Magic Lessons

by Justine Larbalestier

  The diamonds inside him were a wrecking crew, bulldozing their way through blood and gristle. His whole body shuddered in response, screaming from every nerve receptor that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  “No!” Esmeralda roared back at Blake. The n and the o splintered, turning into long, thin, acute triangles that flew, knifelike, for Blake’s throat.

  The diamonds inside Tom cut and dug, heading for his bones. The old man’s magic. Tom moaned low, trying to keep his sight focused on the battle, where Mere needed his help. He continued to clutch her with his left hand, using his right to call the remaining bones into his hands. He shot them through with magic and hurled them at Reason’s grandfather, cursing him with all the foulest words he could think of.

  Then Tom felt hands on his shoulders and back—Jason Blake had somehow gotten behind him. He turned to see Reason, and behind her Jay-Tee, her shapes confused and crumbling as she swayed on her feet. Reason pulled Tom away from Mere. He staggered, slid to the ground still clutching one of the bones, and watched Reason place one hand on Mere’s shoulder. Her other reached out to her grandfather.

  Reason was shimmering, her true shape a swirl of triangles, triangles that spiralled larger and larger into infinity, and smaller and smaller into nothing. She was anchoring herself to Sydney and to Mere, forcing Jason Blake back into New York City.

  Tom felt something cutting behind his eyeballs. He tried to keep his eyes open, to ignore the pain inside him. His body started to slide from his control, to strike against the kitchen floor as Jason Blake’s diamonds ate him from the inside.

  The door between Sydney and New York City slammed shut. Tom heard the overlapping echoes bouncing back and forth against the walls and ceilings in every room of the house. Through his eyelids he saw dodecahedrons spill into the kitchen.

  Then something cool pressed on him, and the knives cut upwards, away from him, out of him, towards the cool thing pressing down. The pain stopped.

  He opened his eyes. Reason was leaning over him. She smiled. Sunlight from the windows lit up her face, made her eyes brighter, her skin a soft golden brown. Each hair of her right eyebrow seemed to glow. He imagined touching that eyebrow, kissing her cheek.

  “Good,” Mere said, pulling off her winter hat. Her hair spilled out, lit gold by the sun. “Your grandfather’s gone, Reason.” She peeled off the rest of her winter gear—gloves, scarf, coat.

  “I used up all the bones,” Tom said, sitting up and discovering that he didn’t feel as bad as he feared. He touched the back of his head and winced. He had quite a lump there. “How are we going to add more protections and keep Jason Blake away? Those feathers must be pretty buggered.”

  Mere touched his cheek. “You’re bleeding. Let me clean that.” She saw to his face with a clean wet cloth and stinging antiseptic and a large Band-Aid. Mere had to lean so close he could feel her breath. He wished it were Reason touching him.

  “But what about the protections?” Tom asked.

  “We’ll add more. Alexander won’t get through.”

  “Who’s Alexander?” Tom and Reason asked at the same time.

  “Jason Blake,” Esmeralda said. “That’s what he told me his name was when I first met him.”

  “Did you meet him back there?” Reason asked, nodding at the door, looking at her grandmother curiously.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like him back then?” Reason asked. “Was he different?”

  “He was very handsome.”

  Jay-Tee snorted.

  Esmeralda laughed. “He was! Funny, too. Yes, Reason, I liked him back then. I liked him a lot. And his magic gave him glimpses of the future. He told me we’d have a daughter together. Then he kissed me. My first kiss.” She smiled. “I’d just turned fifteen.”

  Tom tried to imagine such a vast chunk of time. Thirty years ago: flared jeans and maxiskirts, cork-heeled shoes. It seemed an impossibly long time.

  “What happened to the old man?” Esmeralda asked.

  “Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino is dead.”

  Tom recognised the name but couldn’t place it.

  “What?” Mere said. “Well, of course he is. He’s been dead since 1823.”

  “Raul Cansino?” Tom asked. “The only male Cansino in the cemetery?”

