Magic Lessons Read Free

later, and yet so much had happened—I’d learned that magic was real, stepped through a door to another country, discovered other people with magic, made friends, met Danny, discovered what it is to be truly, truly cold. Far too much had happened in such a short amount of time—eight days!
    My world wasn’t spinning on the same axis anymore. The rules of physics had been broken. Magic was real.
The grey-haired woman’s daughter leaned forward to nod at me briefly before turning her attention back to her loud, unstill mother.
I stared at Sarafina’s profile, counting the freckles—thirtyeight of them—on the side of her nose. I followed the line of her gaze: out the window, down to the bay, where fifteen whitesailed boats floated on the sparkling water. Did she see any of it? Her eyes were glazed over, vacant.
Two weeks ago Sarafina’s eyes had been alive, full of plans. We had been on the road together, had decided to go to Nevertire because the name made us giggle. She hadn’t been sad, hadn’t gotten all obsessive, insisting she count every speck of dirt or wash her hands fifty-five times in a row. None of the usual signs that she was about to lose it. But then, she’d never lost herself completely. She’d never tried to kill herself before.
It shocked me all over again how unlike Sarafina she seemed. She’d never been a still person. Sarafina was always in motion, her face showing exactly what she was thinking. I looked at her now and saw no thought at all. It was as if she had stopped thinking, had run down and become still. All motion gone. Sarafina gone.
I tried to think of what to say. If I said, I know about magic , would that jerk her back to life? Not that I could say it with those two women close by. They’d think I was one of the patients. Besides, it was hardly the best way to break the news. What if Sarafina lost it again?
A trickle of sweat ran down my back. “Hot, isn’t it?” I said, just to be saying something. “At least there’s some breeze off the bay.”
“They never open the windows,” the jerky woman said, turning to look at me. Her voice was so loud I flinched. I was glad Sarafina sat between us; white, bubbly spittle formed at the corners of the strange woman’s mouth, and specks flew as she spoke. “The breeze isn’t allowed in. They want us to boil.”
Every window was open wide.
She tried to lean closer to me. “Did they do that to your eye?” I put my hand to my still-bruised face and shook my head. “Did they put their needles right into your eyeball?”
“Mum, hush. Leave the girl alone.” The daughter leaned forward, pulling her mother towards her, and grimaced at me—though I was sure it was meant to be a smile. She looked very tired. “Sorry, love.”
Sarafina wasn’t hot. My mother always stayed cool when everyone else was warm. In that way, she was still the Sarafina I had always known.
I blurred my vision until I could see inside her, down to where nothing was still, to the pumping of her heart, the blood rushing through her veins, the acid roiling in her stomach, the movement of her intestines. I could see her cells, every single one of them. Hear the roller-coaster movements in every part of her, like the ocean in a storm.
Governing it all was Sarafina’s pattern with its graphic confirmation that yes, Jason Blake was my grandfather. I could see both grandparents, Esmeralda and Jason Blake, in her, traces of their DNA. Like theirs, her pattern was woven through with magic. There in every part of her—in her cells, in the molecules that made up every cell. The magic smelled earthy, like rich black soil, but unlike my grandparents’ magic, unlike Jay-Tee’s, there was no taste of rust. In its place under my tongue was a sharp sourness, like an unripe lemon. The smell made my eyes water.
Sarafina finally blinked. The movement pulled my senses back to the surface, where she was still and quiet.
The crazy woman’s daughter hugged her mother, stood up,