Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  ‘Jeules has been sent,’ I said in a breathless rush. ‘Because of the birds and the fire. They’re looking for me …’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘They think it’s demonic,’ I trembled. ‘Jeules, Nikki’s sister, other people. Me, not you—’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re not even making sense.’

  I opened my eyes to persuade him.

  Mistake.

  Mistake. I was lost in a green sea. Brody, I realised, had one palm pressed to the door. It was millimetres from my body. ‘Do you trust me?’ I managed, my eyes sliding the length of his eyelashes.

  ‘You shouldn’t trust anyone but yourself.’

  I slowly reached my hand across the door until it found the handle.

  ‘Friday night,’ I said. ‘At Gretchen’s. We’ll talk – like this, in private. I’ll make sense then, I promise.’ I exhaled a gentle breath that sparkled on contact with his mouth. Brody closed his eyes. ‘Trust me,’ I said.

  ‘You said you didn’t care if I was at Gretchen’s or not.’

  My hand twisted the handle of the door.

  ‘Brody,’ I said, ‘I lied.’

  And, somehow, I slid through the open doorway into the corridor, leaving Brody behind in the book room.

  18

  It was now twenty minutes before the lunch bell and I was almost running down the corridor. My body felt Brodified but I couldn’t think about him now – I needed to be calm in case I ran into Jeules on my way to the girls’ toilets.

  Once there, I made a quick assessment of the cubicles and, spying no feet, wasted no time ripping my pendant over my head and shaking the bottle of salted water over the sink.

  I strung the necklace chain around my fingers and the pendant stone swung in a tight circle between my stretched-out thumb and forefinger. I felt the autonomous movement of the stone through my hand as I chanted, ‘Vesi, vesi, vesi,’ while drenching it in salty water. Vesi is, of course, Finnish for ‘water’.

  ‘Swim little fish,’ I sang to my pendant. The glowing blue stone, I sensed, was waking up from a long sleep.

  A nearby scrape of shoe shocked me out of my task. The bottle tumbled with a plastic clatter and a splash from my hand into the sink. I scrunched my fingers so forcefully around the pendant to protect it that the chain cut painfully into my fingers.

  ‘Of course you’re here,’ said Belinda Maitland, her hand cocked at her hip and her blonde hair hanging like washed straw. ‘I mean, you have a free period, don’t you?’

  19

  ‘Hi, Belinda,’ I said, choosing to ignore the provocation in her voice. I turned back to the sink, pulled the bottle out of a channel of water and redoused my stone. Belinda’s face was reflected in the mirror that ran above the sinks; her face was contorted with derision and my brain kept repeating Pig-like, pig-like rather than the prettier tune I should have hummed to reconsecrate my stone.

  ‘I got a pie from the canteen and managed to get sauce all over my necklace so I’m having to wash it,’ I said. A quick glance revealed Belinda was walking towards me. ‘It was a total mess, and I—’

  ‘Sophie,’ she said, softening her grimace and touching me on the shoulder.

  I turned round.

  Belinda’s hand was so quick I barely noticed it move until my cheek felt the hard slap of her knuckles.

  It took two seconds to register that Belinda had hit me. It took three seconds to feel the onset of burning redness in my face, and the sting.

  ‘What was that for?’ I blurted, reaching up to touch the slapped skin.

  ‘For Fran,’ she squawked, lunging forward. I was too slow lowering my hand from my cheek and Belinda had a grip of the collar of my school shirt before I could block her. She pushed me backwards. I started to lose my balance, then I stumbled and began to fall. With another push, she let me go. I collapsed, arms flailing for something to catch hold of – I heard a dull, metal gong sound, then another. The first was the edge of my ribs hitting into the hard rim of the metal sink. The second was my wrist whacking painfully against it.

  The collision of ribs and sink knocked the air out of my lungs; winded, I croaked as I tried to gulp in air. I tumbled to the floor.

  ‘And how about I scratch your face now?’ she leered. Belinda pincered my voice box and I spluttered. ‘Have you seen Dan? Have you seen what Michelle did to him?’

