A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

by Lisa Papademetriou

  Leila didn’t find this terribly comforting, but at last the fakir stopped speaking. Zain offered the man a bill, but the fakir’s nostrils flared in disgust. Still, he took the money before walking away.

  “I apologize.” Zain folded his wallet and placed it back in his breast pocket. “There are beggars everywhere. It’s getting so bad.”

  “He’s a holy man.” Wali spoke to Leila, ignored Zain.

  “What did he say?” Leila asked.

  “He said that the world is a miracle,” Wali explained. “He said that you should not fear the world, but should look to the book for answers.”

  “The book?” Leila repeated. Her head felt a little bit spinny. How could the fakir know about—

  “The Quran, I presume,” Zain put in.

  Leila asked herself what Elizabeth Dear would do, but she did not manage to come up with an answer. This was all getting too peculiar. Was the fakir talking about the Quran, or about her book? Her magic book? The one that seemed to be writing its own story every time she shut the pages? But he couldn’t be, because that book is not magic.

  She looked over at Zain, who was smiling at her, as if he hoped to comfort her. That’s what’s real, she told herself. This is my story. I get to decide on my story, and my story is a romantic adventure! Because I lead a life of international travel and excitement!

  This, my friends, is known as wishful thinking.

  THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

  You could not see the damage the fire had caused, but it was there.

  There were many stories about why fire had not destroyed the house. Some said that it was made of stone, and fire could not burn it. Some said that a sudden rainstorm had put out the fire while it was still burning. And some said that it was impossible to burn a house made cold by the heart of Melchisedec Jonas.

  Let me tell you about him.

  Melchisedec Jonas spent eight years as the foreman at American Casket Company.

  “He’s the best foreman I’ve ever had,” his boss, Mr. Pickle, would say as he slapped Melchisedec on the back. Of course, Melchisedec was the only foreman he’d ever had. It didn’t matter.

  Melchisedec was tough, and when he was on the line, the caskets were always perfect. Anything less would be torn apart and tossed into the rubbish bin. But folks said that he cared more for the dead than the living—that was how badly he treated the workers. There were no breaks. There was no sympathy. There was only work.

  But the factory flourished. And when the factory’s owner and his wife died in a mysterious fire, few people were surprised to hear that Melchisedec was to serve as the president of American Casket Company until the owners’ oldest child, Edwina, should come of age. Folks were also not surprised to hear that Edwina Pickle and her little brother, Parker, were to be cared for by their new guardian, Melchisedec Jonas. Mr. Pickle always had trusted him.

  But Ralph did not know this as he waited patiently in Melchisedec’s yard. His parents had been called to Mr. Jonas’s house for a meeting. Ralph was now thirteen years old, for five years had passed since Mrs. Flabbergast sprinkled the powder from the vial into her pot of cabbage. Since that night, all sauerkraut made in the pot had tasted stunningly delicious. Ralph’s father began selling Flabbergast’s Famous Kraut, and they simply could not keep it on the shelf. For once, Ralph’s family was able to save a bit of money.

  Now, Melchisedec Jonas wanted to buy the factory, even though there was no factory. He wanted the name, and he wanted the recipe, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “Pick a card, any card,” Ralph said to the wide-eyed girl who sat across from him. She was shy, with long dark hair and eyes that looked like a deep ocean on a stormy day—blue and green and gray.

  “I don’t like tricks,” the girl said.

  “I’ll take one!” Her brother grabbed a card. He was taller and livelier than his sister, though he was younger, but not by much.

  “Don’t show it to me,” Ralph told him. He had the little boy put it back in the deck, and amazed him by pulling it from behind the boy’s ear.

  “Edwina!” the boy squealed with a grin. “Look, it’s magic!”

  “It’s just a trick, Parker,” she said. “That’s not real magic.”

  “How do you know?” Ralph asked.

  Edwina looked him dead in the eye. “Because I know what real magic looks like.”

  Ralph’s head felt light. “Do you?” he said, holding her gaze. He thought of his vial, which he had hidden in his pocket. He had not opened it in five years.

