A Fistful Of Sky

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  I just wanted to go home and hole up.

  I handed Ian my driver’s license so he could check my address.

  He looked at it a while, then nodded and gave it back. He started the car and pulled out of the lot. “You cursed yourself back to normal?”

  I nodded.

  “And it hurt terribly.”

  “God,” I whispered. I had never imagined such pain.

  He sighed and drove me home.

  When he pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine, I took his hand. He leaned toward me.

  “Maybe you better just leave me here,” I whispered.

  “I don’t think so. I can explain this to your family much faster than you can.”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you really want me to leave now?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “I’ll walk you in.”

  We both sat there.

  “Sorry the curse kind of blew our date,” I whispered eventually.

  “Will you go out with me again?”

  “Do you want to try this again?” Some of my hesitation must have showed, even in a hoarse whisper.

  “Oh, yes,” he said.

  “Good. Then, yes.”

  He got out, came around the car, opened my door, and helped me out.

  The front lights turned on. “About time,” said Mama. “If you sat there any longer I was going to come knocking on your window and see what you were up to.”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered, mortified.

  “Hi, I’m Ian Bennett. Gyp lost her voice.”

  “Good evening. I’m Anise LaZelle, Gyp’s mother. Gyp lost her voice? How on Earth did that happen?”

  “You’re Gyp’s mother? Aren’t you on TV?”

  “Of course.” She smiled, full charisma mode.

  Damn! I’d forgotten Mama’s high profile.

  “You’re really great with the news,” Ian said in just the kind of admiring tone that Mama liked.

  Beryl swept up behind Mama and cackled.

  Mama jumped a foot. “Don’t do that!” she shrieked. “Go back to your room!”

  Beryl cackled some more. How could she be so foolhardy? She had just made Mama look silly in front of a guest, one of the things Mama hated most. And she wasn’t presenting a very attractive picture to a guest, either. Mama always said if we couldn’t be pleasant in behavior and appearance, we should hide while we had company. I often hid.

  “Hi, there, Sonny!” Beryl said. She looked incredibly ancient, and she was still wearing the magenta/acid green outfit she’d had on when I left earlier that afternoon.

  Ian glanced at me, then back at Beryl. “Hello,” he said.

  “Cute!” She patted his cheek.

  “Uh,” said Ian. He looked at me again.

  “Beryl. My little sister,” I whispered. Heat bloomed in my cheeks.

  He stared at me as though I was crazy, then swallowed so that his Adam’s apple bobbed, collected himself, and turned to Beryl. “Uh, hi. I’m Ian.”

  “Hi there!” She shook his hand. “Why is Gyp whispering?”

  I leaned close to Ian’s ear and whispered, “Say brownies.”

  “Brownies,” he said. He looked confused.

  “You’ve come for dessert?” Beryl asked. “Lovely. Follow me.”

  “Beryl,” said Mama ominously.

  Beryl smiled and shrugged. “All right, follow Mama, then.”

  Ian looked at me, his eyebrows peaked in confusion. I nodded. As we followed Mama through the great hall toward the kitchen hall, he whispered, “What happened to Beryl?”

  “Cursed,” I whispered.

  He glanced at Beryl. She smiled at him, introducing hundreds of wrinkles into her cheeks. She looked cheerful.

  “Cursed! That’s right,” she said. Maybe she was having trouble with her eyesight, but her hearing worked just fine. “Gyp cursed me. It was my idea.”

  Mama swept the kitchen door open and held it. We pushed past her into the kitchen. She said, “Will someone arrange a tray? Is there any coffee made? Let’s retire to the dining room when the preparations are complete.”

  “Do we have to?” I whispered.

  “Mama, couldn’t we eat in the kitchen? The light’s better here. I’m having trouble seeing,” Beryl said.

  “Child. We have company.”

  Beryl and I sighed simultaneous sighs. Ian smiled.

