Snowglobe Read online

  For my mum, Helen, and my children,

  Theia, Aubrey and Sasha.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  A Girl Called Owl

  A Far Away Magic

  There were three sisters, named for Jupiter’s moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Io. As they had blood in their veins, so they had magic, fine and strong as a spider’s web. They lived in a house of white marble, and the tower stretched to the sky and speared the clouds, searching, they said, for the moon. They filled it with miniature worlds, set whole galaxies spinning, caught within glass spheres. And then they hid in their house while the world changed.

  That was their lot.

  But lots can change, and change can be chaos.

  Callisto was the first to go: she left for love and the laughter of a boy with hair as red as fire.

  Io was next: she left for solitude, and found her home in a place none could ever change.

  Ganymede was left alone in the house of infinity. She stalked the marble corridors, ruling over everything they had created with a hard eye.

  The world never knew of these sisters. Their house went unseen, their stories unheard.

  And then came chaos.

  It’s not like it’s hurting. Not much. And the lesson is only ten minutes longer – I’ve been watching the clock – so he’ll have to stop soon anyway. I try to ignore it, but it’s prod, prod, at the base of my spine. Prod, prod, like a heartbeat, only not so regular.

  It’s science, and we’re sitting on stools, so it doesn’t take much for him to reach back from the bench behind and do it. One, two, prod, prod. I find myself counting the seconds between them. Ten, eleven, perhaps he’s forgotten – prod, prod. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, prod.

  I don’t know why he took such a dislike to me. It was pretty instant, I remember, on the first day of school. He looked at me; I looked back at him. I tried a smile, but he turned and said something to his friend, and they both began to laugh. It took me a few seconds to realize the laughter was unkind, and the smile froze on my face, heat rushed to my cheeks and they laughed harder. They laughed at everything then. My clothes, my bag, my hair. He said my eyes were weird; that all of me was weird. I went in every morning trying not to be, hoping it’d be different. New bag, bright smile, same eyes – no difference. What was worse, he turned the laughter on to anyone who sat by me. Nobody sits by me now, except those who are made to in lessons.

  It’s OK. I read my books, smile at the new kids, hope, hope, it’ll change.

  It hasn’t, so far. Doesn’t matter how bright I make my smile; the weirdness shines brighter, I guess.

  Mrs Elliott is talking about the homework, and I’m behind already, so I should focus. I try to listen, but prod, prod – it’s all I can hear now, all I even am. It is my heartbeat, prod, prod, faltering and mean, prod. She’s saying something about force, prod. And then there’s a whisper, and a breath of laughter, and something breaks deep inside me, like a wishbone that’s been pulled too tight and shattered into pieces.

  ‘STOP!’ I howl, whirling from my stool to face him just as he reaches out his arm again. I push it away and something flashes, bright as lightning. His stool ricochets across the science lab, and he flies with it.

  There’s a terrible crashing racket as he and the stool land up at the far wall, and then a deafening silence. My ears are ringing; my head feels like it’s been pressed in a vice.

  ‘Clementine Gravett!’ shouts Mrs Elliott. ‘Mrs Duke’s office, immediately!’

  She charges over to Jago, who is in a little heap beside the now-broken stool. He stares at me, like he knows something. Like he’s got something on me now. Like he knew all along I was a freak, and here’s the evidence: he knows that wasn’t ordinary; it wasn’t just strength. The whole class is silent, and they watch without a word as I pick up my bag and head out of the room.

  It was magic.

  My mother’s magic.

  I’ve been pretending ever since my first day at secondary, ever since Jago first saw the weird in me, that it isn’t real. The roar of my blood, the flashes of static – all just the fantasies of a daydreamer. When I was smaller, that was all it was. But ever since my eleventh birthday, it’s been getting stronger, less dream-like.

  And the last two minutes have changed everything.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  I can see from Mrs Duke’s face that she really wants to know. I’m a quiet girl. I don’t hit, or shout, or storm out of classrooms. I don’t make a fuss. Sometimes my work is scruffy, sometimes my homework is late, and I don’t have the best grades, but I’m not a troublemaker.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Clementine, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. This seems out of character . . .’ She leans forward at the waist, looking at me intently. Her expression is so kind. I’ve never seen her like this before. Her office is pale with winter sun, and dust motes float around us. I hope I’m not swallowing them; I try to breathe through my nose.

  ‘Clementine?’

  I can’t look her in the eye. I concentrate on the biscuit-coloured carpet and my black boots. They’re scuffed, and the yellow laces are unravelling.

  ‘Mrs Elliott was quite shocked,’ she continues, resting back into the comfy chair again. We’re in the informal bit of the office, away from her desk. The chairs are navy blue and scratchy. Her short silver hair shines in the sunlight coming through the window. ‘She says you pushed him clear across the classroom. We were lucky he wasn’t injured. You were lucky, Clementine.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say.

  She sighs. ‘But you did. And there are consequences.’ She looks up at the clock. ‘Your father is on his way. Perhaps we’d better not continue until he arrives.’

  ‘He’s coming?’

