The Hungry Ghosts

by Miguel Flores

  Anyway, good luck, little wind. Consider this a test run. A practical interview. An unpaid internship! It’s quite the job for someone so small and untested, but don’t worry. Sure, you might fail spectacularly, but at least then you can get back to your mundane routine as soon as possible.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  in which milly is definitely not a witch

  “please don’t let her fall please don’t let her fall please don’t let her fall.”

  Milly froze in place and felt a great surge of energy rush from her gut to her outstretched fingers. A bright red spark flashed into existence.

  At the edge of the cliff, she sensed a presence. Something with power. Something with . . . magicks.

  “Help me, wind,” she begged. “Please.”

  The red spark grew until it exploded. The energy left her body, shot out, and hovered over the cliff’s edge, filling the air with the smell of something simultaneously burnt and sweet. Milly watched as the air around her churned in visible patterns made of curling loops and flattened funnels, bounding in endless circles.

  The drafts of air continued to run around, forming a tighter cone, until Cilla materialized out of its center and got sneezed directly back at Milly.

  Milly landed flat on her back with a hard, brash cough. The impact left her lungs burning and her entire backside throbbing. Little dots splattered across her vision when she blinked her eyes open. It felt like those same little dots were tap-dancing all along her arms and legs.

  “How?” Milly whispered with a coarse gasp.

  “That was . . . amazing!” Cilla rolled off Milly and jumped to her feet without a scratch.

  Milly sat up and twisted around, much to the displeasure of her ribs. She clutched the side of her torso, panting, and looked up to see Cilla staring down at something.

  “Milly, you’re a . . .”

  Milly looked down and saw her palm covered in a black mark. She stretched out her fingers and gasped. Her hand had been stained with a broken moon. A deep dread filled the bottom of her stomach and she shook her head. “Please. Please don’t say it.”

  Cilla opened her mouth as if to continue talking, then shut her mouth and grinned.

  Milly propped herself up on her elbows and tightened her hand into a fist, silently willing the mark to go away. “Are you okay?”

  Cilla patted herself up and down, then did the same to Junebug. “We’re okay.”

  “Good.” Milly fell back into the grass and closed her eyes. She was trying very hard to relax, but all her insides could do were somersaults and cartwheels. What just happened? Did I just save Cilla’s life? Was that . . . magicks? She snapped her eyes open.

  “Cilla,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “What happened to the book?”

  “Huh?” Cilla looked up from where she was now kneeling next to two little balls: one black, one blue.

  “The book. We need to get rid of it.”

  “Oh.” Cilla lowered her head. “We might have dropped it in the ocean.”

  Thank goodness, Milly thought.

  “We’re very sorry. We didn’t mean to—”

  “No, don’t be sorry. That’s okay.” She stared at the black object crawling into Cilla’s arms. “Um. What is that?”

  Cilla lifted the creature up toward Milly. “Cat!”

  It blinked at Milly from the girl’s arms, then squinted its eyes and let out a very long yawn.

  “Wh-what? How? I—where?”

  “He showed up after we landed.” Cilla hugged the cat, and he purred into her cheek. “Isn’t he cute?”

  Milly reached out to pet the cat, but he stopped purring and hissed. Milly pulled her hand back. “It’s . . . all right.”

  “We want to keep him.”

  Milly couldn’t believe her ears. “You almost fell off a cliff, and you already want to—” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Know what? I don’t care. Keep him. I just want to get back to the house before Doris wakes up.” Milly looked around. Giant walls of fog stretched above her. She scratched her head and turned several times. “Um.”

  “Are we lost?” Cilla said.

  “Yes,” Milly said, trying desperately to keep her voice gentle and calm. (It wasn’t working). “We are very lost.”

  “Is it my fault?” Cilla looked at the mud on her feet, then buried her face in the cat.

  Oh. Milly turned toward her little sister and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “No, Cilla. It’s not your fault. We’re gonna figure this out together, okay?”

  “Okay,” she mumbled through a mouthful of fur.

  The cat seemed unimpressed with being in Cilla’s arms. He wrestled himself out and fell to the ground, then started to walk away.

  “Jasper! Where are you going?” Cilla exclaimed.

  “Jasper?”

  “The cat.”

  Milly opened her mouth to argue, then snapped it shut. There was no use trying to argue at this point.

  Meanwhile, the cat kept walking until he disappeared into the fog.

  “Jasper!” Cilla said. “Hey, Jasper, where’d you go?”

  Milly sighed. “You probably shouldn’t wander too far, cat. You might fall off the cliff.”

  “Jasper.”

  “What?”

  “You have to call him by his name or he won’t listen.”

  “That wasn’t even his name until just a second ago!” Milly tried very hard to not roll her eyes.

  Cilla glared.

  “Okay,” Milly said through gritted teeth. “Where did you go, Jasper?”

  The tippy-top of a black tail appeared somewhere high up in the fog and wiggled its way back and forth down toward her until it disappeared. Soon enough, the creature it belonged to jumped out from the fog and onto a large stone somewhere next to Milly.

