Shamanka (5 page)

Sam is waiting for them; she knows the resurrection chant off by heart. If it doesn't work, she has Plan B up her sleeve. She arranges the dead sparrow on a pad of grass inside her lunchbox in preparation.

The first group of kids arrives. Smallest Girl and friends sit at her feet like disciples. Some boys arrive. They don't want to sit down but Smallest Girl whines at them, “Sit down, will ya? Else I can't see!”

“Yeah, sit down!” yells the crowd.

They gather and gather. Sam didn't think there'd be quite so many.

“Get on with it,” says Trevor Randle from Year 9. “Or I'll kick your lying butt.”

“Watch!” commands Sam. She removes the lid from her lunchbox and throws it into the air – it vanishes. Already their eyes and their brains are confused; they were expecting one thing, but something else happened. Now they don't know what to expect, and Sam has their full attention.

Everyone stops messing around. What has she done with the lid? It can't have just disappeared – or can it? They are so busy worrying about the lid, they can't catch up with what she's doing next. They're always a few seconds behind and that's all the time she needs. She shows them the contents of the box.

“See the poor sparrow! It is dead. It is cold and stiff. I would like a volunteer to touch it to prove that it is not merely asleep. Any fool can wake the sleeping, but
I
can wake the dead.” No one in the audience moves. Sam fixes her eyes on Trevor Randle. “You believe it's dead then?”

“No, but I ain't touching it. It might have fleas.”

Smallest Girl pushes herself up.

“Oh,
I'll
do it. I want fleas. You get a day off school.” She strokes the bird's head with her finger and shudders slightly. “It's dead all right, poor fing.”

Sam nods. “It
is
dead … but not for much longer.”

She cups the broken corpse in her hands, lowers her voice and begins to chant in Motu. She thought they might heckle, but they don't; they're
still
looking for the lunchbox lid. Now she's chanting in an ominous language they don't understand. The resonance and rhythm lulls their minds to the point of numbness.

Suddenly, she opens her hands and the sparrow flutters into the sky. There's a collective gasp. Some of the girls shriek. No one was expecting that, least of all Trevor Randle. For all his jeering and bravado, he doesn't like it at all; it frightens him.

“No way did that happen. That's sick.”

Smallest Girl brushes grass from her skirt “Wassup, Trev? I fink it's nice. I'm glad the sparra' came back to life.”

The boy is riled. “What are you saying, little mad girl? Things don't come back from the dead.”

“Forget it, Trev,” says his mate. “It's a trick. It wasn't dead, it can't have been.”

“
Was
dead,” mumbles Smallest Girl.

Trevor shoves his friend hard in the chest. “It was dead; now it ain't!”

“P'raps it's gone to heaven,” says Smallest, which only makes Trevor angrier.

“Shut
up
! Unless you want to go to heaven an' all … do ya?” He points angrily at Sam. “You're evil, man. I want you out of this school. I'm gonna grass you up, pikey!”

Two other lads hold him back, but he catches one of them on the chin. A fight breaks out. All the boys bundle in, feet and fists flailing. Blazers rip. Eyes are poked. Buttons pop. First a resurrection, then a ruck; it's a lot more exciting than double Maths.

Smallest Girl runs off to fetch a teacher before someone gets maimed; she knows she'll get house points for Telling. Sam steps back, retrieves the lid from the inside of her blazer and puts it back on her lunchbox; no one notices.

Seconds later, a red-faced teacher arrives to break up the fight. He marches Trevor Randle by the collar to the headmistress's office and it is there that the boy grasses on Sam. “It was Sam Khaan started it, miss. She brought a dead bird back to life. Ask anyone.”

Every pupil confirms his story so the headmistress has no choice but to phone Sam's carer, Miss Candy Khaan, and ask her to come up to the school. The phone rings while Candy is in her rum barrel; she is furious at being woken.

Aunt Candy arrives at the school on her rusty old bike with her wig on backwards and totters into the headmistress's office. “What have you done
now
?” She screams at Sam.

