Magic Lessons

by Justine Larbalestier

  Tom pried his eyes open, made himself sit up, draped the fabric across his knees, nice drapes. Full-length coat, thought Tom. That’d be better. Maybe the synthetic fur should only be at the cuffs and collars? He picked up the phone and dialed his sister’s number. The fifteen digits went beep, beep, beep, but slowly. It was more like beeeeeep, long pause, beeeeeep, long pause, beeeeep.

  Then there was silence. Lots of silence. Tom wondered if maybe New York City and Sydney weren’t talking to each other anymore. He was thinking about never talking to Mere again. The phone made an abrupt scratchy noise. Almost a burp. Tom giggled. The phone connected, Australia to the U.S.A. Tom wondered if monkeys had anything to do with it. It had sounded like a monkey burp. The phone was ringing, but not properly—just one looong ring at a time.

  A male voice answered. “Hello?” it said, talking funny.

  “Is Cathy there?”

  “No,” said the voice. There was a click, and the phone returned to dial tone. The dropkick had hung up. Tom groped through his memory, trying to place the voice—Cathy’s mean flatmate, the one who’d said Tom’d slept for twenty-six hours, the one with the expensive bathroom products. He wished Cathy would find somewhere else to live. He tried her mobile and got voicemail. He left a message asking Cathy to call. He missed her.

  He thought about calling Reason in New York City, telling her…

  It was all too hard. He lay back on the bed. Closed his eyes and saw thousands of tiny triangles falling through blackness like rain, or snow, more like. What would he tell Reason? That Mere had drunk from him? That she was every bit as dodgy as Reason thought?

  He opened his eyes. The ceiling had a giant plaster thing around where the light hung down. He couldn’t remember what those things were called. He wasn’t sure he’d ever known. It had flowers and leaves and grapes on it. A few cobwebs between the light fixture and one of the bunches of white plaster grapes. It hurt his eyes to look at it.

  That’s just part of being magic: sometimes you have to lie.

  Mere had lied to Tom and told him it was something else, a searching spell? Something. He couldn’t remember. But she’d drunk from him. Placed her hand on his arm, asked him if he’d share his magic with her. He’d said yes, because he didn’t know what the real question was. Tom decided to never say yes to anything ever again. Safer that way.

  They hadn’t shared. Tom’d gotten nothing from Mere. He’d felt weak and strange afterwards, heavy, like he felt now. He’d slept for a whole day! Now he wanted to do the same. Close his eyes and not see the cobwebs and white plaster grapes and flowers.

  Tom’d thought Mere’d been tired, too. But she hadn’t been. She’d been energised on his magic. She’d lied to him. She’d drunk from him the same way Jay-Tee had, but Jay-Tee’d asked; she’d told him exactly what she was doing. And anyway, she’d only asked him ’cause she had to, because she was dying.

  Jay-Tee had looked wrong. Her skin suddenly seemed almost transparent. Like she had only seconds left. Jay-Tee was only fifteen. It wasn’t fair.

  Then it occurred to him. Mere was forty-five. What if she’d taken his magic because she felt herself dying, too? Like Jay-Tee had? About to keel over and die that very second.

  It wasn’t a what-if, Tom was suddenly sure. The haze of his exhaustion seemed to lift in the face of his realisation: that was why Mere’d taken magic from him. She’d felt herself dying, and she’d been afraid. It made perfect sense. Mere’d never taken magic from him before. Never. Tom knew that for a fact, because now he knew exactly what being drunk from felt like. He’d felt that hideous sensation twice in his life. First Mere, then Jay-Tee.

  He’d been with Mere for over a year, seeing her every day, and only once had she’d taken magic from him. She must’ve been desperate.

  She was dying.

  Recently Mere’d been so cautious with her magic. More cautious than he’d ever seen her. She’d hardly used any while she instructed the three of them. She’d just made the candles go out. That was nothing.

  He wished she hadn’t lied, though. If she’d’ve asked, he’d’ve said yes.

  Tom’s eyes closed again. He dreamed of nothing.

