A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

by Lisa Papademetriou

  Lavinia gestured over her shoulder, toward the window where the light was fading quickly. She winked with her small eye, while the larger one bulged wider. “Right at the other edge of the graveyard, sugar,” she said.

  After dinner and apple cake (Kai actually ate half the cake—it was that good), Kai went upstairs to her room to grab a sweater when she spotted the book on her bed again. Slowly, as if she were approaching a snake, Kai crept near. She opened the book.

  “No way,” she whispered.

  There was more story.

  Kai skimmed the page. A vial? What—what was this?

  A knock on the door made Kai jump. “Eee!” she shouted. The book fell to the floor with a thump as the handle turned and . . .

  “Jeez, what’s the matter, you drink too much coffee, or something?” Doodle asked as she stomped into the room.

  Kai crossed over to the door and peered into the deserted hallway. The faint smell of apple cake was all that lingered there. “Who let you in?”

  “Lavinia, of course.” Doodle looked around. The glow from the setting sun had turned the white walls and coverlet rosy. “I really love this room,” she said. “It gets the best light.” For a moment, Kai had forgotten that Doodle knew her great-aunt. And, apparently, her house. “What’s this?” And before Kai could stop her, Doodle had swooped down and picked up The Exquisite Corpse.

  Kai snatched it away.

  “Whoa!” Doodle said. “What is it, your diary or something?”

  “No, it’s . . .” But Kai didn’t know how to finish the sentence. It’s a freaky magic book? “Yeah, it’s kind of my diary.”

  Doodle just shrugged. “Cool. So, you want to go look for a moth?” she asked. She held up an orange-handled, battered butterfly net.

  “Sure.” The two girls headed downstairs and into the kitchen to say good-bye to Kai’s great-aunt. Lavinia sat at a well-worn farm table, scribbling madly on a yellow legal pad. She looked up and nodded at Doodle’s net. “You girls fixing to go get yourselves a moth? You ain’t hoping to catch it with that, are you?”

  Now, it was true that this net had been purchased at Target for a dollar. And it was true that it did, perhaps, have a hole in it. “Don’t you think it’s big enough?” Doodle asked.

  “Too large, if you ask me.” Lavinia chewed her lip. She hauled herself up from the table and stomped across the room to yank open a closet door. Out spilled a mountain of things: hockey gear, three umbrellas, a beach ball (inflated), a goblet made of golden plastic, a stuffed bear, a pith helmet, several pairs of shoes, and a lampshade rolled around her feet. She thrust her arm into the mass of stuff, and after a moment of banging and rattling, she pulled out a long ivory handle, at the end of which was a silver net that glittered in the low lamplight. “There’s what you’ll need!”

  “We couldn’t possibly take that,” Kai said. The beautiful net looked as if it belonged in a museum.

  “Why not?” Lavinia demanded. “You’re only borrowing it. This belonged to my great-aunt!”

  “We’ll bring it right back,” Doodle promised.

  “All right, girls, happy hunting!” Lavinia boomed. “Don’t let me keep you!” Kai and Doodle swirled in Lavinia’s eddy as she circled them, herding them toward the back door. Before she knew what was happening, Kai found herself standing on the vine-covered porch.

  “Good night!” Lavinia shut the door.

  The girls blinked at the closed door for a moment.

  Kai turned to Doodle, who was now staring at the beautiful net. “Was that a little weird?” Kai asked.

  “Poets are like that, sometimes,” Doodle told her. “Now, let’s go catch a moth.”

  The night was a revelation for Kai. It would be an exaggeration to say that she had never been outside at night, but it would not be a huge exaggeration. She had certainly never been outside at night without an adult. She had never been allowed to roam about the neighborhood once darkness fell, and now it was as if she were full of helium, like she might float away at any moment, right up to the stars. Her fingers brushed the trunk of a tree as she walked past, feeling the rough, ridged bumps and the smooth moss.

  “What are you doing?” Doodle asked.

