Magic Lessons

by Justine Larbalestier

  “You got sucked through a door. An unopened door?”

  It sounded strange when Danny said it like that: You got sucked through a door. How could anyone be sucked through wood? I’d already forgotten how the rest of the world worked, the world that was free of magic. I hadn’t thought much about how it would seem to someone who was normal, who wasn’t doomed. A week ago I hadn’t believed in magic, either. Less than a week.

  “He blinded you?”

  “Yes. Made me deaf, too, and I couldn’t smell. No senses at all. It was really scary. And then he was laughing at me, telling me to go away.” Well, he hadn’t said anything, but it had been clear what he wanted.

  “Couldn’t you magic him back? Turn him into a toad?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Anyway, he’s got more magic than me.”

  “Can’t your grandmother do something? Blast him?”

  “She’s still on the other side of the door.”

  “You should call her.”

  “Yeah. But can I shower first? Before my toes fall off?”

  “Of course.”

  He led me into a bedroom. I didn’t think it was his. The walls—the ones that didn’t have windows—were covered in posters of people in tight clothes. Singers or actors, I guessed. “Are those Jay-Tee’s?”

  “Yup. This is her room. Don’t tell her, though. I want it to be a surprise. It’s filled with all her old stuff.”

  He slid one of the posters away, revealing a wardrobe stuffed full of clothes, toys, battered board games, and boxes piled on boxes. So many things.

  “Wow, Jay-Tee sure has a lot of stuff.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what to keep and what to toss. Figured I’d let Jay-Tee decide.”

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

  “You can have this room for as long as you need to. The bathroom’s in there.”

  “Thanks.” It was as big as my bathroom in Esmeralda’s house, only it had a window—an escape route, not that I thought I’d need one.

  Danny pointed out where the towels were and shut the door behind him. I opened it again. “Uh, Danny? Do you think I could borrow some of her clothes? It’d be nice not to have to put these pyjamas back on.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Danny started rifling through the wardrobe and picked out a red T-shirt and a pair of blue tracky-dacks with double white stripes down the sides. “These should fit. They were always big on Julieta.” He handed them to me, and though our skin didn’t touch, I caught the faintest warmth radiating from him, a faint whiff of something I’d never smelled before—something vital and alive.

  9

  Patterns in the Door

  Waiting was doing Tom’s head in. He was itching to burst through the door and rescue Reason, but Esmeralda was dead against it. Especially now that they knew she was safe with JayTee’s brother. Tom, however, had his own thoughts about how “safe” she was with Danny.

  A loud, shrill ring startled Tom into dropping the pad where he and Jay-Tee’d been taking turns describing what the door did: every stop; every start; the various gentle ripples that trembled across its surface, sometimes lengthways, sometimes across, occasionally swirling like a whirlpool. Mere wanted them to see if they could spot a pattern. So far, none of their scribbled notes looked very useful.

  The phone rang again. Reason, Tom thought. Jay-Tee must have thought it, too: they both lunged for the receiver at the same time.

  Jay-Tee was quickest, but Tom was closer.

  “Hello?” he said, a little breathless. “Mere’s residence.”

  Jay-Tee repeated, “Mere’s residence,” sarcastically. He waved her quiet.

  “Hello, Tom?”

  It was Reason. Tom felt his cheeks get hot. “Reason! Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “How? Jason Blake didn’t—”

  “He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him on the other side.”

  “It wasn’t?” Tom asked. “You’re sure? Maybe he was somewhere else spying or something.”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t see him, Tom. Is Esmeralda there?”

  “She’s next door. Researching, trying to find something that will help.”

  “So she doesn’t know what’s going on, then?”

  Tom hated to hear Mere being criticised, but it was true—she didn’t know what was happening. “Not exactly, but she’ll find something. I’m pretty sure she has lots of ideas.”

  Jay-Tee scooted her stool closer, crowding him. “Ask her if—”

  “Shhh!”

  “What?” Reason asked. She sounded tinny, like she was speaking from inside a metal box on the other end of the world, which she was, sort of—the other side of the world, anyway. Or the other side of the door. It still made Tom’s head spin. In less than a second, Reason had gone from summer to winter, Southern Hemisphere to Northern, moonlight to daylight, Sydney to New York City. When she was really what? Sixteen? Fifteen? Fourteen hours and thousands of kilometres away.

