A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic (12 page)

“My dear, I am a chemist, not a doctor. But Chirragh knows something of this sort of thing, and he believes the goat will recover,” Mamoo said evenly. “As long as it is kept away from the flowers.” Mamoo walked stiffly toward his car. His driver, who had been watching all of this from beneath a mango tree, dashed to the vehicle to open the door for him.

Guilt weighed down on Leila. After all, she was the one who had tied the goat near the flowers. True, the goat was annoying, but she didn't want it to
die
.

Samir petted the goat's fur, his hand smoothing over the red henna flower with the same steady beat of the butterfly's wings.

“What should we do?” Leila asked.

“Wait,” Samir said. “I guess.”

Leila thought about her book, and wondered whether
she should try going upstairs and writing a happy ending for the goat. But it had erased Elizabeth Dear. Would it take the goat seriously?
That book is the most useless piece of magic in the world,
Leila thought.
What kind of magic won't even help you save something?

There really are some times in life when there is nothing one can do but wait. Later, when she was alone, Leila would write in her magic book.
Can't you cure her?
she scribbled, hoping that the book might somehow grant a wish. But she did not do that right away. She found that she couldn't leave the goat. She had come to think of it as hers, partly, and she felt responsible for its illness. So instead of going upstairs, she went to sit down beside Samir, and they both stroked the goat's fur until Jamila Tai called the children in for dinner.

“Can't you cure her?” Ralph asked as he stood awkwardly at Edwina's bedside, leaning against his too-long crutches.

Edwina slept peacefully, her face resting in profile against the pillow. Her dark hair curled around her neck like a soft wave. Ralph longed to wrap a single curl around his finger, but he didn't dare. He didn't want to wake
Edwina or shock the doctor.

“She has been much improved of late,” the doctor said. It was the same smooth-faced physician who had set Ralph's leg.

“Until yesterday,” Ralph said.

“Until yesterday,” the doctor agreed. “But we don't know what might have caused her to relapse.”

The previous day, Ralph had waited for Edwina on the wide hospital lawn, but she had never arrived. Ralph crutched his way toward the rear entrance as dusk fell, and caught sight of a stiff, pale-haired figure dressed in black leaving from the side door. Ralph did not need to see the pale eyes to recognize the frigid air that followed Melchisedec Jonas.

Ralph shivered again at the memory. He knew that it was unreasonable, but he felt in his heart that a visit by Edwina's guardian had chilled her lungs.

“Rest is what she needs most,” the doctor said. “Rest and fresh air. I've given her laudanum. She should have another dose in a few hours. The nurse will see to it. If Miss Pickle has a restful night, she should seem much recovered in the morning.”

Ralph nodded good day to the doctor, then sat down
on a stool by the bed. He rested his crutches against the bed and gazed at her face. All he wanted was to stare at her face this way for the rest of his life.

Ralph started forward as Edwina gasped and reddened, her neck straining with coughs. The hacking lasted only a moment, and Edwina did not wake up, but panic had sunk its claws into Ralph's heart. What if she never woke up? What if she died?

If that happened, Ralph did not think that he could continue living.

He looked over at the bottle of laudanum by the bedside and his fingers traveled to his pocket where the silver vial lay. Once the thought had entered his mind, he could not get it to release its grip.

Ralph looked around. The women's floor was quiet. An unfamiliar nurse made a bed at the far end of the room. Patients were sleeping or out for air and exercise.

With the quick fingers of a cardsharp, Ralph removed the vial from his pocket. Carefully, he unscrewed the cap on the laudanum bottle and placed it on the table. Then he tapped a few smoky grains of magic into the medicine.

“Make her well,” he whispered.

Then he closed both bottles. It was the third and final wish, but it was the only one that had ever mattered.

Edwina turned her head, murmuring something in her sleep. Ralph leaned forward, and thought he caught the whispered words, “dear old mole.”

Ralph believed in magic, and although fear and love held him in sharp talons, he allowed himself to fly away on the feathered wings of hope.

K
AI SHIFTED IN HER
pew while her great-aunt listened to the violin, eyes closed, her round body tipped backward like a globe tilting on its axis. Kai had been to church plenty of times—she and her mother went nearly every weekend—but she had never been filled with the desire to strangle someone in a holy place before, and it was making her uncomfortable. It didn't seem very church-y.

Pettyfer was up at the front, playing the violin—the
violin
!—and it was all Kai could do to keep from screaming. For one thing, the piece he played was simple, something any advanced beginner could master, but he wore a smug, superior, unfaltering smile even when he made a mistake. For another thing, the violin was exquisite. Kai knew violins, and she knew it had to cost at least
ten thousand dollars. And Pettyfer wasn't that good.

Kai loved her violin. It was only worth a fraction of Pettyfer's, but it had been her father's. And Kai had
earned
that violin. Her mother had promised her that she could have it when she “was good enough,” and that moment didn't arrive until fourteen months ago. It had taken years of playing two hours a day to earn it.

And Pettyfer—

Gah!

