The Hungry Ghosts

by Miguel Flores

  Winds are a volatile and persnickety assortment. They require much more patience to befriend than other beings of magicks. Many won’t even give you the time of day.

  If you wish for a wind’s help, all you must (or can) do is ask. And use the magick word. Just don’t do so expecting to receive anything in return.

  Above all, do not—I repeat, do not—without exception, under any circumstance, ever, ever, ever attempt to tame one of the Four Winds. Many foolhardy wizards have seen the wrong end of insanity trying to control even the littlest winds. Many have lost their minds. Some have even lost their hearts.

  Always remember that as a witch, it is never your duty to control the magicks you work with. They are not your servants. Your only goal is to—

  “Milly? What are you doing?”

  “HU—WHOOPS.” Milly jolted and hit her head on a wooden beam. She dropped the book and immediately sat on it, picking up Misfortunate Adventures as she did so. The back of her head throbbed.

  The fuzzy top half of a little girl’s head peeked out at her from the attic’s trapdoor.

  “Hi, Cilla,” Milly said in as calm a voice as possible.

  The little girl, Cilla, climbed into the crawl space with a stuffed blue borkoink squeezed under her left arm.* Half her hair stuck out to the side and her pajama sleeves drooped past her tanned brown hands. She sat down and rubbed at her eyes with her right sleeve.

  “It’s so early,” Cilla said. “Why are we up?”

  Cilla was six years younger than Milly, three pant sizes smaller, and two times the trouble. The other girls called her Silly, either because she talked to inanimate objects or because it was a not-clever play on her name or both. Milly tried very hard to call her Cilla.

  Milly rubbed the back of her head with one hand while still pretending to look at the book in the other. “I was reading.”

  Cilla scooted toward Milly and looked at her over the book’s binding. “Whatcha reading?”

  “Misfortunate Adventures of Tom Fool.” Milly lowered the book and poked Cilla’s nose. “You remember this one, right?”

  Cilla squinted down at Junebug, her borkoink, then up at Milly. “Is this the one with the egg balloon that could fit a person inside it?”

  “Yep.” Milly shifted on her seat, very aware of the hard corners digging into her thighs. She put down the book and smoothed the spikes in Cilla’s hair. “Why are you up so early?”

  “We weren’t tired. We—” Cilla stifled a yawn. “We wanted something to eat.”

  Milly glanced at the borkoink and raised an eyebrow. “Junebug seems pretty tired to me. Maybe you should have let her stay in bed.”

  “Is not.” Cilla held up the borkoink and propped its little blue head with her thumbs. “She’s plenty—yawn—awake.”

  Milly sighed. This act could be cute, but not that cute. “Come on, little one. Doris won’t like it if she knows you’re up.”

  “We won’t tell her.”

  Junebug’s button eyes glistened, as if it were whispering, I make no such promises.

  Milly ignored it. “If I get you a snack, will you go back to bed?”

  “What do you think, Junebug?” Cilla said. The borkoink’s head drooped down.

  “Ugh. Fine.” Cilla stuffed Junebug under her arm and crawled back toward the trapdoor.

  As soon as Cilla’s head dipped out of sight, Milly slid out the Witch’s Guide and tucked it in the floor panel beneath the other books. So much for a quiet spot to be alone. Milly blew a strand of hair out of her face and approached the trapdoor. She paused when her fingertips grazed the edge. Down below was the world where half-chewed dreams gave way to the slow digestion of practicalities. She didn’t want to start her day just yet; she wanted more time to read.

  Too bad she didn’t really have a choice.

  Milly left her curiosities in the attic and jumped down, dressed in her unwanted title. It was time to be a mother again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  not everyone chooses to be a mother

  Outside the foster home, Milly knelt on the ground with her hands in the mud.

  A sudden shift in the wind lifted the brim of Milly’s rice hat and sneezed water onto her face. She sputtered and reached up to pin her hat down with both hands, glaring up at the sky. She wanted to reprimand the bad weather, but another bundle of raindrops clattered against her teeth and she dropped her head back down.

