A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic Read online

  Kai shrugged. “Some things are more magic than others.”

  “Like what?”

  Kai considered the question. “Well, like nursing shoes aren’t magic. Checkbooks. Moths.”

  “Moths are extremely magical!” Doodle huffed.

  “Okay, but, like, mud is not ma— Look, actually, I don’t want to get into an argument about this.” This was the thing that frustrated Kai about people. It was hard to know if they could ever understand you. Like the kids at school who thought she was “weird” just because she wasn’t interested in hearing about who was currently crushing on whom. “I want to know if you believe in magic. Not the everyday kind of magic. I’m talking about, like, unusual magic. Highly unusual magic.”

  “I won’t laugh,” Doodle said then, unexpectedly.

  Kai gaped. “W-what?”

  “If you’re worrying that I’ll laugh at you about something, you can stop. I won’t.”

  That was enough. Kai sat down on a patch of brown grass and handed the book to Doodle, who flipped through it.

  “Isn’t this your diary?” She cocked her head. “No—it isn’t, is it? It looks old.”

  “Yeah—it’s . . .” Kai took a deep breath. “I wrote in it, and it wrote me back. Now it’s just gone off, writing its own story. I add to it, sometimes, and then it takes what I’ve written and makes it into a story. Sometimes, the handwriting even changes. Like—I don’t know—like someone else is adding little pieces, too. And other times, it’ll just go off and add more by itself, and I don’t know why. Or how. It’s, um . . . it’s magic. A magic book.”

  “Wow.” Doodle’s gaze lingered on Kai’s face, and then dipped back to the pages.

  “Do you think I’m insane?”

  Doodle looked up and held her gaze. “Not in this particular way.”

  “Do you think maybe I’m making it up?”

  “Why would you make it up? I mean, I assume that you thought of all of the logical explanations, right? That someone is messing with you—”

  “Right. Not possible. Sometimes, words appear if I close the book and just open it again. Almost instantly. So there isn’t time for someone else to be writing in it.”

  “Whoa.” Doodle held out the book. “Can you make it happen now?”

  “It doesn’t always work that way.” But Kai leaned back to fish around in the pocket of her jean shorts. She came up with a ballpoint. Doodle handed her the book, but when Kai flipped it open, Doodle said, “No—don’t.”

  Kai’s hand hovered over the page. “Why not?”

  “It’s just—I believe you. Don’t ruin it. Don’t put something dumb in there.”

  “It’ll just make it into part of the story.”

  “But if it’s a magic book, Kai, you can’t just—I mean, it’s like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.”

  Kai smoothed her hand over the golden lettering on the cover. She was overwhelmed with sadness, although she wasn’t sure why. She had not yet learned that sometimes finding a true friend can make you feel even more acutely the loneliness of your life before that moment.

  “The thing is, the newest part of the story was about a girl who played the violin. And a moth—it sounded like a Celestial Moth—came and landed on her bow. And I started thinking about those drawings in the lepidoptery journal . . . the ones that looked like music—”

  “Maybe they are music.” Doodle tugged a piece of grass and stared off into the distance, her mind miles away. “Moth music . . .”

  “What should I do?” Kai asked.

  Doodle looked up at the clouds. One of them had slowly formed into a shape that looked like a feathery wing. “Why don’t you tell me the story?” Doodle suggested.

  “The story in the book?”

  “The whole story. What you wrote. What it wrote. Everything.”

  And so Kai did.

  That evening, Doodle burst into Kai’s bedroom with her usual uncoordinated cacophony. She carried the iPad in one arm, wiping the sweat from her forehead and into her hair with another. “Oh, man,” she said, breathing hard, “I ran into Pettyfer on the way over here!”

  “Blech,” Kai said. “What was he doing?”

  “He had something in a jar that he said was an Anna’s Eighty-eight, which would be really rare around here, and he was all, ‘I’ma Plastomount it!’ and I was all, ‘The hell you say!’ but when I tried to grab it, he ran off and I chased him a while, but I couldn’t catch up and I was afraid I’d drop my dad’s iPad and I didn’t want to miss sundown, so I came over here.”

