A Fistful Of Sky

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Cool.” I stuffed my own gloves in my jacket pocket. One thing accomplished. Whether I ever wore them again, I got to keep my gloves. “Promise not to be mad that they’re cursed?”

  “Cursed? They’re gorgeous. Just what I wanted! This power acts like wish power. Surely Tobias was teasing you, child.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How are they cursed?”

  “Try to take them off.”

  She tried to grasp the upper edge of one glove with the fingers of the other, but she couldn’t lift it. There was no dividing line between her skin and the glove. Maybe the glove was her skin?

  “How clever of you,” she said, in that tone that meant the opposite.

  “If they act like mine, maybe they’ll turn into real gloves after—hmm. When did I make them? Ten last night, and now it’s six? Say, eight hours? Or did mine get normal because you pulled on them?” Maybe they’d turned normal long ago and I had slept through it. “If you can’t wait that long, I’m sure you’ll figure something out. When you figure it out, would you let me know? I’m hoping people will have curse antidotes so I don’t have to be scared of using my power.”

  “I will inform you.” For an instant she frowned, but then she got up and headed for the house. “Have to see what the total effect is,” she said.

  I suspected she would head for the full-length mirror in the entry hallway, placed so everybody could check what they looked like before they went out to meet the world. Most of us didn’t use the mirror because we left by the backdoor, since we had to park our vehicles in hidden spots out back. Mama always consulted the mirror before she left the house. Her red Mercedes had its own spot out front to the right of the turnabout, masked by a pittosporum hedge that also hid the tarp tent that kept sun and rain off her car.

  The car. Mama had given me a message about my car. I better move it before I did anything else.

  No, wait. The shoebox full of chalk sat just the other side of the walkway. I picked it up and looked inside. In the pale morning light, the chalk colors glowed, enticed me to take them out and play with them. I shuddered. There were kids in this neighborhood who liked to draw monsters with sidewalk chalk, or giant warplanes having death duels with spaceships.

  I checked the path for stray ends of chalk and stowed all the bits I could find in the box, then took it inside. In my room I looked for a good place to hide it. Not that people came in and went through my things the way they used to. We all used to snoop through each other’s stuff when we were little, even though that went against the big fat rule about not invading each other’s space. If we told on each other, the person who had snooped had to stand in a corner for half an hour or more. Anybody who tattled got shunned for as long as the rest of us could remember. You had a choice of punishments: the ones Mama and Daddy administered, or the ones the other kids gave you. Sometimes Mama and Daddy punishments were easier to take. Sometimes it was worth the risk.

  After people went through transition, our interkid punishments got much more severe.

  Worrying about snoops finding my chalk was silly. Everybody who might snoop had already tried out the chalk; I couldn’t imagine any of them—except maybe Flint—would want another test-draw. I put the box on a shelf in my closet and shut the door.

  A strange little prickle of heat brushed my forehead as I faced the closet door.

  I backed up and it went away.

  Huh?

  I took two steps toward the closet, and felt the tiniest flush on my face. I opened the door, and the heat increased. I walked up to the shelf so that my face was right near the box. Sunlight hot.

  I backed away again, shut the door, walked all the way across the room.

  The heat was gone.

  I blew a breath up across my forehead, ruffling my bangs. Weird. Maybe I could sense things I had cursed? I dug the gloves out of my pocket and held them close to my face. Nothing. Scratch that theory.

  Or maybe the gloves’ curse had run out.

  I pulled the left glove on. It fit like itself. I waited a second, and pulled it off. Hah! No longer a trap! They were plain—well, cursed-chalk-speckled—gloves now.

  Maybe I had a sense of my own curse energy? Whether it was active, where it was?

  I went back to the closet to check. This time I held my hand out to the box, and felt warmth in the tips of my fingers.

  Okay. This could be a good thing. To really test it, though, I should see if I responded to other cursed things like this. I could curse something else and see what happened. Or check something I had already cursed. Right now, that meant Mama’s gloves. I wasn’t going to get anywhere near her until she figured out how to get the gloves off. She hadn’t seemed angry when she left me, but if she got frustrated, she—

  Mama!

  My car!

  I ran down to the kitchen where I had left my pack last night, found the car keys in the outside pocket, went out the front door and moved my car to its hiding place under the fig tree.

  Then I went back upstairs and finally brushed my teeth and took my shower. I set the alarm for later and collapsed across my bed.

  SOMEBODY knocked on my door a couple hours later. In my dream, I was carrying armloads of glassware. I kept dropping pieces, which shattered and sent chips up to nick me here and there. Small wounds scored my forearms and bare legs. The cuts didn’t hurt at first.