  14

  Old Man Cansino

  “Okay, we’re about to go around the corner,” I told Esmeralda. “Are you sure the door’s not moving?”

  “Positive.”

  “Huh.” I leaned against the café window, touched my cheek to the cool glass for a split second before shifting quick smart to put cloth between me and it. The temperature had dropped. Only 5:19 PM and the sun was already disappearing. Still Monday. It felt like Tuesday was never going to arrive. In Sydney it was 8:19 AM and they were already there, living in Tuesday while I stayed in Monday forever. My eyes stung from cold, fatigue, door lag.

  Ever since Sarafina had gone crazy and I’d been sent to Sydney, the days had swelled into years. Seconds dragged, and then minutes sped up and disappeared. Time was happening somewhere far from me. A week ago I’d turned fifteen. Now I wasn’t sure what age I was. A hundred? Five?

  In the window were nineteen different muffins and cakes. I couldn’t smell them, though—all I could smell was him. His vomit-and-charcoal coated my tongue, made my stomach feel like it was full of bile all the way to the back of my throat. The hairs on my arms stood on end. It was bitter cold, my nose, cheeks, and eyes stung with it, but the rest of me was swathed in warm layers. I wasn’t tired anymore.

  “Is he there?” Esmeralda asked, her voice sounding as if it was hauling its way through spinifex to get to me.

  “Ah—” I began.

  “I could go first,” Danny said close to my ear.

  I put my hand over the receiver.

  “I can make sure he’s not there,” Danny continued. “Or you can walk behind me. I’m big enough to block him from seeing you. You don’t look good.”

  “He doesn’t need to see me to know I’m here.” I took in a deep breath. It was icy and made me cough. Danny patted me on the back and I shook my head, swallowing. “I’m okay. I’ll go first.”

  Easier said than done. I might want to get it over with, but my body was deadset against ever seeing the old man again. My ears didn’t want to be shut off from sound, and my eyes were uninterested in repeating their brief experience of blindness.

  “It’s okay to be scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” I lied.

  “What’s going on?” Esmeralda asked from the other side of the world.

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’re about to go around the corner.”

  I took a step forward, neatly avoiding a pile of frozen poo, barely managing not to skid on the salt and ice. The street was familiar to me—even though it was like so many other East Village streets, I knew this one. This was where I’d first stepped from summer to winter. This was where I’d first seen snow, fire escapes nailed to the outside of buildings, New York City.

  I couldn’t see the old man. But further along the block, a tall man I thought I recognised disappeared around the corner.

  “Do you see him?” Esmeralda asked again.

  Should I tell her that I had possibly seen my grandfather, Jason Blake? That the old man was a Cansino, like us? “No,” I said. I glanced at Danny, who shook his head. He couldn’t see any old man, either. “I can smell him, though, stronger than ever.” I thought about going to a chemist, getting something to stop the chunderous feeling. Esmeralda hadn’t been able to smell him.

  I looked around as much as I could with my movements restricted by scarf and hoods and hat. “But it’s getting dark, so it’s kind of hard to tell.” Which applied to my possible Jason Blake sighting, too.

  “The door still isn’t moving,” Esmeralda said, her voice coming through more clearly this time. She sounded like Sarafina. More like Sarafina than Sarafina had when I’d seen her last.

  “It’s good to have proof that there is a connection—you know, between the strangeness with the door and—”

  “The old ma
n,” Esmeralda finished for me. “Yes, it is.”

  Danny and I walked closer. In all my winter clothing I was starting to sweat, yet my nose was running because of the cold. Up above, the sky was turning a strange orangey-brown colour. If the old man’s vile smell had a colour, that would be it. Pollution brown. I couldn’t see the moon or any stars, and even if I could they’d be the wrong ones. The Southern Cross, Carina, Centaurus couldn’t be seen from so far north. I had no idea which was east and which was west.

  “Let me know when you’re on the steps.”

  “Okay,” I said into Danny’s mobile.

  “I’m going to try opening the door,” my grandmother said, her voice breaking up a little.

  “Won’t that muck up those feather protections?”

  “No,” she said, without offering any explanation. Some teacher, I thought.