The headmistress describes the incident on the school field; the bringing back to life of the dead sparrow. The school doesn't allow resurrections; it mustn't happen again.

Aunt Candy stamps her feet in irritation. “It's a trick. An illusion. Search her!”

Sam shifts uneasily. Aunt Candy glares at her, the vein in her temple throbbing. “Come along, Spam! Show Miss Looney what you're hiding.”

The headmistress fiddles with her glasses nervously. “
Langley
. My name is Miss Langley.” She's fond of Sam and not in the least bit fond of Aunt Candy, but she has a duty to get to the bottom of this, so she asks Sam to turn out her pockets.

Sam places the contents of her top pocket on Miss Langley's desk; a biro and a coin. She empties the bottom pocket; there's nothing in there except a pack of cards. Miss Langley tries to make light of things. “Not gambling, I hope.”

“No, miss.”

“Good girl.”

Aunt Candy bangs her fist on the desk and screeches. “
Good girl?
She's a liar! A cheat! Check her
inside
pockets. Let's take her blazer off!” Without warning, she marches over to Sam, yanks her blazer off, turns it upside down and shakes it.

Miss Langley panics. “Miss Khaan, I really don't think that's appropria—”

A very dead sparrow drops out of Sam's pocket onto the carpet. Another second and she'd have managed to hide it behind a cushion, but the attack was too sudden.

“See?” shrieks Aunt Candy. “There was no resurrection! The brat pocketed the dead bird and released a live one hidden in her blazer. Cane her, Miss Looney!”

“Oh, no, we don't have a cane.”

Aunt Candy looks very disappointed. “Don't have a cane? Well, what
do
you have? Got any thumbscrews?”

Miss Langley shakes her head.

“No thumbscrews?” yells Candy, “No wonder there's no discipline! And I have to say the hygiene in this school is appalling, Miss Looney.”

“The hygiene?”

“There is a dead bird on your rug. I'm not keeping my niece at this filthy, feeble school a day longer. Come, Spam! We're leaving.”

“But, Aunt Candy, I don't want to leave.”

Despite Miss Langley's pleas for calm, Aunt Candy grabs Sam's hand and drags her outside. Then she sits on the bike, puts her feet on the handle bars and refuses to pedal. “You can push me all the way home, Spam, then you can have your surprise.”

It is Sam's birthday today. The occasion is never celebrated, but today is her thirteenth. Ever the optimist, she wonders if Aunt Candy might have bought her a card for once. Or a small gift. Or baked her a cake.

But what are the chances of that happening?

If someone is lying, their body language is sure to give them away. Here's how.

1.  They avoid eye contact.

2.  They touch their face, throat and mouth a lot.

3.  They scratch their nose or behind their ear.

4.  They wear a false smile (if it's a real smile, the eyes become squished).

5.  If they say, “I love it!” after receiving a gift and only smile after they've said it, they're lying.

6.  A guilty person gets defensive.

7.  A liar may unconsciously place objects (books, coffee cup, etc.) between themselves and you.

8.  A liar uses your last words to answer questions: “Did you hit John?” “No, I did not hit John.”

9.  A guilty person may speak too much and add unnecessary details to convince you.

10. If you think someone's lying, change the subject. They'll instantly relax, whereas an innocent person will want to go back to the previous subject.

L
ola has gone. Sam searches everywhere, but an orang-utan isn't easy to lose. She isn't on the roof or in the attic or sleeping in the trees of the communal gardens in St Peter's Square. Sam calls her name over and over, but she doesn't come.

“Surprise!” snorts Aunt Candy. “Lola's not here. She's never coming back. Get over it.”

Sam's stomach sinks. Her eyes prickle with tears but she refuses to let them fall. “What have you done with her?”

Aunt Candy is walking around on all fours with her back arched like a demented crab.

“I've sent her to a lovely zoo. You can't keep an orang-utan in a little flat, it's cruel. An orang-utan needs to be with its hairy friends, doing monkey things.”

“Which zoo? Tell me which zoo!”

