Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

‘The Steve and Kylie thing is a bit intense,’ I said, not wanting to out the details of my meeting with Joel. ‘Thought I might catch up on work in the library at lunch so I don’t have to pick a side.’

  Michelle stiffened. We had reached the Art room. ‘There’s no choice to make. Kylie’s been honest, and Steve should know who’s to blame for the situation.’

  ‘Himself?’ I offered.

  ‘Brody Meine,’ said Michelle, sweeping around the corner with a frown.

  13

  ‘We missed you yesterday, Sophie,’ said Ms Jackson as I stumbled into Art.

  I collapsed onto my regular seat. ‘Thanks, Ms Jackson,’ I said.

  ‘Actually, Sophie, I was making the point that you were marked on the roll in the morning and we’d lost you by the time of this lesson. Meaning, I think, you’ve been playing up and missing class. I find it insulting. Don’t do it again.’

  Perversely, I was glad that someone had noticed my absence yesterday. For all the social status supposedly gained from hanging out with the popular group, I’d literally been driven straight out of the school gates and the only person who had noticed was an Art teacher. I settled at my desk with a chilling appreciation of my lack of significance.

  We were issued with silk screens and wax crayons and instructed in freehand stencilling. It was enjoyable, but the absence of Ashley Ventwood actually made me feel uneasy. She was a wise – and, I guessed, very old – magician; if she’d fled the country ahead of the Finders, calling one of their number ‘Jeules the Jerk’ probably amounted to a dangerous underestimation of his threat.

  Thinking about it, my hand went to my pendant. Feeling the muted buzz from the tainted stone against my flesh was a good reminder for me to get it cleansed – especially before I had my scheduled meeting with Joel in the Senior Quad.

  14

  When Art was finished and Ms Jackson had given my half-hearted scribbles of a tree her equally half-hearted approval, I walked into my free period with a plan to clean my stone.

  The mission was to bury it in earth, hold it up to the air, wash it with salt water and then find a source of smoke to wave it through. Earth and air were in easy enough supply, even at high school, but I needed to find some salt and something I could burn. ‘I miss you, stone,’ I said to the cold orb in my hand as I walked through the school.

  I asked the women behind the canteen counter if they had any salt they could spare for disinfecting contact lenses and they kindly gave me a few little packets. I bought a bottle of water and mixed salt into it as I ambled around.

  Finding a source of fire was a tricky proposition. There were boxes of matches in the white plastic box from Nikki’s house, but that box was still in Fran’s car and Fran was, I knew all too well, in Geography. I considered stopping into her class to borrow her car keys, but reconsidered the plan in the context of trying to keep a low profile with Jeules around.

  I walked out of the buildings and towards the back of the Technology labs; here, of course, was my source of earth, and Michelle had already conveniently broken hard ground for me when she’d tried to inter herself yesterday.

  I kneeled down knowing that my location was shielded from view of the main school buildings by the Technology labs themselves, as well as being below the eye line of the lab windows. Feeling almost safe, I made the snap decision that I’d cast a tiny, tiny fire spell just to get my stone reconsecrated quickly. I knew it would cost me a little energy, but the trade-off of the stone’s protective power was, I thought, more than worth it.

  I kneeled down in front of the narrow pits left in the earth by Michelle and ripped up a handful of dry grass to serve as kindling for the fire spell. I removed my pendant and kissed it, lowering it onto the ground and piling dirt over it until it was completely buried.

  I closed my eyes, placing one hand on top of the other, and over my pendant in the ground. ‘Maa,’ I sang – the Finnish word for ‘earth’, feeling the turned soil on my skin and in the cracks between my fingers.

  Under my crossed palms, I felt something moving. I was careful to keep my hands perfectly in place as my stone rotated in the ground. ‘Maa,’ I said again.

  ‘Morgan?’ I heard over my shoulder. ‘It’s Morgan, isn’t it?’

  My head flicked around.

  A few metres away Mr Jeules stood with his head tilted at a curious angle, his blond curls bobbing in the light breeze, observing everything I did.

