by Van Badham
And in the second it took Nikki to look up at Mum another salt bomb screeched past us and exploded. As it did, my mother, grinning back at Nikki, lifted one hand, then the next, and then I saw a flash of metal.
I don’t think a sound came out of my mouth.
Nikki was still standing there smiling as my mother withdrew the knife. As Nikki’s hand flew to the swelling wound in her stomach, my whole world became the horror dawning on Nikki’s face, my mother’s chilling serenity, and the flow of blood that was pouring through the gaps of Nikki’s fingers, over where my mother had stabbed her.
Nikki let go of Brody and he tumbled out of my arms into the dirt. As he fell, Nikki’s legs twisted beneath her, and she fell too.
I stood there, my hands empty, my mouth open.
‘Come on, Sophie, please,’ said my mother. ‘It’s very dangerous out here and we have things to do.’
I didn’t move. Another missile flew over me, so close to my scalp I could feel it in my hair.
‘Nikki …’ I said, staring at the girl curled on the ground, clutching her ruined stomach as she bled to death.
My mother grabbed me by the shoulders. She was in a rage. ‘Do you understand what is happening here, Sophie?’ she barked at me. ‘There are thirty people here who were willing to eat you for dinner. Murderers, torturers and cannibals. There are thousands of Finders all over the world and you and I and Nanna, your friends Ashley and Izek, we are all a very rich meal for them. You think that a few fireworks and running around as a bear is going to make them go away?’
‘Nikki isn’t one of them! She’s the one who broke the circle!’ I could hear Nikki choking, sobbing.
Mum grabbed me by the chin – I couldn’t talk, she was crushing my jaw. ‘Information is power. Anyone with the information of who you are or who I am is going to use it. All these Finders are going to die here tonight, but there’ll be more coming when they realise that their friends have mysteriously disappeared. They’ll be sniffing under every toilet seat in Yarrindi looking for information about us and if Nikki stays alive they’ll find it through her. She may not want to betray you, Sophie, but she will – for promises about money, career, true love, she will do it. No survivors, no tales. Now, we have to get out of here.’
‘She’s my friend!’ I hissed through my mother’s clenching grip.
‘Friends are easy to sell,’ my mother said, with a laugh. ‘Haven’t you read the Bible?’
I looked at Nikki. She was lying on her back. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. She was unconscious.
She was dying.
The position of her head reminded me of the day they put Ms Dwight in an ambulance. The day I saw someone in pain and didn’t help.
‘If I let her die,’ I said to my mother, ‘I’m as bad as they are.’
And with a burst of Will, tentacles of energy shot from my arms and snatched up the white candles from the triangle where Mum had healed me. It took less than seconds for them to be in my hands, less time still for me to charge them with a healing spell, then set them around Nikki. ‘Protect!’ I begged heaven, and saw three intersecting white lights flare and then cover Nikki like a protective cage. Her heart, I knew from experience, would be racing like crazy.
My mother’s face was blank with shock. ‘How’d you learn to do that?’ she asked incredulously.
‘I don’t have to tell you everything,’ I hissed, and dropped to my knees to check Brody’s breathing. Nikki’s heart, I could hear, was willing the white magic from the candles into her body.
Already tiredness was fogging my brain, but I wasn’t going to reveal this to Mum. I felt weak, as if I was about to fall face-forward.
Nikki was in a ball on the ground. My mother tried to hack through the white triangulation of the candles. Sticking an arm into the space above Nikki, she retracted it with the sting of a burn. ‘Undo the spell. Undo it at once!’ my mother cried.
I cradled Brody in my arms. Sleep was very close to me.
‘Sophie, you made a promise to me,’ she said, and she held out my pendant – she must have retrieved it from the ground. ‘You swore at that meal!’
‘What are you going to do with Brody?’ I asked.
‘He’s not your responsibility, or mine!’
‘Why does he get to live and Nikki die?’
‘Commitments have been made!’ shrieked my mother. Another missile flew fast, grazing my arm. Their shots were improving. ‘Sophie, we have to leave. The boy belongs to Ashley. Don’t make me waste my magic tearing down the cage you’ve made.’
I didn’t move. From what I’d seen tonight, my mother had amazing strength, but she didn’t know the diversity of spells I did. ‘Sophie, come on!’ Mum pleaded. From the sound of her voice, I knew there was no way she could hurt Nikki while Nikki was under my protection. ‘We have to go!’ she screamed.
‘I’m not leaving him,’ I said.
Another missile. Another bomb. The whole forest was full of smoke and salt.
‘You don’t know anything about him!’ my mother yelped.
‘I know that I’m not leaving him.’ My back was aching with tiredness. I had minutes left until I blacked out. Another bomb flew, landed, detonated a couple of metres from where we were.
‘We have to get out of here!’ my mother hollered. ‘Please, Sophie, please!’
And then something snapped. My pendant fell from my mother’s hand.
My mother put her hands together and she started to pray. The words were in Finnish but the greyness that covered my mother’s face as she started to whisper their dark sounds made it clear this was no simple healing spell.
My heart stung with fear – she was going to do something to Brody.
Another bomb fell. The grass was on fire. The canopy of the forest was on fire. I took my pendant from where my mother had dropped it on the ground. The moment it was in my hand, I saw its blue electricity bounce off the invisible mesh around Brody’s skin. My mother’s prayer hummed in the air.
