“Shouldn’t we call the police? Why aren’t we calling the police?” Claire couldn’t understand her parents’ lack of action.
She’d raced the whole way home, slamming the gate shut without stopping to latch it properly, and dodging grazing horses, cows and sheep in the paddocks. Her father had listened grave-faced as she’d rattled off her tale at one hundred miles an hour. Now, to Claire’s surprise, his hands didn’t shake, and his face didn’t twitch like it normally did when he was angry or frightened.
She felt thrown off balance. “Don’t just stand there, Dad. We’ve got to do something.”
He shot her a measured glance, then pulled on his big, bushman’s boots. “I’ll be back soon.” The screen door slammed shut behind him.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” she repeated, turning to her mother, who’d sat on the sagging, dusty old couch like a pre-Raphaelite figure from a painting and said nothing since Claire had come racing in the door shouting.
Suranne’s face was bloodless. “Something terrible is unfolding. That’s why they have taken him.”
“What’s happening? Wait? Are you saying someone took Marcus?”
“Sit with me, Claire,” Suranne said, and her voice shook so much that Claire obeyed, even though she wanted to demand answers. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders as Suranne stared into the distance.
Time stretched onwards and still James hadn’t come back.
“Mum? Should we call the police now?” Claire touched the back of her mother’s hand. ‘Mum?’
In response, Suranne gripped Claire’s wrist hard. At Claire’s cry of pain, she let go, drooping back into the cushions.
Claire stared at her arm, shocked. Her mother, who had never hurt anyone or anything, had left red marks.
“There is no point, Claire,” Suranne said.
“No point? But he’s your son!”
“You think I am not aware of that?”
Claire began to cry. “What’s going on? Where’s Marcus? Why don’t you care?”
Her mum’s green eyes were flinty. “Of course I care! But … we promised my family, your father and me, when we were young. We started to believe that this day would never occur, that everything had worked out. Well, time has finally caught up with us.”
Claire sensed she was at the edge of the mystery that had shaped her family’s life in Shale. “Tell me, Mum,” she asked in a softer voice, “how did you and Dad really meet?”
Her mother paused for a moment, and Claire thought that the words were about to tumble out in a rush. But then Suranne pursed her lips. “You are too young, Claire. Given your age, this is beyond your comprehension.”
Too young? That was like a physical slap. In frustration, Claire felt her temper rise, but before she could reply, the door opened, and her father clattered into the lounge. He didn’t remember to wipe his boots and left dirt tracks on the worn carpet.
Claire’s mother stood expectantly, and then wilted as her husband slowly shook his head. “There’s nothing but burn marks against the tree and the ground.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Claire, go to your room. Your mother and I need to talk.”
“But, Dad—”
“Just go, Claire! For once do as you’re told!”
Claire reluctantly climbed the stairs. She slammed her bedroom door but stayed in the corridor outside. When she heard the murmur of her parents’ voices, she crept back to the top of the stairs to watch them and to listen. Her mother paced back and forth, her red hair tumbled over one shoulder, strands sticking to her face; her father stayed rooted to the same spot.
“We cannot ring your police,” her mum said. “What would we tell them?”
Claire’s dad scratched at his black beard. “I don’t know, Suranne, but we can’t act like nothing has happened. People will start asking questions.”
“Tell them he went away to study,” her mum said, stopping abruptly. “He just applied for the exchange program. We will say he went early.”
“It’ll never work.”
“School holidays commence next week. That gifts us two weeks before anyone asks any questions,” Suranne snapped. “What else would you suggest we do?”
“Tell the truth. Someone will notice he’s not here eventually. Admit he went missing. Say we don’t know what happened.”
“Do not be a fool, James. We do know what happened. There will be an investigation. People already talk about us. Can you imagine the rumours that will manifest if this gets out?”
James clenched his hands into fists. “What else can we do?”
“Say nothing for the moment. Until the end of the holidays. Maybe … maybe he will be returned by then.” Her voice broke a little at that. “We should have stayed.”
