by Amy Wilson
Probably.
‘You’re back,’ she says, sounding very unimpressed, sweeping down the grand staircase, amid all the flickering lights, lace fluttering as she comes towards me. She tilts her head, a mechanical movement that reminds me she’s not really very human at all.
Was she ever?
I open my mouth, find my voice deep down and dark. ‘I need you to teach me.’ The words seem to bloom in the air, and the snowglobes around us begin to stir.
Ganymede raises an eyebrow. ‘Teach you?’ she demands, and a single moth descends from the hazy light of the chandelier to spiral over her head. ‘You got in and out of my prisons all by yourself – I don’t even know how you did that – why do you need my help?’
‘I want to go back. I left something there.’
‘And what is that?’ She looms over me, a tower of strange magic and mystery, her grey eyes wolfish, hungry.
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘You’re not telling me,’ she says with a whisper of a smile on her face. ‘I see. And if I refuse to teach you?’
‘Then you’d be even more evil than I thought you were,’ I say defiantly.
She steps back with a crack in her facade, rare colour flushing her cheeks.
‘You know I’m Callisto’s daughter – are you really going turn me away?’
‘I don’t know anything about you, child.’ She shakes her head, flapping a hand at me, and looks surprised when I don’t immediately scurry away back down the steps.
‘Yes you do. Are you afraid?’
‘No!’ She strides past me and whacks the door closed with a touch of her hand, before turning back to me. ‘Not that I need to explain myself to you, but this place is dangerous for an untrained young girl, whoever she is, and I’m not about to put this house, or all of the worlds here, in jeopardy. Not if I have any choice about it!’
‘Why don’t you just let them all go?’ I gesture at the globes, where solitary figures stand frozen while storms rage around them. Glittering sands and ice-cold snow, tossing and turning, settling on upturned noses, gathering in the crook of a tiny arm. I shiver. I know how that feels.
‘No,’ Ganymede says with a frown. ‘That is quite impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re dangerous!’ she says. ‘You’ve encountered some of them presumably, on your little adventure – do you think they belong out there in your world?’
‘I don’t know. I know they don’t belong in there forever. Have you ever been in there yourself? Do you know what it feels like?’ I point to a world where the girl still sits on her church steps, stars spiralling in all directions as she cups her face in her hands, her shoulders rounded.
She frowns, looking from the girl to me. ‘I have always been in control of my power, little snippet,’ she says. ‘And, when it comes down to it, you don’t know much at all yourself. How you tripped through those worlds and came out again in one piece, I can only imagine. Sheer luck. I expect the storms are worse in there now because you’ve angered Io, stealing one of her treasures . . .’
‘Her treasures? Do you mean Dylan? He’s not a treasure – he’s a boy!’ And an awful, treacherous one at that, I think savagely, pointing all my anger at her.
‘He must have a little magic,’ she says.
‘So what?’ I demand.
‘Magic is dangerous; it doesn’t belong out there. That is what our family does, Clementine. We protect your safe little world from the tumult of magic. What you see in those globes is there so that it does not happen outside!’
I bite my lip and stare at her. She stares back.
‘So teach me,’ I say, my voice shaking as I try to bring it under control. ‘Teach me, so that I can help you. So that I don’t cause trouble out there.’
‘Perhaps you don’t belong out there at all,’ she says, looking me up and down, her eyes impassive. ‘You are a rush of emotion. Even now it makes the air thick. What happened to you?’
‘I grew up without a mother.’ I throw it at her, satisfied when she flinches. ‘I didn’t know about this place. I didn’t know about magic. I just thought I was weird. And then when I got here I saw a boy from school, so I went in and I fought against Io to rescue him, and now he won’t even look me in the eye.’ I’m not sure I meant to say the last bit. I try to unwind myself before she really does throw me out, and end with a whisper: ‘And it’s lonely.’