  She flopped onto Kai’s bed. “Man, it’s hot today. That made me tired.”

  “All the running, or all the talking?” Kai asked drily.

  Doodle just inhaled and exhaled for a few moments. “Can you believe he would kill something as rare as that?” she said to the ceiling.

  Kai thought about how some people seemed to be missing something soft and human—something that allowed them to feel things for other people—and at that moment Melchisedec Jonas’s name whispered in her mind.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Doodle breathed a bit more, and then rolled onto her side. “That thing is looking lumpy,” she said, eyeing the white cocoon/blob that sat in a jar at Kai’s bedside.

  Kai frowned. “It’s been so hot. I think the resin is melting a bit.”

  Doodle sat up suddenly. “Are you ready?” She started scrolling through the images until she came to the page with the weird lines and numbers. “Here.”

  Kai looked at it. “I think it’s a form of tablature. It’s a really old way of writing music. Instead of writing the note, you write down a number to indicate the finger you’re using, and the string. Guitar players still use a form of it.” She had already pulled the black violin case from its temporary place in her closet. The black case was worn at the edges, and scratched. Kai had always handled it carefully; after all, it had been her father’s. But anything that is used every single day for ten years will show wear. The silver clasps sprung open beneath her fingers, and she pulled the bow from its place. She tightened and ran rosin over the bow. Its weight was as familiar to her as her own arm as she tuned up the strings. Picking up her violin, she tested a few notes. The melody was eerily similar to the one she had been playing for the insects a few nights before. The one that had just . . . appeared on her fingertips. She was relieved that she still seemed to remember how to play. Before that night of the Insect Symphony, it had been four months without the violin.

  “Every day, you make a choice,” her mother always said. “To get better, or to get worse. What’s it going to be?”

  Every day, for almost ten years, Kai had chosen to get better, until the day—four months ago—she was told that no matter how much better she got, she wouldn’t be the best. And if she couldn’t be the best, the whole thing was a waste. She might as well quit.

  Now, her fingers felt fat and stiff, like sausage stuffed into casing. She had gotten worse, but they still knew their places.

  Beyond her window, the night chirped and hummed. She lifted the sash, letting in the song of the darkness.

  “Do you think they’ll come?” Doodle asked, her voice hushed as if she were in a church. She sounded so hopeful that it made Kai’s heart ache.

  “We don’t even know if they’re out there. But maybe something will. . . .” Kai placed the violin beneath her chin and lifted the bow. She glanced once at Doodle—four months since she’d had an audience. She swallowed, then slowly drew the bow across the D string, pressing down her ring finger until she matched the note she heard outside. Then she hacked a quick series of chopping notes, over to the A . . .

  Kai played according to the tabulature and the sounds it nestled in with the music of the night, at times joining the melody, at times adding a high harmony. She felt the notes lift from her violin, actually felt them rise, like something with weight, and join with the notes beyond the wall. She felt them braid together, becoming something heavy and large. Her eyes ha
d no trouble reading the tablature—it was as if she knew the notes already, as if her muscles remembered them from long ago. She had almost forgotten that this was what it meant to play the violin: to become a part of something so deeply that you became almost invisible. She had disappeared, and there was only the music, the sound, the beauty, the reaching beyond yourself and becoming part of the fabric that knits everything together.

  She played on and on until, finally, she became aware of a third strand on the braid of sound. A breeze lifted the white curtains until they fell back, like a sigh. Stopping, Kai turned to Doodle. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “It—it was like something was playing along. Matching my song.” Kai played a few more notes, but nothing happened. “It’s gone.” She listened a moment longer. Nothing. She shook her head and swiped a finger across Doodle’s tablet, to the next page of music. When her eye landed at the bottom of the page, she murmured, “Oh, my . . .”

  Her voice evaporated—she had no breath to speak with.