Claire’s father flinched like he’d been hit. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. We had eighteen happy years, didn’t we?”
“But to lose our son?”
“We knew this might happen. You promised.”
Suranne twisted her hands together. “You know I had no choice!”
“We raised him to be strong like you.” He gripped her shoulders. “He’ll make it home.”
“I don’t know if I can live with this; the waiting, the not knowing …”
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“We’ll pull through this together,” James said.
“What if we never see him again?” Suranne sobbed openly. “Are you sure you are not mistaken about where he’s gone?”
James sighed. “No chance. I could still sense the crackle of magic in the air. It was your family’s work. I’d recognise the signs anywhere.”
Claire rubbed her ears, certain she’d misheard. Magic only existed in people’s imaginations, didn’t it? Her dad must have meant something else. That was the sensible explanation.
Her mother sucked in a rattled breath. “What do we tell Claire? We have to tell her something – she saw Marcus taken.”
Claire’s father sighed. “I’ll tell her tonight. Leave it to me, Suranne.” He quickly wrapped his arms around her, then broke away.
Claire shrank back against the banister. When the town of Shale had spoken of scandal surrounding her parents, she’d never imagined it would lead to her losing her brother. And just what had her father meant by magic? She couldn’t get the word out of her head, the possibilities equally exciting and frightening.
***
Claire hid under the covers, shaking. Outside, an owl hooted, cows mooed and the crickets made a cacophony, but even those familiar sounds didn’t comfort her. Fear gripped at her throat: what had her parents done?
There was a quiet knock, but she didn’t answer. She heard the bedroom door open and the sound of her father’s footsteps. She started as he pulled the quilt back from her face. “Claire-bear, I need to talk to you.”
He reached out to stroke her hair, but Claire knocked his hand away before she could stop herself. “I’m not ten. You can speak to me like I’m an adult.”
“I guess I can. Sorry.”
“What happened out there? One second, Marcus was in front of me, the next, he vanished.” She couldn’t keep the fury out of her voice. Somehow, this was her parents’ fault. All of it.
“He was magicked away,” James replied.
“Dad! Magicked? Really? You know magic doesn’t exist!” But even as she said it, she knew there was no other explanation. Marcus had literally disappeared in a flash of lightning and a puff of smoke.
“Remember the bedtime story I always told you? About the princess of Kelnarium and how she summoned her prince?” He chewed his bottom lip. “Well, that’s all true. Obviously, I’m not a prince, I exaggerated that bit.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Claire said, but the rage ebbed. “What does that old story have to with Marcus?”
“Everything,” he said.
Claire shifted upright, hugging her knees, unable to hide the fact that she was a little bit intrigued.
“When I was much younger, I was summoned into another world. Your mother and her friends wove a spell and there I was. Just like that.” He clicked his fingers for effect.
The dramatic gesture made Claire smile despite everything. She loved tales of people finding themselves elsewhere, especially when James read them aloud, his little quirks making each telling unique. Not only that, it would be so cool to find yourself in a completely new place, no expectations or people who knew you.
“It happened when I was at the back of the farm checking a horse’s shoe,” James went on. “I smelt smoke. When I looked up, the sky was greasy with the stuff. It’d been a dry year and the paddock was parched and brown. I expected a bushfire. And then the lightning hit, and my stomach went cold, like something gripped me from the inside. I tried to scream, but I was already flying into the air, up, up, up into a colourful void.” He paused, wonder lacing his voice. “Reds and blues and greens and yellows, all brighter than the colour of your mother’s paints in the shed, and then it was over.” He smiled. “I was face to face with Suranne in a land of mountains and lush green, nothing like the dusty, dry landscape here.”
Claire’s skin tingled. This tale was real to James. She could tell from the way he sounded, because his voice always shook a bit when he recalled a precious memory. Was it possible Suranne was from another world after all? It would explain a lot.
“I was taken before her people,” James said. “They needed me, you see. A prophecy claimed that it was important for someone of Dorran blood – that’s your mother’s family name – to have a child by someone from another world to protect Kelnarium’s future.”
