Magic or Madness

by Justine Larbalestier

  I wondered if the wind hadn’t been so wild and loud if I could have heard their shouted conversations. How cold would it have to get before there were no people out? Seemed too cold for life now. But there they were below, in their layers and layers of clothing. Fifty-three of them on this side of the street and thirty-six on the other, all flat out like lizards drinking. Like the people in the restaurant, everyone in this place was in an insane hurry.

  The street was clogged with cars, mostly yellow ones. They drove with their horns permanently blowing. Even over the wind I could hear the constant honking, though I couldn’t see what they thought it would achieve. The cars were stopped because the lights were red. The blast of a horn couldn’t change that. Maybe it just gave them something to do while they waited.

  It really wasn’t Sydney. No bridges, no long unbroken stretches of greenery, no greenery at all, definitely no flying foxes. They’d die in this cold. The wind roared in my ears. My eyes streamed water. I wondered if kidnappers had transported me to some arctic kingdom at the end of the world. Would I see penguins and polar bears if I got outside the city? Was this real at all?

  Something hard hit my side. “Ow!” I turned.

  Jay-Tee stood grinning at me—at least I imagined she was; her mouth was hidden beneath her scarf—something round and white in her hands. She hurled it right at me. I ducked. It hit the railing behind me and exploded in a cloud of white, made the icicles tinkle.

  “What the hell!?”

  Jay-Tee bent, gathered up snow, forming it into a ball in her mittens. I bent and copied her actions. I was so going to get her.

  Wasn’t as easy as it looked, though. Gathering up the snow, I was hampered by the slipperiness of my thick gloves. And the wind kept blowing it out of my hands before I had a chance to pack it together. I mushed together the little I had. My snowball resembled an ice cube more than a ball. I grabbed more, feeling the satisfying crunch as it squished together. I rolled it in my hands into something more spherical. I grinned beneath my scarf and looked up just in time to get a Jay-Tee snowball in the eyes. Just a fraction lower and it would have smacked into my still-tender nose.

  I screamed, blinking snow from my eyes, and hurled my very first snowball, too hard and fast—it zipped over Jay-Tee and exploded against the door. I ducked down and started on my second, faster this time, scooping up a palm full of snow, but with a wary eye out for more Jay-Tee projectiles. She loosed two more, but I ducked and they disappeared over my head. I made more, ducking and shifting away from Jay-Tee’s efforts as I worked. Hard and round they were, about the size of cricket balls.

  Jay-Tee was across the roof diagonally, nearest the door. She had quite a stash. I made as though I was still working on my weaponry, but as soon as she wasn’t looking, I let them loose in rapid succession. Three missed, but the others got her on the head and chest.

  “Yay! Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!” I did a little victory dance, weaving out of the way of two more of Jay-Tee’s snowballs.

  Jay-Tee jumped up and yelled, “Truce!”

  I threw my final effort, my biggest so far. Too big—it fell harmlessly half a metre in front of her.

  “Okay, I said! Can you still feel your face, Reason?”

  “Truce,” I called out, trudging through the snow towards her; it crunched with every step. I could feel my face. It stung.

  “You’ve never done that before, have you?” Jay-Tee asked, pulling me through the door.

  “No,” I shouted above the wind. But then the door closed and my yell echoed, suddenly loud, down the stairs. “No,” I said quietly, still panting a little. “My very first snowballs.”

  “I could tell.” Jay-Tee grinned. “Don’t worry. You’ll get lots of practice. It’s more fun in a park. Especially when it’s not quite as nasty cold. Winds are always worse higher up. Though in a park you’ve got to watch you’re not scooping up more than just snow.”

  “Yuck,” I said, remembering the yellow snow down on the street.

  “Exactly. Throw that in someone’s face and they’re not going to be happy.”

  We both laughed and Jay-Tee held the door back into the hallway open for me. I rubbed my still-damp face. It tingled. The corridor felt oppressively hot. I pulled my wet gloves off, wiping them uselessly on the equally wet surface of my coat. My fingers were pink and tingling, but they didn’t feel like they were going to fall off. “How do you ever get used to this weather? Freezing outside, boiling inside.”

