Magic or Madness

Table of Contents

 

 

White was everywhere. On the ground, clinging to the branches of the trees. I looked down at my feet. I was standing in white, and it was cold. The air was cold too. When I breathed, it hurt.

It wasn’t even daytime. The light was wrong. The sky was orangey-grey and I couldn’t see the sun. Was it night? Then why were there no stars? No moon? Was it an eclipse? Had the sky been sucked away?

Soft, wet drops hit my face and landed in my still-open mouth. Like rain, only softer. The air was full of white drops, like feathers or petals, floating through the air.

I walked down the steps, watching the gorgeous white dust dancing all around me. I caught some on my tongue and felt it dissolve. I shivered. It tasted like cold, wet air. I loved it.

“Snow,” I said out loud, proud of myself for figuring it out. “It’s snow.”

WHERE FANTASY TAKES FLIGHT™

Also by Justine Larbalestier

Magic or Madness

 

FIREBIRD/RAZORBILL

 

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Young Readers Group

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Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A

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Copyright © 2005 Justine Larbalestier
All rights reserved

 

 

Larbalestier, Justine.

Magic or madness / by Justine Larbalestier.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-52559-3

[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Space and time—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Mental illness—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 6. Sydney (N.S.W.)—Fiction. 7. Australia—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L32073Mag 2005

[Fic]—dc22

2004018263

 

 

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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The chapters from Reason and Tom’s point of view are written with Australian spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. Those from Jay-Tee’s viewpoint are written U.S. style. You will find
make-up
with a hyphen in the Australian chapters and without (
makeup
) in the American, and can thus enjoy English in two of her glorious (confusing) varieties. If a word is unfamiliar, turn to the glossary, which will explain that a
jumper
is in fact a
sweater
(and vice versa). However, the book has U.S. punctuation throughout, so as not to totally confuse the poor American copy editor.

 

Please note that
Great Expectations
is by Charles Dickens,
not
Shakespeare. Literary history is not one of Tom’s strong points.

It would be easiest to
just walk out the front door. But I’d been on the run since before I was born—I knew a lot about running away. Sometimes the simplest plan is not the way to go. If you’re expected to run away, then wait awhile, go at night, go out a window or the back door, go over the roof. Leave the way people don’t look for you to be leaving. (People rarely look up.) Plan ahead. Accumulate supplies and know your escape route. Avoid breaking the law or annoying anyone. Best to keep the number of people chasing you to a minimum.

My name is Reason Cansino. I was named Reason because my mother, Sarafina, thought it was prettier than Logic or Rationality or Intellect and had better nicknames, too. Not that Sarafina has ever called me anything but Reason.

My mother believes in all those things: logic, reason, and the rest, and in mathematics, which fortunately wasn’t on the list of possible names. I’m grateful to have a head full of numbers, but I wouldn’t want to answer to the name of Algebra, Trigonometry, or Calculus.

Not many people have ever known my real name: the doctors and nurses at the hospital where I was born, police, private detectives. And
her,
of course, the wicked witch, my grandmother, Esmeralda Cansino.

All my life we’ve been on the run from her, Sarafina and me. She caught us once when I was ten, but we got away. It was dumb, I guess, but I thought that was it: she found us, we escaped, end of story. She’ll never find us again.

Wrong.

Sarafina always said, “Expect the best, but prepare for the worst.”

I’m good at the first part, crap at the second. Despite having lived all my life being made ready in case the wicked witch should find us—Sarafina taught me what to say, what not to say, filled my head with detailed plans of Esmeralda’s house (“What if she moves somewhere else?” I asked. “She can’t,” said Sarafina), how to get in contact with each other if separated, all of that.

Even so, I never really believed it would happen. Not
twice.
It was a game we played, Sarafina and me, nothing more.

I loved our life together. I’d seen brolgas taking off at sunset, their white feathers stained pink, purple, and orange by the light, making vast ripples radiate through the wetlands, sending lily pads rocking, frogs leaping from pad to pad, and lazy crocs slipping flash quick into the water. I’d seen a platypus clear as the air after rains have finally wiped the dust and dirt of a drought away, swimming slow and easy at dawn in water so still, so glass-like, you can see reflected the fine hair on your face.

In that life, I’d never seen a movie, or been in a shopping centre, or held a remote control. I’d never lived anywhere for more than five months, or in a town of more than a thousand people, or had any friends. I’d never had to memorise a phone number because we never had one or knew anyone to call.