A Fistful of Sky (38 page)

most of the time I was things that couldn’t protest.

The fights I always lost. The only time I got to sit in the front seat of the van was when it was just Mama or Dad and me going somewhere. The only time I got to choose the TV show was when I was home alone. Even if I knew I wanted to see something else, a couple minutes after I sat down I’d be convinced I wanted to watch what whoever was strongest at the moment wanted to watch. I suspected that I lost track of my own tastes more often than I knew.

We always included me, whether I wanted it to or not.

The special things the rest of them got to do because they had transitioned. The sense that I was always going to be second-class.

All the things Mama had done to us down the years without thinking twice. I remembered being five years old. I was on the back porch floor, sitting next to Beryl, who was two. She was strapped into a rocking seat. She was crying and sobbing. Tears ran down her face. Nothing she did made a noise; Mama, playing cards with some other adults at the table, had been irritated by it, and silenced her. I kept patting Beryl’s cheek, but it didn’t help. She screamed her face red, and no one heard. I didn’t know what to do. It took me way too long to realize I should find Opal.

I did want to cast curses on my family for every careless or mean thing they had ever done to me. I wanted to fill my hands with red light and send it everywhere.

Altria lifted her hand from my forehead. She still smiled.

“I don’t want to curse my family,” I repeated.

Altria sat back and waited.

“One part of me would love to curse them. But I don’t want to.” Well, that wasn’t as clear as I had thought it would be. “What good would it do me to hurt them for things that happened a long time ago? Things they might not even have known bothered me? It’s over.” “It gives you a focus for your power. If they don’t know why you’re mad, make them know.”

I sighed.

I picked up my curse journal and flipped to a back page, where I’d been working on a spell during my spare time all day. “I’d like you to come with me to the meeting. I want them to know you.” I confused myself. Why was this important? Because she was important. She was helping me figure out how to handle my new life, even if I couldn’t always tell it was help. I

wanted her to stay my friend, if that was what she was. “But if you do come, I need to put a spell on you first.”

“You want to put a spell on me?” She grinned. “Why didn’t we think of that? You could have been cursing me all this time.”

“What?”

“Maybe I’d like it. Whatever it is, I could probably survive it. What kind of spell?”

I showed Altria my spell for her. She narrowed her eyes, frowned, then added a line and showed it to me.

Her handwriting looked nothing like mine. It was spiky and wild and somehow old-fashioned. I was more interested in that than in what she had written.

Focus, Gyp.

I looked at her line, “For the length of this meeting,” and nodded.

We set the curse journal sideways between us. I held out my hands, and she put her hands in mine. Heat roared into me through our connection, flared like wildfire through my chest. Too much! I thought, and then I thought, get used to it. It’s all from me, I need to own it and me it.

Be my aid and my filter so this comes out clean, I thought to Altria. Then I said my spell.

“Altria:

For the length of this meeting, Care for us as I do. Love us as I do. Protect us as I would. Help us as I would.”

Altria shivered and shook, closed her eyes and turned her head. Finally she let out a loud breath. “Eww.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You love them. You actually love them, no matter what they do or say to you.”

“Family.”

She let go of my hands, scratched her nose, stretched. “Yes. I didn’t understand before. I’ve never been this close to one. It’s interesting.”

“Besides, it’s not all awful. Most of it’s wonderful, don’t you see?” I thought of Flint and me holding hands, crafting lights to embrace our house, our yard, and the tree. Leaning into Jasper’s leather-clad back as we rode his motorcycle. Holding my hand still as Beryl painted red sparkle

nailpolish on my fingernails, the brush flickery and cool, her hand warm under mine. Mama’s voice reading us the Mowgli stories. Dad teaching us chess. Opal brushing my hair.

Altria hugged me, and that, too, was strange. I had hugged her before, and she had hugged me, but I hadn’t been so conscious of hugging someone my own soft, solid shape.

Love us as I do.

I guessed I loved myself in addition to everybody else in my family. Sometimes. Hoped that would hold true for the duration of the spell.

“Never mind,” Altria said. “I’ll handle that part on my own.”

I pulled myself together and stood up. “So how do we work this? You want to come downstairs with me in visible mode?” We were both still wearing our party clothes. Might be strange if they couldn’t tell which of us was which.

