Magic's Child

by Justine Larbalestier

  “Dunno. Not sure I feel like it.”

  Tom dared himself to just start dancing in front of her. Even though he knew she’d laugh at him. Instead he did something almost as brave. He kissed her. Quickly, on the cheek. “You had plenty of rhythm when we were kissing out on the porch. I’m sure you’ve got heaps left over for dancing.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” she said. The expression on her face was so sad, it made Tom want to cry.

  But then Jay-Tee smiled, put her arms by her side, and started jumping pogo-stick style. Tom joined her. They bounced like crazy all around the room, staying in rhythm, laughing like they would explode.

  And then, after two songs of silliness, Tom watched Jay-Tee slide into proper dancing. As if her arms, her hips, her legs were disconnected, moving in a separate space of their own, yet connected too. He’d never seen anyone move as fast, as smooth, as charged as her. He followed as best he could.

  Jay-Tee hadn’t lost any of her dance.

  16

  Sweating

  It wasn’t the same. Jay-Tee couldn’t feel the dance sweep through her. She hoped she would find her rhythm, but when she didn’t, and her eyes came close to leaking even more tears, she turned to Tom instead and kissed him.

  He kissed her back, less tentatively than he had out on the back porch. They were both sweating from throwing themselves around the room. Their hands kept sliding off their damp clothes; they almost fell over.

  Tom giggled. His cheeks were red and hot. So were hers. They fell back against the table. Jay-Tee grunted where the side of it dug into her lower back. Tom tried to kiss her again, but his lips landed on her cheekbone and then slid down to her chin.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Slippery.”

  It was a hot night. The whole room seemed to be sweating. Even without the dancing, they’d’ve been dripping. Even without hugging each other, they’d still have fused together.

  She wondered what this would feel like if she still had her magic. How many threads would connect them? Without magic, Jay-Tee couldn’t see the web that tied them together. Without magic, there probably wasn’t any connection.

  She pulled away from Tom, trying to see what wasn’t there. He looked back at her, started to say something, but she put her hand up.

  His skin was so white. He was so skinny.

  “You glow,” she told him. But not scary, like Reason. “A good glow.”

  He looked at his arms. His face went even redder. “I’m pretty white, eh?”

  She put her fingers around his wrist. “Check that out.” They both stared at Jay-Tee’s brown hand against Tom’s white, white arm.

  “You’re so much darker than I am,” he said. “You’re lucky. I get burnt really—”

  “I like how white you are. I can see the blue veins so clear. It’s pretty.”

  “Not as pretty as you. Not as gorgeous as—”

  Jay-Tee put her mouth to his, hoping to get lost in kissing. With her eyes closed, she could remember what the web had looked like. All the magic catching between all the magic-wielders, pulling them together. What was pulling her and Tom together?

  “Do you want to go upstairs?” she asked. The music was pounding, but without being able to catch its beat, it had become just noise. Something that verged on giving her a headache.

  Tom blushed again. Though it was getting hard to tell. They were both so hot, so sweaty.

  “I mean, upstairs’d be more comfy.”

  “You sure?” he asked, anxious.

  “Yeah. The edge of the table’s really digging in.”

  “I meant…”

  She laughed. He was so anxious. “I know what you meant. It’s just kissing, Tom. Relax.”

  Jay-Tee didn’t want to have sex with Tom. She’d had sex three times. Twice it had hurt and the third time it was uncomfortable. Two different boys. One back in the Bronx, before she ran away. Diego, but everyone called him Dig. He was one of Danny’s friends, another basketball nut, though not nearly as good as Danny.

  They’d done it in his parents’ basement, with her lying down on the unopened ironing board. Twice. Both times it had hurt so much she had to bite her lip not to cry.

  There hadn’t been any magic threads binding them together. Dig wasn’t a complete dead spot, but he was close.

  The other time was at Lantern, in one of the stalls in the girls’ bathroom. She didn’t know the guy’s name, but he was a great dancer and she’d liked his smile, though now she couldn’t remember what he’d looked like. Someone needed to go and banged on the door and screamed at them, even though there were other stalls.

