by Temre Beltz
Birdie trembled with fear. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She remembered Ralph’s words. Stay safe, he had said.
But how? How does a Tragical ever stay safe?
Chewy continued to charge over the folds of Birdie’s gown. He skipped across the banging drum of her heart without flinching and gazed at her with his shiny, hateful eyes. Once he scaled up Birdie’s shoulder, he pressed his stinger deep into the grooves on his back and aimed for the tender, fleshy part of her neck.
Birdie let out a great, heaving sob. She didn’t know what to do! She had never read any storybooks about scorpions! She had never read any storybooks where children like her tried to survive anything! Should she fling Chewy away? Should she bop him on the head or poke him in the eyes? Did she have time to do anything at all?
CAW, CAW, CAW!
A shrill cackle tumbled into the dungeon.
Birdie and Chewy looked toward the iron-barred window.
A peculiar gray crow—its wings pumping furiously—hurtled toward them at an impossible speed. Birdie was certain the bird was going to crash headfirst. At the last moment, however, it tucked in its wings, flattened its body, and shot between the bars of the window like a silver bullet. A bullet aimed straight at Birdie’s shoulder. Birdie watched in awe as the crow’s open beak clamped around Chewy and slurped him up whole, as if he were no less formidable than a wriggling little worm.
Birdie was saved!
Today was not the day her Tragic End had arrived. There was still time. Her story was not yet over.
Birdie’s knees buckled beneath her. She collapsed in a heap while the strange crow executed a loose and lazy circle above her head. It cawed triumphantly one last time before exploding into a neat little pile of ash. At first Birdie worried Chewy had eaten the bird up from the inside out—and would emerge stronger and even more terrible—but then she remembered.
She remembered how her first letter arrived from Ms. Crunch. Surely if a letter arrived as a hornet, it could also arrive as a bird. Couldn’t magic do anything? But what Birdie was really thinking, what was really causing her heart to pound, was the idea that perhaps friendship—friendship—could do anything because Birdie had been as specific as possible. Birdie hadn’t wanted to leave any room for confusion. Without a doubt, Ms. Crunch knew precisely who and what Birdie was, and she had written back anyways.
The ash rose up from the ground. It spun itself into a piece of paper. Birdie held it ever so gently between the tips of her still-trembling fingers. With her cheeks flushed, she read aloud:
To the Girl with the Boring Letter (I refuse to use your name since it is ridiculously cheerful, and your parents should be cursed because of it):
Boo! I am a witch. I am not kidding.
I figured it was best to get that out of the way from the get-go.
You wondered if you got my letter by mistake—Ha! You think? I wouldn’t even borrow a lump of coal from a commoner, let alone ask for a bit of advice from a Tragical kid!
Still . . .
Maybe you getting my letter wasn’t a total disaster.
Not because of any so-called interfering of the Winds (I’m not much of a believer), but because lately, I’ve been bored out of my mind. Frankly, bugging you might be better than nothing.
Because I live by myself. In the Dead Tree Forest. Everything here is as rotten as me. I can stomp my boots as loud as I want, chew with my mouth open every single meal, and I never once have to run a comb through my buggy hair. It’s perfect! The flip side is: boredom is real, and life stinks if you don’t find yourself interesting.
The most interesting thing I’ve done in two months is turn the scummy pond outside my haunted cabin blue. If you’re impressed by this, stop it. It’s shameful. It’s a level one apprentice spell. BUT I’VE ALREADY DONE EVERYTHING ELSE!
Anyways, since magic is “forbidden” at your place, I doubt we’ve been reading the same book. Mine’s called The Book of Evil Deeds, and it’s got an end all right. Bah!
Consider yourself lucky yours doesn’t have an end. That way you can make one up. That’s probably breaking a million of the Council’s rules right there, but what do we care? You’re doomed, and I’m wicked.
Anyways, if you haven’t fainted dead away in a corner yet, I’m curious about a couple of things. First, who is that Mistress Octavia character? Her name alone makes my teeth itch, and why’s she so nosy about your mail? Second, why are you “about” ten? I thought all little rug rats loved their birthdays?