  His fur was black from head to toe. He blinked his wide green eyes at Milly, opened his mouth, then promptly sat down and began licking his paw.

  Cilla tugged at Milly’s sleeve. “He wants us to follow him.”

  “How do you know? Follow him where?”

  “Maybe he knows his way around here. Maybe”—Cilla paused and lowered her voice—“maybe he’s magicks, too.”

  Milly walked to the cat and bent down. The cat stared at Milly, and Milly stared back. He returned to grooming himself.

  Milly scrunched up her face. “I think he might just be a cat.”

  The cat looked up and glared at Milly, then turned around and walked off again.

  “Told you he wants us to follow him.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  Cilla huffed and marched off after the cat. “You always think you know everything.”

  Milly planted her feet down. “Cilla, if you fall off the cliff again, I might not be able to catch you!”

  The other girl kept walking without a word.

  “Cilla, I mean it! Cilla? Cilla!” Milly stomped her foot down and ran after them. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  She followed Cilla, who was following the cat, who led them on a zigzag path to who knew where. Sometimes the entire cat was visible to them, almost as if he were walking on air. Other times, the fog was so deep that all they could see was his tail bobbing about ahead of them. Regardless, he seemed to act as if he knew where he was going and never once faltered or waited to see if the girls were following behind him.

  After some time of climbing a particularly steep incline, Cilla stumbled and Milly caught her from behind.

  “You okay?”

  “Our legs hurt.”

  Milly looked up ahead and tilted her head. “Can we take a break, Mr. Cat?”

  The cat’s tail twitched, but he didn’t slow down.

  “I don’t think he’s in the mood for stopping,” Milly said.

  Cil
la sat down in the wet grass and held her hands up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re tired.”

  “Do you want me to carry you?”

  Cilla nodded her head and lifted her hands higher.

  Milly looked up to see the cat getting even farther away, then back down at the little girl and her borkoink. “All right. Come here.” Milly bent down to lift Cilla and immediately regretted it. “Why. Are. You. So. Heavy?”

  Cilla buried her face in Milly’s shoulder and hugged Junebug tighter.

  “Okay.” Milly exhaled and glanced over to where the cat had been. “Let’s see if we can find that cat.”

  She headed up the invisible hill one wobbly step at a time, searching for the black fur of the cat to materialize. “Hello? Hellooooooooo?”

  Her voice got swallowed up by a fierce wind blowing in from the sea. Milly kept walking with Cilla in her arms, but neither of them saw any signs of life anywhere.

  “Jasper,” Cilla called, “Where’d you go?”

  “I think”—Milly huffed her way up the incline—“I think he’s gone.”

  The two girls made it over the crest of the hill and stepped into the soft glow of a waking sun. It spread its golden fingers from beyond the sea and cracked through the thick layers of fog covering the cliffside.

  Milly looked out over the surrounding landscape and saw West Ernost waking up before her. The straw hat of a local farmer popped up through the mist not yet chased away by sunlight. A soft wind blew through the terraces, revealing the damp earth of the rice farms. A winding river curved through the farms all the way out into the far distance, where it disappeared into a forest of bamboo.

  “Look.” Cilla pulled at Milly’s hair. “St. George’s!”

  And there it was, sitting on the hill closest to them. A light flickered on in one of its windows.

  “Told you Jasper knew where he was going!”

  “Looks like Doris is awake,” Milly said, not fully hearing what Cilla had said. “I’m gonna put you down now, okay?”

  Cilla groaned but didn’t say anything when Milly lowered her to the ground. Full of newfound energy, Cilla bounded on ahead while Milly stretched her legs.

  “Be careful next time.”

  Milly whipped her head around and saw the cat staring at her from a nearby rock. She mouthed “What” and took a step toward it, but the cat blinked once then jumped away.

  “Come on, Milly!”

  “Weird,” she muttered, then opened her hand. The mark was still there, permanently etched on to her skin. She closed it into a fist, turned, and followed Cilla down the hill.

  CHAPTER SIX, PART ONE

  on the ineffectiveness of door-to-door marketing

  Things at St. George’s became quiet after our two friends fell off the cliff. Although Doris gave them quite the scolding, Milly and Cilla agreed never to speak of anything related to the cliff or book or anything magick of any sort. Cilla appeared more restless than usual, but Milly found herself very relieved that nothing more had come of the incident. And now that the book was out of her life, maybe she’d be less likely to stumble into magicks.

  But every so often, her fingers would twitch and a little red spark would fly between them. Sometimes when she was washing the dishes or mopping the floor or weeding the garden, she felt her palm itch. It was weird, but she missed it. She missed the feeling of power. She kept wondering what it’d be like to use magicks just one more time.

  But then she’d see a shadow flit out of the garden. Or around the edge of the house. And it reminded her of Cilla falling off the cliff, and she knew she could never risk being found out.*

  Because she was not in the mood for risks, Milly continued with her life, getting increasingly bored and increasingly tempted and scrubbing her hand increasingly raw. Until, one day, while she was standing at the kitchen sink scrubbing her hand for the tenth time in a row.

