A Fistful of Sky (23 page)

The walk led past Mama’s roses around the side of the house. Near our kitchen/laundry door, there was an array of doors: one to the multiroom basement under the big house, one to the basement of the guest house, and then a staircase led up to the hall between the guest house and the kitchen. A small fenced yard between the staircase and the house wall held our garbage cans.

We studied the guest house. My face felt hot. I held up my hands, and felt curse heat against my palms.

Plants grew out of the guest house windows, twined around them, sent runners up to the roof and down to the ground.

“What kind of plants are those?” Beryl asked.

“Hermina’s plants,” answered Flint.

“Yeah, but what kind is that?”

“She’s been working to raise more vigorous and powerful strains of medicinal herbs,” Tobias said. “She thought if she could get herbs to fix some kinds of magic so that they were resident in the herbs until applied to medical problems, that would be very handy.”

“Wonder if she’s got something for burns,” Flint muttered.

“Regardless of what kind of plants they are,” said Mama, “they’re not behaving as they should. I told Hermes she could do anything she liked out here so long as she kept it quiet and inside. This violates our covenant.”

“It’s not her fault,” Jasper said.

Mama looked sideways at him.

“It’s my curse.” I stepped past Mama and Tobias and climbed the stairs to knock on Hermina’s door.

No one answered.

Everyone moved up around me. I knocked again. “Aunt Hermina?” I called. “You in there? Are you okay?”

A voice answered, but I couldn’t understand what it said. I checked with my relatives. Jasper shook his head.

“We’re coming in,” I said. I tried the doorknob. It turned, but when I pushed on the door, there was resistance. Had something fallen across the door in the hallway? I pushed harder. The door opened a crack, and leaves rustled and shifted in that gap.

I pulled the door shut. I looked at Uncle Tobias.

“What’s your sense?”

“It’s my energy.” I felt it pulse at me through the door.

“Your mess. You clean it up,” Mama said. “We’ll help you. This time.”

I bit my lower lip, shoved on the door, and pushed it farther open, fighting back a wall of too-mobile plants.

The hallway between the bedrooms had turned into a jungle. As soon as I got the door all the way open, vines sent runners out to explore the outdoors.

So much lively life! Like Beryl’s chalk plants. I stepped into the hall, crunching stems and leaves under my high heels as I went; there was no place to step without stepping on plants. Scents of fresh rosemary and thyme, basil and peppermint, a mingling of other strong scents I didn’t recognize rose from the crushed leaves and stems. These plants didn’t curl around and trap me. After I took a few steps among them, they tried to move out of the way.

I gave them some time. They cleared a narrow pathway to the back bedroom for me, I stepped carefully, and everybody else followed me single file into the house. “Aunt?” I called.

She answered, but not in words. A smothered cry. I pushed past hanging plants, plants that didn’t naturally grow that way, but plants which grew that way now.

The foliage was even thicker in her office. The plants had blocked all the windows so that most of the light was dim and green, though there was a faint haloed blaze of synthetic light where her desk used to be. I pushed and picked my way that direction; the curse heat was stronger there.

Aunt Hermina sat at her desk, her hands flat on top of it. The computer rode her like a child playing piggyback, its long thin white legs tight around her waist, its arms around her neck. Its hands reached up to cover her mouth. Its keyboard pressed against the back of her head, and its screen peered over the top of her head at us. Her own eyes were wide.

When she saw me she struggled, tried to lift her hands, but they were snugged down, like the rest of her, by vines and roots and rampant vegetation. Or maybe some of the white threads that tied her to her chair came from the computer’s body. It was hard to tell in the dim and denseness.

“This isn’t the charge I gave you,” I said to the computer.

Its pale face stared at me. “I’m helping. I’m working.”

“You’re hurting!”

“No. I’m helping her realize her dreams faster than she ever thought possible.” It frowned. “You cut off my power. How could you cut off my power? Now we won’t be able to pursue our studies. Why did you reject my help?” It lifted a hand and reached for me, and Hermina shook her head, managed to get the other hand away from her mouth.

