Tides of magic, p.2
Tides of Magic, page 2
“Tell me about Melissa,” Thalassa said. She held a pen between her thin fingers.
Charley had heard the question so many times over the past couple of days that she rattled off the details easily. “She’s 23, blonde, 5 foot 8 or 172 centimetres, what they call athletic build. She’s a medical student at Otago, almost finished. She’s good at basically everything. She’s kind and she never forgets your birthday and...”
“Boyfriends, girlfriends, other partners?”
Charley shook her head. “Never. She’s been too focused on school.”
Thalassa arched an eyebrow, like she didn’t believe a word of it, but continued. “Involvement in crime, gangs, cults...”
Charley shook her head again and realised, embarrassed, she was crying. “Melissa’s not like that. She studies. She plays the violin. Her idea of letting go is two wines with her friends over a meal out.”
“So, a perfectionist. You sure she’s not just stressed?”
“She’s always dealt with stress before,” Charley said carefully. “And she seemed to be on track to do well. And it’s true that people sometimes go missing because of stress, but... they don’t tend to leave sea water in their bedrooms, do they?”
“Tell me more.”
“So Melissa and I flat together with two others. I do shift work and I’m a bit nocturnal so I was up playing games all night, and Melissa had work early in the morning. Her bedroom opens into the living room, there’s no other way out, and I had headphones on but I’d still have seen her. In the morning I got a message from one of her classmates, colleagues, whatever you call them, he wanted to know where she was because it was a really important day for them. So I thought she’d overslept, went to her room, and… there was no sign of her. She left everything behind, her keys, her wallet, her phone. Her car was parked outside. And in her room… everything smelled of the sea. Her chair was mostly damp, and where it had dried you could see little rings of salt round the edges.”
“And you knew it was sea water and not just water someone had added salt to because...”
“Well, there were little scraps of seaweed as well. But I got a friend who studies marine science to look at the micro-organisms in the water, and it’s consistent with what you find round the Otago coast, right down to the fragments of yellow penguin shell in it. So if it wasn’t sea water, someone had gone to a lot of effort to fake it, and why would someone do that when the sea’s right there?”
“I see you’re a smart one like your sister.”
Charley grinned and looked down.
“Quite the opposite actually, but if I’ve done the right thing here I’m glad.”
“Let me ask you: what do you think happened to your sister?”
Charley let out a long breath. “My parents think she’s just dealing with some stress and will be back soon.”
“Didn’t ask about your parents. What do you think?”
Charley played with the cord on her hoodie. “I don’t know, but I think, maybe, she’s got in over her head with something. She’s not... naïve, like, she’s good at sorting things out for me, but she’s really friendly and tries to help everybody. I think maybe someone asked for her help and she said yes too easily. And she got in trouble.”
“Ah.” Thalassa wrote down some notes. If there was any magic going on, Charley wasn’t seeing it, but she guessed anyone happy to be paid in some mystical transfer of life expectancy must either be the real thing or at least genuinely believe they are.
“Did your sister like to swim?” Thalassa asked, looking up.
“Sure. I mean, she wasn’t competitive or anything, but she had fun when we went to the beach, and always used to spend summers in the water when we were kids. I’m not sure she’s had much time for that lately, but I expect she’d still enjoy it.”
Thalassa scribbled a bit more, appeared to think for a moment, and then closed up the notebook. She rested her hands on it, as though pondering what to do next.
“I can’t search for your sister today,” she said eventually. “I’m not young, you’ll be surprised to learn, and the trip up to town to get groceries takes more of my energy than it should, but tomorrow. Talk to Gordon if you need somewhere to stay.”
Charley sucked on her lower lip, forcing herself not to panic. She wanted to be searching all night. She wanted to do whatever it took. But she knew she couldn’t push this one and nodded, numbly.
“Gordon?” she asked, realising too late that she hadn’t even thought this far ahead, had only got as far as get to the old woman who is possibly a witch and lives on a clifftop. Once again, she was disorganised. She supposed she could sleep in her car, but if there was a better option...
“Gordon, the guy who runs the holiday park, he’ll sort out a cabin or something. Good rate now, before the season hits. I’d say don’t let him con you but he’s not the sort – too nice, in my estimation. Come and see me again at nine. Don’t be late.”
Charley felt the woman’s eyes on her the whole way down the steep narrow path. She spat on her wrist to rub the mark off, the one she made to reassure herself that yes, she had locked the car, and yes she had her keys with her so if she lost them she could at least trace back to that point. She drove down to the first turnoff on the left and along the short road to the holiday park. Behind her, the river was trickling down to the sea, and the evening waves were cracking onto the rocks.
Charley’s dinner was teriyaki chicken noodles selected from the microwaveable meal options that the holiday park sold, followed by a Moro bar. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The kitchen wasn’t terrible either, especially as she had virtually no one to share it with, and she’d paid for the loan of a plate, cup, and cutlery set. Therese, who was Gordon’s wife and ran the place with him, had given her an extra blanket. She had her laptop and, though the Wi-Fi wasn’t good enough for streaming, she had some TV saved to her hard drive.
