The Hungry Ghosts

by Miguel Flores

  Besides, she also wanted to avoid making Horace’s life any more complicated. She glanced over at him. The half-giant had been quiet the entire day. She was pretty sure she was the reason the shadows had chased her to the witch’s house; it seemed like everything she did only made things worse for everyone around her. She hoped she could make it up to him when this was all over.

  She felt inside the messenger bag at her waist, clenching the padded blade with one hand and pinching the token between her fingers with the other.

  First she had to save Cilla. Through any means necessary.

  The three of them arrived at the edge of the woods by midday. Milly had given the half-giant multiple chances to stay behind, but he kept insisting on coming along. At first Jasper complained about it, but Milly felt obligated to let him tag along. It was kind of her fault he didn’t have a house anymore.

  Clouds had obscured the sun from sight, and a light mist filled the air. It was hard to see very far into the woods because of the fog settling between the trees. Milly looked from her friend to the cat.

  “Are you guys ready to do this?” she asked.

  “Absolutely!” Jasper said. He jumped forward and stretched his legs.

  Horace looked down at the cat with a confused look, then grunted.

  “I think the big guy said yes.”

  Milly let out a big breath. “Here we go.”

  Jasper led the way, followed by Milly, then Horace. Jasper’s tail popped out of the fog, which came up to Milly’s knees and Horace’s shins. Our little train of vagabonds wove through the bamboo, deeper and deeper into the forest. Jasper tried to sniff out any trace of magicks, but he couldn’t find anything, so he had to lead by instinct.

  Milly spent most of her time watching the trees, constantly on edge, wondering if the shadows would come for them.

  She knew she must be a witch. There wasn’t any way to keep denying it. Those shadows hadn’t come for Emm. They came for her. The old witch didn’t want Cilla. The old witch wanted her. If anyone knew who she really was—what she really was—who knew how they would react? She didn’t want to be a witch. Magicks had done nothing but make her life worse at every turn. She couldn’t help but feel as if something deep inside her was very, very wrong. Broken. Sick. Maybe evil.

  She didn’t want Cilla to have to live with that. Not even the assumption of it. The idea that people were hunting Cilla down for something she wasn’t almost felt worse than if her sister had been the witch all along.

  Milly took in several shallow breaths and tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.

  Maybe Cilla was okay. She’d gotten away from the witch on her own, after all. Who knew what else she was capable of?

  “We’re here,” Jasper said.

  Milly looked up and saw the giant tree. It wore such different clothes in the mist. The cold air framed its hanging branches like hollowed-out ghosts and made the holes in its bark look like grimacing mouths, as if the tree was eternally mourning. None of the broombranches made so much as a rustle. Milly wondered if they were sleeping or if they were scared.

  Now that she had the chance to properly study the tree, Milly saw the vines clawing pathways up its trunk. The base where the door was looked almost like a stone planted in the ground. A wild stone that had been watered and given moonlight and care, grown like a plant, twisting upward and outward with the rest of the tree.

  She wasn’t really sure what to do except walk up to the front door.

  “You two stay here.” The weight of the blade pulled down on her shoulders. “I need to do this alone.”

  “What?” Jasper said, “Don’t be stupid. We can let the half-giant keep watch if you want, but I should at least—”

  “Horace come.”

  Milly sighed. “Do whatever you want.”

  She turned toward the house, looked both ways, and stepped out from the trees. A loud thud came from behind her, and she looked back to see that Horace had tripped over Jasper.

  “Shh!” she hissed, ushering them backward.

  The half-giant scuttled back into the woods sheepishly and gave her a thumbs up.

  Jasper huffed. “I suppose I’ll keep watch.”

  Milly waited, but no one came out from the house. She held her breath and stepped out again. This time she was careful with her feet. She noticed the garden she’d trampled over last time had been replotted, and several stalks were being held up by support stakes. It wasn’t until she’d gotten close to the door that she heard the soft singing of the witch drift toward her. She tiptoed around the tree and saw the witch kneeling in the dirt, gardening while she sang:

  “Skin and bones, eyes and toes

  In my soup, the whole thing goes

  Hairs and nails, not for me

  Don’t like things stuck in my teeth

  Fingers, ears, noses, tails

  If you get desperate, eat a snail . . .”

  Milly shuddered and snuck to the back door, which had been left open. She stared into the house. It smelled much nicer than she expected. There was incense burning from somewhere inside, filling the house with a thick, oaky smell.

  Milly covered her nose with her shirt and breathed through her mouth. She didn’t know if the smell itself was enchanted, but she could never be too careful.

  She crept through the first hallway. Two doors lined it on both sides. She opened the first one and found a tiny study full of books and plants and crystals and dishes. No sign of Cilla. The next door led to a staircase made of twisted tree limbs leading up. Where would a tree’s heart be? Probably in the opposite direction. The next door she opened was a black, shapeless void. A rush of wind tried to pull her in, and she propped herself against the doorframe.

  “Bad bad bad,” she said to herself, and shut it.