‘Yes,’ she says, after a long silence, looking me up and down. ‘Loneliness I understand. Years of nobody and nothing, of time passing while you sit and watch the world go by.’
‘So . . . will you teach me?’
She sighs, folding her arms with a rustle of silk and pewter. ‘I am not a good teacher. I lack patience.’
‘I’m not a baby.’
A haunted look flashes across her face. She takes a step closer to me, and for a moment I think she’s going to reach out. ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘No you’re not. And there is a likeness . . . Can she really have had a child and not told me?’ She takes a deep breath and turns a full circle, taking in all the swirling worlds, all the tiny figures trapped within, and when she comes back to me her mind is set. ‘You can start in Callisto’s garden. That is where her magic found its best home, the earth itself taught her much. Prove to me that you have her ability; prove to me that you are really kin.’
‘But it’s . . . it’s a monster!’
‘It is,’ Ganymede agrees, looking out of the window, where brambles cling close. ‘I let it go when she left to be with that boy. I shouldn’t have; it was small of me. Now that you’re here, you can fix it. I’ll make some Bovril tea in a while, and if you have shown some ability, I will consider teaching you.’
‘Bovril?’
‘It’s warming,’ she says. ‘You’ll be needing it by the time you finish out there. Callisto always liked Bovril. Come with me.’
I do not know what Bovril is, but it sounds pretty gruesome to me. I slip down the icy steps with her and look with despair at the enormous brambles and forests of things with thorns growing from the undergrowth.
‘Why am I doing this?’ I ask myself, as Ganymede brings out a heavy metal box with rusted hinges and hands it over to me. It’s cold out here, and the light is leeching from the world as thick clouds gather.
‘Because you say you want to learn,’ she says, gesturing at the wilderness. ‘And this is where you start.’ She sweeps back up the steps, and the door closes with a boom that shakes the ground.
I sit at the bottom and open the box. Inside are bright tools: shining copper trowels and spades, little packets of seeds, coils of wire. I dig through and find some beautiful, brutal-looking shears, and stare at the brambles for a while. They twist from the ground to the marble steps and claw their way up to the front of the house. When I attack with my shears, they attack back, thorns stabbing into my hands as the twisted vine whips out to get me.
I’ve never really done gardening before. Pa looks after the climbing things on our balcony. I like it when he’s out there; it’s the only time I ever hear him sing. It’s a strange song, which tangles on the tongue and tastes like the wind.
Live for me, thrive for thee
’Neath a golden sky, my sweet.
Give my hands, give my love
Into the earth, so . . . Grow!
Fight back the thorns and the monsters, my sweet,
Find the tears of the dawn.
Live for me, thrive for thee
’Neath the love of my hands.
I start to hum the tune under my breath. I am not going to be beaten by the thick black brambles. When I see that beneath them are stunted trees, pale things bent over and choked by the tangling vines, I work even harder. The sun breaks through the clouds, and after a while I realize I’m singing the song, and it gets easier as the vines stop fighting back. The words twist in the air, the ring on my finger gleams and the little trowel shines bright. The dark place by my heart where a mother might be gets a b
it warmer as I fall further and further into the words of the song, and the flash of the copper slashes against all the gnarly roots. Magic curls from my hands and, when I look up what feels like hours later, Ganymede is sitting on the top step in the sun, her grey eyes shining.
The song stutters, the world comes crashing back around me. I was supposed to be searching the house for my mother, or at least learning magic – what am I doing?
‘Continue,’ she says in her dry voice. ‘The spell is working.’
‘The spell?’
‘Your mother’s song. Please. Sing it.’
And I do. I sing, and the vines untwist, the brambles pull easy from the warm soil, and Ganymede tips her head back and looks up at the sky, and just for an instant she could almost be a young girl again, dreaming. Then a cloud covers the sun, and the moment is gone – the iron falls back over her face.
‘Come,’ she says sharply, standing and looking me up and down.