It could all have been worse.
Except for the very reason she was here, it all felt like a welcome break. Not a holiday exactly – everything holiday-like about this place depended on the weather, and it was still the erratic, windy, drizzly days of spring – but a reset from the rest of her life. A reminder that she might be a failure, but she could survive.
Charley rinsed out her plate and cutlery and dropped them in the cabin. In theory, she could have cabin mates at any time – there was space for five more across the three bunk beds – but Gordon had basically hinted he wouldn’t put anyone in with her unless it got suddenly busy. He only charged her for a shared room. Thalassa had said he was too nice.
Then she headed out of the holiday park, swore, returned to lock her cabin, and headed out again. She would forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on, her grandmother always said. She turned up the road, towards the bridge. There were more signs of life in the settlement in the dying light – televisions flickered through windows, and voices and the scent of tobacco smoke drifted from nowhere in particular. Over on the riverbank, a group of teens were perched with a bottle of something and plastic cups, their laughter audible above the rush of water. They looked at Charley with curiosity, but she nodded at them and continued along her way. There was no footpath over the bridge, and even though there was no sign of traffic Charley kept uneasily to the edge.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she checked her messages: no sign of Melissa. Their flatmate Rae said there was a parcel for her, it was on her bed, and wanted to know if she’d found anything. Liam asked if she wanted them to cover her shift at the shop. She’d forgotten all about it, texted back frantically.
She would say she’d lost track of time since she’d come here, but the truth is she’d always been like that.
“You okay?”
In the time she had been standing there, almost all the daylight had disappeared from the settlement. Charley looked up to see a face vaguely lit by the glow of her cell phone, pale skin, eyes framed by round, thin-rimmed glasses. Panicking, briefly, wondering if she looked wrong in some way, and then realising the woman was probably only asking if she was okay because she was a person new to town standing around at night in a T-shirt.
“Oh yeah, sorry, I’m fine. Just taking a walk before I sleep.”
The woman looked as if she was weighing up her thoughts. “You don’t live here and it’s too early for summer visitors, so I’m guessing either you have a relative here or you’re here for...” and here she gestured to Thalassa’s clifftop house. “Less natural reasons.”
Charley felt uneasy. “My sister’s gone missing. Someone told me she could find her. I’m not usually into that stuff but I’m desperate.”
“I’m sorry. I’m True, by the way.”
“Charley.”
“Well, Charley. I hope you find her. Just... be careful.”
Charley wanted to ask her what she should be careful of, but the woman was already walking confidently back across the bridge, back straight, head held high. Her emerald green duffel coat that was perfectly fitted around her hips looked almost black in the dying light. Her hair was behind her in a thick plait.
Probably of giving away seven years of her life. For all the bad decisions her parents had predicted her making, that must have been one they’d failed to see coming. Charley’s gaze lingered on the young woman’s figure until she was almost out of sight. She put away her phone and looked down the river out to sea. She’d never imagined being able to be near the sea like this, to have her head so clear, to not have her whole body reacting. There was discomfort and a little queasiness, for sure, but she was handling it better than she could have imagined.
Back on the campground side of the bridge, a man was good-naturedly shepherding his wayward teen back home. The scent of rum hung in the air. Charley turned on her phone torch to help keep her footing. A couple of older people – permanent residents of the holiday park, she suspected – greeted her as she passed and she replied in turn, making her way to the cabin.
Chapter two
Morning flickered through the flimsy curtain. Charley checked her phone, plugged into the charger. She’d forgotten to include trousers in the clothes she’d flung in the back of her car before she left, but her jeans would last another day and mercifully she had clean underwear at least. She had plenty of time – she could take a walk by the Aora River, explore the rest of the settlement, catch up on some messages.
And yet somehow, inexplicably, by the time she was ready to go it was already after nine. Shit. How had it been an hour? How could it take anyone this long?
Charley crammed the cereal bar that came in the “breakfast pack” she’d bought from Gordon – the holiday park turned out to be the only place in Inver Aora that sold food – into her mouth and hurried down the road and up the steep pathway to Thalassa’s house. The sun was piercing and uncomfortable but she didn’t have time to go back for her sunglasses. She tried to ignore the growing nausea, the discomfort she felt with the sea just round the corner. As she walked she looked in her bag for a hair tie or something to tame her mass of unbrushed hair, but if she had any of them there was no finding them amid the accumulation of debris that was lodged in there. The only saving grace was that she’d showered before she went to sleep, but she still felt dirty and unkempt, a bad representative of her family.
The glass doors to the dining room were open when she reached the top of the pathway, and Thalassa was sitting at the table, dressed in a teal tunic and loose dark trousers, with a necklace of sea glass. Her hair, in contrast to Charley’s, was up in a tidy bun.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, I...”
“Your tea is going cold,” Thalassa said, pointing to it.
