“Well, bless my biscuits. You’re little Caleb Hearn! The Hearns and the McGills are at it again, I reckon. Y’all better get on in here.”
Scooping Katybird into her soft, wrinkled hand, Aunt Eunice hobbled to the kitchen. The room smelled of a thousand pots of stew and an age’s worth of fried-bacon breakfasts. Hanging on nails were half a dozen checkered aprons and several iron skillets. Framed cross-stitch quotes peppered the walls with sayings like, “Bless This Mess” and “Praise Heaven and Pass the Potatoes.”
“Cut the light on, darlin’,” Eunice said, pointing and motioning to Caleb. She gently transferred Katy to a lazy Susan on her freshly scrubbed table. Caleb flipped on the light obediently.
Scooting aside a vase of silk flowers and a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like pigs, the old woman retrieved a carton of iodized salt from the cabinet. She poured some in a neat circle around Katy the frog. Then she struck a match and lit a banana bread–scented candle.
“I’m a mite rusty, but we’ll see how it goes. Hand the book here.” She waved for the spellbook.
Magic? Katy blinked her bulging eyes in surprise. The McGills and Hearns were the only witches in the Hollow. Who ever heard of a preacher’s wife conjurin’?
Caleb hesitated and eyed the old woman, having already witnessed his sister reading from that book and turning into a slimy pond dweller. Aunt Eunice grinned, exposing her gums.
“Don’t fret, darlin’. I ain’t plannin’ to use it. I just want to see what needs undoin’. I was close friends with Delpha’s great-grandma when I was a wee thing. Picked up a magical habit or two.” Caleb considered her smile, then nodded, turning over the book as if he were surrendering an unpinned grenade. Eunice smacked her withered lips and muttered.
“So you’re Katybird, huh? Messin’ with McGill magic, I see.” She clucked her tongue. “Y’all sure know how to make trouble. Guess you come by it honest. T’weren’t a McGill or a Hearn who could stop from tanglin’ with one another back when I was a young’un, even after the magic truce.”
Katy croaked in shock.
“Yes, darlin’, I know about that.”
Eunice thumbed through the book casually, as if she were browsing a sales flyer for the Piggly Wiggly. Her thick halo of white hair, braided milkmaid-style, made the old lady look like an angel searching for Katy’s name in the Book of Life. Chuckling to herself, Eunice continued talking to Katy as if chatting with a frog was as natural as passing wind.
“ ’Course, back then, the magic truce was still new, see. Both families were still goin’ at it like cats ’n’ dogs all the time, but in secret. Once, your great-grandma Fayrene, rest her soul, got her cornbread turned into a sack o’ spiders by Eudaimonia McGill at school. Liketa made her wet her britches. Here now. I reckon this is the right spell.”
Taking a few aprons from the wall, Aunt Eunice handed them to Caleb. “In case her clothes don’t turn back with ’er,” she explained, miming wrapping herself up, and pointing at Katy. Then she lay the open spellbook in front of her and winked.
“You shore you don’t wanna hop around for a minute? Last chance to be a frog for a while, I suspect.”
Katy croaked indignantly.
“All right. I ain’t got any highfalutin magic words, but I’ll do m’ best.” Eunice smacked her lips twice, then warbled, “The Lord works in mysterious ways. This young’un wasn’t born to be a frog, now. By the po’wr vested in me by heaven and by the state of North Carolina, I now pronounce you human.”
Katybird swelled suddenly into a human being, her legs raking across the tablecloth as the giant lazy Susan turned under her weight. She looked down and gasped in relief, grateful to be herself again … with all her clothes still on. Caleb grinned and clapped.
“I … I’d like to have a shower, if you don’t mind,” Katybird stammered.
“Down the hall. I’ll give your mama a call and fix us a nice snack,” Aunt Eunice advised. “After that, we can have a little chat.”
* * *
Half an hour later, the golden aroma of buttermilk cathead biscuits wafted through the shower curtain as Katybird gave her skin a third scouring with a washrag. Turning back into a girl had been a surprisingly clean process. No slime or puddle muck. Still, the memory of being a frog made her shudder, and she reached for the bottle of cheap floral hair conditioner for one last go. Once out of the shower, she squeaked a clear circle in the mirror fog, happy to see her own face. Katy fixed herself with a level gaze.
