A Fistful Of Sky

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “When you curse things, what does it involve? Is it like Tourette’s? Do you just say nasty things to them? Display your vocabulary and your imagination? I’d love to see that.”

  “No, I really curse them. I curse them to fall apart or grow too fast or rot. Actually, I just got this power, so I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but I have to do something.”

  “I’d love to see that, too.”

  “But Ian—I mean, what if I cursed you by mistake?”

  “Is it fatal?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Is it permanent?”

  “I’m still exploring that part. Sometimes it wears off after, uh—” what had the computer said? “—six point seven hours. Sometimes it lasts, but that seems to be when I combine it with something else.”

  “Six point seven hours,” he said thoughtfully. “So, say, you curse me at six-thirty, by one-twelve, I’m back to normal?”

  “You can do math? With minutes?” For some reason this made me mad.

  “It’s a tic,” he said.

  I laughed. “Can you pick me up at the Learning Center at six?” I didn’t want to drive. Too used to cussing out other drivers—I didn’t want to do anything automatic where the consequences could be dire. I was hoping I could get someone to drop me off this afternoon, but I hadn’t figured out how to get home afterward. Catch a bus? What if I got mad at other passengers? I hadn’t used the bus system enough to know if that was something I would do. Ask someone to pick me up? I wondered how busy Jasper was.

  If Ian could pick me up, I wouldn’t have to bother my brother. But what was I going to do about Ian and curses? What if I cursed him, for real, and he hated me?

  Unless I gave up my power, it was going to be part of me for the rest of my life. I wasn’t reconciled to giving up the power, especially when I didn’t know who to give it to. I guessed I might as well test my friendships with it, because sooner or later, they’d be bumping up against it.

  Later I might have better control. Later might be better.

  But where did that leave me now? Here he was, asking to meet me, and I’d agreed. Cancel now? On the off-chance I could learn how to handle myself and we could try again later? Or just go with it and see what happened? I’d already told him what was going on.

  He said, “Six would be okay.”

  “So what was it you had in mind for this evening, anyway?” I asked.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Since you’ll be at the beach anyway, how about a stroll along the breakwater at dusk, and some kind of seafood? There’s a couple nice restaurants down there.”

  “Is this, like, an actual date-type thing?” Part of what baffled me about Ian’s approach was that he invited me to things, and I thought, Is this a date? Only it was things like going to a movie with him and five friends, or going to a concert with Claire, or there’s a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum, want to meet there and take a look? I asked three other people to come, so we’ll have someone to discuss it with. Or there’s a Sing Your Own Messiah at Grace Lutheran tonight, want to go sing? We both like singing four-part music, and besides, Susie and Janet and George will be there.

  He never picked me up, and he never took me home. We always went with company.

  I always had a good time. There were always moments when Ian and I wandered around alone with each other, and I got a chance to say stupid things, and he responded with wild claims about his own family, who lived in Idaho and never came to California.

  I had such a crush on him.

  “I mean, is it going to turn out that you bring about six friends and we have a lovely time, only I have to curse them since they’re there, and I turn them all into statues, or something, and then you never call me again?”

  “Uh,” he said.

  “Not that I’d mind if you brought friends. Except—no, maybe I would mind. I have to tell you that up front this time, because when I’m irritated, I bet the curses work out even worse.”

  “Um.”

  “I mean, Ian, I only got this power Wednesday night, and I really don’t know what I’m doing yet. Some of the results have been horrible.”

  For a minute he didn’t say anything. Then he said, “I’ll come alone.”

  “Good.”

  Neither of us spoke.

  “See you later,” I said at last.

  “Later.”

  We hung up. My heart felt light.

  My shoulders felt tense.

  The kitchen door flapped open behind me, and I turned around. Beryl came in.

  Suddenly I remembered I still wore Opal’s dress, Opal’s makeup. “Okay, okay. I’m going upstairs to change,” I said.

  Beryl sighed and handed me a pair of high heels and a snarl of pantyhose. “You left these in the hall. This outfit stuff, borrowing Opal’s things, it was connected to a curse, right? You didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “I cursed the computer, and the computer cursed me back. It made me think about nothing but how to look better.” I shook my head. “It was the worst, the absolute worst.”

  “Well, it worked. I didn’t know you could look like that.”

  “What?”

  “You’re pretty!” The words burst out of her with a bitter edge.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m going up to wash my face. I’ll never do this again. Or maybe I shouldn’t say never, but I won’t do it on purpose again.”

  “Shut up,” Beryl said.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “How come you never looked like that before?”

  I felt bewildered. “Why should I?”

  “Because you can.”

  “But it’s not me.”

  “But it is you. There you are, you, and you look like that.”

  “But—” Huh?

  “You could look good every day! Why are you always disguising yourself?”

  “Disguising—I don’t care what I look like.” Well, I did have that one good outfit, but now it was covered with chalk splotches. I had some other dresses, too. Nothing fancy, but a step up from slob. I mean, there were moments when I thought it was a good idea to dress up, like when I went to work. But I never wanted to dress up much. “I just want to be comfortable.”

