The Hungry Ghosts

by Miguel Flores

  Edaline’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yes! Exactly. And always use the magick word.”

  Milly turned her attention to the nearby candle. She watched how it danced and turned, leaped and flickered from the tiniest breeze. There was an unlit candle next to it, and Milly lifted her fingers toward it.

  “I’d like to give her a dance partner.” She paused. “Please.”

  A tiny, excited blue spark jumped toward the wick.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, PART THREE

  the magick word

  Edaline spent much of the day showing simple spells to Milly. Some seemed useful (like how to ask a grunkworm to give you light in a dark room), and she did her best to pick them up. Others didn’t seem all that relevant (like what manners to use with a dragon at a leaf-juice party), and she stuck them in the back pocket of her mind for later.

  Edaline seemed to have a point to all these tiny lessons, like she would reveal some grand message connecting all these random spells at the end of the day, but dinner had come and gone and Milly still didn’t know what the point of it all was.

  Every so often, Jasper popped in and out to offer an unhelpful word or two, but he mostly lay about in patches of sunlight and only moved when the branches shifted their formations. Every time she saw Horace, Milly tried to draw him into a conversation, but Cilla would just grab his hand and pull him away.

  Milly really wished Cilla would talk to her, but her little sister didn’t seem to want to.

  Milly ruminated on all these thoughts while she washed the dishes by hand. She’d tried to ask the water to do them for her—several times in fact—but it seemed to know she didn’t actually need the help.

  “Edaline?” Milly asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know why Cilla’s so mad at me?”

  Edaline shook her head. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Because I don’t want to. “Maybe I should.”

  Milly stared at the inside of her palm for a while. It started to itch.

  “It’ll be a while before I’m done here. I think she and Horace were in the garden. You can take a break and talk to her if you like.”

  “Will you talk to her for me?”

  Edaline shook her head. “This is something you need to do yourself. Would you like my company?”

  Milly shook her head.

  Edaline nodded. “You can tell Horace I need help in the kitchen if you want privacy.”

  Milly exhaled. This was going to end badly. But she got off her chair and left the house anyway.

  When she stepped outside, she found two pairs of footsteps (one big, one little) and a small groove leading away from the garden toward a nearby patch in the clearing. At the end of the trail, she saw little clumps of dirt being tossed out of a hole in the ground.

  Milly approached the hole to see Horace and Cilla inside, shoveling with intense concentration. Cilla had a small shovel and Horace had a normal-sized shovel, which almost looked small in his hands. Next to Cilla’s foot was a lumpy bag.

  “Hi,” Milly said.

  Horace looked up and grinned. “Hello, friend.”

  Cilla didn’t look up.

  “Um, Edaline said she needed your help in the kitchen.”

  Horace nodded and climbed out of the hole. “Be back.”

  “Come back quickly, please,” Cilla said.

  “Okay.” Horace handed Milly the shovel he’d been using, then walked toward the house.

  Milly looked down at the top of Cilla’s head. “Can I help?”

  Cilla shrugged.

  Milly put the shovel on the ground, slid into the hole, then pulled the shovel in with her. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Planting.”

  “Oh.” Milly looked around, tempted to make a snide remark, but instead stuck the blade into the dirt and began to scoop up clumps of soil. Cilla continued next to her at the same pace she’d been moving.

  After another couple rounds of dirt, Milly spoke again. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Cilla shrugged. Again.

  “Why . . .” Milly trailed off. “Why are you so mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Are you sure? You’ve been kind of—”

  “I’m not mad!” Cilla stabbed the dirt. She wiped her face with a sleeve, then grunted as she flung dirt into the air. Some of it missed and fell back into the hole.

  “Okay. I believe you.” Milly breathed in to steady herself. “Can you tell me why you don’t want to go back to St. George’s?”

  “I already told you.”

  “I know, but can you explain it to me again? I promise to listen.”

  “No one there takes me seriously.” Cilla grew more forceful with each thrust. “Nishi always makes fun of me. Doris doesn’t listen when I tell her when Ikki pulls my hair. Marikit takes Junebug without telling me. And!” She finally stopped for a minute to gasp. “I keep asking magicks for help, but they don’t listen to me. Ever! They only listen to you. And you don’t even want to be a witch. It’s not fair.”

  Milly frowned. “I didn’t realize you were so unhappy.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Cilla, I’m . . . ” Milly paused and put down her shovel. She took a very deep breath. “I’m sorry.”*

  Cilla didn’t respond.

  Milly swallowed, knowing what else she wanted—maybe needed—to say. “It was wrong of me to ignore you. I’m sorry I tried to take the book from you without asking. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I’m sorry I took out my anger on you. I’m sorry I hurt the tree. I’m sorry I believed so much about witches that I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for a lot of things.” She took a moment to breathe. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I can’t force you to come with me, but we also can’t stay here forever. Please forgive me. Come home with me.”

  Cilla stopped digging and threw the shovel up onto the ground. She picked up the bag next to her foot and dumped whatever was inside it into the center of the hole.