“You turned yourself into a frog, Katybird Hearn.” It was too ridiculous. And even though Katy stood alone in the bathroom, she couldn’t help but blush with pride. Accidental magic still counted, surely, even if it was something she never wanted to repeat. No non-magical person would have gotten such powerful results. That meant something, didn’t it?
Her doubts tapped her on the shoulder. It coulda been Delpha’s family magic jumpin’ out of the book. You’ve got no business foolin’ around with powerful hexes. You know deep down you ain’t a real witch.
Katy’s jumbled emotions dredged up bad memories. As condensation wept down the sink mirror, Katy thought of last year, when she’d been invited to her friend Alexis Gann’s “first moon party.”
Alexis was the daughter of the Hollow’s only hairdresser, who had moved here from California. Though Alexis’s family was non-magical, Mrs. Gann often burned piles of incense on her porch and arranged expensive-looking crystals into complicated grids across her living room carpet while happily crowing, “We’re summoning cosmic consciousness!” in her California accent. They were nice enough people, though. Katy’d gone for a few sleepovers.
When Alexis got her first period, her mother planned a girl’s night, in celebration. Only two other girls besides Katy RSVP’d. Everyone else avoided the Ganns (probably because Mrs. Gann owned a pentagram wind chime). Katybird, having nothing against brownies and cult-classic chick flicks, had enjoyed the night immensely … right until girls started trading their own “Aunt Flo” stories around a bowl of queso dip. They’d all looked expectantly at Katybird. And Katy had shrugged and told them her doctors said she’d never have a cycle. It didn’t bug her. It was a matter-of-fact part of being in her skin.
But Mrs. Gann had gasped and encouraged everyone to “send Katybird love and light, so Mother Earth will heal her body.” Katy had wanted to curl up inside her oversized T-shirt and die. The gesture was meant to be kind, but it stung Katy to the core. Too embarrassed to yell “I’m fine!” her stomach tied itself in knots instead as her friends stared at her with wide eyes and muttered awkward little prayers in her direction.
Katy hadn’t argued that she was perfectly herself, though she’d wanted to. Her uniqueness felt personal, private—not for sharing just then. Katybird wanted that to happen on her own terms, in her own time, and with the right people. Ever since then, the girls who attended the party would tell Katy she was “on their heart,” presumably because they viewed her “poor” body as some kind of lemon. Word had gotten around, apparently, because two other friends had cornered Katybird in Sunday school and offered to put her on the class prayer request list. Katy cringed at the memory and wished she could burn it.
As if making babies was the whole point of me existing, Katy thought, grinding her teeth. Or the point of any girl, for that matter. They meant well. She’d been sweet to all of them, of course, but their unneeded pity had worn Katy’s confidence to tatters for months.
Those memories tightened the stranglehold on the hairbrush Aunt Eunice had lent her. Katy glanced down and saw that her hands, which had apparently been glowing for a while, were starting to fade. Katy gasped. She hadn’t even noticed. It was like she was getting used to her broken magic, the way a person got used to the hiccups. The brush fell and clattered around the sink, and Katy’s shoulders slumped. Maybe you are a lemon, Katy.
“Shut up,” she whispered at the mirror. Her throat was so tight, the word “up” ended in a strangled squeak. “You can’t let
ignorant stuff like that get to you.” Katybird swiped her hand over the mirror, smearing the reflection into a watery blur. It was no time to wallow in self-pity. She had to look after Caleb. And as soon as she could, Katy knew she should go find Delpha, wherever Puppet had carried her off to, and make sure she hadn’t been hurt. Katybird yanked on her clothes and hurried out to the kitchen.
On the stove, a pan of ham sizzled and popped next to a lidded pot that simmered and spat, filling the air with the scent of sweet pork and collard greens. Eunice smiled and waved Katy to a chair. Katybird muttered a quick grace at the table, then scooped two biscuits from the bread basket with quick hands: one for her and one for a hungry-looking Caleb.
“Called your mama and told her you’re fine,” Eunice said, fishing ham out of the pan with a fork. “She shore was happy to hear it. Sweet woman. Said yer car was havin’ trouble, though. Told ’er you could spend the night here. I’ll carry you both down to the Spring Fling in the mornin’ to meet her. Your critter’s in a box on th’ porch.”