“Get it off me!” she cried.

I didn’t know how to shield myself the way Tobias and Jasper did. I focused. I hunched my shoulders. I narrowed my concentration. “Damn,” I murmured.

The computer incinerated, disintegrated, ghosted away in a second. Hermina screamed.

I stumbled forward. “Did I hurt you?” I had tried to keep my curse confined just to the computer itself. I didn’t want any of the fallout to hit her. But it had been on her back. Had I burned her?

She screamed again, and started crying. She struggled, tried to lift her hands. Her plants still bound her. I went to her and pulled at the trapping plants, but she said, “Get away from me!” and turned her head.

Stung, I backed up, right into Jasper. He gripped my shoulders and edged me around, then helped me out of the room. “Go on outside,” he said. “We’ll clear up the rest of this.”

Somehow I made it to the kitchen. My hands trembled as I poured coffee. I loaded it with sugar and milk and sat at the table, sipped until I stopped sobbing.

I had the power of curses. I could either destroy things utterly, or change them so they hurt people I loved. Or, if I could get someone or something to sit still long enough,

I could launder my power through someone else and then it could do good things. And burn the people who helped me.

I wished I knew how to fix all the things Mama wanted me to fix.

She would probably tell me to clean up the guest house, too. I could damn all those plants into oblivion. I would hate that. It wasn’t the plants’ fault they were made to grow. But I could do it. On the other hand, maybe Aunt Hermina never wanted to see me again, and somebody else would have to clean things up.

I drank my coffee, calmer by the time I got to the bottom of the cup. I couldn’t clean up my messes with curse energy, but I might be able to do it a normal way, with muscle. I went to the pantry and got out a stack of paper bags, then headed for the back porch. On my way across the great hall I kicked off the high heels, then stopped to peel out of the pantyhose. God. Girl torture. All my life I’d told myself I would never have to go through girl torture. Evil computer. Force me to turn into what I hated. Rage simmered inside my ribcage.

I set open grocery sacks on the walkway and filled them with bread, pausing once in a while to eat a roll or a muffin. The bread still smelled and tasted great, only there was so much of it. We could take some to feed the ducks and geese at the bird sanctuary, drop some off along the beach where homeless people lived, drive around and ask random strangers in the street if they’d like bread. Maybe eventually we’d find a good way to give this out. But could we do it every day?

Maybe we would never do it again. Flint had trouble with it. How could I channel power through him and not burn him? I didn’t know enough.

I felt more curse energy building.

I filled ten paper sacks with assorted bread, then went to sit on the wall above the orchard.

My aunt had sent me away. She had been angry and scared because of something I did. I told myself I needed to understand that this was going to be a common reaction to me in the future if I went on cursing things. People would be scared and horrified. They would want me to leave.

My little sister almost attacked me for something I did while not in my right mind. I needed to take responsibility for things I did while under the influence of my own curses, too, even though I felt like a victim. I had to own up to my acts and deal with the consequences.

My mother and I were feuding, and I had separated myself from my father. I’d hurt my brother’s hands, and threatened my other brother with weirdness that scared him. So far, having my own power wasn’t working out very well.

Maybe I should get rid of it. At least I knew how to do that. I’d learned

something from that computer.

“Altria?”

Where was she? Was I nuts to even think about calling her? Did I need the protection stone? No. She had come to me upstairs without the help of the stone. What I knew about her was that she scared me, but also that she had saved me twice.

I stared beyond the Old Coast Highway, the scattering of stores fringing it, and Highway 101 beyond. Out past every land thing, the ocean lay. Sun shone, but it was a hazy day, too hazy to see the Channel Islands, twenty-five or thirty miles out to sea.

Presently I realized someone sat beside me. I turned my head and saw myself, the new edition, in red dress, makeup, styled hair; not a me I was in any way comfortable with. She stared out at distance, too.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A different kind of person.”

“What do you really look like?”

“A giant praying mantis.”

I glanced at her, saw the edge of a smile.

“Really?” I asked.

“No.”

“Where do you go when you’re not here?”