“Let me think.” She stood in the center of my floor and stretched her arms toward the ceiling. She cook shape as Mama, smiled, flowed into Dad’s shape, Jasper’s, Flint’s, Opal’s, Tobias’s, Hermina’s, Beryl’s. Then she turned her back on me, hunched her shoulders. A moment later she faced me. Now she was someone else: my hazel eyes, Beryl’s slender teenaged shape, Jasper’s nose, Opal’s mouth, hands like Flint’s, but heavy long red hair like none of ours. She wore a tight melon-green dress with a short, many-layered, scarf-pointed skirt, tights with narrow horizontal black and white stripes, and black cowboy boots like the ones we had worn to Claire’s party.

For a moment I saw her as a collection of parts, and then something clicked and she looked like another member of our family—a cousin we hadn’t met yet.

“Okay.” I picked up my pen and curse journal and unlocked the door.

Beryl and Opal were standing in the sitting room outside.

“I told you it smelled like strange magic,” Opal said to Beryl. “Gyp, what are you doing? Who’s your friend?”

“This is my curse child, Altria,” I said. “She’s been helping me sort things out.” Had Beryl met Altria before? I tried to remember and couldn’t. I was pretty sure Opal hadn’t seen her.

“Hello, sweet things,” said Altria.

“You look familiar,” Beryl said.

“I am familiar.” Altria smiled. She glanced toward Tobias’s tower as a

key sounded in the lock. Tobias emerged, stared at her.

“Uncle,” she said.

“Shade.”

Jasper came out of his room, rubbing his eyes. He saw Altria and straightened, gave her half a smile.

“Jasper,” she said. “Oh. Jasper.” Love them as I do. She knew he was my favorite; if my spell had worked, she felt the same way about him as I did, in addition to whatever she had felt about him before. She darted over and gave him a hug, kissed his cheek. He looked surprised and worried. He hugged her back.

“Like the new look,” he told her when she let go.

She laughed. Then she said, “Gyp put a spell on me so I won’t hurt anybody.” She glanced at Tobias.

He blew out a breath, nodded.

We went downstairs.

Across the living room, the tree glowed in its lace of lights.

Flint had set out tins of cookies and brownies on the coffee tables in front of the living room couches, and even fixed a coffee tray. Or, with any luck, Mama had fixed it.

Mama and Dad sat on the love seat in the square of four couches that faced each other in a conversational grouping to the right as one came into the living room through the double pocket doors. Flint was in the middle of the big couch facing the love seat, the one that could seat four, and often did during parties.

All three looked up when we came in. Mama jumped to her feet. “You brought that thing here?” she asked me, glaring at Altria.

“Anise,” said Dad.

Usually when Dad said that, in that tone of voice, Mama stopped what she was doing and took a moment for reflection. Dad was the only one who could slow her down, even stop her, when she was about to tirade. This time Mama stayed agitated. “Miles, this is something you can’t understand. Gyp has made—contact with that—creature, an amoral creature, who, while it may not wish us ill, hardly wishes us good. In fact, it may only want to play with us, and its powers—” She ran out of words, something that almost never happened, and resorted to arm waving. I

wondered what she was trying to say—some kind of warning— and whether it was true.

“Really.” Dad stood. He studied Altria. “Hello,” he said, then looked confused. “But you look—” He glanced at the rest of us, then back at Altria.

She went to him. “I’m a shapeshifter,” she said. “The perceived connection is illusion.”

“Purposeful illusion?”

“Of course.”

“Not a lot of Bendixen there.” Bendixen was Dad’s last name before he married into the LaZelles. It’s a rule; anyone who wants to marry one of us has to take our last name.

“Yes. I’m sorry.” She held out her hand, and he clasped it.

“Miles! You shouldn’t let it touch you,” Mama said, but she sounded resigned.

He watched Altria’s face. A moment later he laughed. She turned to me, and I saw that she now had a cleft like Dad’s in her chin. Her eyes danced.

“Did you meet Flint yet?” I asked her. She had taken the shapes of all my siblings, but I could only remember her meeting Jasper before. Then again, she had been shadowing me all day today, and maybe yesterday, too. She had had time and opportunity to observe everybody.

And she could visit people in their dreams.