  “That’s right,” Reason said.

  “He didn’t die back then,” Jay-Tee said. “The old man was Raul Cansino.”

  “How could he not have died?” Mere asked, her voice full of disbelief.

  “He just didn’t,” Jay-Tee said.

  “Somehow his magic changed and he became something else,” Reason said. “Not human and not an animal, either—something that could keep on living, no matter how much magic he used.”

  “But didn’t you say he was dead?” Tom asked, feeling deeply confused.

  “He is now,” Jay-Tee said, as if it were obvious. “That’s what he came back for—to die and be in the cemetery with all the other Cansinos. Pretty cool cemetery, by the way.”

  “Isn’t it?” Tom said, wondering why the old man had to scare them all with his assault on the door if he was only trying to off himself.

  “That’s all he wanted?” Mere asked. “Why couldn’t he have asked?”

  “He wanted to be with his family,” Jay-Tee said. “With his daughter.”

  “Then why did he try to infect us with his magic?”

  “I don’t know,” Reason said. “Maybe it was his present to us before he left.”

  “Not much of a present for Jay-Tee. And anyway, Jason Blake said the magic doesn’t last,” Tom said.

  “He said that?” Reason asked.

  Esmeralda nodded. Tom noticed her hands clench in her lap. “There’s no reason to believe him. Why would he tell us the truth?”

  “I guess,” Reason said, but she looked worried. “Raul’s magic only worked for his relatives, for us Cansinos. That’s why he sent that bit of himself through the door—to find us.”

  “But it worked for Alexander.”

  “He’s family.”

  “He’s your family,” Esmeralda said. “But he’s not Raul Cansino’s family.”

  “Jason Blake’s a Cansino, too.”

  “What?”

  “I saw it in him. You and he are related. Not closely, but it’s there. He has Cansino ancestry, too. Tom and Jay-Tee don’t. His magic works for us, not for them.”

  Tom sighed. He felt deflated knowing that he wasn’t going to become a superwitch like Esmeralda and Reason (and Jason Blake). Nor would his mother. When he finally got the chance to talk to Cathy, he wasn’t going to have very good news for her.

  “Ewww, so you and him are cousins?” Jay-Tee asked, looking at Mere and screwing up her nose. “Kissing cousins? That’s gross.”

  “More distant than first cousins,” Reason said. “More like fifth or sixth.”

  “Whatever. It’s still gross.”

  “But he hasn’t just given us magic, has he?” Mere said. “He’s changed us.” Tom watched as she blurred her eyes, looking into Reason. He wondered what she saw in place of true shapes.

  Her eyes widened with shock. “You’re pregnant!” she said.

  Reason was up the duff? No way. How? Reason’s face had gone tight. Then Tom remembered Danny and had a sudden vivid image of Danny kissing Reason. He felt sick. Reason and Danny. So he, Tom, was too daggy for her; she’d gone for a poxy wanker with the try-hardest voicemail messages Tom’d ever heard.

  Jay-Tee sat up. “Holy crap! That’s what he was doing? The elf man—I mean, Raul Cansino—made you pregnant? He put his hand in your belly and…Oh, my. Oh, Reason. Oh, no! You poor thing.”

  “Really?” Reason looked at Mere. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. I was surprised.”

  Reason shrugged. “You and me both.”

  Not Danny then. Tom’s heart began to beat again. Not Danny. Then he thought about what it would be like being up the duff to a
freaky old nonhuman magic guy who just happened to be your ancestor. Deeply weird and wrong. “The old Cansino bloke made you pregnant with magic?”

  Reason looked too shocked to say anything. She and Esmeralda were staring at each other. Tom imagined Mere would have a lot to say to her. She knew what being pregnant at fifteen was like. He wondered if there was anything he could do.

  “I’m starving,” Reason said at last. “I swear, I’ve hardly eaten since Raul hauled me through to New York City.”

  31

  The Family Way

  Between us we polished off four-and-a-half family-sized pizzas. There was some talk of dessert and watching a movie, but Jay-Tee almost fell asleep halfway through the fourth pizza.

