I thought about my grandmother’s plan, about trying to find out where the old man had come from by following the trail of his scent. He reeked much more strongly than his little golem, so Esmeralda figured it should be a lot easier to follow him.
I wasn’t quite so sure, but at least there was a plan now. I stopped on a channel that played loud music while a girl in tight black pants and a top that hung off her shoulders and barely covered her breasts jumped onto the hood of a battered car and waved her arms around. Her lips were moving as if she were singing, though the voice sounded more like a man’s than a woman’s.
There were so many words said so fast that they all jumbled into one another. I wasn’t sure if the song was in English or not. I think I heard baby and love, but those were the only words I understood. All around her were piles of rubble and crumbling buildings. Everything was grey and cold-looking except the girl with her brown skin, orange hair, and unnaturally blue eyes, and the sky, which was the same plastic blue.
I thought about how the old man had smelled; my stomach tightened. If I were going to track him, I’d have to remember it perfectly. He smelled like the golem thing in the house, but more intense.
The girl on the television jumped from the hood of the car to the top of the tallest crumbling building—an impossible distance. From the top of the building, you could see green hills.
More intense, because not only did the smell make me chunder, but somehow it managed to curl around me, insinuate its way into my body. Was that because he was related to me? Because he was a Cansino? But so was the golem thing, just not as much as he was. The golem was merely a copy, I decided. He was the original.
8
Danny came through the door loaded up with shopping bags, talking into his mobile phone. “Call you later,” he said as the lift closed behind him. “Yeah, me, too.” He pressed a but-ton on the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. “Christmas time!” he called out.
“Yay! Pressies!” I jumped off the couch and ran over to him, regretting my hasty movements instantly. I was dazed. I’d been lost in television land, and here I suddenly was in the real world, only it was hazy, not as distinct as television land. I blinked slowly, trying to clear the haze.
“You okay, Reason?”
“Yep. Just fine.”
He handed me seven different bags, all of them overflowing. I’d never been given so many presents before (I wasn’t counting the books and pyjamas in my room at Esmeralda’s—those weren’t presents, those were bribes). For my birthday and for Christmas Sarafina only ever gave me one, but it was always perfect: an ammonite, a compass, an atlas.
When I was eleven she’d given me Darwin’s The Origin of Species. It had taken me a while to get used to how it was written, so old-fashioned and roundabout, but natural selection, evolution—amazing. There were thousands of fossils in the outback, every step we’d take, practically, and we’d feel history going crunch under our feet.
Sarafina had found my ammonite in the Kimberleys, hundreds of kilometres from the sea. And yet once—millions of years ago—the stone had been a shell, home to a creature that might have resembled a cuttlefish. It had once lived in a straight shell—but slowly it evolved, becoming a spiral-shelled creature.
I wondered how magic had evolved. What had been its straight shell? Where had it come from? What was being selected for? Were humans the only ones with the trait? Surely it must be an evolutionary dead end? How far could you go with genes that drove you to madness or death?
“You like?” Danny asked.
“Wow,” I said, peering into the bags and seeing blues and blacks. T-shirts, jeans, lots of woolen things, three shoe-shaped boxes. I could barely hold it all. “There’s so much. You didn’t have to buy this much!”
Danny shrugged. “I got the money, you know? Why not? I figured it was better to give you some choices. I bought you this, too.” He pulled a small box out of his jacket pocket.
I opened it. A watch. Digital, with a black face and bright blue digits. The strap was blue, too.
“So you don’t have to keep asking me what time it is.”
I hugged him. “Ta heaps, Danny!”
“Go get changed.” Danny grinned and saluted me. “Make sure you have lots of layers.”
“No worries. Jay-Tee taught me how you dress for the cold.”
Danny raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at my dirty pyjamas. I giggled.
