A Fistful Of Sky

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  She cackled. “Wait till Mama sees me like this. And Uncle Tobias. I look older than Uncle Tobias, and God knows how old he is. Hah!”

  “I’m out of here. You know where to reach me.”

  She cackled again. “Hah! If only it were Halloween, I could scare everybody in the neighborhood.” She hobbled out of the room. “Gotta find the Polaroid, get somebody to take a few shots of this. Hah!”

  “YOUR car or the motorcycle?” Jasper asked.

  I handed him the keys to my car. “More comfortable for me.”

  He smiled.

  As he pulled up in front of the Center at a quarter to four, he said, “How are you set for curse power?”

  “I cursed Beryl right before I left.” Should I mention the line of weight across my shoulders now? I was still under my own curse. I could use my power like magic. I’d figure something out while I was alone in the Center.

  “You did?”

  “She agreed to it.”

  He frowned. “You gave her a haircut.”

  “You saw her hair?”

  “It took some getting used to, but I’m halfway there. You gave her a haircut. You cursed her then, right?”

  “Only it was straight power, not curse power. Damn! I wonder if I need to take the Fashion Sense curse off her myself? I didn’t build in an endpoint. I’ll call her from work.” I realized I had said “damn” out loud. I glanced around. Nothing smoked nearby. Apparently while I was cursed, I could curse and not burn things up. Maybe I should use all my power on myself.

  “And you cursed her again?”

  “She agreed, both times.”

  “How come you never curse me?”

  I widened my eyes. “You want me to?”

  He looked away. “Well, no. Not right now. I have a gig tonight. But you could, you know.”

  “I’ll—I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “So,” he said. “How are you getting home?”

  “I have a date with Ian after work. He’ll take me home.”

  “What?” My brother looked shocked. I didn’t want to ask why.

  “I warned him about the curse thing.”

  “What?”

  Okay, that shock I could figure out. At some point in our lives, we had to explain ourselves to outsiders—if we were getting married. We always married outside the family. Sometimes we let friends know about us. Usually that took a family council to approve. “I can’t spend the rest of my life holed up at home,” I said. “For one thing, I’d run out of things to experiment on. Besides, the side effects really upset Mama. So anyway, Ian asked me out, and I thought it was an opportunity for me to practice in public, or figure out how not to practice.” I paused. “I don’t want to end up like Aunt Meta.”

  He sighed. “River Run is playing at Greenwoods Brew Pub, sound check at eight. Call if you need help.”

  “Thanks.” I grabbed my pack and my jacket and ran to the Center.

  “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,” Anita said as soon as I came in. She logged onto the center computer and punched out. “Thanks for coming in even though you’re sick. Are you sick? You look great! Have a great holiday, Gyp. See you next year.” She disappeared out the door.

  “Happy New Year,” I muttered. I clocked in, then toured the center. Study carrels, writing lab, microfiches, computers, tapes for help with languages foreign and domestic, all straightened, all alone. I was the only one here.

  I sighed happily and settled at the front desk, got out my curse journal, found a pen in my pack’s outside pocket, and set to work writing down everything I read in my mental datafields about the past three days’ worth of cursing.

  ONE person came in before six and asked for a brochure that detailed what services were available at the Center. Her haircut was okay and she had really good color sense, so I managed to restrain myself from doing anything to her aside from giving her a handout. She said she was sure she’d be back next year. We said holiday things to each other and she left.

  Oh, and I couldn’t resist adding a narrow turquoise line to the brown walls, suitably sleek and curved where necessary. And I added a subtle sparkling tint to the carpet. Just the briefest touch. No one would notice, right? They would just feel better without knowing why.

  I finished my journal entries. I called Beryl and told her my fears about the Ultimate Fashion Sense spell, and she just laughed. “I’ll figure out how to get rid of it if I ever want to.” She told me Mama had something to say to me when I got home, and advised me to stay out late. I said I’d do my best.

  The fog was rising by the time I clocked out and locked up. My shoulders felt extremely tight. I sat on a bench beside the building, near the access road where Jasper had dropped me off earlier. Last time I was here, I had been so scared, and it turned out I was my own bogeyman. This time I was trying to figure out what to do with the load of power I’d built up over the past two hours. It was still clean power for maybe another fifteen minutes, if my minute math was at all close. Shouldn’t I use it while I could be sure it would do just what I wanted it to? But for what?

  Could I use it on myself? Turn myself into a regular power instead of a curse person? I wished I had thought to ask Tobias about that, but other things kept coming up.

  I was so deep into contemplation that it startled me when a hand fell on my shoulder. I jumped. “Ian?” I said.

  “Who’s Ian?” asked a stranger. “You must be the last woman on campus. Waiting for someone?”

  He was tall, large, a little puffy-looking. Pale face, with acne scars; narrow pale eyes under slender, expressive brows; good teeth and a nice smile below a neat mustache; brown hair, close-cropped. He wore dark slacks, and a navy suit jacket over a light polo shirt, no tie. He sat beside me. He patted my shoulder but didn’t grip it. His hand dropped to his lap.

  The fog had closed in so that I could only see about fifteen feet away, and it was shutting down the sounds, too.

