A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic Read online

  Kai looked at the old peanut butter jar that Doodle had placed on the table. Inside were a stick, several fresh leaves, and the resin-coated blob that might or might not be a cocoon that might or might not be from a Celestial Moth.

  “There’s pages of them.” Doodle scrolled through the images, showing a drawing of a moth at rest, one on a red flower, one in flight. After that were sketches of other moths, then some butterflies, then a bunch of praying mantises.

  “Someone was really into bugs,” Kai said.

  “Everybody’s got a thing,” Doodle said. “What’s yours?”

  Reflexively, Kai said “violin” before she was even aware of the word.

  “Really?” Doodle looked surprised.

  Kai winced a little, half afraid that Doodle would ask her to go get her violin and play, and half hoping that she would. “Kinda.”

  “Cool.” Doodle turned back to the cocoon. “It’s just so hard to identify anything in this state.”

  Kai’s fingers tapped against her thigh, playing out the familiar notes to her favorite Mozart piece. It was her thinking habit; she didn’t even know she was doing it. “What should we do with it?”

  Doodle sighed. “I don’t know. Do you want it?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m not really sure how to figure out what it is. If it’s a cocoon, the pupa is probably all dried up.”

  “Okay.” Honestly, Kai did want the weird, fat little pearl. She liked the way it glowed in the darkness. She’d never seen anything like it.

  “It’s yours.” Doodle pushed the jar toward her.

  Several hours later, after dinner and a game (in which Lavinia took all of their Monopoly money, warning them to “Never talk money with a retired loan officer!”), Doodle went home and Kai took the jar up to her room. She placed it on the windowsill and then went to wash her face and brush her teeth. Kai changed into her pajamas, then shut off the light and sat on her bed, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the change. It took a moment to see the cocoon’s soft glow. But then, there it was, shining dimly at the bottom of the peanut butter jar. It seemed friendly, somehow.

  Could it really be the cocoon of a Celestial Moth? If so, the caterpillar inside must be dead.

  Beyond the window, insects pulsed and hummed with a hundred different melodies. Kai didn’t know much about insects, but she knew about music, and she could distinguish the cheerful creak of the cricket and the rhythmic buzz of the katydid. There were other melodies, too, and although she didn’t know the players, Kai liked the way the sounds made her skin vibrate.

  It was amazing to think that a cricket, a being smaller than her smallest finger, could make a noise that would travel across the yard, through her window, past her hair, and right into her ear.

  There was another insect, one with a clear tenor. She loved the sound it made—every time she caught a piece of the melody, it reminded her of the cello.

  Ah, there it goes again, she thought, straining to distinguish the sound from the many others.

  It sounded so much like the opening of the second movement of Bach’s Suite No. 1. Did Bach like bugs? Kai wondered, humming along. Filled with a sudden longing for her violin, Kai stood and walked quickly to the closet.

  The black case lay in shadow, but Kai, knowing its familiar shape, kneeled and snapped it open. She reached for her bow, tightening and then rosining it carefully. She tuned up the strings, and then crossed to the window and sent a cool, clear note into the night. The insects seemed to pause for a moment as Kai played a melody that bubbled up from inside of her, and then the chorus swept over her and the hum and rattle from the grass and trees joined the notes like an orchestra.

  A light blinked in through the open window and disappeared, like an ember winking out. Kai played on with her insect symphony, trying to cling to the notes, so that she wouldn’t forget them. I should write these down, she thought. The Bug Sonata.

  The lightning bug floated through the room, pulsing with occasional light until it finally came to rest on the bedside table. It glowed and dimmed and crawled across the pages of an open book.

  The bug was crawling across the The Exquisite Corpse. The band played on as Kai dropped her bow and crept closer to peer at the page. There was a bit of new writing. The firefly lurched into the air and meandered out the open window. Slowly, Kai crossed the room and skimmed her eyes across the line.

  Perhaps the music was a dream, it read.

  THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

  Perhaps the music was a dream.

