Magic or Madness (9 page)

They passed a couple, huddled together on a tombstone that had been knocked flat to the ground, trying to light a cigarette that kept going out in the wind. Reason said hi and they both nodded at her.

“I swear most of the people buried here drowned in Sydney Harbour,” Tom said, pointing to the nearest drowned-in-the-harbour inscription. “The early settlers weren’t much chop at swimming.”

Reason giggled. “They still aren’t. I met these English backpackers at Woolgoolga on the beach, and they didn’t know how to swim. They just lay on their towels and turned pink, too scared to put more than a toe in the water. Weird, huh? Wasn’t even stinger season.”

Tom nodded. “There’s this French girl at school.... Hey, do you know what school you’ll be going to?”

“Nope.”

“Hope Esmeralda doesn’t send you private. If you go public, you might be at the same school as me. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Reason nodded, not looking as enthusiastic as he’d’ve liked, but he figured that was the thought of school, not the thought of school with him. He wondered again if Reason would be studying with him at Mere’s.

“Anyway, the French girl couldn’t swim. Tried to get out of it when we were all doing our Bronze Medallions—”

“What are they?”

Tom looked at her, startled. “You know, lifesaving certificates? Jump in the deep end with all your clothes on and tread water for forever? Fake rescue someone?”

Reason shook her head. “Never did any lifesaving.”

“Really? I thought all schools taught it.”

“We moved around a lot.”

“But you can swim?”

“Yeah. Of course!”

“Right, then. So the French girl was trying to get out of it, but they made her have lessons. So we’re at the deep end pretending to drown and then saving each other, and she’s in the shallow end screaming her head off, sounding like she
really
needs to be saved.”

“Did she learn?”

“Yeah. But she’s pretty crap. Doesn’t like putting her head in the water. Worried about getting her hair wet or something. Almost there.” He stepped off the path, where three gravestones stood packed close together with no discernible graves in front of them.

“So is this it?”

Tom shook his head. “Not yet. Have to tell you the story first.”

“Story?”

“Have you read
Great Expectations?
”

“Nope. Never heard of it.”

“It’s by an old English guy. Shakespeare, maybe? Whatever. I haven’t read it, saw the movie, but. There’s this old nutter, Miss Havisham. When she was young, she was going to be married, but on her wedding day the bloke never showed up. She was rich, so the whole house was decked out with flowers and there was this huge cake and stuff. And everyone was just sitting around waiting for him to show, but he never did.

“She went into shock. Totally lost it. Never took off her wedding dress or let them clear away any of the wedding gear. Not the cake or the flowers or the food or anything. It crumbled and decayed, was covered in the thickest dust and cobwebs. Stayed like that till she was really, really old.”

“Ugggh.” Reason shivered. “But that’s just a book, right?”

Tom nodded. “But it was based on someone real. That’s it there.” He pointed to a marble cross under a small copse of trees. “At the bottom, that’s her. The real person Shakespeare based the book on. She lived right here in Sydney. That’s her father, James Donnithorne Esq., at the top with the big important lettering.”

Reason crouched down. You had to get close to make out the smaller letters. She held her hair out of her eyes and read out loud, “‘Eliza Emily. Last surviving daughter of the above. Died 20th May 1886.’ Yet another loony lady,” she said. “Sydney’s full of them.”

Tom crouched down beside her. “Yeah. Just like our mums. Except, you know, ours have better hygiene: my mum changes once a day, not once a century.”

“Did she hurt you badly?” asked Reason. “When she tried to kill you?” She looked concerned, which made Tom squirm. He didn’t much enjoy people feeling sorry for him.

“No, Dad got there first. She was waving a knife around saying that she’d kill us. She cut Cathy, but Dad reckons it was an accident. Cath’s got a scar on her shoulder, it’s tiny, but.”

“Cathy’s your sister?”

“Yeah.” Tom stood up, then Reason. “She’s studying at film school in America.”

“Wow.”

“Pretty cool, huh?”

Reason nodded.

“She’s studying at NYU. That’s New York University in New York City.”

“Long way from home.”

“When I finish high school, I’m going to go study there too,” Tom told her. “Or maybe London. Or Milan. I wanna study fashion. I’m going to make beautiful clothes for women and have my own label like Chanel or Balenciaga or Schiaparelli.”

“Wow,” said Reason, sounding impressed, though Tom could tell she’d never heard of any of them.

“Don’t worry. I’ll still make you normal clothes. I’ve already started on your cargo pants.” Reason looked blank. “The pants with all the pockets? You know? That you asked for?”

“Oh, right,” Reason said. “Ta. That was quick.”

Tom shrugged. “I’ll show you the sketches tomorrow probably, then we can go fabric shopping.”

They were still staring down at Eliza Emily’s grave. Tom was imagining what her wedding dress had looked like, how it would’ve changed as it disintegrated. He fashioned the acute triangles in his mind until they became a dress of silver-grey cobwebs that hung from head to toe. Kind of fairytale goth, only with more elegant lines. Bias-cut 1930s à la Vionnet. The material would be designed to dissolve slowly. Sleeves melting away first, then maybe the back. He’d have to design an elegant slip dress to go underneath. But where would he get a fabric like that? Could he learn to make it himself? How about sleeves made from real cobwebs?

Reason punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, Tom. Where’s the mystery thing you promised?”

“This way.” Tom led her past more trees, graves, and the roped-off area where they were trying to get native grasses growing again.

“Drowned in Sydney Harbour. Only sixteen years old.” Reason pointed to a broken-up grave whose tilting headstone featured two engraved anchors. “That’s five.”

“See the anchor over there? The real one?”

Reason nodded, looking across at the little alcove and the fenced-off grave with the anchor lying on top.