  “Just . . . just feeling the bark.” It had looked different in the dark. Although everything looked different in the dim light, Kai was surprised at how much she was able to see, and she found herself noticing things she had not paid attention to before. She and Doodle each had a flashlight, but the beams only illuminated a small patch of ground before their feet. It made the darkness around them seem blacker, somehow. Kai had never before realized that there are a thousand shades of shadow between gray and black.

  The moon was not full, but it hung low, fat and yellow, looking close enough to step onto. It seemed like a different moon entirely from the sick, pale thumbnail that she often glimpsed through her bedroom window back home. “The moon is huge here,” Kai said.

  “It’ll get smaller as the night goes on.” A twig snapped beneath Doodle’s foot. “When it’s higher in the sky.”

  “Because it’s getting farther away?”

  “No—it’s called the moon illusion. When it’s low on the horizon, you see it next to trees and telephone poles, and stuff, so it looks bigger. When it’s up in the sky, there’s no—” Doodle’s feet kept moving, but her words stopped.

  “Comparison?”

  “Yeah. When it’s by itself, you can’t tell how huge it really is.”

  Now that the sun had set, everything seemed to breathe again. Around Kai, insects chirped. She tried to follow the tune. It reminded her of something—the opening bars of a Haydn sonata, maybe? The digits of her left hand tapped against her thigh, remembering the fingering of the opening bars. She didn’t even notice herself doing it, but I did, and that meant she was concentrating on the strangeness around her.

  A white cat darted across a yard. A small light flickered. Then another. “Fireflies!”

  “We could catch some, if you want,” Doodle said.

  “No, that’s okay.” Kai hadn’t meant to sound so excited, but the flashes had taken her by surprise. She just had never seen lightning bugs in real life before, and it made her both happy and a little sad as she wondered how long it had been since her mother had seen one. “How are we going to find these moth things?”

  “They’re bioluminescent. Like the fireflies, only not as bright.” Doodle took a sharp turn, and Kai nearly danced after her, swinging her great-aunt’s silver net. Over on the other side of the iron fence, gravestones hulked, casting long, eerie shadows. “Here we are,” Doodle said.

  Well, now that they were here, Kai did not like the look of the place very much. But she didn’t want to say that to Doodle. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the building hulking on the far side of the fence.

  “American Casket, of course. Home of the famous Eternal Casket. Guaranteed to stay in perfect shape for two hundred years.”

  “Wow,” Kai said. “How would anyone know?”

  “Exactly,” Doodle replied.

  “So—uh, what now?”

  “We go inside.” Doodle had already slipped through the gate, which—though chained—gaped wide enough to let a middle schooler through.

  Now, as I’ve already mentioned, Kai was a planner. But in all of Kai’s years of planning, she had never before come up with a strategy for what to do if a friend headed into a creepy-looking graveyard, expecting her to follow. Kai was not someone who was very accustomed to being brave. In fact, the bravest thing Kai’d ever had to do was perform Mozart’s Concerto #4 in D Major for Susan Laviere, which was terrifying, but in a completely different way. So you will please excuse her for thinking that it might be wise to just leave Doodle in the graveyard and head on home, preferably at top speed.

  But she only thought that for a moment. Then she realized what a lowdown thing it would be to let a friend go into a graveyard full of hunching, hulking white stones all alone after dark. And so she force
d one foot in front of the other.

  Kai followed an elegant stone footpath, and shuddered as the wind blew behind her, making the gate creak like it thought it was a gate from some scary movie. “Doodle?” she called, as she wound her way between massive headstones. A white marble woman looked up at the sky, rooted to a pedestal that read, M. Jonas 1835–1913.

  She tried not to think of M. Jonas under the ground, waiting to reach up and grab at her ankles. She called again.

  “Over here!” Doodle cried.

  Kai spotted her nearby, leaning over, looking at something at the base of a large tree. The tree was hunched and twisted, with a cluster of branches on one side that seemed to reach for the marble statue. This was clearly the Lightning Tree. Kai forgot her fear and hurried to join her. “Did you find one?”

