Chapter 8
I stare at her. “Blood? Gross.”
“Not a lot of blood,” she allows. “Just a few drops for most spells. We’re not talking gallons. A drop of blood, a little water, some ingredients, and the right incantation, and you can do all sorts of things.” Her crest raises. “Wanna see?”
“Now? You want me to do magic now?” I hold out my arms to show the absolute wreck that is my current situation.
I am totally unprepared to do magic; I don’t even have a pointy hat.
It almost feels like one of those dreams where you realize you’re back in school and have to take a test you haven’t studied for, except I’m fully clothed and talking to a parrot.
“It’s not hard. You already did half a spell today.”
At first, I’m puzzled, but then I think about what happened at the waterfall. She—Doris—bit me, I bled in the water, and then it was like I was upside down on a roller coaster for a moment and suddenly my grandmother was talking in my head. “My blood, the waterfall…”
She bobs her head excitedly. “Plus the spell I’d already done, just waiting to happen.
It was supposed to be Diana and Moon, but—” She must see my face harden.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got to stop putting it like that.
I wasn’t expecting…you. I didn’t know you existed.
I didn’t even know your name until I heard you give it to the Blakely boy.
Your mother must’ve used the last of her magic to shield you from me.
Rhea, honey, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I’ve always wanted a granddaughter. ”
“You have two more.”
I hear the gasp in my head as the cockatoo flaps her wings and raises her crest in excitement. “Three! Three granddaughters! Well, how do you like that? I swear, your mama—”
“Do not say one bad word about her or I’ll feed you worms for dinner.”
“Honestly, I don’t think I’d mind. I guess I’m getting used to this body. Anyway, I want you to look under the sink. There’s a milk jug full of water. But don’t you spill a drop. That’s not normal water.”
It looks normal, and it’s definitely not 1% milk, as the sticker suggests, which is good, because it would be totally curdled.
“See the little seashell dish by the sink? Pour out maybe a teaspoon of water into that dish.”
I do. It’s honestly pretty difficult, because the jug is very, very full, and there’s a frantic cockatoo dancing on the toilet, urging me to be careful.
“Now, there are two ways to do this spell. You can use an eyelash or a marigold petal.”
“I vote marigold,” I say, not wanting to pluck myself bare.
“Tough. Today it’s eyelash. Just run your finger over your eye and half the time, one will fall out. I’d give you one of mine since I’m too old to be that vain, but it appears I don’t have them anymore.”
I lean close to the sink and am fortunate to find an eyelash already on my cheek. I hold it out on my finger to show her. This all feels very silly, but literally everything today has felt silly, starting with the water tower labeled Cumming, which, I mean—what’s in there?
“Now just drop the eyelash in the water, add a drop of blood, and say—”
The word she says sounds like a drunk person saying, “Bear slick.”
“Slow down, GamGam. I don’t currently have an open wound.”
“Yes you do, and I’ll give you another one if you call me GamGam again. Just pinch your bit finger, for Pete’s sake.”
I unwrap the paper towel, and, yeah, it’s not hard to get a drop of blood. It plunks into the tiny puddle and disperses as the single dark eyelash floats on top, coated in waterproof mascara.
“Bear slick?” I ask.
She repeats the word in my head, and I do my best to mimic it. In answer, the dish of water catches on fire.
I immediately shriek and swat it into the sink, breaking the dish. Maggie squawks and flaps into the bathtub, screeching in parrot. I turn on the sink faucet, but the fire is already out.
“What are you doing, you goose?” she asks in my head, still clattering around in the bathtub. “It wasn’t real fire!”
I stare down at her. “How would I know? You didn’t tell me what it was! I was not expecting literal flames!”
She flaps up and struggles to sit on the edge of the tub. “I thought you’d be smart enough to know!”
“My intelligence is not the issue here!”
There’s an annoyed pause in which, in perfect time, we both mutter, “Lordy!”
And then, against my will, I laugh along with her.
