Cattywampus

by Ash Van Otterloo

  A dark look crossed Delpha’s face, and she rubbed her forehead with her fingers. Then her stomach growled so loud, Katy winced.

  “I am hungry,” Delpha admitted. “Real hungry.”

  Tyler seemed to sense his opportunity. “Well, why not come into my house? I can get you food. And water. And all kinds of other stuff, if you need it. Salt and dried parsley and oregano—”

  “You gonna feed us or cook us? What do I need parsley for?” Delpha spat.

  “You know, for castin’ witch spells!” Tyler grinned. “C’mon! I’ll go to the front door, and y’all hide behind the azaleas. When the coast is clear, I’ll sneak you to my room through the back door!”

  “Fine. But just for a quick bite.”

  Katy stared at Delpha in surprise. She’d barely put up any fuss. She must feel even worse than she looks, Katy thought, frowning. Delpha swiveled her eyes toward Katy.

  “Then we’ll look through my book real quick and figure out how to fix those zombies.”

  Delpha sounded so certain, Katy brightened. Maybe they could fix this stew they’d gotten themselves in before their parents found out.

  Maybe Delpha can fix it, you mean. Your magic is still broken, Doubt reminded her. Katy’s cheeks grew hot.

  “All right. Lead the way, Tyler,” Katy said, forcing a smile. “Let’s get Delpha fed.”

  One by one, they dropped from the shed onto the dirt trail and followed Tyler through the dense trees. Katy couldn’t stop herself from jumping at every cracking branch, half expecting to see a zombie at any moment. They’re spelled inside the cemetery, she told herself. She hoped with all her heart Podge had gotten away from them. Her vision blurred with tears just as they came up on a cluster of bushes covered in red and pink buds.

  Tyler turned, swallowing hard. “Y’all hide here.” His face was almost as white as it had been in the graveyard, and Katy peered through the branches toward his house. Rust-red wind chimes filled the air with pentatonic wonder as they jangled in the breeze. An old station wagon was parked in the gravel driveway. Tyler grinned and wiped his sweaty palms on his hands before tromping across the yard and up the porch steps.

  “I’m home,” he called meekly through the fraying screen door, which swung open before his hand touched the handle.

  Katy squinted. Tyler’s mother Muzz towered in the doorway, box braids swinging, and eyes lined with worry. She clutched a walkie-talkie to her heart, eyeing him up and down.

  “He’s in trouble,” Katy whispered.

  “We’re all in trouble, case you haven’t noticed,” Delpha muttered.

  Muzz lifted the walkie to her mouth and pressed the talk button. Her voice was all ferocious tenderness as she said, “He’s home, Honey. He’s alive, but don’t worry. I plan to kill him.”

  Katy felt Delpha tense against her shoulder.

  Muzz punctuated every word with a glossy crimson fingernail, talking loud enough to be heard clear across the yard.

  “You are in a heap of trouble, Tyler Jonas Nimble. I thought we talked about you not goin’ on your little ghost hunts without tellin’ anyone! It’s seven in the morning! Your mama and I were torn up worryin’ about you all night. You’re grounded. Forever. What if you-know-what had happened, and someone saw you?”

  Tyler flinched, looked over his shoulder, and hissed something Katy couldn’t make out. She felt embarrassed for Tyler, and wondered if she ought to plug her ears.

  Muzz pursed her lips. “I’m sorry, did I say I was done talkin’? What were you thinkin’?” She raised her eyebrows. “No, hush. I’ll tell you what you were thinking. You weren’t thinking. Did you even take your herb capsules? And did you have your inhaler?”

  Before he could answer, Muzz yanked him into a bone-crushing hug, swaying gently the way mamas do. Delpha rolled her eyes, but Katy suddenly missed her own mama desperately and wished Tyler would hurry.

  Tyler pulled away from Muzz. “I’m sorrry. I guess I’ll just go to my room now,” he said a little too loudly.

  Gravel sprayed as a National Park Service jeep tore down the long wooded driveway and skidded to a stop in front of Tyler’s house. Slam! went the door as Tyler’s other mom, Honey, charged across the yard. Muzz went inside. Oh, mercy. Poor Tyler.

