A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,19

said when she burned the crumpets.

“There is no room inside you,” said Henrietta. “Listen to you. You cannot control your thoughts. You are loud and careless. How will you hear the world—the real world—when all you hear are your own buzzing thoughts?”

Annabel wondered if she would get morning tea.

Miss Henrietta sighed, exasperated.

“First imagine your mind is a teacup.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Henrietta?” said Annabel.

“Impudent child,” said Miss Henrietta. “To empty one’s thoughts and to quiet them, one must quickly and carefully examine the cup of one’s mind. What kind of cup do you have?”

Annabel stared at Miss Henrietta. It was a trick question—she knew it. No matter what she said, it would be wrong.

Miss Henrietta waited.

“If your mind were a cup,” her great-aunt said slowly, each word like a stamp of the foot, “what kind of cup would it be?”

“Well,” said Annabel, “it would be a little fancy. It would be a bone china teacup, white, painted all over with yellow roses, and trimmed in gold.”

“Good,” said Miss Henrietta. “Now that you see your cup, can you see what is inside it? What are your thoughts? Do not shout them, I beg of you. Just look into your cup and quietly list them.”

So Annabel imagined her fancy teacup, and she imagined lifting it up and looking inside. My thoughts are that you are very mean, Annabel said to herself. That thought floated on the top like a large blob of cream.

My thoughts are that if I could go home, I’d go home this very instant. Everything would be well again. Charlie would be singing in his cage, and Mama would be dressing for a party. She wouldn’t ever have been very magical. My father really would be a sea captain who’d been lost at sea.

Quite suddenly she saw a horrible thought. It was dark and oily, sitting just below the surface. The thought was: Why did my mother lie to me? About my father, about herself. About everything.

What did I see in the washtub? What is that part of me? The ruinous, horrid part. The part that sees things. She stopped looking in her teacup and looked at Miss Henrietta instead.

“There is more,” said Miss Henrietta. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” said Annabel, but she didn’t want to look again. There was much more, a thousand questions, one of them so huge she dared not look. “Are my thoughts quieter?”

“No,” said Miss Henrietta.

Surely I can’t be expected to go on a journey all alone? That was the next thought that rose to the surface. She’d never been anywhere alone. What if I fail? That was a very large thought. It was almost as big as the cup, expanding. She looked up at Miss Henrietta.

“Look again,” said her great-aunt. “I know there is more.”

So Annabel looked back at her fancy teacup. The thing at the bottom was worst of all. She looked at her shiny white porcelain handle instead and then at the perfect yellow roses. She looked at them carefully, even though they were completely imaginary.

“Tell me,” said Miss Henrietta.

The thought at the bottom was unspeakable.

I should like to smash this teacup on the ground, thought Annabel.

She wanted to smash it because she knew that her mind was nothing like that cup. She knew this, even though she had been taught to think it was. It had been drummed into her, reinforced just as surely as she was laced up and beribboned, her fair hair curled with rags and arranged just so. She had been told again and again: You are pretty and fragile and delicate. You are nothing. This is you, Miss Annabel Grey. Pretty Mayfair girl.

She knew that cup was not her mind. She knew it, and it made her want to howl. Her mother should have told her so. Oh, she was angry. She had never in all her life howled. She held the howl in. It hurt her insides. Her cup would be dark. Her cup would smell of unknown things. Her cup would never be empty. She would never, ever get to the bottom of it. Her cup was everything she had been taught to turn her back on. She was everything she was taught to never see.

She howled then. Her whole world was shattering around her. Everything seemed lost and found at exactly the same time. She began to cry a great wave of tears. She put her hands up to her face in horror at the force of them.

“Good girl,” said Miss Henrietta.