  But he had been magic. She hadn’t realized till they were kissing and these strands unwound from him and unwound from her and tangled together, pulling them to each other. It was like fighting, each keeping their magic balanced—not giving any away, but not taking either. Like balancing a balloon on a pin, scared that it will pop.

  Jay-Tee still hadn’t liked the sex bit, but at least it hadn’t hurt, and the kissing had been okay. And the magic had been strange and kind of cool.

  She knew it was what you were supposed to do, so she’d done it. Already, kissing with Tom was better than kissing anyone else. The touching too. So maybe with Tom, a boy who’d never done it before, the sex wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe it would bring the magic back.

  “I like kissing you,” she told him.

  “I like kissing you too,” Tom said.

  She took Tom’s hand and led him out of the dining room, up the stairs. He stopped her halfway and kissed her again. It was a warm, slow, gentle kiss. She felt it all the way to the soles of her feet, like getting caught in the right kind of beat, which she never would again.

  She had to not think about that, to concentrate on Tom. He’d gotten a lot better at kissing really, really quickly. For a few seconds the kiss stayed slow; then their hearts heated up again, and they were kissing messily and fast.

  Tom lost his footing, slipped down a step. Jay-Tee fell with him. She broke her fall on Tom; he broke his on the stairs.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and was wrapping himself around her and she around him, with the stairs digging into her ribs and thighs. But kissing was too good.

  Jay-Tee had no idea how long it took them to get to her room. But when they did, she was suddenly so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open. It felt like everything was hitting her all at once and the only way she could cope was to sleep.

  For the first time in her life, Jay-Tee started to fall asleep in someone else’s arms. And it was nice, even though he was bony, and she knew she was going to wake up bruised.

  “You’re lovely, Tom,” she said, half asleep.

  “You’re lovely too,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

  17

  907 Lights

  I stayed close to the surface so that I could hear Esmeralda but still be in Cansino’s world. “Alexander?” she asked. “Here?” Her words went past me like rippling water.

  “Yes,” I told her. Until she replied I couldn’t tell whether I’d spoken or just thought those words. I wasn’t a body in the same way I was in the other world. My limits were a long way past the edges of my skin. Space leaked into me; I leaked into it. Esmeralda’s magic danced nearby. If I wanted to pull it towards me I could. But I didn’t know what that would do to her. Could I do that with Jason Blake? Pull him here?

  At that second his magic disappeared, swallowed by the spiral door. Could he hear my thoughts?

  “You’ve found the door he came through?”

  “Yes.” I stood up, sliding through the thickness. I could see the door Jason Blake had emerged from and just as quickly disappeared back into. I wondered if there was a way to slide through Cansino space that was quicker than the way I had been moving. Raul Cansino had seemed to appear out of nowhere. Could I do that?

  I looked at the door again, but it wasn’t one door; it was two. How had that happened?

  “And it’s not far?”
Esmeralda asked.

  “I don’t know.” I still didn’t understand the correspondence between the real world and Cansino’s world of lights. The two sets of light tightly bound together—the two doors—seemed to be side-by-side. Just a smidgen of textured darkness between them. The stuff that Jay-Tee was now entirely made of.

  I doubted that they would seem like that in the real world. “There’s two doors,” I said.

  “Two?”

  “I can see two.”

  “Which one did Alexander go through?”

  “They’re too close. It’s hard to tell.” Jason Blake had disappeared so fast, I didn’t know which was the one he had gone through.

  I pushed my way back to Esmeralda’s flat. This time the weight of normal gravity was too much. I crashed. And even though my eyes were wide open, I could still see Cansino’s magic world in the corners of my eyes. It had eaten my peripheral vision.

  “Reason? You okay?” Esmeralda poked her head out of her bedroom, squashed-up woollen things in her hands.

  I nodded. “Just the heavy air. Should pass in a second. It did last time.”

  “You sure?”

