“They left us, Fido.”
Fido snurfled around Piper, trying to figure out where she was hiding food.
“They didn’t even wake me up! Couldn’t they have at least said good-bye and told me when they’d be back?”
Fido offered another lick, slurping her across the chin.
Piper pet him consolingly. “You’re left behind a lot, huh? I guess I am too, now.”
A line of drool came out of the side of Fido’s mouth. For the love of all that was holy, would she not feed him a morsel of something?
“Do you want a Fido Treat?”
Fido did indeed want a Fido Treat. More than he could possibly communicate with his grumbling bark and his smushed-up, wrinkly face. He flew about the kitchen excitedly, knocking into things until Piper gave him two treats in his bowl, and he crouched down and gobbled and crunched.
As it happened, it was a Sunday. For Betty, the Lord’s day was all about church, and come rain or shine she saw to it that the McClouds were present and accounted for lest there was someone taking attendance in a loftier sphere. As though the day had no end to its anomalies, Betty McCloud didn’t feel up to going to church. Joe didn’t want to leave her side, and so Piper was sent off as the sole representative of the McCloud clan.
Walking down Creek Road, the first farm Piper passed, and the McCloud’s nearest neighbors, was the Miller farm. The Millers were also on their way to church, but when they saw Piper, they pushed on ahead and didn’t greet her or acknowledge her in any way. This was far from an anomaly.
After the Miller farm was a long stretch of neatly planted corn and wheat fields that led into a thicket of trees. Past the thicket was Main Street, at the head of which stood the church. Lowland County Church was a white clapboard building, ample enough to hold the small congregation of farmers and their children, its one claim to grandness being a tall steeple, a sure signal to the Almighty that Lowland County worshippers meant business.
Today was the first time that Piper had walked the entire distance to town without floating or flying. By the time she reached the thicket of trees, her feet ached and her leg muscles complained. Walking, Piper decided as she leaned up against a tree to rest, was her least favorite thing to do. Another reason to add to her very long list of why flying was better.
As she rested, Piper caught sight of an old woman hobbling down a forest path carrying an electric blender.
In the same way that everyone in Lowland County knew all there was to know about Piper and her flying, Piper knew all about this old woman.
She had been born and christened with the name Bertie Becca, but the name hadn’t stuck. She’d been an odd baby who grew into an odder child, so that by the time she was an adult, she’d turned full-blown strange. She wasn’t strange in the way Piper was strange, though; she had a different variety of it that was all her own.
Bertie once said that the wind had told her to cut her hair, and she’d shorn her head like a sheep and then covered it in goose fat to hold her body heat in. She was a rather shocking and smelly sight around Lowland County after that. Another time, she had an argument with a strawberry bush and returned to yell at it every afternoon for a week until it died.
When she was a teenager, Bertie had a dream that a snake was eating her heart out. At the last moment a raven swooped down and pecked the snake away. This, she claimed, was a sure sign that her true name was Raven, and she demanded that she be called such. The Lowland County boys were delighted and took to calling her Stark Raven Mad. The name stuck, in a shorter version, and one and all, including the minister, called her Stark Raven until people could hardly remember that Bertie Becca had ever been her given name.
The problem with Stark Raven was not her eccentricities or her strangeness but her brilliance. For about one in ten things she did had the stroke of absolute genius. Like the time she had stopped a swarm of locusts from eating all the Lowland County crops by offering them a cup of sweet tea. The locusts drank the tea and flew away, never to return.
True story.
Then there was the time that eight-year-old Dukie Dick went missing, and no one could find him. Out of desperation, his parents begged Stark Raven for help, and she’d gotten down on her hands and knees in the middle of Main Street and put her ear to the ground. When she got back on her feet, she told Dukie Dick’s parents that he’d fallen down the well behind old man Decater’s house. Sure enough, that’s just where they found him. Later everyone asked Stark Raven how she knew this. “Simple,” she said. “There was a worm in the ground next to my ear, and he told me.”
