it
was the real world?
Was he right?
"Just show me how to get to Sarafina."
"There's more than one way, Alexander," Esmeralda said. "You know that."
"Think about how much magic it would take, Reason."
I thought about the magic that made up all the doors I'd seen. Magic I couldn't break.
"See this place? I grew up here. This is where my family is from. My hometown."
"We're in Texas?" Esmeralda asked. He ignored her.
I looked around. The park was mostly grass, not trees. Other than that there was no greenery at all. I could only see two stars above. What a bleak place to grow up.
"I made that door." For a moment, he took his eyes off me to look back at it. A plain wooden door in a six-storey brick building.
"You made it?" Esmeralda asked, staring at him.
"I did," he said, pleased with himself. His eyes were back on me. "You glow much brighter than Raul Cansino did."
"How did you make a door, Alexander?" Esmeralda asked.
"With magic.
Lots
of magic."
Esmeralda snorted. "Very informative. How many others have you made?" she asked. He had made a door. I wondered if I could do that. Was that how I was supposed to get to Sarafina?
"None."
"None? You only made one door?"
"These are the only two places I know well enough. New York and here, where I grew up."
"Why?" Esmeralda asked.
"You of all people should know. To learn more about what magic is, what we can do. If you knew how to make a door, surely you would."
Esmeralda looked down, but I could see he was right.
"Okay," I said. "You made a door. Now take me to my mother." He wasn't bargaining with me. He wasn't attacking me. He wasn't doing any of the things the Jason Blake I knew would have done. Even the staring was out of character. The old Jason Blake wouldn't have been so obvious. But now he looked at me as if he was a magpie unable to keep from something shiny.
"You'll see her, Reason. You'll rescue her like you want to."
"How did you make the door, Alexander?"
"You can do anything now, Reason," Jason Blake told me. Then he turned to Esmeralda. "I drew points of light together. From here to New York City."
Esmeralda clucked her tongue.
Lights flickered in the corners of my eyes. I thought about how much magic it would take to draw them together. "It was easy?"
He laughed. "Easy? No. But it was the best thing I've ever done in my life."
"Now
that
I believe!" my grandmother exclaimed. "Other than fathering Sarafina, your life has been a selfish waste."
Jason Blake fished something out of his pocket and held it out: an ordinary key. "I fashioned it out of air." I could imagine doing that. He watched my reaction, waiting for me to say something. When I didn't, he continued. "All I've ever wanted, Reason, was to live. To live and use my magic."
"And steal other people's," Esmeralda said.
"Like you haven't?" he said to her without taking his eyes off me. "You're no better than I am. You just pretend harder."
"That's a lie!"
"And you've never lied, have you? When I take magic, I always ask."
"Because it's no good to you if you don't," she said. "Not because you give a damn about anyone but yourself."
"You didn't ask me," I said, interrupting them. "That first bit of magic Raul Cansino gave me— you stole it."
"That's true. I was desperate. I knew he would choose you. I wanted…That was an exception. The only time I stole."
"Liar," I said. When he first asked me a question it had been to get magic from me, but his question hadn't been clear. He had tried to trick me out of my magic. "You might've asked, but you didn't make clear what you were asking for, did you?"
My grandmother looked down again and I knew she had done the same thing, but Jason Blake just shrugged. "It's not stealing. Technically, anyway. Stealing requires too much magic, not much of a net gain. I was a good little magic-wielder: eking out a life, a tiny bit of magic here, a tiny bit there." He spat. It landed two metres away.
"When you took Raul Cansino's magic from me it almost killed me."
"I knew Cansino would give you more."
I doubted that. "What about Jay-Tee? There was no Raul Cansino to save her."
"It's true. I cared more about living longer, having more magic." He was still staring at me. "We can't afford to care too much about other magic-wielders. It's dangerous. My own mother tried to trick me out of my magic, as she had my father. In the end I tricked her out of hers. That's how it is. How it always has been. We eat one another."
Esmeralda opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.
"Is that why you don't use your real name?" I asked.
"My real name?"
"The name you were born with."
"I was born Alexander Tannen."
"You told Esmeralda your real name?"
"I was young."
"And in love?"
He laughed. So did Esmeralda.
"I didn't woo Esmeralda out of desire for anything but her magic. And if there was a child— and I saw there would be— that magic too. Like my mother tried to do to me. Like every magic person I have ever known. Esmeralda too, of course."
"But you didn't get mine," Esmeralda said.
"Nor did you get mine. Stalemated each other, didn't we?"
"I was just glad to be free of you."
It was one of the first things Esmeralda had said that I believed a hundred per cent.
"None of that matters, Reason. Raul Cansino's magic sets us free." He laughed. "We don't have to turn on one another anymore. What he gave you— it changes everything."
"What about what he gave you and Esmeralda?" I asked. "You made a door. If you can do that, why do you need me?"
"I don't. I don't
need
you. But I want to be like you. I want to have all of Cansino's magic. He showed me what I would become if he chose me. He showed me real space. How I could change what I was. Change anything I wanted— "
"You want me to give you
more
magic?" I asked. Was he mad? "I'd much rather turn your magic off."
Jason Blake blanched. It lasted only a moment, but I saw it. He
was
frightened of me. Esmeralda saw it too.