  Ralph blinked up at the whiteness overhead. A slender crack ran along the top of the wall, just beneath the place where it met the ceiling. He had just awoken, but he did not feel awake. He felt heavy, so heavy, as if he might sink through the mattress and into the floor. Through the floor, and into the ground.

  His eyelids sank closed, shutting out the unfamiliar, white room. He did not wonder where he was. He did not care. He just wanted to sleep again, and perhaps to dream of music.

  For a short while, there was no sound but the gentle rasp of his breath. Then a long, high note like a song.

  His eyes drifted open. The music refused to be silent.

  Light streamed in from a window near his bed. The music pressed against the window, pushing against the glass like the soft pad of a cat’s paw.

  Ralph turned his head toward the light and sound.

  A woman bustled in. Her dark hair was precisely parted beneath a round hat that perched atop her head like a stack of pancakes, and her long skirt swished at every neat little step. Her nose was fat as a cherry tomato and her cheeks soft and almost jowly. She smiled sweetly down at Ralph, and he thought how plain she was, and how kind she looked. “You’re awake, then?” she said as she snapped the sheet back into place over him and tucked it up beneath his mattress.

  “Where . . . ?”

  “You’re in the men’s ward. Broken leg and a concussion—I heard you played a card trick on the wrong customer, tsk, tsk!”

  Ralph winced as he tried to sit up. Another four years had passed, and Ralph was seventeen years old. He had become quite a cardsharp, and turned a tidy profit hustling other young men with a version of the shell game. But that career had its risks. He reached for the vial that he always kept in his pocket, and was shocked to find that he wore only a hospital gown. “Where’s—?”

  “All personal effects are stored in the side table.”

  Lunging for the table, Ralph let out a gasp, then fell backward onto his pillow. The nurse took pity on him and pulled open the drawer. “Is it in there?”

  Ralph craned his neck, but was careful not to move his body. The drawer held a wallet. A watch on a silver chain. A set of keys. And a smoky purple vial with a silver top. “Yes,” he breathed.

  “Good.” The drawer snapped shut, and the nurse reached for a dark metal crank at the end of the bed. With every turn, Ralph felt himself rise a fraction of an inch. “Your father’s been by. Lovely man. Lucky you, to get this nice bed by the window. You’ll feel better, looking out a bit.”

  Ralph placed a hand on his forehead. “Do you hear that?”

  “Oh, Billy and his moaning? Don’t mind that,” the nurse said. “It’s all in his mind,” she whispered, pursing her lips and opening her eyes wide.

  “No, I mean . . .” He turned toward the window, and the light fell across his face like a soft breeze. The wall was made up of three tall windows, each arched toward the ceiling in a curving hump. His bed was the closest to one of these, but the angle was such that he could only see the sky beyond, not the lawn.

  “Oh! The violin? That’s Miss Pickle.” The nurse held out a small glass of clear liquid. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

  Ralph wrinkled his nose. “What is it?” he asked.

  The nurse cackled. “It’s water! Honestly, did you think I was trying to poison you?” She laughed again, and held the water to his lips.

  Ralph drank. He had never thought of water as having a flavor, but
this was sweet and cooling. It seemed filling, too, like a piece of fruit. When he had finished, he leaned his head against the pillow. “Who is Miss Pickle?” he asked.

  “Aren’t you full of questions!” The nurse winked at him. “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to get better and go see for yourself, won’t you?”

  The music curled through the men’s ward, floating over the elderly gentleman in the large wheeled chair, and slipping past the man stretched on the bed beyond him. “How long will she be here?”

  “Don’t know.” The nurse planted her hands on her hips and gave him a twinkly eyed frown. “She’s a patient, too, but she seems quite well to me. I suppose you’ll have to get better soon, or you might miss her.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Leila

  THE SHUT AND SEALED windows couldn’t keep out the smoky smell that hovered thick and insistent over the city of Lahore. “It’s because it hasn’t rained,” Samir had explained. “Eventually, a monsoon will come and wash all of this away.”

