by Amy Wilson
‘Is this really necessary?’ I ask, trying not to stagger back beneath a barrage of blue sparks coming at me. Her hands are like claws, outstretched towards me, her eyes hard as flint.
‘You told me you wanted to learn control,’ she says. ‘If you cannot find it, I will have to take measures. So you should concentrate. And stop fantasizing about getting back into those globes – I’ve seen your eyes wandering. Why is it still on your mind?’
‘We left our dog in there,’ I say. ‘I want to get him back.’
Her eyes widen. ‘A dog? You’d risk everything for a dog?’
And for a mother, I think.
‘Wouldn’t you, for Portia?’ I demand, my eyes flicking towards the green-eyed cat, who is licking butter from the dish on the kitchen table.
Ganymede doesn’t have an answer for that she just throws a colander. I see it bowl towards me, gleaming in the winter sun, turning as it comes my way. I put up a hand to stop it knocking me out, and it halts in mid air, held between us by some force I can’t name. It clatters to the floor, dented.
‘Not bad reflexes,’ Ganymede says. ‘How do you feel?
‘Fi-ine,’ I stutter, finding the edge of the table behind me and leaning against it.
‘Tired?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were fighting me,’ she says. ‘Your strength against mine. And I wasn’t holding back too much, so you did well.’
‘Oh good,’ I breathe.
‘Now, we should work on control. Raise the colander, keep it there, and don’t make any more dents.’
It takes a long time to get the colander off the ground. For a moment, it hovers around Ganymede’s ankles, and then in a burst of frustration I flick it up into the air, and the whole thing folds like origami.
‘What happened?’ I exhale.
‘Too much force,’ she says. ‘Like taking a hammer to it. Probably fairly similar to what happened at your school. You need to do things carefully, let it out slowly. Not get frustrated.’
She reaches for the squashed colander and sighs.
‘Can’t you fix it?’ I ask.
‘With a hammer, yes.’ She turns and starts riffling through drawers.
Timothy stares out at me from the top of his ladder, while yellow flecks of dust fall around his shoulders. He makes a rude gesture, and I remember being there. I remember breaking those doors down, running away from him with Dylan and Helios. I remember how it felt to be part of their team. And if Dylan isn’t going to fight for his dog, then I will.
I dash from the room while Ganymede’s back is turned, silent as I can, knowing it’s the wrong moment, but there’s no choice. My eyes flick up and down the shelves as I run, past world after spinning world, just hoping I’ll spot a tiny golden dog. I don’t look for my mother; I don’t know how I’d feel if I suddenly saw her. Would I even recognize her? Is she really here somewhere, just waiting to be discovered? It feels impossible that she could be so close after all this time, so I just focus on Helios, knowing that when I find him we can look for her together.
I dash through room after room where the sun sparks through grimy windows, into dark cupboards where cobwebs hang thick as curtains, and then I hear her behind me. A rustle of movement, a screech that makes my ears pop. My ring flashes on my finger, getting warmer as I flee up a back staircase, and then I’m in a narrow corridor, the walls lined with dark wood shelves, where the globes are yellowed with age, the people in them long-forgotten. Tiny figures rush up to the glass as I fly past them, and Ganymede’s footsteps thunder through the house. It’s too late for pretending, too late to act the innocent, so I just keep going.
After a while, I realize the figures are heckling in thin, whispered voices, urging me onward, crying for freedom. ‘I’m trying. I’m trying,’ I hiss at them, bounding up more steps, looking all the time for Helios.
She catches up with me as I reach the carpeted landing at the top of the house, before the tower room where I first found Dylan. She has come up the main stairs and appears before me, wraith-like and furious as the wildest ocean storm.
‘I trusted you!’ she bursts. ‘I let you in! I even tried to teach you, and you have betrayed me already! I should have known you would: your father was a thief; he took a part of our heart away with him, and nothing was ever the same again!’