  “Nothing, Ree. Jay-Tee’s being a pain.” Jay-Tee made a face and scooched her stool closer, practically putting her ear on the receiver. Tom inched away, which left him with the kitchen table jammed into his ribs. Unfortunately, the phone was an old-fashioned one with a cord and everything. “Are you really fine?”

  “Yes. Bit shaken but fine. I’m in New York.”

  “Yeah, we know, Danny rang. So what happened, Ree? You disappeared into the door. We both saw it. You’re really sure it wasn’t Jason Blake?” He pressed the phone to his ear as if that would somehow bring Reason closer. Jay-Tee’s cheek was practically against his; he could hear her breathing, straining to listen. The rippling of the door stopped. He nudged Jay-Tee and she wrote it down.

  The farthest Tom or Jay-Tee had been from the door since Mere’d issued her instructions and gone to her library was to the dunny, just off the kitchen. Tom was completely jack of staring at the door and taking notes, and Jay-Tee had been getting narkier and snarlier as each minute passed.

  “No,” Reason said, “I didn’t see Blake.” She paused. Tom could hear her breathing, but in a different rhythm to Jay-Tee. She told him about an old man who wasn’t human. Tom didn’t understand.

  “Old? How can he be old?” It didn’t make any sense. “And do magic?” Then it hit Tom. “Do you think he’s been drinking from other magic-users? Stealing their magic?”

  “Could be.”

  Could stealing magic keep you alive for centuries? Wouldn’t Mere have mentioned that? Maybe the old man was completely insane? Tom looked at the door. So did Jay-Tee. It was still.

  “He’s definitely magic and old,” Reason’s voice said down the telephone wire. “I don’t know how he got that way. He didn’t try to take my magic. I don’t know why, ’cause he’s really powerful.”

  “We gathered that from this end.” Reason had disappeared into the door so fast. Tom’d imagined her captured by Jason Blake or broken into pieces or, worse, trapped inside the door. For a second, Tom could taste wood in his mouth, feel the splinters sticking into all parts of his body like pins and needles, only vicious and bloody. Like the biting golem thing.

  “How do you know he’s old?” Jay-Tee said loudly, so loud Tom’s ear hurt. He glared at her and held the receiver tighter. It slipped in his now-sweaty hand.

  “I just know,” Reason said, far away. “Is that you, Jay-Tee?”

  “Yeah!” Jay-Tee yelled, hurting Tom’s ear some more. “So how do you know?”

  “Well…”

  “Come on, Reason,” said Jay-Tee. “How do you know?”

  “I can see it.”

  “See what?” Jay-Tee said, sounding annoyed.

  “Hey,” Tom said. “Steady, Jay-Tee. You don’t want to lose your temper.”

  Jay-Tee flushed. “I wasn’t going to lo—”

  “So, Ree?” Tom asked, more gently. “How do you mean?”

  Tom could hear Reason take a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “when I look at people, really
look at them, I can see down into their cells. I can see the magic in them.”

  “Wow,” Tom said. “Like when I see the true shapes of things. I can sort of see if a person’s magic, too. Doesn’t always work, though. I wasn’t a hundred-percent sure about you.”

  “Then how come you couldn’t see it in Danny?” Jay-Tee asked. She didn’t sound like she was losing it anymore, back to her narky self. “Remember? You had to ask me whether he was magic or not.”

  “I didn’t know how to do it then. I do now. When I look at Danny, there’s no magic. But the old man has magic all the way through. It’s like the magic ate most of the human bits of him.”

  Tom tried to take this in. Either the old man stole magic from everyone he could or…“He must be really, really crazy, then.”

  “No.”

  “What? You can see whether they’re nutters, too?”

  “Yeah, I can, Tom. He’s not crazy.”

  “Wow.” He imagined Reason seeing the madness inside her mother. He wondered what it looked like, if his own mother’s insanity looked any different. He was pretty sure it wasn’t something he wanted to look at.

