Magic's Child

by Justine Larbalestier

  “Maybe. I can lead us to them. I just don’t know how long it will take.”

  “But you can see them from here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see when someone opens one?” Esmeralda said.

  “Yes. I saw you.”

  My grandmother laughed. “The door’s right there. How could you not see me?”

  “I saw you in the other world, not here.”

  Esmeralda shivered. “If we go to my flat here, will you still be able to see the doors?”

  “Is it near here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think so. But we could just walk to them. Find out what’s on the other side. See if we can find Sarafina.”

  “But, Reason, you said there were seventeen of them. You don’t know how close they are. Maybe some of them aren’t even in Manhattan. It could take us all day just to look at two or three. And even though you suddenly seem to be immune to the cold, I’m not.

  “If we go to my flat, we can wait, and as soon as Alexander or Sarafina shows up, we can go to them. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

  “I could examine the doors by myself. It probably wouldn’t take me very long,” I said.

  “And if Alexander showed up? He’s devious. He’ll try to trick you, Reason. You’d be better off with my help. I’m not as strong as you, but I’m strong.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t convinced, but if there was a chance of real-world news of Sarafina, I didn’t want to miss it.

  Esmeralda stuck her hand out to make a taxi stop. “Too cold to walk,” she said.

  A taxi stopped almost immediately. That was easier here. In New York there were more taxis than normal cars.

  I slid in. Esmeralda leaned forward to give the address. Thirteenth Street. Good. A prime number. Almost as good as those divisible by nine.

  I thought about Jay-Tee again. Would she really stay alive without magic?

  I hoped we’d find Sarafina quickly. And that I wouldn’t see Danny again.

  8

  Esmeralda’s New York flat wasn’t as big as Danny’s, but it had more furniture, pictures on the walls. It seemed more lived-in. How often did she come here?

  The flat had a long, narrow corridor with a kitchen, study, bathroom, and two bedrooms off it.

  “You can sleep in there,” she said, showing me the smaller bedroom. “If we end up having to stay a night.”

  A large Escher print hung on the wall, lizards entwined and crawling off the edges of the drawing. Sarafina had used Escher to teach me about tessellation and tiling. We’d spent hours designing our own mosaics, laying triangles and polygons edge-to-edge on paper, graduating to more complicated shapes, mixing them together. None of ours were as fine as Escher’s, but it had been fun.

  The next room was the bathroom. I peeked inside and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  I had no hair.

  Seeing it gone was completely different from feeling it gone. My eyelashes and eyebrows were missing too.

  I wasn’t looking at myself. I was looking at someone else: a hairless alien with golden skin that glowed like a statue’s.

  My eyes. They weren’t…

  The irises were bigger, pushing the whites away. They were without variation, one uniform colour: brown. The way pupils are black and nothing else. There were no feathering strands of colour radiating out from the pupil, no bits of yellow or green or black. Not like normal eyes. They were brown and only brown. The same golden brown as my skin.

  They were like Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino’s eyes.

  That couldn’t be me.

  I stared harder, past my skin, I stared inside myself. It hurt to do it. Like something was tearing. I’d never been able to do that before. My cells were not what they had been. I found the pulsing life of my baby, those few scant cells that were not mine, but that were as changed as I was.

  A monster. I was pregnant with a monster.

  “You see,” Esmeralda said. “You’re hardly you anymore. And Jay-Tee couldn’t see it.”

  She led me to the end of the narrow hallway, to the largest room in the flat. It had five windows, two couches, a coffee table, a piano and stool, and two bookcases filled with books. On one of the walls was a photo of an enormous tree. It looked like the Moreton Bay fig in her backyard in Sydney, Filomena.

  I blinked and caught a glimpse of the tiny magics in the room, too numerous and too smudgy to count. Was that leakage from my grandmother’s magic?

  Esmeralda took off her coat and laid it on the edge of the nearest couch. Then she sat down, crossed her legs at the ankle, and waved at me to take a seat. She looked calm and relaxed. Not like a woman whose daughter had just been kidnapped.