  It landed with a heavy thud. It was the blade Milly had used to pierce Rosas’s heart.

  Cilla didn’t look up. “Can you help me?”

  Milly nodded.

  The two of them climbed out and shoveled the dirt back in over the blade. They continued late into the day, side by side, until the entire hole was filled.

  At the end of it all, the two girls sat next to their finished work, leaning against each other as the sun traded spots with the moon.

  “Milly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for coming after me. I’m—I’m sorry, too.”

  “I know.”

  After another minute had passed, Cilla spoke again. “Can Horace and Edaline come with us?”

  “I don’t know. They probably won’t want to leave their homes.”

  Cilla bit her lip.

  Milly took a long breath. “Maybe we can ask them.”

  “Okay.”

  Milly looked up at the sky shifting into darker colors. Her palm, for the first time in days, had stopped itching. She wondered if Doris had known she was a witch. She wondered what any of the other girls would say if they knew. Maybe staying with Edaline wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  “Milly?”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding in. “Yeah?”

  “Something’s in the woods.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  the north wind is nothing without its master

  A terrible bang echoed all around them.

  Milly leaped up into a small patch of moonlight. She looked up and saw broombranches scattering wildly into the surrounding woods. In their wake, the moon was a sliver of silver being swallowed by the clouds.

  Ash drifted toward Milly with a bag tied around his front end. “Are you two okay?”

  �
�What’s going on?”

  Another loud bang shook the ground, followed by a scream.

  “Milly! Cilla!” Horace’s head appeared from the backdoor. “Shadows here! Hunger! Must run!”

  Milly looked at the shovel on the ground nearby, the thing she’d just used to bury that evil metal. Then at Cilla, whose eyes were wide. Then at Ash, hovering just above them.

  “Do you need a ride?” Ash said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m going back inside.”

  “Edaline knew you’d say that.” Ash looped around and shot beneath the two girls, lifting them into the air.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “I promised her we’d run.”

  “But we can’t!”

  But they did.

  Ash shot up through the canopy with Milly and Cilla on his back, away from the woods and into the clouds.

  Milly looked back the whole time, watching with horror as shadows devoured the house behind them.

  The surrounding sky grew more tempestuous. Dashes of lightning pricked their way through the clouds like thin, crooked needles. A low rumble of thunder reverberated around them the higher they climbed. Soon they saw nothing but the dark of the storm, with light unable to reach them from above or below.

  “We have to go back!” Milly shouted over the growing wind. “Edaline needs our help!”

  “We made a promise!”

  “No!” Milly grabbed the branch with both hands. “We need to go back now!”

  Ash wrestled against her. “Don’t try to steer me!”

  A large flash of lightning erupted in the cloud just beside them, and Cilla fell from the branch.

  “Milly!”

  “Great!”

  Ash whipped around and zipped toward the girl. The momentum forced Milly to give up trying to take control; she hugged her entire body against the branch as they went straight down. Apples and loose pages fluttered past her head as they rocketed to the ground.

  “Get ready to catch her.”

  Milly squinted her eyes open and reached her hand out toward her sister. She grabbed Cilla’s hand and the broombranch leveled out as they popped back out of the clouds.

  They were headed straight for the ground.

  “Hold on!”

  The branch steered its way toward the house, barely missing entire shoots of bamboo and snappy gripe jaws as it whipped back and forth. Ash steadied out and started to climb back into the air over the house.

  A fierce wind blew them back to its entrance.

  Ash spun sideways and the two girls tumbled through the front door.

  Milly looked up and saw a faint light pulse from the other end of the hallway, where the common room was. She pulled Cilla up and ushered her back onto Ash.

  “Get her out of here, Ash.”

  “Milly, what are you—”

  Milly let go of Cilla and ran. When she tripped into the room, the light was brighter than she imagined.

  The floor had been ripped apart. Flattened holes spotted the floor and walls where gripes had been in the process of crawling out. But they, and everything else in the room, had been frozen. They were paused in time with their claws extended, their teeth bared, their eyes shut to the light.

  The light itself, unmoving, plastered the room like white paint. It came from Edaline’s fingertips, pointing up in the air like the torch of a lighthouse.

  Edaline herself stood at the center of the scene.

  She, too, was still. She looked like a figure cut out of a painting. Or more like . . .

  “A tree,” Milly whispered to herself.

  She took slow steps to the witch and, with trembling fingers, touched the witch’s arm. Edaline’s skin had turned fully bark. Flowers grew from her hair and coarse lines ran down her face like rivulets set aside for tears. Her lips were the color of berries, her skin like leaves. Only the witch’s eyes remained the same. Fixed, horrified, on something above.

  The cackle of a loud wind echoed through the hollow tree.

  Milly looked back and saw the old witch, Lilith, in the doorway. She tried to run toward Cilla’s side, but she could already see the witch’s lips moving.

  “Privacy, please.”