She turned. “Flint.” She smiled.

“Huh—hi,” said my brother.

“This is Altria,” I said.

Altria and my brother shook hands.

Mama pulled herself together. “Altria.” She held out her hand. “Oh, well. Might as well meet you, since we seem to be going this road.”

“Anise.” Altria held Mama’s hand a moment. Neither of them smiled.

“You’re here because?”

“Gyp asked me to come.”

“You said we’re going to discuss the problem of me,” I said as the family settled onto the couches in the conversation square. “Altria’s helped me in lots of ways since I came into my power. I hope she keeps helping me. Whatever we decide about me, it’ll probably involve her, too.” I dropped my curse journal on the coffee table. Altria snuggled against me on the

gray couch, which made me feel strange, as though we had declared something momentous to the family. “Today, for instance, she’s been storing my power so I can access it later instead of having to curse things every two hours.”

“So you could go Christmas shopping,” Beryl said. “Oh! And to the party.”

“Right,” I said.

“Store your powers in a person? How does that work?” said Opal.

“Don’t even ask,” Tobias said. He and Jasper sat on the couch across from Altria and me. Opal, Flint, and Beryl chose the big couch in front of the window that overlooked the pool yard to my right, and Mama and Dad returned to the love seat.

“Why not?” Opal asked Tobias. “It’s ridiculously risky.”

“Why did you teach it to Gyp, then?”

“I didn’t. Gyp has been teaching herself”

“Altria’s been teaching me,” I said.

“No. Uncle is right. You’ve been teaching yourself,” Altria said.

Was that one of those loaded statements where she was really admitting that she was part of me, despite the fact that her personality was different from mine and so was her handwriting?

“No,” she said, and thumped my head. “Get over it.”

“You’ve been teaching yourself,” Mama repeated. “You’ve been struggling with all kinds of things while the rest of us have been preoccupied.”

“That’s not true. Everybody’s helped me.” Jasper had rescued me from school, and had tried to rescue me from Altria, and had definitely rescued me from the computer, with Altria’s help. Beryl had encouraged me to curse her. Flint had shared his power with me. Tobias gave me pointers and broke some of the worst spells. Hermina forgave me after I screwed up. Dad accepted me, and Mama left me alone.

I grabbed my curse journal and a pen, opened the journal to a blank page. “And I could use some more help. Have you guys thought of curses I can do?”

“Am I too late?” Aunt Hermina came in through the pocket doors and looked around the circle. She sat down beside Tobias, across from me and Altria. When she noticed Altria, she sat up straighter. “Gyp?”

“This is my friend Altria,” I said.

“A nightmare is your friend?”

“Yep.”

“A better friend than enemy,” she muttered. “Maybe.” She grabbed a couple cookies.

“Have you ever thought about cursing people who need it?” asked Flint.

“Who needs it?”

He shrugged. “People who did something wrong. You could go to jail and curse people who killed other people.”

“How can I be sure they’re guilty?” I asked. “All those DNA tests turning up innocent people in prison. I could never be sure.”

“We tried that kind of thing. It’s hard for her,” Altria said. She held out a hand, and a cookie jumped into it. She took a bite. “She closed the door on the self who knows how to be mean. Opening that door makes her miserable.”

“You could stick with the playful curses,” Beryl said. “Turn us into toads. Children. Dogs. Furniture. Strangers.”

“Strangers?” I said.

“Gyp?” Dad said.

I turned to him.

“We are strangers now,” he said slowly. “Something happened, and you sent me away. I left, because I didn’t want to make things harder for you. Curse me with knowledge of what happened after I left.”

Altria sat up straighter. Her red hair grew redder— glowing. My fire coming out of her. “Knowledge is a curse,” she said. “That’s right.” She took my hand. “Give them your memories, Gyp.” She stroked her fingers across my palm. Red fire danced from her hand to mine. She spiraled an index finger, drew up a scrap of flame—baby Beryl, sobbing and sobbing without sound—and flicked it at Mama.

Mama straightened, her eyes wide, then slumped back against the couch. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “No. I didn’t. No. I couldn’t.” She stared across at Beryl, and Beryl looked at me and Altria, her eyebrows up. Mama pulled her legs up to her chest, hugged them. Tears ran down her cheeks.