Magic or Madness

by Justine Larbalestier

  “He knows about me?” Reason sounded surprised.

  “Of course—I had to ask if it was okay. Your staying, I mean.” Jay-Tee wondered if her nose was growing. She almost had to hold back from checking. Lying didn’t normally bother her, but this was different. Even though it went against her own interests, part of Jay-Tee wished she could warn Reason. She could casually mention feathers or the color purple. Reason had known enough to get them out from under her pillow. Hell, she’d known enough to hide the key. Maybe she didn’t need a warning.

  Jay-Tee looked at her closely. There was something more alert about Reason since she’d woken from her nightmare. She hadn’t once asked where she was. Maybe she’d finally figured it out.

  Then Reason smiled and her smarts disappeared. All Jay-Tee could see were Reason’s wide, big eyes and the trusting expression on her face. Hell, she thought. Why wasn’t Reason like Jay-Tee? Why couldn’t Reason just know when people were lying?

  They got back to the apartment late. He was there this time, just like she knew he would be. There’d be no dancing tonight.

  After the cannoli they’d wandered around. The wind had died down and it wasn’t nearly so cold. Jay-Tee was delaying. Seeing him was never her favorite thing, but she especially didn’t want to face him with Reason by her side. Instead she’d given Reason a tour, pointed out more of her favorite places to eat, described what it was like out on the streets when it wasn’t freezing.

  They’d walked past stores, restaurants, cafés. Reason was quieter than she had been, asked hardly any questions, but she seemed to be absorbing everything she saw. Jay-Tee wondered again if she knew where she was now.

  They passed an old man selling hot roasted chestnuts and warmed their hands over the grill. The old man was delighted and amazed that Reason had never even heard of chestnuts before. He insisted that they take a bunch wrapped in newspaper for free as long as Reason ate one in front of him and told him what she thought. “Don’t burn your lips, girl,” he warned her. Unsurprisingly, she said she loved them. Reason was a very polite girl who, Jay-Tee was beginning to realize, was all about food.

  Jay-Tee told Reason stories about the city when it was warm, of music everywhere, people dancing on the pavement, of summers that were so hot the roads melted, but Reason obviously found the stories hard to believe when icicles hung from the leafless trees and everyone who passed was gray-faced, grim, and moved with almost no rhythm.

  Jay-Tee switched tack and started filling Reason’s ears with all the cool things about winter. Not just chestnuts. She told her they’d go uptown, skate at Rockefeller Center or in the park, go see some basketball in the Garden, that they’d go dancing every night. She filled her head with all the cool stuff about this city, all the things a person could do even when it was colder than a dead man’s breath.

  He was sitting in front of the fire, shoes off, a smug grin on his face. He looked like he owned the place. Which, of course, he did. His presence, as usual, made the apartment seem tiny. The walls seemed to be pushing in on them, leaving barely enough space to move, stealing the breath from Jay-Tee’s lungs.

  When they’d gotten their coats and the rest of their winter bulk off, he stood and smiled at them, showing almost all his white teeth. His lips seemed even redder than usual. Just like a wolf, thought Jay-Tee.

  He held out his hand and Reason shook it, smiling.

  “I’m Jason Blake,” he told her. Jay-Tee had wondered what name he’d use.

  “Reason Cansino. Though I guess you know that.” The idiot girl turned to Jay-Tee, smiling as if meeting him was a good thing. “Jay-Tee said she told you about me.”

  He nodded. “All good things. Said you needed a place to stay. It makes me feel better to know that she has someone her own age around.”

  “Not exactly the same age,” Reason said, and Jay-Tee could’ve pinched her.

  “Well, I’m sure even when you’re fifteen, a few months doesn’t make that much difference.”

  Reason stared at Jay-Tee, who said nothing, silently cursing him. He was grinning. She was sure he knew she’d fibbed about her age.

  “You’re really doing both of us a favor, Reason, staying here. I worry about her living alone.”

  Jay-Tee thought she was going to throw up. He was talking like he was her kindly grandfather. Surely even Reason wouldn’t buy that crap. Jay-Tee glanced at him out of the corner of her eye—he looked more like a snake than a wolf, really. Though she had no doubt he would, that he had, torn people to pieces when he needed to. A snake and a wolf.

