Magic's Child

by Justine Larbalestier

  I blinked and saw only the backs of my eyelids, and shivered. This was what it felt like to be free of Cansino’s magic. I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt for my ammonite. It felt like a smooth stone. Nothing uncoiled from it. Numbers did not cascade through me.

  I didn’t need any of that. I didn’t need magic. My chest felt hollow.

  The bell rang again.

  Esmeralda put her hand gently on my shoulder, stepping ahead of me to open the door. A woman was standing there. She looked at me, and I recognized the sadness in her smile. “All ready for your test, Reason? I said I’d come to pick you up.”

  “Um,” Esmeralda started. “I don’t think I—”

  “Jennifer Ishii,” the social worker said, holding her hand out to Esmeralda. “And you are?”

  35

  God’s Children

  After Reason left to take her test—with an entourage of mother, grandmother, and social worker—Jay-Tee decided it was time for her and Tom to talk.

  She walked back to the kitchen, readying herself for what she had to say.

  Tom was watching as Danny raided the freezer. “What are you doing with all that ice?”

  Danny winced. “Little-known fact: you punch someone, it wrecks your hand.”

  “Oh,” Tom said. “So that’s why boxers wear those big gloves? I always thought it was to make sure they didn’t mess up each other’s faces too much.”

  Danny wrapped the ice in a towel and then around his hand, and gave Tom a look that would have made Jay-Tee laugh if she wasn’t so upset.

  “Is it weird that I’m really hungry?” Tom asked.

  “You’re always hungry,” Jay-Tee said. “It’s not weird at all. Tom, I really think—”

  “So, Danny,” Tom said. “How long you think you’ll be staying?”

  So Tom knew he was in trouble and was trying to avoid talking about his decision.

  “Man,” Danny said. “I have no idea. Right now I need to find a bed before I keel over. Jet lag is a bitch.”

  “You can sleep in my room,” Jay-Tee said. “Top of the stairs. Turn around and it’s the first door on your left.”

  Danny hugged his sister and kissed the top of her head. “You take care. It’s been a very long day.”

  After Danny left, Jay-Tee didn’t know what to say first. She felt wobbly. Not body wobbly, brain wobbly. “Let’s go outside, sit on the porch.”

  “Okay,” Tom said nervously.

  As she opened the door, Tom let out a gasp.

  “What?”

  “It’s not…There’s not…New York City’s gone.”

  He stuck his head out. “Wow. It’s just the backyard. Reason really did wipe out all the Cansino magic.” He shivered.

  Jay-Tee knew exactly how he felt. “Welcome to my world,” she said, “where a door is just a door.”

  “Right,” Tom said. They sat down together on the third-to-last porch step, with their feet just above the soggy backyard. He picked up a dried old leaf from amongst the smatterings of leaves and twigs on the porch behind them and tore it into tiny little pieces.

  Jay-Tee tried to speak, but her throat was clogged. How could Tom have chosen magic? Maybe life without it wasn’t as good as life with, but being alive was much better than being dead.

  Tom picked up another leaf and set about destroying it. And then another. If he didn’t say something about his crazy choice soon, she was going to scream.

  “My brain is going to explode,” she said at last.

  Tom turned to her and smiled. He had a really cute smile: it was kind of uneven, and always made his left eyebrow go up slightly.

  “You and me both,” he said.

  “I can’t believe…” She trailed off. She really didn’t want to fight with him. “Wanna make out?” she asked instead, though for the first time since they’d started kissing, she didn’t feel like it. But at least it would give her something else to think about.

  “Nah.”

  “Me neither.”

  “It’s too big.” Tom held his arms out, and a rain of little broken leaves fell on the yard. “Everything is too big. I keep trying to understand, but I can’t.”

  “Yeah,” Jay-Tee said. “And thinking hurts.”

  “Yup.”

  Jay-Tee wondered if they’d ever want to kiss again. Maybe they’d already broken up but just didn’t know it yet. How long would Tom want to be her boyfriend now that he was permanently-and-forever magic and she was permanently-and-forever not? He’d start thinking she was lame ’cause she couldn’t do anything special anymore. She felt lame. She felt angry too.