  Doodle looked at her sharply. “What is it?”

  Glancing up at her friend, she touched the signature on the screen.

  “What does that say?” Doodle craned her neck to see. “Edward?”

  “Edwina,” Kai told her. “Edwina Pickle.”

  Their eyes locked. Neither knew what to say, for they both realized at the same moment that there could be only one Edwina Pickle—the one who wrote a diary of moths and music must be the same as the one in the magical book.

  “I’m scared,” Kai said after a moment. “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should I—?” She glanced at the violin.

  “I don’t know,” Doodle replied.

  I won’t play the rest, Kai thought. I won’t. But—almost against her will—her violin nestled under her jaw and her bow traveled to the strings.

  She played.

  She played the sounds up to the stars, out into space, to heaven or wherever someone like Edwina might be, and she didn’t stop until she heard Doodle gasp.

  “What?” Kai cried. Her eyes snapped open; she had not even realized they were closed. “What is it?”

  With trembling finger, Doodle pointed at the peanut butter jar on her side table.

  “Oh, wow,” Kai said as the cocoon—jumped.

  Something inside it was alive.

  THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

  “Are you ready?” Ralph asked, holding up the folded piece of paper. He lay in his hospital bed, his leg raised, and Edwina sat perched on a chair beside him. She smiled, and Ralph let his eyes linger on the crinkles at the corners of her dark eyes.

  “Do you want to read it out loud, or should I?” Edwina asked.

  “You do it.” Ralph handed her the paper.

  Edwina unfolded it inch by inch, slowly revealing the alternating handwriting—hers, then his, then hers, then his again. Rain tapped and spattered against the tall windows, trapping them indoors. But Edwina had suggested a game of Exquisite Corpse, and so she and Ralph had passed a pleasant afternoon together, coming up with tale after tale. Each would write part of a story, and then fold it over so that only the last sentence showed. The other would then come up with the next part, and fold it again.

  Edwina read aloud:

  “Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a hole. A horrible man had put her there, with no way to get out. It was a very deep and dark hole, and the girl was very lonely there.

  “One day, the girl received a visitor. It was a mole. ‘Hello!’ said the mole. ‘I am sure we will be good friends!’

  “The mole lived underground, of course, but he didn’t mind it. Sometimes, the mole tried to imagine what the sky was like. He had heard of it from an earthworm, but the worm’s description didn’t make much sense. Something about being quite the opposite of the hole: bright, and wide, but those words meant nothing to him, so he asked the girl.

  “The girl puzzled over the words. Bright? Wide? What could they mean? She had lived underground so long that she had forgotten. One day, she decided to see if she could find a way out of her hole. She had to see the sky again.

  “And so she asked the mole what to do. Naturally, the mole told her that she must dig!

  “And so the girl did! She was a marvelous digger. As she went deeper and deeper underground, everything became darker and darker.

  “‘This must be bright,’ she thought. ‘This must be wide.’ Then she saw something in the darkness—she pulled it out. It was a giant diamond. ‘Ugh, worthless,’ she said to herself. ‘What use have I for a rock?’ Just then, who should appear but her dear friend, the mole.

  “‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  “‘Digging toward the sky,’ she said.

  “‘Have you found it yet?’

  “‘Yes, I believe so.’

  “‘Ah, how wonderful,’ said the mole. ‘I do love to be out in the bright, wide world.’

  “And so they lived happily ever after, together, in the darkness underground.”

  Edwina smiled softly, and folded the paper carefully, crease by crease.

  “I do love a happy ending,” Ralph said.

  “Yes.” She looked up at him. “It’s a wonderful story. Like a fugue, almost. Different strands that come together.”

  “Or like a magic trick.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Edwina looked out the window at the gray sky as Ralph settled himself against his pillows. The heavy, weeping clouds made the long ward dim, but Ralph felt like the mole—happy in his darkness, uncaring of the wide world, and not at all lonely.