  “You girls eaten?” he asked, flashing his bleached white teeth some more. He was very sparing with his magic.

  They nodded.

  “I’d like to take you both out to dinner. Someplace special. Do you like fancy restaurants, Reason?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been to one.” She looked pleased at the idea of it. Thinking about the food, Jay-Tee didn’t doubt.

  He clapped, grinning. “Excellent—what a treat is in store for you. I’ll reserve a table for tomorrow night. Somewhere very special. Eight o’clock. I’ll pick you up at twenty of.”

  Great, thought Jay-Tee, shuddering at the prospect of seeing him again in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Thank you,” Reason said. “I’ll look forward to it.” She seemed sincere. Though Jay-Tee couldn’t read her decently with his magic hanging so heavy in the apartment. Well, if Reason liked him that much, Jay-Tee would be happy to hand her over to him. Anything to keep him farther away from me.

  He stood up. “I’ll leave you two girls now. It’s late and I’m sure you’re both ready for bed.”

  He slipped on his shoes and picked up his coat. “Lovely to meet you, Reason.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blake.”

  “Jason.”

  Reason lowered her head. “Sorry. Jason.”

  “Good night, Jay-Tee.”

  Jay-Tee nodded without saying anything, relief at his swift departure washing over her.

  He put his hand on the doorknob and then half turned. “Reason?” he said, as if something trivial had occurred to him, but he couldn’t help sharing. “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor?”

  “A favor?” Reason asked, smiling sweetly.

  “Yes. Would you be able to help me out?”

  “Well,” Reason said, “I’m sure I could, but it would depend on the favor.”

  “Nothing difficult. Just an errand.”

  “What kind of an errand?”

  He smiled, more wolflike than ever. “Perhaps some other time. What happened to your face, Reason?”

  Her hand went to her nose. “Nothing. I slipped.”

  “Really?” His smile widened. “Good night, Reason.”

  19

  Into Magic

  When I woke up, I was still in New York City.

  New York City. That’s what I’d learned yesterday and once I’d learned it—New York City—those words were suddenly everywhere, not just on the plaque in the lift, but on people’s caps, in window displays, on the sides of trucks, all over the newspaper that was wrapped around the chestnuts I’d eaten last night—the New York Times—the same newspaper that sat in piles on Esmeralda’s bed. Once seen, once understood, those three words multiplied until they were almost all I could see.

  Lying there, I was thinking something else that made my head hurt. Something I’d been trying not to think since I’d stepped through the door. I wasn’t mad after all, and I hadn’t lost my memory. Part of me had known that all along. I sat up, recognising the plain room straightaway. Not crazy, not disoriented. I knew where I was and how I’d gotten here.

  Magic is real.

  That was the thought.... It made my head hurt.

  Magic is real. I am in New York City and it is Wednesday when it should be Thursday, morning when it should be night, freezing when it should be boiling, and magic is real.

  I opened the door in Sydney in summer, stepped out to New York City in winter, the
opposite season on the opposite side of the world. One moment and everything had changed.

  If magic was real, then Esmeralda really was a witch. Witch as in magic, not witch as in bitch. Just like that Jason Blake last night. He had actually smelled like Esmeralda.

  If magic was real, then Sarafina was a liar.

  If magic was real, then everything I had ever learned was wrong. The world wasn’t explicable. Wasn’t rational. Wasn’t any of the things Sarafina had said it was. Smoke and mirrors did not cause me to travel thousands of kilometres in one step. I was not hallucinating.

  Sarafina had lied to me. Not just once, but every single day of my life.

  That’s why Sarafina had gone mad. She hadn’t just lied to me, she’d lied to herself. Run away from the house of magic and spent years convincing herself it was nothing but tricks. My mother is evil, Sarafina had told herself, not magic.

  Then, somehow, it had all fallen apart. That’s why she was in Kalder Park. Because she had been telling herself lies for years, had begun to believe them, and finally her head had exploded.