Katybird relayed this to Caleb, who shrugged and grinned, stuffing his mouth full of biscuit and grape jelly. Soon, he collapsed in a contented puddle of six-year-old drool. While she nibbled ham, Katy watched the steady rise and fall of Caleb’s rib cage inside his fading Guardians of the Galaxy T-shirt, grateful he’d found her. She felt a flash of guilt. She was supposed to take care of him, not the other way around. His fist rested beside his face—a habit he’d kept since his thumb-sucking days. Katy reached over and ruffled his hair. Her mama would not be pleased Katy had run off after Delpha instead of watching him.
Eunice hiked her faded nightdress and settled onto a chair. “Bless his little heart. He’s wore out, ain’t he? We’ll carry him to bed in a minute.” Idly, she gathered a pile of biscuit crumbs with her gnarled fingers. “So, what were you and the McGill girl tanglin’ over?”
Delpha’s angry face loomed in Katy’s mind, and Katy frowned. “Oh, you know. Stuff. Normal girl stuff.”
The old woman gave a throaty chuckle. “So, somehow you ended up with her spellbook? Ain’t nothin’ normal about y’all, child.”
Katybird felt herself flush. “Meanin’?”
“Oh, just your family bein’ cunning folk an’ all.”
“Cunning folk?”
“Magical. Not everyone can do what y’all can.”
Katy steepled her eyebrows. “Folks aren’t supposed to know about that. How come you’re not upset?”
“Darlin’, I’m about as old as the archangels. When you get this long in the tooth, you stop worryin’ so much about rules and focus a darn sight more on helpin’ folk. Holy is as holy does, I reckon. ’Sides, I was best friends with Delpha’s great-grandmother.”
“She taught you magic?”
Aunt Eunice cackled. “Pshaw, she showed me some of her magic. Y’alls magics ain’t the only kind. I reckon there’s conjure from every corner of God’s earth, so don’t grow a big head about it.”
Katybird nodded meekly. Her “magic” wasn’t anything to be proud of, anyway.
“Anyhow, I just nudged things around a bit. That spell woulda worn off eventually.”
“So … you’re not magical, then,” Katybird asked slowly. “But you can work magic? How?”
Eunice cackled. “I reckon everybody’s a little bit magical, even if they don’t know it. I treat it like a yellow jacket. I don’t bother it none, an’ it ain’t gonna bother me back, see? Sometimes, I can brush it off my shoulder without gettin’ stung, because we’re on good terms.”
“Huh.”
“But you Hearns are different. I reckon the yellow jackets are inside your souls, and you can’t help buzzin’ with ’em, bless your cotton socks.” Eunice’s chair creaked as she shifted her weight. “I was a midwife for fifty-two years, before I turned m’ practice over to Delpha McGill’s mother, sweet girl. You were the last baby I ever caught. I always was proud to end my catchin’ days on one of the Hearn young’uns.”
Katybird’s fork clattered against her plate, and she leaned forward with interest. “You … were there when I was born?”
“Surely was.”
“Did you notice anything special about me? Like maybe a sign of magic or anything?”
“You were as healthy as a horse. But no, you didn’t glow like the baby Jesus. Can’t tell a witch baby from a reg’lar baby.”
Katy swallowed hard and proceeded carefully. “My family … they ain’t sure I’m actually a witch. I’m kind of different.” Katy didn’t explain about her androgen insensitivity, the clumsy forest spirit spell in her bedroom, or her green Fourth of July–sparkler hands. Still, Eunice smiled a gummy grin, like she understood.
“Darlin’, I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.” The old woman said it with such surety, tears scorched the inside of Katy’s nose.
“I think maybe … the magic might not want me.”
“Well, now. I ain’t no Hearn witch. I’m a preacher’s wife who’s better at casseroles than conjure pots. But I’ll tell you one thing, Katy-lady. You were made for magic. To heck with bein’ normal, whatever that is. Pers’nlly, I don’t see how bein’ different makes a flying lick o’ difference. You gotta follow your own lights. Your soul is buzzin’ with a whole swarm of wasps. I reckon that’s why your magic is takin’ its time. It’s tryin’ to protect you from yourself.”
“Myself?”
“Well, yourself and Delpha, prob’ly,” the old lady muttered, raising an eyebrow. “An’ everyone else in the Hollow. Lots of folks who’s against magic. Now help me tote your little brother to bed. It’s gettin’ late.”
Katybird lugged her brother to the bedroom. Aunt Eunice went to bed.