‘So you took your revenge?’ I shout back, knowing that this is my last chance to get answers from her – she’ll never let me in again. ‘How could you take her from us? Where is she now?’
‘I didn’t . . .’ She backs away from me into a shadowed corner.
Snowglobes are in uproar all around us, and the air is so cold our breath steams. Cracks start to run up the walls as thousands of tiny fists beat against the smooth glass of their prisons.
‘. . . I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know you existed! I never would have taken a mother from her child!’ Tears streak down her hollow cheeks, but as the clamour of the globes intensifies, she steels herself, coming out of the shadows, reaching up to her full height.
‘I do not know where she is now,’ she says in a ringing voice. ‘And I will not have you tear this house down with your anger. So you have a choice, Clementine.’ She stalks towards me as I back away, swallowing hard. ‘Leave now and never return, or I will find you a permanent home of your own. You cannot be trusted. And, let me tell you now, you will not break free if I curse you there. Your father will have lost you both forever.’
I stare at her, but all I can see is my pa’s bewildered face when I don’t come home. All I can think is that he never got over losing her, and to lose me too might be the end of him. I go to protest, to shout, but the tide has turned. Her power is far greater than mine in this place, and she has nothing to lose.
I close my eyes and tell Helios I’m sorry. That I’ll be back when I can creep in of my own will, when I know I can get us out again. And when I open them again I’m on the cold hard pavement in front of the bakery. The house is nowhere to be seen; the old swing creaks as a bitter wind blows.
She won, for today.
‘I’ll be back!’ I shout at the top of my lungs, making a cloud of pigeons break for the sky.
I’m still angry when I wake the next morning. I don’t know if Ganymede was telling the truth, or if I might have been able to break her curse and get out of whatever snowglobe she put me in with my own magic. But in that moment she was more terrifying than anything I have ever imagined. I comfort myself that choosing Pa was the right decision, but it feels hollow. I should have played along for longer. I should have helped her mend that colander, done gardening until she stopped watching me like a hawk.
I throw back my duvet and slide out of bed, pulling on my uniform and brushing my hair, dreading the day at school. Pa makes pancakes for breakfast, and looks at me as if he knows today is going to be difficult. I came out of my bedroom hard and ready for anything, and his kindness is making it go soft.
‘Got everything you need?’ he asks as I head for the front door. He’s not usually here at this time making pancakes – it’s a special occasion.
‘I think so . . .’
‘Oh! I made you lunch.’
He hands me a plastic box with different compartments. A roll, a banana, some bits of carrot and a little muffin, all in their own areas.
‘What?’ he asks, when I stare at him.
‘You’ve never done this before,’ I say past a lump in my throat.
‘Maybe I should have,’ he says. ‘Better late than never, eh?’
‘Yeah.’ I smile. ‘Thanks, Pa.’
‘Go careful today, then,’ he says. ‘And stay away from that Jago.’
‘I will.’
‘Clem?’
I look back at him. His hair blazes as the early morning sun leaches through the window, and his eyes are shining.
‘I mean it,’ he says. ‘Don’t let him get to you.’
‘OK.’
Of course when I get to the bus stop, Dylan is standing there looking like a
nice boy who would stand up for a person. Like a boy who could be a friend.
‘Hey,’ he says, his crooked smile trying to hide the shadows in his eyes.
I stare at him, waiting for him to say something, to explain what happened, even just to ask how it went with Ganymede, whether there’s any word on Helios, but he doesn’t. He just looks away. Hey, indeed. What the heck does he expect? I’m not going back to being part-time sort-of friends; that’s a load of rubbish I don’t need.
When the bus arrives, I rush on and park myself next to one of the year-seven kids – so there’s no chance he can sit next to me – and look out of the window the whole way. The sun is low in the pale blue sky, and the shadows of all the houses and trees cut across the road as we swing through town. In and out, in and out of shadow, lurching all the time. A bit like being in one of those snowglobes. It felt simpler when we were in there. Terrifying, but also kind of clear. Keep going, until you find the way out. Keep hold of your friends, or you’ll lose them to Io forever.