  “If Esmeralda gets any ideas about what I should do…”

  “She will. She’ll call you when she gets back. Shouldn’t be long.”

  “Is the door still being all weird?”

  Both Tom and Jay-Tee glanced at it. That would be a yes. “It’s stopped right now, but there’s been continued weirdness. Some of the feathers burst into flames.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Yeah, I know. They didn’t burn anything else, but. Just left a pile of ashes. I added some of the chicken bones. But it hasn’t been noisy or violent since then. Now it just ripples. It’s quite pretty, actually.” Beside him Jay-Tee mimicked the way he said “quite” under her breath.

  “Huh.” Reason’s voice sounded even smaller for a second.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Tired.” She paused. “And fuzzy. You know, jet lag.”

  “Door lag.”

  Reason laughed. “That’s right.”

  “I wanted to go after you, but Mere said—”

  “It’s too dangerous? It is, Tom, really dangerous. You don’t want to touch the door while it’s like that. That old man is scary. When I tried to magic him—”

  “You what?” Fear shot through Tom. That would require a lot of magic. “Tell me you didn’t—”

  “No, no, I didn’t. Honest, Tom. The old man didn’t let me. He’s really powerful.”

  The door started up again, lengthways ripples that started swirling, turning into figures of eight. Jay-Tee was noting it down.

  Tom’s scalp tightened. It was as if the old man knew what they’d been saying. Tom could picture him, grinning, showing a mouth full of rotten green teeth. He took a deep breath and changed the subject by asking, “So, uh, what’s Danny’s place like?” Straight away the door slipped back into slower, gentler patterns. Was the old man listening?

  Jay-Tee grabbed the phone. Tom’s hands were so sweaty it slipped right out. “You’ve been on for ages.” She turned to the phone. “Hey, Reason. Tom was being a hog. Sorry about before. Being cranky? It’s kind of nervous-making being stuck here watching the stupid door, you know?”

  Reason responded, but Tom made no attempt to hear. He stood up, stretched, rubbed his ear. Outside the world was getting lighter. The sun coming up. He looked at the clock on the stove—almost six-thirty. It had been around 4 AM when Reason had been sucked through into New York City. He was knackered.

  “Uh-huh,” Jay-Tee said. “You’re lucky being on the other side. How’s Danny? What’s his place like?”

  Reason said something and Jay-Tee giggled.

  Suddenly, Tom had a clear image of Danny sitting at the back of that restaurant in New York where they’d found Reason again. A really good-looking guy who’d been radiating eau de Reason. Tom felt wobbly. He hadn’t yet had the nerve to ask Reason about Danny, ask her if anything had happened between them. He didn’t want to think about that. He shook his head, trying to kill the thought, and instead thought of worse things, like Reason not living much longer.

  Tom grabbed a glass of water, gulped it down, poured another. The day was heating up. He wished Mere would get back; he was going to go mad if he had to stay here watching the door much longer.

  He tapped Jay-Tee on the shoulder. “Hang on, Reason,” Jay-Tee said. “Just a second. What, Tom?”

  “I just need to say one thing to Reason.”

  Jay-Tee looked like she was going to say something mean, but then she simply handed him the receiver.

  “Hey, Reason.”

  “Hey, Tom.”

  “Listen, will you do me a favour?”

  “What?”

  “Will you try not to use any magic? I mean, not unless you really, really have to.”

  Reason didn’t say anything.

  “Will you promise?”

  “I’ll promise to try, Tom, but I might have to. That thing…”

  “I know, but try really, really hard, okay?”

  “Sure, Tom. I promise.”

  “Good. ’Bye, Reason.”

  “’Bye, Tom.” He handed the receiver to Jay-Tee, who nodded at him.

  The first thing she said to the phone was, “You’re going to promise me the same thing, right, Reason?”

  10

  Ammonite

  “You don’t have much furniture,” I said. Danny’s hair was damp, making the curls cling even tighter to his head. He’d changed clothes, too, but my ammonite was still in his pocket.