  Not since the day he sprinkled some powder on the tree, and several hours later, it was hit by lightning but did not die. (In fact, the weeks that followed, it sprouted leaves more lush than ever before.) The same day his mother had sprinkled some into the sauerkraut pot, and changed their lives. Two wishes were gone already, thoughtlessly, and Ralph did not dare to use the third.

  Ralph believed in real magic, too, and he longed for it, although it frightened him. This was why he learned tricks and kept the vial in his pocket—he wanted to come as close to magic as he could, without actually touching it. He didn’t want to waste his last bit of it, and he didn’t want to let it out of his sight.

  Ralph tried to read what Edwina was thinking of, to see what was hidden in the depths of those eyes.

  The door opened and three adults stormed in.

  “Ralph, we’re leaving,” Mr. Flabbergast announced, holding his hat over his wide belly.

  “I’ll have my lawyer send you the papers.” Melchisedec Jonas was a small man, extravagantly groomed with pale hair slicked to his head and eyes that seemed flat and dead.

  Ralph’s parents were always polite, but they did not look at Mr. Jonas as they collared Ralph and marched him out the door. And, in this way, Melchisedec Jonas killed the small magic that had almost changed the fortunes of the Flabbergasts.

  Mrs. Flabbergast never made another jar of sauerkraut again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kai

  The library is doing a wonderful job of impersonating a small wooden cottage, Kai thought. It didn’t look like the libraries in Baltimore. It didn’t look official at all. In fact, if it weren’t for the hand-painted sign on the white fence, she never would have cast a second glance at the one-story structure on the main street.

  “Why aren’t we just looking up the moth on your dad’s computer?” Kai asked.

  “This library has some stuff you can’t get anywhere else,” Doodle told her.

  Kai lifted her eyebrows at the little old building. “Like dust mites?”

  Doodle ignored her, pushing the gate, which yielded with a welcoming creak. The paint on the wooden steps and front porch had been rubbed off by years of people carrying books back and forth. All in all, there was something about the building that made Kai think of a friendly old woman, the kind who loves visitors.

  “Doodle!” The young man behind the library counter looked delighted to see her. Colorful tattoos ran up his arms, creeping beneath the turned-up sleeves of a vintage gas-station attendant shirt with Vinnie written over the pocket. The sides of his dark hair were cropped close, ending in a bouffant that towered over a pair of black-framed glasses. “Wait there!” he said, ducking behind the counter.

  “Who’s that?” Kai whispered.

  “The librarian, who do you think?” Doodle said back. She did not whisper. Subtlety was not Doodle’s strength. “Carlos.”

  “His name isn’t Vinnie?”

  Doodle chuckled. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  Carlos resurfaced holding an enormous, battered volume. “Dug it out of the archives!”

  “You’re kidding!” Doodle rushed over.

  A very thin blonde woman with green eyes and a wide mouth shushed them.

  Carlos lowered his voice to a whisper. “It was down there—hi”—Carlos glanced at Kai—“buried in the back. Completely mis-filed!” He said this like a man who had endured a great deal of incompetence.

 
; Doodle reached for the book, then held back. “May I?” she asked.

  Carlos handed her a pair of white cotton gloves, and she pulled them on.

  “Are you going to look at it, or operate on it?” Kai asked.

  “Carlos, welcome to Kai.” Doodle did not look up as she gently, gently turned the brittle pages of handwritten notes.

  “Are you a lepidopterist, too?” Carlos whispered, and shoved his thick glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. They promptly slid down again.

  “No, why? Is everyone in this town into moths, or something?” Kai asked.

  Doodle looked up from the book. Both she and Carlos stared at Kai.

  “What?” Kai asked.

  “Whittier Springs used to be a huge tourist destination,” Doodle explained. “Because of the annual moth migration.”

  “Tourists?” Kai repeated, smiling a little. She assumed they were pulling her leg.

  “We had a unique colony of Celestial Moths; the only one in the country,” Carlos explained. “That’s why we have the annual festival.” He pointed downward. Taped onto the front of the counter was a flyer proclaiming 134th Annual Lepidoptery Fair!

  Yep. He was serious.