8
He’d bought me four pairs of jeans, six normal T-shirts and four long-sleeved ones, three jumpers, eight pairs of socks, underpants and bras (which sort of made me blush—Danny had touched my underwear! Sarafina would not have been impressed), a huge coat, two pairs of gloves, two scarves, and a knitted blue-and-black hat. So much! And all of it fantastic. How had he chosen so well? There was nothing little-girlie or stupid.
I chose a pair of black jeans that were a size too big, transferred my ammonite from my hand into the right pocket. I pulled on a blue T-shirt with the word Forever written in red, also too big. Was that a message from Danny? And if it was—what was for forever? Or had he liked the way it was lettered—kind of scribbled, almost falling over? I liked it.
The next layer was a black long-sleeved T-shirt that had a hood. Then a blue woollen jumper. I pulled the hood from the long-sleeved T-shirt so that it hung outside the jumper. Then I pinned Esmeralda’s brooch on the front.
I put on black socks and opened the three boxes of shoes. One was a pair of boots lined with sheepskin. The other two were fancy sneakers. A red-white-and-blue pair covered in stars, and then the best pair of sneakers I’d ever seen. I pulled them on. They were the first things to fit right. Just as well, I thought. Shoes that don’t fit are way more of a problem than too-big jeans and T-shirts.
The shoes were the deep blue of the sky in the desert when there’s a full moon. Almost, but not quite black. Silver streaks ran down the sides as if the sneakers were ready to take off. They made me feel like I could run faster than anyone else in the world. Faster than Jay-Tee even. Or that I could if I wasn’t going to die so soon.
I pushed the thought away, grabbed the big blue coat.
“It all fits?” Danny asked. “Hmmm, well, sort of. You’re littler than I remembered. How about the shoes? At least they should fit. One of the girls in the store, her foot matched the outline of yours exactly, so I made her try on all the shoes. Lucky, hey?”
“Very.” I could imagine all the girls in the shop going out of their way to help Danny. If I worked there, I would, too.
“Clothes seem okay,” he said, looking at me. “Even too big and all.”
“They’re perfect. Thank you.” I gave him a big hug and he returned it. I could feel his strong hands on my back. A warmth spread all the way to my soles. “Let’s go,” I said. “I’m starting to get hot.”
Danny nodded. “Winter’s all about being too cold when you’re outside and too hot inside. You can’t win. Have you got your gloves? Scarf? Hat?”
“Oops!” I dashed back to Jay-Tee’s room and scrabbled about for them. So much stuff to wear! Then I thought about that bitter cold and wrapped the scarf firmly around my neck.
8
We took a taxicab because Danny said it was too cold to walk all that way and we’d be walking around enough once we got there. It took ages to get a cab. They kept sailing by, even though Danny stuck his arm out and waved like crazy.
On the way we decided that we’d begin three blocks from the door and walk until I picked up the old man’s scent, without getting close enough for him to spot us.
We’d walked blocks, and Danny’s phone had rung five times (but not once from Sydney) before I smelled the old man for the first time. I stopped and inhaled. There in the midst of traffic fumes and cigarette smoke, I caught the tiniest hint of burnt rubber and acid—essence of old man Cansino, but not enough to turn my stomach.
It was coming from the same restaurant Jay-Tee had taken me for breakfast a week ago, when I’d
first stumbled through the door between Sydney and New York City; when I’d no clue where I was and Jay-Tee’d been working for Jason Blake. It felt strange being back here. I wasn’t exactly who I had been that day. Neither was Jay-Tee. The world had shifted on its axis several more times since then.
“The smell’s coming from in there.”
“You’re sure?” Danny asked.
“Yes.” It was faint but definitely there. I pulled the coat Danny had bought me tighter, glad of it in the cold, and of the hat and gloves. I glanced at my gorgeous new shoes. The jeans were fine, too, though they kept slipping down too far on my hips, and I couldn’t help comparing them with the wondrous pants Tom had made me. None of the clothes, not even the shoes, fit me the way those pants did. I wished I had them here. I bet Tom’s magic would make them work as well in this cold weather as they had in the Sydney heat.