  “Uh-huh.” I stood up, feeling the movement of each muscle. In the corner of my eyes, the three doors gleamed. My mother could be behind one of them. “Are you ready? We should go.”

  “Just let me grab a scarf. I left Sydney a bit empty-handed. Will you be okay dressed like that?”

  “I don’t feel the cold anymore.”

  “No,” she said, staring at me. “I guess not.”

  8

  The first door was close by, only a block away. First I recognised the street; then I recognised the building. Jay-Tee had taken me here. We’d had a snowball fight on the roof. But the door wasn’t on the outside of the building.

  It was inside.

  I recognised the huge foyer with its floor of swirling coloured marble tiles and ornate plaster ceiling of interwoven doves carrying roses in their mouths.

  The lift, I thought. This was where Jay-Tee had taken me up in the temperamental old lift to the roof, where we’d thrown snow at each other. She’d said the lift liked me. The lift was a door.

  I walked towards it.

  “Can I help you?” asked a white man in a black suit and red tie, seated behind the big wood-and-leather desk. He looked at Esmeralda and then at me. Not the same man as when I’d come here with Jay-Tee. This man was much older. He didn’t sound or look like someone who wanted to help anyone.

  He had the smallest amount of magic I’d seen so far, but it was there, a fraction of a micron-thin layer sprinkled between his cells.

  “I’m here to see Rebecca,” Esmeralda said. She was concentrating hard. I could see her calling his infinitesimal fragments of magic to her.

  “In 8C?” he asked, frowning. “She knows you’re coming?”

  Esmeralda said, “Yes.”

  She nodded. I stared at the 250 brass tacks that held the green leather to the wooden desk, all the factors tumbling through my head. “We haven’t seen each other in ages,” Esmeralda added.

  “Was she your teacher?”

  Esmeralda nodded. “She was wonderful. And now I want Rebecca to teach my daughter.”

  I had a sudden vision of a white-haired old woman teaching students to play violin. I’d always wanted to learn an instrument, but it had never been possible. Sarafina didn’t play anything so couldn’t teach me: besides, we travelled too light to carry any but the tiniest musical instrument. But we’d never had the money to spend on such non-essentials. I’d never even touched a harmonica.

  “I miss her,” Esmeralda said.

  The man smiled. “She’s a lovely old lady. Go on through. Eighth floor.”

  The lift looked as forlorn as it had before, but this time I could see its magic: all 907 of its tiny smudges, bound together with threads of misty light. A delicious prime. I could taste it on my tongue.

  I pressed the button, waited with my breath held for the doors to open. Surely this door would co-operate, let me through to my mother. Jay-Tee had said it liked me.

  Nothing happened.

  Then I remembered that Jay-Tee had spoken to it. “Please,” I said softly. “Please.” When I got to Fib (17), 1,597 (also a prime), the metal doors groaned open.

  I stepped inside, Esmeralda behind me, onto the carpet worn so thin in places I could see the metal floor underneath. There was no panelling on the walls, nothing covering over the nuts and bolts holding the lift together.

  “Please,” I begged the lift in a whisper. “Please show me the other place you’re connected to. If you want to. If you’d like. It would mean so much to me.” I wondered if Jay-Tee had known it was a door. Or had she simply been attracted to its magic?

  The lift did not lurch into motion—its doors didn’t even close.

  I reached Fib (43), 433,494,437, and the doors were still open.

  “Maybe the door doesn’t like you,” I told Esmeralda. “It didn’t take this long last time.”

  “Last time?”

  “When I was here with Jay-Tee. I didn’t know it was a door then.”

  “The lift is the door?” Esmeralda asked. She didn’t sound like she believed me. “And it doesn’t like me?”

  I shrugged. All around us I could feel the lift’s impatience. I was increasingly sure it didn’t want Esmeralda to be there. “If you wait in the foyer…”

  Esmeralda cut her eyes at me. “Wait?”

  “The lift doesn’t like you.” I was at Fib (61). “It would have moved by now if it did.”

  “It’s only been a few minutes. You can’t be sure.”