  ‘We called him.’ She nods, watching me closely. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I don’t tell her I’m surprised he’s coming; it might not sound right. I love my pa, but he’s very absent-minded, and he tends not to do things other parents would do. Like come to school. He hasn’t been here in so long I wonder if he’ll find it. I wonder what he’ll say.

  ‘Mr Gravett, the stool broke,’ she says some time later, her voice close to despair. ‘Clementine is a good student,’ her eyes flick over me again, as if to reassure herself that I really am. ‘But we can’t tolerate violence of any kind, and she has made no explanation.’

  ‘Clem?’

  His eyes are sorrowful as ever, his unbrushed hair standing up on end, like a burning match. He doesn’t look like he belongs here. I guess neither do I. Maybe that’s what Jago saw that first day, a year ago.

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say.

  Mrs Duke sighs, tapping her fingers on the folder she has on her lap.

  ‘I just wanted to stop him.’

  ‘From doing what?’

  They both lean in to me. And my mouth dries up. What am I going to say, he poked me in the back? It sounds ridiculous, like I’m five. I suppose I could talk about all the other things that have happened over the last year, but they’re all so small, so silly.


  He says I’m a freak.

  He says it might be catching.

  He shoves his chair out and tries to trip me, just as I’m passing with my lunch tray.

  No.

  I don’t know how to explain it. I was different from the start, and it’s lonely, even in the moments he’s not there to taunt me. Surrounded by hundreds of people every day, and alone all the same. I overhear conversations, and in my head I join in sometimes, smile at a funny bit, and then I realize I’m just staring at people, smiling to myself. Or I have thoughts that want to be out there, and they just wedge in my head because there’s nobody to tell them to. Maybe I whisper to myself when I walk along the bustling corridors. Maybe I stare too much at other people. Maybe I drop books, miss balls, stumble on steps, maybe I just don’t quite fit. Maybe that’s why I bother him so much.

  But I don’t say any of that.

  I don’t say anything at all.

  Mrs Duke raises her hands at my silence. ‘I have no choice, Mr Gravett,’ she says. ‘Even if Clementine had some sort of justification, it wouldn’t be enough. We have a zero-tolerance policy, and there is no question that she pushed Jago, hard enough to break his stool and throw him to the floor. She will have to be suspended.’

  ‘Suspended?’ Pa asks.

  I blush. He probably doesn’t even know what that means. He probably thinks they’re going to hang me upside down on the nearest tree.

  ‘She is not allowed on to the grounds of this school for two days,’ she says, her voice crisp with frustration. ‘We will expect her back next Wednesday, and not before. She may access the online portal to get her homework and any study notes.’

  Pa blinks, and stares at her.

  ‘I fail to see how that is going to resolve the issue between them.’

  ‘We will have to pick that up on Clementine’s return,’ she says smoothly. ‘I hope that over the intervening period, Clementine will have a chance to work out what did happen here today, and be able to articulate it so that we can work with her on a solution.’

  Pa mutters something under his breath before springing to his feet. Mrs Duke flinches back into the chair – he doesn’t look like he’d be so nimble.

  ‘Come on, Clem,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’

  He doesn’t exactly smile at me, but there’s a twinkle in his eye as he picks up my bag and swings it over his shoulder.

  Mrs Duke stands and follows us out, frowning from the door as we leave – two little matches against a grey sky. We don’t look like we fit because, sometimes, we don’t. Pa may not have it in his blood, but he’s known about magic for longer than I’ve been alive. And me?

  I guess there’s not much use in denying it now.

  ‘This was your mother’s,’ Pa says, handing me a slim, leather-bound notebook. ‘Perhaps I should have given it to you earlier, but I wanted to be sure the time was right.’ He peers at me. He’s a little short-sighted, but he never remembers to wear his glasses. Mostly they’re parked in his hair.

  ‘I’m sorry about today.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, pulling out a chair opposite mine and stealing a chip from my plate. ‘It’s not good to go throwing boys around classrooms. I’m sure there was a reason –’ he holds up his hands as I begin to protest – ‘but it won’t be good enough, Clem. I’ve been trying to talk to you for a while now about your magic; you can’t ignore it any more.’

  ‘When did you try?’

  ‘Last Sunday, I’m sure. And a few weeks before that as well,’ he says absently. ‘I know I’m not around enough, Clem. I’m sorry you don’t have more. Perhaps the book will help in some way . . .’ His voice trails off and the tormented look creeps back over his face. It’s very difficult to be angry with Pa when he looks like he’s already feeling about as bad as a person can bear to feel.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Thank you for the book.’

  He looks from me to the book. ‘It was never far from her.’

  The notebook is made of leaf-green pitted leather, and it warms quickly in my hands. The cover is worn, the gold-rimmed pages within flutter softly when I look through it. My mother’s handwriting is small and spidery. I trace my finger over the words, feel the way they were pressed into the page. She did that. My mother. It’s about as close as I’ve got to her for more than ten years. She never let anyone take photos of her – she said it pinched her soul.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Pa says, loitering by the door. ‘But go careful. There’s some big stuff in there.’