  “Ugh!”

  Now even more cold and wet, Milly returned to the bucket she had been trying to wrestle out of the ground. Her forearms and every inch of her fingers were covered in mud.

  She probably should have done this instead of reading earlier. Doris always said, “Better done in haste than done in waste.”

  Or . . . something like that.

  Something rolled beneath her right foot and she slipped, falling backward into a mess of vines. The rain splattered onto her face while she lay in a patch of the squash garden.

  She thought she heard a laugh.

  Milly whipped her head around, flicking droplets from her nose, but didn’t see anything in the shifting walls of rain. Doris’s old moss-bull lay on his side nearby. Snoring. Oblivious. Little pink wildflowers grew around his toes and legs. Years of sleeping had made him barely distinguishable from the landscape.

  Rubbing her thigh, Milly got back to her feet. When she pulled her hand away, it was covered in the remains of a yellow-blue squash.

  “Gross.”

  She tossed it aside, then pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and sloshed back over to the buried bucket. A small green grunkworm wriggled between one of the wooden slats into the dirt.*

  “Okay,” Milly whispered. “You need to come out. Right. Now.”

  She adjusted her grip around the edges—

  “One . . .”

  —dug her fingers in as best as she could—

  “Two . . .”

  —and set her two slippery feet shoulder-width apart.

  “Three!”

  It didn’t budge an inch.

  Milly gritted her teeth and mumbled, “Please just come out.”

  A small red spark flashed across Milly’s knuckles and the whole bucket flew upward into her arms. She shifted to keep from falling over with the sudden weight. An unbidden grin spread over her face.

  Wait, did I do that? Milly frowned, then laughed, then frowned again, not entirely sure what to feel. Maybe she’d just . . . imagined it. Yeah, that was it.

  She shook her head free of distracting thoughts. Knots of grass and dirt squished beneath her feet while she turned with the bucket between her legs. She waddled out of the garden and toward St. George’s, squatting the entire time. The bucket’s contents sloshed from one side to the other with each wide, unbalanced step.

  Halfway up the slope to St. George’s, she slipped against the mud. The bucket started sliding.

  “No!”

  Scrambling up, she sloshed to the bucket and held it from going any further with one hand. “Can you please let up for one moment?!” she complained to the sky. “Just let me in the house, and I won’t come back out until you’re good and finished. Promise!”

  The sky flashed with lightning, followed almost immediately by thunderous fanfare.

  Milly thought she heard laughter again, this time from behind.

  She spun around and saw a shapeless shadow flicker in the rain.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Who are you?!”

  She blinked several times to clear her vision as raindrops stung her eyes. When she could see again, the mysterious shape was gone.

  Frustrated and a little embarrassed to be talking to no one, Milly kept one hand on the bucket and pulled it behind her. With a new sense of motivation, she trudge-slip-climbed the rest of the way up the slope to St. George’s.* From outside, she saw all of St. Ge
orge’s wall-sized windows slatted shut against the wind. Except for the tiny window up in the attic, which she’d forgotten to close, and a narrow slit of light where she’d left the kitchen panels open. Milly could see the room lit up by a lantern on the center table.

  She hauled the bucket up and into the house, then pulled herself up after it. With a loud exhale, Milly sprawled onto the floor, belly-side down.

  Through the floor, she felt the faint vibration of approaching feet. The rhythmic tip-tapping grew louder until she heard two wooden slippers slap into the kitchen.

  “Oh. Hello,” came the disembodied voice of Doris. “Were you able to grab the last batch of fermented rice?”

  “Yup.” Without getting up, Milly knocked the bucket with her foot.

  She heard Doris walk around her to retrieve it. “Thank you.”

  Milly shrugged, though she knew Doris probably didn’t see it. She heard the sound of a fish’s head slap against a chopping board, followed by the thud of a knife.