  “I’ll probably have to go back to New York, you know.”

  “That’s what your brother wants, isn’t it? Crap! Now the door’s buggered, how’ll I come visit you?”

  “I believe they’re called aer-o-planes.”

  “Very funny. How am I going to afford to be on a plane once a week?”

  “You won’t want to come once a week.”

  “How else am I going to see you as often as I want?”

  “Doof.” Jay-Tee punched him lightly. “You don’t have to worry about the money, though. I’ll pay. Danny says my dad made us rich. Or Mere. She’s got piles of money.”

  “Can you wait to go back until it’s warmer there? The weather’s horrible right now.”

  “Sure,” she said, though she had no idea how she was getting back. Could she get a passport so far from home? Could she pretend that she’d lost one? Would they know that she’d never had one? If they did know, she’d get into trouble, wouldn’t she? Maybe she could stow away on a boat and get home that way. She hoped Mere would be able to figure something out.

  Tom was ripping yet another leaf apart.

  “Don’t get mad at me, Tom, but why? Why did you tell Reason no?”

  “I’m not, Jay-Tee,” he said, brushing her cheek with his hand. “But I had to keep my magic. I love my magic.”

  “I loved it too. Yours and mine. I miss mine. It’s like I’m suddenly color-blind. Like…But I’m not afraid anymore. Not of Jason Blake or my father—”

  “I’ve never been afraid of my parents. Not like that anyway,” Tom said. “They’re not magic, remember? My mum’s like you now.”

  “But there are other magic-wielders out there who are just like Jason Blake. If you’d given up your magic, you wouldn’t have to worry all the time about—”

  “You’ve said all that,” Tom said. “I made my decision, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s done. I wasn’t saaaved.” He dragged the last word out and then paused like he was about to say something. Then he shook his head.

  “What?” Jay-Tee asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “There was something. It’s all over your face.”

  He shrugged and then cleared his throat, tearing at another leaf. “It’s a bit weird.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You won’t laugh?”

  Jay-Tee shook her head, smiled at him.

  “Okay. When Reason was all changed like that—so changed she was hardly human anymore—well, then how could she still have been one of God’s children? I mean, don’t you believe that we’re made in God’s image? That’s in the Bible, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?” Jay-Tee asked. It wasn’t exactly what she’d been expecting him to say, and she didn’t want to confess that she wasn’t that strong on the Bible. She’d looked at bits. Well, sort of. The bits they read in church. But she was kind of foggy on most of it.

  “Doesn’t that mean she was turning into a devil or something?” he continued. “I mean, you said that magic being real means that God is too, but doesn’t that also mean that devils are real? Don’t you think that’s what the strange old man was? And what Reason almost became?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” Jay-Tee said, stalling. She had thought that Raul Cansino might be a devil, but not Reason.

  “I don’t. I
’m just trying to figure out how you think about it. Isn’t magic what witches and devils use? Don’t you think a magic-wielder is automatically one of the bad guys?”

  “No,” Jay-Tee said, but it wasn’t true. When she was little, she’d worried that she was going to hell because of the magic, despite what her dad told her. “Okay, maybe. I used to think I was cursed, that my family was. That we were a demon family. Don’t laugh!”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Better not. Anyway, Dad said that was crazy, that being magic made us closer to God, not further away.”

  “Then why did you want me to give up my magic?”

  “Because…” Jay-Tee paused, trying to figure it out. He was right. If it made her closer to God and now she’d lost her magic…She felt different since her magic had gone, not just because the world was dimmer, but because her thoughts and feelings had changed. But she didn’t feel further away from God.

  The idea of it, of the change, had been at the edge of her brain, but it was hard making the thoughts come together. Not having magic made her feel less…She didn’t have a word for it. Since changing, she was thinking about herself less and about Tom and Danny and Reason and Mere more.

  “Reason kept saying magic was evil. You heard her, right?” Tom asked.

