A Far Away Magic Read online

  Oh yes.

  I didn’t mean to come straight home; it’s way too early. I meant to wander for a bit, so Aoife wouldn’t notice. But I was tired and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to go, and suddenly the world seemed too small and I was sick of looking at pavements, so here I am.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks, as I walk into the hall.

  This house is the right size for me. I see it with suddenly clarity. I’ve been pretending it isn’t. That it’s vast and cavernous and creepy, and that I’m not also those things too. After today, and that boy’s face when we collided, I can see that I fit just fine here.

  I look at Aoife for a long time, wondering what to say. How can I explain that everything is different, just because of one person? She stares back, her expression unchanging.

  ‘There’s a new girl,’ I say eventually, feeling my cheeks get hot. And then I don’t know what else to say. What does that even mean? How does that explain anything?

  Aoife nods.

  ‘A catalyst,’ she says. ‘And you didn’t want it.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Come,’ she says. ‘Come with me.’

  I follow her into the kitchen and sit at the scarred pine table in the corner. There’s a painting on the wall, an old oil of green fields beneath storm clouds, sheep clustered together beneath a wide-spreading tree. Hiding.

  My storm is all around me.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Aoife says, sitting opposite me. She’s not bustling. Not making tea, cutting cake. She’s just sitting, looking at me. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face, greying at the temples. She’s not so different from my mother. From her daytime face, anyway.

  ‘How?’

  ‘It just is,’ she says with a lift of her shoulders. ‘You cannot control everything, Bavar. You are becoming what you were always meant to be. I’ve seen how hard you fight it . . .’

  ‘I made a promise.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I made a promise.’ My voice rises, and her eyes widen as she hears just a hint of the thing deep within.

  ‘A promise? To whom?’

  ‘To the world . . . To . . . I don’t know. I made a promise, to myself, that I wouldn’t fight; I wouldn’t be like they were.’

  ‘A promise cannot change what you are, Bavar.’ She stares at me, and her eyes are bright, and I don’t want to see what is reflected in them. She thinks I can be like them, and still be me, not be a monster. But she’s wrong. She has never felt the way the power corrupts. She was the younger sister; the power didn’t come to her.

  I scramble up from the table, knocking it askew. Aoife clasps her hands together as I rise to my full height.

  ‘One day,’ she calls out, standing as I flee the room, her voice bright. ‘One day you’ll be glad of your true nature. You’ll need it, Bavar!’

  I roar as I head up the stairs. I can’t help it. The sound reverberates all around me, and the portraits of my ancestors up high on the walls tremble, and the painted faces stretch their mouths wide and roar with me.

  It’s a flipping disaster.

  I wait until lunchtime, then I can’t wait any longer. I march up to the office and explain that my friend had to go home sick, and I want to take his things to him. I wave the coat and the basket in the secretary’s face and she blinks.

  ‘Please?’ I say. ‘It’s January – he’ll need his coat tomorrow, when he’s better.’

  I mean to say – as if I care he wears a coat! Frankly, it’s enormous and really heavy and I’d rather not take it. But it seemed a better excuse than the basket. What you going to say about a basket? He might need it for his baking?

  ‘Bavar, you say,’ she turns to the computer screen. ‘Bavar. What’s his surname?’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘Oh, here he is. Bavar. That is his surname. And his . . .’ She frowns. ‘Must have missed something on the entry form . . . here we are, Meridown House, Dragon Hill.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I bustle out of the door before she can think again . . . about how if we were friends I’d know where he lives, or I’d have his number.

  What sort of a house does a boy like that live in? I picture a great Gothic mansion, all spires and chimneys and leering gargoyles, and a gaunt old butler opening a creaking door. And it gives me a little thrill inside, even just the imagining of it. The reality’s probably going to be a bit of a let-down, I tell myself, as I head up the hill. It’s probably going to be a safe little semi with net curtains. My breath steams in the winter air, and the pavement glitters with frost, and I’m kind of laughing at myself now, because what the heck am I doing, trudging up this hill with all this stuff, to find a boy who wants to hide? It’s not the best idea I’ve ever had, but I keep going anyway, and then I get to the top of the hill and look up and there it is, Meridown House spelled out in great curved iron letters over a vast gate and wow.