  Lying here thinking about it all was making my head explode too.

  If Sarafina was lying, did that make Esmeralda a good person after all? I thought of the thirty-three teeth, of the dried-up cat. I shuddered. The stories Sarafina had told me—those were true, I was sure. Except that Esmeralda’s magic did make things happen; doors opened out on places they shouldn’t. From Sydney to New York City in a single step.

  Had Sarafina started the lies to protect me? From what? Was magic why all my relatives died so young?

  Or had Sarafina’s lies been to protect me from myself? Because if magic was real, then I was a murderer. I had wished that boy dead and less than a second later he had died. I had done it. Part of me had always known that too.

  My head was crowded with thoughts and I didn’t want to think any of them, but I had to, didn’t I? Being too scared to think (magic is real) had made me hope I was crazy, had stopped me from facing what was plain as the no-longer-white snow out the window.

  Magic is real. Magic has always been real.

  After breakfast I asked Jay-Tee to take me to the street where she’d first found me. For less than a second she looked at me strangely.

  “I was hoping it might jog my memory. Sarafina says if you retrace your steps, it can help you find stuff. I thought it might help.”

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem.” I wondered if I’d imagined her look.

  The wind was back up again, making walking hard work. I watched my breath turn into mist, then, when my lips started to sting, I pulled my scarf up. It was too cold to talk, though my head was bubbling over with questions.

  I wanted to know about Jason Blake. The way he had talked just before he left . . . well, he was not a nice man. He had shark’s eyes and when he smiled, it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. He was too much like Esmeralda. What was he doing to Jay-Tee?

  He’d wanted me to say yes, I knew. Sarafina had always taught me to be sparing with my yeses because you never know what the question really is.

  I thought about some of her other lessons, the meditation, turning feathers upside down. She’d been teaching me to protect myself. She’d denied magic existed and then taught me how to shield myself from it. I longed to talk to her, to ask her why.

  It was almost too cold to breathe.

  When Jay-Tee finally said we’d reached the street, my heart sank. It looked like every other street we’d walked along. Every one had buildings with staircases on the outside—fire escapes. Every house in New York City, it seemed, was tall, and all were jam-packed together, no gaps between. They lived like sardines, without any green in sight. Depressing.

  But it wasn’t all horrible. I thought of Jay-Tee’s boasting last night about the wonders of winter, the ice sculptures and roaring fires. Seeing the trees glittering with ice had been incredible. Especially now that I could admit that it was real. And the chestnuts, hot and nutty and sweet. It was so cool just buying them on the street like that. I loved the chestnuts. All the food I’d had in this city had been amazing: the pizza (even without beetroot or pineapple), that canoolly dessert stuff—even the kasha had grown on me. I decided it was worth spending an evening with creepy Jason Blake to see what fancy New York food was like.

  It had snowed again overnight. Eighteen inches, Jay-Tee said; she held up her hand to demonstrate how high, around half a metre. Snow was banked up on the sides of the road, in the tiny little fenced-off gardens. I pulled the scarf up over my nose. It was warm and wet from my breath, but within seconds it was cold and wet.

  “Recognise anything?” Jay-Tee asked, standing close. She rubbed her mittens together. “This is the exact spot where I found you.”

  “Not sure. Think I need to look at all the doors. Maybe I can spot where I came out onto the street.”

  “Does it look familiar?” Jay-Tee asked.

  “Not sure,” I said, because I really wasn’t.

  “Let’s start at the beginning of the block,” Jay-Tee suggested, her teeth chattering. “So you don’t miss one?”

  I nodded, though the one thing I was sure of was that I’d come out of a building in the middle of the street.

  All the doors were big and wooden. They had door knockers that were brass hands or faces; one was a skull with its eyes painted red. I didn’t recognise any of them. Many of them had locks big enough for the infinity key. I touched each one, but not one felt right.

  I stared at the spaces above each door too. That’s where I was pretty sure I’d seen the painted man with the moustache, above the door like a guardian angel. Lots of the houses had the usual kind of angels painted or carved above them. Cats too, and stained glass. I knew my door didn’t have stained glass. At least, I thought I knew. I wasn’t even sure the moustache man was above my door. Maybe I’d seen him later when I’d run along the street.