  ‘You’ve got – no reason to hit me—’ I choked.

  ‘Hit you? I’ve got reasons to ruin your life.’

  ‘Stop, Belinda, please,’ I begged, my voice wheezing.

  She let go of my throat. ‘You think you can turn up and move in on our group, but you’re not one of us. You don’t go to parties, you don’t have a boyfriend – you’re a little slut with hickeys who picks up losers at the mall.’

  I thought she was going to kick me while I lay there clinging to the base of the sink. I shrank in genuine fear while she spoke. I knew that magic could heal me; magic could strengthen me … Magic could, if I pushed it, set Belinda on fire.

  But magic might attract Jeules.

  Belinda stood over me and pushed her hand into the crown of my head, crushing my skull. My eyes watered. I struggled to shift her hand but I wasn’t strong enough.

  ‘No one was supposed to know about Fran and Dan except me,’ she said.

  ‘Everyone knows,’ I coughed. ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘Obvious if you’re hiding in the toilets in your free period, listening in. Hearing things and running off to tell Michelle. Do you know what she did to him on Saturday night?’

  I started coughing. My battered body was aching in a hundred different places and it spasmed with each cough. Belinda, at least, stopped leaning her weight on my head.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I said, rubbing my scalp.

  ‘That Michelle let Dan take her all the way to White Beach so she could fly at him in the car, accuse him of just about anything—’

  ‘If he likes Fran so much he shouldn’t be at White Beach with Michelle.’

  ‘I knew there was someone in the toilets that time. I told Fran we should go back and find out who it was. Then Dan wouldn’t have had his face carved up.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said. ‘Michelle worked it out …’

  ‘Michelle isn’t smart enough to work out a Maths equation,’ Belinda said.

  ‘I heard you once. I heard you and Fran talking in here just one time,’ I said. ‘I was new, and I didn’t say anything to Michelle. Something came out at the Tell-All – ask Nikki and Kylie, they were there. Ask them! It’s nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Why do you care who he takes out to White Beach?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t! Why do you?’ I said, my breath starting to return.

  ‘They’re my friends,’ Belinda said.

  Anger was channelling the return of my strength. ‘If I’m responsible for Michelle freaking out and wrecking this beautiful fantasy Dan and Fran are living in, why isn’t it Fran in here, slapping my face?’ I was growing more enraged. ‘Or Michelle? Or Dan himself if he’s the big surf-action superhero everyone wants to believe? They’re not here because this,’ I said, flicking my finger between myself and her, ‘has got nothing to do with them. This is you finding an excuse to slam me into the sink!’

  ‘You bet it is,’ she said. ‘Staying at Fran’s, catching the bus with Michelle, going to Nikki’s to stay up and bake cakes … You think you can waltz into Yarrindi and take whatever you want. You can’t. I want you away from our group. I want you back with the nerd-herd where you belong.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I will find what is the most important thing in the world to you and I will take it away.’

  ‘I’ve got more interesting things than you to be afraid of, Belinda,’ I said, rubbing my wrist where – another! – new bruise was forming.

  ‘That’s your mistake,’ she said.

  And then, as if I wasn’t even there, Belinda leaned across my body and turned on a
tap. She washed her hands, and then she left.

  It took me a couple of seconds to appreciate that the stiff fingers knotted into a fist in my right hand were actually keeping my pendant safe. I uncurled the fingers, one by one, and let my held pendant tumble out of it, safe on my chain.

  20

  I had a few minutes left before the bell and now I had more injuries too. I knew I should be trying to get to the library – at least to get out of the toilets before they crawled with people – but the encounters with Jeules, Brody and Belinda in the past forty minutes had been enough to convince me that nothing, nothing was worse than not having a protection amulet.

  The dry grass I’d collected at the beginning of the period was stashed in my pocket – with, I remembered, Jeules’s missing azurite ring. I pulled the grass out now, making a little well out of my cupped hand. Once again I strung the chain of my necklace around my hand. I was in pain. My cheeks burned and I didn’t know if it was because of the physical effects of Belinda’s blow, or my humiliation at being hit. Whatever it was, I now had to finish this process with my stone. I realised now why my mother had insisted I put the necklace on myself; the tiniest touch by someone else could weaken its energy. Someone – something – like Izek could render it mute.