  Kai felt her face burn hot out to the tips of her eyelashes.

  “A hundred years ago, people believed the moths could cure illnesses,” Doodle went on. “Even mental ones.”

  “Yeah, but—” Kai squinched up her nose, face still burning. “You guys don’t believe that, right?”

  Carlos frowned so hard that his glasses nearly fell off the end of his nose. “How do we know?” he demanded, slowly adjusting his glasses. “Lots of herbs and insects are the basis for modern medicine.” Kai didn’t really know what to say to this. Carlos had a good point, but Kai wasn’t used to being wrong, and she didn’t like it much.

  “How would a moth cure mental illness?” Kai shot back. “Would it land on your head?”

  The lady at the nearby library table shushed them again.

  “I apologize,” Carlos said to her. His voice was sincere, but the woman frowned. To Kai, he said, “I think the answer to your question is pretty obvious, if you bother to think about it.”

  Another point for Carlos, which made Kai feel like crawling under the carpet. Since nobody seemed to want to tell her she was right, she decided to drop the subject. “Oh,” she said. “Uh—so what’s the book?”

  “The diary of an amateur lepidopterist,” Doodle told her.

  “Doodle is the person who found the title in our old card catalog,” Carlos said.

  “They just keep it for decoration,” Doodle put in. “Nobody ever looks in it anymore.”

  “Nobody but Doodle,” Carlos said. “But she brought me the card from the catalog, so I started digging around for it.”

  “We’ve found a few other rare titles that way.”

  Kai was beginning to see that Carlos felt the same way about books that Doodle felt about moths. It was the way that Kai used to feel about the violin. It was that thing that settled into a space inside you, and made you happy whenever you thought about it.

  Or, at least, the violin used to do that for Kai. Thinking about the instrument now only filled Kai with loneliness.

  “Can I take it home?” Doodle asked.

  Carlos looked pained. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s the only copy, Doodle.”

  “I know, but—”

  “I’ll keep it behind the counter for you. I won’t let anyone else touch it.”

  Doodle hesitated, looking concerned. “Promise?”

  “Of course!”

  “Who else would want a book like that?” Kai asked, genuinely curious.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Doodle yanked off the cotton gloves, gaping over Carlos’s shoulder. The librarian asked no questions—he simply pulled the book from the top of the counter and slid it onto the shelf underneath just as Kai turned to see Pettyfer approaching.

  “Hello, Miriam,” Pettyfer said to Doodle. “Here to do a little research?” He looked at Kai with his flat, blue eyes, and she gave a little shudder.

  “I could’ve asked you that last night,” Doodle snapped. “What were you doing by the graveyard?”

  Pettyfer leaned ever so casually against the counter, unwittingly tempting Kai to give him a push and send him sprawling. She restrained herself. “I don’t think I need an excuse to stand near my family’s factory.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t scouting moths?”

  Pettyfer grinned with half of his mouth.

  Kai resisted the temptation to smack the arrogant look off his face. She just wished he would go away. There was something about the smug coldness of him that made her furious and fearful, all at the same time.

  Carlos’s nose wrinkled, as if an unpleasant smell had just wafted his way. “I need to go . . . file something,” he said, heading over to a book cart. He and Doodle exchanged a glance before he turned away.

  Pettyfer’s gaze drifted to the cart, then snapped back. “I might have been after a Sphinx moth,” he said smoothly.

  “Or you might have been hoping to steal whatever I got,” Doodle replied, “after I got it.”

  “Why would I do that?” Pettyfer smirked his smirky smirk, sending a little shiver down the back of Kai’s neck. “I’ve already got a project for the Lepidoptery Fair that’s going to blow whatever sad little thing you’re working on out of the water. A demonstration.”

  Kai couldn’t resist temptation any longer. “Are you kidding?” She let out a loud snort.

  The blonde lady slammed her book shut and glared at them. “Keep your voice down,” she said in a loud whisper. “Some people are trying to study.”

  Nodding, Kai turned back to Pettyfer. “Are you kidding?” she repeated in a strangled whisper. “We are working on something so amazing that it’ll probably make your brain explode and dribble out of your ears in clumps.”