  I got down one of the cookie tins and a platter and went to work arranging brownies. Beryl poured coffee into a white thermos pitcher, put it and cups, spoons, a sugar bowl, and a cream pitcher on a tray.

  “While you’re setting the table, I’ll find Miles.” Mama swept out of the room.

  Beryl watched until the door flapped shut behind her, then turned to me and said, “So what happened?”

  Suddenly exhaustion overwhelmed me. I tapped Ian’s hand.

  “She cursed herself back to normal,” he said. “It hurt so much she screamed herself hoarse.”

  “Oh, no!” Beryl rushed around the table and hugged me. “How could you?” she cried. Then she straightened, gripped my shoulders. “How could you?” she asked in a puzzled voice. “You were never normal to begin with.”

  Was that right? But I had always thought I was normal. Wouldn’t the curse work through my beliefs? Or maybe that was why this curse hurt so much more than the others had. It had to twist even more to make my words work.

  “So your throat hurts?” Beryl put her frail, gnarled hand up to my throat and murmured something squeaky. Warmth flowed from her palm into my throat.

  “Ahh,” I said. I sounded like me again. “Thank you. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “There are lots of things you don’t know about me, young lady,” she said. “You stopped studying way too soon! But never mind that. Normal! How horrible!”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. All charged up and no place to go.”

  “Lots of things easier than normal,” said Beryl. “You could’ve made yourself old, or young, or a boy, or ugly, or a dog, or something. Normal.” Her white eyebrows drew together over her nose. “Is this what you really want, Gyp?”

  When I stood on the fog-shrouded beach and thought up my latest curse, I had asked myself the same question. I finally had power. I could do wonderful things with it, and I could do horrible things with it. If I were normal again, I wouldn’t have to come up with new ways to curse, wouldn’t have to wrack my brains figuring out how much I could hurt other people and things without hurting them too much. Normal. Maybe that would be best. So I had said my words, and tortured myself.

  I met Beryl’s gaze. “If it was what I wanted, it wouldn’t have been a curse.”

  She pursed her lips, then nodded. “Good point.” She turned to Ian. “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Where’d you come from?” Her voice switched from almost Beryl-normal to the creaky voice of a crone.

  “Beryl,” I said.

  “Idaho,” said Ian.

  “Idaho,” she muttered. “Welp. Better get this stuff to the dining room.”

  “May I carry that for you?” Ian asked.

  “Why, sure,” she said. She held the door, and he took the coffee tray past her.

  “I’ll get the other one in a minute,” he called back. But that was silly. I grabbed the brownie platter, then put it down again. It was really heavy, and my arms were tired. I sat down. Just for a minute.

  Ian returned. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m really tired.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Oh, no. Not now that Mama’s decided to make a production out of your visit. You have to stay. Are you all right? I don’t have the easiest family in the world.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Hey. Beryl put her hand on your throat and you could talk again.”

  “Yeah. That was nice.”

  “Your whole family is like that?”

  “Everyone but Dad and me. I mean�
�” I put my hand on my chest, feeling for my curse fire. It wasn’t there. “Everyone but Dad. And maybe me again, if this curse really worked.”

  He sat down in the chair next to me. “How weird for you.”

  “Until Wednesday.”

  He touched my hand. “Even then, huh? Blowing up a piece of traffic furniture or turning yourself inside out isn’t the same as being able to heal with a touch.”

  I turned my hand over and gripped his. My throat felt tight. I waited, then managed to say, “How weird for you this whole evening is, huh?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Oh yeah. I’m pretending it’s a dream. It’s more interesting than my daydreams, though, even the old ones where I invoked dark powers and made people do what I wanted.”

  “You had that dream?”

  “I bet most kids do.”

  “Only in my family, those dreams come true.”

  “Gyp—hey, who’s this?” asked Flint from the kitchen door.

  “This is Ian.”

  Flint came in and shook Ian’s hand. “Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Gyp’s brother Flint. Mama’s getting steamed, Gyp. What’s taking you so long?”