  We all went to bed—Tom to his house; me, Jay-Tee, and Esmeralda to our separate rooms.

  I showered, brushed my teeth, put on clean PJs, climbed into bed, checked under the pillow for any feathers or bones, even though I knew I was strong enough to undo their magic, even though I almost believed Esmeralda that she’d put them there to protect me. But the habits of a lifetime, even a short lifetime, are hard to shake. I put my ammonite there. I needed it close to me.

  I lay my head down, closed my eyes, and saw darkness dotted with light. Where there wasn’t magic, there was nothing. Raul Cansino, I realised, had been able to see magic.

  I opened my eyes, to colours and shapes and textures, to the world as I’d always seen it. I couldn’t turn the old man’s vision off. How was I going to sleep if every time I shut my eyes, I saw what Raul saw? My eyes burned with the effort of not blinking.

  Why was Blake determined to get through the door? What did he want in Sydney? He had the old man’s magic. If Esmeralda was right and it was infinite, then he didn’t need anything else, did he? He’d finally gotten his wish: lots of magic that it didn’t kill him to use.

  Why take mine? Because he wasn’t lying: Raul’s magic didn’t last.

  I closed my eyes again and was plunged into the world as Raul Cansino saw it. The old man hadn’t done this to Esmeralda or Blake. Raul Cansino had done more to me, given me more. Why had he chosen me and not them?

  Because I was pregnant? What would Danny say about that? What would Sarafina say? Could I give my mother some of the old man’s magic, make her sane again? She was a Cansino.

  But I didn’t trust Raul’s magic. It might make me stronger, and live for a long, long time, but it would also turn me into something like Raul: not human, not animal, either. I didn’t want that any more than I wanted to die young.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Esmeralda opened the door, leaned against the frame. There were two letters in her hand. The ones she had written and slipped under my door and then taken away before I’d finally decided to read them.

  “Are you too tired to talk?”

  “No,” I told her. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to talk to her. What would she do if she was certain her new magic didn’t last? Would she try to steal it from me like my grandfather had?

  Esmeralda placed the letters on the bed, then sat down beside me.

  “How do I know those are the same ones?”

  “They are. You can ask Jay-Tee to verify that I’m not lying.” Esmeralda looked tired. Older, too. The skin under her eyes slacker than it had been.

  “I will,” I said, though I was fairly sure on my own she was telling the truth.

  “You only really need to read the second one. That’s the one I decided I didn’t want you to read.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you the truth in it. I told you I was dying.”

  “And now that you’re not, you’re going to square with me? What makes you certain that you’re not dying?”

  Esmeralda looked at me for a long time. Her eyes were so much like Sarafina’s, big and brown and intense, seeing through me. I could never fib to Sarafina.

  “You don’t know,” I said. “Not for certain.”

  “I feel different,” Esmeralda said, speaking slowly, as if she had to grope for each word. “Before the old man’s magic…I was fading. Getting fainter. I was running down. That feeling’s gone now. I feel stronger. The magic crackles in me. There’s so much of it, and there’s even more in you.” She leaned forward a little. I leaned away.

  “We have no idea what it’s doing to us,” I said. “I don’t want to end up like Raul Cansino. I like being human. What do you see when you close your eyes?”

  “What?” she asked. The question didn’t make sense to her. She didn’t have Raul Cansino’s vision. If she knew about it, would she want it?

  “Nothing. I don’t trust the old man’s magic.”

  “It just—”

  “Magic brings out the worst in people. Why should I trust you, Esmeralda? Will you tell me the truth from now on?”

  “Yes. No.” She smiled tiredly. “I don’t know, Reason. I want to be straight with you. I want to be someone you can trust.”

  “Then give me the keys to the house next door. Let me use the library whenever I want.”

  Esmeralda blanched. “I can’t.”

  “Then why should I trust you?”

  “Reason, there are things in the library you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Explain them to me.”

  She sighed. “I have made rather a mess of things.”

