Part One
Wind
Kate
His name is Jarrod Thornton. He has blond-red hair to his shoulders, nice clean skin and green eyes like fiery emeralds; but this is not why I can’t drag my eyes off him. There’s something else. Something almost … disturbing. It’s this unearthly element that’s got me hooked.
He’s standing awkwardly at the front of a class of twenty-seven Year 10s, looking as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands – or his unusual eyes. As they flick nervously across the back wall of the lab, I glimpse amazing inky blue circles surrounding deep green irises. They’ve been everywhere without once connecting with anyone else’s. He has a black backpack that looks as if it’s travelled twice around the world slung across one slightly slanted shoulder, and he keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’s in uniform, the usual grey trousers, white shirt, red striped tie. At a guess it doesn’t look new.
Mr Garret, our science teacher, tells us a little about him. His family shifted from the Riverina only a couple of days ago and he has a younger brother, Casey, who’s still in Year 3.
Looks like I’m not the only one interested. Tasha Daniels’ eyes are on Jarrod too. But hers are fixed in a leering manner, her sultry painted mouth slightly parted, invitation written all over her. God, she’s so obvious. Briefly, I glance at Pecs, class loudmouth and Tasha’s boyfriend, though there’ve been rumours lately that not all is well in that camp.
Not that Pecs is his real name. He got it around Year 4, courtesy of his footy coach, who’d been impressed by the boy’s stocky rugby appearance and muscular arms. It turned out the name suited his personality, which wasn’t much even then. I know, I was there. Still, I can’t imagine anyone calling him Angus John, named after some long-dead Scottish relative. Not even the teachers dare. Pecs is one of those blatantly rude, in-your-face thugs that can make your life a misery. And does so just for kicks.
He notices Tasha’s interest in the new guy, registers the threat instantly, something basic enough for his singularly-focused mind to comprehend.
I decide to probe inside Pecs’s brain. It’s one of the skills Jillian taught me. She says I was born with a natural gift, sensing emotions, feeling emotions. Over the years I’ve polished the skill to a point that now I only have to concentrate for a few seconds and I’m in. Inside his head.
Oh hell! I make a fast withdrawal, my head spinning. He’s all burning fuel. Makes me feel as if I stepped too close to a raging fire. Geez.
‘Kate? Kate!’
Hannah, my best (and only) friend, is staring at me with wide brown eyes. ‘Yeah?’
‘You all right? You went paler than your usual Godawful pale.’
I smile, ignoring her God-awful comment. I may look anaemic, but I’m not. I am careful though to avoid the sun, my skin burns too quickly. Living on Ashpeak Mountain suits me fine. It even snows in winter. I have long, dead-straight black hair, courtesy of a father I’ve never met. And except for her pale skin, I don’t take after my mother at all. She, apparently, has hair as gold as butternut. At least she did fifteen years ago, which was the last time I saw her. Obviously I don’t remember a thing. My grandmother, Jillian, raised me. People say I have a Hawaiian look. It’s my eyes I think, a kind of grey-blue, and slanting with an upwards tilt on the outside. Considering this, I think it’s quite odd that some of them still think I’m a witch. They’re right of course, but not in the stereotypical sense of the word.
Hannah’s the only one who knows the truth. Sure, everyone gossips, the community up here is pathetically small. And nosy. But Hannah’s seen what I can do, which isn’t much, really. Not yet anyway.
And even though Jillian is my grandmother, I don’t call her Gran or anything like that. She raised me after my birth mother bailed out when I was a baby. She couldn’t hack my crying apparently – a habit I grew out of. I was only eight months at the time.
As soon as I could understand, Jillian explained about my mother’s inadequacies with babies, told me not to worry though, thankfully, she – Jillian – loved children. At first she didn’t know what I should call her. ‘Mum’ just wasn’t right. Besides, the whole community knew the truth anyway – that Karen Warren had given birth to a bouncing baby girl at the ripe old age of fifteen years and three months.
And ’cause Jillian didn’t like ‘Nana’ words, not, she reckoned, suitable for a thirty-one year old, I grew up calling her by her first name.
One thing Jillian constantly teaches me is to keep certain things a mystery. Like my abilities – to move objects, work spells, sense moods, and, well … change things. They’re only small tricks compared to what Jillian can do. They never say it to her face, but most everybody around here knows Jillian’s a witch. With me they’re only guessing. But they’ve never seen either of us do anything, Jillian’s careful about that. They come to their assumptions mainly because of where we live (buried half into the rainforest), Jillian’s New Age shop, and the freelance articles she writes for various witch magazines. Of course they never say anything to her face. They’re scared. Scared she’ll perform ‘black magic’ on them. They don’t know her of course. If only they’d stop to read one of her articles they’d see what Jillian is: a healer. She doesn’t make much money out of the shop, the articles keep us financially afloat. Sure, she’s a witch, but most people have stupid preconceived ideas of what a witch is. Jillian’s not ‘typical’ in any way. And as for me, I’m still in training.