  “My boyfriend will be here any minute.”

  “I’ll just wait with you until he shows up.”

  I gave this some serious thought while I stared at him, memorizing details. Those rumors of a campus rapist. On Wednesday I had been afraid I was being stalked, but it had turned out I was chasing myself. Was this guy the actual stalker?

  Curse power or regular power, I had a huge supply at the moment; I wasn’t afraid of him. But what if I was wrong? I had a sense of my range and ability, but, despite my filled-out curse journal, I didn’t know my own strength. What if he was stronger? “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Dennis Ralston.”

  “Are you a student here?”

  “No. I’m a walker. I live up the hill, and I like walking the campus after hours. You shouldn’t be here alone. It’s not safe. Girls get hurt.”

  “Are you the one I should be scared of?”

  “You should be scared of everyone.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll go back inside.”

  He shook his head. “That’s no good. If I were stalking you, I’d just force you into the building, and that way we’d have some privacy for what I wanted to do to you.”

  Heat flared under my breastbone, built.

  “I mean, if I were that kind of guy.”

  “You seem to have given this some thought.”

  “A person does if he walks alone at night. You have to think about stuff like that, because you read about it in the news. Or maybe see something some night, but by the time you get there, there’s nothing you can do about it. Same way you can wander around and think about how to rob ATMs. Haven’t you ever planned a crime?”

  “No.” Well, there had been that brief fling I’d had with shoplifting as a child. Choosing a target object, observing the behavior of store authority figures, checking to find a time when they weren’t paying attention. Too emotionally exhausting for me. I had managed to lift one package of Lifesavers when I was seven years old. Mama found out about it and made me take them back and apologize and pay. That was the end
of my crime spree.

  “What time is your boyfriend supposed to get here?” he asked.

  “Six o’clock.” I checked my watch. Six-fifteen.

  “He’s late.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if he doesn’t show up? Do you have a way to get home?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Like I say, I live in the neighborhood. I could give you a ride.”

  “This conversation is giving me the creeps.” Rivers of heat traveled up and down my arm, flowed out from and returned to the lake in my chest. Flickers of red fire floated above my fingertips.

  I tucked my hand in my pocket.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Guess you should be feeling like that. I could be just anybody.”

  “If you really want to trick me, shouldn’t you be reassuring me, or something?”

  “There you go.” He smiled. It was a great smile. “I’m not reassuring you; therefore I’m probably not trying to trick you.”

  “Do you make it a habit to approach women alone and get into conversations like this?”

  “Actually, I don’t. If I’m looking for companionship, I can find it at singles bars.”

  “Oh. I hope you have better lines there. This one doesn’t work.”

  “I’m not trying to pick you up. You’re not my type.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “So what are you doing?”

  “Just waiting with you.”

  “Gyp?” Ian called from around the building. “Gyp? Where are you? I thought we were meeting in the parking lot. Gyp?”

  “I’m over here, Ian,” I yelled.

  “That’s all right, then,” said the stranger. “What kind of a name is Gyp?”

  “Mineral.” Stock answer. I got that question a lot.

  “It is?”

  “Short for Gypsum.” The instant after I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have. No reason I should let this guy know anything about me.

  “Interesting. Well, take care, Gypsum. See you around.” He rose and vanished into the fog just as Ian ran out of it.

  “Gyp! I heard voices. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was fine except for this load of power I needed to use somehow. I looked at Ian, a wiry guy my age with short straw-colored hair, sea-blue eyes, and a nice square-jawed face. His beige wool sweater was a little moth-eaten near the hem, and his jeans were an inch too short. I realized I didn’t have an obsessive urge to fix his wardrobe. Ultimate Fashion Sense had expired.

  Eighteen

  “GUESS we must have crossed signals,” Ian said. “I thought we were meeting in the parking lot. There’s not a single other car over there. I’ve been sitting in the car for half an hour watching the fog come in and worrying. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “A strange man.”

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Gyp. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right, but I have to use up some curse power now. I thought maybe I’d use it on that guy, but he never tripped my trigger all the way. I wonder if I should curse myself again.”

  “The curse stuff is serious?”

  I stood up and grabbed my pack. “Are we ready for our relationship to go there?”

  He blinked.

  “I mean, do we have a relationship?”

  He smiled.

  “I mean, do I sound like the ultimate creepy girlfriend with a question like that?”

  “No. I’ve been wondering myself.”

  “If you’ve been waiting for me to make the first move, we’ll never get anywhere,” I said. “I don’t know how any of this works.”

  “Neither do I. I thought you already made a move on the phone.”

  “I did?”

  “Asking me not to bring a bunch of friends? Maybe I’m wrong, but I kind of interpreted it as one.”

  “Hey.” I smiled. “So was it a smooth move?”

  “Smooth enough.”

  “It didn’t make you run screaming into the night.”

  “No.”

  “Cool!”

  “I’m not sure I get the part about curses, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. That. I guess that’s the next thing we need to deal with.” I sighed. “Maybe this part will make you run screaming. I don’t know. This is all new to me, so I don’t know how it’s going to work with other people. Wednesday night I got my power, and it’s the power of curses, and it builds up, and I keep having to use it. High tide right now. Understand?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll use it. Maybe that will help. See what you think.”