I don’t regret that. I know I couldn’t live with myself if I’d left Dylan in there. It’s hard enough knowing I’ve left Helios behind. How can Dylan turn his back on the only friend he had for such a long time? The friend who kept him warm when he had no strength left? I know magic is hard for him, that he blames it for the death of his father, that his mother fled their seaside home to keep him safe – but can he really think it’s just going to disappear? Does he think that pushing me away is somehow going to help? I go round and round in circles, and keep coming back to the same question.
How could you abandon Helios?
I shout it, loud as I can in my mind, and there’s a little gasp from behind me, so maybe he heard. I hope he did. I hope my voice blasted through all the little walls he’s built.
‘You OK?’ asks the girl next to me, breaking me out of my fury and making me start. She has curly hair that looks like her mum cut it, and freckles across her nose.
‘Yes,’ I say, trying to smile.
‘Only you’re crying a little bit,’ she whispers. ‘Or something . . .’
‘Oh!’ I swipe at my cheeks, glad that Dylan is sitting up behind us at the back of the bus. ‘Uh, thanks.’
‘That’s OK,’ she says, picking up her bag and riffling through it. Her face turns to mine again; it’s so bright and friendly. ‘Want a tissue?’
‘OK.’
She has a little packet with pictures of kittens on it. She pulls one out and hands it to me. ‘Mum packed them, just in case. Not that I cry a lot. More like, if the sun is in my eyes, or something.’
‘Yeah –’ I take the tissue – ‘I know what you mean. Thanks.’
‘OK,’ she says.
And she turns her face to the window, and then we’re at school, and she’s scrambling past me, waving madly at someone on the outside. I move along with the rest of the crowd, watching her dash out, coat swinging, clattering to meet her friends, and she’s got no idea how much her kindness helped. If one person can be like that, others can too. This place is not full of Jagos; I don’t have to be afraid of it. This is school. There is nobody here I need to be that frightened of.
I clutch the balled-up tissue in my pocket and keep my head up, walking through the gates, past Dylan, ignoring the clamour and the bustle, just focusing on getting inside and up to my form room. I sit somewhere new, and when people file in there are a few looks and whispers, but I ignore them all, and because I’ve sat in the middle of a row, people are forced to sit around me. I smile at the girls who slide in on either side of me, and they smile back, even if they look a little puzzled.
Ha!
It’s an exhausting day. I make myself do all the things I usually don’t do. I smile, I sit in all the wrong places, I brazen it all out and even say ‘hi’ to a couple of people. Mostly they say ‘hi’ back, even if they look a bit surprised. Jago lurks, like a spiteful cloud. He’s worse than ever with all his jibes and mean, tripping feet, but I ignore him, put a shield up, and by the end of the day it’s got boring. Someone tells him to shut up when he calls me ‘witchy-witch face’ in history. I don’t know who; I just sit there and concentrate on Miss Olive, and make notes on the Battle of Hastings. I have more important things on my mind, like how I’m going to get into a house that my weird aunt Ganymede will no doubt be hiding from me.
I watch for the bus, wishing it would hurry up. My ring has been flashing all day as I’ve tried to keep all my emotions in check, and I barely trust myself to be around people now. Tension winds through me, making me jumpy, and when Dylan ambles over I have to bite my lip to keep it from spilling out.
‘Clem?’
I glare at him. ‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’
‘I shouldn’t have done that, yesterday. I should have put Jago straight. I just . . . It’s hard for me.’
I look down at the ground. Tiny amber flecks spiral out on the pavement around my boots, and the ring doesn’t help. If anything, it seems to amplify the magic I’m trying hard to control.
‘Clem?’ He follows my eyes. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You should get away from me,’ I say.
‘I know you’re not going to hurt me,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to make it right!’
‘What is wrong with you?’ I howl, stamping my foot, cracks appearing in the pavement.
Dylan steps back.
