Disharmony (18 page)

Luke was praying that people would have to use the toilet tonight. A lot of people. But so far, everything was quiet. Just another night. He sighed and shoved at the lock-pick set, trying to manoeuvre the spiky pieces of metal through three layers of fabric.

From the back of the dorm, he heard a faint groan and movement. He turned his head slightly on the pillow. Jason Taylor was standing by his bed, his plastered arm in a sling.

It’s probably nothing, Luke told himself. He was used to doing that: playing down any hopes that others would come through; it saved time feeling disappointed later. Just because Zac had assured him he’d laced the tea tonight with his powdered mushrooms, it didn’t mean a) that he’d actually done it and b) that anything would come of it, even if he had.

And then there was another urgent rustle of bedsheets from Section One.

They’d had the tea first. This time, it was Adam Friar on his feet by his bed, fidgeting. On his podium up the front, Luke saw Holt give a nod, and Jason Taylor walked up the aisle. Fast. Another groan, and more movement from Section One. Like others around him, Luke sat up to check it out. At the back of the dorm, five more boys stood by their beds. Tua Palau sat on the edge of his bed, holding his gut and rocking.

‘Oh God, I’ve got to go now, sir!’ Adam Friar suddenly broke ranks and began to jog up the aisle.

‘Friar! Back to your bed!’ Holt was now on his feet, torch in hand. He moved towards the steps of the raised platform at the front of the room. Friar froze midway up the aisle, gripping his hands around his stomach, bent forward, moaning. Rustling, stamping and moaning noises now bounced around the room, and Luke grinned as he saw kids from Sections Two and Three now standing restlessly by their beds.

‘Okay, Friar. You can go.’ Holt stood in the middle of the room now. He bellowed out orders. ‘Friar, return immediately when done, and tell Taylor to get his arse back here right now.’

Tua Palau began shuffling towards Holt, his hand over his mouth.

‘Sir –’ he tried.

‘Just get back –’ said Holt, holding out an arm.

Too late. Palau’s hand relinquished its role as gatekeeper, and he projectile-vomited over the Dorm Master.

Dorm Four erupted.

Section One was empty now; all of them had sprinted for the toilet block at the front of the building. Toad Wheeler, last from the back of the room, bolted past Luke’s bed, his eyes wild with worry. All around the dorm boys abandoned their
beds and the rules, ignoring Holt, who now looked as green as most of them. Holt had his radio out and was shouting into it, calling for back-up. But Luke knew it’d be a while coming. Almost everyone in Dwight had drunk the tea tonight. With no Coke, chocolate or dessert, hot, sweet, milky tea was something everyone craved. Including the screws. With only four on duty tonight and at least a ten-minute drive from the cop shop, Luke knew he and Zac now had a shot. He threw back his covers and stumbled from his bed, clutching his stomach. The rest of Section Six sat blinking in their pyjamas at the edge of their beds. Jonas, Kitkat, Barry and Hong Lo each called to him as he moved past.

‘Are you all right, Black?’

‘What’s going on, Luke?’

‘Told you not to drink the tea,’ he said in a low voice as he made his way past them. He threw them a quick wave when he reached the inner dorm doors.

Zac was waiting. So was half of Dorm Four, spilling out of the shower and toilet block. The smells, sounds and sights surrounding them almost made Luke’s stomach turn as well.

‘This way,’ he said to Zac.

He led them quickly past the shower block and into the TV room. Although he was certain no one was watching them, he stayed close to the walls. He made it to the main House doors and reached under his pyjama bottoms and into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out the bent nail and filed piece of metal, and leaned down to the lock on the door.

‘They’ll send someone over here soon,’ said Zac. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

Luke inserted the nail and file into the lock. ‘You know I need to concentrate to do this,’ he said.

He narrowed his focus and sharpened his thoughts into a tight beam and sent them with his tools inside the barrel of the lock. By touch – by slight changes in the vibrations at the tips of his fingers – he found the five tiny pins inside the barrel. He closed his eyes and saw them there. Softly, gently, he rubbed the rake in a minute scrubbing motion backwards and forwards across the pins until he felt the stiffness of their springs yield. Three of them popped backwards, open. Two to go. He tickled them, and then scrubbed harder, but they were sticky in the old lock. He switched to his torque – the nail – twisted it slightly and pushed. Click. The lock engaged. He smiled up at Zac, cracked the doorhandle and stole out into the night. He headed straight for the shadows.