  “And what if he’s just hiding? I can smell him really strongly.” I turned to look behind me.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  I wondered how she could be so sure.

  “We’re at the door now. Oh…”

  Something grey-brown was oozing out of the top step in front of the door. Something that smelled so intensely, my mouth flooded with bile. It began to bubble, get bigger and bigger.

  I took a step back. “Bloody hell.”

  “The door’s started again,” I heard Esmeralda say.

  The stuff was surging upwards, shaping itself into something human, into old man Cansino. I turned to run. He froze me in my tracks, then, without using his hands, pulled me back towards him. I opened my mouth to scream and he closed it for me. If I vomited now, I would choke on it. I wished he had stopped my nose so I couldn’t smell him.

  “Oh, there he is,” Danny said, as if the old man had been there all along, as if he hadn’t just bubbled out of the ground. “That’s gotta be him, right?”

  “What’s happening?” Esmeralda asked. “Are you okay, Reason?”

  I tried to say no, but my mouth wouldn’t open.

  “Is he there?” asked Esmeralda. “The door’s gone mad. Reason? What’s happening at your end? Should I come through?”

  The old man moved his hand slightly; I felt his grip on me lessen. A little.

  “No,” I said to my grandmother, relieved I could talk. “He’s here. Don’t come through!” My right hand with the phone dropped. I strained to pull it back up again; sweat started to trickle down my back.

  The old man was leaning against the door in the same position as when I’d last seen him. As if he’d never moved. I turned again, more slowly this time, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I wanted desperately to run, to get away from the smell, from him. The old man stopped me. His fingers flickered up, slighter than a butterfly’s breath, but I knew that was why I wasn’t moving. Esmeralda was asking questions. I could feel the buzz of them from the phone in my hand that I could not raise up to my ear.

  “Bugger,” I said. I thought about my magic, tried to think about sending it at him, stopping him. My magic was as far away as Esmeralda’s squeaking voice on the phone. I had never felt so helpless in my life. There was nothing I could do to stop him.

  The old man smiled. Or at least, the expression on his face shifted in a way that could have been a smile. There was something completely wrong about his face. It was too mobile. Expressions flitted across like the ripples in the door. His flesh moved the same way his strange clay golems moved. His flesh was the golems, I realised. He had shifted up from the cracks in the ground, oozing that same grey-brown substance. They weren’t golems; they were pieces of him. That was why they had the exact same horrible odour—not because he’d made them, but because they were him.

  “He looks like a mummy,” Danny said. “He’s so dry and old.” He stood in front of me, blocking my view of the old man, but I could still smell him, still feel him. I still had to concentrate to keep from chundering until there was nothing left to chunder. “Don’t worry, Reason. He may be magic and everything, but he’s not much taller than you. I’m way bigger and stronger than he is. I’ll take care of him.”

  The old man did something. Without wanting to, I stepped around Danny, fighting each movement of my legs. My left foot moved to the first stair.

  “What are you doing, Reason?” Danny asked. “Don’t go near him!”

  I opened my mouth; the old man closed it, pulled me up another step.

  “Reason!” Danny jumped beside me. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Old man Cansino made me take one more step. Two more steps and I’d be standing beside him. My body screamed at me, every muscle twitching, desperate to run. I was so close now I could see the grey-brown texture of his flesh, the way it moved as if his muscles were made of plasticine. He didn’t look dry at all—more like an overripe piece of fruit: if touched, he would explode with rot. My stomach began to turn; he stopped it cold. I didn’t vomit; I remained stuck in the moment before vomiting, my eyes watering, my nose breathing cold acid, my mouth tasting nothing but him.

  Danny jumped in front of me. “Leave her alone,” he commanded.

  “Careful, Danny!” I yelled, before the old man waved my mouth shut again. Esmeralda’s bleating in my hand got more frenetic.

  Danny turned and grinned. “You said he wasn’t interested in me.”

  The old man punched Danny in the stomach, then the face, and then kicked him in the knee, sending him stumbling back down the steps, barely missing me. I flinched, or at least my brain told my body to flinch, and it sluggishly obeyed, working against the old man’s hold. My stomach stayed locked. Danny landed steady on his feet, almost like he’d meant to come down the steps that fast.