  I leaned over the sink, swung my pendant. ‘Tuli,’ I summoned in song. My Will was strong today, and with it I bent the air around the handful of dry grass until it sparked and burned. My hand I kept unburnt with a kind of psychic asbestos glove. The well of dry grass in my hand sparked and flamed, but my hand was safe. These spells were only minor, but still they weakened me.

  In the coils of black smoke from the burning grass, my pendant danced, swinging back and forth as it received its final, cleansing charge.

  No one came into the toilets while this happened. No one saw my stone move of its own accord, or glow with blue light.

  ‘Welcome back, stone,’ I said as I hung the pendant back around my neck.

  Put your hand over me, Little Bear, the stone said.

  I pressed it into my chest and felt its warm blue electricity connect straight into my flesh.

  Concentrate, the stone whispered.

  I did. Blue light spread throughout my bones, my tissue, every duct and fold of skin. Blue light encountered my tired muscles and relieved them, found my cuts and healed them. Blue light was air in my lungs, and the red stain of a handprint faded from my cheek.

  I left the toilet with my bruises gone, my eyes clear and my thoughts sharp. Thus healed, I made my way to the Senior Quad.

  21

  When I arrived in the Senior Quad, the trees were still and the light was grey; clouds had rolled over the sun since my encounter with Belinda in the bathroom.

  There was something disorienting about being in this place when no shadows were being cast. I remembered the day I’d stood in the Art room and seen the great crow through the window. Even though I knew now that the crow was Izek – and I nominally counted him as an ally – I couldn’t restrain a shiver as I walked across the grass.

  Joel wasn’t here. I expected that a beep in my pocket would alert me to a text, at least, or a call about what he wanted.

  ‘Hey, Sophie!’ I heard from the upper level, and I turned and looked up.

  Gretchen Eighfield was standing at the top of the cement stairs, and Sally and Naomi were with her.

  I skipped up the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing in these parts?’ asked Sally. ‘I thought you were solidly a behind-the-labs girl.’

  I rolled my eyes, hoping that would suffice as an explanation.

  ‘Guess everyone needs a BFD now and then,’ said Naomi.

  ‘BFD?’ I asked.

  ‘Belinda-free day,’ Gretchen said. ‘We shouldn’t say those things, she is your friend.’ She turned to Naomi with a reproachful frown.

  ‘And you did invite her to your party,’ I reminded.

  ‘That’s Yarrindi, though,’ said Sally. ‘One in, all in.’

  ‘Guess parties in Sydney can be more select,’ said Gretchen.

  I didn’t actually know this from experience, so I gave a neutral smile. Back in Baulkham Hills, Lauren and Sue and I would celebrate birthdays by going to a restaurant with someone’s parents or going to a movie with lots of junk food. It struck me that Gretchen’s party would be the first, full-blown teen party I’d ever been to.

  Lauren. She’d been trying to contact me for days. I had to call her.

  ‘I do understand the need for a BFD,’ I said. ‘I think it’s a universal phenomenon.’ I was half-tempted to let them know the full details of what had just happened between the two-faced snake and I in the toilet block. ‘Can I sit with you guys for a bit?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Sure thing!’ said Gretchen, pulling back a wooden chair from the table.

  As I sat I noticed the table was spread with a collection of open magazines – the kind I used to read before my evenings were spent turning into bears and flying over coastal towns. ‘You getting some inspiration for Friday night?’ I said, pointing at a magazine pictorial of actors from a vampire movie.

  ‘You don’t think a Halloween theme’s predictable, do you?’ she asked me, sitting down.

  ‘Not if it is Halloween,’ I said. ‘It’d be a dumb time for a Christmas party.’

  Sally and Naomi laughed.

  ‘Halloween’s actually Monday night,’ said Gretchen. ‘But it is my actual birthday on Friday and I really, really want it to be good. My parents usually never let me have parties but my dad got the surf club for me and I want it to be really amazing.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be,’ I said. ‘I know my group’s dressing up.’ I didn’t mention that they were currently planning to dress as Ashley Ventwood.