  “You just do. Snow is excellent. Not just snow fights, but snowmen and snow angels. I’ll show you. You’ll like it.” She reached forward and pressed the button and almost instantly the doors of the old, recalcitrant lift opened. Jay-Tee grinned. “She likes you.” Jay-Tee stepped in and pressed the button gently and respectfully.

  “What else is fun for a couple of runaways to do?” I paused to let Jay-Tee know I was teasing, “In the East Village, east of the West Village but west of the East River?”

  “Are you kidding? No school, no parents, no bossy brothers. There isn’t anything we can’t do!” The lift surged into life as if in agreement with Jay-Tee and willing to take us wherever we wanted to go.

  I sighed happily, suddenly so tired I had to slump sideways to rest my head. I let all the anxious and confused thoughts float away. If this was madness, it was still better than where I’d been before. Esmeralda’s house seemed such a long way away.

  My eyes fell on a notice on the wall opposite me: City of New York. Department of Buildings. Elevator Inspections. Then in scribbled handwriting a list of dates and times and initials.

  I was in New York City.

  Magic was real.

  16

  Feathers

  Jay-Tee’s skin prickled. She knew before putting the key in the lock that he wasn’t home, but he’d been here. She opened the apartment door; the smell of him was everywhere: the air shimmered with it, taking away all the sharpness and corners and replacing them with wavering soft edges. Jay-Tee hated it when the apartment was like this.

  Reason leaned heavily against her, a rag doll, not noticing a thing. One minute she’d been full of life, talking a mile a minute, and the next she was practically in a coma, slow moving, stupid again. Hardly able to keep her eyes open. Jay-Tee led Reason to her room, wondering if she’d need help getting into her PJs. He hadn’t told Jay-Tee that she was going to have to be Reason’s maid.

  “You know, you should really try to stay awake. It’s only three. You’ll miss the last hours of daylight.”

  Reason made a noise that could’ve been anything and started struggling out of the down coat. She slipped to the floor and sat there on her ass, pulling at the coat with her head resting against the bed. Her eyes were half closed and her mouth half open. She hadn’t taken her gloves off first. Looked like one of them was caught in the sleeve, still on her hand. Reason kept pulling at the sleeve without moving it or the glove an inch. She probably hadn’t remembered that the gloves were held on by buttons.

  Jay-Tee sighed and bent down to help her, extracting the gloves, slipping the coat off, then pulling the sweater and long-sleeved T-shirt over her head before Reason could tangle herself in those too. Finally she slid Reason’s boots off.

  Reason still hadn’t figured out where they were. Jay-Tee wondered how long it would take her. It still amazed her that the girl couldn’t recognize New York City. It was like she was from Mars or something.

  “How old are you?” Reason asked. Her voice seemed to come from somewhere a long way away.

  “Eighteen,” Jay-Tee lied. She didn’t want Reason knowing they were the same age.

  “I’m fifteen, just . . .” She trailed off. “Eighteen? Wow, that’s so old.” She giggled. “You could be dead already.”

  Jay-Tee felt her hands clench. She had to fight the urge to hit Reason. What did Reason know? A lot more than she’d been letting on. Calm down, she told herself. Never lose your temper, especially not now.

  Reason grinned up at her dop
ily. Jay-Tee started to relax. The stupid kid didn’t know what she was saying. She was just exhausted. Jay-Tee too. It had been a long, cold, bitter wait for Reason to appear and for Jay-Tee’s life to stop sucking.

  “Could we go dancing?” Reason asked. “I like dancing.”

  “Sure,” Jay-Tee said. “It’s the best thing about the city. Lots and lots of dancing.” This wasn’t a lie. There was nothing Jay-Tee loved more than dancing. “What night is it? Tuesday, right? Lantern’s great Tuesday night. We could go there later, you know, when you wake up.”

  “Good,” Reason said fuzzily. “Tuesday? Still? Huh. Can we have chocolate too? And pizza? I like pizza.”

  “Lots of pizza. Whenever you want.”