  After presumably deboning and cutting several more fishes, Doris spoke. “Are you ready for the Happy Ghosts Festival?”

  Milly shrugged again. “I guess.”

  “I’m glad for all your help,” Doris said. “I know it’s been . . . tougher than usual, with the shadows eating the crops, but I really am grateful. I’ve been thinking, maybe you should learn a trade next season. You like baking. I could ask Gimmy to take you as an apprentice.”

  Doris waited for Milly to answer, but Milly didn’t want to.

  “Some of the other girls are getting older now . . . I’m sure they’d be willing to take up some of your chores around the house. I’m sorry it’s been a lot of trouble. I know how long you’ve waited.”

  The weight of silence sat between them.

  And then, just as quickly as she created it, Doris broke the quiet. “I know you feel responsible for the other girls. Especially Cilla. But . . .”

  Milly lifted her head and stared at Doris. I dare you to say it, she thought.

  “You aren’t their mother.”

  Milly shut her eyes and gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to talk about this right now. She wanted to sink into the floor, or take a long shower, or sit in the attic and read the rest of her book. Anything, really. Just not this.

  But Doris kept talking, and the words fell over Milly like an itchy blanket she couldn’t throw off. Doris meant well—she always did—but no matter how many times Doris promised anything, Milly knew better.

  Doris couldn’t take care of the girls by herself. Milly would remain their big sister or mother or whatever forever and always. She’d watch Cilla and Nishi and Lissy and Ikki find titles to chase, families to make their own, and then she’d be left behind. Again. Stuck with St. George’s and the dreams she was never allowed to have.

  A silent scream tore through her chest and she got up.

  “I need to clean up,” she sputtered, and ran from the room.

  * * *

  Milly sat in a wide barrel, staring into the foamy water that had lost its heat long ago. She clutched her knees, studying clusters of bubbles with glazed-over eyes.

  In her mind, all she saw were ghosts. She imagined their eyes were glossy black buttons, like Junebug’s, peeping from cupboards and beneath floorboards. Their skin stitched out of the rough-hewn material Doris kept rice in. Their hands made from long-bladed scissors.

  She knew, of course, that real ghosts could never be that ugly. Giving the unknown a mask to wear was just the best way she knew to cope. If a ghost had a mask that was scarier than its real face, it’d make seeing one easier. Right?

  The Happy Ghost Festival happened every year in West Ernost. It was how the village remembered everyone lost to the Wizarding Wars, how they remembered all the children who used to live at St. George’s, how they remembered to never trust witches again. No one else in Arrett really cared, so the people of West Ernost took it upon themselves to never forget. To always keep praying.

  “Remember us.”

  A cold, gentle hand gripped her shoulder.

  Milly gasped and jumped up, spilling water onto the floor.

  “Geez!” Nishi pulled her hand back and fidgeted with two braids of hair. “I just came to tell you that dinner’s ready.”

  Milly relaxed her shoulders, nodded, and stepped out of the bath.

  Nishi grabbed a towel off the wall and tossed it at Milly. “You should probably clean first.”

  Milly caught it and blinked. “This is too small.”

  “It’s for the floor.”

  Milly looked down at the mess she made. “Oh.”

  Nishi looked in a mirror, grinned at herself, and twisted on her heel. “See you downstairs!”

  After wrapping herself in a much bigger towel, Milly slid open a panel, then stood up to pull on a large, hanging rope. The water from the bath rushed out in a thin, sudsy river along a little engraved pathway on the floor and streamed out through the miniature door. Milly held on to the rope until the entire bath drained, then slid the door shut with her foot and walked back to the barrel.

  She dropped the towel Nishi had thrown at her and hopped on it with both feet. One foot at a time, she slid around until all the water was soaked up. Satisfied, she glanced into the barrel once more to make sure nothing had been left inside. Two unpopped bubbles stared back at her, covered in her own shadow, like little glass eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  the living, the dead, and the in-betweens

  Every year, as soon as harvest ended, Doris took her fourteen girls on a field trip for the Happy Ghosts Festival. Although not all the girls still believed in ghosts, they all had their own reasons for going.*

  This year, they woke up with the sun and spent their day preparing a feast. Each girl had been given her very own job this year, while Doris stood in the middle of the kitchen blurting out names and sometimes getting them right.