  The realworld knocking startled me, and in the dream I dropped three vases and a big crystal punchbowl. The splashing crash of breaking glass excited me. A big shard flew up and cut my stomach. Red flowers of blood burst out of my stomach, inner fire leaking from me to take shape in the air in front of me as cool flowed in. The flowers hovered, held their shape. I liked looking at them and wondered if this was my art.

  Knock knock.

  I struggled up from sleep, let go of my frozen dream life. “What?”

  “Gyp?” Tobias said from outside the door.

  “What time is it?” My voice came out scratchy, squashed by sleep.

  “Eight-thirty.”

  I groaned. What was with all these people who got up way too early?

  After a minute during which I contemplated whether I wanted to move, I got up, threw a happi coat on over the 6X T-shirt I slept in, and went to open the door.

  “Sorry I woke you,” said Uncle Tobias.

  “Yeah, so why did you?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “You couldn’t just come in and check?”

  “Gypsum.” He used ice voice. There was frost in his eyes.

  Without thinking, I straightened, woke up. I was not supposed to speak to my teacher and elder like this. “Sorry. Had a long weird night, and you woke me out of strange dreams.”

  After a second, he smiled. “All right. I admit I was too curious to wait any longer. How did everything go?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. “Sorry, Uncle. For this I need coffee.”

  On my way downstairs, I wondered what the rest of the day would be like. I had slept on the lawn, in a position that left me aching. Mama woke me at six. I slept for maybe an hour and a half, and Uncle Tobias woke me an hour before the alarm. I hated being awakened before the alarm! I hated sleeping in ridiculous positions so parts of myself fell further asleep because of lack of circulation. I hated having my sleep broken up into bitesize chunks. None of those things made me feel like I’d gotten any rest. Might as well have stayed up all night.

  Or maybe after I talked to Tobias I could go back to sleep. It wasn’t like this was a regular school day. I didn’t have to go anywhere today, not even school, my second home. I’d gotten my two-year degree last spring; I stayed at City College because I had a job I liked there, and now I was taking classes for fun. This was sort of my year of goofing off, only, unlike Flint, I managed to make it look like I was doing something semi-important. Dad had encouraged me to get a bunch of college catalogs last spring, but I’d stacked them on my desk without looking at them unt
il it was too late to register for any of the colleges.

  Dad had mentioned the University of California at Santa Tekla once or twice. I’d been to the campus out there—it was where Dad and July worked. Plus, there were all kinds of film festivals connected to the film studies program, films which the general public could attend if they paid for tickets. Opal had started a tradition of taking us to foreign and/or obscure films out there while she still lived at home, and after she left, Jasper and I went out once in a while, and sometimes took the younger kids. But there was something about the campus that made me uncomfortable. If I was going to a four-year college, I wanted to go someplace else.

  And yet, I wasn’t ready to leave home. I’d already spent my high school years somewhere else. While I was away, I had been so homesick . . . not for Mama, but for family, for being in the midst of all these people I knew and loved, and all this chaos of magic that I had never found anywhere else except with the rest of the family in L.A. But maybe I would be better off if I went away to college—

  Well, no. Not right now. First I had to learn how to deal with this curse thing. For which I needed Tobias.

  In the kitchen, Tobias poured me a big mug full of coffee and dumped in half-and-half and four spoons of sugar. “Talk.”

  I stirred first, then sipped. I told him about the chalk, Beryl’s plant, Trina’s head, Flint’s cake, Mama’s gloves. I glanced down at my waist and realized that I had taken my chalk-splotch dress off before I showered. If it had been stick-to-me like the gloves, that part of the curse had worn off. I told Tobias about the probable timespan of my first curses: less than eight hours.

  “Fascinating,” Tobias said. “You need to start a journal of your power use. You’ll want to note trends. The more you figure out about your power, the sooner you’ll be able to control it.” He went to the fridge and got out Flint’s cake.

  “Oh, yum!” I got up, grabbed a knife, fork, and plate, lifted the plastic wrap off the cake, and sliced off a piece. “Cake for breakfast. A dream come true.”

  “It didn’t make you sick?” he asked, even though I had told him that already. I had explained Flint’s theory of Flint Power plus Gyp Power.

  “Just try it.” The cake tasted maybe better than it had the night before; but then, I liked a few things better when they were stale—cookies, for instance.

  “Ah, well.” Tobias cut a piece for himself.

  For a while we ate in companionable appreciation.

  I finished my piece and sighed. I probably shouldn’t eat another. Dad hadn’t even tried it yet. Maybe Jasper and Beryl would want some, too, now that they had proof it didn’t hurt people.

  On the other hand, when Flint woke up, he’d probably eat all the rest.

  Before I could decide whether to grab more while I could, Tobias put the cake back in the fridge.

  “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 rolled 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.”