, almost adding, ‘If you had it, I’d have it,’ but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Is he a good kisser?’ asked Fran, winking at me.

  My heart thudded with the memory of Brody and I in the street, amongst the bookshelves – and that indelible image of him and Kylie.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kylie said sarcastically, ‘so good my boyfriend’s going to dump me and my lips are falling off.’

  I pointed to the white candle. ‘Can you light that?’ I asked Fran.

  ‘What for?’ she said.

  ‘Atmosphere,’ I said, smiling, indicating Kylie should sit in a chair. I felt confident, bold even, now that I was channelling magic through objects. Making something happen without wanting to throw up or pass out was a real treat. ‘Now,’ I said, putting the bowl under Kylie’s mouth, ‘spit in this.’

  ‘Spit?’ exclaimed Kylie and Fran.

  ‘I don’t know why this works, but it does,’ I said.

  Kylie, perplexed, looked to Fran.

  ‘Hippie mother,’ Fran assured her, and Kylie spat into the chopped-up lavender flowers.

  ‘Keep going,’ I said. She spat again. And again.

  ‘This is revolting,’ said Kylie.

  ‘Okay, now smear it on your face where it’s cut.’

  Again, Kylie needed a nod from Fran in order to continue. She reached into the bowl and, grimacing, brought the spit-wet lavender flowers to her mouth and nose.

  ‘At least it’s not the most disgusting thing I’ve had on my mouth today,’ said Kylie. I thought of her and the rotten banana and laughed, despite myself.

  ‘Now just hold your hands over your mouth. I’ll put my hands over yours, for warmth.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kylie, covering her mouth with her hands.

  I breathed in. A white glow radiated from the tea light as I held my hands over Kylie’s face. I sang softly, closing my eyes as the Finnish words spoke themselves in gentle notes.

  Small white crystals of energy formed under our hands and in each of her wounds. The lavender flowers fizzled pale purple electricity that bound the saliva with the broken skin. Kylie was trying to say something but I held my hands firmly in place.

  ‘Soph, I think your phone’s ringing,’ said Fran in alarm.

  Dropping my hands from Kylie’s head, I screamed, ‘Michelle! Nikki!’ even before I read the name JOEL on the screen of my phone.

  From the kitchen, I could see through the lounge room’s panoramic window a forest-green station wagon turn into the driveway of the Cipri family home and head towards the house.

  73

  I didn’t have time to answer the phone. I didn’t have time to clean up the lavender bowl or wipe Kylie’s face. ‘Marlina’s coming! She’s in the driveway!’ I hollered as loudly as I could. ‘Get your stuff and get out the kitchen door!’

  Kylie sat in shock.

  ‘Where’s your bag?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nikki’s room,’ Kylie said.

  ‘Then get it – get it! You want Nikki sent to convent school?’ I said, pushing her out of the kitchen.

  Through the window, the car made another turn in the driveway.

  I dumped the bowl in the sink, blasting it clean with water from the tap. I snuffed the candle. I flung the lid on the white plastic box and shoved the whole thing into Fran’s hands. ‘Run with this – to the car, anywhere – run as fast as you can!’ I screamed.

  Fran snatched the box and spoke quickly. ‘Leap the fence on the left and go down the slope. You have to run across two backyards – second fence, laneway, turn left. I’ll have the motor running.’

  I tore the door open and she ran through it. The flyscreen door snapped behind her. ‘Nikki!’ I screamed. The car was now so close to the house it was out of view.

  In a complete panic, I searched the kitchen for my schoolbag. It wasn’t on the floor. I froze with fear. It wasn’t in the lounge room, and I could hear the car being parked. I wanted to scream for the girls, but I realised that if she was just outside, Marlina would probably hear me.

  I remembered I’d left my bag in Fran’s car. The sense of relief was quickly surpassed by complete and utter fear. I shoved my tainted pendant in my mouth.

  Thundering steps. Nikki, Michelle and Kylie ran into the kitchen. I gestured ‘downstairs’ and ‘follow me’ and held open the back door. They filed out into the garden and I urged them towards the low brick fence Fran had told me about.

  Taking one last look around, I convinced myself there was nothing incriminating in the kitchen. I shut both doors behind me and, spitting the pendant out of my mouth, hissed to the girls: ‘Jump the fence! Go down the slope!’ I followed them, then turned around, unsnapped the lock charm from the doors of the Cipri house and leaped the fence myself.

  Only after I’d tumbled down the slope, run through two backyards and needed Kylie to give me
a boost so I could get over a tall timber fence and land in the laneway did it occur to me what we’d left behind.

  Garbage bags – full of rotten food, and vomit, and tissues soaked with blood.

  74

  There was nothing I could do. Marlina would have been well inside the house by now. As Michelle, Nikki, Kylie and I cantered down the laneway to the street, I prayed that, Witchfinder conversion and all, Marlina was still not the kind of person to go through bags of smelly garbage.

  I remembered visions of Finders holding white-hot pokers and trawling through graveyards selling babies, and then I wasn’t so sure.

  Fran was waiting in the car and we all bundled in. The girls went in the back and I clambered in the front.

  ‘Kyles!’ shrieked Fran happily as the car shot down the road. ‘You’ve stopped bleeding!’

  ‘Really?’ Kylie asked.

  Fran positioned the rear-view mirror so Kylie could see herself. Some tiny scraps of lavender flowers were scattered around her face, but all that remained of the cuts were thin powdery lines of dead skin.

  ‘That’s totally amazing, hey,’ said Fran.

  ‘Hippie magic,’ I said.

  ‘I got to learn me some hippie magic – with these wild children it could come in real handy,’ Fran said with a laugh. ‘You reckon Marlina saw anything?’

  ‘She’s gonna know something was up,’ said Nikki. ‘There’s stuff all over the bathroom.’

  ‘And the shower’s wet,’ said Michelle. ‘We all had one.’

  Something inside me soured with a sense of failure; Fran noticed and gave me a reassuring smile. ‘So Nikki had a particularly crazy time in Drama,’ she said, ‘and came home to have a shower. Big deal.’

  ‘We left the garbage bags in the kitchen bin bay,’ I said. Turning round in my seat I asked Nikki, ‘Is she the kind of person to look through them?’

  ‘You don’t know how paranoid she is. But don’t worry. I’ll make something up. My parents always believe me rather than her anyway – drives Marlina insane. But who tipped you off my sister was Lady Intolerant?’

  I pointed at Fran.