  “Look.” Doodle’s voice was a whisper. She pointed at the trunk.

  Kai clicked on her flashlight, but Doodle snapped, “Turn it off.” Kai did.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Wait.”

  So she did. Kai stared at the trunk of the tree, where Doodle pointed to a black hollow. Kai stood on tiptoe, looking down into the darkness. Slowly, something began to appear. Something long and luminous, like a misshapen pearl, glowed faint blue. “That’s not a moth. Is it?”

  “No, but it could be a cocoon.” Delicately, Doodle plucked it from the bark. “It’s covered in resin.”

  “Like a bug in amber?” Kai had seen a display of prehistoric insects at the natural history museum.

  “Exactly.”

  Doodle shone her flashlight on a red flower growing near the base of the tree. “Hm, I’ve seen this flower before. There’s a bunch of them that grow in a field close by. But the factory always mows it.” She peered again at the cocoon.

  Kai was just about to ask if Doodle thought it was a cocoon for a Celestial Moth, when a loud crack snapped behind them. Kai wheeled; Doodle leaped to her feet.

  Something flashed—a movement between the gravestones. Kai let out a little scream.

  Doodle lifted her eyebrows. “Really? You’re screaming?”

  Kai couldn’t catch her breath. She wanted to say, “Something’s there!” but she couldn’t make the words come out. Not that it mattered. The thing moved again, and Doodle started chasing it.

  “Don’t leave me!” Kai called, running after her friend, who was pounding up the footpath.

  The thing was on the other side of the iron gate, near the side of the coffin factory. At the sound of Doodle’s footsteps, the thing raced off.

  Oh, thank god, Kai thought, immediately followed by—Why did Lavinia let me out after dark? Why? “Stop!” Doodle shouted. “Stop, you stupid jerk!” She dashed after the thing, but it had disappeared around the corner of the building. She shook the net angrily in the general direction of the escapee.

  “What was that?” Kai asked.

  “Not what,” Doodle said, “who.”

  Doodle looked in her net. The cocoon was still there, unharmed. She looked over at Kai. “Come on,” she said.

  Kai didn’t know what to make of any of this. “What was that all about?”

  Doodle stormed ahead like a hurricane. She didn’t stop; she didn’t slow down. She only spoke one word. “Pettyfer,” she said.

  The pale blue pearl in the net receded as Doodle stomped on. Kai wondered if it really was a cocoon.

  And, if so, she wondered what was inside.

  THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

  What was inside? Ralph peered at the vial. It was small and flat, made of smoky purple glass. The man had told him to open it only when he was alone. There are three magics inside, he had said. Don’t let them all out at once.

  Ralph hurried toward home, but he did not make it all the way. He passed American Casket and walked through a field of bright red flowers. Halfway across, he looked up at the sky, which was bleached close to white by the harsh sun. Around him, there were no sounds but the music of the grasshoppers at his feet. He stood in the shade of a slender sycamore and pressed his back against the patchy gray-and-white bark. Carefully, he unscrewed the silver cap on his vial. Like mist, fine white powder rose from the vial and a light breeze blew it against the tree. Ralph peered up at the canopy of wide, seven pointed green leaves, wondering for a moment if he was like Jack and the Beanstalk, and if the tree might rise into the bleached sky.

  The grasshoppers whirred on. Nothing happened.

  Perhaps I need to make a wish, Ralph thought. “I wish,” Ralph said aloud, “that something would happen.”

  Above him, the leaves whispered for a moment, and then were still.

  Ralph fought the urge to dump out all of the powder in the vial. Be patient, Ralph told himself. Even Jack’s beanstalk didn’t grow right away. He screwed the cap back onto the vial and hurried home.

  The smell of cabbage overwhelmed him the moment he walked into the kitchen. As usual, his mother was at the stove, stirring. Ralph and his entire family stank of sauerkraut. All of their clothes stank of sauerkraut. That’s because Ralph’s mother put sauerkraut on everything. His parents were even starting to sell it at the store. It was his great-grandmother’s secret recipe, and she said that it was what had helped her live to the age of 103. Sometimes Ralph wondered if he wanted to be a stinky, sauerkrauty 103-year-old, but he never said so to his mother, as it would have broken her heart.