  Danny was bone-meltingly gorgeous. His brown eyes were huge and almost slanted, with the longest, blackest eyelashes. His hair was cut close to his scalp, leaving lots of tiny little curls. His skin was a gorgeous shade of brown, darker than mine or Jay-Tee’s. It glowed. Looking anywhere other than at him was an effort. So I did an inventory of his furniture: a couch, two comfy chairs, a huge television, and six stools around the kitchen island, one of which I was sitting on. In the giant room, it seemed like no furniture at all. He pulled up one of the stools and sat opposite me.

  “So, Reason?” he said. I bit on my tongue to stop myself from blushing or shaking or doing anything that would make him realise that I liked him. I wanted him to realise, but only if he liked me, too, and not just as Jay-Tee’s friend.

  “Uh-huh?” I said, barely opening my mouth.

  “What did your grandmother have to say?”

  “I didn’t get to talk to her, just Tom and Jay-Tee. She was out doing something. They didn’t know much. They said they’d get her to call me back.”

  He pulled the ammonite out of his pocket, placed it on the benchtop, where its browns, greys, and blacks almost disappeared into the marble counter. “This is magic, right? How come you gave me this?”

  Now I was blushing. “I…You know when we were at that dancing place?”

  “You mean the club, Inferno?”

  “I guess. The place where you introduced yourself to me? You know, when you were looking for Jay-Tee?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t know if you…You might’ve been like Jason Blake. I know you’re not now, but I didn’t then. I gave it to you so I could follow you. Then if you kidnapped Jay-Tee or something, I could find her again.”

  “You can follow it even when you can’t see it? So it is magic?”

  I nodded. “I can always feel where it is. Well, not if it gets too far away, but.”

  Danny and I reached for the ammonite at the same time, our fingertips touching briefly. “Sorry,” we both said.

  “Take it.”

  I did. It was warm. The feel of Danny from it was overwhelming.

  “Good to have it back?”

  I nodded. It did feel good. I slid it into my pocket but kept it in my hand, between forefinger and thumb.

  “How does it work?” Danny asked. “I mean, the whole time I had it with me the stone never felt cold. Very w
eird.”

  I tried to explain about magical objects, how magic rubs off on them. It was hard because it didn’t entirely make sense to me. I could almost hear my mother scoffing at the explanation. I tried to think of it as like the sun’s energy being absorbed by a dark stone, but longer lasting so that instead of staying warm part of the night, it stayed warm forever. I thought about Danny as his heart continued to beat between my fingers. Had part of him rubbed off onto the ammonite? Had he absorbed something of me from having it in his pocket the last few days?

  The phone rang. Danny handed it to me. “Your grandmother.”

  “Hi, Esmeralda,” I said, glad for once to hear her voice.

  8

  I needed to think about what Esmeralda had said. I walked to the sliding glass doors and opened them, stepping out onto the balcony. The wind was bitter, but no snow fell, and the sky was perfectly blue, with tiny pockets of stringy, feather-thin clouds. On the ground, piles of snow lingered. I could see a large body of water, but I couldn’t smell much salt in the air so I figured it must be a lake or a river, not the sea. Close to the shore were sixty-two rotten wooden posts sticking up, looking like a flock of drowning giants only able to get one arm above the water. It must have been an old pier that had rotted away. Seagulls glided by. One hovered for a moment, as if frozen, and then drifted away. The sea must not be far. I wondered why the gulls would stay here in the cold when they could fly to summer.

  The door slid open and then shut. I looked at Danny and saw no magic, no rust inside him. He was completely normal. He handed me a big woolly jumper.

  “You must be freezing.” His words made little puffs of condensation.

  I was. I put the jumper on. “Great view. New York City is so big.”

  “That’s New Jersey over there.”

  “Is that a different city?”

  Danny looked at me oddly. “Yes.”

  “Huh.” It didn’t look very different. Grey and brown buildings. Hardly any trees. Beside the water, on the New York City side, people rode bicycles and jogged and took their tiny dogs for walks at the end of long leashes that from this distance looked more like kite strings. On the highway beside them, trucks and cars zoomed by. I could hear the rumble of the traffic, punctuated by the sudden squeal of horns and brakes and then by the bit of song that meant Danny’s phone was ringing.