But Katy tossed and turned, uncomfortable from the strange, lumpy mattress and the nagging worry that Delpha McGill was dead in a gully somewhere, making Katy responsible. Who knew where Puppet had run to, or whether Delpha had managed to stop it before it careened off a cliff? Caleb stirred in his sleep, whimpering from a bad dream, and for a minute, Katy considered crawling into bed with him. Blood was thicker than water, after all, and Delpha wasn’t even exactly Katy’s friend. But what if Puppet crashed? What if Delpha needed help? What if someone shot at the enchanted shed, thinking it was a trophy-winning deer?
Katybird slid out of bed, scribbled a note, and left it on Aunt Eunice’s kitchen table: Woke up early and walked to Spring Fling with Delpha. Caleb needs his breakfast cut up for him and doesn’t like black pepper. Then she sneaked outside with her phone and the McGill spellbook tucked inside Delpha’s satchel.
DELPHA DRIFTED TOWARD CONSCIOUSNESS LIKE A surfacing bubble. Light glowed directly overhead, but it was foggy and oh-so-far away. A worried voice called her name.
“Delpha? Delpha? Oh man, please don’t be dead.” A cold, clammy hand slapped Delpha’s cheeks. Delpha blinked, trying to make sense of the world. The blurry suggestion of light focused into the harsh metallic beam of a flashlight. It was a boy’s voice, and it kept on yammering. “If you’re dead, go toward the light—think harps and clouds! Don’t stick around and haunt me, okay?”
Delpha blinked and grunted, trying to orient herself. Crickets trilled. How late was it?
Finally, Delpha recognized the voice. Tyler Nimble. Perfect. Nearly a hand shorter than Delpha, Tyler made up for his height in double helpings of hyperactivity and superstition. The kid’s tongue was loose at both ends with a spring in the middle—that is to say, he rarely shut up. And because that wasn’t unpleasant enough, he tended to ask questions. Delpha sighed, her battered ribs aching. Social norms dictated that she not slap him flat like a mosquito, so she growled a one-word greeting. “Tyler.”
“Yeah,” Tyler beamed, adjusting his glasses. “It’s me!”
Delpha sighed. The boy was excessive.
“You’re alive! Here—I’ll help you up. Man, I knew somethin’ was going on out here tonight. I had a dream about haints, an’ of all the nights I’ve ghost hunted this month, something felt especia
lly good about this one. You hungry? Want a sandwich?”
Before Delpha could respond, a bologna sandwich in a Ziploc landed on her belly, along with a half-eaten bag of chips. She sat up slowly, twigs and leaves crackling beneath her aching body as she tried to stand. Dizziness stole her balance, and Tyler reached out and steadied her. Kid was stronger than he looked, she’d give him that.
“Easy, there. Want a sip of Coke? Ghosts made you faint, huh?” He popped the lid of a sweating can and eagerly thrust it into her hands. “If you see one again, tell me. I’ll be able t’see it, too, if I look over your left shoulder.”
Delpha ignored Tyler’s prattle and sipped the soda—too sweet for her liking—and stewed. Her anger toward Katybird Hearn crept into her bones like hot lead, and she squeezed the metal can until it dimpled under her fingertips. Tyler mistook her sour expression for indication she’d spotted a ghost and rushed behind her to stick his chin over her shoulder.
“Where? Where’s the haint? I can’t see!”
“There ain’t any such thing as ghosts,” Delpha said, shrugging him off. “I was out huntin’, but not for ghosts.”
“Then why are you here in the cemetery? Alone? Fainted dead away in a pile of old wood? That don’t make sense.”
“Nope. It sure don’t.” Delpha tried to stand again.
“Delpha, stop!” Tyler frowned and leaned into Delpha’s face, tilting his head sideways. “Look into my eyes.”
Delpha dropped her can of soda and bristled. “What?” she snapped. “Are you off your nut?”
Tyler blushed crimson. “Oh, mercy, not like that. It’s just your pupils are all cattywampus. They’re like, whoo, whoo, whoo,” he demonstrated with his hands, making starburst motions. “You look dizzy. You should probably see the doctor.”
“I … got knocked down,” Delpha snapped truthfully. She didn’t explain how. She had a vague memory of Puppet colliding directly into the side of something hard and the terrible sound of boards smashing around her. “Probably a concussion. Good thing you found me,” she admitted.
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