  “Sorry.” I stood up, then staggered. I’d forgotten how off-balance I was.

  Ian put his arm around my waist. “Come on. There are comfortable-looking chairs in there.”

  Flint grabbed the brownie platter.

  I leaned on Ian as we went into the dining room. He put his arm around me. And I wasn’t even screaming.

  It was strange and nice to be so close to someone who wasn’t a member of my family. Also it was confusing. I liked it.

  Mama, Beryl, Tobias, and Dad were seated at one end of the table. The candles were lit. Flint set the brownies down in front of Mama next to the coffee tray. We sat down, and Mama introduced Ian to Tobias and Dad, then poured coffee and passed out plates with brownies on them. Ian held my hand under the table while my family asked him questions.

  It spooked me. This was too much like interrogating a prospective husband. They weren’t supposed to get this serious after our first date. What if they scared him off?

  I must have fallen asleep sitting at the dining room table, because I didn’t remember going to bed, or when Ian left.

  The next thing I knew, I was in my bed, staring up at morning light highlighting the cracks in my bedroom ceiling, listening to the raging bonfire in my chest.

  Nineteen

  MY first thought was, Oh, thank God! The curse expired. The power came back. I don’t feel sick and lost. I’m me again.

  I had wondered more than once last night if I had cursed myself right out of the curse business.

  I sat up in bed and laughed.

  My second thought was, Oh, my, God, I fell asleep and left Ian alone with my family. Wonder if he survived.

  My third thought was, Opal’s coming home today.

  Then I wondered what to curse and how. I wished I had brainstormed curses with somebody so I could have been ready for this. It was going to be like this every morning, right?

  I glanced around my room. I’d finished superficial decorating during my UFS period, so that everything was different colors than I remembered, and things looked styled rather than thrown together. I liked the color combinations, but Beryl was right. It wasn’t quite right. My UFS self was not my real self.

  It was Saturday. Opal was coming home today, to stay through Christmas, which was Wednesday, and then drive back to L.A. and the current project. I hadn’t talked to her in a while, hadn’t told her I’d finally come into my powers. I wondered if I had a curse to use that would help me enjoy her visit. UFS was the perfect curse to help me deal with Opal; then I would feel like I was even with her about looks and fashion for the first time in my life, even if I was wrong. But I wasn’t ready to repeat myself, and how many more haircuts and makeovers could I do?

  Today I also planned to start my traditional Christmas chore. I was going to make lots of cookies this year—I owed Jasper three batches already, though the way he’d been shying away from eating anything sweet since he had tried out being fat, I wondered whether he still wanted them.

  Oh yeah, he could give them to his bandmates.

  Once I got his cookies out of the way, there were the regular Christmas cookies to make for all the parties. There was the Christmas Eve party just for family. Then a Christmas Day party, to which we all invited outsider friends, people who knew us well and people who only knew us slightly, so the family would be on their best behavior. A couple days after Christmas, we’d go to L.A. to Grandmère’s and Grandpère’s for the big semiannual family gathering. It helped to take lots of cookies to that, too. It was my big bid for popularity in the cousin stakes, since I hadn’t anything else to offer.

  But wait a second.

  Okay, this year was going to be different.

  Oh, God. Everyone would find out about me. Mama would either be proud or ashamed. I should figure out which and plan accordingly.

  And then there was shopping. I hadn’t done any gift shopping yet.

  I checked my clock. Seven A.M. Saturday morning. God, I was waking up early these days.

  Red light flickered near my chest and above both my hands, little half-invisible flames.

  Focus, Gyp.

  I pulled on pants and a T-shirt, grabbed my protection stone, and ran downstairs and out to the orchard.

  One of the lemon trees was dying, almost dead. I’d studied it the day before, but I hadn’t known what I could do then.

  This morning, with the image of the pulverized concrete pillar from the college before me, I had an idea.

  If I damned it, it would disappear, and I would still be overloaded with power. If I cursed it, though, the power would siphon off, and I’d be safe for a couple more hours. Theoretically.