  15

  ‘Sally Morgan?’ he asked.

  I was careful to keep my hands on the ground.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked. ‘Why aren’t you in class?’

  I noticed that there was a pile of photocopied sheets held in the crook of his arm. A packet of thumbtacks were peeking out of his front jeans pocket, and he had a ring of masking tape around one wrist.

  ‘I’ve got a free,’ I said, choosing not to correct his mistake with my name.

  ‘Then aren’t you supposed to be in the library,’ he said, ‘rather than … tooling around in the dirt?’

  ‘I lost a contact lens at recess,’ I lied, slowly raising my hands from the ground and sitting them politely in my lap. ‘My eye started watering in Art.’

  ‘Even if you found it, it would be too dirty to use now,’ he said with suspicion.

  ‘The ladies in the canteen made me some saltwater solution,’ I said, waving my bottle.

  ‘Sally, get out of the dirt, please,’ he said.

  ‘But my eye—’ I protested.

  ‘You don’t have a pair of glasses?’

  I shook my head. ‘You putting up posters?’ I asked, hoping to distract him.

  ‘I’ve lost something,’ he said, holding out one of the A4 sheets. I took it from his hand. It was a crudely drawn picture of the azurite ring, with text that said:

  Lost Ring

  Sentimental Value

  If Found, Return to Mr Jeules

  (English/History Staffroom).

  REWARD

  No questions asked.

  I noticed the drawing didn’t show the Eye of Providence.

  ‘Do you really think someone stole it?’ I said, handing back the piece of paper.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘I think someone might be hanging on to it.’

  Was he scanning me? ‘Yarrindi people aren’t like that,’ I said. ‘If someone has it, they probably don’t know who to give it back to.’

  ‘They will now,’ he said. ‘Get out of the dirt and go to the library, please. You don’t want to waste the luxury of free time.’

  ‘There’s a good noticeboard on the other side of the labs,’ I said, standing, wiping the dirt off the legs of my trousers. ‘I’ll show you.’

  I walked Jeules around to the other side of the building hoping a noticeboard I half-remembered was actually there. When it was, I sounded a little too relieved when I exclaimed, ‘There you go!’

  ‘The library, Sally,’ Jeules said.

  I feigned surprise. ‘I left that bottle back there! Can I just get my bottle?’

  ‘You don’t need it now, do you?’

  ‘To keep my eye clean,’ I said, and ran back towards the other side of the lab.

  Once I registered the bottle, sitting exactly where I’d left my pendant buried in the ground, I didn’t even look as I dug – I kept my eyes darting between each side of the lab building, in case Jeules had followed me or was planning an ambush. Come, I ordered the stone as my hand dug in the dirt. In a second, I felt the pendant swim out of its earthy bed and wriggle into my hand like a metal tadpole. I blindly chucked some dirt over the hole it left behind and clutched it tight.

  On my feet, I shoved my pendant into the front pocket of my schoolbag, and skipped around the lab building in the opposite direction from which I’d left Jeules.

  Sure enough, I clocked him creeping around the other corner. He’d left his A4 posters weighted to the ground in front of the noticeboard with the masking tape and packet of tacks. His blond head peered around the side o
f the building.

  I walked out wide from the shadows, so I was well in front of the building when I called, ‘Thanks, Mr Jeules!’ in an innocent voice.

  I saw him jump. His hand shot to his chest.

  I waved the bottle at him. ‘Good luck finding your jewellery.’ I walked, as calmly as I could, towards the entrance of the main building, not waiting for him to reply.

  16

  I still had half an hour before the bell for lunch, but I had the odd problem that I now needed to expose the stone to sunlight. Jeules prowling the school grounds made an easy task tricky; I needed to find light somewhere indoors.

  I didn’t walk to the library, though something gave me the feeling that Jeules would check in there to see if I’d followed his orders. Wandering around the corridors, I saw a teacher and a junior walk into a classroom with their arms laden with books and I realised I knew exactly the place where I could ‘charge’ my stone.

