The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  “My phone’s ringing!” called Marbie, hair in her eyes, taking one step forward, and looking down at her phone at the same time. “It’s Fancy!”

  “Careful!” cried Nathaniel, pressing her back so abruptly that she did not stop on the median strip, but tripped into the lane behind, straight into the path of a sports car.

  A gust of wind skidded across the yard and through the open door of the shed. It tossed papers in the air, extinguished three candles, and knocked the fourth onto the welcome mat, where the flame took hold of a loose fiber.

  Cath and Cassie, at the far end of the room, grabbed at the fluttering papers and photos and continued reading.

  Among the papers and manila folders, Cath found lists of every movie she had seen; charts showing her growth patterns from birth; an Excel spreadsheet of her favorite foods, colors, dance steps, and magazines. Everything she touched was connected to her.

  There were butterfly paintings she had done when she was six. There were dozens of close-up photographs of her face, aged eight or nine, hair in a high ponytail, leaning forward at her school desk. There were photos of her ankles. Photos of her walking home from school, swinging her schoolbag. Photos of her, aged twelve, talking to a horse named Buck, and offering a secret carrot. There were lists of her favorite books, along with her own observations on these books. In one drawer, there was a collection of each of her favorite toys.

  Although she continually gasped and murmured, “Who are these people?” and “What is this place?” she also murmured, “That’s right,” and “I loved that doll!” She found herself feeling elated. Here it was! All of her! Here in this garden shed.

  As she climbed back out of the kitchen window, Listen felt her eyes begin to sting. She looked up at the sky, which was a strange yellow-gray color, as if someone had stretched a pair of nylons across it. Tendrils of black smoke were wafting through the open door of the shed.

  She looked around for Ms. Murphy and Cassie, but they were nowhere to be seen, so she ran across to the shed door. It was curtained in smoke, and the heat thumped at her chest and threw her backward. “CASSIE!” she shouted, in terror. “CASSIE, ARE YOU STILL IN THERE?”

  She ran around the outside of the shed, pounding on the walls. “GET OUT OF THERE! THE SHED’S ON FIRE!”

  Cath was leaning over Cassie’s shoulder as the child turned the pages of a photo album. “That’s me on a Jet Ski,” she said.

  “Okay,” agreed Cassie.

  “…me riding a pony…me winning a medal at Brownies. That’s me eating an ice cream…that’s me behind that sunflower…that’s me at a law class—who took that?”

  Cassie quietly turned the pages, coughed, and rubbed her eyes. Cath coughed, wiped sweat from her forehead, and thought vaguely that she ought to open a window. She looked up to see where the windows were.

  The front half of the shed seemed to have vanished.

  “Help!”

  Listen stopped thumping on the walls. A tinny voice was calling from somewhere deep inside the shed.

  “Help! Listen, can you hear us? We can’t get to the door!” It was the Grade Two teacher, Ms. Murphy.

  “Call a fire engine!” That was Cassie’s voice.

  Listen backed away from the shed to look at it again: There were no windows and no back door. She ran toward the front door again, but the smoke was gushing out now. An industrious rustle sounded, cut through by sudden pops of breaking glass.

  Next she ran to the garden hose, which was neatly wound on a spool by the garden tap. She wrenched it out of its spool, turned the tap to full, and pelted across the yard dragging the hose behind her. The hose reached its limit well before she had reached the shed, and jolted her onto the grass. In any case, looking down at the slender plastic, and feeling the weakish water dribble from the nozzle, she knew it would not have worked.

  She stood again, squinting through the smoke at the burning shed. There must be another way out. Her eyes drifted up and caught a glint of sun on the skylight. It was too high for them to reach, but if she could somehow get onto the roof, and lower a rope down to them, she could help them out. Where would she find a rope?

  Her eyes swung to the gum tree and its old rope swing. She would climb the tree, untie the ropes, and climb onto the roof of the shed.

  But the shed had such slippery high walls, she knew she could never climb it.

  She would have to jump from the tree to the roof of the shed.

  The tree was smooth but the ropes of the swing were helpful. “Use your feet,” the climbing instructor had always shouted. Her sneakers slipped on the bark.