She wanted to grab the violin and smash it over his head—except not
that
violin, it was too nice. She would go buy another, cheap violin and smash him with it.

Kai looked up at the stained-glass window picturing Jesus with a lamb on one side and a lion on the other.
Doodle is a much better person than I am,
she realized.
She would never want to smash a moth on Pettyfer's head.

When he finished and took his smug bow, Aunt Lavinia opened one eye and looked at Kai from the corner of it. “He sure is a
special
boy, now, ain't he?” she murmured. A thousand sparks of meaning glittered in that crystalline sentence, like the sun drying up the raging storm in Kai's heart. The minister stood at the lectern and announced
a hymn. The organ hooted and hymnbooks thumped and rustled as people struggled to find their place, and a moment later, Kai tumbled into the music and let herself sing. Her chest loosened with every note.

After the service, Lavinia had to greet just about everyone in the small church, introducing her “darling niece, Walter's girl.” Kai had to say “thank you,” as people told her how much her father had meant to them. They would grasp her hands, look deeply into her eyes—one old blue-haired lady even burst into tears. Kai gave her an awkward pat, half wishing that she could burst into tears, too. But her father died when she was three, and she barely remembered him. She couldn't just cry on demand.

“Was my father very religious?” Kai asked, once the woman had dried her tears on her sleeve.

“Oh, not terribly,” Lavinia told her in a low voice. “Church is just something we did on Sundays.”

“Why didn't anyone mention his music?” Kai asked.

“Oh, Walter didn't play in public much until he was older.”

Kai nodded. She knew that it had been her father's dream that she would have the opportunities for violin
that he'd had—and that she would surpass them. Her mother told her so whenever she hit a snag in her practice, or had trouble mastering a new piece.
Well,
Kai thought,
that's over now.

Once they had greeted everyone in the church, including the minister, they made their way out the wide double door and started toward the parking lot. A giant white Lincoln Navigator stopped short in the middle of making a left-hand turn onto the road. A white-haired gentleman in a wheelchair was rolling through the crosswalk, and the Lincoln had stopped to avoid hitting him. Unperturbed, the man carried on crossing the street toward the church as the driver blasted a loud, long honk.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Lavinia pursed her lips and strode right up to the SUV, where she knocked on the tinted window, which rolled down at a smooth, unhurried speed.

The man who looked out had blond hair and a flat, gray expression. His paunch nearly touched the steering wheel, and the air-conditioning blasting from the vents ruffled his hair. The woman beside him had tresses that were a highly unlikely shade of blonde and ten fingers stacked with diamonds. She looked straight ahead through the
windshield while her husband glared at Lavina. “What?” he demanded.

“Brother Pettyfer, I was just wondering if we could count on your support for the Places for People project,” Lavinia said smoothly, leaning an elbow on the car window as the white-haired man rolled up onto the sidewalk and passed by, glowering at the car. “You know, the youth group is going to be building houses for some of last month's flood victims.”

Pettyfer Senior huffed. “Why don't those people get flood insurance? Or move someplace that don't get flooded? Why do they got to live so close to the swamp?”

“The land is cheap by the swamp,” Lavinia told him.

“Come on, Dad!” someone whined from the backseat. “Let's go!” Kai wrinkled her nose at Pettyfer's nasal whimper. He ignored Kai, and she was happy to return the favor.

“Everyone in this town wants money,” Pettyfer Senior snapped. “Don't I pay enough in taxes?”

“I'm sure I have no idea,” Lavinia replied sweetly. “Do you?”

Kai giggled and the blonde woman finally looked over
in her direction. “Let's go, Petty,” she said.

Pettyfer Senior stared hard at Kai's great-aunt. “Sister Lavinia, nobody will ever learn to stand on their own two feet if people just give them money.”

“Oh, I see. And what about people who inherit their money? How do they learn to stand on their own two feet?” Lavinia asked, but the dark window was making its smooth way back up. The Lincoln's tires screeched as it made the left turn.

Lavinia planted her hands on her hips, then looked up at the sky. “Forgive me, Jesus!” she shouted.

“What? Why?” Kai asked. “You didn't do anything wrong. You just asked him to help with a project.”

“Hmm.” Lavinia lifted the eyebrow over her big eye. Her gray hair was twisted up and fastened with a beautiful carved comb. In her hot pink tunic and white slacks, she looked elegant and more than a little intimidating, and Kai was—frankly—slightly surprised that Pettyfer Senior had barely given her the time of day. “Oh, there isn't any Places for People project, I just asked him that so that he'd have to turn me down right in front of the church,” Aunt Lavinia replied. Her smile was half embarrassed, half proud of her
mischief. “I told a lie on a Sunday! Oh, I'm so bad!”

“Well . . .” Kai wasn't sure what to say. It
was
kind of bad. But it was better than smashing a violin over someone's head.

“Sometimes, I think I should learn to be more kind.” Lavinia glanced up at the church tower. “But then I think—forget it; I'm too old to worry about being nice to someone like that Pettyfer.”