  “You’re changing very quickly, Reason. When I look inside you,” my grandmother said, “even your cells are different. If you become any more like him, you won’t be human anymore.”

  “I know,” I said. I had seen it.

  “Do you still feel human?”

  “I guess.” I didn’t know. I missed my mother. I was still angry with Danny. Those were human feelings, weren’t they? But when I was in Cansino’s world, I hardly felt them at all. Was I beginning to feel them less strongly here too?

  I looked up at Esmeralda. There were so many traces of Sarafina in her. The same colour hair and eyes. They were the same height, had the same olive skin, brown eyes. But it was her voice that was most like. If I didn’t look at her, if I just listened, I could almost imagine it was Sarafina.

  Esmeralda was staring at me like she wanted something. Sarafina would never stare at me like that.

  “I wonder why he chose you?”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not like he had heaps of people to choose from, is it? How many Cansinos are there? Just you, Jason Blake, and me.”

  “And Sarafina.”

  “And Sarafina. So we each had a twenty-five-per-cent chance.”

  “But he chose you.”

  “And my baby.”

  Esmeralda nodded. “That’s why, I think. Because of the baby. You’ll become even more powerful as you change. I think you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

  I wanted to see my mother again. I wanted Tom and Jay-Tee to live long, happy lives. I wanted my baby to be born safe and sound and for Danny to love me. Or did I? I wasn’t so sure about that last one.

  “Have you thought about what’s happening to your baby?”

  Of course I had. When I didn’t say anything, Esmeralda made a little sound, half a cough, half a tsk. She raised an eyebrow, delicately, as if it might break. “Your baby is changing too.”

  “I know.”

  “You might want to be in that other place you won’t tell me about, but is that what your baby will want?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If you keep going there, you won’t have any choice but to stay there forever. Your baby won’t have any choice.”

  “Raul Cansino didn’t stay there forever.”

  “But what was he, Reason? What was his life?”

  Wonderful, I almost said. No pain. No hurt.

  “I think you could stop the changes. The same way you turned Jay-Tee’s magic off but kept her alive. You can do the same thing to yourself, to your baby. You don’t have to turn into him.

  “You can do whatever you want now.”

  “Like take away your magic?”

  Esmeralda shivered, shifted back further on the couch. “Or make my magic stronger. More like yours.”

  “But I’m turning into a monster. You said so yourself.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said you’re becoming like him. Do you want to be all the way like Raul? Barely human?

  “I’m just saying that you can do anything now. I saw what you did to Jay-Tee. She would have died. She’s alive because of you.”

  I nodded. “But we don’t know for how long.”

  Esmeralda shrugged. “How long do most people have? She’s normal now.”

  Normal, I thought
. Was that a good thing? Sarafina had never thought so.

  “I bet you can use your magic to find Sarafina right now,” Esmeralda said, as if she’d heard my thoughts.

  “Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t sure how far I could see in Cansino’s world. “But it wouldn’t help finding her here.”

  “Aren’t the two connected? You can see doors there. You said you could see me there.”

  “It’s not like there are street signs. When I’m there I can’t navigate the way I can here. There aren’t any roads or trees or rock formations or any other way for me to find my bearings. I can figure north, south, east, and west. And whether something’s far or near. But far could be twenty K or two thousand. I can’t tell.”

  Esmeralda leaned towards me, an intense expression on her face.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” She shifted back again, crossed her legs the other way.

  Greedy, I decided, she looked greedy. She wanted what I had.

  “You’ve changed.”

  “You said that already.” I glanced down at my gleaming hands. The nails weren’t broken and uneven. They were smooth and tapered.

  There weren’t any scars. No nick on the third right knuckle of my left hand from where I’d cut it peeling a yam. No long faded burn mark on my right palm from where I’d picked up a billy can from the fire. I’d only been little, I was trying to help. But it had hurt so much I’d cried and cried and cried. We had no ice, so Sarafina picked me up, carried me to the creek, plunged my hand into the icy water. At first the scar had stretched across my palm, but as I got older it got smaller and smaller and faded from bright red to white.