  Panting, she straddled a branch near the top of the tree, dragged the swing seat up to her level, and began to untie the knots. They were tied in rethreaded figure eights, which was what they used at rock climbing. She wound the rope around the seat, and looked over at the shed.

  Black smoke billowed from the doorway and crept through cracks in the roof. Beyond the roof of the shed, she could see the grounds of Bellbird Junior High next door, where a small group of students was gathering. Now they were moving slowly across the yard, watching her.

  There was no time to stop. She stood up on the branch and tucked the swing seat, wound in its own ropes, under her arm. The leaves above her tangled with her hair and twigs scratched at her neck, but she knew she had to start in the right position: one knee raised, the other bent, one arm forward, the other back.

  There was only room on the branch for two and a half steps of the starting run, but she used them, bumping her head on the branch above. And then she leapt. She was rising into the air. There was a rush of wind in her face. Her legs were steady as a dancer’s: For the briefest moment, she was flying.

  She landed by the skylight with a self-conscious kick, which was the correct way to finish a flying side kick.

  There was a small metal handle on the side of the skylight, which burned her hand when she touched it. She pulled an edge of her T-shirt to cover the handle and wrenched it open, so that the skylight lifted high into the air. Then she was on her hands and knees looking down into blackness.

  Cath crouched against the far wall, pressing her arms, her T-shirt, her skirt against her face, but nothing would stop the smoke. She was clutching Cassie tightly to her body, the girl’s face pressed hard into her stomach. This is how my parents died, she remembered. She looked around again for a way out. It was too high to climb to the skylight. Flames were hurtling around the room, excited by the scattering of papers and folders, melting into the plastic covers of photo albums. There was a shrieking wrench as timber crashed onto the floor. The heat felt tight, like a rubber glove.

  There was a shout from above.

  Listen lay flat on her stomach and lowered the swing seat through the open skylight and down into the shed. The ropes of the swing were looped around her wrists and gripped in her palms, but she had no idea if she was strong enough.

  Cath saw the swing above her and reached for it, but then stopped to gather Cassie close again. With one hand, she caught the swing seat.

  “Wrap your arms around the seat,” shouted Listen, “and use your feet on the wall.” Cassie’s eyes were tightly closed against the smoke, but she nodded, and wound her arms around the seat. With Cath’s help, she placed one foot high against the wall, and looked up toward Listen.

  Listen slid back, pulling the swing ropes as she did, and burning her knees on the shed roof until the ropes were tight. Now she was dragging Cassie’s weight. She started flat on her stomach, inching back along the roof, and then lifted herself onto her elbows and knees, until she was finally standing up, leaning backward and pulling, arm over arm. Below, the shed was so dark with smoke that Cath was only a pale shape.

  When she was high enough, Cassie reached a hand up and Listen helped her scramble out. They both fell back onto the roof for a moment and looked around. Smoke seeped out of the skylight.

  Cassie crouched close to Listen while Listen lowered the swing again. Below, now pre
ssed into a corner by flames, Cath grasped the swing and looked up doubtfully.

  But this time, Listen felt the strangest surge of strength. She dragged at the rope with both hands, again sliding back from the skylight on her stomach, and within moments Cath’s hands appeared at the edge.

  Now all three huddled together looking for a way to get down. They could hear the shriek of a fire engine; also, they could see that the Zings’ backyard was crowded with students from next door, shouting and waving at them.

  “JUMP! JUMP!”

  Cassie straightened up, coughed once, and jumped. A flurry of hands caught her.

  Cath and Listen looked at each other and down at the schoolkids below, and then, feeling the heat burst around them, they both dived into the crowd.

  Listen felt hands all over her stomach, arms, and legs, and found herself carried in a tumbling rush to the front lawn, away from the heat. There was a bustle of shouting and excitement, and she was lowered onto the grass while students asked where it hurt and whether she was burning.

  “Give her space!”

  “Get some ice!”

  “No, not ice!”

  “Get the hose!”

  The students backed away from her in a circle. They were quiet for a moment, watching, uncertain, as she lay coughing and staring up at them.

