A Fistful of Sky (33 page)

“I will.”

We studied each other. Finally exchanged smiles.

“Is Mama home?” Opal asked.

“She was about twenty minutes ago.”

Opal looked at nothing for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Might as well see her.”

We went downstairs.

Tobias was studying my cookie book on the cookbook stand, where clear plastic shielded the page from random ingredients. He had rolled out more dough, and was cutting out pairs of shapes with the cookie cutters.

“Hey, Uncle! Domestic streak?” Opal asked.

Tobias smiled at her. “It occurred to me I hadn’t tried anything new in a while. This is interesting. How nice to see you, Opal. Welcome home.”

“Thanks.” She kissed his cheek.

I got a cookie tin down from the top shelf and opened it, held it out to her. She selected some snickerdoodles and headed for the coffeepot.

“Thanks for taking care of things, Uncle.” I put away the tin, grabbed the spatula, and transferred the finished cookies he had taken out of the oven from the baking sheet to the cooling racks.

“You didn’t mention that detail.”

“It’s a small one,” I said. “You’re doing great.”

Flint came in, carrying index cards and a Magic Marker. He dropped everything when he saw Opal, and went to hug her.

“Hey, little brother. How are you?”

He smiled and smiled. Then he went back and picked up his cards, sorted through them. Held one up. “Cursed,” it said.

I hid behind my hands.

“You cursed Flint?” Opal asked.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said through my fingers. “It just popped out. They were eating the cookies without asking.”

“So he can’t talk? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I think he can’t open his mouth.”

Flint nodded.

“For how long?”

I lowered my hands and checked the kitchen clock. “I cutsed them around ten-thirty. Now it’s two hours later? So another four, five hours?”

“Harsh!” said Opal.

“It’s awful. Uncle, how can I take off a curse?” Flint found a blank index card and wrote on it, held it up. “Never mind. We won’t starve. Steak for dinner?”

I went to the money drawer and checked the grocery envelope. Mama and Dad put money in it every week, and I spent most of it for dinner stuff and the day-to-day things that everybody ate; I checked out the cupboards and the refrigerator often enough that it was easy for me to keep track of what we were running out of. There was a shopping list magneted to the refrigeratot, along with a pencil, and people wrote new things on it, and I bought them. I left money in the envelope for people to buy meals on the nights when I didn’t cook; usually they bought pizza or Chinese takeout or someone picked up something at the supermarket deli on their way home.

We didn’t have any steaks on hand, but there was enough money left from the week’s cache that I could buy a big family pack of steaks. Plus, I owed Flint, and steaks were his favorite. I didn’t make them very often, because they were expensive and didn’t make good leftovers (not that there was ever anything left over after a steak night). “Sure.”

He held up another card, this one already written out. “Gyp, will you help me?”

“How?”

He turned the card over for another prepared message. “Mama says I should make the lights again this year.”

“Okay,” I said. Next card. “I screwed up so much last year. But if we worked together, maybe I could get it right.”

I felt my own smile. “Oh, yeah! That would be great!” Another curse I wouldn’t have to worry about casting, and something Flint really needed.

He grinned. He wrote a card. “When?”

I checked the clock again. “A couple hours? I just used up my energy, but I should be recharged in a couple hours. Can we do this if you can’t talk, though? How about we wait until your curse wears off and then do it?”

He held up a prepared card. “OK.”

I smiled at him. One of this evening’s curses was spoken for. I was totally happy about that.

“What’s that about? How can you help Flint?” Opal asked.

I explained that to her. I could filter power through Flint, and through Altria, and it came out clean. At first I thought it was just Flint. But since it worked with Altria, too, and, come to that, my UFS self, maybe it would work with anybody? I needed to do some more experiments.

“Have you tried setting time limits on your curses?” Tobias asked.

“How do you mean?”

“If you built a time limit in instead of letting them run their course—which, I should warn you, may be more variable than you’re giving them credit for; it depends on how much energy you put into it. More oomph, longer curse— if you specify a limit, that might help. Say you were mad at Flint and Jasper for eating the cookies, but you just shut their mouths for an hour.”

