A Fistful Of Sky

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  I drank my coffee, calmer by the time I got to the bottom of the cup. I couldn’t clean up my messes with curse energy, but I might be able to do it a normal way, with muscle. I went to the pantry and got out a stack of paper bags, then headed for the back porch. On my way across the great hall I kicked off the high heels, then stopped to peel out of the pantyhose. God. Girl torture. All my life I’d told myself I would never have to go through girl torture. Evil computer. Force me to turn into what I hated. Rage simmered inside my ribcage.

  I set open grocery sacks on the walkway and filled them with bread, pausing once in a while to eat a roll or a muffin. The bread still smelled and tasted great, only there was so much of it. We could take some to feed the ducks and geese at the bird sanctuary, drop some off along the beach where homeless people lived, drive around and ask random strangers in the street if they’d like bread. Maybe eventually we’d find a good way to give this out. But could we do it every day?

  Maybe we would never do it again. Flint had trouble with it. How could I channel power through him and not burn him? I didn’t know enough.

  I felt more curse energy building.

  I filled ten paper sacks with assorted bread, then went to sit on the wall above the orchard.

  My aunt had sent me away. She had been angry and scared because of something I did. I told myself I needed to understand that this was going to be a common reaction to me in the future if I went on cursing things. People would be scared and horrified. They would want me to leave.

  My little sister almost attacked me for something I did while not in my right mind. I needed to take responsibility for things I did while under the influence of my own curses, too, even though I felt like a victim. I had to own up to my acts and deal with the consequences.

  My mother and I were feuding, and I had separated myself from my father. I’d hurt my brother’s hands, and threatened my other brother with weirdness that scared him. So far, having my own power wasn’t working out very well.

  Maybe I should get rid of it. At least I knew how to do that. I’d learned something from that computer.

  “Altria?”

  Where was she? Was I nuts to even think about calling her? Did I need the protection stone? No. She had come to me upstairs without the help of the stone. What I knew about her was that she scared me, but also that she had saved me twice.

  I stared beyond the Old Coast Highway, the scattering of stores fringing it, and Highway 101 beyond. Out past every land thing, the ocean lay. Sun shone, but it was a hazy day, too hazy to see the Channel Islands, twenty-five or thirty miles out to sea.

  Presently I realized someone sat beside me. I turned my head and saw myself, the new edition, in red dress, makeup, styled hair; not a me I was in any way comfortable with. She stared out at distance, too.

  “What are you?” I asked.

  “A different kind of person.”

  “What do you really look like?”

  “A giant praying mantis.”

  I glanced at her, saw the edge of a smile.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Where do you go when you’re not here?”

  “I can be in several places at once. Now that I know you, I leave a fragment of myself here to listen for your call. I have fragments in many places; other people call me, too. I find doors in people’s dreams. Part of me is in a place that listens for new calls, like yours yesterday, when a way opened for me to find form. Invitations into new forms, plus power, those are my favorite things. Much of me . . .” She frowned. “Where I am, it’s not this world, but one nearby. Everything about it is different from here.” She smiled and leaned toward me. “I could send you there,” she whispered, “and stay here. Take your place.”

  I stared down at my hands in my lap. I had hurt my aunt. Everything I touched burned. I had more power than I knew what to do with, and when I used it, I had to hurt or disturb people. Wouldn’t it be nice to be the victim of a diabolical plan, helpless to prevent my own abduction, not responsible for anything anymore? I could go somewhere else and leave Altria to deal with the consequences.

  Then again, that wasn’t fair to my family. She looked like me. Maybe they would be able to tell the difference, maybe not; armed with all my power, she might be able to do a lot of nasty things to them before they could stop her.

  “Can’t let you do that,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll do it anyway.”

  I sighed.

  “But in the meantime, while I’m hatching evil plots, what did you want from me?”

  “I wanted to talk about the shunt. That’s one thing. I also wondered if you would work with me on a couple of things.”

  “Tell me about the shunt,” she said.

  I rolled my shoulders. Power sat on them like lead weights.

  “Suppose we set up some kind of feed so you could take part of my power?”

  She licked her lips.

  “But I would want to be in control of the shunt. If I need all my power, I want to be able to cut you off. If I need to get rid of some, I’d love to be able to dump it on you. It’s coming too fast for me, and I don’t know how to use it yet. But if we set up a shunt, I want you to promise that you’re not going to use my power to hurt me or anybody I love.” I thought about the computer and its ideas of help and hurt. “Only, do you understand what I mean by hurt?”

  “My definition is different from yours. A little pain now can lead to knowledge and growth later.”

  “Do you work toward knowledge and growth?”

  She frowned. “I will not tell you what I work toward.”

  I felt like crying. I wanted to trust her. I wanted her to help me. I thought we could do something we’d both benefit from, but she had to say the right words.

  She could lie to me and I would believe her.

  I wished I didn’t feel so tired and discouraged. Maybe I was making stupid decisions, courting disasters.

  “What’s your other project?” she asked.

  “I need to curse something soon. If I work with someone else who can direct the energy, I can turn my curse into a blessing. Will you help me replace the staircase I destroyed last night?”