  Just wow.

  It’s the yellow house. The one on the hill. The one that screams Gothic trapped beneath a layer of sunshine paint. And here I am at the gate, with the coat and the basket, and puffing a bit, because it’s a steep hill. Clouds are gathering over the jagged skyline of a hundred chimneys, and a shiver runs down my back, so I take a deep breath and turn my back on it for a minute. The lines of the town spread out beneath me, from the church along the river to the farms in the distance, houses to either side in neat little rows, all of it directly overlooked by the house. It’s an amazing view, with the low winter sun making all the shadows stretch.

  I look back at the house. It’s incredible. Like something from a film, and I’m right here. Only thing is I haven’t quite tried to get in yet. I mean, there’s this huge gate, and I don’t know if I should just go in, or if I should ring the brass bell at the side. I’m not sure I want to ring the bell; it seems a bit like overkill. Like I might ring in the end of the world, or something. But I’ve now been here for about ten minutes and I’m starting to feel a bit stupid, and cold. And I have this old coat, not to mention the basket.

  I look up through the gate and count the windows again. Ten full-length ones along the bottom, divided by the porch. Ten windows above, each the size of a normal house. Or you know, about that. And then the gable windows in the roof. And the chimneys, and the towers. And a couple of gargoyles thrown in. Leering figures carved in stone, climbing up the towers, perching on the roof tiles.

  Something moves in one of the upstairs windows. I shiver and move away to the bank of grass that you could imagine goats grazing on. After a couple of minutes arguing with myself, I spread out the coat and sit on it, and open the basket, take out the roll. Ham. Quite good ham, actually. Not your wafer stuff. I sit back, munching and watching all the little people and the little cars going about their business, from my quiet spot up high on the hill. And then I eat the apple, assuming it’s not a fairy-tale one and about to send me to sleep for a hundred years. Not that I’d mind that. But anyway, it’s good. It’s peaceful. And in a minute I’ll ring the bell.

  I am not eating that cake. Looks like raw liver.

  I’m in the bed, with the curtains drawn around it. Feels like a boat out at sea, but at least I’m not drowning in the boat any more. It’s about the right size for me, I can see that now.

  ‘This house is your house,’ Uncle Sal’s soft voice, a year ago, just after my parents went. His glasses obscured his eyes. ‘We are its caretakers for the moment, and you are its master.’

  ‘I’m twelve.’

  ‘The house doesn’t care about that, Bavar.’ The smell of the leather chairs in the study, the shaft of sunlight through the stained glass, bleeding on to the carpet. The heat, and the sick feeling in my stomach. They’d really gone. After everything that happened, they’d just turned their backs on it all, left me here with an aunt I barely knew, and this funny little man who smelt of old books. ‘It was always your destiny to be its master. One day, you will come into your own.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now things will be quiet, for a time.’

  ‘Now that they’re gone.’

  I needed to say it out loud. It didn’t feel real. But Uncle Sal didn’t contradict me. So. It was real.

  ‘Do you miss them, Bavar?’

  ‘No.’

  Uncle Sal sighed. ‘It’s been difficult, I know. But we will be all right, Bavar. You and me, and your Aunt Aoife. We’ll get on; it’ll work out.’

  Was it a statement, or was he seeking reassurance? I didn’t know then. I don’t know now. All I knew was that there was an expectation, somewhere. When it was time – when I was ready – he would listen to me. He would do as I bid. So would Aoife. So would the house.

  I am Bavar, master-in-waiting. And I think the time is coming, whether I’m ready or not.

  ‘Bavar!’