  “How uncomfortable are you now?”

  I looked down at Opal’s dress on me. It was tight, but it wasn’t uncomfortably tight. I couldn’t even feel the makeup enough to tell if it was still on my face. My hair felt a little strange, but I hadn’t noticed it until this moment.

  “This is red. I never wear red.”

  “But it’s a great color on you! It puts roses in your cheeks. You look all healthy and glowing.”

  “Maybe that’s the makeup.”

  “Either way.”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  Her hands curled into fists; her face tightened in frustration. “Because you’ve been hiding for years!”

  “What are you talking about? I’ve been right here.”

  “But you—arrrgh!”

  Having my little sister growl at me added weight to my already tight shoulders. “I’m going to turn back into myself now, Beryl. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of my way. The power’s riding me right now, and it wants out.”

  “Hey. I got the answer to that. Do your worst.”

  “You’re seriously daring me?”

  “You got it.” She scrawled something on her palm, muttered some words too low for me to hear. Then she held up her hand. She had built a shield, but it wasn’t the kind Jasper or Tobias had used; it was nearly transparent, but flashed opalescent colors.

  What should I do to my little sister? I had to curse something, and she thought she was prepared. Whatever it was, it would last about seven hours. It might not even land on her.

  Curses that sounded good worked out badly. I had told the grapefruit to be plump, juicy, and tasty, and look where that ended up. I had told the computer to help, and that had been awful. Maybe if I said something that actual
ly sounded like a curse, it would work out better.

  I stared at my sister. She looked pale. I realized how much I loved her. We’d never had a fight like this before. She had been nice to me when everybody else was picking on me. I thought we were friends. How could I curse her?

  “Come on,” she said. “Give it your best shot.”

  “I can’t figure out what to do. I don’t want to curse you.”

  She sighed in disgust. “Quit being such a martyr. Do something mean.”

  I checked the clock. About twenty minutes after eleven. I couldn’t do math with minutes! But whatever I dropped on her, it would last until around six-thirty, say. “Do you have any plans for this afternoon?”

  “Stop stalling!”

  “Ultimate Fashion Sense!” I yelled. I pointed my hand toward her. Heat balled in my chest. No! Not another outfit ruined, I thought. This one’s not even mine! Power, leave through my hand instead!

  The power listened to me. It gathered in my chest, flowed up to my shoulder, then shot down my right arm and out my fingers at my sister.

  She looked fierce and held up her shield.

  The shield glowed red, then orange, then white. A ball of power collected in it and shot back at me.

  Seventeen

  IT slammed into me, and I screamed, the impact was so unexpected! But it didn’t hurt. First there was heat, then a wave of flickery tingling, then sort of a champagne-bubbles-in-my-brain feeling. I blinked a couple of times and stared at my sister.

  “No, no, no,” I said.

  Her hand dropped to her side. “Ultimate Fashion Sense? What kind of curse is that?”

  “You can’t possibly wear that skirt with that blouse. Those socks!”

  She glanced down at herself. “What’s wrong with my socks?”

  “Ribbed socks? With plaid? Not midcalf height! Please! Either anklets or knee-highs. And your hair? How can you live with it?”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “You can’t go out in public with that hair. Come on.” I grabbed her arm and dragged her upstairs.

  “Gyp, what are you doing?”

  “I have to cut your hair. It’s imperative. No one should have to live with looking at that any longer.”

  “Gyp?”

  I took her to the upstairs bathroom, sat her on the toilet, got the Fiskar scissors and a comb out of the drawer, wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and went to work.

  “Gyp, what are you doing? You’re scaring me,” she said in a small voice.

  “I’ll be done in a few. I won’t hurt you if you just sit perfectly still. Keep your eyes closed.” I wet the comb, tested different parts on her head, considered the results if I layered or cut straight across, allowing for the natural wave she had. Colors. She should have maybe a light wash of something. “So what kind of shield was that?”

  “A reflector.”

  “Clever. It worked, huh?”

  “I don’t know. Is Ultimate Fashion Sense really a curse?”

  I tapped my upper palate with the tip of my tongue. “You tell me. I’m obsessed with details of appearance, and I don’t know what I’m doing.” I scissored about ten inches of hair off the side of her head.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing?”

  “Hold still.” Maybe she’d look good with asymmetric hair, long on one side, short on the other. She could start a trend. “Do you have any gel?”

  “No!”

  I glanced in the mirror. Oh, my God! My hair!

  Not now. One thing at a time.

  I wet-combed Beryl’s hair and sliced off some more of it, evened the ends, layered the back. She’d been wearing her hair schoolgirl long for years, and it didn’t flatter her face. Something short and playful. Bangs. She could use some bangs. Short straight ones right across her forehead. She had such great eyes and eyebrows. Her face was a nice shape. I tried wet-combing her hair a few different ways, wished I had those clips they had at salons to separate her hair out into different pieces for special treatment, but no. Work with what I had. I combed and snipped.

