Free Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier Page A

That was quick.”
    Tom shrugged. “I’ll show you the sketches tomorrow probably, then we can go fabric shopping.”
    They were still staring down at Eliza Emily’s grave. Tom was imagining what her wedding dress had looked like, how it would’ve changed as it disintegrated. He fashioned the acute triangles in his mind until they became a dress of silver-grey cobwebs that hung from head to toe. Kind of fairytale goth, only with more elegant lines. Bias-cut 1930s à la Vionnet. The material would be designed to dissolve slowly. Sleeves melting away first, then maybe the back. He’d have to design an elegant slip dress to go underneath. But where would he get a fabric like that? Could he learn to make it himself? How about sleeves made from real cobwebs?
    Reason punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, Tom. Where’s the mystery thing you promised?”
    “This way.” Tom led her past more trees, graves, and the roped-off area where they were trying to get native grasses growing again.
    “Drowned in Sydney Harbour. Only sixteen years old.” Reason pointed to a broken-up grave whose tilting headstone featured two engraved anchors. “That’s five.”
    “See the anchor over there? The real one?”
    Reason nodded, looking across at the little alcove and the fenced-off grave with the anchor lying on top.
    “This huge ship, the Dunbar, went down in the olden days and that’s where most of the people are buried. All of them drowned in Sydney Harbour.”
    “How many?”
    “Hundreds.”
    “Bloody hell.”
    Tom nodded. “The anchor really is from the Dunbar. They dredged it up from the bottom of the harbour. You want to look at it or are you ready for the thing I told you about? It’s just over here.”
    “The mystery,” Reason said.
    He led her to a tall monument next to a large palm tree. At its top was an angel holding a book in one hand and a sword in the other. Her wings were longer than her body. All four sides of the monument had names and dates on them, the oldest at the top.
    “Oh,” Reason said, staring at the names. Almost everyone shared the same last name: Cansino. “They’re my relatives?”
    Tom nodded.
    Reason circled the monument, staring, openmouthed. “They’re almost all women.”
    Tom nodded again, amazed that she really didn’t know anything about her family.
    “With the same surname.”
    “Yeah. See? Here’s one of the few men.” He pointed to the first male name, Raul Emilio Jesús Cansino, right at the top. “He’s a Cansino. I’m thinking he’s where the name comes from, but after him there are only a few men and their last names aren’t Cansino. All the women, though—”
    “All the same as me,” Reason finished. “Cansinos.” She was tracing her fingers across one name: Sarafina Maria Luz Cansino. “My mother wasn’t the first Sarafina.”
    Tom shook his head. “Nope. Look, there’s an Esmeralda. See how the names get repeated? Lots of Milagros and Luzs and that’s not counting the middle names. See how none of them are described as ‘loving wife’ or ‘daughter of’?”
    “Just ‘mother of.’”
    “That’s right. This is the only tombstone that tells so little about how they’re related. Weird, huh?”
    Reason was looking intently at the inscription for Esmeralda Milagros Luz Cansino—born in 1823—a strange expression on her face.
    “What?” Tom asked.
    “She died so young.”
    Tom glanced at the dates, working it out. “Eighteen. They died a lot younger in the olden days. You don’t know much about your family, do you?” Why was she surprised? Of course they died young. Tom was disappointed. Maybe he’d been wrong about Reason.
    She shook her head. “Not really. Just what Sarafina told me: everything she knows about my dad, which is not much, and about growing up with Esmeralda. She didn’t talk about family history.”
    “Huh.”
    Reason moved to the next name. “This one was only twenty, and this one twenty-one, fourteen,