  ‘I want to go as a vampire,’ said Sally, eyeing the magazine. ‘I just wish I could get some gold contacts to make my eyes really sparkle.’

  ‘What are you going as?’ I asked Gretchen.

  ‘I can’t decide,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a costume to go as the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but Naomi thinks it’s lame.’

  ‘The costume’s great,’ said Naomi, turning to me, ‘but she’s got this thing happening with Scott Moss and I reckon she should go all-out glamorous so he doesn’t lose interest.’

  Gretchen’s cheeks were red. ‘Naomi, shut up,’ she said.

  ‘I reckon you go as whatever you like,’ I said to Gretchen. ‘If Scott isn’t interested in the White Witch, he lacks imagination.’

  Gretchen beamed at Naomi. ‘What are you going as?’ she asked me.

  I shrugged. I decided then and there, if not out of friendship then out of respect, that no matter how hard Belinda tried to pound my face into a sink, I certainly wasn’t going as Ashley Ventwood. ‘I’ll probably go as a witch,’ I said with a little smile. ‘Hey,’ I said to Gretchen, ‘what was that business with Mr Jeules after class?’

  ‘He’s weird,’ said Sally.

  I saw Gretchen’s hands form fists on the table surface. ‘He’s lost a ring – have you seen the ads up around the school? And I’ve never met him before today but he was convinced I knew something about it. I had to keep telling him I’d never met him before, but he went on and on and he made me late for class. I hate that.’

  ‘He’s just got you mixed up with someone else,’ Naomi said.

  ‘I never do anything wrong,’ Gretchen said. ‘And he totally didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know anything. I just pray that Ms Dwight gets better. He creeps me out.’

  ‘He was pretty crazy with Nikki yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘Is that why you guys left the school?’ asked Naomi.

  ‘I can’t believe everyone knows about that,’ I said, cross with myself that all my sneaking around had come to nothing.

  ‘You don’t … You guys don’t really take drugs, do you?’ Gretchen asked.

  I shook my head. ‘The girls were just a bit crazy after Kylie’s car accident and they just need
ed to get out of school and reset,’ I said, downplaying it as much as I could. ‘We weren’t gone long and they were fine when we got back.’

  ‘Except you didn’t come back,’ said Gretchen.

  ‘If someone offered you a trip to Burger King or Brant Norton reading Shakespeare, which would you pick?’ I asked her.

  ‘Good point,’ said Naomi with a giggle.

  ‘So why aren’t you behind the labs today?’ persisted Sally.

  ‘Apart from Belinda Maitland being a swamp creature,’ said Naomi.

  ‘I’m actually here to meet Joel Morland,’ I told them.

  Sally’s eyes widened. ‘You’re friends with him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly, ‘but I owe him a favour and he’s going to cash it in.’ I turned to Gretchen. ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘He’s Scott’s best friend,’ said Gretchen.

  ‘And?’ I said.

  ‘And anything Scott likes must be great because Scott likes it!’ laughed Naomi.

  Gretchen’s face was a neutral mask.

  ‘What do you think of him, Gretchen?’ I repeated, trying to penetrate the cloud that had formed in her eyes.

  ‘I think he’s over there,’ said Gretchen quietly. I followed her eyes to the other end of the Quad. Joel Morland had walked as far as the grass on the lower level. He raised a hand to me, and beckoned me downwards.

  22

  I farewelled the girls and walked down to where Joel Morland was standing. There was something odd about his posture, something awkward. I noticed that he was wearing cycling gloves, and a bike helmet was strung to his schoolbag.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Had stuff to do.’

  ‘That’s fine with me. I like the girls who hang in the Quad.’

  Looking back over my shoulder at them, I noticed that while Gretchen and Naomi were poring over the magazines, Sally was watching Joel and I.

  Joel didn’t even look. He pulled a small package out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  It was something in a black velvet jewellery bag with a drawstring. ‘This is that favour you owe me,’ he said. ‘I want you to give this to Fran.’