Charley nodded with relief. She could cope – she wasn’t feeling as bad as when she’d first arrived – but it was a relief not to have to. “Sorry,” she said again, and sat down, sipping the tea which was at least still warm, if not hot. She caught a brief scent of jasmine in it. She swallowed a mouthful trying not to taste it.
“Here’s something for you,” Thalassa said, handing over a slip of paper. On it was scrawled the name of a doctor, followed by a phone number.
“This is someone who can help find my sister?” Charley asked, looking up.
“Dr Pedrick is a very good psychiatrist of my acquaintance. I suggest you make an appointment. He has a waiting list, but if you tell him I sent you he’ll find a spot for you. He’ll let you pay off the cost, as well. He only accepts dollars, not time.”
“A psych... you think I’m crazy? You think I’m making all this up?” Charley shot to her feet, her face burning, tears welling. She’d gone to so much effort and now she was just being dismissed.
Thalassa rolled her eyes. “Sit down and calm down. I don’t think you’re crazy. I don’t even think you’re mentally ill, though there’s no shame in that. I’m suggesting you call him because you’ve shown at least five classic signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I think it’s obscuring what else is going on in your brain. You’re exhausted, just trying to deal with the effects of that. I may be wrong. But if something is going on for you, the sooner you get a handle on that the sooner we can get to the other stuff.”
“The other... attention...”
“Attention deficit disorder. ADD or ADHD, they change the names with the fashion and I can’t keep up with it. Anyway, you forget things. You can’t focus or you focus too much and can’t snap out of it. You don’t have a good sense of time. You’re always late. Sound familiar?”
Charley felt suddenly cold, wanting a blanket, wanting Melissa, wanting to be anywhere but here. “And they can treat it?”
“There are meds that help. Or ways of dealing with it. If it is that, and I’d place money on it. If anyone gambled with me. Which they don’t. Sensible of them. Anyway, I’m not promising. I’m not a doctor, I’m just very old. But I reckon he can help you one way or another. Might be able to help you focus enough to finish a course of study...”
“I never mentioned...”
“You came to see someone who’s widely referred to as a witch because there was something weird and possibly supernatural about your sister’s disappearance. You can’t do that and then complain that there are certain things I can do that don’t make rational sense to you. Really? If you’re freaked out I know things about you that you didn’t explicitly say then we probably need to stop the whole process, because things are about to get very weird for you.”
“No... I... just lots to take in,” Charley stammered. “You said other stuff going on, aside from the attention disorder...”
Thalassa turned away. “We’re already running late. We’d better hurry if you want to find your sister. You got a photo of her?”
Charley started scrolling through her phone.
“No, child, a photo, on paper, unless you want to sacrifice your phone to the eternal depths.”
The idea seemed momentarily tempting. It was so quiet out here; even on a thin bunkbed mattress in a cold cabin, Charley had slept better than she had in months. But, feeling her face start to redden, she unfolded a small stash of MISSING posters, cast aside the outer one because it had something suspicious stuck to it, and passed the second over to Thalassa.
She stared at Melissa’s face on the remaining stack of posters for a few moments, one of a series of portrait shots their parents had organised a couple of years ago. Melissa’s hair, though wavy, was neat in a bob, and her smile was calm and professional. She probably wasn’t the sort of person who would stand out to most people. If she wanted to go missing she could change her appearance easily and be hard to recognise. But why would Melissa want to go missing? If she needed a break from exams, if she didn’t want to study medicine anymore, she’d at least tell Charley. She must have known Charley would keep her secrets – as she’d kept plenty of Charley’s over the years.
No, something much more than that was very, very wrong.
“We need to go down to the beach for this,” Thalassa said. “Bring that bag there with you please.”
The bag felt like it was full of rocks, but Charley knew better than to complain, swinging it over her shoulder and following Thalassa down the path. There was nothing that separated the coastal road from the beach; tarmac gave way to uneven rocks and then a wide expanse of sand. Charley spread out her free arm to help her balance as they climbed down, seeing the usefulness of Thalassa’s staff.
The day was grey but dry, the sand more a dusty pale brown than golden. The waves seemed tipped with an unpleasant-smelling foam, and seaweed was smeared on the rocks. Over in the distance, Charley could see some figures – an adult and two children – walking over the rocks, and a single car went past, but otherwise, there was little sign of life. Thalassa nodded to Charley who, relieved, placed the bag on the sand.
Thalassa moved with the staff, creating vast lines in the sand, great sweeping motions that read almost like a dance to Charley. One circle with a symbol in it, like an ancient letter, and then another.
“The good thing is that water holds a memory of magic that has been worked in or on it. And that thing with the sea water in your sister’s room – I don’t quite know what went on, but I’m confident it wasn’t some joker dragging a couple of buckets up the path.”
“Memory like homeopathy?” asked Charley, squinting in the daylight. She instantly panicked that she’d said the wrong thing.
“So, interestingly, the water memory isn’t the most dubious part of homeopathy. That’s solid, if you have a magic worker be part of it, which most of these charlatans don’t. The like-cures-like thing is much more suspicious – arguable for a minority of conditions, but hardly a universal principle. Open the bag.”