  The lift groaned, a high-pitched sound of metal scraping against metal, but its doors stayed open.

  “See? If you’d just wait outside. Jay-Tee says it’s cranky.”

  The groan got even louder.

  “All right,” Esmeralda said at last, stepping out of the lift.

  The doors shut so fast they caught the back of her coat. I heard her yelp from the other side, and then her coat disappeared, and the lift shuddered, creaking into motion. I couldn’t tell if we were moving up or down. I couldn’t see out of the doors the way I’d been able to when me and Jay-Tee had gone to the roof. None of the buttons for the floors were lit up.

  Fibonaccis stuttered in my head, giving me only primes: Fib(3), 2; Fib (4), 3; Fib (5), 5 (yes, that’s right, Fib (5) is 5); Fib(7), 13; Fib (11), 89; Fib (13), 233; Fib (17), 1597; Fib (23), 28,657; Fib (29), 514,229; Fib (43), 433,494,437; Fib (47), 2,971,215,073; Fib (83), 99,194,853,094,755,497.

  The doors concertinaed open, groaning so loudly I had to cover my ears. I blinked in intense sunlight. Keeping one foot in the doorway, I put the other foot on the step in front of me and peered at this new world.

  Opposite me was a long wall. Every ten metres or so it changed colour, from brilliant blue to yellow to faded red-brown. Each section had a door and a window. The doors were small, the windows large. I was looking at a blue painted door and a large stone window, pots overflowing with flowers resting on the wide sill behind rusting metal bars. From the top of the wall, vines dotted with tiny blue flowers cascaded towards the street.

  Three white butterflies fluttered by. Then a huge yellow one with a black stripe at the bottom of its wings. I’d never seen such an enormous butterfly before. So big it could simply glide rather than constantly flutter its wings. Bells tolled in a tumble that made it impossible to count how many there were.

  I wasn’t wearing a watch. I peered up at the sky. The sun was high, in more or less the same position it had been in New York. If I’d been able to see the sun there, that was. So roughly the same time of day. Was this another city in the United States? It didn’t look like New York.

  The door snapped shut on my heel, pushing me out of the doorway and stumbling onto the street, where a car honked at me. I jumped out of the way, back onto the step, which I now saw wasn’t a step but a narrow, raised footpath. On the other side of the street was a
path just like it, made of the same large, uneven stones as the road.

  I turned to the door. On this side, it wasn’t the entrance to a lift: it was a wooden door with a brass knocker in the shape of a hand, set into a stone wall.

  I grabbed the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge.

  I took a deep breath. The door had let me through without a key, which meant that Jay-Tee was right: it liked me. Of course it was going to let me go back to New York City when I needed to.

  I sat down on the stone step and worked on breathing evenly, not panicking. I closed my eyes, and the calm of Cansino’s world washed over me. I searched for Sarafina. There were fourteen strong lights close by: none of them was my mother. Jason Blake wasn’t here either. There was not nearly so much magic here as in Sydney or New York City. The bindings between the 907 lights were pulled tight and did not respond to my probing them.

  I opened my eyes, felt the weight of the real world fall on me. I gasped, wondering why I had bothered to return to the real world. The few strong lights—none of them Sarafina—floated in my peripheral vision. I tried the door handle again. Nothing.

  I leaned back against the door, looked at the plants cascading down the wall towards me. These were studded with white, red, and yellow flowers. I peered up at them. More butterflies drifted by, more of the white ones, and a lone yellow, and then a tiny bird zipped past, stopping to stick its long, narrow beak into one of the flowers, and, more remarkably, hovering in place, its wings beating so fast they were a near-invisible blur. Its tail feathers bobbed back and forth. Then, just as my eyes adjusted to seeing it, the bird zipped away, faster than I’d ever seen any bird fly. What was it?

  Where was I? The same time zone as New York, more or less. Was it the same hemisphere? I’d have to wait for dark to see if it was a southern sky or not.

  An old man with skin darker than mine and as wrinkled as a walnut walked by, leading a donkey carrying two large baskets full of firewood down the hill.