  He’d been in here. Jay-Tee could feel it. She wondered if Reason knew enough to take precautions. If she was even smart enough to check under the pillow. Jay-Tee doubted it. Especially not as crazy tired as the kid was now.

  If Jay-Tee hadn’t been sure he’d know, she might have cleared the room. It seemed unfair to be plucking Reason this way, her knowing absolutely nothing. Like taking candy from a baby. But if Jay-Tee made the room safer, even if he never knew she had, how would helping Reason help Jay-Tee? Not one little bit. She had to remember that. She was doing this for herself, not for him, Reason, or anyone else.

  “It’s fuzzy in here,” Reason said in the same distant voice. She sounded like she was drunk. She’d gotten her jeans off and her pajama bottoms on, but the pajama top was on over her T-shirt, buttoned crooked. She was half in the bed, half out, looking all of ten years old.

  Reason was such a goner.

  “It’s fuzzy in your head.” Jay-Tee pushed Reason’s leg into the bed, picked up the comforter from the floor, and covered her with it.

  Reason nodded. “But fuzzy outside my head too.” She sat up slowly, lifted the pillow, and blew a waterfall of feathers to the floor. “That’s better,” she murmured, putting her head on the pillow and falling fast asleep.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Jay-Tee stared at the pile of black and purple feathers. “He’s not going to like that.”

  17

  Searching

  Tom hadn’t been in New York City in two months. In the autumn, their autumn. He loved all the leaves changing colours: reds, browns, yellows, and oranges. So pretty that he hadn’t minded how cold it was.

  The first time Esmeralda had taken him through had been a year ago, when he’d first moved from the Shire to Newtown. She’d taken him through to see a snowstorm and he’d almost died. The snow was pretty, but not even close to pretty enough to make up for that cold. He’d felt it all the way down to his bones. It had actually hurt his teeth when he breathed.

  He’d told Esmeralda he never wanted to go through in winter ever again. She’d laughed. Told him you could get used to it. Tom shook his head, knowing that there was no way he would ever get used to that and nothing that would convince him to step through the door into that bitter horror ever again.

  Nothing didn’t include Reason going missing in the snow and the cold. For her Tom had stepped through the door, even though he had absolutely no idea how he was going to find Ree in this lot. Howling winds that blew the snow around even when it wasn’t actually snowing, everyone completely anonymous (including him) in many layers: hats, gloves, scarves, coats, jumpers. Sensing Reason through all of that, when there were millions of people around, well, it was close to impossible.

  Mere had just told him to trust his senses, that he’d be able to feel for her. Under his breath he’d muttered, “Trust the Force, Luke.” He was pretty sure she hadn’t heard.

  He trusted Mere’s senses, though. She said Ree was still alive, was definitely here in Manhattan. Tom tried hard to believe her, but knowing that Reason had left the key in the lock, that she had no way back to Sydney, didn’t fill him with hope.

  He imagined Reason scratching at the door, trying to get back in, succumbing to the cold and freezing to death on the steps before they had even known she was missing.

  He blinked the vision away. They hadn’t found her frozen body when they’d come through and Mere said she was alive. He had to believe that and, impossible or not, he would do whatever he could to find her.

  Cath had not been pleased to see him. Well, she had at first, for all of twenty seconds. Enough time for an embarrassing hug and kiss in front of her weird-looking boyfriend. She hadn’t mentioned him in her e-mails. What on earth was that thing on his head? Kind of a dead-echidna, black-felt concoction. Tom couldn’t see the stitching. Probably glued, he thought scornfully. Was that mascara he was wearing? They both stared at each other and Tom could tell the boyfriend didn’t like him either. Good.

  After that first twenty seconds Cath had realised she was going to have to put Tom up, and that meant him sleeping on the couch, when her last guest had only left two days ago. Her two flatmates were starting to get well annoyed at the steady stream of Australian visitors.

  Cath told Tom exactly how things stood. “They’re not happy about Dillon being here all the time either, ’ken hell, there’s only one loo. Hey,” she said suddenly. “I haven’t introduced you two! Tom, this is my boyfriend, Dillon. Dillon, my brother. You two should get on like a house on fire. Dillon makes his own clothes too.”