“That would be great, if I had been thinking when I did it. If I had been thinking, I wouldn’t have done it, though.”

“How much oomph did you put into it?”

Flint and I exchanged glances. “I was pretty mad. But I didn’t rhyme,” I said.

“Good observation. Maybe without the reinforcement of rhyme, the

curse will be weaker. All these things factor in. Flint, keep track of when the curse wears off, will you? Gyp can add that information to her curse journal.”

Flint held his thumb up, waved it.

“You cursed Jasper, too?” Opal asked. She sounded surprised.

“Yep.”

Tobias said, “That might be a factor, too. You spread the curse between two people, which might make the individual curses less powerful or shorter.”

“You cursed Jasper,” Opal muttered. “You made it so he can’t talk?” She gave me a brilliant smile. “I’m going to find him.”

Just then the phone rang. Opal was closest, so she picked up. “Afternoon. LaZelles,” she said. “No, this isn’t Gypsum. This is her sister. No, not Beryl. Opal.” She glanced at me, mouthed B-O-Y. “She didn’t tell you she had a sister Opal? Well, I just got home half an hour ago after a year away. You’re fascinated, right? Gypsum’s home. She’s fine. She’s right here. I’m just torturing you both. Hey, Gyp, it’s for you.”

I took the handset from her, heat in my face, and turned away from my family. “Hello?”

“Hi. Are you all right?” Ian asked.

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Great! I just wondered if you recovered from last night.”

“I am so mortified. I’ve never fallen asleep in front of company before.”

“Stress makes people do weird things.”

“Did you survive all right after I conked out? I guess I should warn you I’m talking in the kitchen, and a bunch of my family are listening. So you can say whatever you like, because they can’t hear you, but I won’t be able to ask you the questions I really want to ask. If you can just imagine what I want to know and fill me in, that would be great.”

“Hah! Everyone was really nice.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I like your dad.”

“Me, too.”

“Your mom is very … impressive.”

“Hmm.”

“The brownies were great.”

“Good.”

“Beryl was hilarious. What does she normally look like?”

“Very cute.”

“Anyway, it made me nostalgic for my own family.”

“Beryl said Mama invited you over for Christmas Day; 1 “

“Is that okay with you?”

“Oh, yeah, great with me. I’m making a turkey. You like turkey?”

“I love turkey. What I called about, though, other than to find out if you’re okay, is, Claire’s having a party tomorrow night. Want to go?”

Claire was having a party and she hadn’t invited me herself? I wondered if she was mad at me. Usually she told me when she was having parties, even if she didn’t have room for me to come, so I wouldn’t find out later from somebody else and be mad that I didn’t know. “Is it okay with her?”

“She asked me to ask you.”

“No kidding?”

“She said she sent you an e-mail about it on Wednesday but she hasn’t heard back yet. So I said I was going to call you anyway, so—”

“Jeeze, I haven’t checked my e-mail in a week. I forgot all about it.” Too busy cursing things. “Anyway, yeah, I’d love to go. What are we supposed to bring?”

“Snacks. Want me to pick you up?”

“That would be great.”

“About five okay?”

“Yeah.” I wondered where I would be in my curse cycle at that point. I should curse something at 4:45 just to be on the safe side. “If I have to leave suddenly, are you okay with that?”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Kewl. See you tomorrow.”

“Right.” He hung up.

Doubts assailed me. I wondered if Ian would have asked me to the party if Claire hadn’t asked him to. D’oh! Was he really okay with all the things that had happened last night? If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have called me, right? Was he interested in me because he liked me? Or was he just

interested in what I could do? Remember all those nondates, though. He had invited me to go lots of places with him before I grew into my power. He hadn’t minded when I asked him not to bring other friends this time. That was before I cursed anything where he could see, too. Maybe he did like me.

If he was interested in me, was there something wrong with him? Nobody else had ever been interested in me that way. It wasn’t like I was beautiful, ot shaped like people on TV, or anything.

Well, whatever happened, I was getting some experience now, I guessed. Even if it didn’t work out, it was experience.

I hung up the handset and turned around. Opal was grinning.

“Shut up,” I said, with no heat behind it.

She laughed and left to look for Jasper, maybe.