  “A right dog’s breakfast.”

  “Is there any way I can fix it?”

  “Sure. Don’t lie to me, don’t hide things from me, let me into the library.”

  “All right. I’ll start by telling you that I know Raul Cansino didn’t make you pregnant. It was Danny, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded, relieved that someone knew, even if it was Esmeralda. “He didn’t…I kissed him first. I wanted to.”

  Mere—I stopped myself from thinking of her by that name—Esmeralda put her hand on mine. “I know,” she said.

  I didn’t pull my hand away. “I have a lot of questions. Will you answer them?”

  Esmeralda nodded.

  “What did you do to Sarafina’s cat? Why did you cut Le Roi’s throat and bury him in the cellar? Why did you keep Sarafina locked up? Why did you keep searching for me and Sarafina even when you knew we didn’t want to be found? Why couldn’t you let us be? You were the witch who haunted all my dreams when I was little. I never ever felt safe. You were around every dark corner, waiting.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to find you, to help you. To teach you who you really were…”

  I let go of her hand, pulled myself to sit up properly. “Were you teaching Le Roi who he really was when you cut his throat?”

  Esmeralda blanched. “Le Roi died.”

  “Because you killed him.”

  “Le Roi died of natural causes. Sarafina loved that cat. She couldn’t stand that he was dead. She put her hands on him, made him live again. But he wasn’t really alive.”

  “But…” I trailed off. “How could she do that to a cat?”

  “Le Roi had magic. Most animals do. Cats in particular have a lot of magic. Le Roi had more than most.”

  “And Sarafina really made him live again?”

  “Yes. And I had to teach your mother a lesson about what you can and can’t do with magic. I had to teach her that she had overstepped. That she had done something awful. I slit Le Roi’s throat in front of her. I made her take her magic back from his blood.”

  “You tied her to a chair?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s brutal.”

  “Magic is brutal. It’s what my mother would’ve done.”

  “That doesn’t make it the right thing to do.”

  “No. That’s when Sarafina started to hate it. That’s when she started to convince herself it didn’t exist. I didn’t handle any of it right. I taught her the way my mother taught me. But it didn’t work. And I lost her.”

  “You were a terrible mother.”

  “Reason, I
was a young mother. I was fifteen years old when she was born. My own mother died before Sarafina’s third birthday. I had my mother’s money, but I didn’t have my mother. I had Rita—”

  “The cleaning lady?”

  “She worked for my mother and for my grandmother before that. But she’s afraid of us. Always has been. In awe of us Cansino women and afraid of our magic. She wasn’t much of a substitute for my dead mother. But she helped me with Sarafina. A lot. I could finish high school, go to university—”

  “Drive your daughter insane. Sarafina was fifteen when I was born.”

  “And look what she did to you! Lied to you about what you are. Left you completely unprepared for all that could happen to you. I had to find you, teach you—”

  “Tie me to chairs and kill my pets? That’d be grouse.”

  “I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes with you that I did with Sarafina. I wasn’t going to—”

  I held up my hand. “I’m tired. I need to sleep. I need to think about what you’ve said.”

  Esmeralda stood up, walked to the door, then turned back to me. “Most of what Sarafina told you about me was true, but she didn’t ever put it in context.”

  “You ate babies? What’s the context that makes that okay?”

  “No, Reason, I never ate babies. I said most of what your mother told you was true. And she never explained why I did things that look so bad on their surface. She didn’t explain, because she couldn’t. Because she lied to you about the most important thing.” Esmeralda opened the door. “Good night, Reason.”

  “Good night,” I said, but only after she’d closed it and couldn’t hear me.

  8

  There wasn’t any sleep for me after that. Any tiredness I’d felt evaporated. I opened the glass doors onto the balcony, leaned against the railing, felt the cool breeze against my skin. A flying fox glided by, its leather wings making a whooshing sound against the air. The bat landed in one of the bottlebrush trees growing out of the footpath. It squeaked and rustled before taking off again.