  “Your power, my direction?” She grinned.

  I had a bad feeling about this. But heck. At least if we built something together, it wouldn’t be cursed, and somebody else in the family could change it.

  “Mama wants white marble,” I said.

  “Let’s do it.”

  We wended our way through stacks of baked goods to the edge of the walk where it disappeared into air. We sat down side by side and dangled our legs over the dropoff, our feet waving above the crater from last night’s big curse.

  “Rococo,” she said.

  I looked at the house. Early twentieth century, kind of a Craftsman house. “I don’t think that’ll go.”

  “Italianate. Gaudí? Byzantine?”

  I didn’t even know what she was talking about. “Classical?” I suggested.

  “Boring?” she asked.

  “That would make Mama happier.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  I looked away from her.

  If it didn’t work out all right, it could be fixed.

  If it worked out all right, maybe we could get back to talking about the shunt.

  I held out my hand, and she clasped it. “Lift up your feet,” she said. I scooted back from the edge, tugging her with me. “Oooh, you’re so hot.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Heat doesn’t hurt me. I love it. Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes and opened myself up to being used.

  Our communion felt different from the one I had had with Flint. With my brother, I had just poured energy out headlong and thought about what I hoped would manifest from it. Here I sat, and felt Altria draw energy from me slowly and steadily, comfortably. I was conscious of some kind of spinning, of the energy leaving me, passing through her, changing, hitting
the air and going solid, but I didn’t know what she was making of it. I didn’t have to hold onto anything. All I had to do was be, and let her draw from me.

  It felt good. No, great. I could get addicted to this. I listened to my slow, deliberate breathing and paid attention to how the tightness loosened in my shoulders, how contentment filled me as the tension left.

  “All right,” she murmured what felt like a long time later. She squeezed my hand and released it.

  I opened my eyes.

  At our feet, white marble gleamed.

  I crawled over to look at it.

  The steps were rough instead of smooth, with faint chisel marks still on them. The railing was delicate Gothic fretwork, all marble. No way did this match the house in color or style, but who saw the backyard besides the family? The stairs looked safe. Even wet, they wouldn’t be slippery, because of the roughness. They glittered in the hazy sun.

  I looked over my shoulder at Altria. “Beautiful,” I said. “Thanks. Thanks.”

  She smiled and cocked her head. “Now are you going to let me suck your brain?”

  I laughed and lay back on the lawn, feeling boneless and utterly relaxed, cursed out and clean. Birds chirped and fluttered among the bread, tasting here and there. A scrub jay landed on a loaf of wheat bread not five feet from my head. It squawked at me.

  “Gyp?” Jasper yelled from the house.

  Altria and I looked that way.

  “I’d better go,” she said.

  “You’ll come when I call you?”

  “Probably. Promise me energy and I’ll come for sure.”

  “Thanks again for coming this time.”

  “My pleasure.” She got to her feet, dusted off her dress.

  “Hey! Gyp!” Jasper was on the porch now.

  “Wrong,” said Altria, and melted.

  I rolled over and sat up, then stood so he could see me over ambient bread. “Hi,” I said.

  He jumped over bread and came to me. “What—” He glanced to the side where Altria had stood before she disappeared, then back at me. “What?”

  “Look.” I pointed to the staircase.

  His eyebrows rose.

  “She built it using my energy. I thought I better figure out how to fix all the things I ruined. That’s my start.”

  “Pretty good. It looks different. Nice rock.”

  “I hope Mama likes it.” I straightened. “Is Aunt Hermina all right?”

  “She’s getting over it.”

  “Did I burn her?”

  “No. She’s not physically hurt. She’s mad about a lot of things, though. What the computer did, what it made her do, ruined her research, stuff she’d been working on for years. Those plants are no longer things she can propagate and sell to nurseries. And she’s mad because the computer is gone, go figure. She has a couple disks, and she hopes her work is still on them, but they kind of got buried under plantlife so it’s hard to tell if they’ll be usable. She’s in Dad’s study trying them in his computer right now.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, hunched my shoulders. Maybe I could curse myself mute and then I wouldn’t be able to curse anymore. I could sink down silently into Aunt Meta’s fate. Eat myself up from the inside.

  “Let’s try the stairs,” Jasper said.

  I sighed.

  We walked down the stairs one step at a time. I couldn’t rid myself of the conviction that these stairs would be cursed too. Would they throw anybody who walked down them? Tip you over, send you sailing? My power, Altria’s direction, what was I thinking?

  I navigated the stairs with no problem, and so did Jasper. We walked out into the orchard to check them out.

  There were the weatherstained and venerable retaining walls holding up the upper terrace, and there was the gleaming white staircase, shining in front of them like something Photoshopped into a background where it didn’t belong. The mellow ochre walls of the house beyond, the glossy green of the orange tree’s leaves, the dark shingled roof. And that glowing staircase.

  It was a beautiful staircase.

  “Altria?” I didn’t realize I had said her name aloud until I heard it.

  She stood beside me and studied the view. Then she laughed. “Well, you said white.”