  After their trip to the market, Leila’s clothes held the city’s smell. Her sheets even seemed to smell. She wondered if the smell had become caught on the inside of her nostrils—if even her nose smelled of smoke, and that was why she couldn’t escape it.

  She changed her clothes, but didn’t feel fresher or smell better. Leila thought about Elizabeth Dear’s signature fragrance—lilac body powder. I need a signature fragrance, Leila decided as she sniffed her smoky shirt. Something to cover up whatever this is.

  Her computer pinged, and she walked (eighteen steps) to the bedside table to read the text. It was from her mother. “Good time to chat?”

  “Sure,” she typed.

  Those four letters whooshed into space, bounced off a satellite, and then returned to Earth on the East Coast of the United States. A moment later, the computer rang and her mother’s voice sounded through the speakers.

  “Leila! How is it? We miss you!” her mom asked. As usual, she had the computer angled so that it showed a corner of her forehead and the curtain behind her.

  “Mom, you’ve got to adjust it. Tilt the screen down—there you go. Over a bit. Can you see me okay?” Leila asked. Her parents were pretty terrible at video chatting, in spite of the fact that Leila’s mother sat in front of a screen all day and her father was a computer expert.

  The screen tilted, and her parents came into view. Her father’s green-and-gray striped shirt stretched over his belly, and Leila knew he must have been sneaking into the chocolate halvah at night. “Hi, Daddy!”

  He waved from behind his wife. “Hi, sweetheart!”

  “Are you loving it?” her mom asked.

  Leila thought about how best to answer. “Yes, loving it!” seemed like a lie. But “no” would set off alarm bells. “Everyone’s nice.” Leila glanced toward the window, looking out at the dome of the mosque. The smoke in the air made it look soft.

  “How’s the food? I’ll bet they’re stuffing you! Is the food good?”

  “It’s a little too spicy.”

  “I hope you aren’t complaining!” Her mother’s bright-red-framed glasses were perched on top of her head, and her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in three days. This was her Deadline Look.

  “No, no. . . . It’s great. Jamila Tai knows I love kabobs, so they’re making extra ones for me.”

  “It’s very generous that they’re hosting you,” her mother said.

  “It’s family!” Her father gave a dismissive little hand-flip away from his forehead, which Leila had recently realized was a very Pakistani thing to do.

  “Yes, I know, it’s nice of them,” Leila said.

  “You should buy them a gift while you’re there.”

  “I gave them the stuff you sent along.” Her mother had packed bags of chocolates and fancy soaps and perfume, which Leila had doled out the first night.

  “That was nothing. This is really very gener—”

  “It’s family!” her father insisted. “I would hope that my own brother would be happy to have my daughter in his house!”

  “Oh, Bilal.” Leila’s mother shook her head, and then turned back to Leila. “You wanted an international adventure like your sister’s, and it’s very nice of your aunt and uncle to give you this opportunity!”

  This comment irritated Leila a bit. It felt like her mother was saying that Nadia found her adventure on her own, while Leila needed help. It might be true, but nobody wants to be told that. “It’s great that you’re getting to know Pakistani culture a little bit.”

  Leila’s father huffed. “She knows Pakistani culture!”

  Her mother held up a hand. “Bilal, please.”

  “Yeah—no, it’s good. It’s different when you’re here,” Leila said quickly. This was a familiar argument for her parents. Her mother often wished that Leila’s father would teach her Urdu, or take her to the mosque sometimes. Her father insisted that he had never been religious when he lived in Pakistan, so he wasn’t going to start now. As for Urdu, Leila and Nadia didn’t even call their father Abu.

  “So, uh—like what should I get these guys?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something for the house?” Leila’s mother was famously bad at choosing gifts, but she did have one good suggestion: “See what they like when you’re out together, and just get that.”

  Her father rolled his eyes. “Then they’ll get Leila something else! The gifts are nonstop! It never ends!”

  “Bilal, I do not want Jamila to say that my child is so American that she didn’t even know—”

  “Okay, okay.” Her father shook his head. “All right. You’re right. I’m agreeing with you.”