  Honey’s red ponytail swung as she bounded up the porch steps in her khaki ranger uniform, cheeks flushed. “Lord ’a’ mercy, kid, do you want to give us a heart attack? You had no business being out in the woods by yourself.”

  Muzz reappeared in the doorway with a suitcase. Delpha glanced at Katy, raising an eyebrow.

  “We won’t have to cancel our plans, now we know you’re not dead in a ditch. I’ve stocked the fridge with a potpie for lunch. Your uncle Clement will be here sometime after noon. Can you manage to keep out of trouble for that long?”

  Tyler practically shouted, “Okay! Don’t worry about me. I’ll be real sure to lock THE BACK DOOR.”

  Delpha poked Katy. “C’mon, Hearn,” she whispered, clutching her spellbook. “He’s tellin’ us to go around back.”

  They waited behind the house for several minutes, not talking, until Tyler yanked open the tattered screen door, out of breath and arms teeming with snack cakes, a jar of pickled okra, beef jerky, and a glass of sweet tea. The tea dripped down the sides, as if it had been poured in a big hurry.

  “Here ya g—”

  Tyler had barely opened his mouth when Delpha snatched up several of the snack cakes and tore into the cellophane wrapping with her teeth. Katy stared bug-eyed as Delpha bolted the food down like a starving animal, barely pausing to breathe before guzzling the tea.

  “Delpha, you’ll get sick eatin’ that fast!” Katy exclaimed, grimacing.

  “I feel better,” Delpha gasped finally, thrusting the empty wrappers into Tyler’s hands. “Loads better. All right, Katybird. Time to go.”

  “Go?” Tyler exclaimed. “You just got here!”

  “The less you know, the better,” Delpha retorted. “This don’t concern you. You ain’t magic, and you’ll just get in the way.”

  Tyler’s face fell. Katy’s stomach twisted hard at Delpha’s words, too. If Delpha knew Katy was just spare luggage, too … Well, she was about to find out soon, wasn’t she?

  Katy shot Tyler a sympathetic smile. “But thanks for the food! That was real nice of you.” She glanced at Delpha, who was already trudging off through the woods toward Puppet, then turned back to Tyler. “Don’t say anything to anyone about all the the you-know-whats back at the you-know-where, all right? Keepin’ this stuff secret is really, really important to our families. We don’t mean anyone any harm. But you know how folks are.”

  Tyler pressed his mouth together and nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m good at keepin’ secrets.”

  BY THE TIME DELPHA MANAGED TO STOP PUPPET in front of Katybird’s house, the sun roared over the tops of the trees and early spring birds chittered a dawn chorus.

  For a minute, Delpha let herself collapse back against the rough wood of Puppet’s wall, head pounding as the world whizzed around her. Her stomach gnawed itself again like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, and a drop of red landed on the leg of her good jeans. She touched her nose. It was bleeding again. Lifting her wand weakly, she let Puppet rest, collapsing its stack-stone legs back into a foundation.

  Katy pulled out her dead cell phone and used the black screen as a mirror, wiping tear-streaked dirt from her chin. “Why are you wavin’ that dumb stick around, anyhow?” Katybird spat, chin quivering. “Mountain witches don’t use wands.”

  “This one does. And all the McGill zombies do,” Delpha muttered, rubbing her pounding forehead. “And I thought being nice was your thing, Katybird. You’re cranky.”

  “Ya THINK? You set a cemetery full of zombies loose, and Podge is gone,” Katy said, voice cracking at her pet’s name. “And Puppet …”

  “Not this again,” Delpha growled and tilted her head back, pinching the bridge of her nose. “For the last time, Puppet’s a shed, not a tree. And
it ain’t like I had a choice.”

  Katy nestled her head between her knees, not seeming to hear. “An’, anyway, Podge is lost. Or dead! I never should have taken him with me!” Her words choked off in a sob.

  Delpha frowned hard. They didn’t have time for this. They needed to find a way to kill the zombies. She crawled gingerly on hands and knees to the shed door and twisted herself down to the ground, her head throbbing as her feet hit the grass. “C’mon. We’ve gotta sort this out before those things get loose.”

  “But Podge—!”

  Delpha started toward the house. “Things leave, Katybird. Stuff dies. That’s life.”

  “That’s … that’s a heartless way of seeing things.”