‘Where are you going?’ hissed Zac, skidding to a stop next to him by the bushes on the road opposite the dorm. ‘It’s faster to get to the gates that way.’

‘Detour,’ said Luke. ‘We’re going to Admin.’

‘What? Are you mad?’

Luke ignored Zac’s hisses behind him and ran quietly, crouched low, along the bushes that flanked the main quadrangle. Dorm Four was furthest from the Admin block and they had to run past each of the other Houses along the way. All lights were on in the Dorm blocks, but there was no one walking the road between them. But as they approached Dorm One, the door swung open and Mr Singh stood framed in the glow from within. Luke hit the dirt. Zac was there first. They breathed quietly.

‘Matron will be in Admin,’ whispered Zac. ‘We can’t go there.’

‘No, she’ll come here,’ said Luke. ‘She must have had the tea too, or she would have been here ages ago. Look.’

Along the path ahead of them a torch beam bobbed into sight.

‘She’s got her work cut out for her,’ said Zac.

‘Don’t worry, she’ll call for an ambulance once she hits Dorm One.’

‘Well, that’s comforting,’ said Zac.

They watched Matron move into the circle of light at Dorm One. She and Singh had a rapid conversation and they entered the building.

‘Let’s go,’ said Luke.

They bolted across a boggy, grassed patch, exposed in the moonlight. Zac was first to the back door of the Admin building and Luke pushed past him, his pick set ready.

‘Move over, you oaf,’ said Zac, squeezing an arm past Luke. He tried the doorhandle and it opened. Matron had been too sick or too rushed to worry about re-locking it.

Luke raised his eyebrows and grinned. They were in.

‘Okay, now tell me. What are we doing here? We’re going to get caught.’ Zac was still whispering, but Luke was almost positive they were alone in here. He knew the staff roster inside out. Besides, he couldn’t sense anyone. The corridor was dimly lit. He headed straight for the main office. For a fraction of a second he paused at the doorway and then walked inside. He moved quickly to the wall of filing cabinets.

‘I want my file,’ he said. ‘You want yours – you’d better grab it now.’

‘Why would I want it?’ hissed Zac. ‘What are you wasting your time with this for?’

‘I need to know who I am,’ said Luke. ‘I need to know what everyone else seems to know.’

The very last of the midsummer festivals. A night of forest sprites, faeries and elves. Of love spells. Luck charms. Gifts for the Goddesses. An intoxicating, fire-filled, bewitching night.

This year, for the first year ever, Samantha wasn’t into it.

All day, just like every year since she’d turned five and become Lala’s apprentice, she’d helped Lala to prepare for the evening. Just as she’d guessed, at breakfast Lala had relented and told her that, despite the dramas of the past two days, she could participate, as long as she stuck to her like glue and performed only the standard spells.

And that’s when Samantha had felt deflated by the whole event. The standard spells. Her heart ached with the sudden realisation that the standard spells didn’t actually seem to
do
anything. Tonight, she, Lala and maybe thirty other Roma witches from around Pantelimon would gather at the river’s edge bearing seeds, flowers, honey, nuts and fruits; beaded and silver amulets; live chickens; a dagger and heavy cauldron; and hundreds and hundreds of candles. All year long, the people of Pantelimon had paid each of them in cash, services and goods to tonight perform rituals that would
ensure business growth, pregnancy, freedom from illness, and love.

Especially love. Because late summer was when the faeries were most drunk on love, feverish with desire, open to assisting mere mortals to share in some of their happiness. All they required were a few special incantations and offerings. Some standard spells.

But Samantha had never seen a faerie. Nor a forest sprite or elf. In ten years, she’d never even sensed anything else out here at midnight under the full moon by the river. And despite the midsummer spells, each year the people of the village always seemed to go on dying and divorcing, declaring pregnancies, bankruptcies and infidelities, whether or not they’d paid for a witch’s aid. Where something ill befell them and they had not consulted the gypsies – well, there you have it. You had your chance, you blew it. And when they had paid a witch for luck and good health and these things had not come to pass, they believed that the curse upon their family must have been too ancient and too powerful, and that they should have listened when their witch told them that more money was required – yet again – to finalise the rituals. Most people in Pantelimon didn’t have an endless supply of money. And the handful who did were either a few blessed Roma witches themselves or, like the gypsy king, they kept a fleet of these consultants to hand.