  ‘Why did she go?’

  I don’t look at him when I ask it; I just keep my eyes on the book.

  ‘Not because of you,’ he says.

  ‘So then what was it because of?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I wish I did, Clem. One day perhaps we’ll find out.’

  She is the space between us, sometimes. We don’t know how to talk about her.

  The first page is a pencil sketch of a tall, thin house that stands alone in a valley. Shadows crowd in on every side, and it feels like there are dangers there, hiding in scribbled lines just out of sight – but the house itself is bright beneath a crescent moon. Balconies jut from first-floor windows, a tiny bridge curves between two towers high over the huge doorway and a dozen steps lead down into ornate gardens where flowers bloom pale against the darkness. It’s a beautiful picture, and I can see the places where she lingered, the paper shiny with pencil strokes and scarred where the shadows are thickest.

  On the next page, her name, Callisto Paradis, and then pages and pages of the close-set writing, scrambled together to make the most of the paper. There are rhymes and wards against curses between fragments of thought, and intricate little sketches of strange creatures. I flick through the pages again and again, but I can’t focus on any one passage. The fact that I have this book in my hands is too big. I read snatches, tiny clues into what she was like when she was here, and each one is wondrous, but also devastating, because I never really knew her. I don’t remember her voice, or her smell; I don’t know how she looks when she is happy, or sad. Now, I guess I know a little bit. I know how she put words together, how she felt about someone called Ganymede and her potions for warding off the common cold.

  It still isn’t much. Most of the words are strangely obscured, they seem to blur when I look closely. After a while, I pull back from the book with a huff and tuck it into the pocket of my jacket. I shout out to Pa that I’m going for a walk. He calls back from his study, and I picture him at his old wooden desk, the narrow-faced brass clock ticking on the mantelpiece, his brow furrowed as he tries to read some tiny text without his glasses. And then I bang out of the front door and begin to prowl the winding streets of our ancient town, tucking my chin into my scarf as the cold November air flowers into my lungs. It’s a thing I do, when I’m restless. I walk. Pa used to hate it: I think he worried I wouldn’t come back. But I couldn’t help myself, and I was never too late home, so he got used to it.

  Tonight I head down into the very centre of town, where the cobbles of the market square are slick beneath my feet, and shadows cling beneath the old clock tower. The streets are narrow and twisty, and the sky overhead is star-spattered ink. I come here often. There’s warmth in the streetlights, and the shabby, crenellated rooftops make me think of old Christmas cards. It’s a small town, and most people know each other. They still talk about my mother, say how special she was. I smile and nod when they tell me, but it feels like a club I wasn’t allowed into; I never got to see it for myself. I turn a corner, and the air whistles out of my chest.

  Rising up behind the clock tower – taller, grander, shining like the moon itself – is the house. The one my mother sketched, with the balconies, and the tiny sparkling bridge, and the wide marble steps that sweep up to a massive, ornate porch. I take a step back, look around me wildly. Familiar rooftops spin over my head as I turn. I have walked these streets a thousand times. I know their nooks and crannies, and where they rise and fall. I know the
way they smell in the morning, when the baker opens her shop, and in the evening, when the pubs are closing. I know that postbox on the corner, the bench beside it dedicated to Mr A. Knowles, who used to run the bookshop.

  I collapse on to Mr Knowles’s bench now and curl my fingers round the wooden slats. Take a breath of freezing air, and look up.

  There is the house.

  It was never there before.

  The steps are smooth as glass, reflecting the lines of the house above. There’s not a single smudge on them, not a winter-dried leaf, nothing. They loom over me, and I don’t mean to be here at all, but I can’t walk away now. What if I came back tomorrow and it was gone? What if it’s only an illusion?

  I tread on the first step, heartbeat thudding in my ears, just waiting for my foot to fall through, for this whole new world to collapse around me like some kind of dream. I hold my breath, bring my other foot up to join it and stand there for a long moment. It holds.

  I look down. My boot is out of place, scuffed and muddy, and when I move up to the next step I can see that I’ve left a footprint. A real footprint, on a real step. A shudder rolls up my spine as I see that to either side of the steps the gardens have been left to grow wild, thick brambles winding up the dark branches of trees. If I slip or fall, I’ll land in a tangle of thorns.

  I keep going and it gets colder, until my breath is steaming and my knees are shaking. It seems to take hours, and all the time the wilderness to either side seems to be growing. There was a garden here once; my mother’s sketch showed it clearly. There were flowers, in cultivated rows. They were loved.

  I stumble when I get to the top – my head has been so full of the steps and the brambles that I forgot to look up as I was going. The porch opens up around me, built on pale marble pillars, every inch carved with flowers and trees and tiny winged figures that wink in the moonlight. The door is set back, sheltered from the elements. It’s as wide as a car and made of stark white wood. I step forward, rest my hand against it, wondering if I dare to knock. The wood is soft and warm, and it gives slightly beneath my touch, like skin. I whip my hand away with a tiny shriek.