“Can you go and check on the old man? See what he’s up to? Esmeralda seems to think that he won’t have much interest in anyone who isn’t full of magic.” That’s what my grandmother said, but I wondered if the old man could sense that Danny had been near a magic-wielder.
“Check for what, exactly?”
“What he’s doing. Is he still just standing there, leaning against the door? Or does he seem to be doing something?”
“Okay, then.” Danny didn’t sound convinced it was the best plan in the world. “I’ll meet you back in here. Once you’ve finished sniffing around, grab a table and order something. Don’t go too far.”
I nodded and pulled open the door. “Be careful.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I thought he wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“Esmeralda says not.”
“No need to be careful, then?”
“I don’t think he’s stupid, though. If you stand there gawking, he’s going to think something’s up. He’s dangerous.” I thought of what I had done to Josh Davidson. “He can hurt you.”
“True enough. You be careful, too.”
“Of course.”
As he walked off to do his recce, I heard the fragment of song that meant his phone was ringing again. His life was ringing. That phone was where Danny’s many friends lived. If he hadn’t been rescuing me, helping me, he’d be doing other things, spending time with other people. Whereas me, well, I had exactly four friends in all the world: my mother, Tom, Jay-Tee, and Danny. And I’d only just met three of them. Would Danny still be friends with me when he didn’t have to look after me?
Inside the restaurant I was assailed by the smell of freshly baked cakes and breads, hanging heavy in the air, slow-cooking meats, the lumpy brown soup a man was sipping from a cardboard cup as he pushed past me out onto the street, detergent, sweat, steam. I lost the faint trace of the old man.
I walked further into the restaurant, past the counter and the kitchen, closer to the other entrance. The scent of Mr Cansino curled past my nose, making bile rise in my throat. There and then gone. I stopped, breathing deeply, trying to catch the elusive foul smell again. Gone.
“You want table?” a waitress asked in an accent I didn’t recognise. “Seat yourself,” she continued before I could respond. She pointed at a sign with those words written on it and then walked away.
The smell wafted past me again, just outside the two dunnies. I went into the nearest one.
Inside I smelled antiseptic, soap, toilet water, and the lingering smell of the last person’s visit. Since I was there I went to the loo myself, adding the smell of my pee to the mix. If the scent of the old man was in here, it was completely lost in everything else. I flushed and washed my hands with the strange foamy soap that came out of the wall yet didn’t lather. It left my hands feeling oddly dry and itchy.
Outside the toilet my stomach contracted. I smelled him again. I took a step towards the other toilet door, and the acid and burnt rubber started to slide away again. I stepped back. The smell was still there. I took a step away, closer to the exit with its smells from the street outside, and of the food conveyed from kitchen to table. It started to fade again. I moved back towards the loos.
Right here between the two toilet doors, next to the metal stand loaded with postcards. This was where I could smell him most strongly, where I most strongly wanted to chuck. I tilted my head up, wondering if the smell was coming from a vent. It was no stronger or weaker. I knelt down. I had to press my hand to my mouth and concentrate to keep from bringing the spag bol back up. There was a crack about ten centimetres long on the linoleum checked floor. It wasn’t wide, no more than two or three millimetres, but it looked deep.
“Can I help you, miss?” a waiter asked. He was holding a jug of water and looking at me as if I were mad. “You drop something?” He had the same accent as the waitress. Not American like Danny. Something else.
“Um,” I said between my teeth. “I’m fine.” I stood up and walked over to an empty table. The smell vanished. The first waitress came by, slapping a glass of water and a menu down. I guzzled the water, hoping to rinse the taste of him away. When the waitress returned I ordered hot chocolate, not at all sure I’d be able to stomach it.
On the floor near the restroom the smell had been so strong. Was it somehow in the floor? Coming from underneath? I had no idea how I was going to get down there. And if I did, how was I going to keep from chundering every two seconds?