  “Okay; I’m on it.” Leila smiled and shook her head. It was comforting to think that her parents were at home, still being exactly themselves. “How are you guys?”

  “We’re great! Oh! I ran into Aimee’s mother the other day. Aimee’s been cast as Sleeping Beauty in the fall ballet—isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Yeah. Great.” Leila didn’t explain to her mother that Aimee wasn’t really her friend anymore. She didn’t mention the painful, gut-shredding conversation where Aimee had explained that she had more in common with Nadia, now that they were both in the same accelerated class. Now Aimee and Nadia can be remarkable together, Leila thought bitterly. She took a deep breath and filled the silence with, “Aimee has always been a great dancer.”

  “And have you been keeping up with Nadia’s blog? She saw a lion!”

  “Oh. Wow.” Leila decided not to mention the parrot that she saw from the window. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem pale in comparison to Nadia’s amazing, spectacular cultural experience or Aimee’s starring turn on the stage.

  “I nearly had a heart attack when I read that,” her mom went on, “but Nadia says it’s perfectly safe.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “You should write a blog!” Her mom beamed. “Who cares if it isn’t for school credit, Daddy and I would love to read it! Wouldn’t we?”

  “Of course,” Leila’s father said absently. His eyes had traveled to his lap, and she knew that he was checking his smartphone.

  “The Wi-Fi’s a little spotty. I’m not even sure it’s possible.” Leila didn’t mention the secret blog that she was writing in her own mind. “Uh, listen, Mom—I need to go in a minute.”

  “Sure, honey. I love you! Don’t forget to get the present. Just use some of the money we gave you.”

  “Thanks! I love you, too.”

  All of a sudden, Leila’s mother burst into tears. “Oh, Mom,” Leila said, touching the computer screen. “Dad! Do something!”

  He looked up from his smartphone, and wrapped an arm around his wife. “We miss our girls,” he said to Leila.

  “I miss you, too.”

  “I’m sorry!” Her mother dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t expect to do that!” Another tear leaked out. Her mother boo-hooed some more, and her father said, “It’s okay. It’s okay,
Sarah. Look—you have to cheer up! We can’t go to the theater like this. We’re supposed to be seeing a comedy!”

  The theater? Her parents never went out. Leila knew it was unreasonable to expect her parents to sit around the house, doing nothing but working or missing their children. But she had kind of expected it, anyway.

  “Good, good,” her father said. “We’ll speak again soon, all right?”

  “Love you, honey! Love you!” her mother called. “Talk to you soon!”

  I’ll try to come up with some adventures for her before then, Leila thought as she smooched toward the screen, waving. “Okay! Bye!” Leila touched the keyboard with a finger and watched as her name disappeared.

  With a deep breath (oh, let’s be honest, it was a sigh), she sat down on the bed—on something hard. She knew what it was. For a few moments, she did not move, but simply continued sitting on the book. She began to count.

  When Leila reached eighty-three, she realized that she was going to have to stop counting sometime. She would have to stand up eventually. The only alternative was to sit here, on this book, until she died.

  Leila considered the pros and cons.

  Ultimately, she lifted one leg and pulled out The Exquisite Corpse.

  “What do you want?” she whispered. She turned the pages and stopped at the latest entry, which was about Ralph waking up in a hospital, and hearing the violin. The name “Miss Pickle” tickled her ear.

  I wonder if Ralph will meet her, she thought idly. Then, a moment later: Well, she reasoned, can’t I make them?

  The thought actually frightened her a little. But it thrilled her, too. Why shouldn’t I? she wondered. She felt as if the book had been making all of the decisions so far. Leila would write a single sentence, and then the book would go off on a story of its own. And sometimes, more would appear for no reason at all, at least not a reason that she could figure out. It was a bit like her experience in Pakistan. She had said that she wanted to ride a camel, and go to the Shalimar Gardens, and visit Badshahi Mosque—but nobody seemed to be in a hurry to make those things happen. It was always, yes, yes, tomorrow, but when tomorrow arrived, it would turn out that there was some desperate urgent errand that could not be put off, unlike her sightseeing.