  She tried to focus on the students, to stop them from shifting in her gaze. Just before she passed out, she saw three distinct faces: Carl Vandenberg, the black belt from Tae Kwon Do; Samalia Janz, the girl with the ponytail from rock climbing; and Annie Webb, that new girl with the gold stud in her chin. All three wore Bellbird Junior High uniforms.

  The gold stud caught the light, and Listen thought she heard Annie murmur, “Are you, by any chance, the sorcerer?”

  Although she knew that this must be a dream, she felt the softest rush of gladness.

  PART 21

  Friday Afternoon

  Fancy and Radcliffe arrived at the Zing house to a clamor of fire trucks, schoolchildren, and smoke. Ambulances were parked at jaunty angles, and there seemed to be girls on stretchers everywhere they turned. Shortish men in uniforms leaned briskly over the stretchers.

  “Cassie?” called Fancy, but no sound emerged. She watched vaguely as Radcliffe hurried into the jostle, throwing questions around him. After a moment, he returned and told her to get into the car.

  They arrived at the hospital at the same time as Grandpa Zing, Grandma Zing, Marbie, and Nathaniel, which caused some confusion in the revolving door. The confusion intensified when they found their way inside and were directed, variously, to Accidents & Emergencies, the Children’s Ward, and the Burns Division.

  In the elevator, Grandpa Zing said to Radcliffe, “We drove straight back to our place like Fancy said we should, and followed the ambulances here. What’s going on?”

  “I spoke to an ambulance officer,” Radcliffe told him, watching the elevator buttons grimly. “Apparently, Listen and Cath Murphy were climbing the tree in your back garden, and it caught fire. Cassie had to rescue them. All that smoke, eh? From a single tree!”

  In a corridor, Grandma Zing explained to Nathaniel, “I don’t think Listen was involved, Nathaniel. Cassie had an asthma attack, that’s all, because of the smoke from a bonfire in the school yard next door. Now is this the right direction?”

  On a stairway, Fancy said to Marbie, “What have you done to your knees?”

  “I fell into the path of a sports car,” Marbie replied. “But it swerved.”

  In a waiting room, a doctor said to Fancy and Radcliffe, “We suspect that Cassie may have smoke inhalation poisoning.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Radcliffe.

  “We understand she was trapped in the burning room—a shed, was it? Or a garage? In any case, she was trapped for some time. She’s under ten. She’s exhibiting difficulty breathing. And there is some slight discoloration of her skin. These factors add up and tell us smoke poisoning is likely. Now, she suffered only very slight burns, and we have already begun treatment—in those circumstances, the prognosis is good. But I must impress upon you that a condition like this can be extremely serious, and the major cause of…There is a chance…I must ask you to prepare…”

  The doctor’s voice seemed to fade in and out.

  “She’s asthmatic,” Fancy tried to say.

  In a small office, a nurse said to Nathaniel, Marbie, and Grandpa Zing, “Now, it’s Listen, did you say? Right, well, she has some bruising, cuts, some minor burns and grazes. She’s exhausted, and she’s resting right now, but otherwise she’s fine. We’re keeping an eye on her for smoke inhalation, but am I right in thinking that she wasn’t actually in the shed? She was the one who helped the others out?”

  “The shed was on fire?” murmured Grandpa Zing. “Has anybody told my wife?”

  In a corridor, a doctor said to Grandma Zing, “She’s sleeping now, but we’ve treated her for second-degree burns on her arms—it looks like she was wrapping her arms around the little one, protecting her from the fire, like so…You need me to explain second-degree burns? No?”

  For a while, the family moved about among hospital rooms and sleeping girls in a state of agitated confusion, but eventually they settled down.

  Radcliffe and Fancy sat by Cassie, watching her without a word. Once, Radcliffe cleared his throat and said, “Fancy, the doctor mentioned that her asthma might be worse now, worse than ever.”

  “Forever?” breathed Fancy.

  “Than ever,” corrected Radcliffe.

  Then they were silent again.