Aunt Candy raises her eyebrows. “What's it called now? Let me think… Ah, I remember. It's The Zoo for Nosy Parkers.”

It doesn't take an expert in body language to know that Aunt Candy is lying. Sam feels like kicking her feet out from under her, but she doesn't; she's not a violent person.

“Why did you get rid of her? Just to hurt me?”

Aunt Candy looks mortally offended. “I got rid of her because she's been teaching you tricks – I hate tricks. I've asked you not to do them, but you carry on behind my back and I won't have it.”

“But
why
do you hate magic so much?”

Aunt Candy won't answer, so Sam decides to risk everything and mentions the F-word.

“Is it to do with my father, the
magician
?”

She guesses it is, because suddenly Aunt Candy's knees buckle. She collapses, cracks her head on the floor and lies there cackling hysterically.

“Magician? Your father isn't a magician. No, no, no. Whatever gave you that idea? He's Bingo Hall. He's an explorer. A murderer. A vicar … a postman.”

“No, he isn't; he's the Dark Prince of Tabuh.”

At the mention of his name, Aunt Candy starts frothing at the mouth. “No, no! He's a grave digger, a dustman, a donkey!” She flips onto her stomach and lashes out like a serpent. “How d'you know he's the Dark Prince? Who told you, WHO TOLD YOU?”

It would be so easy for Sam to admit that she's found the witch doctor's notebook and seen her father's photo, but she wants to keep that to herself.

“I'm psychic,” she says. “I dreamt about my father. He has a blond streak, just like mine, doesn't he, Aunt Candy? I know I'm right. Now, where's Lola? If you lie to me, I'll know. My dreams will tell me where she is.” Sam is exaggerating about her dreams. They won't tell her where Lola is but she wants Aunt Candy to think they will, to freak her out. She hopes it will make her confess and it does.

“All right, you meddling little runt!” she snaps. “I didn't put your stupid ginger friend in a zoo. I sent her to a laboratory where she will help the nice scientists with their experiments.”

“But they'll put her in a cage – they'll hurt her! How
could
you, Aunt Candy?”

“Easy! I phoned the laboratory and a man collected her in an armoured van.”

Lola would never go anywhere with a stranger, but unfortunately Aunt Candy knew that. “I slipped a tablet into her banana,” she confesses. “She was taken away on a stretcher. Looked ever so peaceful.”

Sam is not a violent person but she's so upset about Lola, she grabs Aunt Candy by the ears and tries to shake the truth out of her.

“Which laboratory. Where is it?!”

Aunt Candy's chins wobble like a turkey wattle. She seizes Sam's lapels and wrestles her to the ground. There's a lot of slapping and kicking, and in the struggle, her wig slips off and a strand of her real hair ravels round one of Sam's blazer buttons. As Sam struggles to her knees, the trapped hair is ripped out of Aunt Candy's scalp. She clutches her head, screams; then, in a pincer movement, snatches hold of Sam's ponytail and drags her towards the boxroom.

“So you like hair-pulling, do you Spam? I like hair-pulling. Come, brat! Into your poky room and stay there!” She pulls the door shut and shoves a chair under the handle so Sam can't escape. “Your cheeky, chimpy chum can't save you now! You can stay there until you are a good brat, which will be …
never
!”

Sam hammers on the door. “Let me out! Let me out!” But it's useless. Aunt Candy storms off, slumps on the sofa and sips gin through a straw the width of a hosepipe.

Never one to sit there doing nothing, Sam has opened the witch doctor's notebook and is reading how to make a doll in the shape of her worst enemy. According to the pictures, the doll can be used to inflict anything from measles to murder on the person it represents. Mercifully, all Sam wants to do is prevent Aunt Candy from following her; she's decided to run away. She must rescue Lola, then find her father. She wants to ask him why he abandoned her as a baby. If he had good reason and is a good man, she hopes he'll give her a home. If he is bad or dead, she will mourn him and move on; perhaps she'll find some other relative willing to adopt her.