  Most of the limbs were dead, but there were still two branches with glossy green leaves on them. I stroked a living branch. Red flame danced above my hand.

  I leaned my forehead against the smooth-barked trunk, avoiding thorns. Then I gripped the trunk.

  Could this be my answer? Find something to destroy every morning? Oh, God, I hoped not. How long could I do that and still feel good? Maybe there were things that needed destroying. I thought about garbage. Suppose I went through town and destroyed all the garbage of the day? Wouldn’t that put people and systems out of work?

  My chest burned.

  Well, this dead tree could just sit here in the orchard until it decayed, or I could use my power to do something potentially useful, like make firewood out of it. That wouldn’t interfere with anybody’s livelihood and it might, if it worked, give me a couple hours free of curse energy without my having to hurt anybody.

  “Shaped by life, now you’re done. Power’s the knife; many from one.” I spread the fingers of both hands wide. Foot-long blades of red power sprang from my finger ends. I aimed them at the tree trunk.

  Lesson one, if you’re going to cut something into bits, start at the top instead of slicing through the trunk low down. The red blades slid through the wood with ease. The tree toppled toward me after my first slice. I ran, but its thorny crown came down on top of me, though, because there were so many branches, it didn’t crush me. I lay on my back under dead branches, feeling the sting of many scrapes and thorn pricks. I waved my hands and sliced off more of the tree. The rest of it kept collapsing toward me, the few living leaves rustling, the smell of woodsmoke from the power slices stinging my nose.

  I carved my way out from under the tree, but by then I was so hurt and so mad at it I didn’t care that I was killing some living flesh with the dead. I raged through the tree with my blades until all that was left was kindling.

  The blades flickered and vanished, and I was left bleeding and crying in the middle of a pile of demolished tree, the cool in my chest a treasure.

  I slumped through the orchard back to the house, headed for antibiotic ointment, waterproof Band-Aids, and a shower.

  SATURDAY was
one of the days when everybody slept in. Mama and Dad didn’t work weekends unless there was an emergency, and those of us going to school didn’t have to get up for classes then either. Besides, we were all on break.

  I had the kitchen to myself.

  I made a big pot of coffee, put Joan Baez’s Noel on the kitchen sound system, and set up for cookies.

  Two hours later I had made Nestlé Tollhouse and snickerdoodle cookie doughs and was baking as fast as the oven could work. The rhythm and the repetition of beating batter, dropping spoonsful in neat rows on cookie sheets, putting them in the oven to bake, and pulling them out when they were done felt good. Finally I had found something which connected me comfortably to my previous self.

  My first problem came when I had finished a batch of cookies and they were cooling on wire racks. I realized we had filled all the cookie tins we had with brownies.

  I took the tin we had eaten the most brownies from, put the rest of its contents on a plate, and set the plate on the counter by the coffee thermos, where people could find it and succumb to impulse. I filled that tin with cookies.

  I finished baking the sheets I had already filled with cookies, waited until those cookies were ready to cool and set them on racks, put all the rest of the batter in the fridge, and went to find myself a driver.

  ON my way upstairs, though, I noticed that my hand was leaking red light.

  I turned around and went back to the kitchen.

  Okay, chopping up a tree hadn’t been such a great idea. But the grapefruit curse hadn’t been too bad. Worst thing about it was that it made the kitchen unusable for a while. If I did something like that somewhere else, maybe even that wouldn’t be a problem.

  I took a banana from the fruit bowl and headed to the orchard.

  I sat at the edge of our old garden plot below the pool yard and studied the banana. Whatever I did to it, I didn’t want to give it the power to hurt anybody. I should tell it something that would keep it here, outside the parts of the yard where people usually went. Also, because the curse put a reverse on well-wishing, I should tell it to be something bad, maybe. But what? Everything that came to mind seemed ambiguous, with too many ways it could go wrong. I wished I were better with words.