  Jay-Tee nodded. “I’m not sure evil is the right word.”

  “What is, then?”

  “Um.” Jay-Tee tried to figure it out. The magic going away had made her less selfish. But Tom wasn’t selfish. Maybe it wasn’t just the magic being gone. All the stuff that had happened since she first met Reason…Maybe all of that had made her—she hated to think it, ’cause it was the kind of thing her dad would have said before he became so horrible—but she was a bit more grown-up, more considerate or something. “I think not having magic makes you…kinder.”

  “Kinder?”

  “It’s probably the wrong word. I don’t really know what I mean. Magic changes us. Makes us less, well, good? No, that’s not it. Whatever it is, it gets worse as you get older. I think my dad was maybe wrong. Magic might bring you closer to God. But only if you use it right. And most people don’t. It makes them less good. It’s like…it’s like if you get rich. Money makes lots of people not good people. They get greedy and worry about losing their money and how to make more and they go all evil. I think magic’s like that.

  “And I don’t want that happening to you. I hate the idea of you dying young, but it would be even worse to see you turning into someone like Jason Blake.”

  “I would never!”

  Jay-Tee didn’t say anything. But she could imagine it. When he was a bit older and his dying closer. Mere had said she’d give anything for a few more weeks, a few days…even if it meant stealing magic from someone else. One day Tom might be like that too.

  “Does this mean you don’t want to be my girlfriend anymore?” he asked.

  Jay-Tee laughed. “Hell, no! I just have to make sure you see the light and don’t stray into the path of evil.”

  Tom laughed, but Jay-Tee was deadly serious. She wasn’t going to let him go over to the dark side.

  “Shall we start by cleaning up the mess downstairs?” Tom asked.

  Jay-Tee rolled her eyes. “Doofus, I was talking big evil! Not lame housework.”

  8

  It wasn’t too bad. They mostly just picked up all the broken magic stuff and threw it into garbage bags. The Cansinos sure had collected a lot of it over the years: antiques and pieces of wood—even the stones were all in pieces now.

  Their magic was over. Finished. Done.

  It made Jay-Tee feel less bad about her own missing magic. She bet the magic schoolhouse next door looked like a bomb had hit it.

  The house was almost spotless before Jay-Tee realized what the other thing bugging her was.

  “Where did Jason Blake go?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tom said. “Good ol’ Jason Blake. I bet he did a runner. You didn’t want him to hang around, did you?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jay-Tee would live happy if she never saw him again for the rest of her life.

  “Do you reckon anything valuable’s missing?” Tom asked.

  Jay-Tee looked at the full garbage bags. “How would we tell?”

  “Too true.”

  Jay-Tee wasn’t sure how she felt. “I wish he’d been punished.”

  “Did you see that black eye Danny gave him?”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Jay-Tee, he was punished,” Tom said. “He’s got no magic.”

  “That means I’m punished too.”

  “No,” Tom said. “You were saved, remember?”

  “Very funny.” But she was starting to believe that she had been saved. She certainly didn’t feel punished. Running and dancing weren’t the same, but she had the feeling she’d get to like the non-magic version of them too. She was a whole new person. A kinder, less selfish one. But maybe that had already started back when Reason stumbled through the door into a New York blizzard.

  One thing was certain: Jay-Tee was starting to like this new person. She was looking forward to seeing how she was going to turn out.

  “It must be worse for him,” Jay-Tee said, thinking it through out loud. “Magic was all he ever cared about. He didn’t love anyone. The only thing for him was magic and now it’s gone. I’ve got lots of things to live for. My life isn’t over. Not even close.”

  “Course not,” Tom said. “We’re pretty much finished, right? Time to make out?”

  Jay-Tee laughed and kissed him.

  36

  Reason Cansino

  I passed the exam. Well, not exactly passed. I got a hundred per cent for the maths, and a strong suggestion that I might get a history and English tutor before I started year ten.

  Truth was, I barely made it through the exam. Only the maths problems kept me going. Once the magic had gone, all my emotions came rushing back. I was knocked sideways by love, anger, jealousy, hurt. It was all I could do to concentrate.