‘This will always protect you, no matter what happens,’ I said to Brody. Thunder started to sound in the night sky and, grasping my beloved stone, I rammed it into the palm of Brody’s hand. He choked in pain as the turquoise stone was squeezed between us. The magic that coated him caused the stone to sizzle under our clenched palms and I yelped. My skin burned … his skin burned … our burning flesh bubbled and spat even as the cause of the pain was still between our hands. Tears poured out of my eyes as I pressed my fingers even more fiercely into the back of his hand.
Looking up, I saw my mother chant her prayer with a murderous expression. More storms were above us now; bolts of lightning rippled through black clouds that were pregnant with rain. Still I clutched Brody’s hand. The skin of my hand, and his hand, was melting into an indelible scar. Rain started to fall.
‘I won’t leave him!’ I screamed at Taika Salainen.
She just smiled. Her hair was flowing out behind her, amber curls bouncing at her shoulders. She was young and ancient, wise and naive. Blue magic crackled over my body and Brody’s as I kept my hand pressed into the pendant.
My mother saw what I was doing. She nodded to herself. A word howled out of her mouth that I could not understand.
Then a whoosh, a snatching. I felt blood spray from my hand – it had been ripped out of Brody’s and now I was falling – or flying, I couldn’t tell. My body was thrown through darkness and shredded into pieces. I tried to scream as invisible razors tore me to ribbons. The forest and the bombs and Brody were replaced by a pure, hurtling nothingness, an engulfing blackness. My body was atomised, and every atom was pain. I was racing through air, taken apart … a scream wouldn’t come.
Then the rush stopped. The pain remained only as an echo, but my torn hand was bleeding and I had a faint but growing sensation that I was going to be sick. I was dripping with sweat, and I was shaking even as I tried to decide whether I had the strength to throw up. I didn’t think I could manage getting to my feet.
/> I was naked on a pine floor.
I was naked on a pine floor. It smelled like pine oil and dust and someone was looking at me.
I was shaking. When I went to rub my head, a stringy chunk of hair fell from my scalp. Touching my head again, another clump fell. And another. I was sobbing. I was naked. I was covered in sweat. I touched my arm and my arm hairs fell out under my own touch.
‘Mitä vittua?’
It was said by the person looking at me, but it was not said to me. My eyes were watering but I saw a blond boy, with a round face, staring at my naked, hair-shedding body. I cried again. ‘Mitä vittua!’ he repeated.
The room smelled like smoke and pine caskets. I was lying on a pine floor, sure, but one that had a circle a few metres wide painted on it – a circle containing a five-pointed star. Some kinds of herbs were burning in the background. I shuddered, unable to control my tears.
‘Where am I?’ I asked, crying.
‘Joutsa,’ the boy said.
‘I don’t know what that means!’ I cried.
‘Joutsa, it’s a place,’ said the boy. He had a light voice I didn’t expect, and an accent I couldn’t quite recognise.
‘Where?’
‘A little bit north,’ said the boy, coming towards me, pulling a stub of tissues from his pocket.
I couldn’t lift my hand to take them, the heavy curtain of my consciousness was falling.
‘You’re in …’ said the boy, looking worried. ‘You’re in Finland.’
Acknowledgments
A book is a collective effort no matter whose name is emblazoned on the front of it, and as this is also my first book it is appropriate to acknowledge the amount of help I have had bringing it to publication. Firstly, I have to thank my Australian agent, Nellie Flannery, who nurtured the project, and Claire Craig, Catherine Day, Julia Stiles, Joel Naoum and everyone else at Pan Macmillan who laboured over the pages to bring it to fruition. While writing and revising I had the blessing of a reading group who inspired and encouraged the manuscript at each stage of its evolution: Emily Finlay, the Incomparable Ug, Samira Lloyd, Jessica Moore, Ann Wodinski, Arcadia Lyons, Shalane Connors, Jenni Medway, Adam Ford, Robert Reid, Jimmy Andrews, Feargus Manning, Hellen Reynolds, Peter Anderson, Jen Fitzgerald, Liz Humphrys, Elena O’Curry, Elliot Clifford, Alexandra Holmes-Storey, Mark Barrett and my gorgeous cousin, Lauren Jarvis.
Meri Harli, Esther Rocket, Hayley Katzen and Julie Wheatley were my companions at Varuna, where I completed significant chunks of the book while on retreat, and I am grateful to the Varuna Writers’ Centre in New South Wales not merely for the comfort of its accommodation but for the wonderful society of writers it provides.
Anu, Heidi and Kirsti Vilkman, Janne Tukiainen and Toivo Tukianen Vilkman I love like family, and not merely because they do on-the-spot Finnish translations.
I gratefully acknowledge my mum and dad for their ongoing support, as well as Tamara Kappeller and Amy Hardingham, who were forced to listen to me give great recitations of plot details – often while trapped at restaurant corner tables or in cars. Corinne Heskett and Louise Ling helped me to remember the necessary bits of high school that I had tried to block out. Daniel Willis and the girls of the Chelsea Cocktail Society (Tabitha Langton-Lockton, Lizzie Baggaley and Rhiannon Spurgeon, that means you) have kept me sane on a day-to-day basis.
Finally, I acknowledge the contribution of Super Mega Boyfriend, Hamilton Richardson, who has read every page, overlooked every correction, and patiently provided many, many cups of tea.