Folks in Lowland County didn’t have a large tolerance, or any tolerance really, for the eccentricities of a person like Stark Raven, but they kept her around as a sort of insurance on the off chance things got really bad and she could save them from calamity.
But while Stark Raven wasn’t driven off, she wasn’t particularly welcomed, either. No one talked to her, children were not allowed anywhere near her, and she was expected to keep to herself. As it happened, this suited Stark Raven just fine. She settled in a shack covered by vines and herbs in the thicket of trees and let her hair grow wild and matted down her back. The only time folks in Lowland County thought about Stark Raven was when they got themselves in a pickle of such a nature that there was no help for it, and then, like blazes, they beat a path to her door, begging for a miracle and praying it would work and not be some batty, weird crap. She was known for that, too.
* * *
Piper could hear the church bells ringing and knew she had best get a move on, but the sight of Stark Raven pulled her like a magnet.
She could hear Betty’s words in her head. “Don’t you go near that Stark Raven, Piper! Leave her be.”
Yet still …
Before Piper knew what she was doing, her tired feet and aching legs were walking with a sure step down the path that led to Stark Raven’s shack.
CHAPTER
11
Around the curve of the trail, the trees in the ticket grew dense so that it was dim and cast in a mossy glow. Until that morning, Piper had obeyed Betty’s decree to keep away from Stark Raven, making this the only place in Lowland County she had never been. Even from the sky it wasn’t possible to see through the trees, so Piper had no idea what she was walking into.
The trail was well worn, curving and ambling on tangents, hugged closely on either side by the forest. When it felt as though she had passed out of Lowland County entirely, Piper came to two large stones on either side of the path that formed a gateway. On the other side of this natural gate, Piper found herself in a glade. It was not much larger than the McCloud barn, covered by the boughs of the nearby ancient trees, giving it the feeling of an outdoor cathedral. The first things that caught Piper’s eye were wind chimes made of sticks and stones that hung from the trees. When the wind passed through them, they clicked and clacked like happy typewriters.
In the center of the clearing was a tumbledown shack, surrounded on all sides by a hodgepodge collection of the strangest, most unexpected things that only Stark Raven herself understood and saw the need for.
To Piper’s right stood a brand-new silver range. It looked expensive. It gleamed like a chalice and stood as though waiting for a top chef to appear and start whipping up a soufflé. A raccoon family had taken up residence in the oven part of the range, and there was a raccoon-size letterbox, to which someone, Piper guessed Stark Raven, had delivered letters. The letters were also raccoon size.
To her left, bunches of herbs and flowers were threaded up on large drying racks and then, inexplicably right in front of the shack, which was no bigger than a large room, was a hot-pink chaise longue. It was upon this that Stark Raven was currently reclining, talking in a heated fashion to a mouse that was perched upon her knee.
“No,” she told the mouse firmly, holding up her gnarled finger. “The internet is connected to the plumbing, and the electricity requires postage. I’ve told you this before.”
Th
e mouse flicked his tale angrily and sat up on his hind legs.
“If you want rain, then don’t eat nuts,” Stark Raven told him.
“Ummmm-hum,” Piper said, politely clearing her throat.
The mouse and Stark Raven looked to her, and neither of them was in the least bit surprised to find her there.
“I was passing by,” Piper explained, because it seemed like an explanation might be in order. “I was going to church. I thought I should stop and say hello.” She waved her fingers about. “Hello.”
Stark Raven fixed her with a firm look. “You haven’t ever stopped in to say hello before.”
Piper felt all at once that she had been inexcusably mean and thoughtless. Perhaps Stark Raven wanted to have visitors and was lonely. Why had she never thought of that? “I’m sorry.”
Stark Raven squinted, taking a good look at Piper. “You’re that Piper McCloud.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve sprung up and got tall. You’re almost full-grown. That Millie Mae Miller says you’ll be the death of us all. She says you got the devil in you.”
