A Fistful of Sky (15 page)

“No, you’re right. Not our color. But what if—” She stroked her hands down over her breasts, stomach, legs, up over her rump, her sides, her back, finally over her arms and shoulders, neck and face. Her skin turned golden.

I held my hands out before me, marveling at this new tan. I had never spent much time in the sun. I’d heard too much about skin cancer. But I was as susceptible to advertising images as other people, and I’d wondered what it would be like to have skin this color.

“You like that, hey?”

I checked her looks. Blonde, tan Gypsum? Still fat, but somehow it looked good on her. Well, no. The blonde was not a good color.

“More golden, then.” She stroked her hands over her hair and darkened the color from ash to coin gold.

I smiled and shook my head. I was creeped out by the feet that she could hear my feelings even when I didn’t say them out loud. At the same time, it was kind of handy.

“What color do you want?”

“I don’t know. Who are you? What are you? What are you doing to us?”

“I’m just playing.” She ran her hand through one part of her hair and it turned fiery red. She ran her hand through another section and it turned black. A third section, grass green. A fourth section went deep brown and curly. A fifth section, blond-streaked brown and frizzy. Then she stroked

through her bangs and left them pink. “And—” She pulled a section from the top, threaded it through her fingers, left a long solid streak of white. With every move she made, I felt something move through my hair, and I saw it change around me. “Something for everybody, Nice, eh?”

“Patchwork quilt hair,” I said. “What happens when you brush it?” Would it all mix together, or stay in separate sections? It looked incredibly silly; it was hard to take her seriously, and I figured nobody would take me seriously either as long as my hair looked like this. Maybe that would be a good thing-

“Did you bring a brush?” she asked.

“No.”

“Conjure me one.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Wish one up.”

“It’ll be flawed,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“Because my power is unkind.”

“Who told you that?”

“Uncle Tobias.”

She spat to the side. “Wish me a brush.” “I wish you had a hairbrush the right size for you to use, one that will work as a brush should,” I said. A tiny trace of” heat on my breastbone, then a tiny trace of chill. She held up a red brush. “How hard was that?” She stroked it through her many-colored hair. I felt the phantom touch of a brush through my hair, and sat back with my eyes closed.

I had always loved having my hair brushed. Opal used to brush my hair when I was little, and she had cut my fingernails and toenails for me until I was old enough to clip them myself. Mama was too busy for such things. Opal was pretty busy too, but she had made time.

These days the only people who brushed my hair were me and the hairdressers at SuperCuts, and they usually worked fast.

Now here I was in the orchard with an unknown creature, having my hair brushed by proxy. It felt great. She brushed for a while. My shoulders had already relaxed when I made her, but now, as the brush traveled through my new luxurious long hair, stroked across my scalp, I fell into a state of ultimate contentment. The sun shone on my face and the air

smelled like lemons. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so nice.

What kind of curse was this?

At last she stopped. She thumped my knee with the brush. “Hey. You asked. What does it look like?”

The hair had changed again. It was heavy and wavy, streaked all through with shades of brown, black, blonde, and red, with one vivid white streak down the side. Sun gilded it.

“It looks great,” I said. “Thank you.”

“This is the look you want to go with?”

“It’s up to me?”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “You’re making all the choices. I just wanted to thank you for brushing it like that. That felt great.”

“I’m making all the choices.’ She smiled wide and wicked then. “You said it. So what about the rest of us?” She spread her arms and looked down at her stomach. She cupped her breasts. They filled her hands. She patted her stomach, and it jiggled. “I don’t think there’s enough of us. You made me too small, but that’s because you’re too small.”

“Too small,” I said faintly.

She slapped her belly. “We could be much more magnificent.” She tugged, pulled her belly out to twice its size, and I felt an answering surge in mine. My stomach spread, pushing my arms out from my sides. “And these.” She pulled at her breasts, and they grew too. Mine ballooned from grapefruit to honeydew size. “And this.” She slapped her rump. It swelled. “And these.” She slapped her thighs, and her upper arms. They grew and grew, and so did mine. “And, of course, this.” She cupped her face in her hands, pulled her hands outward, and her face followed, rounding out, chins tripling.