A couple hours later Tobias had done a whole batch of cookies by himself, without cheating. I had made two more kinds of cookies and mixed up the pfefferniisse dough. I should have made the pfefferniisse a couple weeks earlier and stored them so they could get just the right kind of stale, but I always forgot that until cookie baking day. People just had to eat them fresh.

My right hand was glowing red again.

“I’m ready to try something with a time limit on it,” I told Tobias.

“What did you have in mind?” Tobias asked.

“I could curse you.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I know the most about unweaving spells. If you do something dangerous, I want to be up to capacity to deal with it.”

That made sense. It had certainly come in handy with Mama. I could go find someone else in my family to curse, or curse something around the house. Or—

“I’m going to the orchard for an hour. Tell people to stay away if you see them.” I put the dough in the fridge, went up to my room to get my curse journal and protection stone, and headed to the orchard.

I settled near the shielded tree and made plans.

I wrote down my idea before I said my curse aloud, because I wasn’t

sure how it would work, or even whether I would be able to write afterward. Then I sat for a while and thought about it.

I had made promises: promised Flint a steak dinner tonight, and I hadn’t even bought the steaks yet. Promised Flint I’d help him with the lights. Promised Ian I’d go to Claire’s party with him tomorrow.

Part of me wanted to play with fire, though. I was tired of being careful. Even when I was careful, horrible things happened. What would happen if I wasn’t careful?

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the protection stone. I held it in cupped hands. It felt warm, though not with curse energy. I spoke to it. “Altria, for an hour, do what you want to me with my power.”

Heat flowed from my chest down my arm, out of rny hand; all of it I had went into the stone. Then my twin sat beside me in the dirt, dressed the same as I was: a black T-shirt with a Tlingit design of a raven in red and white surrounded by white painted-on buttons, jeans, black socks, and black ankle-high Reeboks. “That’s a lovely invitation,” she said. “So many fun possibilities. I’ve missed you.” She trailed her fingertips over my shoulder, then nudged me. “I’ve been watching you, too. I like your boy.”

“You’re not going to mess with him, are you?”

“I couldn’t do it directly under this particular spell, but I could make you do it.”

She could make me do anything. Just the edges of the ideas that swept through my mind sent fear prickling through me.

“However, how smart would that be?” she asked, after letting me think and grow cold. “An hour’s not very long. You are my sweet thing, my love, my goose, and if I upset you too much, you may not call on me or make offerings to me again.” She stroked my hair. I remembered what she had said about our differing definitions of kindness, how she thought pain could be helpful. Why hadn’t I remembered that before I crafted this curse? “So let’s do something we both want.” She swept her open hand up, and I rose in response like a marionette, floated a few inches above the earth. For a second I windmilled, confused, but then I realized I wasn’t going to fall—I couldn’t even get back in touch with the ground. Altria rose beside me, took my hand. “Let’s go flying.”

We shot up into the sparkling afternoon sky, so quickly I felt like I left my stomach and my breath behind. Then we stopped, higher than any building in earthquakeconscious Santa Tekla or the suburb of Bosquecito, but not so high we couldn’t see details. I gasped and tried to quiet my

terror at being up in the air without a plane.

“I won’t let you fall,” Altria said. Then she dropped my hand, and I fell like a stone. The ground rushed up at me. I had time to envision crashing down feet first and breaking both my legs, and then she swooped down and captured me again, dragged me up. “Or only a little bit,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry!” Adrenaline pumped through me. I gripped her hand as hard as I could, hoping I’d give her bruises.

She pulled me close, fitted herself to my back, and clasped her arms around my waist. I closed my hands over hers, tried to lock myself into her embrace. “All right,” she said, her breath warm in my ear. “Just a little wakeup call to remind you I’m not nice. Now let’s go do something interesting.”

We flew. With her arms tight around me and my hands over hers, I was no longer afraid she would drop me. Afternoon air rushed past us, cold because of our motion, until Altria stroked my stomach and red flame rose at her touch and wrapped us in warmth. I had given her permission to use my power on me for whatever she wanted. It hadn’t occurred to me that we could use it like a heater. I liked it.