But Samantha knew that the king’s wealth would certainly not last forever. No, the king’s empire would crumble very soon. The cards had told her that. And she’d warned him.

In the grass by the riverbed, listlessly weaving a wreath of ivy and flowers to float out with the other blessings, Sam thought about that hot afternoon in the caravan.

Unlike tonight by the river, then she’d sensed something Other. More than just the spirits within her cards. Something dark had been there too. And then there was the buttery light she’d conjured somehow and used on Scarface and Milosh. These happenings appeared real, but no one had ever explained them to her or seemed to be able to do the same thing.

Questions about where she came from arose again. Maybe someone in her birth family could explain why she was able to do these things? She slapped the thought away, furious with herself. Every time she thought about the people who’d abandoned her at birth, it felt as though she’d as good as spat in Lala’s face.

She shifted in the grass and yawned, heavy with fatigue. She’d been awake since three that morning, but she couldn’t relax. Nothing had felt the same since the king had visited the camp. And then there was Scarface and the shootout. A nagging tug of worry tightened the back of her neck. She stretched it from side to side to try to loosen it, to shake the feeling of dread. She tried to regain her sense of wonder in this evening. Fifty metres behind her, darkness waited, but here, along the winding riverbank, it seemed that midnight had laid a tablecloth of stars over the grass. Candles and lanterns blinked and winked, pinpricks of fire paying homage to their leader – the roaring bonfire in the centre of them all.

Next to her, Lala crooned softly, singing the spell-songs she’d taught Samantha since she’d been in the cradle. Some of the other gypsies were equally devout, bent over rafts bearing gifts, their lips moving soundlessly as they prayed. But many more of the women were less serene; they shouted in laughter, slurped from goblets, punched plumes of cigarette smoke
into the night. Samantha watched as one of the wealthiest witches in Pantelimon, Violka Dragos, rose from the cluster of others fawning around her and lurched sideways, directly into a platter of candles. The molten wax caught the hem of her ribboned skirt and a corner of fabric flared orange with flame. Violka shrieked with laughter as one of the witches doused the fire with wine and then stumbled over to gossip with another group.

Samantha knew what they gossiped about. They made sure of it. She heard snatches of their whispers blowing down-wind with the candle smoke.

She’s ruining our business and she’s not even Roma … You know that they call her the Gaje Princess – stolen by the gypsies! It’s an insult … Have you heard that the king has fallen in love with her? … I’ve been told that she does a little bit more than read cards when she closes the doors of that flea-bitten caravan, if you know what I mean. Why do you think she is so popular? … She’s a fraud! She can’t even read the cards properly … I’ll be casting a special spell for her this enchanted evening, don’t you worry about that … Well, I’ll be doing a little more than casting a spell. I’m going to take this further. We can’t have Gaje harlots pretending to be respectable Roma witches …

The volume of Lala’s singing increased as she tried to block out their words, but Samantha didn’t miss the grief and worry emanating from her. She stopped weaving and placed her hand over Lala’s, willing her peace and calm. Lala raised dark, wet eyes and smiled sadly. A tear found a pathway through a crevice in her weather-ravaged cheeks.

‘I love you, my kitten,’ she said.

‘I love you too, Lala. Thank you for saving me.’

‘I haven’t saved you yet, my child.’

Samantha bowed her face back to her work to ensure her tears could not be seen by the crones on the riverbank. She told herself that the anxiety she felt welling inside her was just the fear from her Lala, residue emotion that always found its way to her heart.

Tonight, she knew she was lying.

‘Look,’ said Mirela. ‘We have to go. How can we not go? It’s the Carnivale!’

‘Yes, I do realise the Carnivale is on tonight,’ said Samantha. ‘It
is
only the coolest thing that happens all year. And I haven’t forgotten that we’ve both been counting the days since spring.’ She turned another page of her novel, and spoke into the book. ‘And then there’s the fact that you’ve been blathering on about it all week.’