And finally, how is the weather over at your place? Mwah, ha-ha-ha!
Write back quick! I wanna know how my curse worked. Because if there’s one thing about magic: forbidden or not, it always finds a way.
Never in a million years yours,
Ms. Crunch
(I bet you wanna know my first name. But I’m not telling. I still haven’t made up my mind about you.)
PS: For as much as I’d like to take credit for the whole “hornet” thing, that wasn’t my doing. If you’re wondering, your letter arrived as an obnoxious cupcake, so maybe the Winds have a sense of humor. Who knew?
PPS: I’m not trying to make you feel better (at all), but maybe the reason everyone ignores Tragicals is because the Chancellor doesn’t exactly advertise where you’re holed up. Bottom line: I don’t have a clue where you live. If the Winds get lazy, I’m gonna need your address. Send it to me ASAP!
Birdie was shaking all over.
It scarcely mattered that she avoided her Tragic End via Chewy’s stinger, because another end—a much more terrifying one—had just presented itself. Of all the doomed storybook endings Mistress Octavia gleefully read aloud, were there any worse than those that came by witches?
Birdie set the letter on the ground. She scooted decidedly away from it. But the letter did not sprout legs and pursue her. It did not turn into a poisonous dart aimed at her heart. It didn’t do a single witchy thing except remain a complete and utter disappointment.
In all of Birdie’s daydreaming—in all of her penny-rattling hoping—she never once imagined she was waiting to hear back from a witch.
A witch.
Surely there could be no worse friend in the world than a witch. Especially for a Tragical. Birdie very nearly wished she’d never received the magical letter in the first place. The witch had even sent a curse for crying out loud! A curse delivered by the Winds of Wanderly! Yes, the rainstorm had given her a chance to talk with Ralph, and the children got to feel the splish-splash on their fingertips, but what if the next time the witch did something else? What if she did something dangerous? And even though Birdie didn’t have a clue what “ASAP” meant, what good reason could a witch possibly have for wanting her address?
What had she done?
Birdie looked up toward the iron-barred window. She closed her eyes and imagined the Winds of Wanderly swirling around her; the Winds of Wanderly lifting up her hand; the Winds of Wanderly whispering gently into her ear, Yes, the way they did the day she released her letter from the depths of a dungeon.
But everything was quiet.
If the Winds were there, she couldn’t tell.
And despite receiving a letter, a letter from someone outside the manor, from someone who said she wanted to hear from her again, Birdie had never felt lonelier.
“All I want is a friend,” she whispered into the darkness. “And I got a witch.”
As if it had been listening, a rat poked its head out from the shadows and tilted its head in Birdie’s direction. It ambled into the lone streak of dim light that fell across Birdie’s cell. It drew near to Birdie.
Though Birdie typically did everything she could to avoid the abnormally large rats that called the dungeon home,27 this one had a distinguished sort of appearance. Almost like a gentleman rat. He even had a plume of silvery fur that curled regally atop his head.
As Birdie and the rat scrutinized each other, she was hardly prepared when—with a surprising burst of energy—he leap
ed jubilantly into the air and landed right in her lap. Birdie stiffened. She’d never seen a dungeon rat do such a thing, and though she still couldn’t imagine actually reaching her hand out to pet the fellow, neither could she keep the corners of her mouth from curving up ever so slightly. And she heard herself saying to the rat, “Have you come to be my friend?”
Even though rats don’t talk, the rat seemed to shrug its tiny shoulders. As if to say, Why ever not? Not a moment later, however, the rat was back on its way, toddling away from Birdie and leaving her lap a little lighter and a little less warm. She didn’t ever think she’d have occasion to wonder after a dungeon rat, but that’s precisely what she did. And she wished it’d stayed a bit longer, because maybe the rat was right. Maybe the only limit to who could be a friend was Birdie’s thinking.
Why ever not?