  I turned a corner and headed for the History book room. Someone had mumbled at recess that Brody had been seen leaving the school and by virtue of the fact that it was the place that the school let him have, I gathered it didn’t get a lot of visitors. I hurried along the corridors until I found its fateful blue door.

  I popped the lock with the weakest of magic charges and entered. If I’d had a black cloth, I would’ve been able to wipe away any electric residue that these little spells left behind. I made a note to myself to include something like that in my portable kit.

  Shutting the door behind me, I was quick to yank my pendant from my bag and hold it for strength. Brody wasn’t in the History book room – he didn’t have to be. Everything, from the dingy carpet to the dusty books to the papers on his solitary desk, breathed his presence into me.

  If I thought I could pretend that last Thursday didn’t happen, I was kidding myself. With a single step into the room, it was last Thursday. I could see myself on the floor with Brody, my limbs felt the imprint of his body, pressed into mine, I heard his breath in my ear.

  Trying to clear my head, desperately wanting to concentrate on the task at hand, I walked over to the desk. I dropped my bag to the ground and was about to climb up on Brody’s chair to get nearer the light streaming in from the high windows when the books stacked neatly on his desk drew my attention. I traced my finger along the spine of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reminding myself that Brody’s fingers had touched the book too. I fought back a strong urge to will a spell into the cardboard cover of the book that would make Brody, touching it, think of me.

  Leaving the book, I stood on Brody’s chair and then stepped on the desk, careful to avoid slipping on a notebook. Holding the pendant by the silver chain, I thrust the stone into a beam of sunlight that poured in through the window. ‘Ilman,’ I murmured in song – Finnish for ‘air’. In the sunbeam, the stone swung around its chain without me moving it. Particles of light twinkled against its surface. ‘Ilman,’ I repeated. I could feel a new energy beginning to radiate from the turquoise; the removal of Izek’s magic was also the removal of my mother’s own layer of spells on it. Blue light glittered around the stone as my pendant soaked up the warming light; I felt empowered and so – I could see – did my stone.

  Afterwards, I put the pendant around my neck, keeping the stone under my shirt. My skin felt a faint tingle of blue energy sparkling from the stone and, with it, the sense of being partially restored.

  I stood down from the table and the chair, and had already slung my bag back onto my shoulder when I glanced at the open notebook on Brody’s desk. Written in Brody’s handwriting was something that looked like a poem. I peered into the book and read a list:

  Toxic

  Twist and Shout

  Kick out the Jams

  Superstition

  Witchcraft !

  Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

  Foxy Lady

  Evie

  Sex on Fire

  Never Tear Us Apart

  Jailhouse Rock, ha ha ha

  I realised it was a list of songs when I spied a guitar case leaning against the wall near the door. Odd, I thought, that Brody would go home without his guitar.

  The next treatment for the stone was immersion in salted water. I decided that, while the book room was secure and quiet, spilling water everywhere and then trying to set something on fire amongst the papery old tomes was not a good idea. The girls’ toilets were a much more practical option.

  I turned towards the door and shrieked out loud when it opened in front of me.

  Jeules, I panicked.

  I was weak with fear, my knees buckled beneath me—

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ demanded Brody Meine.

  17

  His green eyes were blazing, unobscured by the falling curtain of his long fringe. He shut the door behind him, marching as far away from me as possible within the room’s tight walls.

  I stood like a statue stranded in a museum’s smallest room.

  ‘How’d you get in?’ he asked.

  ‘Door was open.’

  ‘It wasn’t. It’s got a deadlock that bolts when you close it behind you. How’d you get in?’

  I kept my eyes averted from his. ‘They told me you’d walked out of the school. I came up here to see whether you had.’

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t know how to answer. To find a cue for my response, I looked at him.

  Mistake. Brody’s chin was set, his eyes fierce and the mere sight of his face made me want to collapse into him. I forced myself to remember Jeules, the Finders, the white-hot pokers and screaming, tortured witches, the shattering consequences of physical contact between Brody and me.