I’m suddenly aware of the mud on my knees, of how tall and grand she is, and how small I am. My magic has squirreled away for now, deep and dark, leaving only a cold breeze and dirty hands.
‘It’s time for a break.’
The kitchen is less of a kitchen, more of a clutter. Heavy old ledgers, notebooks and piles of paper have been stacked on to every surface, where they vie with teapots and jars of utensils, groaning spice racks and jars full of mysterious and strange-coloured things. Ganymede reaches for one: a large jar full of thick brown sludge, which is nestled into a corner of the windowsill next to the globe where Timothy presides over his miniature library, sitting cross-legged on the top rung of his tiny ladder, yellow dust drifting down as he shifts to stare at me.
‘I did what you asked,’ I say, turning from him.
‘You began, little snippet.’ She shrugs. ‘You are not done.’
‘But I didn’t come here to do your gardening!’
‘And yet you will,’ she says. ‘Your magic is like one of those pale trees out there: it does not know itself yet. It has hardly begun to grow. If you are who you say you are, then you are family, and so I will give you this chance. I will teach you, if you continue your work out there. But you must abandon your idea of getting back into the globes; that is not your place, not unless I decide it.’
I stare at her, and she stares back. She does not expect me to question her, I realize. Was this what it was like for my mother and Io? Was she always so sure that she was right? My mind whirrs as I try to work out how I’m going to get what I need out of this. The gardening is strangely intoxicating, but I don’t have all the time in the world. I cannot afford to fall under Ganymede’s spell and stay here forever; I have to get back in there. I have to find a way to explore the house without her knowing.
As long as she trusts me, it might just be possible.
‘For now,’ I say. ‘If you tell me things.’
‘What things?’ she demands impatiently.
‘How do you decide who is locked in a snowglobe?’ I ask. ‘How did you end up with a whole house full of them? Doesn’t it creep you out?’
‘Creep me out?’ She smiles, shaking her head and turning to light the stove beneath a battered tin kettle with flick of a long finger and a flash of her eyes. ‘Our family has always maintained them. The world out there is not easy for one with magic, and magic itself is no good for the world. My grandmother’s idea for a school was flawed, and they soon realized it. There was too much power in her students, too much disobedience. So those who abused their powers were locked away, and there they remain. Time passes differently, and they are magicians. They make much of their worlds; they do not suffer.’
‘They are all under Io’s spell,’ I say. ‘Most of them are, anyway. And they’re not happy in there; they’re just enchanted. Why does she stay in there?’
‘That is her realm. This is mine,’ Ganymede says shortly. ‘She prefers to avoid responsibility.’
‘Weren’t you all supposed to work together to look after it?’ I ask.
She narrows her eyes.
‘I read it in my mother’s book,’ I say. ‘And Io said you were the one who locked them all away. Which means you put Dylan in there too. Why not me?’ I bite my lip; my words keep escaping. I’m supposed to be acting all nice and compliant, and then the anger bursts out.
‘He is a boy with untrained power and a reluctance to take responsibility for it.’
‘So you just locked him away?’ I demand, even while I’m feeling the truth of her words.
‘And you released him. We are even in that, at least,’ she snaps, pouring steaming water into two china cups with glinting golden rims.
‘He thought he was in there for months. It messed him up,’ I say.
‘He should have been more careful.’
‘What did he do? Something with a raindrop – it can’t have been that bad!’
‘Oh! And you know that, do you, with all your twelve years of magical wisdom?’ She cackles darkly. ‘No, little snippet, you barely know how to walk. Even playing with raindrops is dangerous if you don’t think about the consequences. Now drink your Bovril, and then you should go. You may come back tomorrow and continue your work.’
I take a sip of the steaming brown stuff and try not to spit it straight back out again. It tastes like beef juice, and I suspect that’s exactly what it is. Ganymede watches with a sharp eye, as if just waiting for me to prove I’m not magic enough for beef juice or whatever, and so I swallow it and smile.