The waitress sloshed the hot chocolate down on the table in front of me. Maybe it would settle my stomach. I took a sip and almost spat it out. Too hot. I blew on it. Then sipped again. It tasted awful, like vomit and burnt rubber. The smell of him was coating my mouth.
Danny came in, talking on his phone. He said goodbye, slid into the chair opposite me. “You okay? You look green.”
I screwed up my face. “I’m fine. His smell is kind of foul.”
“That sucks, having to track by a smell that makes you want to hurl.”
“Can we not talk about it?”
“Sure. Sorry. There wasn’t anyone there.”
“There wasn’t? No one?” If the old man wasn’t there, I could go back to Sydney, call Esmeralda and walk back through the door. But I wanted to stay here, with Danny. At least for a little bit.
Danny shook his head. “Nope. No one.”
“Can you call Australia on your mobile?”
“My phone?”
I nodded. “Can you call Jay-Tee? Right now?”
“Sure.” Danny dug out his phone and pressed a few of the keys and handed it to me.
Esmeralda answered; she sounded tired. She must be. I doubted any of them had gone back to sleep after I’d been sucked through the door. Come to think of it, I hadn’t slept since yesterday (Sydney’s yesterday). I pushed back layers to look at my watch. It was 4:33 PM here, so 8:33 AM there. I wondered if my grandmother had decided to take the day off work.
“It’s me, Reason.”
“Hello, Reason. Have you found something?”
“Sort of. Danny walked along Seventh Street, and he says the old man isn’t there anymore.”
“Really? That’s interesting, because the door on this side is perfectly still.”
“Huh. You think the door only goes crazy when he’s nearby?”
“It’s a possibility. Are you close? Can you go around and check that he’s not there? Cautiously? If he is there, I don’t want you to set him off again.”
“We’re not far,” I said, though I really didn’t want to risk seeing the old man again—it was bad enough following his vomitous trail.
“Go back, see if he’s there, but stay on the phone.”
“Okay.” I put my hand over the receiver. “She wants us to check the door.” I took my hand away. “If he isn’t there,” I asked my grandmother, “what then? I mean, if I go back to Sydney, aren’t we back to where we started?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll get you back here somehow, Reason. I promise.”
13
Magic Lies
Tom went home. All the cells of his body had turned
into concrete. Walking was harder than running had been. He ached. His body wanted him to lie down and sleep in the street. He ignored it, kept guiding one foot after the other, over and over, until he was outside his tiny house and his key was in the lock and the door was open, then closed, and he was pulling himself up the stairs, one foot after the other, over and over.
The handle of the door of his bedroom wouldn’t fit right in his hand, kept slipping. It wasn’t a tricky door. He’d never struggled to get it open before. Only when he used both hands would it open and then shut behind him. He pushed the blue gaberdine aside and fell onto his bed.
He was knackered. Like Reason had been when they came back through the door, back from New York City. Like he had been after Mere had drunk from him.
He touched the wool gaberdine, pulling across the grain—it was sturdy but soft. He felt soft but not even faintly sturdy. He was drained. He tried to remember his plans for the fabric. There was so much gaberdine, and it was such a dark blue. Midnight blue, the sales assistant had called it, but midnight in Sydney was never blue.
A coat. It was going to be a coat for Cathy. The least daggy coat in the universe. A long coat, three-quarter length or more. He was going to line it with synthetic fur or maybe quilting or polar fleece, though something that thick might wreck the line. Cotton wool? Spider webs? Something warm. It was going to be cool and warm. Best winter coat ever. For his sister in New York City, where it snowed and people took your magic without asking you.
Tom was so tired. He’d only ever been this tired once before, and then he’d slept a whole day. More, according to his sister’s flatmate. That had been at Cathy’s place, sleeping on her ugly yellow couch, just after Mere had drunk from him.
Mere had drunk from him.
Magic Lessons Page 10