  Nathaniel, Marbie, and Grandpa Zing sat in a row by Listen’s bed, occasionally chatting about the contents of the hospital menu, or the fact that Nathaniel’s sneakers had a squeak. Mr. Zing suggested he try beating them with a stick, or drowning them in a bucket of water for a day or two. He swore that these techniques were effective. A nurse noticed Marbie’s bleeding knees, and chastised her before washing and dressing them.

  Grandma Zing, meanwhile, sat alone by the sleeping Cath, gazing at her steadily.

  “Now, Cath,” she murmured eventually. “If it’s true that the shed burned down, I don’t know what might be left of our garden there. Which is a shame, as I think you’d like that garden. We have so many flowers! Let me think. We’ve got sweet peas, begonias, pansies, petunias, snowdrops, cyclamen, daisies, and orchids. No roses though, because of the thorns. We’ve got port-wine magnolias, camellias, dahlias, and azaleas. We’ve got a vegetable garden too, you know. Broccoli, carrots, beans, and peas. Corn, cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, strawberries, tomatoes, mint, and thyme. And there’s David’s little lemon tree, of course. You might have noticed that.”

  Cassie dreamed of porridge. “Never put porridge in your nose,” she told Lucinda, who only coughed in reply.

  Listen dreamed of glimmers on the surface of the turtle pond.

  “As a reward!” said the principal happily. “For squeaking sneakers!”

  “Bravo,” said a voice. It was Carl Vandenberg from Tae Kwon Do.

  “It’s silver,” Listen told him.

  “Bravo,” Carl repeated, more quietly this time.

  Cath Murphy dreamed that her cat, Violin, was evil, and she had to save him. It was too late: Violin was treading through dried brown grass toward nesting plovers that would pluck out his eyes.

  “Violin!” she shrieked, but her cat gave a snort of contempt and ran his claws slowly down her forearms.

  Cassie breathed a single, high-pitched wheeze, which surprised her. She turned her eyes toward her mother. “I can run as fast as a bus,” she whispered. Her mother said, “Can you?” and burst into tears.

  Listen opened her eyes and saw Marbie, her father, and Grandpa Zing, sitting by the side of her bed. “Sorry,” she said. Grandpa Zing leaned forward and tapped her on the head with the hospital menu.

  Cath woke up. A plump woman was sitting by her bed. “Hello,” said the woman. “Are you all right? The painkillers are working? I hear you’
ve seen our garden shed!”

  PART 22

  Lunchtime on a Saturday Two Weeks Later

  One

  Two weeks had passed since the fire, and Grandpa Zing had already built a gazebo on the site of the garden shed. It was here, for symbolic reasons, that the Zings held their “explanation lunch” for Cath.

  While in the hospital, she had been extremely confused by everything Mrs. Zing said, so that, in the end, she spoke in her law-student voice to say, “Why should I not call the police about your shed, please?”

  Mrs. Zing asked that she wait until she was home and felt better, and then they could hold an explanation lunch, and then, if she still wanted to, she could telephone the police. It was not clear what she could say to the police even if she did call them (the Zings could deny the contents of their burned-down garden shed), and what she really wanted was an explanation. So she had agreed to Mrs. Zing’s request.

  Cath Murphy sat at one end of the table, and Mr. and Mrs. Zing sat at the other. The table was draped in a new white cloth, and was surrounded by elegant garden chairs. Bellbirds chimed in the bush behind the Zings’ back fence. A kookaburra rested on the fence itself, silently watching the family, as they in turn regarded their cucumber soup and reached for their napkins and spoons.

  Cath had been introduced to each of the Zings on the way out to the garden, and now she sat with her back straight and surveyed each Zing in turn. On her right sat the girl, Listen, who had rescued her from the fire; then Listen’s father, Nathaniel; and Nathaniel’s girlfriend, Marbie Zing. On her left sat Cassie Zing; then Cassie’s mother, Fancy; and Fancy’s husband, Radcliffe. Occasionally Cassie whispered an observation to Cath. She had already whispered that her parents were getting a divorce, but they were both going to come and watch her win races at the Redwood Sports Carnival the week after next. Now she was whispering something about the mint sauce.