Still, as unusual as a chummy rat was, a chummy witch was a thousand times stranger. Maybe even impossible. But perhaps Birdie couldn’t know that for sure. Perhaps Birdie wouldn’t know if the witch could be a friend unless she tried.
Not to mention the witch had arguably saved Birdie’s life. Certainly the Winds of Wanderly played their part, but without a letter to deliver, there would have been nothing to slurp Mistress Octavia’s wicked scorpion up. And instead of chatting with rats and pondering the oddity of friendship with a witch, Birdie could have been—gulp—lying paralyzed on the ground. Maybe even for days.
There was also that one part of the letter that kept bouncing about Birdie’s heart. The part when the witch had said “we.” Birdie had never been a “we” before. She didn’t necessarily know if she wanted to be a “we” with a witch, but maybe the fact that the witch mentioned it at all was promising. Even if the witch didn’t know it yet, maybe what she needed was a friend too? Living all by herself in a place like the Dead Tree Forest . . . It was hard to imagine the witch had ever had a friend before.
Birdie rose up and moved toward the stone where her book was hidden. She rolled the stone aside, lifted the book out, and pressed it tight against her chest. She opened up the front cover and flipped toward the back, where the blank pages ruffled eagerly, as if they were simply begging to be torn out.28
Birdie paused.
She wondered if this was how every book in Wanderly began.
Blank pages. Full of promise. Full of hope.
And if, like the Tragicals, the books found themselves weighed down by the scribes’ words that pressed hard against them. Maybe the books themselves never set out to doom anyone. Maybe, if it were up to them, they would rather be a friend.
Friendship certainly is complicated, Birdie thought. I do hope that it’s worth it.
And as she tore out another page of her storybook; as she brought forth her formerly useless nubby pencil and bent her head to knowingly write to a witch; as the dungeon crept near and peered curiously over her shoulder, no one paid a bit of attention to the book.
But that hardly mattered.
The book had never been more content.
The book was, at last, doing what it was made to do.
Because good books, above all, are meant to come true. And this book had been waiting a long, long while for someone just like Birdie. . . .
Seven
A Witchy House Call
Agnes Prunella Crunch eyeballed her cauldron.
It was nearly empty.
There were no evil potions boiling and toiling, and no enchanted bones simmering and filling the small space with a potent aroma. No, there was just one thing inside of Agnes Prunella Crunch’s cauldron: a meager serving of split pea soup.
Agnes’s stomach growled, and Agnes growled back at it.
Other than the soup’s lovely green color, Agnes was hardly a fan of the humdrum dish. But she had to remain hungry. She had to keep her nose in peak operating condition. Agnes didn’t want to miss even a single whiff of something swirling toward her haunted cabin, because there would be day upon day to sauté a handful of juicy worms, but on this day, she was doing something she had never done before.
Something new—something thrilling—something risky!
Agnes Prunella Crunch was awaiting a letter from a child. And in all her witchy life, she had never felt quite so knee-jittering about anything. Sure, there was a pocketful of thrill-seeking witches in Wanderly who purposefully sought out encounters with children, but Agnes had never joined their ranks.
Indeed, she still remembered the year she received the invitation to the first-ever Witches’ Child-Wrangling Convention. Oh, it had intrigued her for half a moment. There was no act so likely to induce audible gasps as kidnapping a child and living (without resorting to pulling one’s hair out) to tell about it, but in the end, she declined.
It was a good thing, because not only did a group of do-gooding fairy godmothers dismantle the entire event, but before they arrived, one witch actually got wrangled by a child, and both tumbled into a different realm! The last Agnes heard, the witch was sentenced to work long days in the lunchroom of a school that overflowed with runny-nosed, screeching children (some who were even quite nasty and made bets on how many spaghetti noodles they could toss into the witch’s frazzled hair).
Agnes shivered.
She hoped her plan wouldn’t backfire in such a way. A few days ago, plotting to kidnap a child had seemed the perfect way to make a smashing entrance to the Annual Witches’ Ball and take her witching to a whole new level. It had seemed the perfect way to win the grand prize. It had seemed the perfect way to make witching fun again!