“I—I don’t have the devil in me,” Piper stammered. It chapped Piper to no end the way Millie Mae went about saying things like that. “Millie Mae Miller shouldn’t say things that aren’t true.”
Stark Raven laughed at this in a hooting sort of way. “Folks can’t speak truth if they don’t got the truth in ’em.” With effort, she hoisted herself up and off the recliner, chuckling as she did so.
Piper felt discombobulated and unhinged. Was it impolite to have invited herself into the glade? What was she supposed to do now?
“I can fly,” Piper blurted out.
“I know that,” Stark Raven said.
“But I had an accident, and now I can’t fly anymore. I don’t know what to do.”
“Ahhh.” Stark Raven nodded her head as though this was all making sense. “So you came to ask for my help.”
And Piper was startled to realize that this was exactly why she had come. “Oh. Yes. Do you think … I was wondering … I mean, can you help me?”
Stark Raven took a hard look at Piper and didn’t blink. It felt to Piper like her eyes were probing unseen places.
“Hmm,” she said, snapping back to the glade. “Best come inside.”
Stark Raven hobbled to her shack, but Piper hesitated to follow her.
“Come or don’t. Don’t bother me none,” Stark Raven said. “But if you want my help, this is where you’ll find it.”
Piper looked over her shoulder, took a fortifying breath, and cautiously followed Stark Raven.
The inside of the shack was not unlike the outside but for the fact that it was surprisingly neat and uncluttered. A small cot of a bed was wedged in one corner. A large wood table dominated the center of the room, and a cooking area of sorts was to the right of the entrance and framed by two windows.
“Sit yourself down,” Stark Raven said without turning. She selected two clay cups and a tiny delicate china bowl decorated with a single red flower out of her cupboard. She placed these items on the table and then went to a large pantry stocked with herbs and jars. Piper could spy chicken feet floating about in a green liquid and pigs eyes in another and things too hideous to even contemplate in more.
Piper perched on the edge of the chair closest to the door.
“You gonna tell me what happened?” Stark Raven didn’t pause in her efforts. “I can’t read minds.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. There was a bug, a big bug, and it bit me.” Piper twisted and pointed to her back. “Right here. Ever since then I haven’t been able to fly.”
“Uh-huh. I can see,” she said, without looking up at Piper, “that your insides are all scrambled up, like an egg.”
This was news to Piper. “I’m scrambled?”
“Uh-huh.” The old woman shook her head. “It’s like you aren’t yourself anymore.”
“Yes,” Piper said excitedly. “That’s just it.”
“The flying is still inside you, but you got to figure out where you put it.”
“How do I do that?”
“Don’t ask me.” Stark Raven shrugged. “Only you can know where it is.”
“But I don’t! I don’t know! I’ve tried and tried to fly, and I can’t. I’ve done everything.”
“Ha. Getting yourself up into the air won’t help. Flying happens last. It’s the result of what comes before.” Stark Raven stood looking at Piper and not doing much else. Piper was anxious to come to a solution and considered the things in front of her.
“Maybe you can give me something to drink, or a special stone that’ll make my flying come back?”
Stark Raven snorted indelicately. “Wouldn’t that be nice and easy!”
“Or maybe you know a spell or have words that I can say?”
Stark Raven eyed Piper angrily. “What d’ya take me for, a witch?”
Piper bit her lip and looked down.
Stark Raven picked up the large stone that sat on the edge of the table and smashed it on the delicate china bowl. The bowl instantly shattered into tiny bits.
Startled, Piper yelped, half rising.
Stark Raven reached for the pieces of the bowl and gathered them up. “This bowl is your flying,” she said. “This rock here is the bite you got.” Now that she had all the pieces of the bowl in her hand, she walked to the open window and threw them outside into the forest. “That’s where your flying is. It’s everywhere. But inside you. It’s up to you to gather all the pieces of it back together and put them right. Soon as you do that, you’ll fly again.”