  I checked through the bathroom drawers.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keep your eyes shut.” I found an old hair dryer of Opal’s and plugged it in, found some mousse, shook the bottle, squirted an egg of it into my hand, and smoothed it through Beryl’s hair. Then I used the blow dryer to style it.

  “You really don’t know what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Nope.” One more comb-through, and I stood back to study the results.

  Cute. Very, very cute. With all that hair out of her face, you saw what classic bone structure she had.

  “Okay. I’m done.”

  She opened wide violet eyes, and she looked even better. She glanced at the towel on her shoulders, saw all the hair I’d cut off her head, and shut her eyes again. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Yep.” I whisked the towel off her, poked her to get her to stand up, and shook the towel out into the toilet.

  “No, I mean, you chose that curse just to torture me, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You knew it would bounce, and—”

  “I did not.”

  She took a deep breath and looked in the mirror. “Oh!”

  I stuck the towel in the hamper. I put away the tools. I could try to cut my own hair, but I’d probably mess it up. Better to pay a professional and give really explicit instructions.

  Beryl’s eyes met mine in the mirror. “I don’t look like me.”

  “Join the club. What I’d really like to do is add some red highlights—” And then I thought, Hey, I’ve got a little power, just—I put my hand on her hair and let out a trickle of power. Her hair blushed.

  How did that work?

  “Wait. I’m sorry. I don’t know how that worked. What if it’s curse energy, and it makes your hair fall out, or something?”

  She turned to look directly at me. “You’re already cursed.”

  “I am cursed. It’s very odd. This is like the curse from this morning, only I don’t hate it. It’s Girl Power, but it’s not disabling. I mean, I know my own mind. I know what I think and what I want. I know that it’s an aberration, me thinking I know what everybody should look like and how they should dress. I’ll survive this, as long as I don’t take my checkbook or my debit card out of the house. I’ll just hate how everything looks until it wears off, except your hair. I like your hair now. You know, that shield was pretty nasty. Why’d you tell me to do something mean?”

  “I was mad at you.”

  “You really wanted me to mess myself up, huh? That’s going to go over well at work and on my date tonight.”

  “Work? Date?”

  I ran my hand through her hair. “It feels all right.” I frowned. “It looks great. I wonder how long the red will last. Hope I didn’t do you any damage.”

  She glanced at her image again. “I almost like it.”

  “You will.” I looked past my sister at my own face. Most of the makeup I’d put on earlier was still there. My lips were way too bright. Something subtle would be better. The rest of it was sloppy. Girlish, but messy.

  I brushed my hand across my face, and the makeup disappeared.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  I ran my finger over my lips. A nice plum stain followed my touch, a perfect fit in the lipline. I darkened the color of the top lip a little. Interesting. I ran my fingers over my eyebrows, straightening and darkening them. I outlined my eyes with off-black, not too wide a line, but smooth and even, then touched silver-pink shadow onto my eyelids.

  “Gyp,” Beryl said.

  “In a minute,” I muttered. A faint rose blush above the cheekbones and along the jawline. None of it obvious. All of it improving on nature. I took a look at the overall effect. Good.

  “Okay, what?”

  “You’re doing an Opal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re putting on makeup without
the makeup.”

  I frowned at her, then at my reflection, then at my fingertips. I thought about Jasper and me playing with Opal’s beauty brush, a lifetime ago, and smiled. “Oh well.”

  “If you landed that curse on me, could I do what you’re doing?”

  “Why can’t you just do it anyway?”

  “But I—” She glanced at her reflection, then at me. “How do you know what color to choose?”

  I shifted my shoulders. Yes, despite these tiny flares of power I played with, I was building up to another curse. I checked my watch. Maybe an hour had passed since I had cursed myself. Apparently plenty of time for me to amass more power. I put my hand on my sister’s head. “Want to see what happens when you have this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Make up your mind. I don’t need a double dose of this.”

  “You think it’ll wear off in a few hours?”

  “If it works like some of my other curses.”

  “Why is it a curse?”

  “At the moment I’m not sure. When it wears off, I’ll know. At least this answers one question. I guess it’s a curse because I think it’s a curse, not because the person being cursed thinks it is.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I gathered a blast of power. “Ultimate Fashion Sense!” I said, and felt the power flow along my arm and into my sister’s head.

  Somehow this reminded me of Sailor Moon and Pretty Sammy and Magic Knights Rayearth. Maybe I should study Japanese animation to get my curse ideas. The superhero girls always shouted things when they used their powers. Mystical Water Dragon! Pretty Mutation Magical Recall! What would happen if I said that to somebody and backed it with curse power?

  Beryl jolted under my hand, gripped the side of the sink, then steadied. I took my hand away. She checked herself in the mirror. “Oh!” she said. “It is a good haircut.” She smiled at me.

  “Meanwhile, I have to get out of this dress. Even if it does look good, it’s not mine.”