"Reason!"
"Jay-Tee?"
She nodded. "You were in New York?"
"Yes," Reason said. She pulled off her winter coat and dropped it on the kitchen table, then added her sweater, gloves, and hat to the pile.
"Why were you there?"
"To see if I could get through without a key," Reason answered, taking a few strides past her. She misstepped in the hallway, and Jay-Tee dashed to grab her before she fell.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine," Reason said, shaking Jay-Tee off and continuing toward the front door. But she wobbled like a baby horse learning to walk. Her eyes were only half open.
"Are you drunk?"
"No," Reason said, pulling the front door open.
"Stoned?"
Reason ignored her and stepped into the tiny front yard, where the sun hit her. Jay-Tee blinked. Reason's skin wasn't the same color it had been. Except that it was— it was still caramel colored, a shade or two darker than her own, but the depth had changed. Or something.
Reason collided with the front gate, or rather, didn't. Somehow she was now on the sidewalk, seemingly undamaged. Jay-Tee wasn't sure what she'd just seen. One second she was on this side of the gate, next second she was over there. Reason continued down the street.
"Where are you going? Are you sure you should be going anyplace when you're like this?"
"Yes," Reason said. "It takes practice. It's harder when you make me talk too."
"Walking takes practice?" Jay-Tee knew Reason wasn't the most coordinated girl in the world, but she wasn't usually this bad.
Reason kept walking, her steps becoming more even and certain. Jay-Tee jogged after her. "Reason! Where are we going?"
"To my mother."
"Your mother."
Okay.
"In the loony hospital?"
"Kalder Park."
"Why?"
Reason started walking even faster. The sidewalk was narrow and uneven and crowded by trees and weeds. Jay-Tee had to weave around them, sometimes onto the road to keep up with her. The almost-running made her feel the tingle of her magic. She slowed a little, shook her arms out, willed the magic to just STOP. She refused to drop dead here on the street.
What was up with Reason? Her arms didn't look right. Actually, none of her did.
"Is there something you need from your mother?" Jay-Tee ducked under a low-hanging tree branch and almost tripped over a root that made the pavement buckle.
"No."
"Are you okay, Reason?" Jay-Tee asked, even though she obviously wasn't.
"I'm fine."
"Shouldn't we tell your grandmother where we're going?"
Reason didn't say anything. They reached the end of Esmeralda's quiet street and, without looking, she walked across the road crowded with zooming cars.
Jay-Tee crossed herself again. "Reason!" she screamed, but Reason was already on the other sidewalk. It had to be her new magic. No way could the old Reason do that. She could barely run without falling over.
Reason disappeared around the corner. "Ree! Wait up!" Jay-Tee screamed, even though there was no way Reason could hear her over the traffic. She waited for a gap, but it was like trying to cross the FDR. If she'd had enough magic, she could have used it, but she didn't. The lights finally changed and she dashed across the street and around the corner. Reason was a block ahead. "Wait up!"
She picked up her pace, feeling the magic tingle grow, and slowed again. In two blocks she was behind Reason. "Can you stop for a second, Ree? Tell me why you're acting so weird?"
Reason stopped dead in her tracks and Jay-Tee ran into her. A woman in black track pants and a pink T-shirt walked by. Jay-Tee realized how few people she'd seen since they left the house. Ones that weren't in cars, that was. It was hard to believe Sydney was a city at all. There were so few people around.
"Sorry," she said, even though it was Reason's fault. Reason didn't look out of breath, even though she should have.
"What's going on?"
"I want to give Sarafina some Cansino magic. So she doesn't have to be insane anymore."
"Okay. And Tom's mom too?"
"She's not a Cansino. There's nothing I can do for her."
Jay-Tee had learned that truth herself, but it didn't make it any less painful. Reason and her family, even
him
, her vile grandfather, were going to live with all the magic they needed, but Jay-Tee was going to be dead soon and Tom probably wouldn't see thirty. It wasn't fair.
"Whatever, but what's wrong with you? Why are you acting so weird? Is it what Raul Cansino did to you?" Standing in the bright sunlight Reason looked like someone had made her up with bronzer, but not just her cheeks: her hands, her face and neck, her everywhere. Maybe it was just the light.
Jay-Tee looked at her own hands. It wasn't the light. Reason was somehow shinier.
"I'm fine. Why do you keep asking?"
"Because you're walking like you're crazy drunk. Okay, you
were
walking like that. Now you're all Amazon-y or something. And you're glowing, Ree. You're glowing like a statue."
9
Disappearing Magic
Staying in Cansino's world while
walking in the other world was hard. And managing to hear what Jay-Tee was saying and answer her was even harder, but I was learning. Every step I took, every word I spoke, I got better at it: I saw more, I heard more, I felt more. It was as though the world I'd spent most of my life in was black and white and now, seeing it through Cansino's eyes, it had sprouted colour. Except that there wasn't any colour, just magic everywhere I looked, making everything richer, deeper. More.
But I needed to see what Jay-Tee was talking about. I stopped walking and opened my eyes completely, losing the richness and complexity, and landing with a thunk in the world of colours. Some of it resolved into Jay-Tee: instead of being a wisp of magic, trailing behind me, she became someone who looked a lot like Danny.
Danny. My head exploded with everything he'd said to me. Tears oozed out of my eyes, trickled down my face.
"Reason? You're crying. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, though the tears came even quicker. I took a deep breath and it hurt so much I was ready to climb back into Cansino's world. Why had Danny rejected me and my baby? Though I hadn't told him about the baby. Well, of course not— he hadn't let me.