  Aoife twitches the dark curtains aside, her narrow face suddenly appearing between embroidered vines and birds. ‘Your catalyst! My, but she’s a live one!’ she crows, flapping at me and rushing across the room, going from window to window.

  I put my book down.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Catalyst! The girl! Come, see! She was at the gate, but she went – I thought she’d gone, but she’s just sitting on the hill. She has your basket, Bavar! She’s come to see you!’

  I join Aoife at the window, and there she is. Sitting out there, just outside the wall, sitting on my coat, eating my lunch.

  How did this happen? What’s she doing? My coat stretches like a blanket around her; she’s very small. Her pale hair shines in the sunlight. She puts her hand into the basket, starts to eat the apple.

  Who does that?

  I turn from the window, fed up with the whole day and planning on getting back into the bed, and then Uncle Sal comes out of his study, a frown on his round face.

  ‘Off you go, Bavar,’ he says.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Stop hiding in the house and go and get your coat back, and that ridiculous basket.’

  ‘I’m not going out there!’

  ‘You are,’ he says, his eyes flashing behind his glasses. He’s a small man, but in this instant there’s a new steel in him, something I’ve never seen before. ‘You absolutely are. I am not going to sit by and watch you hide from everything for one minute longer. Besides, your aunt is disturbing my work with all this fluttering about.’

  Aoife stiffens by my side and mutters something about ‘work’, and Sal rolls his eyes, and they don’t often argue, but when they do the whole house joins in, ancestors howling from the portraits, lights flickering, windows rattling. So I make for the stairs, watched by the pale faces of those who came before me. And heckled by a couple of the more cranky ones.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I jump up, the hairs on my arms bristling. I don’t know how the heck someone so big can creep up on a person so effectively. He looks proper grumpy too, all looming and scowling and hiding behind his hair.

  ‘Came to bring your coat and your basket.’

  ‘And eat my lunch . . .’

  He noticed. I smile. Just on the inside.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d mind. Saved you the cake.’

  He snorts, digging his hands into his pockets. He’s in the shadow of the wall that surrounds the house; I can only see portions of his face and body.

  There’s a long silence. I think he’d call it awkward, but I’m quite enjoying it.

  ‘You can go now, then,’ he says. He steps forward and I dart out of his way. He shakes his head as if he expected that, and picks up the coat. He takes a look behind him, up at the nearest window. A couple of the shadows within flicker, and when I look back at him he’s got his fists clenched by his sides. He takes a step back, a deep breath, and then he runs at the basket, catching it with his foot and launching it down the hill. ‘There.’

  He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t see that I’m grinning and just about jumping up and down with how brilliant he is. He just marches back to the gate.

  ‘Bavar . . .’

  ‘Yup.’

  Standing with his back to me, the gate in front of him.

  ‘Isn’t it lonely?’

  It just comes out. I swear I didn’t plan on asking something so big. I swallow and move back as he turns to me, lifting his head.

  Man. I will never get used to this boy.

  ‘I’m accustomed to it,’ he says. His voice is deep, slow. I wonder how often he really uses it. Who he talks to.

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘You?’

  His surprise makes me cross. I mean, just because I don’t walk with a lurch and bury my head in my shoulders doesn’t mean I’m not going through things too. Does he think he’s the only one who ever felt like he didn’t fit?

  Here, in this house, in these shadows, he fits.

  I don’t fit anywhere.

  I turn my back and start down the hill.

  But I know this isn’t the last time I’ll be here.

  She looks like she has the sun with her. That sounds silly. She’s bright, and that was all I saw. Then she said the thing about being lonely and there was another side to her. Something injured and reaching, searching.

  I do not regret the thing with the basket.

  She bounces down the hill and takes the sun with her, and I turn back to the house, shivering. I have no idea who painted it yellow. Was it supposed to be a disguise? Bad things can’t happen here, because it’s yellow?

  Hah.

  ‘Bavar! Your lesson!’

