A Fistful of Sky (13 page)

“So how often do I have to use the power?” I asked. “Is once a day enough? I’ve already used it once today.”

“In an ideal situation, supposing it was a power you really wanted, you would use it until you exhausted it every day, and keep track of how long it took your power to revive. That’s the best way of building up your power and testing your ability. In the case of an unkind power, though—” He frowned at me. “Do you want to be a villain?”

I tapped my chest. “Me?”

He sighed. “I have to admit that of all the people I know, you seem the least constitutionally suited to receive a power like this. Any of the other children might have reveled in it.”

“Not Beryl.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, yes. I forgot. You left off lessons with me before Beryl transitioned. You don’t know what she’s capable of. Well, I do. I think even Beryl would have found a way to make this work for her.”

“You think I can’t?”

He sighed again. “I think you’ll have to.” He drank some coffee. “So the question is, is this a power you want to foster, or just endure? If you want to become strong in this power, you need to curse as much as you can.”

“I don’t want to curse!”

“So, you want to merely endure this power. Have you found your tell yet?”

“My tell?”

“The thing that tells you you need to use power.” I thought back. “After I cursed Mama with gloves, tension went out of my shoulders.”

“How are your shoulders now?”

I shrugged one shoulder, then the other. They felt tight. I frowned.

“Your first curse of the morning was about two hours ago?”

“Right. Maybe a little longer.”

“Oh, dear. Fast recovery time. This power wants to be big. It might not settle for less. I suggest you find something else to curse as soon as you can.”

“Like what?” Would he volunteer?

He glanced around the room. “Has anything ever frustrated you about this kitchen?”

Our kitchen was huge. Since I came back from boarding school with

lunch and dinner prep skills, I loved the kitchen best of all the rooms in our house, and spent a lot of time here. In many ways, it was a wonderful kitchen. There were tons of cupboards; a large pantry; a chopping block/butcher table big enough to dismember pumpkins and watermelons on; and lots of great dishes, knives, and utensils. I had the industrial-sized kitchen at boarding school to compare it to, though. “I hate that there’s no exhaust vent over the stove. The main counter with the sink in it is too low. It makes my back hurt to wash dishes there. And the freezer compartment is way too small.”

“If you were to wish any of those things were different—” “But if my wish is a curse? All those things are adequate as they are. What if I mess them up?”

He shrugged. “Eight hours later, they go back to normal.”

“But some stuff didn’t do that. My dress was still stained this morning. The cake is still here. What we didn’t eat, anyway.”

“Don’t include Flint in the equation unless you want the effect to last.”

Flint bounced into the room as if the mention of his name had drawn him. “Hi.” He went to the fridge and grabbed the cake platter. He turned, and waggled his eyebrows at me.

“Just as great as it was last night,” I said.

“So can I have some more? It’s your cake.”

I smiled, touched that he was thinking about me. Maybe he did, off and on, but not so I noticed before. “Hey. If the others aren’t up early enough to get some, too bad.”

“When we run out, can we make some more?”

Tobias said, “Dear boy, have you ever managed to get your powers to repeat themselves on purpose?”

Flint sighed. “I wouldn’t mind experimenting.” He got a plate and a fork and carved himself a big piece of cake.

“So, Gypsum? Have you chosen?” Tobias asked.

“Couldn’t I do something that’s not in the kitchen?”

“You undoubtedly will in the normal course of events.”

“What are you choosing?” Flint asked.

“Something to curse.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Use it or lose it.” He went to the fruit bowl on the

counter and tossed me a grapefruit. “You could start with something small.”

I smiled. Right! Why should I pick on big important things? Maybe my whole curse career could center around fruits and vegetables and rocks.

I studied the grapefruit. A little sticker on it said it was a Texas Ruby and gave a number for the cashier to use when ringing it up.

What harm had a grapefruit ever done to me that I should curse it? Worst thing one had ever done was squirt in my eye when I was a kid and didn’t know how to use those tooth-edged spoons to scoop sections out of grapefruit halves. If someone was trying to scoop out sections of me, I would hope to squirt in their eye too, so I couldn’t exactly blame the grapefruit.

