Magic or Madness (19 page)

Then, somehow, it had all fallen apart.
That’s
why she was in Kalder Park. Because she had been telling herself lies for years, had begun to believe them, and finally her head had exploded.

Lying here thinking about it all was making my head explode too.

If Sarafina was lying, did that make Esmeralda a good person after all? I thought of the thirty-three teeth, of the dried-up cat. I shuddered. The stories Sarafina had told me—those were true, I was sure. Except that Esmeralda’s magic
did
make things happen; doors opened out on places they shouldn’t. From Sydney to New York City in a single step.

Had Sarafina started the lies to protect me? From what? Was
magic
why all my relatives died so young?

Or had Sarafina’s lies been to protect me from myself? Because if magic was real, then I was a murderer. I had wished that boy dead and less than a second later he had died. I had done it. Part of me had always known
that
too.

My head was crowded with thoughts and I didn’t want to think any of them, but I had to, didn’t I? Being too scared to think (
magic is real
) had made me hope I was crazy, had stopped me from facing what was plain as the no-longer-white snow out the window.

Magic is real. Magic has
always
been real.

After breakfast I asked Jay-Tee to take me to the street where she’d first found me. For less than a second she looked at me strangely.

“I was hoping it might jog my memory. Sarafina says if you retrace your steps, it can help you find stuff. I thought it might help.”

“Sure,” she said. “No problem.” I wondered if I’d imagined her look.

The wind was back up again, making walking hard work. I watched my breath turn into mist, then, when my lips started to sting, I pulled my scarf up. It was too cold to talk, though my head was bubbling over with questions.

I wanted to know about Jason Blake. The way he had talked just before he left . . . well, he was
not
a nice man. He had shark’s eyes and when he smiled, it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. He was too much like Esmeralda. What was he doing to Jay-Tee?

He’d wanted me to say yes, I knew. Sarafina had always taught me to be sparing with my yeses because
you never know what the question really is.

I thought about some of her other lessons, the meditation, turning feathers upside down. She’d been teaching me to protect myself. She’d denied magic existed and then taught me how to shield myself from it. I longed to talk to her, to ask her why.

It was almost too cold to breathe.

When Jay-Tee finally said we’d reached the street, my heart sank. It looked like every other street we’d walked along. Every one had buildings with staircases on the outside—fire escapes. Every house in New York City, it seemed, was tall, and all were jam-packed together, no gaps between. They lived like sardines, without any green in sight. Depressing.

But it wasn’t all horrible. I thought of Jay-Tee’s boasting last night about the wonders of winter, the ice sculptures and roaring fires. Seeing the trees glittering with ice
had
been incredible. Especially now that I could admit that it was real. And the chestnuts, hot and nutty and sweet. It was so cool just buying them on the street like that. I loved the chestnuts. All the food I’d had in this city had been amazing: the pizza (even without beetroot or pineapple), that canoolly dessert stuff—even the kasha had grown on me. I decided it was worth spending an evening with creepy Jason Blake to see what fancy New York food was like.

It had snowed again overnight. Eighteen inches, Jay-Tee said; she held up her hand to demonstrate how high, around half a metre. Snow was banked up on the sides of the road, in the tiny little fenced-off gardens. I pulled the scarf up over my nose. It was warm and wet from my breath, but within seconds it was cold and wet.

“Recognise anything?” Jay-Tee asked, standing close. She rubbed her mittens together. “This is the exact spot where I found you.”

“Not sure. Think I need to look at all the doors. Maybe I can spot where I came out onto the street.”

“Does it look familiar?” Jay-Tee asked.

“Not sure,” I said, because I really wasn’t.

“Let’s start at the beginning of the block,” Jay-Tee suggested, her teeth chattering. “So you don’t miss one?”

I nodded, though the one thing I was sure of was that I’d come out of a building in the middle of the street.

All the doors were big and wooden. They had door knockers that were brass hands or faces; one was a skull with its eyes painted red. I didn’t recognise any of them. Many of them had locks big enough for the infinity key. I touched each one, but not one felt right.

I stared at the spaces above each door too. That’s where I was pretty sure I’d seen the painted man with the moustache, above the door like a guardian angel. Lots of the houses had the usual kind of angels painted or carved above them. Cats too, and stained glass. I knew my door didn’t have stained glass. At least, I thought I knew. I wasn’t even sure the moustache man was above my door. Maybe I’d seen him later when I’d run along the street.

What would Sarafina think of me? A lifetime of being taught to be observant, and instead I’d stood there catching snowflakes in my mouth.

All the buildings looked virtually the same, with only the tiniest variations, like the clothes in Esmeralda’s wardrobe. I wished I still had the infinity key, then I could try it on each door. But somehow I had the feeling that I would know when I came to the right one.

None of these was it.