  He was in love, and he knew it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Leila

  LEILA WAS IN THE yard in front of the Awans’ house, thinking about what a lousy pet a goat seemed to make. True, the family had thanked her profusely and seemed really happy about it. But whenever Leila went out to the backyard to pet the silly thing, it would bang its head against her leg. It was pretty annoying. Leila had come out to the front to get away from her, leaving her tied up near a bunch of pretty red flowers that matched the design on her haunch.

  The thick metal gate clanged open and a black car pulled into the driveway beside the small front lawn. The entire property was ringed by a high white wall, and topped with jagged broken glass. All of the large houses in the city were mostly hidden behind walls, with only their tops showing. It was one of the major disappointments of Leila’s visit. At home, she loved walking around her neighborhood and looking at houses. Sometimes, she would even catch a glimpse of a room, or a family beyond the window. But here, nobody in her family seemed to go for walks anywhere, and there wasn’t much to look at but walls, anyway. Each house in this area was its very own fortress.

  The gate squealed closed and the black car was still for a moment before a back door opened and a tall man in a bowler hat stepped out. He stood, taking in Leila, who sat on a white wicker chair near a mango tree. She wasn’t sure whether or not she should get up, so she was halfway out of the chair when Mamoo announced, “Samir told me about the book.”

  Leila fell out of the chair. It was a very inelegant fall—she tried to reverse her attempt to get up, then clutched at the armrest as her rear end missed the chair. Instead, she plopped onto her bottom and pulled the chair over onto its side next to her.

  Mamoo made no move to help. It was impossible for Leila to tell whether he was surprised by her reaction. Personally, I can tell you that Mamoo had lived long enough to know better than to be surprised by anything.

  “I’m fine,” Leila told him, scrambling to her feet and patting the dead grass and dirt from the back of her shirt.

  “Yes, I see that.” Mamoo helped her set the chair back upright. That was when she noticed that he was holding a thick, clothbound book in one hand.

  “What’s that?” Leila asked.

  “The book,” Mamoo replied, holding it up. He really did not think much of L
eila’s intelligence. “For you. Samir said that you were interested.” The book was a dull red. Kim was stamped on the cover, and below that, Rudyard Kipling.

  What is this? Leila wondered, at the same moment that she was flooded with relief that Mamoo had not been talking about The Exquisite Corpse. She had, in fact, left her air-conditioned room to escape from the book in the first place. Even when she placed it beneath her folded jeans and closed her bottom drawer, she felt that she could still hear it buzzing, like an insect. She knew it was there. She was always waiting for it to sneak up on her.

  The night before, she had conducted another experiment. She wrote the first sentence of her favorite Dear Sisters novel in the book. “Elizabeth Dear frowned at her reflection in the mirror, wondering who would mistake such a typical American girl—with her smooth cornsilk hair and sea-blue eyes—for a countess.” Then she closed the book and waited. This morning, when she turned to the page where she had written the sentence, she found that it had disappeared.

  The book had erased Elizabeth Dear! Leila suspected that The Exquisite Corpse was annoyed with her.

  “Today we will go to see the gun.” Mamoo pursed his lips, managing to point to the book in her hand with his silver mustache.

  What? What? This sentence took a long time to worm its way through Leila’s brain. Synapses went to work, connecting thoughts, until finally something lit up. “Kim’s gun?” Leila said.

  “Yes. And a trip to the Lahore Museum,” Mamoo said. “Where is Samir?” He barked something in Urdu to his driver, who jogged into the house. A few moments later, he reappeared. Samir trailed behind. “Hello, Mamoo!” he called cheerfully. “Are you ready?” he asked Leila.

  “Are we going now?” Leila asked.

  “Yes, we decided last night, remember?” Samir asked. “Ami has to visit a cousin in the hospital and Rabeea is going with her, so today’s a good day to see the gun.” This plan had been discussed at length by the family the evening before. But, naturally, this discussion had taken place in Urdu. Leila had nodded and smiled whenever anyone looked over at her, and this was the result.