This particular batch of grapefruits had been kind of pulpy and juiceless, though. Helping me learn how to curse might be a better fate for them than being thrown out. Maybe they didn’t care.

I blew breath up across my face and tolled the grapefruit between my palms.

“Strive for some finesse this time, Gypsum,” Tobias said.

“How do I do that?”

“You want to learn to direct your power. Choose its form. You can use rhyme to strengthen your control.”

“Poetry is not one of my strong points.”

“So work on it. Work on any weaknesses you have; turn them into strengths. Can you envision a curse?”

I frowned. Even thinking about wishing something ill made me queasy. I’d totally suppressed that part of my imagination when everybody was doing nasty things to me and I couldn’t do anything powerful back. It was easier for me to accept brief spans of undignified life inflicted on me by relatives if I believed I was above that sort of thing, rather than letting myself know I had no way of retaliating.

I needed to change my way of thinking.

I had done rock into chalk. It had worked, though on the surface you might not think that was a curse. Chalk was some kind of rock, so it was sort of like telling something to be a different version of itself. “What if I try something that’s not a curse?” Then I knew the answer to my own question. Rock into chalk wasn’t a curse, but the command had supplied cursed energy that made the chalk peculiar and scary.

“If there’s no way for the curse energy to embody itself,

nothing will happen. If there’s a way but you haven’t given a direction, the energy will take the way. If there’s more than one way, it’s possible the curse energy will take the worst way; that is its nature. It will be better for all of us if you learn to give direction. Then at least we’ll know what to expect.”

I had expected Mama’s gloves not to come off, and they hadn’t. Maybe there was more to the gloves than that. I hoped she would tell me.

What would a grapefruit consider a curse?

I frowned. “Does it have to be something I consider a curse? Or is it something that the person or object in question considers a curse?”

Tobias raised both eyebrows. “Interesting. I don’t know. Another thing to determine as your experience grows.”

What was the worst thing a grapefruit could imagine? Probably being eaten.

Rock to chalk. Was chalk a rock’s nightmare? It did involve being broken into bits and worn down to nothing through use, whereas if the rock stayed a rock, probably neither of those things would happen. I hadn’t considered rock to chalk a curse when I did it, but it had worked out like one. Maybe, ultimately, only the curse energy knew what worked.

Oh, for godsake. I should just try things. I could worry about theory later.

I held the grapefruit between my palms and stared down at it. Tension twitched my shoulders. “May you be plump and juicy and tasty,” I said.

Again, heat went through me, and came out of my chest. It shot into the grapefruit. The grapefruit swelled, and swelled, and swelled. It pushed my palms apart, then spread my arms. It grew to beachball size, then weatherballoon size, then even bigger. I let go of it when it got bigger around than a car tire, and I backed away as it grew. So did Flint and Tobias.

Eventually the grapefruit reached the size of a small hotair balloon, having pushed me and Flint and Uncle Tobias out of the kitchen and smashed the furniture up against the counters and even raised the ceiling a bit.

Then it just sat in the middle of the kitchen, a giant, fragrant, looming globe of citrus with pale gold, pink-washed skin. The pores were enormous, and the scent was overpowering, sweet with a large dollop of

throat-closing sour.

I felt incredibly relaxed. I also noticed that I felt heat from the direction of the grapefruit. Okay, good-I could sense my own power in something outside of me. The power felt pretty warm, too. I had used a lot of power on this one.

“Dear me,” Tobias said.

“Way to go!” said Flint.

Dad strolled down the hall. “What are you looking at?” He peered over our shoulders into the kitchen. “Hmm. That’s not particularly convenient. Would one of you gifted people get me a cup of coffee? With cream and a spoonful of sugar?”

“Hey, Dad. Gyp did it,” Flint said.

Dad stared at me. My heart flattened. Dad and I had a great relationship based on our mutual status as normal people in a house full of magic-users. Mama always protected Dad from anything the kids might be tempted to do to him, and made sure we respected his authority by backing up most of what he told us with her own irresistible force; but she didn’t dictate our attitudes, and some of us had gotten pretty cocky after transition.

My eyes got hot. A tear streaked down my cheek.

