Magic or Madness (32 page)

Then I fainted.

It was hours before I discovered that Josh Davidson was dead. An aneurism, they thought. The blood in his head had lumped together, had stopped the oxygen getting to his brain.

Had I made his blood do that?

I didn’t ask Sarafina, but that night we left. Not just the town but the state—we went all the way across the country, as far as we could get. No more school for me.

We never talked about it, but after that, Sarafina’s warnings about not losing my temper came even more often. Without explanation.

I know now. I stopped that boy’s blood. I killed him.

I’m magic, like my mother, but she never told me. She didn’t tell me that if I lose my temper, people might die. She never told me that if I don’t use my magic, I’ll go mad, like her. Or that if I do use it, I’ll most likely die before I turn twenty. She never told me to choose between magic or madness.

Sarafina didn’t tell me anything.

Sarafina didn’t look any different.
She sat on one of the biggest of the ugly brown couches, still and silent, more statue than human, wearing the same white terry-towelling robe she had on last time I saw her. Only a week ago, I realised.

I wondered when time would come right again. Ever since Sarafina had tried to kill herself, it had been running either too fast or too slow. Right now it was 11 AM, but my body was convinced it was night time.

Jet lag, Tom had called it—then he’d laughed and said, “
Door
lag, really. We went by door, not jet. You get used to it. Jay-Tee and me are already on Sydney time on account of we didn’t sleep away two whole days like you did.”

They hadn’t seemed so over it when I’d slipped out of the house, though. Jay-Tee had been sound asleep and Tom nowhere in sight. I doubted I was the only one still
door
-lagged.

The visiting room at Kalder Park was much more crowded than it had been a week ago, and hotter. The two ceiling fans didn’t turn quite true and made more noise than cool air. Visitors and patients were dotted about the room, twenty-five of the first, nineteen of the latter, easy to tell apart.

Sarafina was sitting next to a much older woman with grey hair and strange, jerky movements who was trying to explain to her daughter (at least I imagined she was the woman’s daughter) why Thursdays, not Mondays, were the best days for visits. It had something to do with the way
t
’s and
h
’s sounded together. Her voice was loud, carrying around the room, her cheeks red and damp. She looked exactly the way I’d always imagined a crazy person would.

Sarafina didn’t look up or smile when I squeezed in beside her on the couch; her expression stayed blank and distant. I’d half expected her to tell me that I’d changed. She said nothing. She looked so much like Esmeralda. But I could see no resemblance between her and Jason Blake. It was hard to believe he was her father, my grandfather. Why hadn’t she told me about him?

I reached into the hip pocket of my new pants, specially made for me by Tom, feeling for my ammonite. Just as my fingers touched nothing I remembered that I’d left it on the other side of the door, in New York City. I hoped Danny had picked it up.

Jay-Tee had called Danny yesterday. She’d chatted away with her brother for what seemed like hours, but I hadn’t gotten to talk to him. It hadn’t occurred to Jay-Tee that I’d want to. And Danny hadn’t asked for me. I could call him later, when Sydney and New York time lined up properly, but I was too embarrassed.

Still, it was only Monday. I’d last seen Danny on Thursday. No,
not
Thursday. That had been in New York City; it’d been Friday here in Sydney. It was three days since I’d last seen or spoken to him. I’d been asleep for almost two of those days, recovering from battling Jason Blake with magic. Maybe Danny had asked after me and Jay-Tee had forgotten to pass it on.

Did magic affect time? I’d first arrived in Sydney on Sunday afternoon and here it was, Monday, just eight days later, and yet so much had happened—I’d learned that magic was real, stepped through a door to another country, discovered other people with magic, made friends, met Danny, discovered what it is to be truly, truly cold.
Far
too much had happened in such a short amount of time—just eight days!

My world wasn’t spinning on the same axis anymore. The rules of physics had been broken. Magic was real.

The grey-haired woman’s daughter leaned forward to nod at me briefly before turning her attention back to her loud, unstill mother.

I stared at Sarafina’s profile, counting the freckles—thirty-eight of them—on the side of her nose. I followed the line of her gaze: out the window, down to the bay, where fifteen white-sailed boats floated on the sparkling water. Did she see any of it? Her eyes were glazed over, vacant.

Just two weeks ago Sarafina’s eyes had been alive, full of plans. We had been on the road together, had just decided to go to Nevertire because the name made us giggle. She hadn’t been sad, hadn’t gotten all obsessive, insisting she count every star or wash her hands fifty-five times in a row. None of the usual signs that she was about to lose it. But then, she’d never lost herself so completely. She’d never tried to kill herself before.