  “Are you—” I began. The old man closed my mouth and pulled me up the last two steps so that I stood beside him. He smiled. Even on his strange face there was no mistaking that expression.

  Danny plunged back up the stairs, aiming a punch at the old man’s head that would have landed if Cansino hadn’t dissolved into grey-brown clay, disappeared into the steps, then reappeared out of the path of Danny’s fist. All before Danny had time to blink. As soon as Danny had blinked several times, perhaps wondering if his eyes were packing it in, and realigned himself to the old man’s new position, Cansino was already dissolving again. Danny had no chance. The old man wasn’t even looking at him; he was looking at me. The smile did not leave his face. I amused him.

  “Reason,” Danny said, sounding breathless, “back away, get out of here.”

  I tried to move. I couldn’t.

  “I—”

  The old man shook his head. My mouth closed again.

  Old man Cansino continued to duck Danny’s blows, dissolving out of his way, melting in and out of the steps. Danny was getting slower; sweat dotted his upper lip. Him and me both—I kept trying to move, but all it did was make me damp with sweat.

  The old man punched Danny’s cheekbone, making a loud, smacking sound, like flesh against flesh rather than clay. Danny stumbled, managed to jump out of the way of Cansino’s foot before misstepping and landing on the step below. The old man shimmered forward and kicked him hard in the knees. Danny fell backwards, swearing his head off.

  Old man Cansino turned to me, still smiling. The edges of the smile flickered as his plasticine face wavered. He cupped his empty hands together, then they weren’t empty anymore; he threw something at me. Instinctively, I caught it. It was greybrown. A piece of him. I felt it all again, that we were related. I felt our Cansinoness, his age, his magic. The smell of him overwhelmed me, invaded my cells. There was no other smell in the world, just him. The chunder remained trapped in my stomach.

  The small piece of him, like the golem, began to dissolve into my hands, pushing its way into me. It hurt. More than it had last time. Like thousands of pins and needles. It—he—was doing something to me. He still stared at me, with his wavering smile. The pins and needles felt like they were piercing my bones, penetrating my marrow.

  He nodded and waved his hand, push
ed me backwards down the steps. Released his grip on my muscles. I stumbled to the gutter and chundered and chundered until I was chundering nothing but air.

  Danny helped me up, pushed snow on top of the mess I’d made.

  I glanced up at the old man, still there against the door. He made his shooing gesture. Without any magic coercing me, I obeyed, grabbed Danny’s hand, and got away as fast as I could. The thing he had thrown at me was sharp and cutting inside me. It felt like I was being operated on. Changed. What had he done?

  I could feel him still watching. I broke into a run, half afraid that running would make whatever he had thrown at me cut even deeper. I didn’t stop until I turned the corner and was out of the old man’s sight, but not out of his smell.

  “Are you okay?” Danny asked. He’d easily kept pace with me. We were back in front of the café with the cakes and muffins; there were only seventeen now.

  I nodded, though my mouth tasted awful, my stomach hurt, and there was something alien slicing into my bones. I glanced nervously at my hands, but I was wearing gloves and couldn’t see the thousands of little pinholes I was sure would be there. The sensation of cutting was fading, but I could still feel whatever it was inside me. “I’d give my right arm to brush my teeth.”

  “I bet. We’ll get you a toothbrush.”

  “You?” I asked. His right cheek was very red, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. I wiped at it with my glove.

  “It’s nothing. Just a split lip.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t do worse. He could have used magic against you.” He could have killed you, like I killed Josh Davidson.

  “Oh,” Danny said smugly, “he was using magic.”

  “No, he wasn’t. Not against you he wasn’t. He didn’t turn you blind or control your movements as if you were a doll.” I shuddered. Would he be able to control me even better with the stuff he had put inside me? It didn’t hurt anymore, but I could still feel it there, throughout my body. What was it?

  Danny snorted. “No dude that old beats me in a fight without magic.” He drew in a deep breath. “Is your grandmother still on the line?”