Dad hugged me. “Hey. It’s all right. I don’t know why you need a giant grapefruit, honey, but it’s all right.”

Then his hand stilled, stopped stroking my back.

I had a morbid sense of him pulling away from me, even though we still embraced.

He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back so he could look into my eyes. He was smiling. Maybe I had imagined that new distance. “What happened?”

I rubbed my eyes. My throat felt tight. I couldn’t speak.

“She went through transition while we were in L.A., Miles,” Tobias said. “Not a normal transition. She received A dark power.” “Aw, come on,” said Flint. “How dark is it if it makes giant grapefruits? Maybe it’s sort of misty gray.”

“Interesting,” Tobias said. “Something midway between curse power and wish power? Perhaps you’re right. Any chance you can grab that fruit and take it somewhere else, Flint? The backyard, perhaps?”

Flint shrugged. He stepped over the threshold into the kitchen and put his palms against the grapefruit.

The grapefruit growled.

FLINT jumped back as a slit appeared on the side of the fruit, split to reveal the fruit’s sleek, juicy, ruby-red interior. The slit gaped wide, the growls louder now that the mouth was open. Flint leaped over the threshold into the hall and slammed the kitchen door. “Okay. Maybe I was wrong about the gray part,” he said.

“Gyp?” Dad said.

I swallowed. “I got the power of curses, Daddy. Only I don’t know how to use it.”

“Killer grapefruit?” He smiled at me.

“I just wanted it to taste good.”

“Hah!” Flint said. “Maybe if tastes good, all right. Maybe it wants to taste us good!”

Tobias sketched signs across the kitchen door. “We had better stay out until it goes away,” he said. Black bands of force stitched from side to side across the door, binding it shut. “Sorry about the coffee, Miles. I guess we’ll all be going out to eat until later.”

“What? You’re just leaving a giant grapefruit in charge of the kitchen?”

“So far, Gyp’s curses have lasted less than eight hours. If this follows the pattern, it will revert in time for us to make supper. Small price to pay, don’t you think?”

Dad frowned. “Eight hours? You were cursing things more than eight hours ago? You transitioned last weekend? Gyp, what has been going on?”

“I thought I had the flu. I didn’t know it was transition. Nothing happened until last night. You and Mama were watching TV and we didn’t want to interrupt you.”

He looked rueful. “Oh. I wish… .”

“I’ll be cursing things the rest of my life, Daddy. I’m sure you’ll experience as many curses as you can stand, and probably more.”

He ruffled my hair. “It’s not that I’m asking for curses. I just want to

help.”

“You will.” I would need everybody’s help, I was pretty sure, especially Dad’s. He was a psychology professor. It used to make us mad when we were little and he analyzed us all the time. He grew out of it, and we grew out of some of our resentment; analysis was part of his character. Sometimes he told us things about ourselves we would never have been able to figure out on our own.

Maybe he could help me think about my power and figure out how to make it work better. I trusted Tobias for that kind of knowledge, but what did Tobias know about curse power? Not that much, if Great-Aunt Meta was the only other person he had known who had had it, and she had died before she could master it. Maybe a fresh brain would help.

“So what’s the game plan?” Dad checked his watch. “I Have to leave for work in about twenty minutes—earlier if I want to stop for coffee and a doughnut somewhere on the way.”

I said, “I want to go back to bed.” “You should record everything as soon as possible,” Tobias told me. “What you did, how it manifested, what you felt while you did it. All these things ate important.”

I growled at him.

“Gypsum.” Ice voice again.

I straightened, then glared at my great-uncle.

He held a hand up, palm toward me, and I saw a faint blue shield in front of it. Light glanced off a translucent blue disk.

My eyes went wide. Tobias was shielding himself from me? Never-hurt-any body me? How could anybody be scared of me?

He took my power seriously. And he thought I’d use it on him.

I backed up a couple steps, swallowed, and said, “Okay. Right, I’ll go upstairs and find a blank notebook right now and write everything down. Bye, Dad.” I darted forward to kiss my father’s cheek. “Have a good day at work. See you later. Flint. Uncle.” I left the hall and ran all the way up the stairs, trying to escape some phantom self who could scare other people, even my oh-so-powerful great-uncle.