Kai reached out to touch her aunt's elbow. “Me, too,” she said.

Doodle, as usual, didn't knock.

The next afternoon, Doodle didn't even slow down when she saw that Kai was playing the violin, she just strode right into Kai's room and plopped herself onto the unmade bed saying, “Don't mind me.”

Kai didn't—she just kept right on playing through the piece, which was one of her favorites, Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 4. The final note ran through the room, skimming the walls and shimmering at the window. Kai opened her eyes.

“Wow,” Doodle said. “You're . . .”

“Rusty.”

“I was going to say incredible.”

Kai huff-snorted, as if the compliment had been an insult. “I'm
rusty
. Did you hear how I was sharp there, near the end? It sounded
awful
.” Kai tucked the violin into its case and, with three quick twists, loosed the bowstring.

“I thought it was amazing,” Doodle replied. She peered over at the peanut butter jar. “How's the patient?”

“Nothing new to report.”

Doodle cocked her head. “How long have you been playing?”

“About an hour. I really should do two, but I don't—”

“No, I meant
in your life
.”

“Oh. Since I was three.” Her thumbnail picked at the calluses at the tips of her fingers. They had softened in the months she had stopped playing, but now the strings were wearing familiar grooves in the tough fingertips. “I haven't practiced much lately.”

“Really?” Doodle grabbed a rumpled pillow and shoved it behind her back, so that she was half upright. “Why not?”

“What's the point?”

“What do you mean? Isn't music the point?”

“I mean, what's the point of practicing? I'm never going to be a concert violinist, so . . .” Kai slid her bow into the sleeve. Then she placed the violin into the velvet-lined case and snapped it closed. The windows were shut, and the room was hot and still. It was too hot to open a window, and too hot to leave it closed.

“How do you know?” Doodle asked.

Kai sat cross-legged on the wood floor. It was cooler there than anywhere else, but the wood quickly absorbed the heat of her body. “I know because I know. Because I don't have what it takes, okay?”

“Really? What does it take?”

Kai thought it over. “More.”

“Well, you could still just play. For fun.”

“I don't think it would be fun without . . .” Kai searched for the words. “. . . without the dream.”

“What dream?”

“The dream to be—” Kai shrugged. “My dad always dreamed of being a concert violinist.”

“Oh, so, wait. Was this your dream? Or was it your dad's dream?”

“It was—mine,” Kai said. “Both.” But Kai knew that this wasn't quite true. Her dream wasn't to be a concert violinist. Not exactly. It was more like, her dream was to fulfill her dad's wish. To make it come true. Because he wasn't around to do it himself. Because it seemed like the thing that had to be.

“Anyway, I blew it,” she said. “I ruined everything.”

“How?” Doodle asked.

Kai sighed. She looked up at the ceiling. How could she explain? It was about having a father that was dead, and a mother who worked too hard for years to make up the difference, and then lost her job, anyway. It was about how, no matter what you did, sometimes things didn't work out. She closed her eyes and said, “I didn't get into Susan Laviere's studio.”

“Who's Susan Laviere?”

“She's a violin teacher. She's the best in the country. My dad—my dad wanted to study with her.”

Kai looked over and Doodle nodded, not like she understood, but like Kai should keep going.

“My dad loved the violin, and when he was in high school, he got into Susan Laviere's studio. But his father,
my grandfather, wouldn't let him go. He wanted my dad to be a doctor.”

“Did your dad give up the violin?”

“No—he was a professional musician. He played weddings, art receptions, and stuff like that, but he really wanted to be a true concert violinist. He always thought he could have been, if he had studied with Susan Laviere. That's what my mom says. He wanted me to have the chance that he missed out on.”

“Isn't she still teaching, though?”

“Yes. She's old, and she only takes three new students a year. Usually, she only takes people who are in high school. But my violin teacher submitted a tape, and I auditioned.” Kai spoke up to the ceiling. It was easier to talk without looking at Doodle.

“And you didn't get in?”

“No. We found out the same week my mom lost her job. It was a disaster.”

“Your mom got fired?”

“No way.” Kai shook her head. There was no way her mother would ever get
fired
. She had been the top regional salesperson for the past three years, and even got to drive a
shiny silver Lexus as a reward. “Her company was reorganized, and her job didn't exist anymore. They offered her something new, but it was less money and a lot of travel, and she's a single mom, so—”

“So forget it.”

“Right. And now I'm here while she looks for work and takes a three-week course on computer skills—social media, all that stuff. It just stank because it was like we both failed majorly in the same week after working like crazy for . . .” Kai shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe after that, it was better to be apart for a while.”

“But you just said Susan Laviere usually only takes people in high school.”

“She took a middle school kid this year.” Kai reached for the fringes of the rug that lay beside her bed. She let the silk strands dangle over her fingers, then let it go. “It just wasn't me.”

“But you can try again next year. You'll be better by then.”

“So will everyone else.”

“Are you . . . you're really just
giving up
?” Doodle couldn't believe it. She was honestly trying; she just
couldn't quite manage it.