  “Yeah.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders. “Hmm. A bit of buildup already, just after I drained you. We can fix it.”

  “Okay.”

  She hugged me from behind, her arms around my waist, her chin on my shoulder. “Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes. I felt the movement of power from me into her, from her into air. Jasper gasped.

  “All right,” said Altria.

  I opened my eyes. The staircase was now golden marble veined with black, and it melted into the view, an organic part of the whole. “Much better,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s do different work next time. Something lively!”

  “I’ll see.”

  “Sounds like a no to me. So I’ll just take this.” She skimmed her hand across my shoulders, pulled tension out that I hadn’t even noticed, and vanished.

  “At first I thought the filtering effect would only work with Flint,” I said, “but I think it works just fine with her, too.” We headed toward the staircase, climbed the steps. They worked just like steps.

  “She uses your energy for anything she likes. Once it gets one step removed, it’s not your problem anymore. I wonder what she is. She took energy from me and used it, too. But then she kind of gave it back. Is she a vampire?”

  “Maybe.” None of the standard vampire rules seemed to apply. She could run around in broad daylight. What she was sucking wasn’t exactly blood. Was she a parasite or a symbiote? “Probably not. But I don’t know what she is.”

  “Oh, I forgot. You got a phone message from Phil.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I was looking for you. Phil left you a message. Says everybody has the flu and he really needs you to work this afternoon.”

  I groaned. It wasn’t even eleven yet and I’d been up for hours. I had attacked and demoralized half my family, and the other half had attacked and demoralized me. Now Phil wanted me to come to work? When I kept collecting curse power? “I better call him and tell him I’m really sick, too.”

  “He sounded desperate.”

  “He’d be worse off if I went to work with all this uncontrolled power. Look what happened to Aunt Hermes!”

  Jasper frowned. “Maybe you could take Flint with you. Things get desperate, Twinkie attack!”

  “Flint has a job tonight. Anyway, he’s retired from helping me. I burned him bad last time. I’ll see what I can do.” I dug a loaf of dill rye and a loaf of sourdough bread out of a pile the birds hadn’t pecked down very far yet and took them into the house.

  In the kitchen, I put the bread in the bread box, then grabbed the phone and called work.

  As soon as Phil recognized my voice, he said, “How sick are you?”

  “If I’m contagious, nobody else on Earth wants to catch this,” I said.

  “How contagious could you be? I thought you got hit hard last weekend, but you came to work on Monday. Are you saying you’ve had a relapse?”

  “Same sickness, different symptoms.”

  “Can you walk? Can you talk? Can you think semi-straight? Look, Gyp, chances are nobody will come in looking for a tutor, but you’re my last shot at getting someone to actually be here the required hours. My plane leaves at 3:30—Mary and I are flying up to San Francisco to spend Christmas with the kids—so I have to get out of here by one, and Anita’s got to leave on the dot of four. Could you please, please come in at ten minutes to four?”

  “Anita can’t just close down the Center?”

  Phil muttered something. “I’d consider it service above and beyond the call of duty if you could manage to come in today, and close up tonight. You’d build up some nice brownie points. You can close the Center at six; that’s when the rest of campus is closi
ng. Can you manage two hours?”

  “All right,” I squeaked.

  “Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  If I planned it just right—cursed something right before I left, maybe brought something to curse—if nobody showed up looking for help—

  This wasn’t going to work. I could tell already.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said to my boss.

  “You have a merry Christmas, too,” he said.

  We both hung up.

  The phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Gypsum! Just who I wanted to talk to! Hi, this is Ian.”

  “Hi, Ian.”

  “You busy tonight?”

  I covered the transmitter with my hand and sighed. Then I took my hand off. “I’m working until six, and then I have to go curse something. After that I’m free for a couple hours, maybe. What did you have in mind?”

  “You have to go curse something?”

  “Did I say that?” I said weird things to Ian all the time just to see what would happen. He didn’t know that any of it was true. Sure, he knew Claire, and he had met Claire’s mother. July never kept it a secret that she was a practicing witch, but she never kept it a secret that she wasn’t very good at it, either. You could know July, hear her talk about this stuff, and just think she was a flaky Californian, even if you saw her do craftwork. She did get things right. But then she was always surprised by it. And the sorts of things she got right were things that might have happened anyway, like getting something to bloom or summoning up a little nice weather so she could take a walk.

  So, because I made these absurd statements, there was a chance that Ian believed I, too, was a flaky Californian. Last week at this time there wasn’t even the possibility that he’d seen me do anything outré, and I hadn’t introduced him to my mother. We were much more secretive about our practices than July was.

  But somehow, when I talked to Ian, I just said things. Maybe because I couldn’t believe this guy, and I didn’t understand him. He’d spent time with me. Unlike every other guy I’d met, he kept coming back for more. Why? Whatever courtship signals were, I didn’t send them; I knew that much, so what did Ian see in me that no one else did? He baffled me. At the same time, it was kind of exhilarating to just run my mouth around someone who wasn’t in my family. I said, “It’s like a tic. I have to curse things every once in a while. You don’t want to be around when that’s going on.”