by Fiona Horne
‘Thank you, Mrs Pilkington. My name is Vania, and this is Dean. We promise to be really careful.’
She beckoned us to follow her down the corridor that stretched out behind her desk. We picked our way around some boxes on the floor before catching up with her. At the end of the corridor there was a door with a small metal grate set at eye level – it reminded me of a prison door. Mrs Pilkington took a large skeleton key from her pocket.
‘I warn you, it’s a little disorganised in here,’ she said. ‘More recent copies are filed digitally, but it wasn’t so long ago that everything was just paper. You may have to do a little hunting to find what you’re looking for.’
She opened the door and flicked on the light switch. I immediately sneezed. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.
‘Gesundheit,’ Mrs Pilkington said.
A single bulb illuminated the room, which was filled with boxes stacked topsy-turvy everywhere. Scattered copies of the Summerland Star lay on top of some of them. I picked one up.
‘Twenty-fourth of June 1966 – well, these are certainly archival copies.’
‘You two knock yourselves out for the next forty-five minutes – at five p.m. sharp I lock up.’
Mrs Pilkington left Dean and I alone in the dusty room.
‘We may need to come back,’ Dean said wryly.
‘Well, let’s see what we can find today at least.’
He nodded, and together we started sifting through the stacks of papers. It was actually quite fascinating looking into these printed snapshots of the world before computers and immediate information had existed. I considered what it would have been like when you had to wait for the newspaper delivery boy to throw a paper onto your doorstep to find out what was happening in your neighbourhood or the world. As I turned over pages and pages, though, it became clear that not much had happened in Summerland. The news was mostly about a store opening, an unusually high tide . . .
‘Found something!’ Dean’s voice jumped out at me from a dark corner of the room.
He held a newspaper up exultantly. When he laid it out in front of me on the floor I was thrilled to see the headline ‘Woman’s Mysterious Death Baffles Police’.
I scanned the article. ‘The partially burned body was surrounded by candles and cooking items . . .’
That was kind of bizarre.
At that moment Mrs Pilkington appeared in the doorway. ‘Have you found anything? It’s time to go,’ she said. ‘Yes, actually we have, ma’am – could we make a photocopy?’
Mrs Pilkington nodded and beckoned us to follow her, which we did, Dean flicking off the light switch and thrusting the dusty room back into complete darkness as we left.
Moments later we stood next to the photocopier, which was making a warm hissing sound as it captured images of our new research material. I felt excited. I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling we were going to solve this mystery – we just needed a little more time in that room.
I turned to Mrs Pilkington. ‘Can we come back again next week?’
‘You and your friend can come back anytime, Miss Australia.’ She beamed at me.
Dean and I high-fived each other as we walked down the stairs of the Summerland Star.
I couldn’t wait to show the rest of the coven the photocopy the next day.
‘This is intriguing,’ Amelia said. Alyssa nodded.
‘Cooking items,’ Alyssa read aloud. ‘Maybe she was making dinner and burned the house down?’
‘Can you get a psychic read on it?’ Bryce looked at the twins expectantly.
But both of them shook their heads. ‘It’s really weird. We can’t get any read on this at all. There’s a wall around it – like a locked room with no windows.’
‘Well, anyway, I think to pass the elective we’re going to have to solve this mystery by practical means, mostly – we can’t write in our paper that the twins psychically solved it!’ I said.
We all laughed.
‘Maybe I could try to communicate with her ghost,’ said Bryce.
‘That would be cool,’ I said.
But Dean looked a bit spooked and held up a hand. ‘Wait. Let’s see what we can find using orthodox methods first – then if we get stuck we can start using some magic.’
Bryce shrugged and nodded.
‘That’s probably a good idea,’ said Alyssa. ‘So what’s the next step?’
‘We should pay another visit to the Summerland Star offices soon,’ I said.