  Dillon, thought Tom, what a stupid name. He resisted the temptation to ask about the hat and nodded. Dillon returned the nod, every bit as unconvinced of the house-on-fireness of any possible friendship between them.

  “I brought Tim Tams,” Tom told her. Cath was a Tim Tam addict. “If it’s such a pain, I could always stay with Mere in her flat. She offered.” Which would be heaps more comfortable than this pile of dung. He was sitting on the couch in question and something hard was sticking into his bum.

  The couch had no redeeming qualities. Uglier than sin, it was possible the thing had once been orange. Now it was yellowy grey, possibly the world’s least attractive colour. The cushions were worn through in several places and the smell wafting from it was indescribable, though to be fair, Tom couldn’t be sure the smell was coming from the couch. Could be from any of the other pieces of hideous furniture (who could have thought covering a chair in brown corduroy was ever a good idea?) or the walls or floor (both apparently never cleaned). Even the ceiling looked dodgy.

  Tom had to admit, looking around, that the couch fitted perfectly with the rest of the flat’s decor, even matching the walls in the kitchen. Ugh. If Dad knew Cath was living in a dump like this, he would not be happy. Tom thought about taking photos.

  Cath looked scandalised. “Mere’s already done so much for us. No way am I going to let you cramp her style. You know, Tom, you really could’ve given me some warning. I can’t believe Dad didn’t call to tell me.”

  Tom put on his most innocent expression. “It happened really fast. Mere had an extra ticket and before I knew it, I was in New York City.” At least the last half wasn’t a lie. He wished for the millionth time that he could tell Cath the truth. But he knew what Mere would say: That’s just part of being magic: Sometimes you have to lie.

  Tom looked around the flat with what he hoped looked like enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to see New York. And now I’m here. Cool, eh?”

  “Okay, you can stay. But only for a week. When is Mere taking you back home?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Hmmm,” Cath said, with the put-out expression Tom knew well. “And you have to make yourself scarce as much as poss.” She looked at him doubtfully. “What are you going to do with yourself? It’s freezing outside. You can’t go following me and my mates around. I’ve got classes.”

  “As if!” Tom rolled his eyes. Her friends were probably as poxy as the boyfriend. He’d never thought much of her Sydney mates. All they ever talked about were movies and books as pretentiously as possible. “What do you reckon I’m going to do? Find fabrics. Check out all the clothes. Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons, Vivienne Westwood—”

  “Closed,” Cath’s weirdo
boyfriend said. He had the strangest accent Tom had ever heard, sounded like he was swallowing the words as he spoke. “Recession. It’s gone.”

  “How do you know?” Cath asked. “Thought you were dead against name designers.”

  “Deb used to work there.”

  Cath nodded as if that explained things. Tom wanted to know who Deb was. Had she met Westwood? The old dame was known for making appearances at her stores. Did this Deb keep any of the old season catalogues or sample books? He wondered if she’d part with them, forgetting for a moment that he would probably never meet this Deb person.

  Then he reminded himself that he was here to find Ree. Suddenly he felt exhausted, wanting nothing more than to sleep, even on the smelly, ugly couch.

  That was the crappiest thing about coming through the door: jet lag was even worse without the jet. It didn’t seem right. But Mere said your body was even more confused about the time and the season when it took just seconds to go from middle of the day to middle of the night, from summer to winter. You had to expect a freak-out. More than one.

  In New York City right now it was 2 PM on Tuesday afternoon, but when he’d stepped through the door with Esmeralda four hours earlier, it had been Wednesday. Right now in Sydney it was six in the morning. It did his head in when he tried to think about it. His body too.

  Tom forced himself to push past the fatigue, listened to Cath telling him which things in the fridge he could touch and which he couldn’t (nothing but Cath’s horrible vegan healthfood stuff), which towels he could use (only the ones from her room), and which bathroom products. “Don’t touch anything with the word Kiehl’s on it. Those are Andrew’s and he ’ken spews if anyone else uses them.”