  “Where’ve you been?” Ralph’s mother asked the moment he banged open the door.

  “In town,” Ralph said. His hand automatically went to the vial in his pocket, and he closed his fingers around it.

  “What’ve you got there?” Mrs. Flabbergast planted her fists on her wide hips.

  “Nothing.” Ralph blushed as red as a boiled lobster.

  “Ralph . . .”

  “It’s nothing, really,” Ralph said, pulling the vial out of his pocket and holding it out to his mother. “It’s just . . . um . . .”

  “Looks like a fancy salt shaker.”

  “It is! Yes! I found it.” Ralph did not have much practice lying, and it showed.

  “Hm.” Then, to Ralph’s horror, Mrs. Flabbergast opened the vial and shook a bit of the white powder into the sauerkraut cabbage. “Well, I hope this does something for the sauerkraut,” she said. Then she handed the vial back to Ralph, whose jaw dangled dangerously close to the floor.

  That evening, a storm blew in around dinnertime. Lightning flashed; thunder boomed. Nobody in the Flabbergast family noticed. They were too busy devouring sauerkraut, which—everyone agreed—was (for once) scrumptious.

  Almost magically so.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Leila

  THE MORNING SUN ROSE feebly through the smoky Lahore sky. Leila was still jet lagged, and was only now—too late—beginning to feel tired after a sleepless night, but she didn’t go back to bed. She had not dared to step out into the hallway until the sun rose. Elizabeth and Jennifer Dear often discovered mysteries when roaming around in strange, dark houses, but Leila felt she had enough mysteries already. For example: what was the deal with this freaky book? That was pretty much number one. That and, who was making up new parts to this story? What did sauerkraut have to do with anything? Was someone just messing with her?

  Leila padded into the library and pushed The Exquisite Corpse back into the lone empty space on the shelf. Her body loosened the moment she turned her back and walked out of the library. Now she could get a little nap before breakfast.

  Back in her room, Leila slipped between the soft white sheets and closed her eyes. She did not bother closing the blinds. Leila liked sleeping with the sun on her face. It made her feel like a cat. Thinking of Steve’s gray tail, she curled her knees toward her chest. Some pinchy pointy thing dug into her thigh.

  “Ow!” Leila felt for the object and pulled out a book. Then she let out a slight shriek and fell out of bed.

  I don’t even have to tell you, do I? Fine, I will. It was The Exquisite Corpse.

  She stood up and lim
ped to the door, then down the hall. She peeked into the library. There was an empty space on the shelf where the book should be.

  Leila knew that she was not dreaming, but she truly wished she were. She had always longed to have a strange, magical adventure. It sounded great when it happened in books! But now that she was having a strange adventure, she wished she could just go home. Well, maybe not home. Not yet. She just wanted to go somewhere nonmagical. Someplace comfortable. Someplace where the books did not follow one around.

  After all, she realized, this book situation wouldn’t even make a good blog. People would just think she was crazypants. That her brain had gone soft in the heat.

  Well! Leila certainly was not about to go back to her room, so she headed downstairs to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was an interesting place. For one thing, there were two kitchens. “One for show, and one for blow,” as her mother would say. There was a beautiful kitchen with granite countertops and knives in a rack. It had a lovely white wooden table and matching chairs, and had a window that looked out onto a mango tree. Along one wall of the kitchen was a door. This door led to the second kitchen: the real kitchen. This was a cramped, narrow place with a concrete floor and pots and pans that looked like they had been used to bash rocks. This was where the servants cooked the meals. The show kitchen was for the family to make toast or heat up something in the microwave.

  Leila sat down in a white wooden chair for a moment. Then she decided that she should drink a glass of water. Elizabeth Dear always drank water when she needed to calm down. She crossed to the cabinets and pulled one open. Bowls. She tried the next one and let out a little yelp.

  Can you guess what was inside?