I sat inside my new shape, my clothes in tatters around me. My fat, fat arms lay across the upper curve of my rounded belly, and my breasts lapped over my arms. My butt lifted me higher off the ground than I was used to, and my legs were layered in rolls of fat like a baby’s, splayed out like a baby’s, too fat to cross.

I had been fat since I was twelve, but I had never been fat like this before. I spread my hands and stared at pudgy fingers. The adjustable silver ring I had worn since a boy gave it to me in seventh grade had opened wide and fallen off the ring finger of my right hand. My flesh was golden with rose undertones; I cupped my breast and felt velvet skin against my fingers. Everything about me was huge and soft and cushioned. I stroked my belly, pressed it in, let go to see it spring out, round and huge, monumental. The shake reverberated through me. I flexed my ankles. What would it be like to swim like this? I would float really well. The water would cradle me. What would it be like to walk like this?

Buddha was fat like this, I thought, and looked up to see Jasper by the loquat tree, staring at me.

I had nothing to cover myself with except my hands. I cupped them over my breasts, and drew my knees toward me as far as they would go—not very far. Too much me in the way. I dropped my head as far as my chins let me and watched my blush travel across my breasts. I stared down at my curse child.

“What are you worried about? You’re magnificent,” she said. She spread her arms wide and whirled to show me all the large, loose, jiggling parts of herself. How abundant and succulent she looked, how lush. Her long many-colored hair danced around her without hiding her. She laughed.

I smiled.

Jasper stooped beside me. “Want something to wrap up in?” he asked.

“The sun feels good.” My voice sounded richer and more robust. The sun, the faint breeze that brushed across my skin now and then and teased my hair, the scent of warm earth, crushed grass, the sound of the highway not too far away, birds calling from tree to tree in the jungle beyond the orchard fence, it all melted together into comfort.

I did want to wrap up in something and hide what I looked like from my brother, and from myself. Then I thought, this is a manifestation of my own energy. I better ride it out, wherever it takes me. Gotta get used to weird things happening.

“What is she?” He stared at the small woman. She stood, smiling, her arms akimbo.

“She won’t tell me.”

“Where’d she come from?”

“I put curse energy into my stone, and she’s what happened.” I sighed, glanced at Jasper, who looked away. I tipped as far forward as I could, put out my hands, pushed up, managed to rock to my feet. Sumo wrestlers were fat like this, I thought. But they probably had more muscles. “This is Jasper,” I told my curse child.

“I know.” She came to me and held her arms up. “Lift me.”

I was afraid to lean over, afraid I would collapse onto my huge belly and be as helpless as a turtle on its back. I tilted forward a little and held out my arms.

“All right. A for effort.” She jumped up into my arms, settled her butt between my breasts on my stomach as though it were a shelf. I clutched her to me. She, too, felt soft and velvety.

“God, you’re heavy,” I told her.

“So are you.”

I glanced at Jasper. He held a green blanket in his arms.

“Is that for me?” I asked.

He looked away and shrugged.

“He can’t stand to look at us in our natural state,” she said.

“Is this our natural state?”

“One of them.” She leaned across my breast and poked Jasper’s arm. “Hey, you! Get used to it!”

“She’s my sister,” he mumbled.

We had always been embarrassed to see each other naked, even when we were little. Well, not when we were, like, two and four, but later. “Give me the blanket,” I said.

He shook it out and draped it around my shoulders and tucked the corners into my hands. The curse child’s head rose above it. The blanket wasn’t big enough to go all the way around me. He studied it, then tugged on it and made it bigger, big enough to surround my new size. “You coming up to the house?”

I shook my head. “I was thinking about going swimming.”

The curse child turned and smiled at me.

“Mama’s by the pool,” Jasper said.

“She still wearing red gloves?”

“Yep. They go all the way to her shoulders.”

Uh-oh. They had started out elbow-length. Maybe they’d grown because she liked them to start with. Maybe if you liked the result of a curse, it would figure out a way to make things worse.

What did that mean for me in present circumstances? I didn’t exactly like what I had become, but I found it interesting. Did that mean the curse child would intensify it?