‘Why aren’t you at school?’ Ganymede asks the next morning, when I turn up early. Birdsong followed me all the way here, and cut off as soon as I came through the gate, which was eerie and not at all comforting. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I can put up with a lot if it means I can find my mother and Helios without having to travel through thousands of worlds under Io’s control.
‘I have a couple of days off,’ I say as she stands aside to let me into the house. The snowglobes roar around us, whorls of water and tiny silver fish splashing up against the glass sides, and I frown. ‘What’s going on with them?’
‘A storm,’ she says dismissively. ‘Io has a temper; you must have discovered that when you were inside. She’s not a morning person. Now tell me about these days off. I didn’t think that was how school worked. Is it a half-term?’ She says the words through her teeth, like they’re in a foreign language she still hasn’t mastered, narrowing her eyes.
‘Uh, no. I got banned for a couple of days.’
‘Banished!’ Her eyes glitter. ‘For what?’
‘I pushed someone,’ I say, still looking at the globes out of the corner of my eye. ‘And they went further than I thought they would. Really, is there something wrong in there? Is it because Dylan and I escaped?’
‘There are consequences to everything,’ she says. ‘As you know. She’ll settle down. I suppose you used your power on this boy? That is strictly forbidden, Clementine. You should have been more careful.’
‘I didn’t mean to! Nothing like that had ever happened before. And now you’re teaching me it’ll be OK.’
‘Will it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But you don’t need to be locking me away in there. I’d just come back out again, anyway.’
‘You might,’ she concedes, pursing her lips. ‘Though you might find it harder than you think, if you’re not the one who puts you in there. Callisto was always hopeless at controlling herself – that’s why the garden is so wild,’ she says. ‘Get on with clearing it, and when you come back in, I’ll give you a lesson while you have your Bovril.’
She turns her back and swooshes away, Portia winding around her skirts. The door slams, and I turn slowly, looking out over the town, thinking how strange it is that I can see everything from here, and nobody stops to notice this place. They pass by without looking up; not even a stray leaf ever crosses the boundary.
Were the three of them really here for hundreds of years, before Pa showed up and changed everything? Did
my ma let him see it, because she was intrigued by him? It would explain why he never saw it again; why he still can’t now. As far as I know, Pa doesn’t have his own magic. I try to imagine what it was like for her, living here, but it’s impossible. I find the world fairly intense most of the time, and sometimes I’m not really sure I belong at all, but I want to belong, somewhere . . .
I hold on to that thought as I start to dig at the ground for the roots of the weeds that have choked this place for so long, and the song rises up, warm and stirring, filling my chest. My freezing hands slip on the little trowel that seems no match at all for the job, and the earth is hard as ice around the roots, but when I finally sit back to look, every muscle aching, you can definitely see I’ve been here. It’s not pretty, exactly – the bare places look scarred, and the stunted trees and plants are still pale and scrawny – but it’s progress.
Ganymede doesn’t show the slightest bit of appreciation when she comes out to get me. ‘Lunch,’ she says, sweeping back into the house, feather cloak trailing behind her. I follow at a distance, and my skin feels tight because somehow I have to find a way to get away from her to explore the house today, despite all her hawk eyes and moth-fluttering. I’m back at school tomorrow, and I have to have done something before then.
I wish I’d brought a cheese sandwich. Lunch is probably cow-brain spaghetti, or something.
‘Concentrate!’ Ganymede shouts at me an hour later, after a reasonably normal soup that I’m hoping was tomato.
We’re still in the kitchen, and I’m supposed to be keeping my focus while she darts about me like a crazed moth-dragon, roaring and stomping, bashing pans and muttering spells under her breath. Every so often, shadows gather at the corner of my eye, or light flares and the room shakes. Tiny fluttering forms gather at the nape of my neck, and I’m supposed to ignore it all and stand still.