“This huge ship, the
Dunbar,
went down in the olden days and that’s where most of the people are buried.
All of them
drowned in Sydney Harbour.”

“How many?”

“Hundreds.”

“Bloody hell.”

Tom nodded. “The anchor really is from the
Dunbar.
They dredged it up from the bottom of the harbour. You want to look at it or are you ready for the thing I told you about? It’s just over here.”

“The mystery,” Reason said.

He led her to a tall monument next to a large palm tree. At its top was an angel holding a book in one hand and a sword in the other. Her wings were longer than her body. All four sides of the monument had names and dates on them, the oldest at the top.

“Oh,” Reason said, staring at the names. Almost everyone shared the same last name: Cansino. “They’re my relatives?”

Tom nodded.

Reason circled the monument, staring, openmouthed. “They’re almost all women.”

Tom nodded again, amazed that she really didn’t know anything about her family.

“With the same surname.”

“Yeah. See? Here’s one of the few men.” He pointed to the first male name, Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino, right at the top. “He’s a Cansino. I’m thinking he’s where the name comes from, but after him there are only a few men and their last names aren’t Cansino. All the women, though—”

“All the same as me,” Reason finished. “Cansinos.” She was tracing her fingers across one name: Sarafina Maria Luz Cansino. “My mother wasn’t the first Sarafina.”

Tom shook his head. “Nope. Look, there’s an Esmeralda. See how the names get repeated? Lots of Milagros and Luzs and that’s not counting the middle names. See how none of them are described as ‘loving wife’ or ‘daughter of’?”

“Just ‘mother of.’”

“That’s right. This is the only tombstone that tells so little about how they’re related. Weird, huh?”

Reason was looking intently at the inscription for Esmeralda Milagros Luz Cansino—born in 1823—a strange expression on her face.

“What?” Tom asked.

“She died so young.”

Tom glanced at the dates, working it out. “Eighteen. They died a lot younger in the olden days. You don’t know much about your family, do you?” Why was she surprised? Of course they died young. Tom was disappointed. Maybe he’d been wrong about Reason.

She shook her head. “Not really. Just what Sarafina told me: everything she knows about my dad, which is not much, and about growing up with Esmeralda. She didn’t talk about family history.”

“Huh.”

Reason moved to the next name. “This one was only twenty, and this one twenty-one, fourteen, five—ha!—look at this:
Gone before her time.
What about the rest of them? Were they all
on
time? Next one, nineteen, then twenty, twenty-five.” She glanced at each set of dates for a split second before announcing the age. As fast as Esmeralda would’ve done it. She
had
to be magic too.

“Wow, Ree,” Tom said. “You’re really good at maths!”

Reason looked at him as if he was a bit slow. “That’s not maths, that’s just arithmetic.”

“Whatever. I’ve never seen anyone add so fast. You definitely are Mere’s granddaughter.”

“Actually, it’s mostly subtraction.” She moved to the next side. “Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, twenty again. Tom, look, they
all
died young.”

“Not all.” He pointed to John Matthew Douglas O’Shaughnessy. “Sixty-five,” he said, after
way
more than a split second.

“He’s a man,” Reason said. “You look, all the men live a decent amount. Except for the first, Raul.” She pointed. “Him you can’t tell. See? Died in 1823.”

Tom looked. Raul Cansino’s year of birth was a question mark. “But all the women.” Mere had said it ran strong in her family.

“Not all,” Reason said. She’d come to the last name, Esmeralda’s mother. “Here’s one: Milagros Luz Cansino, forty-eight. She was practically an old lady.” Reason was staring at the plainly etched name. “But neither of her sisters made it past twenty. This tomb is so well kept,” she said, turning to look at Tom. “Most of the other ones are overgrown and broken, hard to read. I haven’t seen any others so recent either. I thought the cemetery wasn’t being used anymore.”

“It isn’t. Except for your family.” Tom looked at Milagros Cansino’s dates.

“Is that my great-grandmother?”

Tom nodded. He was feeling stupid for not having figured out Esmeralda’s age based on her mother’s dates. Though Mere could have been a late baby.

“So she lived to be forty-eight. Esmeralda is forty-five. Sarafina thirty. That’s three who’ve made it to thirty. What happened to the others? Do you know, Tom?”

Tom shook his head, trying to look innocent. He knew, though he could hardly say so after Mere’s request. It had to do with magic. He wasn’t from a long line like Reason. As far as he knew, his mother was the first, and she didn’t understand what she was. It scared her. Tom had only been rescued by Esmeralda a year ago—there was still a
lot
he didn’t know. But he did know that magic was dangerous, that it could, and usually did, kill you. Those with magic almost never lived long lives. If Reason was magic and didn’t know
that,
Mere should tell her as soon as she could.

There was loud crack of thunder. They both jumped. Fat raindrops started to fall; within seconds they were both drenched.

My mother, Sarafina, was mad
and my grandmother, Esmeralda, was evil. I wondered what that made me. Mad evil? Evil mad? Was that why the women in my family rarely made it past thirty?

I didn’t feel evil or mad; I wanted to have a long, normal life.

The next morning, as soon as I was sure Esmeralda was gone, I went to see Sarafina. There’d been another letter under the door when I woke up. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than glance at my name in her handwriting. I added it to the first two.

The walk to where they were keeping her, Kalder Park, took less than half as long as Tom had said. He probably didn’t walk very often or very far. City folk.

It would’ve been even quicker if there hadn’t been so many cars and trucks. Some of the roads were impossible to cross anywhere but at a pedestrian crossing, and the lights took forever to change.

When I was close, I stopped at a café and bought breakfast. Eggs and bacon and chips. Twelve dollars, it cost. I wondered if the eggs were made of gold or something. They didn’t taste any different to normal eggs.