But now she wondered if she had been a bit hasty—if meddling with a child was simply too risky. She had tried to be coy. She had tried to reveal just enough to gain the child’s trust. But was her tacked-on request for the child’s address too obvious?
Send it to me ASAP!
Agnes tilted her head back ever so slightly. She dug in deep for another big, long sniff.
“Aiiii!” Agnes screeched. Her small, stony heart rattled in her chest. She smelled it. She had! The unmistakable scent of child was catapulting toward her cabin. But what emerged from Agnes’s chimney was not a child, nor was it even a letter. This time it was a butterfly. A terribly radiant butterfly with splashes of red, orange, and yellow on its wings.
Even worse, it fluttered all about her cabin, which left Agnes in a terrible predicament. She desperately wanted to get her hands on that butterfly and mush it all up until it resembled a proper letter. But witches have two default speeds: they slink or they lunge. Agnes found that lunging produced an inconvenient gust of air that sent the butterfly whirling out of her grasp; slinking, on the other hand, was entirely too slow and left her clawing and grappling at the air in a fashion ridiculous enough to make her jar full of jawbones snap back and forth in hysterics.
Agnes huffed. She rolled up her sleeves, hiked up her skirts, and attempted to—ugh—walk like a commoner. It was terribly humiliating—she almost tripped four times—but eventually her knobby fingers clasped tight around the butterfly, and it exploded in one glittery burst.
Agnes collapsed into her rocking chair. She brought the letter near and read aloud:
Dear Ms. Crunch,
I’m going to be real honest and admit I don’t have a clue how to start this letter. Everything sounds sort of awkward. I guess when it comes right down to it, it’s hard for me to stop thinking about how you’re a witch. An honest-to-goodness, real live witch.
But every time that gets me to the point where it’s a little bit hard to breathe, I remember who I am. And I think how there’s probably not another person in all of Wanderly who would have written a letter back to a Tragical.
So, really, I guess the only thing I ought to say is: thank you.
You also asked a lot of questions. I’ll do my best to answer them. First off, you mentioned Mistress Octavia Foulweather. She’s the lady who runs this place and the one who tosses us in the dungeon from time to time. You said she made your teeth itchy, which makes me think you’ve got smar
t teeth because she’s worse than awful. She hates us so much it’s hard to imagine why she’d ever want to be stuck with us, except she says there’s no higher honor than fulfilling the Council’s call.
Second, you asked about my birthday. There are a few reasons I’m not 100 percent sure of my age: (1) Mistress Octavia, as you can imagine, is not really the type to throw birthday parties; (2) considering a Tragical’s days are numbered, the passing of time isn’t really something to celebrate; and (3) until four days ago, every day at the manor was the same, so even if you’re trying, it gets hard to notice when one day slips into the next.
Third, and this is the biggie, you are right. We definitely are not reading the same book. But maybe it wasn’t an accident I thought we were. Maybe the book I have is one you’ll want to read, too. Because the book I have is all about friendship.
This moment right here may be the one where you faint in a corner, but if you’re still with me, I hope you’ll let me explain. You mentioned being bored. Really, really bored. You mentioned how where you live, there’s nobody else around. Maybe instead of bugging me by sending curses (which, by the way, worked, but wasn’t all that terrible considering how baffled Mistress Octavia was), you might consider being my . . . friend?
If you wonder why I want a friend so badly, I’ll tell you. Growing up as an orphan and a Tragical, I sort of thought being alone was as permanent as having brown eyes. But if friendship really is for everyone, then that means somewhere out there is a friend for me. And considering how we met, it’s hard not to wonder if maybe that friend is you. Wouldn’t that be something?
On the flip side, considering I’m doomed, it’s equally possible I’m walking into a total trap and you’re rolling on the ground cackling hard enough to get a bellyache.
I’M WILLING TO RISK IT.
It’s maybe the one benefit to being a Tragical: we don’t have much to lose, but just about everything to gain.