  I glanced around. What to curse, what to curse? There was the bench, which was a perfectly useful bench; I sat on it often. There was a line of concrete structures, waist-high pillars, to prevent people from driving on the walkway. There were slender-trunked eucalyptus trees growing out of the sidewalk, with their own grilled enclosures so people wouldn’t step on their exposed roots. A scattering of scythe-shaped menthol-smelling leaves fretted the sidewalk. There was the street. Behind me was the center, and nearby were other buildings, classrooms, offices. There was me, and there was Ian.

  I could call Altria.

  I took my hand out of my pocket. The flames were steady over my fingertips now. I felt the heat. Curse heat. “See?” I said.

  “Whoa!”

  “It’s gotta go somewhere or I’ll make myself sick.” I bit my lip. I pointed toward one of the concrete pillars. “But once you start thinking about things, you get the feeling there’s no good place to send it. Here goes.”

  I zapped the pillar, and it blew into bits of stone and rebar. Then the bits blew into smaller bits, and then those blew apart until the pillar was completely pulverized. Dust floated in the air, then dispersed into the fog.

  Ian jumped a foot and grabbed my arm.

  First normal curse I could remember casting. Well, since I blew up the computer, anyway. I wondered about that. What if the computer had really been alive? Had I murdered it? Killed a thinking being?

  I wasn’t looking forward to going to sleep tonight.

  “And that thing probably costs a lot of money to fix,” I said. “But I didn’t know what else to do. So let’s get out of here!”

  We ran for the parking lot.

  We were both breathing hard by the time we reached his car, which turned out to be a red Saturn. He dropped his keys three times while he unlocked the passenger door for me. Then he ran around the car and it took him a while to work his own door open.

  I leaned on the car while he worked at it, and then, when he was going to get in, I said across the roof, “Let’s talk.”

  He leaned on the car on his side and looked at me through the fog. It was getting dark. The light from the orange streetlamps hovered in haloes up where it was coming from; the fog was so thick that not much light reached the ground.

  “So was that okay with you?” I asked.

  He breathed, then said, “Yeah.”

  “Oh, good. Can I put my pack in the trunk?”

  Pant, pant. “Okay.” He opened the car door, reached in, and pressed something that popped the trunk. I went back and dumped my pack in there, pulled out a scarf my Ultimate Fashion Sense self had stuffed in there earlier—lavender snakeskin pattern—and wrapped it around my neck.

  I climbed into the car beside Ian. The seat was ultra-comfortable, and I felt relaxed since I had kicked all that energy out of my system. I strapped in and glanced at him.

  He was watching me. His eyes looked soft. After a second he started the car. “You hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seafood?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Bistro okay?”

  “Great.”

  The Bistro was one of the trendy upscale restaurants that looked out over the yacht harbor. I had never eaten there; it wasn’t one of the places we went in our Sunday Evening Family Forage. I’d heard the food was good, though.

  I had forgotten to figur
e out pseudo-date etiquette. Was this one of those things where we each paid for ourselves? Or did Ian pay? Which meant I should just order an appetizer, I guessed. Maybe I should ask him.

  “We going Dutch?” I asked as he pulled into a parking space down by the beach.

  “You want to?”

  “Is that a signal for ‘let’s do it that way?’ ” In all our previous activities, we’d paid for ourselves; we’d been with big groups of people and it had been the obvious thing to do.

  “No, it’s a signal for ‘what do you want to do?’ ”

  “Oh. Subtle.”

  We smiled at each other.

  I dug my wallet out of my jeans and checked the currency compartment. I had some money. “Let’s go Dutch this time.”

  “Okay.”

  Maybe we should go Dutch every time. Who knew if there’d ever be another time? Jeeze, this was nervewracking.

  The restaurant was decorated with blown-glass globes in all kinds of weird colors, supported by weird cages made of steel and antlers. A mess of the globes lay like alien eggs in the big stone fireplace. Each table had its own little glass-and-antler sculpture.

  Our waiter brought out weird breadsticks in a vase made of glass panels wired together. The breadsticks looked like slices of focaccia and pita buttered and dusted with sesame, dill, and caraway seeds.

  “Huh,” Ian said after he tried one.

  “Good huh or bad huh?”

  “Vaguely good.”

  I liked them. Lots of flavor, soft texture. I wanted to remember this in case Flint and I baked bread again. “You get the feeling we’re experiencing California cuisine?”

  “More than a feeling.”

  The waiter brought us a basket of root vegetable chips that ranged in colors from white to orange to purple to pink. The water glasses were blown-glass goblets with twists of iron around them.

  “Have you ever eaten here before?” I whispered.

  “Nope,” he whispered.

  We studied the menu in silence.

  Okay. I could afford a shrimp cocktail and a dinner salad. Not that they were called that. I closed my menu. Good thing there was lots of bread included with the meal. I checked the supplies on the table. Turbinado sugar came in paper tubes with illustrations on them in the style of Matisse.