“Wait. Mum wanted you just so she could have your kid?” This was not how Claire had imagined her parents falling in love.
“Yeah, I wasn’t too happy either, but you’ve got to understand how seriously they took prophecies.”
Prophecies? This story was getting more and more like a fantasy novel by the second. She grasped for something to say. “Why was Mum important?”
“She’s the daughter of a powerful magical family.” He shrugged. “Anyway, despite everything, your mother and I fell in love and were married. But I grew unhappy. I missed my parents. I missed my job at the Shale Herald and telling tall tales at the pub on Fridays. Suranne understood. She’d given me no choice when she’d stolen me away. Living here was something she could do for me.”
“Give up everything she knew?” That seemed pretty unfair on Suranne, and Claire didn’t really get her dad. It would be cool to go to another world, especially if it had magic. Why would anyone want to come home to boring old Shale? Adults. They were so weird.
“Yes. We spoke to her parents. They were hurt at first, and sad, but in the end, they let us go.”
“I thought my grandparents died in a car crash before we were born,” Claire said, eyes narrowing. The more her father went on with his story, the more he revealed how much he’d withheld from his kids. “Did you lie to us?”
“It was easier that way,” James said. “Less painful than you thinking they were in the city but didn’t want anything to do with you.”
“You could have told us about Kelnarium.”
“We had our reasons not to. Will you let me finish this story?”
Claire nodded, though she smarted inside. Her family didn’t keep secrets from each other. They just didn’t.
“Your mother had to promise that our firstborn would return if Kelnarium was in danger. It was the only way they would help us leave through the Rift.”
“The Rift?”
“It’s a scar, but it’s also like a … a highway between there and here. Those colours I saw when I travelled to Suranne and again when we returned home to Shale together were part of it.”
Claire thought for a bit. “But didn’t people in Shale notice you’d been gone for ages? Weren’t your parents frantic?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking. Time passes differently there, kind of like, well, Narnia,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “I was in Kelnarium for two years, but in our world just over two weeks had passed. I told Mum and Dad the truth, of course. I had to with Suranne in tow, but we put it about town that I’d run away to the city for a bit and had come home with a bride after a shotgun wedding.”
As interesting as all this was, it was getting away from the point of their discussion. “So, Mum’s people want Marcus to … to help Kelnarium? How? With magic?” Claire could barely contain her enthusiasm. What if she had magic in her veins? Could she use it in Shale? She couldn’t wait to ask Suranne about it.
“I don’t know, but I imagine yes, it’ll have something to do with Dorran fire magic,” Claire’s father said.
“Fire magic?”
“That’s your mother’s family’s speciality. Suranne lost the ability when she came to live in Shale.”
“Cool,” Claire said breathlessly, her eyes going wide. She couldn’t help imagining shooting flames from her fingers at the older kids who sometimes laughed at her in the playground. She was definitely asking Suranne about spells later.
Her face fell. Her brother had been summoned to a whole other universe and all she could think about was herself. He would be so frightened and alone. If only they’d gone to Kelnarium together. “When will Marcus come back?”
“Who knows, though if he succeeds in doing whatever has to be done, he’ll be sent home one way or another.”
Claire’s heart pounded. “And if he fails?”
James closed his eyes. “It’ll be just us, Claire-bear ...” He couldn’t go on, his voice rough with unshed tears.
Claire gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “We can’t let that happen. We could find a way through and help Marcus. We never do anything alone in this family and—”
“It’s impossible. You can only get there if you’re summoned.”
“I’ll find another way. I’ll try. I’ll do it.”
He put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t! I couldn’t bear to lose both of you. Nor could your mother. Promise me you won’t ever try. Promise.”
“But—”
“Promise me, Claire!”
“But … Oh, Dad.” She crossed her fingers behind her back and did something she detested: lied to her father, telling herself that it was payback for him keeping such a big secret from her for so long. “I promise.”