The bell rang and we gathered up our bags. I carefully folded the photocopy and placed it in my backpack. I felt almost protective of it – like I now had a responsibility to this woman to solve the mystery of her death.
Seven
I stared at the fluffy white feather in my hand. Brenda stood over me, snapping her fingers rhythmically. It was supposed to help me concentrate, but to be honest I was finding it a bit distracting.
‘It’s all in your mind, Vania . . .’
She was swaying back and forth, her head thrown back, her good eye closed and her gold-and-green caftan shimmering in the candlelight.
‘When will I know to put it in the smoke?’ I asked, frustrated.
It was lunchtime, but the curtains were drawn and it could have been the middle of the night in the dark cafe. We had been there for over an hour, and I was nervous that my first spell-casting lesson was going to be a dud, and that someone would walk in and wonder what on earth we were doing with the large bowl of incense on the table emitting somewhat toxic smoky plumes into the air.
‘Focus, focus, focus,’ Brenda murmured, and I started to feel irritated. Focus on what? That I was in over my head and spun-out that she was expecting me to make this feather change colour, which was scientifically impossible? But I needed to suck it up and deal with it. It had been my idea to form a coven and do magic, after all. I knew I was lucky that Brenda was sharing the wisdom of her ancestors with me. Still, I wanted to throw the stupid feather on the floor and go to the beach. It was a hot, sunny day outside.
Dean was out enjoying it. Brenda had sent him on a hike through the hills to pick some desert sage – a herb his Chumash ancestors had used. It would have been the job of the shaman to gather the sacred herbs for the tribe. The Chumash had carried and burned desert sage for protection, and Brenda said it was beneficial for anyone new to magic to carry a piece. I wanted protection from Mr Barrow’s persecution so I hoped Dean would bring back a ton of it. Brenda had given him a thorough briefing on what it looked like and where he would most likely find it, as well as some sage advice about gathering his spoils from higher up on the plant, in case a dog had peed around the base. ‘You’ve got to be practical as well as magical,’ she had said brightly, sending him off carrying a lunch bag containing a sandwich and cookies. Talk about getting it easy.
Meanwhile, my mind was wandering and my butt was going numb from sitting on the wooden chair for so long, but Brenda kept insisting that I focus. She had also given me a sharp piece of purple amethyst crystal to hold to supposedly help magnify my magical powers, but as I gripped it harder and harder in frustration all it seemed to do was burn a hole in my palm.
I looked intently at the feather. White contains the seven colours of the light spectrum, so a different colour was in there somewhere – I just had to reveal it.
All of a sudden the front door of the cafe swung wide open and light streamed into the room.
‘Hey, Vania, are you in here?’
Bryce! His presence gave me a renewed jolt of energy.
I looked at the feather in my hand. It was now a pulsing flow of colours, like a fluffy rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet!
Bryce came to stand in front of me. ‘Awesome!’ he said.
All I could do was stare incredulously at the feather, my mouth opening and closing like my nickname.
‘Excellent, Vania,’ Brenda crooned. ‘Now you can wave it through the smoke.’
I passed the feather through
the incense and saw it start to sparkle. There was a crackling sound as the sparks popped.
‘It’s not going to catch fire, is it?’ I asked Brenda, worried I was about to burn down her cafe.
‘No, Vania,’ Brenda said soothingly. ‘You have just harnessed the power in the ninety per cent of your brain that most of us generally don’t use. That noise you’re hearing is your own brain cells firing. The sparks are a visible expression of your inner magic. Everything is energy, as you know.’ With a flourish she whisked the feather from my hand and it immediately stopped sparkling and went back to its original colour.
‘Time for something to eat,’ Brenda said. She put the feather away in a drawer at the side of the cafe. Bryce and I sat there in silence – I think we were both in shock – as Brenda brought over some sandwiches and iced tea. She had told me before we started with the feather today that it was important to eat something after you did magic, to ground any excess energy so that it wouldn’t fly around and cause something weird to happen (as if making a feather look like it belonged in a disco wasn’t weird enough).