  I took a step backwards, towards the door. ‘Because you’re my friend,’ I said.

  Brody had a sharp smile. ‘I don’t have friends.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It doesn’t go with the angry loner persona,’ he said. ‘Now, get out.’

  I didn’t move, but the words fell out of my mouth. ‘Why did you kiss Kylie, Brody?’

  ‘Kicks,’ he said.

  I sneered. ‘Is that why you kissed me?’

  ‘Just leave.’ Something in his gaze softened. ‘Please.’

  Everything in this room reminded me of the last time I was here. The smell of the old books. The muscles in Brody’s neck. This tension – this solid, palpable tension between us.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t … try to be friends,’ I said, hand on my pendant.

  ‘Birds, storms, fires, broken windows,’ he said. ‘Choking, car accidents, random acts of violence … hospitalisations.’

  I remembered his white face when he found out about Ms Dwight.

  ‘You can’t possibly blame yourself for what happened to Ms Dwight,’ I said. ‘That’s actually deranged.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’m responsible,’ Brody said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re bad luck. Except I reckon I’ve been a bit closer than Ms Dwight and I’m standing here, right here, and there’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘You’re covered in bruises and there are cuts on your hands,’ he said, nodding towards the scratches on my palms. ‘When did that happen?’

  I blushed and crossed my arms. ‘Your bad luck goes for a walk around Yarrindi on Sunday nights, does it?’

  ‘Who was the last person who touched you, Sophie?’ he asked. ‘There were birds in that corridor. They attacked people.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Kylie,’ I said.

  ‘Really? I thought I saw her pass out and get carried off to the nurse. I heard her face started randomly bleeding and you had to bust her out of school so she could get cleaned up.’

  Yarrindi High has a thousand eyes, I thought to myself.

  ‘What, so before that happened there was nothing wrong?’ I laughed. ‘She just wandered into our classroom like a hysterical zombie because you’re so magnetically hot and fantastic she couldn’t help herself?’

  ‘Okay,’ Brody said, standing
forward. He put his hand out, as if he wanted me to take it. His green eyes flashed like emeralds. ‘You gonna let me touch you now? You wanna risk it?’ He took another step forward.

  I couldn’t look at him. I grabbed clumsily for the wall behind me, actually shuddering with the effort of restraint. I was already breathing as if his lips were on my neck.

  ‘There’s no one here but you and me,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t do this …’

  ‘I’m not doing anything.’ He raised his hands in the air in surrender, taking a half-step back. ‘I didn’t kick that business off last week – you did. You leaped across the room. I want to know what’s changed.’

  Nothing had changed, not in me. ‘I want to be your friend,’ I said, like no friend at all.

  ‘Okay, Friend – let’s shake hands,’ said Brody.

  I stared at the floor. To keep myself away from him, I imagined Jeules in the corridor, imagined him so loudly and vividly I almost thought I could hear him breathing through the book room door.

  ‘You kissed Kylie,’ I protested.

  ‘Yes, I did. Right in front of you,’ he said, stepping forward again.

  ‘Brody—’

  His face was centimetres from my face. Every cell of my skin anticipated his touch. My head and back were pressed into the door. ‘You afraid of something, 1919? You know I’m not going to do anything until you do.’

  I did, and I couldn’t bear it. ‘Maybe it’s me, did you think of that?’ I said, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him any more. ‘All this—’

  ‘I don’t remember you from my childhood.’

  ‘I have things to do now,’ I said.

  ‘Things?’ asked Brody. The breath from the word hung on my lip.

  I could hear my heartbeat, or maybe it was his.

  ‘We can’t,’ I whispered. My eyes stayed closed. ‘We’re not safe.’

  ‘You bet we aren’t.’

  ‘Jeules,’ I said. ‘In the corridor.’

  Silence. Heartbeats.

  I could hear Brody’s expression change. ‘What’s that got to do with—’