  All the doors of the house burst open and an angry wind rushed toward Milly, flattening her.

  Milly tried to shout, but the wind stole away her words before they could make it past her lips.

  “What are you doing here?” Cilla shouted over the wind.

  Milly’s eyes narrowed and then widened at the realization. She could hear them.

  “I’m here to help,” the old witch said. Her gray eyes appeared almost black in the shadows that surrounded her. Motionless shadows with hands and feet. The witch didn’t even seem to notice their frozen limbs eternally reaching across the ground toward her. She locked eyes with Milly. “I don’t remember you.”

  Cilla held on to Ash as thunder rumbled overhead.

  Milly glared.

  “Ah, yes. You. Aren’t you the one who slayed the heart? The one who let the shadows in?”

  Milly’s shoulders shivered. The shadows twitched just beside Lilith’s feet and turned. Slowly, they crawled across the floor. Toward Milly.

  “What do you want?” Cilla asked.

  “You see those shadows approaching your sister?” the witch said. She illuminated the hallway with green light seeping from her fingers. “They plague the world with their presence. Haunting people with nightmares of the past. You”—she pointed at Cilla—“are the last remnant of East Ernost. The last witch. They won’t leave Arrett until you have.”

  Milly felt the mark on her hand throb again.

  “Is that true?” Cilla asked. She glanced back at Milly.

  “I can help you,” the witch said. “But you have to come with me.”

  Cilla stared into Milly’s eyes.

  Milly shook her head and tried to say Don’t do it over and over and over and over. She doesn’t want to help us! she wanted to say. She only wants to use you! This isn’t what a true witch would do!

  The shadows inched closer. They covered almost the entire hall now.

  “What will you do, witchling? Run forever? Go back home? They’ll follow you wherever you go. I’m your only chance.”

  The wind howled overhead, shaking the timbers of the house.

  Milly raised her hand, to show her mark in some desperate attempt to stop the witch.

  A shadow grabbed her wrist.

  “Quick now!” The witch hovered just out of reach of the shadows. She extended a hand toward Cilla. “You don’t really have a choice.”

  The itch on Milly’s palm gave way to a throbbing pain. The shadow tightened around her wrist and pulled her deeper into the floor.

  “Leave her alone!” Cilla shouted.

  The shadow paused.

  Cilla took the witch’s hand. “I’ll do it.”

  Cilla, no. You’re not the one she wants.

  Cilla smiled at Milly. “It’s okay.”

  The witch cackled and yanked Cilla up into the air with one of her wrinkled claws. She looked up at the winding funnel in the sky, then pointed at Milly. “Take care of her.”

  The wind howled in defiance.

  Lilith glared and lowered her voice. “Do what I tell you.”

  The winds picked up around Milly, ripping their way across the walls and tugging her hair across her cheeks. But the winds didn’t hurt. In fact, they barely brushed by her. At the roaring of the wind, the shadows let go and retreated into the ground.

  The witch and Cilla rose up into the sky. Milly tried to shout after them, but the wind swallowed up her cries.

  Milly watched as the shadows abandoned her and stacked themselves on top of each other, stretching from the ground, reaching and reaching and reaching. Trying to
grab hold of the witch.

  Lilith shrieked. “You stupid wind! You take orders from me!” Green light spilled from her fingers like slow poison working its way through the dark clouds above, and the winds grew more frenzied. The witch flew away with Cilla as the wind turned its attention back on Milly. Its howls sounded mournful.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Make her stop!” Jasper howled. “It hurts!”

  Milly’s eyes snapped open, and she saw Jasper, not the little wind but a cat, standing in front of her. Shielding her from the wind’s rage. His ears flat against his head, his claws gripping the floor.

  Jasper’s cries made something inside Milly snap. It was a snap so loud it broke through all the noise rushing around her head. Milly raised her hand, and a white light consumed her vision. “Please, just leave us alone!”

  The wind stopped howling.

  Her hand stopped throbbing.

  The whole world went very, very quiet.

  * * *

  When Milly opened her eyes again, she found herself kneeling on the ground. She looked up. Everything was dark, except for the shining eyes of Horace the half-giant. He grunted above her, and she realized that he’d put himself between her and countless piles of wood and debris. She felt Jasper shift somewhere next to her in the dark.

  “Please, little light,” she gasped. “Let us see. Anything at all.”

  A familiar spark of flame wiggled its way out of a crack in the dirt, crawled across her knuckles, and jumped onto her hair. It was warm, but it did not burn.

  The half-giant let out a very loud groan and pushed upward until the wood fell from his shoulders. When he did so, a faint circle of light appeared above them. Milly picked up the cat and climbed out with the half-giant, the flame still nestled in her hair. When they escaped the unstable remains of the house, the storm was quiet, the shadows were gone, and neither Cilla nor Lilith were anywhere to be found.

  Tears formed in Milly’s eyes.

  Without thinking, she ran back through the shattered remains of the tree and found Edaline at the center of the wreckage, still standing. Still frozen.