  Now it was gone.

  My hands weren’t my hands.

  “Not just physically,” my grandmother continued. “You’re not entirely you anymore. When was the last time you laughed?”

  “There hasn’t been much to laugh at, has there? My mother’s been kidnapped.” I paused. I wasn’t going to tell Esmeralda about Danny.

  “If you keep changing, will you even want to save your mother?”

  I blinked and caught a glimpse of a familiar light. I closed my eyes, felt the weight lifting from me, the soft thickness of Cansino’s world surrounding me.

  The new magic was strong. It started to move—in its wake a glittering spiral.

  Jason Blake.

  “He’s here,” I said.

  15

  Dancing

  They sat in front of the tellie in Jay-Tee’s room. Something dramatic set in the American West with lots of cowboys, but so underlit, everyone was lost in shadow. Tom had no idea who was who. The costumes were pretty excellent, but. Even if they were all in dark, dirty colours, with the occasional shock of white or red.

  Tom felt like he was floating. His little trip to New York to talk to Cathy had brought the door lag flooding back. It was night, and the sun had set, but it felt wrong. Maybe because he’d barely been outside since he got back. He’d just hung out with Jay-Tee while she tried to make sense of what had happened to her.

  She’d rung her useless brother and left messages on his mobile, his landline, and with about a dozen of his friends. They all promised to tell him to call her when they saw him.

  Esmeralda had rung to tell them that Jason Blake (or Alexander, as she called him) was in New York City and Reason was tracking him down, which gave Tom an incongruous image of Reason with her nose to the footpath, sniffing.

  He was more than a little relieved that he and Jay-Tee weren’t in New York. That their job was, as Esmeralda put it, “to hold down the fort.” Whatever that meant.

  “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

  “Who?” Jay-Tee asked. “The blonde one? Nope. I think that creepy guy’s going to kill her. He’ll probably kill all of them. He’s clearly got issues.”

  “No. Reason’s mum.”

  Jay-Tee turned to him and smiled. “I hope so. I mean, I’m pretty sure. You haven’t seen Reason. She’s changed. There’s nothing she can’t do now. She’ll find her mom and save her, just like she saved me.”

  Tom wasn’t sure Jay-Tee had been saved. Yes, Reason had stopped her from dying, but…well, he wasn’t sure saved was the right word. She didn’t have any magic. Tom couldn’t imagine what that would be like.

  He was also thinking about how his hands had felt on Jay-Tee’s bare waist. About kissing.

  Who’d’ve thought someone else’s tongue in your mouth would be so tingle-making? He’d known that was how it was supposed to be, and he’d really wanted to try, but he’d had his doubts. It looked gross. He’d worried that he’d get a major dose of tongue-awareness right in the middle of kissing properly for the first time, and he’d be thinking about tongues being worms, or worse, slabs of meat, and, well, gross.

  It hadn’t been like that at all, and now here he was wondering—and not for the first time since they’d been interrupted by Jason Blake calling—if there’d be more.

  He didn’t know if Jay-Tee felt the same way. Right now, she didn’t look like she was thinking about what he was thinking about. Yes, she’d kissed him first. But it could’ve been one of her strange moods: first worried about dying, then about going mad, now coping with her magic being gone.

  It would do anyone’s head in, wouldn’t it?

  What if she’d kissed him rather than think about it? Did Jay-Tee even like him? She said she did. Tom liked her, but he hadn’t known how much until she kissed him. Not many hours ago he’d only wanted to kiss Reason. Would he be feeling this way about anyone who kissed him?

  Tom wasn’t sure. He hadn’t felt much when Jessica Chan kissed him. It’d been okay, but he wasn’t desperate to do it again the way he was with Jay-Tee. He hoped it hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment freak-out thing. After all, he’d given Jay-Tee some of his magic. Didn’t that mean they were connected?

  Or maybe not, now that she wasn’t magic anymore.

  Jay-Tee giggled, but nothing funny had happened on the tellie.

