The Telling made absolutely no sense to Samantha and she’d told Sera exactly that.
‘Well, that’s because I’ve only told you bits and pieces about it,’ Sera had said.
‘Well, isn’t it about me? I need to know everything,’ she’d responded.
‘It’s not only about you, Samantha,’ said Sera. ‘It’s about everyone, and I’m not authorised to tell you more than you need to know.’
‘Who says so?’
‘The Grand Council.’
‘Well, who are they?’
‘That’s another thing you don’t need to know.’
This was one of many times during those frustrating conversations that Samantha wanted to just walk away and ignore everything this woman had told her. Only one thing stopped her – Seraphina had warned her that her family and friends would never be safe while she remained in Romania.
‘Their next strategy,’ said Sera, ‘will be to hurt one of your family, to weaken you. They’ll then abduct someone else you love and force you to come to them.’
‘How do you know that?’ said Samantha.
‘Because they know that everyone has a weak spot, and it’s usually their family,’ said Sera. ‘The only way that Lala and the rest of the camp will be safe is if you’re as far away from them as possible, if they have no idea where you are, and if you stay on the move until you find your brother. These people won’t stop.’
So on the plane, Samantha leaned her forehead against the window, peering out into the night, and tried to come up with as many strategies as she could to make it out of Sydney airport. She began by thinking through every chase she could remember – running with the other kids from Gaje farmers, shopkeepers, police – recalling just how high she could climb and how small she could make herself when she needed to jump over, under or through something.
Then she reviewed the scams. The long cons – requiring days or weeks to set up – obviously wouldn’t work here, but a short con might, playing a hustle to recruit an ally to defend her. She thought through every trick she could remember to make money, to evade detection, and to escape when the latter failed. She filed them away as possible strategies.
She sighed. The biggest problem was that she didn’t know how they’d come for her. If somebody approached her, it could be someone genuine who Sera had asked to help her; or it could be a trap.
Oh God, I need to walk, she thought. She had never sat still for so long in her life. She grabbed her bag, slipped past the man asleep beside her and through the heavy curtain that screened Business Class from the rest of the passengers. She began padding down the aisle of the aircraft, mentally perusing all the good luck, bad luck and curse spells she’d been taught by the gypsies. She discarded each of them fairly quickly. The only good she’d ever seen them do was to open the purses of the Gaje, and they did that because of what she told them, not because the spells actually did anything.
She met other sleepless souls walking the aisle and nodded when they smiled at her. Her appearance was unremarkable in the Economy section. Plenty of people were dressed like her. In that way, she would have felt a lot more comfortable back here than up the front with the posh people, but halfway down the aisle she turned back. There were so many more people in the main cabin and thousands more emitted emotions – they wafted up from each seat with nowhere to disperse. Frustration, lust, envy and grief blasted endlessly back into the cabin with the recycled air.
She hurried back to her seat, breathless, shoving her bag back beneath it. She pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed a thumbnail. How am I going to be able to get away from them, she worried. Why would Sera just send me out here on my own? Couldn’t this mighty Council have sent someone to guard me if I’m so important to the Telling? And how the hell am I supposed to pay for anything when I get there? I mean, Sera didn’t even give me any money!
For what felt like the hundredth time, Samantha mentally face-palmed over this fact. What kind of nutjob plan was this anyway? In the car and at the airport, she’d been so bewildered by everything that she hadn’t even thought to ask about money. Sera had told her that all she needed was in the wallet.
There had to be something else in there. She decided to go through everything she had to look for anything that could possibly help her. She bent forward and dragged her bag out from under the seat. From the only pocket of the bag, sewn into the fabric, she removed the plastic wallet and emptied it out onto her tray. Her boarding passes. And only one other thing: the Carnivale ride pass.
She picked it up and turned it over, studying it from every angle; she even held it to her nose and sniffed. It was just cardboard. Her lips turned up in a small smile. How did it work? All she could see was a crumpled ticket lined with faded green stripes. In large green capitals right through the middle were the words ‘ADMIT ONE Dodgem Cars’. And yet it had got her through every gate and checkpoint so far, and faster than anyone else had cleared them.
In spite of her anxiety, a thrill of excitement fluted through her stomach. What on earth did all the airport people see when they looked at the ticket? She had supposedly been around magic her whole life, but no one had ever showed her anything like this. She wondered what else Sera could do. Sera didn’t feel like most people. In fact, she didn’t feel like anyone Samantha had ever met before.
Suddenly she dropped the smile. Sera wasn’t here right now and she’d just sent her across the world alone. She gathered the tickets up and put them back into the wallet, then shoved it into the bag. Her fingers hit something hard. And this? What was she thinking, giving me this? She pulled the phone out of the bag and turned it over in her hand. It was pretty old-school. She flicked the cover open with a finger. The screen stayed blank. And it would be staying that way for a while, given that it had no battery! So, no money, a dead phone and unknown enemies waiting at Sydney airport for her. Great.
She sighed and threw the phone back into the bag. Her hands found her tarot deck, or maybe her tarot deck found her hands. Through the lacquered box she could feel the cards inside jostling. They whispered to her. She closed her eyes, fingering the gold cord around the box.
‘Is there anything I can get you, Ms White?’
Samantha snapped open her eyes.
One of the serene, supreme, scented stewardesses stood there. Smiling, of course.
‘Um, no,’ said Sam. ‘I’m good.’
‘Okay, then.’ The smile stayed stuck, but Samantha felt the woman’s annoyance as she bent towards her. ‘You’ve clicked on your attendant’s light,’ she said.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Samantha. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘That’s no problem,’ said the stewardess. ‘Everyone does it. It’s very sensitive.’
And then something weird happened. As the woman leaned over Samantha to depress the Call button, their hands touched briefly. And this time Samantha saw an image. It was the woman in her uniform, standing by a doorway, a black wheelie luggage bag by her side. A young child, a girl, maybe five, was crying piteously, her arms outreached. An older woman held the child back, terribly upset for the woman by the door – her daughter – and for her granddaughter who couldn’t understand what could be so important outside that door that would make her mummy leave her. Again.
The stewardess clicked off the button on Samantha’s console and straightened in the aisle. The image vanished.
Samantha squinted through the gloom at the woman’s name badge.