  What would Sarafina think of me? A lifetime of being taught to be observant, and instead I’d stood there catching snowflakes in my mouth.

  All the buildings looked virtually the same, with only the tiniest variations, like the clothes in Esmeralda’s wardrobe. I wished I still had the infinity key, then I could try it on each door. But somehow I had the feeling that I would know when I came to the right one.

  None of these was it.

  At the end of the block, Jay-Tee suggested we try the other side. Just because she’d found me on this side of the street didn’t mean that I hadn’t somehow gotten turned around. By the time she’d shown up, Jay-Tee reminded me, I’d been so cold I couldn’t think straight. I nodded.

  I examined each door carefully. No moustached man, no lock that felt right. Jay-Tee didn’t say anything, just trailed behind me, trying to stay warm. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay outside. My nose was starting to throb again.

  What was I going to do if I couldn’t find my way back? I was a long way from Esmeralda. Which was what I’d wanted. But now I wanted to know who I was, what I was, what I’d done.

  Besides, was I really far away from her? It was Esmeralda’s door, after all. She came here, I knew from the winter coat hanging on her door, from the United States of America coins in its pockets, from the copies of the New York Times. Was I any safer from her now than I had been in her house?

  I wished there was some way I could talk to her without putting myself in her power. I wanted to ask so many questions. I wanted to read those letters. I wanted to know what magic was. I thought again of the teeth, the dead cat. Maybe it was Sarafina I needed to talk to, not Esmeralda. The witch, I was sure, would eat me alive. The real Esmeralda, hidden from view, was just like Jason Blake. They even smelled the same.

  How could I get home? If I found the door, it wasn’t going to open without the key. How would I get back through? Wait until Esmeralda showed up and let me through? Too scary to contemplate. Catch a plane? I had no passport and if I tried to get one, they’d notify Esmeralda for sure.

  I stepped
back from the last house—in my pocket through my gloves I could feel my ammonite, neither warm nor comforting. I looked up at the grey sky. I couldn’t find the sun. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was. Every time Jay-Tee said it was night, I thought it should be day; when she said it was dinnertime, I was ready for breakfast.

  I shivered. Jay-Tee looked as cold as I felt.

  20

  With Bubbles

  That night—Wednesday night, I reminded myself, not Thursday—Jason Blake came to pick us up in a long, black limousine. When we got in, he was sitting with his back to the driver, dressed in a black suit as if we were going to a funeral. He gestured for us to sit opposite him and handed us glasses of champagne.

  I took a sip and the bubbles got up my nose, making me giggle, just like I’d read in books. I’d never had champagne before. It tasted lemony, light, dissolving on my tongue like sherbet. It was the first alcohol I’d ever liked, not to mention the first cold thing I’d enjoyed since stepping through the door.

  A screen blocked off the front of the limousine—we couldn’t see or hear the driver, nor he us. It made me feel like I was in some high-tech car that drove itself. It was enormous. The back was more like a lounge room than a car. The seats were made of soft leather and there were cushions and footrests. There was even a television.

  The limousine seemed to be designed for drinking champagne, with special holders that fit the skinny champagne glasses perfectly and behind a panel a tiny fridge to keep the bottle cold. I wondered if there was a hidden toilet too, which instantly made me want to pee.

  Jay-Tee had loaned me a black dress that held my legs together so tight they felt glued. She’d insisted that you couldn’t wear jeans to this kind of restaurant. The shoes were high and when I walked in them, I wobbled. They pinched my toes. Jay-Tee said not to worry, we’d be sitting down most of the time.

  Her dress was black too, with red around the hem. Actually, I hadn’t seen a dress in her wardrobe that wasn’t black. The shoes she wore were even higher than mine and made of metal. They made a loud clicking sound every step she took. She’d put makeup on herself and then on me. When I protested, she said it was to hide my black eye. It made my skin feel weird, tight and itchy. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a doll’s face: lips and cheeks red and glossy. I didn’t recognise myself. Jay-Tee said I looked great.