  Delpha was already on Katy’s porch and thumbing through her spellbook, ignoring the deep sting of Katy’s words. “Better heartless than thoughtless. What if some innocent person wanders into that graveyard full of zombies? We gotta fix this.”

  No one was home inside the Hearns’ house. Katy explained that her dad was on a truck run and her mama was busy setting up a booth downtown for Spring Fling. She fished a key out of the flowerpot by the door, and the girls let themselves in.

  The house was creepy-quiet except for a fancy mechanical fountain that burbled in the entryway. Delpha craned her neck to gawk at the vaulted ceiling, then stopped herself as Katy waved for her to follow. The Hearn kitchen was cheerful, with orderly bundles of sage drying above the sink and dozens of elegant orchids on shelves that spanned the picture window. The smell of blueberry muffins hung in the air, and Delpha’s belly rumbled.

  Katy sniffed. “Smells like Mama made breakfast before she left. Want a muffin?”

  Delpha shrugged, not wanting to seem eager. Katy kicked off her sneakers and skated across the slick tile in her socks. She pulled a handful of oversized muffins from the microwave and a bag of jelly beans from the cabinet. Delpha settled at the high counter and flipped through her spellbook, snatching glances around the kitchen when Katy wasn’t looking. The fridge was covered in photos of Katy as a little kid: on her daddy’s shoulders, snaggletoothed and eating ice cream here, and riding the teacup ride together at Disney World there. She stared at Mr. Hearn’s smiling face with something akin to fascination. Delpha’s memory of her own father’s face had blurred long ago, after her mama had cut him out of the McGill photos.

  What’s it like, livin’ that way? Delpha couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever been that carefree. In her twelve years, Delpha’d had plenty of opportunities to feel envy over things like new shoes or beach vacations. That was okay. Delpha could transform her longing into plans—plans that magic would help her accomplish.

  But as Delpha gazed around Katy’s house, she ached with something deeper than envy. This … this was missing a faceless person or having a sad song like “Blue Bayou” stuck in your head, bringing you down all day. It was emptiness without a bottom to it. Delpha tried to shake the maudlin feeling.

  Still, a hazy idea of a man in a worn denim jacket and the smell of peppermint gum wormed its way into her thoughts, and a fiery stab of something shot her heart clean through. Delpha shoved the pain away and tightened her jaw. That memory was a little girl’s daydream, nothing else. Her daddy hadn’t been around like that long enough to matter.

  Delpha jumped as Katy dropped a muffin in front of her, then brushed the crumbs off her spellbook before tearing into its sweetness. After she’d downed three muffins back-to-back, Delpha paged through the spellbook as fast as she could without ripping the delicate binding. When she’d found the page, she read the fine print below the “Wend-to-War” hex, which she’d overlooked in the graveyard.

  Terms o’ th’ hex: Th’ undead army will wage war against th’ castin’ witch’s opposing clan (in addition tae murderin’ anybody what stands in thair wey) fur eternity, or till th’ Reverse-Curse is cast.

  Delpha shuddered, more relieved than ever that she’d managed to contain the zombies to the cemetery. She kept on flipping. There were spells to make a lover true, a “Getteth Lost” spell for banishing, and itch hexes for annoying nosey neighbors.

  Finally, Delpha’s eyes screeched to a halt:

  If ye’r daft enough t’ cast th’ Wend-to-War, this is how ye undo her, provided th’ undead haven’t murdured ye yit.

  Delpha’s heart leaped, her eyes scanning the text greedily. The spell appeared to be penned by two different people, one with neat and fluid handwriting and the other writing in a haphazard sprawl.

  “Hearn, listen up! Here’s the page we need!” Katy padded around the breakfast bar and leaned in. “It’s a two-part spell,” Delpha explained. “I do one half, you do the other.”

  “Why should I have to do it, too?” Katybird asked, chewing her lip. “You’re the one who threw the hex, not me.”

  “The hex only wakes the ancestors of the caster, to form a zombie army. For feudin’. Both the McGill witches and the Hearn witches rose from their graves. I think the hex bounced off you and worked for your family, too.”

  Katy’s eyes darted as she scanned the page. “So everyone from the cemetery will just keep fightin’ forever?”

  Delpha nodded, her throat tightening. “And they’re probably after all the Hearns or McGills, too, not just the dead ones. You, me, our families. We both have to undo this. And fast.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  Delpha sat up tall. “Here it is.”