"What did you mean when you said this new magic doesn't last?" she asked him. "How long do we have?"
"I don't know. A month. A year. The rest of a human life span. But not the centuries she has."
"But I feel so strong," she said. "And I've done things I never dreamt of."
"He left us powerful," Jason Blake agreed. "Not as powerful as you, Reason, but powerful. He left me human. Do you know what you look like now? You vibrate with power."
"But I'm changing. I'm losing— "
"Your humanity? Why care? I don't. I don't care about people. I never have. I don't want to feel greed. Or guilt. Or love." Esmeralda laughed, but my grandfather ignored her. "Or lust. I want the life he had. Your life. I want to be stripped down to curiosity. I don't want anything else. I want to explore, to have the universe unfurl for me. It's all I've ever wanted. Not love, not money, not fame. I've never wanted human things."
"But Raul wanted them," I protested. "He wanted to make sure there were more Cansinos. He wanted to die and be with the rest of his family."
Jason Blake laughed. "Every living thing wants to pass on its genes. And, eventually, every living thing dies. Not many get to explore for centuries before it happens."
I could see it. The shimmering lights, shifting in the margins of my sight. No discord there. All I had to do was close my eyes completely to be there…to stay there forever.
"He's wrong, Reason," Esmeralda said. "Raul Cansino didn't want to live forever. It wasn't enough for him. In the end he chose to die."
"Rubbish," my grandfather said. "No one has ever been as content as he was. Or as you'll be once you accept your gift. You can do anything you want. Go anywhere. Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino showed me what he was."
I looked at Esmeralda, but she was looking at Jason Blake.
"She can't go through doors that don't want her," Esmeralda said.
He laughed. "Neither of you understand, do you? Reason, you don't need doors. Those lights you see? The magic? Concentrate on any one you recognise and you'll fly through space until you're there."
Esmeralda turned to look at me. "Really? She can do that?" The greed had returned to her eyes.
"You can go to Sarafina anytime you want. If you can see her magic, you can go there. Your magic is inextricably linked to hers."
"Then why didn't Raul fly to me? Why did he need the door?"
"He didn't know you. He had to know you first. Then, wherever you were, he could go there. He was in the room when you and your Danny boy went at it, making sure you conceived. He pushed you at him." His smile turned feral. "That's why he chose you, after all. For the baby."
As soon as he said it I knew it was true. I
had
wanted Danny— he was so beautiful— but I never would have kissed him, not without Raul Cansino pushing me. He'd even made Danny smell of limes, of lightly toasted bread, of cinnamon. I'd seen Danny since then, and all I'd smelt was soap. Those other smells— they'd been from Raul Cansino.
He really had been in the same room with us. I shuddered. Jason Blake smiled.
"You are repulsive," Esmeralda said, glaring at him.
"But," I began, pushing thoughts of that night away, "why did you steal my mother?"
Jason Blake laughed. "Why don't you ask her yourself? Go on. Concentrate. Find her."
"Reason, be careful!" Esmeralda said. "You can't trust him."
I looked from him to her and back again, not sure what to do. I had to get to Sarafina. I had to save her. I closed my eyes.
"No," my grandfather said. "Don't shut your eyes."
I opened them. He was still staring at me.
"Can you see her?" he asked.
I couldn't. "She's not here."
"Careful, Reason," Esmeralda said.
"Search further. Push yourself. Concentrate on her. You've seen her magic; now find it!"
I was already searching, pushing further than I ever had before. I heard them yelling at each other, but not what their words were. My peripheral vision was growing, eating into everything I saw.
I found her.
So far away. She was even fainter than when I'd last seen her, almost as faint as Jay-Tee before I'd saved her. "What have you done to her? She has almost no magic left."
"Go to her, then," my grandfather told me. "Ask her yourself."
"How?"
"I don't know. He didn't show me how. I just saw him do it."
"Don't," Esmeralda said. "It might not be safe."
I retreated into the lights floating in my eyes. Sarafina's was so faint. I concentrated on it, until it spread out and was almost all I could see. My vision stretched out. My skin prickled. I moved forward. I panicked, stutter-stepped, tripped.
A huge semi trailer zoomed past; wind pushed my hair and clothes wildly around my face and body. I was on the edge of the highway. I took a step back.
Behind me Esmeralda called out, "I'll find you!"
I didn't turn. I'd moved. My grandfather was right: I could be my own door. But I had to concentrate or— another semi trailer rushed past— or I would be squished flat as a bug.
I turned my attention to Sarafina, let her fill my vision, until the highway in front of me drifted into my peripheral vision. My skin contracted, then expanded, shifting across my flesh. And my vision stretched again. Streets unfurled beneath my feet, countryside, ocean, ocean, ocean, but her light always there.
I could feel the panic rising. The rushing ocean began to take up more of my vision. For a brief moment I thought I could feel spray, smell salt. I pushed my thoughts back to Sarafina. Sarafina, not ocean— Sarafina. Ocean changed to land; green, blue, brown flashed by.
Then my mother's light grew sharper and sharper, until I was standing in front of her.
25
Without Tears
Tom was banging on the
door and calling out to her to let him in, that he was sorry, and that she should stop being such a bloody pain. Jay-Tee lay in bed and listened, which was easier than it had been, because the rain had finally started to ease off.