I was amazed – and thrilled – that I was able to make magic happen. And I hoped that the more skilled I became, the safer I’d feel, until I could forget about the tea-leaves omen, which had continued to pop in and out of my thoughts since the reading.
Later, Bryce and I walked out of the Purple Raven together. It had been a long and intense afternoon.
‘That was mind-blowing, I can’t believe you did that,’ Bryce said.
I felt the familiar heart flutters. To distract myself I fingered the piece of amethyst in my pocket that Brenda had given me to take home and practise with.
‘It was no big deal, really,’ I said, trying to brush off his compliment.
‘Vania it is. Your powers are amazing,’ he said.
I took a deep breath – it was so hard to concentrate around him. ‘You know what’s weird?’ I said. ‘It only started happening when you walked into the cafe. I’d been sitting there for ages with Brenda and nothing had happened. Maybe you had something to do with it.’ I allowed myself to look directly at him and his clear green gaze bore into mine.
‘Maybe that why I feel we should be together,’ he murmured.
‘What?’ I was shaking. Hope soared in my chest. He felt the connection, too?
‘Magic,’ he said. ‘We’re better at it together than by ourselves. And that’s good to know; we should keep practising. It’s why we’re friends after all, isn’t it?’
My breath caught in my throat and I misstepped – he’d said the F-word again.
Recovering, I turned and raced off down the street. ‘Gotta go!’ I called out over my shoulder. ‘See you at school tomorrow.’
I didn’t wait to hear his reply.
The twins were waiting for me at the bus stop the next morning.
‘Vania, are you upset with Bryce?’ Alyssa asked as soon as I walked over to them.
‘No, not at all. Why are you asking?’
I kept my eyes averted. I often felt that when the twins looked at me in the eyes they were reading my mind, and I wanted to keep my thoughts to myself right now. We walked into school.
‘Bryce called us and asked if you were,’ Amelia said. ‘He’s worried he said something to offend you at the cafe yesterday.’
‘We heard about the feather. It’s so cool you could do that!’ Alyssa said.
‘I was starting to wonder if it was all in my imagination,’ I said. I was still trying to get my head around what had happened. Rationally I couldn’t believe it. But then again, in the last week I had seen a pen move by itself across a table, and apparently my eyes had changed colour that night we’d formed our coven. And now, the most unbelievable thing of all – Bryce had called the twins to ask about me. What guy did that? It seemed like anything was possible now, and I was just going to have to get used to crazy stuff happening.
‘Vania, you know, I think you’re too hard on Bryce. I mean, he broke up with Cassidy and started hanging out with us – you could give him some credit,’ Amelia said in her serious voice.
Even though the twins were identical in almost every way, Amelia could be bossy sometimes, and I resented her tone.
‘Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you know everything,’ I snapped at her – and immediately regretted it when I saw the hurt look on her face.
‘I’m sorry, Amelia,’ I said. ‘I’m not upset with Bryce, just confused. I like him, but I know we can never be anything more than friends. He’s from a different world to me – he’s from a prominent family so his parents are old-money rich, he’s hot, he’s popular . . .’
‘Well, he ditched all his old friends for us, so he must like you a lot.’ Alyssa smiled.
‘I don’t think he did that just because of me – I think he was fed up with their crap, just like we are.’
Alyssa nodded. ‘And that’s why we love him – and here he comes now.’ She did an about-turn and waved at Bryce, who was at the end of the corridor behind her. There was no way she could have seen him. Once again I was in awe of their psychic prowess.
‘Be nice,’ Amelia whispered to me as Bryce walked up to us.
‘Hi, Amelia. Alyssa.’ He nodded to them and then, looking at me, he added a little more cautiously, ‘Vania.’
‘Bryce.’
We all stood there in silence for an awkward moment, and I realised I was going to have to bridge this gap before it turned into an uncrossable chasm.