‘How can you be so two-faced? How could you act as if nothing ever happened and stand there with Jago while he called me a freak? How can you abandon Helios like that? Why don’t you want to go back and get him out? What are you so afraid of, Dylan?’
He looks tormented, ashen with doubt. ‘I don’t know!’
A light rain starts to fall, flying into our faces with the twist of the wind. I know I’m not the one making it, and it’s not natural either. A couple of steps away, the sun is still shining, casting bars of shadow on to the pavement from the school fence. I stare at him.
‘You can’t hide from it forever,’ I hiss. ‘Even now – look around you, Dylan. This isn’t natural rain, and I’m not doing it: you are!’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he chokes, taking a breath, letting the storm wash out. ‘Mum won’t understand; nobody will understand!’
‘They don’t need to understand,’ I say. ‘Do you think they’ll hate you for it? Your mum won’t, and I don’t know about Jago, but why should you care? Do you really think he’s such a great friend if you can’t trust him with who you are?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want it to be true. I don’t want this! It was OK in there, but out here . . .’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ I say. ‘Not in that, anyway. But you can choose your friends; I guess you already did. So I’m going to go back to that house without you. I’m going to find my ma.’
‘I’ll come,’ he says. ‘I want to find Helios too.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t trust you.’ It hurts to say it, and he winces when he hears it, but it’s true. I can’t go in there with him like this; there’s too much in the way.
It’s a huge relief when the bus arrives. I take a deep breath and stomp on, sitting myself firmly in the back corner, sighing loudly when Dylan piles in next to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again after a while.
‘It doesn’t matter. Just leave it to me. I’ll get Helios. It’s my family’s mess, anyway.’
He stares at me, but he doesn’t say anything, and we don’t speak after that. We watch out of the window as the bus winds through the streets, and the streetlights come on, shining blearily through the glass. I try to figure out how I’m going to fix it all. There’s a big part of me that’s furious with Dylan for casting me aside, but I can see how hard this is for him, and I don’t know how I’d feel in his shoes. It’s hard to imagine it: trying to hide what you are from your mother and your new family. If I ever find my ma, at l
east I won’t have to do that.
The house is hiding and, no matter how hard I glare at the place where I know it should be, it won’t appear for me. I try until there are sparks flying, until my eyes are aching, and eventually I head for home, weary and terrified that maybe I’ll never be able to fix this. Maybe Ganymede will hide it so tight I’ll never find it again.
Pa stares at me when I get home, so I tell him I’m having an early night; I don’t want my despair to meet his. I head for my room, but it’s hard to sleep. There’s too much in my head. I spend most of the night trying to juggle things using magic: pens, books, bunched-up socks and an old watch. I keep going until I can do it without everything flying at the walls of my bedroom, and I tell myself that will be useful, somehow. It will be strengthening my magic so that I can find the house.
When I wake, the sun is shining, and Pa has left for work, but my new lunchbox is full of neat little packages again. It makes me smile. I linger in the kitchen for a while, flicking through my mother’s book, wishing our magic was the fairytale sort, where spells would be written in black and white, and the right words would make anything possible. This kind of magic seems to be about feeling and instinct, and I’d do anything for a nice, simple ‘here is how you make the house visible’ sort of tip.
‘Bleurrrgh,’ I tell my reflection in the hallway mirror, baring my teeth at myself as I shove my hat on. ‘Tonight. I will get into that place tonight. One day of school, and then everything changes for good. I swear.’ My eyes flicker with amber shards as I say it, and I know it probably won’t change anything, but it does make me feel a bit better.
I grab my lunch and head out, ignoring Dylan at the bus stop and marching on to the bus alone, sitting by my new friend from year seven. She’s called Amelia, and she moved to the area to come to the school, so she didn’t know anyone before she started. She doesn’t seem that fazed by it now, though, and by the end of the journey I’m surrounded by a little gaggle of her friends.
And then Dylan joins me as we get off the bus.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey.’