How could she?

Maybe I shouldn’t ask.

I rook a couple of steps. My feet dropped like thunder, and every loose thing on my body swayed in response to each impact.

If Mama was by the pool, no way was I going swimming now.

I headed away from the stairway up to the pool, toward the stairway that led to the lawn. Jasper walked beside me.

“Did Beryl tell people about my curses?” I asked. “She tell you what happens when I say the D word?” I liked my new voice. I wondered what it would sound like if I sang.

“Yeah.”

“Are you shielded?”

“Nope.”

“D— Jasper! What are you doing here?”

“I came to see how you were.”

“I’m fine!”

“You sure?”

Stomp. Jiggle. Stomp. Jiggle. “I’m enjoying this, actually.”

“Wow.”

“Would you like to try it?” asked the small woman on my stomach.

His eyes widened. He shook his head.

“Chicken,” she said.

He drew a pattern on one hand with the index finger of the other, then held up his hand, palm toward us. The sun glinted on the shield he had built.

The small woman relaxed back across my collarbone, one hand riding on each of my breasts. She was warm against me. Her heavy, smooth hair fanned across my front. ‘Chicken,” she muttered again.

“How long is this going to last?” Jasper asked.

“I don’t know.” We reached the stairs and I lowered myself to sit on the second one. My rear was so cushioned that even stone felt soft. “It’s up to her.”

“Let’s just stay like this the rest of your life,” she said drowsily.

I contemplated that. It was scary. People would look at me funny, mock me; they already muttered things under their breath, but if I stayed this size, I was pretty sure I would hear much louder things. People would stare and point. Nothing would fit. Clothes? I’d have to have them made for me, and I wouldn’t be able to fly in planes, or sit in booths at restaurants, or ride rides at Disneyland. No more movies. Wheelchairs wouldn’t hold me. I wouldn’t be able to drive my car.

Not that I had ever dated, except for whatever my confusing relationship with Ian was, but with my new look, the prospects were even dimmer.

And how could I work? How could my students listen to what I wanted to teach them? I would be triply the freak I already was. How could they pay attention to anything I said when they were confronted with something they had probably never seen before? What could they do but stare and speculate?

Movement was challenging, and I hadn’t even tackled stairs. If it were this hard for me to walk, my world would shrink to a very small sphere.

“If I’m going to stay like this, I need more muscles,” I said.

“I can do that.” She sat up and patted my stomach, my arms, my breasts. She patted her own legs and rear and back, stroked her shoulders. With each touch, strength flowed into me. Things under my skin tightened and grew more dense, the thick layers of fat riding higher over the muscle fibers so that I expanded even more. I felt strong, full of coiled energy waiting to be used.

The blanket was too small again. It dropped off my right shoulder. I lifted my arm and pumped it. Muscles rippled and popped under the skin as I flexed, even as flab hung down from my arm and swayed with my movement. I felt muscles shift across my back. “Wow!” I climbed to my feet. Oh, yeah. This felt better. Movement was ponderous, but it didn’t make me out of breath to walk. I stomped around the orchard, flattening the tough grasses under my feet. The little one rode me as though I were a carnival ride. She laughed.

Was the ground really shaking under my tread? Maybe it was just my

own wobbling that made me think so.

I grabbed a tree trunk and bent it. Whoa! Bent it! My arms didn’t hurt from the effort, either. I let it go, and it whipped upright. I felt like a god in a bad Italian Greek-myth movie. Roar! Or, characteristically, I guessed I should have roared with laughter. I was afraid to test the power of my voice. What if it was loud enough to rouse Mama, and she came over to see what was happening?

“Roar,” I whispered.

Okay. I wasn’t sure I could get used to this, but it was a lot better than feeling totally immobilized by myself. I wandered back to the stairs and sat down again.

“God,” said Jasper. “How did she do that?”

The curse child laughed and drummed on my stomach.

Jasper touched her shoulder. “What are you?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” She stared up at him, and he snatched his hand away. His touch had built a bridge between them, one she could cross; it was an invitation to her energy to shape him, if she took it that way. “Too late! Too late. What would I like you to look like?”