Pan made a quick, efficient burglar. "Binoculars, first aid stuff – man, I keep expecting the lifeguards to show up and have a go at us."
"They might still," Nash said.
They moved down to the sand, Fisher leading Madeleine to the edge of the surf while the others waited by the stairs.
"The beach is a kilometre long, and we’re halfway, so you’ve got five hundred metres of unbroken sand in either direction," Fisher said. "We’ll do the tests right at the wave wash, so it’ll be clear each time. Do you think you can punch instead of using the shield?"
"We practiced yesterday afternoon." Madeleine pointed at a shell and focused the roil of energy inside her into the tiniest little blip, sending the shell shooting away in a spray of sand. "No more dramatic collapses for me."
Fisher smiled. "At least a softer landing here. And a better setting." He gazed down the vast stretch of beach to the rocky rise of cliffs at the south-western end, his face contemplative. After a moment his determined brows lowered in remembered anger, and he turned toward the centre of the city, but they were too low and too far for the Spire to be visible. "Go all out, " he added. "And try to keep the punch flat, scoring the surface rather than digging into the sand."
He strode back up the beach while Madeleine hooked off her sandals and hitched up that day’s maxi-dress. The damp sand felt incredible against her velvet skin, and she shivered when the water rushed up to caress her feet. The last trace of mist had already burned off, and the blues of sky and water were shifting, deepening. There were no seagulls, no voices, no cars; just the soughing of the waves.
Madeleine glanced back. They were all clustered together at the bottom of the tower stairs, more than fifty metres away, Nash and Shaun holding cameras at ready. The question of angles preoccupied her, and she eventually knelt, and cupped her hands before her knees, focused down the long, slightly curving line of surf, and poured everything inside her down through her arms, her palms, out.
THOOOOMMMMMM!!!
The noise shocked her, and she jerked. Since she’d angled a little low, gouging underground, this lifted the punch, sand exploding up for the whole of perhaps a hundred metres. The leading edge of water poured and foamed into the instant trench, and Madeleine took a deep, shuddering breath, wondering at the sudden rush of exultation.
"Damn, Maddie, I am never going to piss you off!"
Pan had run down, Noi and Shaun close behind. He was lit high with excitement, but paused to help her back to her feet and then pushed a brightly coloured stick into the ground a few metres to her right before trotting down the line of the trench with another.
"No pins and needles? Urge to imitate statues?"
"I’m fine." Breathing deeply, Madeleine took the sandals Noi held out, trying to reconcile the rush of excitement with a sick feeling in her stomach. "Like I’d run up a lot of stairs. Just…trying not to picture what would happen to any people in the way."
"If they were Blues, we think they’d auto-protect," Gavin said, coming up with the others.
"Auto-protect?" Noi repeated. "What’s that supposed to mean?"
"Tap me with a finger-punch and I’ll show you."
"Seriously?"
He gave her a mock-sultry look. "I know you’ll be gentle with me Noi."
"I’m immune to your lash-batting," Noi told him. "Okay, you asked for it."
Waiting till Nick and Fisher had moved out of the way, she pointed at his shoulder. Madeleine couldn’t see the punch, but she realised she was beginning to feel it happen. And she could just barely make out a visible ripple around Gavin’s shoulder as he stood, unmoved.
"Now do it again, a good solid palm-shot."
Frowning, Noi obeyed, and this time the shield was obvious, making the air around Gavin shimmer.
"It doesn’t work if you bean him with a cricket ball," Pan said, jogging up. "Not automatically anyway, though if you see one coming you can try to shield in time."
"While we just get punched," Nick said, pulling his shirt down so they could see a round, red mark above a patch of green. "Seriously cheated in the special abilities department."
"Could be we just haven’t figured it out yet," Shaun put in, looking up as he tied the end of a colourful ball of wool to the first stick. "You Blueberries can be brute force, and Greens will be the brains."
He trailed off down the beach, unreeling the ball of wool, which switched colours at regular intervals, and Pan followed him, pushing a stick into the sand at each colour change.
Madeleine’s punch had reached over one hundred and fifty metres. Her nearest rival was Gavin, managing fifty. Then Noi, Emily, Fisher and Pan, mildly indignant at measuring lowest. Madeleine spent her time on the lifeguard tower’s steps, sketching, snacking, and watching Nash, not surprised when he kept to his role as cameraman and did not test.
Pan dealt with any disappointment by playing the fool for Emily, drawing her out until she was pink-cheeked and giggling, convincing her to put her fine pale hair in a bun and calling: "Come on Tink!" as they raced along the line of sticks to confirm the length of each punch.
It wasn’t until they’d eaten a second breakfast, and Pan had led Nick and Shaun off to investigate the food opportunities of the Bondi Pavilion, that Madeleine had a chance to speak to Nash. He and Fisher had paused, as they all did eventually, to watch her sketch.
"Can I look–?" Fisher asked, pleasingly surprised and interested, and she handed the sketchpad to him, glad she’d taken the precaution of removing a couple of sheets before heading out.
Madeleine studied their faces as they turned over pages, stopping particularly at the portrait of Noi sleeping to say impressed things. Compliments were something she struggled with. Either she thought them over-effusive, a lie with ulterior motives, or she dismissed them as the opinions of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Better than the alternative, of course, but she never expected real appreciation.
She found herself thinking about Mrs Tucker, something she hadn’t managed to do since she’d understood the amount of death a cloud of dust might bring. Mrs Tucker, who had been substitute art teacher for all of two weeks when Madeleine was in Year Ten, who had asked Madeleine to stay after class on her last day there and had mercilessly deflated an over-inflated bubble of pride, pointing out issues of composition, and Madeleine’s complete absence of backgrounds. Cutting her to bits for deliberately avoiding areas she was weak in, for acting as if she had nothing to learn.
Mrs Tucker, a scrawny, wrinkled, grey-haired woman, the wrong demographic for survival. She had given Madeleine the contact details of a talented university student willing to tutor cheaply, and left not the burgeoning art genius who had stayed back expecting praise, but a beginner, a pretender, overwhelmed by how far she had to go. Madeleine could only hope she’d been outside the dust zone.
And of course there were now new people to worry about, ones she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring – nor even wanted to. Proving Madeleine’s expectations wrong once again, Nash made several comments which showed he had a very good understanding. And Fisher – Fisher looked at her as if she had become suddenly real to him.
"I’m jealous," he said, handing the sketchbook back with a solemnity which lent the words weight. "I can’t do anything like that. It’s a revelatory skill, isn’t it?"
"Revelatory?" It wasn’t a word Madeleine associated with her work.
"You see Noi as beautiful, and when we look at these images, we realise that beauty as well."
"If we managed to miss it before now," Nash added, mouth curving.