  “Lissy and Cilla, I need you two to collect banana leaves.”

  “Okay!” They (and Junebug) went outside and mostly played with green sticks.

  “Gabby, I need you to rummage around in the spice cabinet and find me some cinnamon.”

  “ ‘Gabby’? Milly, who’s she talking about?” one of the girls whispered.

  “I think she means Abby.”

  “Oh . . . wait. That’s me!”

  “Nenita,” Doris continued, oblivious, “come here and bring that sack of june-eyed beans with you.”

  Little Nene wobbled across the room, taking twice as long because she didn’t want to step on any of the cracks in the floor.

  “Nishi, can you keep an eye on that pot of rice?”

  “Ugh.” Nishi dragged Ikki along and forced her to stir the pot while she braided Ikki’s hair.

  “Mei, I need squash from the garden.”

  “Called it!” Marikit jumped out the door at the chance to go outside.

  “Hey! She said I could do it!” Mei shouted, clambering after her with only one shoe.

  “Aisha, please don’t eat the pudding before it’s ready.”

  “Aisha’s not here today,” said Aisha, with her pinky finger in the bowl of pudding. She licked it, then stuck her index finger in for another taste.

  Meanwhile, Milly was in charge of nothing in particular. Which meant she was in charge of everything.

  “Aisha, get your fingers out of that.”

  “I’m not Aisha. Today I’m Fahtma—”

  “You knew exactly who she meant.” Milly swung around. “Nishi, please stop making Ikki do your work.”

  “But I’m too busy.”

  “I’ll fix your hair later.”

  “Really?!” they both said.

  “Yes. If you do your jobs. I need Ikki to help me with these bean cakes.”

  “Go on, Ikki. I got this.” Nishi pushed her sl
eeves up past her elbows.

  “Fiiine.”

  Most of the morning continued like this, and they somehow made progress throughout the day. Slowly, the mess on the table transformed into an arrangement of platters and bowls. Little steamed packets of rice sat in a row, neatly dressed in banana leaf robes and twisted-grass ties. A large bowl of rice porridge with flowers carved along its wooden sides sat in the middle, cinnamon dusting the top. Round ovals were stacked on a plate, hard-crusted on the outside and filled with soft purple beans within.

  When the sun began to set, all fourteen girls took a portion of this feast and packed their rice and bean offerings into little open-topped boxes. Doris lined them up and led them out the front door onto a small stony path that led away from the rice terraces and toward the Hallow at the edge of the cliff.

  As they approached the Hallow, some of the farmers and villagers from the nearby Tugalong Town materialized down the road. Many of them were older without kids of their own, but they all had some ghost—some memory—to pay tribute to. Living in West Ernost meant you were haunted by the dead, and that was a fact of life.

  Most of the girls were too young to remember who any of the ghosts used to be. For them, this was a chance to get honest, down-to-their-toes scared.

  Every child wants to be terrified out of their boots every so often. Nothing’s better than a monster at scraping down the walls, stripping the floors, and tearing down the doors that have locked up one’s complacent heart. Fear has its way of startling the heart back into shape. It nips the heel. Stings the skin.*

  As they marched toward the festival, the girls whispered among themselves stories of cruel fairies and ancient giants, mischievous dwarves and pale-eyed djinns. However, if they wished to be particularly scared, the definitive worst of the worst were the woesome, wily, wicked, and wasteful witches.

  Nishi, as usual, was the first to bring them up.

  “I heard they like to eat children,” Nishi said, whispering over her shoulder at Ikki and Cilla. She licked her lips, wrinkled her nose, and took on a croaky voice. “Mmm, roasted bones.”