Piper’s ballooning hope burst inside her, and she slumped over. “But how am I going to do that?”
“Beats me,” Stark Raven cackled, and shook her head at the impossibility of it all. “Don’t see how you can.”
Piper burst into tears. Not only was she upset, but she was embarrassed to be crying like a baby, and she spread her hands over her face to hide herself.
Stark Raven sighed. “There, there, child. Crying isn’t going to help you.”
“But I just have to fly. It’s all I ever wanted. I miss being up in the sky, and if I don’t fly, my friends won’t want nothing to do with me, and I’m so lonesome for the sky I could just split down the middle.” Piper’s sobs came with hiccups. “Please, can’t you do something?”
Piper presented such a pitiful picture that Stark Raven shook her head again, and then took a small bottle from a cupboard and put it on the table in front of Piper.
“I wasn’t going to offer this up, but seeing as you have your heart set on it…” She slid the bottle before Piper, who was so upset she hardly noticed. “If you can’t calm yourself some, then you won’t hear what I have to say. I means to help you as best I can, but if you don’t stop your howling, no one will be able to help you with anything.”
With the greatest effort, Piper took one deep breath followed by another. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m not worth nothing without my flying.”
“Now, that ain’t true. Flying is something you do, not what you are. You hear?”
Piper nodded, hiccupping.
“Now, here. This isn’t a magic potion”—Stark Raven nodded at the bottle—“but it’ll unscramble you some and clean out your insides. You can’t be light when you’re so weighted down. This should lighten you up.”
Piper wrapped her hands around the bottle gratefully. Opening the top, she peeped in and discovered an eyedropper in the cap. “Th-thank you, Miss Raven,” Piper hiccupped. “Thank you so much.”
“It’s powerful stuff,” Stark Raven warned. “Put two drops on your tongue at sunrise and sunset. No more, no less.”
Piper held the bottle to her chest.
Church bells rang in the distance, and suddenly Piper’s true purpose of the day returned to her. “I have to—”
“I know, I know.” Stark Raven waved her hand. “You was on your way to church. Go! Go.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Piper meant it from the bottom of her heart.
Stark Raven waved Piper away, coming to the door to watch her go. “I’ll talk to my friends and see if I can’t find out more about these bugs for you,” she called. “No promises, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Piper said again, and passed through the two rocks and found her way onto the path. When she came to the road, Piper stopped to look in the bottle. Whatever was inside was such a curious shade of blue, like the sky after a storm. Stark Raven had told her to place two drops on her tongue. Using the dropper, Piper did just that. One drop. Two drops.
At first it tasted sweet, but a few swallows later a bitter aftertaste puckered her mouth.
Starting for church, Piper suddenly realized her tongue was feeling tingly. It was a feeling she knew well—the same feeling she used to get all over her body right before she flew. The tingling didn’t last long, but it filled Piper with longing.
When she came to the end of the thicket and Main Street was in front of her, Piper took out the bottle for a second time. Maybe just two more drops would be the ticket. Stark Raven said it unscrambled her. Would she be able to start flying when that happened? Maybe it would turn out to be as simple as that.
Piper took another drop. Then another.
More tingling.
On Main Street, Piper paused outside Jameson’s Dry Goods and Feed long enough for a few more drops.
The tingling was moving from her throat down her neck. Soon it would be in her stomach. If she wasn’t mistaken, she was actually feeling buoyant.
Piper skipped the rest of the way to church, thinking that maybe, just maybe, on the way home she might be able to manage a little bit of floating.
CHAPTER
12
Minister Brown had already launched into his sermon, so Piper quietly found her way into the McCloud pew and settled herself. The Millers had the pew right in front of theirs, and Millie Mae made a point of eyeing Piper so that the she wouldn’t think her tardiness had gone unnoticed. Piper was careful to sit neatly and quietly and keep her eyes directly in front of her at all times so Millie Mae would not have additional fodder to add to her report.
The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky Page 6