  I sobbed for ten solid minutes after I put my pencil down.

  After that, there was no getting out of seeing a counsellor once a week. Isabella Sanditon said to tell her everything. Hah! But I did tell her about the baby and how scared I am to be fifteen and almost a mother. Especially when I don’t know how I feel about my own mother and how she brought me up, knowing so much about mathematics and science and almost nothing about anything else. How she lied to me.

  Omission, we decided—the counsellor and me—is as bad as a lie.

  Sarafina apologised, explained. And I didn’t forgive her, and then I did, and then I didn’t again, and we screamed and fought. Knowing that she was right, had always been right, in a way, helps a lot. She always knew that magic was evil.

  And really, if she hadn’t kept me away from Mere, would I have been able to save us? For that alone I forgive her. Today anyway.

  Mere forgave me for taking the magic away. Sometimes I’m not entirely sure if I forgive myself. I can’t help wondering what it would have been like: me and my baby floating in Cansino’s world together—no pain ever.

  What mother doesn’t imagine giving that to her child?

  Sarafina and Mere have been locked in plenty of their own fights. Hardly a day goes by that Sarafina doesn’t threaten to scarper back out bush, out the window, down the drainpipe, and away. But mostly they just scream at each other.

  School starting in February turned out to be a relief.

  It’s school for both me and Sarafina; she’s trying to finish the education she barely started. I’m pretty sure she won’t run away again till she’s all educated.

  My grandfather Alexander/Jason Blake disappeared some time between me closing my eyes to turn the magic off and Jennifer Ishii coming to the door. None of us miss him. Jay-Tee hopes he was left destitute, with no credit cards in his pocket and no explanation to the authorities as to how he wound up in Australia without his passport.

  But then a package arrived
for Tom. It contained three keys and four addresses, in Bangkok, Auckland, Dallas, and New York. So I suspect that my magicless grandfather is doing okay. Though why he cares about Tom I don’t know, unless he just didn’t want his precious doors to go to waste.

  I was right about Jay-Tee and Tom. While I’d almost been swallowed whole by my great-great-great-etc.-grandfather’s magic, they’d been off kissing! Unbelievable. And to top it off, they kept disappearing together, leaving me alone with my guilty, angry, loving mother and grandmother. More than enough to make me want to run away.

  If I could have, I would have.

  And no boyfriend for me. Danny hadn’t ever been anything more than a magic-induced crush (well, partly magic-induced). When Raul had started to unravel, the Cansino magic wanted a baby, and Danny was conveniently there to be the father. I was grateful that he was decent about it. He wants to help with raising the baby, and not just with money. He wants the baby to know him, to have a father, even if he lives such a long way away.

  There’s so much to cope with. The coming baby and Sarafina. They both need me.

  And Jay-Tee too. She couldn’t stay in Sydney with Tom like she wanted. She had to go home with Danny, and while the adults sorted out her passport problems, and when she wasn’t off with Tom, she spent her time crying about not getting to stay and worrying about Tom using too much of his magic.

  All of which barely affected him. He didn’t regret his decision. Not for a second. I don’t think he believes he’ll die. Who really believes that until it’s too late? And once a week he makes one of us something excellent to wear. Mostly Jay-Tee, of course, but he never entirely neglects the rest of us. Tom reckons everything is roses: he has a girlfriend he loves, he’s had the mother he hardly knew returned to him, and there are no more secrets or lies in his family.

  I did my best to persuade him. But I don’t think anything would have changed his mind. Tom doesn’t believe he’s anything without magic. And sometimes, when the Fibonaccis aren’t cascading through my head like they should, sometimes I think he might be right.

  Life was easier before I knew magic was real. Before Sarafina went mad. But I’m not sorry it changed. My life with Sarafina hadn’t been the way I’d always told myself it was. Sarafina did wrong by me, keeping me from making friends, from knowing the truth. And even if that’s how I ultimately saved my family from magic, it still wasn’t right.