"Aaargh!" If Danny had been standing there, I would have kicked him as hard as I could.
"Reason? What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You're crying over nothing?"
"Yes!"
"Sure you are. You going to tell me what's up? I can help. Or Esmeralda can. Why don't we call her?"
"You can call her if you like. I'm going to Sarafina." I wiped the tears away, but more just joined them. I wished Jay-Tee didn't look so much like her brother.
"Like there are any phones around here. I wish my cell worked in your country."
"Can we keep walking? I want to get to Sarafina."
"Sure thing. We can walk and talk. So, Ree, how come you've changed again? I mean gone back to normal? You're talking and moving like you used to. Not that crying is normal. I mean— "
"Because I opened my eyes."
"You what now?"
"It's because of the new magic. I'm not sure how to describe it. You're slowing up, Jay-Tee."
"Sorry," she said, and shrugged the same way Danny did.
"You know, you could go back to the house and call Esmeralda, then meet me at Kalder Park."
"I don't think so. It's not like— "
"Glowing, you said?"
Jay-Tee nodded and made the strange gesture across her forehead, chest, and shoulder that she made whenever she was nervous or scared. "Look at your arms."
I looked down. "Bugger." My skin was shining. It looked almost like Raul Cansino's: smooth, hairless. Were my pores disappearing? I looked closer. Not yet: there was still fine, downy hair on my arms, but I was definitely glowing as if I were made of gold or bronze. "It's beautiful," I said, finally able to stop crying.
"You think?" Jay-Tee said. "Looks freaky to me."
"No, it's beautiful." But what was Sarafina going to think? She hated magic. One look at me and she'd go even madder than she already was.
* * *
I led Jay-Tee past gum trees, and grassy slopes spilling down to water that shone bright with sunlight. I wondered how it would look from Cansino world, started to imagine the added depth of the mathematical patterns that made up the movement of the waves, of the boats through the air currents.
I noticed that Jay-Tee and her brother even walked the same: an almost loping stride, like a big cat, which made sense in Danny because he was so tall, but Jay-Tee was even shorter than me. I shook my head. I wasn't going to think about him.
"It really is a park, huh?" Jay-Tee said. "I didn't expect that. Thought it would be all hospital-y."
"This is the art school." We walked past a sandstone building overrun with ivy. In front of it students sat on the grass sketching. It was like they hadn't moved since last time I'd been here. All of them still dressed in black.
"Isn't it summer? How come they're still in school?"
"Dunno," I said. "Maybe art students don't get holidays."
"Huh. So what did you do in New York? I mean once you saw the door worked without a key and everything. Did you see Danny? Or, you know,
him
?"
Her saying Danny's name made my eyes well up again, which made me mad at myself. What was I supposed to say?
Your stupid brother told me to rack off
? I was relieved to see the first of the buildings that made up Kalder Park.
"Sarafina's somewhere in there. You wait here."
"What do you mean, 'wait here'?!"
"I'm going to use Cansino magic, Jay-Tee, lots of it, okay? You can't help me with it. I have to sneak in there to fix her. I can't have you tagging along."
"I could be a decoy or something."
"I don't want to attract any attention, Jay-Tee. I won't be long," I said, walking away from her. "Honest."
I turned a corner, went through the first ten Fibonaccis, and when Jay-Tee didn't follow, I ducked into the shrubbery between two buildings: bottlebrush and a stunted gum tree. Then, checking that no one could see me, I sat down with my back against the weatherboard slats of the closest building.
The truth was, I needed to be away from Jay-Tee reminding me of Danny every time I looked at her.
I closed my eyes. The pain of Danny not wanting me vanished and Cansino's world unfolded; the bushes and trees beside me became a dusty scattering of the tiniest magic imaginable, completely drowned by all the brilliant lights around them, more than I'd seen before, more even than New York City, and so many of them close by. Magic-wielders. They had to be.
Were they all like my mother? Mad because they didn't use their magic? Had all the magic at Kalder Park over the years started rubbing off on everything? Made the couches, the windows, the doors magic as well? This place exploded with magic.
I saw Sarafina's light. I knew it was her; I could feel it. I zoomed closer, the feel of her got stronger, but then the texture wasn't right. The light flew apart, exploded into dusty particles, into nothing. Not Sarafina.
It wasn't her. Hadn't been her. Hadn't been anything— which didn't make any sense. I saw something familiar, a faint trace of magic. I recognised it but couldn't place it. I searched through the lights that were farther away. Still no Sarafina.
I stood up, feeling the thickness around me giving way slowly, more resistant than before. I concentrated, trying to find the real world. I heard what could have been a myna bird calling; somewhere, not far, cicadas buzzed in chorus. I saw the barest edges of a path and pushed my limbs along it, as though I were moving in low gravity.
I wondered what the gravity of pure magic was.
"Ray gun." I heard someone call. "Raise them. Read arse. Rea-son!"
"Jay-Tee," I said. Through the wavering texture that surrounded me I could see the faint dust of Jay-Tee's magic.
"Sarafina's not here," I said. The words moved out of me slowly, glittering in a spiral pattern that wove round and round until it disappeared out of sight. So beautiful. Before they'd gone, Jay-Tee overlaid them with more words of her own. There was no spiral or glitter to them. I heard nothing.
I continued searching for Sarafina, striving to listen for more words from Jay-Tee, but they reached me only in tiny fragments. "Mer." "Ont." "Elp." "Ezon." I could feel vibrations, like a butterfly's wings beating against a soft cloth. They weren't from this world: they had to be from where Jay-Tee was.