Magic Lessons Read Free Page A

and said goodbye. Her mother started to cry.
“I’ll be back, I promise.” She glanced at me, embarrassed, and then away again, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “I have to go. I’ll bring your granddaughter next time, I promise.” She left quickly without glancing back. Her mother started to rock back and forth, her cries gradually getting louder. A nurse came to quiet her and led her from the room.
When they were gone, I moved to the other side of Sarafina and screwed up my courage to speak to her. There was so much I wanted to ask. What were the feathers Esmeralda had put under my pillow? What were they supposed to do? How did magic work? How long did I have to live? I wanted to tell her about the letters Esmeralda had slipped under my door—the letters I hadn’t opened, that Esmeralda had stolen back before I could read them. I opened my mouth to say, I’ve been to New York City .
But Sarafina spoke first. “You’re hers now, aren’t you?” She wasn’t looking at me. Her tone was flat and even, but her eyes had somehow cleared.
“No. No, I’m not.” I wasn’t sure, though. I was staying under Esmeralda’s roof. I had helped her win the stoush against Jason Blake. She was going to teach me about magic. She had put those black and purple feathers under my pillow. Did all that make me hers?
“Then why are you wearing those pants?”
I looked down at the green pants Tom had made for me, his magic sewn into every seam. I flushed.
“You’re going to die,” Sarafina said. “Soon.”
“Then tell me what you know,” I said, trying to sound brave, though I felt ill. “Tell me what I can do. I don’t trust Esmeralda. But at least she’ll tell me how magic works. If I’m going to fix this, I need you to help me.”
“There’s no fix. You die or you end up here. This is better.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. There had to be a way, a path that didn’t lead to madness or early death. I was going to find it. I opened my mouth to tell her.
Instead, a question bubbled out. “Why did you lie to me?”
Sarafina closed her eyes, then opened them. Turned to look at me— really look at me—for the first time since she’d tried to kill herself. “I never lied.”
“But magic is real. I’ve seen—”
“I was trying to make it unreal by denying it. I wasn’t lying.”
“But what about all those things you told me? You said there was no electricity in her house. There is. That she sacrificed babies—”
“I never lied.”
“What are the black and purple feathers for? What do they do? How much danger am I in?”
But Sarafina was gone, her eyes filmed over again with the drugs they’d given her. The unripe lemon taste filled my mouth, and something sharp and jolting filled my nostrils. I gagged, my eyes watering, as I realised what it was: I could taste and smell my mother’s madness.

3
Someone at the Door
“At least she left a note.” Jay-Tee grabbed two more
    slices of toast and doused them with so much strawberry jam, there was more jam than bread. Heaps more. Tom wondered why she didn’t just eat it out of the jar with a spoon.
    Jay-Tee was wearing a green T-shirt Tom’d never seen before. He wondered if it was Reason’s. Jay-Tee’d come through the door from New York City with only the winter clothes she was wearing. Not very useful in Sydney in January. The rest was borrowed from Mere: a pair of tennis shorts and thongs . . . though what had Jay-Tee called them? Flup-flaps? Some stupid name like that.
    If Jay-Tee wasn’t mean, Tom would’ve considered making her some clothes. She’d look good in red—though really, JayTee’s brown skin would look good against any colour. She could even wear white or yellow. Pale people looked terrible in those colours. (Tom’d learned ages ago never to wear them. Or red.) But he would never make Jay-Tee anything in green. Green was a Reason colour.
    Tom picked up the note and reread it. Why’d Reason want to go to Kalder Park without him? His