  “What?” Tom asked. For a stricken moment, he thought she knew what he was thinking.

  “I just tried to make light. And I really, really, really can’t.”

  “And that’s funny?”

  She nodded. “Very. I’m concentrating on my mom’s leather bracelet. I’ve got the tooth. See?” She showed it to him. It was the one Esmeralda had given her that had been in the Cansino family for generations. “And now—” She held out her hand, palm up. “Now I’m not making money out of nothing.”

  “You used to do that?” Tom asked. He hadn’t known it was possible.

  “Uh-huh. All the time.” Jay-Tee grinned. “I was a very bad witch. Not a good idea, though. Uses lots of magic. I guess that’s why I almost bought it twice. Okay, watch this.” She stood up and held her arms out in front of her, Superman style. “Now I’m not flying.”

  “No way,” Tom exclaimed. “You used to fly?!”

  Jay-Tee sat down with a huge grin on her face. Then she cracked up.

  “Bitch!”

  “Gotcha!” She punched him lightly on the shoulder. Tom felt it through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. He thought about leaning forward and kissing her.

  “I wonder if I can still run,” she said, playing with her bottom lip. Tom found it hard to look anywhere else. “Not how I used to, obviously. But I wonder if I’m still fast.”

  “You’ll be faster than me, that’s for sure.”

  “Big deal. Hey, do you think I’ll still be able to dance?”

  “Well, that we can test. Esmeralda’s stereo is grouse. Wanna go dance in the dining room?” Dancing could definitely lead to more kissing, couldn’t it?

  “Sure,” Jay-Tee said. “I’d love to.”

  8

  Esmeralda’s music either sucked or Jay-Tee’d never heard of it. They went through every CD and found nothing she deemed even slightly danceable.

  “Mere’s forty-five,” she said, as if she were saying, Mere’s an alien. “Old
people’s music always sucks.”

  “How about this?” Tom asked. He’d turned the tuner on and pressed FM, then turned the dial to a best of the seventies, eighties, nineties channel, pretty sure that Jay-Tee would hate it.

  “Vile!” she said instantly. “Top forty crap. It smells so bad it might as well be rotten meat.”

  “Let me guess,” Tom said, trying not to laugh. “You don’t like it?”

  She grinned. “It’s disgusting. Guitars, bass, crappy singing. Boring old-people music.”

  He switched the dial, got Triple J. “How ’bout this?”

  She shook her head. “Guitars, Tom, guitars! They’re so over. Dance music! It’s gotta, gotta, gotta be dance music.”

  Tom turned to the three other stations that were actual possibilities. On the second one, Jay-Tee nodded. “That’s more like it. Feel that bass? It’s skittering and thrumming. There’s reverb. Perfect.”

  They drew the curtains so no one could see in from the street. Then got good and sweaty pushing Esmeralda’s dining table, chairs, and the other moveable furniture against the walls, which left plenty of space.

  Tom turned the music up two more notches and walked into the middle of the room. “Ready?” he asked, though he was nervous. He really liked dancing, but most of his friends didn’t. So he’d mostly just danced in his bedroom, which was deeply pathetic. He’d also danced some at the year nine formal last year, but then Scooter and Ron had started snickering. So he’d stopped and joined them in mocking everyone else, even though he’d rather have kept on dancing. He didn’t want Jay-Tee to think he was unco at dancing, given that she was so good.

  Or used to be, when she was magic.

  Jay-Tee stayed next to the stereo, with her back to Tom. He could see her move the tiniest amount, as if she were measuring the beat without actually dancing.

  He took a deep breath for courage and walked over to Jay-Tee, taking her right hand in his and moving her into the centre of the room.

  “I don’t do that kind of dancing,” she said.

  Tom laughed. “Me neither, dancing holding someone—that’s the daggiest dancing ever,” he lied. He really enjoyed watching ballroom dancing and had wanted to try it himself for ages. He could certainly make way better costumes than those dancers normally had. “But there’s more room to move here. Are you going to dance or what?”