  The last one looked like the oldest of the four doors. Dust covered the handle, and a soft blue light came from beneath. She turned the handle and the door groaned open, revealing a strange tunnel full of gemstones. A large, luminescent cobweb lay across the pathway.

  Our brave, scared hero studied the hole. It seemed to angle downward, leading somewhere below the house.

  Milly almost wished she’d hear a wind or see a ghost or . . . something. Anything but the total silence that closed in around her thicker than any blanket ever had.

  She groaned.

  Of course she was going in. The curiosity burned through her like a piece of hot coal in a bed of ice—and perhaps there was some clue to where her sister had gone through here.

  Milly entered the tunnel and tried to push the web to the side. To her surprise, it moved like a curtain. When she had passed through, the web fell back across the entrance unbroken.

  The girl gulped but continued. The passage wound around a few times, twisting and turning and always leading further down. Its insides were lit by large clusters of quartz crystals glowing with an inner light, ensuring that the entirety of the floor was visible.*

  The longer she walked, the less uncertain she became. This had to be where the heart of the tree was.

  After what felt like more than enough walking, Milly arrived at a dead end with a trapdoor. She knelt down and blew at the engraving in the floor, revealing lines cut deep into the stone beneath all the dust.

  It read: What’s the Magick Word?

  Magick word? What magick word? That could be literally any word!

  She cycled through some of the words she thought she’d read in books before, but she had no idea how to even pronounce any of them.

  What was the word she kept hearing the witches use?

  “Makisuyo?”

  The door creaked open.

  A ladder dressed in glowing silver dust led to the floor below. Milly climbed down.

  Roots twisted between each other in the ceiling and the walls. Various shelves wrapped aro
und the room, covered in all manner of vials and bottles and jars, all differing shades and shapes and colors. And there, in the center, was a giant pulsing gem. It sat in the tangle of roots spreading outward. She wasn’t quite sure what color to call it. It was pink and blue and purple and green all at once. Nor was she sure what shape to name it. It looked like both a flower and a stone. All she knew was there could be no doubt about what the gem was.

  It was the tree’s heart.

  Milly searched through the shelves leading to the center of the room. The glassware had been labeled according to names of people and places. One shelf was dedicated to Nignip, one to Delfin, one for West Ernost, another for East Ernost.

  Milly blinked. East Ernost’s shelf was entirely empty except for four very old, very tiny bottles. Three of them had been tied together and shared a single parchment label.

  The last vial said St. George’s.

  Milly gulped. What did this all mean? How was this witch connected to St. George’s? To Hightop? To the shadows?

  Why was there was a bottle with her home’s name on it?

  Milly walked to the shelf and stood up on her tippy-toes. She grabbed the one that said St. George’s. The bottled memory—for that’s what these were, memories—was ice-cold and dark as mud.

  Flecks of dull green swam around in the liquid. She wiped the dust from the bottle with her thumb and stared into her own reflection. Her eyes were large and sad. Her hair tousled. Bottom lip cracked. It hadn’t even been one week since she’d left St. George’s, but she already barely recognized herself.

  She wondered if the others were okay.

  Milly stuffed the bottle in her pocket and turned her attention to the heart of the tree.

  “Okay,” she said to herself. “I can do this.”

  Milly drew the unwieldy object from her bag and unwrapped the blade. The gemstone pulsed before her, steady and calm. Her palm began to itch. She gulped. The broken moon started to manifest itself, burning back onto her hand. She reached for Emm’s token but as soon as she pulled it out, a sliver of light spilled from the gem and made the moon shine even brighter.

  Vicious green leaves flew from the heart and melted into her skin, as if the heart was trying to ward her off.

  But Milly barely noticed them. She closed her eyes, ignoring the guilt worming through her stomach. She needed to get her sister back.

  The longer she held the blade, the more her hand burned.

  She gritted her teeth.

  She raised her hand.

  She plunged the blade into the heart. But it barely pierced through.

  A quiet rage filled Milly. She couldn’t let this stupid tree get between her and her sister. She pulled the blade back and pushed again. Again, something kept it from reaching the center of the heart.

  Milly raised the blade above her head one more time.

  “Give me back my sister!”

  She stabbed the heart, and this time the blade pierced through. Milly closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see her handiwork, attacking it over and over.

  She could feel the heart weaken beneath her hands, its light dimming with every blow.

  “Milly?”

  Milly’s eyes snapped open, and she dropped the blade. She spun around and saw a face staring out at her from beneath the ladder. It was her. Same mussed-up hair. Same sleepy eyes.

  “Cilla!”

  THE SECOND HIATUS

  some broombranches just really want to play

  After showing the witch her stained hands, Cilla felt a rush of wind pull her and the witch up into the sky. The force ripped Junebug from her arms. For a brief second, she hovered in the moonlight, neither rising nor falling. Then . . .

  A broombranch rocketed beneath them and carried her off with the witch.

  She held on to the branch with one tight fist and on to the book with the other. She could see that the broombranch had letters engraved into its wood. H.C. . . . something.