It shocked me all over again how unlike Sarafina she seemed. She’d never been a still person. Sarafina was always in motion, her face showing exactly what she was thinking. I looked at her now and saw no thought at all. It was as if she had stopped thinking, had run down and become still. All motion gone. Sarafina gone.

I tried to think of what to say. If I said,
I know about magic
, would that jerk her back to life? Not that I could say it with those two women so close by. They’d think I was one of the patients. Besides, it was hardly the best way to break the news. What if Sarafina lost it again?

A trickle of sweat ran down my back. “Hot, isn’t it?” I said, just to be saying something. “At least there’s some breeze off the bay.”

“They never open the windows,” the jerky woman said, turning to look at me. Her voice was so loud I flinched. I was glad Sarafina sat between us; white, bubbly spittle formed at the corners of the strange woman’s mouth, and specks flew as she spoke. “The breeze isn’t allowed in. They want us to boil.”

Every window was open wide.

She tried to lean closer to me. “Did they do that to your eye?” I put my hand to my still-bruised face and shook my head. “Did they put their needles right into your eyeball?”

“Mum, hush. Leave the girl alone.” The daughter leaned forward, pulling her mother towards her, and grimaced at me—though I was sure it was meant to be a smile. She looked very tired. “Sorry, love.”

Sarafina wasn’t hot. My mother always stayed cool when everyone else was warm. In that way, she was still the Sarafina I had always known.

I blurred my vision until I could see inside her, down to where nothing was still, to the pumping of her heart, the blood rushing through her veins, the acid roiling in her stomach, the movement of her intestines. I could see her cells, every single one of them. Hear the roller-coaster movements in every part of her, like the ocean in a storm.

Governing it all was Sarafina’s pattern with its graphic confirmation that yes, Jason Blake was my grandfather. I could see both grandparents, Esmeralda and Jason Blake, in her, traces of their DNA. Like theirs, her pattern was woven through with magic.
There
in every part of her—in her cells, in the molecules that made up every cell. The magic smelled earthy, like rich black soil, but unlike my grandparents’ magic, unlike Jay-Tee’s, there was no taste of rust. In its place under my tongue was a sharp sourness, like an unripe lemon. The smell made my eyes water.

Sarafina finally blinked. The movement pulled my senses back to the surface, where she was still and quiet.

The crazy woman’s daughter hugged her mother, stood up, and said goodbye. Her mother started to cry.

“I’ll be back, I promise.” She glanced at me, embarrassed, and then away again, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “I have to go. I’ll bring your granddaughter next time, I promise.” She left quickly without glancing back. Her mother started to rock back and forth, her cries gradually getting louder. A nurse came to quiet her and led her from the room.

When they were gone, I moved to the other side of Sarafina and screwed up my courage to speak to her. There was so much I wanted to ask. What were the feathers Esmeralda had put under my pillow? What were they supposed to do? How did magic work? How long did I have to live? I wanted to tell her about the letters Esmeralda had slipped under my door—the letters I hadn’t opened, that Esmeralda had stolen back before I could read them. I opened my mouth to say,
I’ve been to New York City
.

But Sarafina spoke first. “You’re hers now, aren’t you?” She wasn’t looking at me. Her tone was flat and even, but her eyes had somehow cleared.

“No. No, I’m not.” I wasn’t sure, though. I was staying under Esmeralda’s roof. I had helped her win the stoush against Jason Blake. She was going to teach me about magic. She had put those black and purple feathers under my pillow. Did all that make me hers?

“Then why are you wearing those pants?”

I looked down at the green pants Tom had made for me, his magic sewn into every seam. I flushed.

“You’re going to die,” Sarafina said. “Soon.”

“Then tell me what you know,” I said, trying to sound brave, though I felt ill. “Tell me what I can do. I don’t trust Esmeralda. But at least she’ll tell me how magic works. If I’m going to fix this, I need you to help me.”

“There’s no fix. You die or you end up here. This is better.”

I didn’t believe that for a second. There had to be a way, a path that didn’t lead to madness or early death. I was going to find it. I opened my mouth to tell her.

Instead, a question bubbled out. “Why did you lie to me?” Sarafina closed her eyes, then opened them. Turned to look at me—
really
look at me—for the first time since she’d tried to kill herself. “I never lied.”

“But magic
is
real. I’ve seen—”

“I was trying to make it unreal by denying it. I wasn’t lying.”

“But what about all those things you told me? You said there was no electricity in her house. There is. That she sacrificed babies—”

“I never lied.”

“What are the black and purple feathers for? What do they do? How much danger am I in?”

But Sarafina was gone, her eyes filmed over again with the drugs they’d given her. The unripe lemon taste filled my mouth, and something sharp and jolting filled my nostrils. I gagged, my eyes watering, as I realised what it was: I could taste and smell my mother’s madness.

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