‘I’m sorry I raced off like that yesterday. I was stressing that my parents would ground me if I came in too late. You know I had to tell my mum I was working at the cafe to be able to go and hang out there all afternoon.’ He seemed to relax as I babbled.
‘No problem.’ He smiled. ‘My dad was annoyed at me for not getting home earlier, too – I was supposed to help him clean out the garage.’
‘Bummer you missed that,’ said Amelia and Alyssa, nodding.
We all laughed as Dean came running up.
‘What am I missing out on? My bus was late,’ he panted.
‘Nothing spectacular, just household chores.’ I looped my arm through his.
He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me. I looked at the spidery tendrils of silver-grey foliage in my hand.
‘Desert sage.’ He smiled.
I had been dreading chemistry class all day. It was such a drag that the subject I had loved so much had become torturous because of Mr Barrow. It had occurred to me to speak to the principal about it, but what would I say? That Mr Barrow had it in for me for some unknowable reason? Besides, the only potential solution she could offer would be to transfer me to a lower class, which would look bad on my report card. And then my parents would come down on me . . .
I sighed as I took my seat. The only person who could solve this problem was me. I tried to focus on positive thinking, and magic being the art of changing things with will. I had no choice but to sit here in the same room as him for the next hour – so I decided I would make the best of it by trying to at least learn something.
Mr Barrow walked into the classroom. I fingered the desert sage in my pocket, hoping it would work and he would be even just a little nice to me – or simply leave me alone.
‘Open your books to page 40: “The Principles of Thermal Radiation”,’ he said. I began to read.
Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of charged particles in matter. All matter with a temperature greater than absolute zero emits thermal radiation.
‘Thermal radiation can be measured by colour, as light is a form of visible thermal radiation – although the light we see with our eyes is really a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. That is, a rainbow shows the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum,’ Mr Barrow said.
I thought about the feather changing colour in my hand. Maybe it hadn’t been magic at all – just science again, like the penny changing colour. Taking a deep bre
ath, I stuck up my hand.
‘Mr Barrow, could the human body’s electromagnetic radiation cause an object to change colour?’ I asked.
‘Are you telling me you have witnessed an object change colour in your own hands, Vania Thorn?’
A chill went through me. Did he know about the feather? Who had told him?
‘No, sir, I’m not,’ I said quietly.
A couple of students laughed at my obvious discomfort.
I hid behind my study book for the rest of the class. No matter how much I tried to use positive-thinking magic, Mr Barrow’s overwhelming negativity was like a dark cloud that completely smothered it. I was obviously going to need more desert sage.
Matt Rock was hot. If there was one guy in school who distracted me from Bryce, it was Matt. He was in the year above me and hung out with a cool gang that surfed a lot. He had thick blond hair spiked up into a Mohawk and blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled.
I had started catching a different bus home from school – the same bus Matt took. It dropped me a kilometre from my house, but it was worth it so I could avoid Cassidy and have some space from Bryce.
Spending my bus rides watching Matt had given me an idea. I was still not entirely convinced that what I’d done with the feather was magic. Although Barrow had shut me down in class, the more I read about electromagnetic radiation, the more I felt I needed different proof that what I was experimenting with was magic. I wondered what else I could practise my so-called powers on – and that was when the crazy idea started to formulate in my mind: maybe I could make Matt pay attention to me. And if he liked me then maybe Bryce would get jealous, and see me as more than just a friend with stringy hair and fish lips.
After mulling this over for a few days, I finally decided to go for it. I stared at the back of Matt’s head, willing him to turn around and look at me – not that I had any idea what I’d do next.
I stared and stared, but nothing happened. I had to up the stakes. Then I remembered the amethyst in my backpack that Brenda had given me. I felt a bit guilty as I removed the lustrous purple stone from its black velvet pouch. Brenda had made a point of telling me not to use it for frivolous means. In fact, I was only supposed to use it alone at home for a week, until I saw Brenda again for my next lesson.