At the end of the block, Jay-Tee suggested we try the other side. Just because she’d found me on this side of the street didn’t mean that I hadn’t somehow gotten turned around. By the time she’d shown up, Jay-Tee reminded me, I’d been so cold I couldn’t think straight. I nodded.

I examined each door carefully. No moustached man, no lock that felt right. Jay-Tee didn’t say anything, just trailed behind me, trying to stay warm. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay outside. My nose was starting to throb again.

What was I going to do if I couldn’t find my way back? I was a long way from Esmeralda. Which was what I’d wanted. But now I wanted to know who I was, what I was, what I’d done.

Besides, was I really far away from her? It was Esmeralda’s door, after all. She came here, I knew from the winter coat hanging on her door, from the United States of America coins in its pockets, from the copies of the
New York Times.
Was I any safer from her now than I had been in her house?

I wished there was some way I could talk to her without putting myself in her power. I wanted to ask so many questions. I wanted to read those letters. I wanted to know what magic was. I thought again of the teeth, the dead cat. Maybe it was Sarafina I needed to talk to, not Esmeralda. The witch, I was sure, would eat me alive. The real Esmeralda, hidden from view, was just like Jason Blake. They even smelled the same.

How could I get home? If I found the door, it wasn’t going to open without the key. How would I get back through? Wait until Esmeralda showed up and let me through? Too scary to contemplate. Catch a plane? I had no passport and if I tried to get one, they’d notify Esmeralda for sure.

I stepped back from the last house—in my pocket through my gloves I could feel my ammonite, neither warm nor comforting. I looked up at the grey sky. I couldn’t find the sun. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was. Every time Jay-Tee said it was night, I thought it should be day; when she said it was dinnertime, I was ready for breakfast.

I shivered. Jay-Tee looked as cold as I felt.

That night—Wednesday night, I
reminded myself, not Thursday—Jason Blake came to pick us up in a long, black limousine. When we got in, he was sitting with his back to the driver, dressed in a black suit as if we were going to a funeral. He gestured for us to sit opposite him and handed us glasses of champagne.

I took a sip and the bubbles got up my nose, making me giggle, just like I’d read in books. I’d never had champagne before. It tasted lemony, light, dissolving on my tongue like sherbet. It was the first alcohol I’d ever liked, not to mention the first cold thing I’d enjoyed since stepping through the door.

A screen blocked off the front of the limousine—we couldn’t see or hear the driver, nor he us. It made me feel like I was in some high-tech car that drove itself. It was enormous. The back was more like a lounge room than a car. The seats were made of soft leather and there were cushions and footrests. There was even a television.

The limousine seemed to be designed for drinking champagne, with special holders that fit the skinny champagne glasses perfectly and behind a panel a tiny fridge to keep the bottle cold. I wondered if there was a hidden toilet too, which instantly made me want to pee.

Jay-Tee had loaned me a black dress that held my legs together so tight they felt glued. She’d insisted that you couldn’t wear jeans to this kind of restaurant. The shoes were high and when I walked in them, I wobbled. They pinched my toes. Jay-Tee said not to worry, we’d be sitting down most of the time.

Her dress was black too, with red around the hem. Actually, I hadn’t seen a dress in her wardrobe that
wasn’t
black. The shoes she wore were even higher than mine and made of metal. They made a loud clicking sound every step she took. She’d put makeup on herself and then on me. When I protested, she said it was to hide my black eye. It made my skin feel weird, tight and itchy. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a doll’s face: lips and cheeks red and glossy. I didn’t recognise myself. Jay-Tee said I looked great.

“Will this be fun?” I’d asked her.

She squeezed my hand. “Afterwards we’ll go dancing.”

“In these?” I gestured at the ridiculous shoes on our feet.

Jay-Tee had laughed.

We hadn’t talked about Jason Blake all day. Every time I started to ask, Jay-Tee changed the subject. I was a little relieved. I was almost afraid of what she might say, of what I’d gotten myself into.

Jay-Tee had lied to me about her age, about what a nice man Jason Blake was. What else had she lied about? I wasn’t quite sure why, but something made me trust her despite the lies. I had a feeling she would tell me what was going on, just not quite yet.

“To new friendships!” Jason Blake raised his glass and we all clinked together and then sipped our champagne. My head was spinning out of control, lost like a feather in a willi-willi. “Don’t forget to look out the window, Reason. We’re almost at Midtown; you
have
to see Times Square in the flesh.”

Jay-Tee snorted. “I bet she’s never even
heard
of Times Square.”

I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I moved closer to the window, which radiated cold like a block of ice, wiped the mist of my breath away, and peered out at the jumble of lights: reds, greens, blues, and yellows. We drove past a giant television screen that was the entire side of a huge glass building, showing a white-sand beach with palm trees and a red car without a roof driving along. Snowflakes drifted slowly past the screen, and for a moment the sand looked like snow.