  “Two witch spell. (Prob’ly the ones what done it in the first place.) Best to choose a crafty miss what’s full of vinegar and piss wits.”

  Here, the word “piss” had been clearly crossed out and replaced with “wits” by a witch with better penmanship. Delpha smirked to herself and kept reading.

  “An’ best t’ make her counterpart a lass what’s kind an’ soft of heart.”

  Katybird whispered, “That’d better be me, I think.”

  Delpha nodded in agreement and continued:

  “(First witch)

  With cunning mind an’ strongest will, I call the hex

  of war to still.

  (Second witch)

  Love like hearth with coals aglow, my open heart makes

  magic grow.

  (Speak together for this part, with feeling)

  These balanced pow’rs make evil quake.

  Together, watch the curses break.”

  “That’s it, then,” Delpha said, shoulders sagging in relief. Not too bad. She felt a smile tug one corner of her mouth. “We do the Reverse-Curse and the zombies die. You ready?”

  Delpha looked up at Katy and startled. Katybird stared at her with swollen eyes, chewing a wad of buttered popcorn jelly beans. She wore two giant oven mitts, no doubt in a vain attempt to hide the fact that her hands were glowing.

  But even if Delpha hadn’t seen the green light edging up Katy’s arms, her own skin had already begun to crawl with the God-awful sensation she’d had when Katy’s hands had glowed in the graveyard. It was a claustrophobic, knotted-up sensation. Delpha grabbed for her wand, pulse thumping in panic.

  “No, Delpha, wait! Listen, will you? My magic’s broken. I’m not trying to make this happen. It just does. My mama don’t even know, and I wouldn’t be telling you, either, except”—she slid off the oven mitts to reveal firework-sparkler hands—“I don’t know how I’m gonna do my half of the Reverse-Curse.”

  Delpha frowned and considered Katy’s face. Her feelings softened. Katy was dead serious. She seemed embarrassed, almost. But surely Katy saw how real her power was, even if something was clearly haywire with it. “Hogwash. You’re practically leaking magic all over the floor. Now sit down, and let’s do this Reverse-Curse before that ‘Stayeth Put’ spell wears off and all those zombies get loose.”

  “But—”

  “But nothin’! Sit!” Delpha flipped her braid and commandeered every ounce of her focus. The muffins had restored some of her strength, along with most of her confidence. Delpha wasn’t about to let on to Katybird, but
the way magic zapped her energy scared her. It made her feel like a lightbulb filament about to burn right out. This’ll be the last spell today, she promised herself. Then, rest. Everything would be set right again.

  She looked down at the spell and curled her lip. “I’ll go first, and then you do the ‘soft of heart’ bit.” Delpha glanced to make sure Katy was following. Katybird nodded. Delpha began.

  “With cunning mind and strongest will,

  I call the hex of war to still!”

  Katybird hesitated, and Delpha swiveled on her stool and shot her a hard look. Katy took a trembling breath, then recited, “Love like hearth with coals aglow, my open heart makes magic grow.” As soon as she said it, Katy’s hands hissed and spat cold sparks several feet into the air. Her eyebrows shot up in alarm. Delpha suppressed a growl of annoyance and tapped her index finger on the final lines. Keep going.

  Together, Delpha and Katy chanted, “These balanced pow’rs make evil quake. Together, watch the curses break.”

  For a split second, Delpha thrilled as an eddy of ionized wind whirled around them, lifting Katybird’s curls and tickling the back of Delpha’s neck. Then Katy shrieked as a large stoneware fruit bowl on the kitchen table exploded, showering them with broken shards and bits of apple and orange.

  Delpha’s heart skipped as she swore, and Katy’s face crumpled to quash a sob.

  “I told you I couldn’t do it,” Katy shouted. “I told you!”

  “You … you aren’t tryin’ hard enough,” Delpha found herself insisting, swabbing orange pulp from her cheek with one of the oven mitts. She’d gone dizzy with panic, but she didn’t let it show. “Let’s do it again.”

  “My magic is stuck, Delpha. I can’t control it, believe me. I’ve tried.” Katy’s hands were fading to normal, no longer shedding sparks. She jumped from her chair and started for the back door. “I need to go out and look for Podge before something bad happens.”