  “Meow.”

  Milly looked up from the sink, still in a bit of a daze from the mental tug-of-war she’d been losing to herself. Sitting in the open window was the cat, watching.

  “Oh, hello,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  The cat just stared.

  “Hm. I guess I’ll come to you, then.” Milly turned off the tap and walked over while drying her hands on a towel. She bent down to pet the cat. “Where’d you come from, little guy?”

  The cat pulled his head back with flared nostrils. “Please do not touch me.”

  Milly froze with her hand in the air. “Did you just—”

  “Speak?” The cat scratched his ear with a back paw. “Yeah, I figured out how. It’s not as hard as you people make it out to be.”

  Milly fell back with a loud thud and opened her mouth to scream or babble or say anything at all, but nothing came out.

  The cat tilted his head. “You okay there, little person?”

  “I— You— This— Talking cat! Talking cat? You’re a— What?”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I’m very impressive.”

  Milly rubbed her eyes with her fists several times and then reopened her eyes.

  The cat sneered. “Still here.”

  “Okay, so this is real.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is a real thing that is happening to me.”

  “Yep!”

  “This is real life and I am not dreaming and this cat is talking to me.”

  “I can keep saying yes if you like, but I’d hate to be redundant.”

  Milly exhaled and leaned back. “Okay. Okay okay okay.” She looked at the cat and rubbed her clammy hands together. “First of all, name. What is yours?”

  “Jasper, obviously.” The cat’s left ear twitched. “You should’ve known that already. You were there when your little friend first gave it to me.”

  “Oh . . . Sorry?”

  “That’s quite all right, little girl.”

  Milly scrunched up her face. “My name is Milly, by the way. And I’m not that little. The other girl’s name is Cilla.”

  “It’s possible I won’t remember that, but I suppose that’s good information to have.”

  Milly narrowed her eyes.

  “What? It’s not like you remembered mine either!”

  Milly scratched her head and leaned forward. “I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you here?”

  “Right! Almost forgot.” Jasper grabbed a thick, blockish object with his teeth and pulled it into view in front of him. He nudged it toward Milly. “You dropped this.”

  Milly looked down and saw the embossed gold letters of the Witch’s Guide staring back up at her. Her eyes widened.

  “Is that how you people look when you show gratitude? It’s not as happy-looking as I expected.”

  “No, it’s just—why did you bring it back?”

  His right ear twitched. “I figured you’d need it, considering your upcoming circumstances.”

  “ ‘Circumstances’?”

  Just then, Milly heard a faint knock at the door, followed by one of the girls shouting, “Someone’s at the door,” immediately after.

  “That was quick,” the cat said and jumped out the house.

  “Wait!”

  “Good luck!” The cat disappeared over the hill.

  She heard another knock on the door. In a panic, Milly kicked the book out the open wall-window and ran out of the kitchen.

  “Coming!” she shouted, and hurried to the front door.

  Whoever it was knocked again. Harder.

  “COMING!” Milly blew a curl of hair out of her face and picked up her pace. “No need to be in such a hurry.”

  She pulled the door open to a complete stranger with his fist poised to knock again.

  “Welcome to St. George’s,” she said. “Who are you and what do you want?”
>
  “Ah, yes. Hello!” The stranger withdrew his hand and took off his hat—a very large, wide-brimmed hat with more feathers than a peacock. “I am the Great Wizard Charles Weatherman Hightop. I am here on, um”—he paused to fumble with one of his large blue sleeves and pulled out a tiny piece of paper—“official wizarding business!” He presented the card to Milly crumpled and upside down.

  Milly squinted at it. It read:

  She shook her head and started to close the door. “We don’t want to buy any of your black-market magicks.”

  Hightop stuck his foot in the door and winced when it collided with his ankle. He tried to chuckle the pain away. “Little girl, I am here on very, very official business. You may have heard of me? Hero of the Wizarding Wars? The guardian of Nignip and its neighboring realms? Tamer of the North Wind?”

  Milly blinked at him in silence.

  The man coughed. “Okay, well, I have it on good authority that a large influx of magicks recently erupted nearby.” He sniffed the air a couple times and lowered his voice. “You wouldn’t happen to know something about that, would you? Because if you do, you are legally obligated to tell me anything that might concern any unauthorized magicks.”

  Milly’s throat became dry and she opened her mouth to respond, but the wizard wouldn’t stop talking—mostly to himself.

  “Of all the places to be, here? Really? Hasn’t been a witch here in years! This place smells like rotten eggs stuffed inside an old gronkle’s socks.”*

  At this point, Doris arrived in the doorway and placed her hand on Milly’s shoulder. “Let me take care of this,” she whispered.

  Milly nodded and backed away from the door. She saw the other girls’ faces peeking around the corner, all except Cilla’s.

  “Ah, yes, hello,” Hightop said while trying to squeeze himself through the door. “I am the Great—”

  “Yes yes yes, we heard all that already.” Doris crossed her arms and stood in front of him. “You can conduct all your official business from outside the house if you please.”