“I can be in several places at once. Now that I know you, I leave a fragment of myself here to listen for your call. I have fragments in many places; other people call me, too. I find doors in people’s dreams. Part of me is in a place that listens for new calls, like yours yesterday, when a way opened for me to find form. Invitations into new forms, plus power, those are my favorite things. Much of me… .” She frowned. “Where I am, it’s not this world, but one nearby. Everything about it is different from here.” She smiled and leaned toward me. “I could send you there,” she whispered, “and stay here. Take your place.”

I stared down at my hands in my lap. I had hurt my aunt. Everything I touched burned. I had more power than I knew what to do with, and when I used it, I had to hurt or disturb people. Wouldn’t it be nice to be the victim of a diabolical plan, helpless to prevent my own abduction, not responsible for anything anymore? I could go somewhere else and leave Altria to deal with the consequences.

Then again, that wasn’t fair to my family. She looked like me. Maybe they would be able to tell the difference, maybe not; armed with all my power, she might be able to do a lot of nasty things to them before they could stop her.

“Can’t let you do that,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll do it anyway.”

I sighed.

“But in the meantime, while I’m hatching evil plots, what did you want from me?”

“I wanted to talk about the shunt. That’s one thing. I also wondered if you would work with me on a couple of things.”

“Tell me about the shunt,” she said.

I rolled my shoulders. Power sat on them like lead weights.

“Suppose we set up some kind of feed so you could take part of my power?”

She licked her lips.

“But I would want to be in control of the shunt. If I need all my power, I want to be able to cut you off. If I need to get rid of some, I’d love to be able to dump it on you. It’s coming too fast for me, and I don’t know how to use it yet. But if we set up a shunt, I want you to promise that you’re not going to use my power to hurt me or anybody I love.” I thought about the computer and its ideas of help and hurt. “Only, do you understand what I mean by hurt?”

“My definition is different from yours. A little pain now can lead to knowledge and growth later.”

“Do you work toward knowledge and growth?”

She frowned. “I will not tell you what I work toward.”

I felt like crying. I wanted to trust her. I wanted her to help me. I thought we could do something we’d both benefit from, but she had to say the right words.

She could lie to me and I would believe her.

I wished I didn’t feel so tired and discouraged. Maybe I was making stupid decisions, courting disasters.

“What’s your other project?” she asked.

“I need to curse something soon. If I work with someone else who can

direct the energy, I can turn my curse into a blessing. Will you help me replace the staircase I destroyed last night?”

“Your power, my direction?” She grinned.

I had a bad feeling about this. But heck. At least if we built something together, it wouldn’t be cursed, and somebody else in the family could change it.

“Mama wants white marble,” I said.

“Let’s do it.”

We wended our way through stacks of baked goods to the edge of the walk where it disappeared into air. We sat down side by side and dangled our legs over the dropoff, our feet waving above the crater from last night’s big curse.

“Rococo,” she said.

I looked at the house. Early twentieth century, kind of a Craftsman house. “I don’t think that’ll go.”

“Italianate. Gaudf? Byzantine?”

I didn’t even know what she was talking about. “Classical?” I suggested.

“Boring?” she asked.

“That would make Mama happier.”

“Leave it to me.”

I looked away from her.

If it didn’t work out all right, it could be fixed.

If it worked out all right, maybe we could get back to talking about the shunt.

I held out my hand, and she clasped it. “Lift up your feet,” she said. I scooted back from the edge, tugging her with me. “Oooh, you’re so hot.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Heat doesn’t hurt me. I love it. Close your eyes.”

I closed my eyes and opened myself up to being used.

Our communion felt different from the one I had had with Flint. With my brother, I had just poured energy out headlong and thought about what I hoped would manifest from it. Here I sat, and felt Altria draw energy from me slowly and steadily, comfortably. I was conscious of some kind of spinning, of the energy leaving me, passing through her, changing,

hitting the air and going solid, but I didn’t know what she was making of it. I didn’t have to hold onto anything. All I had to do was be, and let her draw from me.