  Doodle shook her head and looked at Kai with huge eyes, silently telling her to cut it out.

  Pettyfer looked doubtful. “Right. Like what?”

  “Like it’s a surprise,” Kai snapped. “A big surprise! Like, the biggest surprise you’ll see for the next hundred years!”

  “Please. Miriam has tried to win that five-hundred-dollar prize for three years in a row. And three years in a row, she’s lost. To me.”

  “Why do you keep calling her Miriam?”

  “Because that’s her name.”

  Kai looked at Doodle, who gave a little shrug. “Doodle is technically my middle name.”

  “And what’s all this about five hundred dollars?” Kai demanded. She hadn’t realized that the Lepidoptery Fair came with a cash prize. She looked at Doodle, who mashed her lips together and headed for the door.

  “See you later,” Pettyfer called.

  “Not if we see you first,” Kai shot back, adding, “Okay, okay, we’re leaving,” as the blonde lady let out a megashush capable of knocking the third little piggie’s house down.

  Doodle was already storming through the gate. Kai hesitated a moment, unsure whether to follow. She had begun to think of Doodle as her friend . . . but was she, really? She hadn’t said anything about the five-hundred-dollar prize, and Doodle wasn’t even her real name.

  Kai felt small, small as a dandelion seed. And as useless. She hated it—hated that feeling—but she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  Doodle stopped. She turned. “You coming?” she asked Kai.

  Kai remained on the other side of the gate. “When were you going to tell me about the five hundred bucks?”

  “After we won,” Doodle replied. “If we won.”

  “Why not before?”

  “Because the Lepidoptery Fair is not about money,” Doodle said slowly. “It’s not about winning.”

  “What is it about?” Kai asked.

  “It’s about the moths.”

  That soft word, moths, hung there in the space between them. Kai felt her rage shifting, like the dandelion seed on the wind. It fl
oated a moment, and then found a new direction—toward Pettyfer. “Okay, but we still can’t let that . . . that jerk win.”

  “Exactly,” Doodle agreed. “He doesn’t care about the moths.”

  Kai thought. “Well, it kind of seems like he does. He’s interested in them, at least.”

  “He’s interested in killing them,” Doodle snapped. “He pins them to a board while they’re still alive, Kai.” Doodle’s voice was heavy with bitterness. “He isn’t a lepidopterist, he’s a collector.”

  In Kai’s mind, she saw a frail moth, wings flapping desperately as Pettyfer drove a pin through its body. She wished she hadn’t imagined it. Now she couldn’t stop imagining it, and it made her nauseated.

  “He doesn’t deserve to win,” Doodle murmured. “He doesn’t deserve anything.”

  Kai nodded. They couldn’t let him win. They wouldn’t. Because Pettyfer did deserve one thing—he deserved to lose.

  The next day, the girls returned to the library. Carlos insisted that the journal was too delicate for the photocopier, but he let Doodle photograph the pages with her dad’s iPad. Then they went back to Lavinia’s house, and sat down at the worn gold-flecked Formica kitchen table. Doodle scrolled through the images as Kai poured out two glasses of a drink she had concocted over the weekend: Luna Juice, named for the bright green moths. It was a blend of lemonade and green Kool-Aid, and was surprisingly good. Plus, it turned your tongue green. Lavinia had quickly become addicted to it, and for the past several days there had been a pitcher at the ready in the refrigerator. “Hoo, girl, don’t go giving out that secret recipe,” Lavinia had said. “We’re gonna make a mint! I’ve written ten poems since we started making this; I swear, it’s good for the brain activity!”

  “So, what are these, do you think?” Doodle asked now, pointing to an image of five lines, with numbers, on the screen.

  “It looks almost like musical graph, with no notes. But I don’t know what the numbers could mean.”

  “Look at this.” Doodle enlarged another drawing. It was of an open-winged moth. The color was striking—pale blue, with white bands on the forewing and a large black-and-yellow dot that looked almost like an eye on each hindwing. “Irregular,” Doodle said, pointing to the scalloped wing edges. “It’s a Celestial.”