  Cilla held her breath to keep from screaming as they tore through the sky at a frightening speed. The ground beneath them vanished into a blurry patchwork of colors. She heard the witch’s laughter fill her ears as they ripped through a cloud. The soft impact left her clothes damp.

  Cilla shivered against the harsh winds. They were wild and violent, tearing and pulling. It was like they were trying to yank her off. The broombranch buckled beneath them and ducked below another cloud. She saw that they were approaching a forest.

  The witch sitting ahead of her cursed at the broombranch as it struggled to fly. Cilla tried to see if the witch would notice, then bent down and ripped a page out of the book with her teeth. She dropped it and looked back to see it fluttering toward the ground. Cilla grinned, then started to rip out more pages, determined to leave a trail.

  All of a sudden, something whipped by them.

  The witch cursed again.

  Cilla tried to figure out what was going on, but they were going so fast that all she could do was keep ripping pages and hope she wouldn’t fall.

  Whatever it was whipped by Cilla’s head, tossing her hair.

  “Leave us alone, you pesky branch!” the witch said.

  Cilla looked up just in time to see a wild broombranch whip around them. The one they were riding bucked in response, as if it wanted to join in the fun.

  “Those liars told me this branch was already domesticated!” The witch pulled out her wand and wove a wicked spell. “I command you to ignore that branch and take me home.”

  The branch shivered beneath Cilla, and she saw its wood darken between her fingers. It was . . . changing. It was in pain.

  The other broombranch made a loud rustling noise and flew at the witch.

  The witch ducked and aimed at the branch. “Now for you.”

  Cilla finally found her voice and grabbed the witch’s arm. “Leave it alone!”

  “What the—unhand me, child!”

  The two of them corkscrewed through the sky, neither in control as they wrestled over the wand.

  “Let go!” the witch said.

  “You’ll hurt it!”

  Cilla let go of the book and pulled at the witch’s wand with both hands. “Ha!” she shouted, tilting too far and falling from the branch.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.”

  She looked down to see the forest approaching fast.

  There was no one to catch her this time. Was this how she’d die?

  The forest rustled violently for a moment. Dozens more broombranches flew out of the trees and surrounded Cilla in their wild flurry of yellow leaves. They brushed by her cheeks and arms and legs, slowing her fall until she landed with a very soft plop in the shallow part of a creek.

  She laughed as the broombranches rustled around and above her before darting away and toward the witch. They clacked and chattered angrily.

  Something tapped against her foot. She looked down and saw the book she’d dropped had drifted down the creek. Almost like it had followed her. She picked it up and stared at its soggy cover, then let out a frustrated growl and threw it into the deepest part of the waters.

  “Stay out of my life!”

  Cilla watched until the book floated out of sight, then nodded to herself. That was that. She looked up and saw the witch now busy with the dozens of broombranches attacking her. Cilla pulled herself up out of the creek and ran into the woods.

  Like I said, some girls are just really good at running.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  in the heart of the woods

  The two girls held each other in a tight embrace for a very long while. By the time they let go, Milly had run out of I’m sorrys to give, and Cilla had soaked through Milly’s shirt with tears.

  “What are you doing here?” Milly managed to say. “Are you okay? Is the witch keeping you captive?”

  Cilla shook her he
ad. “No, she’s a good witch. Like you! Her name is Edaline. She’s been keeping us—me—safe.”

  “Safe? From who?”

  “The witch who took me! Her name is Lilith. She’s not nice at all. But she can’t get into the woods. Edaline sent broombranches to chase her away. She said that as long as I stay with her, I’ll be fine.”

  Milly’s stomach tightened. “But we have to go home, Cilla.”

  “Why? I like it here. I think you would too. There’s magicks all over the place. Maybe Edaline could teach you how to be a better w—”

  “Cilla.”

  Cilla frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t stay here. I need to bring you back.”

  “No.” Cilla’s breathing quickened. “Edaline treats me seriously. All anyone at home wants to do is treat me like I’m stupid. Or wrong. I don’t want to go back. I want to be a witch, too! I want to . . . I want to belong.”

  “But, Cilla, St. George’s is where you belong.”

  “Do you feel like you belong?”

  Milly sighed. “Don’t be silly. You know we have to go back.”

  “You can’t make me!” Cilla turned away. “You’ll never understand me.”

  Milly didn’t know what to say.

  The blade clattered onto the ground. Milly spun around at the noise and saw a large gash in the tree’s heart. She gulped.

  Cilla stared at the blade and sniffed. “What were you doing?”

  Milly felt her throat tighten. “I was trying to rescue you.”

  “But why—”

  “I was just trying to—”

  Cilla glared. “You were trying to kill the tree, weren’t you?”

  “I . . .”

  “You were!” She turned around and ran. Right into the Witch of the Wasted Woods.

  “Oh my!” The witch, who’d just finished climbing down the ladder, looked taken aback. She put her hand on Cilla’s head. “What are you doing here? Why are you crying? Are you . . . ?” She trailed off when she saw Milly and the tree. Her jaw visibly tightened. “Is this your sister?”