  Sleety rain begins to fall as I head inside, and Sal is hovering impatiently on the stairs. ‘He doesn’t like it when you’re late,’ he says, fidgeting with his waistcoat.

  ‘I know,’ I say, trudging past him. I try to forget about the girl and realize I don’t even know her name. That’s a good thing – I can’t give it away if I don’t know it. And I don’t want him to have it. There’s power in a name, he always says.

  The house gets darker as I get higher, and the winding staircase at the top is cluttered with boxes and piles of unravelling books. I pick my way through them and put my shoulder against the door, shoving it open.

  My father’s library is cold. It doesn’t breathe without him, there’s a stillness that makes my skin itch. I glance at the fireplace and it leaps into flame with a pop.

  The bust of my grandfather is covered with a cloth. It was sculpted by someone famous, a long time ago, and my father told me always to keep my eye on it.

  I didn’t know what that meant, back then.

  I take a breath and pull the cloth away. It’s an old tablecloth of Aoife’s, with sunflowers on it. Grandfather would be mortified if he knew. He hates to be covered, but he hates most things, and this was necessary. He shouts a lot, if he’s left free.

  ‘BAVAR!’ he booms now, as I back away from him. ‘Just in time. I want to talk to you about the barrier. I’m not convinced you’ve been working hard enough . . .’

  I sigh. He’s obsessed with the barrier. It’s important, I know that, but he must’ve said the same thing a million times in the last year.

  ‘. . . It is your JOB, Bavar, to keep that barrier intact,’ he continues. ‘It was forged with this family’s magic, once our magic had done the damage and opened the rift between worlds. It is the only thing that protects the lands around us from the foul beasts, and only YOUR magic will keep it strong and keep them restrained to the grounds here . . . Bavar! Are you listening? You must put your heart and SOUL into it!’

  ‘I already do,’ I sigh. The barrier is like a web around the estate, strands of magic that cover acres of land and stop the raksasa from getting through to the world outside. It took me a while, in the beginning, to get a feel for it. Now it’s second nature, like feeling in the dark for a familiar light switch. Feeding magic into it, until it gleams in my mind, stronger than steel. ‘It’s fine . . .’

  But he isn’t listening; he’s still lecturing. I sit on one of the leather chairs around the table and watch his mouth move. It’s mesmerizing, the way the metal contorts, like watching a bronze river flow. Suddenly he breaks off, his nostrils widening.

  ‘Humanity!’ he roars. ‘What is that? What is the difference, Bavar? What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell him, leaning back in the chair. Reminding myself he’s just a chunk of metal. His eyes flash.

  ‘You must tell me!’ he shouts. ‘Report, Bavar. Has there been humanity on the grounds? Did you bring one home with you? That ridiculous school. What a notion. The master of this house, going to a common human school! I don’t know what AOIFE was thinking . . .’

  He launches into another tirade. He doesn’t like me going to school. He thinks I should spend my time cooped up here with him, growing stronger in magic, keeping the barrier strong, and learning how to fight the raksasa. He doesn’t know about the promise I made, that I would never fight like my parents did. They failed to look after the barrier, and people died because of it. So I know it’s important to get that right. But fighting is another thing entirely.

  ‘There was a new girl,’ I break in eventually, when he looks like he’s about to explode with frustration. ‘I didn’t bring her home; she followed me, brought my coat. Aoife says she’s a catalyst.’

  She’s blonde, and small, and she smells of hope. Possibility.

  I don’t tell him that bit.

  ‘A GIRL, on the premises? A human girl?’ He jiggles on the pedestal, his brow furrowing. He was a big man, my grandfather. He leans forward slightly in his pose, shoulders broad and powerful, face heavily lined, determined. Predatory.

  ‘She was on the grass outside the wall. She didn’t come in.’

  ‘So. So. But the smell of her . . . it is here. She touched your coat; they will scent it, Bavar.’ His voice drops to concern. ‘Are you ready?’