“Got that from your mama, didn’t you?” she asks softly.
I nod.
“And she got it from me, and I got it from my mama. It’s as close as she would come to cussing. Nice to know it’s still in the family. Same auburn hair, too.” A sigh. “Lordy, I missed out on so much. Look at you! You’re fully grown already. We never even got to make cookies.”
I smile and help her out of the bathtub. “But we can apparently make magic, and that’s even better. What else can I do? What are the rules? Is there a book? Do I get sorted into a house? Where do I buy my pointy hat?”
Maggie settles on my arm. “No hats. No schools. Let’s say it’s like cooking. There are all sorts of recipe books but no Bible, you know?”
“There’s Joy of Cooking,” I start.
“And how many editions does that thing have? Lordy, you’d argue with a post.” She clucks. “There is no formal study. Everything is inherited. The rest of the world has no idea.”
“So I don’t get to go to witch college?”
“This isn’t some ridiculous story, Rhea.”
It’s weird, hearing such an annoyed, human tone coming from the comical pink parrot who usually just sings show tunes.
“It’s real, but magic…well, it’s imperfect. It keeps itself a secret. You’ll see.”
“But you’re telling me there are witches all over the place?”
Maggie flutter-jumps up onto the windowsill, nearly falling over before finding her feet. This window has no ivory blinds; it looks out on the alley, showing only a wall of kudzu peppered with tiny purple flowers.
“Witches cluster together along magical bodies of water. You can’t cast a spell at all without the right water. And if you get too far from the wellspring of your magic, it fades. Our wellspring is the falls.”
I consider the dish in the sink. “So that’s one spell. What else can we do?”
She sighs, and even in my head, her voice sounds very old. “I can’t teach you much. Not without my grimoire.”
At that word, I perk up. “A grimoire? Like a magic diary? You have my full attention. Where is it?”
“Lost.” She fidgets on the windowsill, weaving her head. “Like so many other things. I remember a few everyday spells, but without a grimoire, you might as well have infinite monkeys trying to write Shakespeare. And if they write it incorrectly, things get…explosive.”
I can’t believe I’m disappointed about magic, but here we are. “So I can do magic, but you can’t teach me much. There is no cool book of spells. I don’t get to live the witchy life and make potions and, I don’t know, dance around under a full moon and curse people?”
Maggie flutters to the ground and walks past me into the hall. “I’m afraid not. Magic isn’t what it once was. Most of the young folks moved away, after it began to dry up. You might have a knack—just something you can naturally do—but you won’t know until it decides to reveal itself.”
“You mean like levitating?”
She sneezes like this is ridiculous. “No. Nobody levitates. What’s the point? Ladders exist. More like being able to figure out what’s wrong with a car or having horses love you or never getting lost.”
“Those sound kind of boring, honestly. I was hoping we could fly. Or make money.”
Maggie hunches over and raises her tail in annoyance. “Oh, well, I’m so sorry the magic doesn’t impress you! Your generation, I swear.”
If I had a tail, I’d raise it, too; I’m just as annoyed as she is.
“I don’t understand. If the magic is mostly gone, why’d you show me a spell at all?
You could’ve just convinced me I was hallucinating.
Or just stayed quiet. You don’t have to constantly talk in my head.
We could go back to communicating by singing duets.
” It feels like she showed me something wonderful, shining on the horizon, and then let the curtain fall, shutting off my beautiful view, and I begin to see why perhaps my mama didn’t like her so much.
Maggie stops pacing and stares in at me, her beady red eyes as sharp as lasers.
“I guess I shouldn’t have shown you anything.
Maybe I just wanted to see if you could do it.
Maybe I was hoping you would stop questioning everything.
But what’s done is done. None of this is going the way it was supposed to.
I guess it’s not going how you expected, either.
We’ll just have to find a way to live with each other. ”
She sounds exhausted, deflated. And I’m feeling a little bit emotional myself. It has been one hell of a day, and I’m at the end of my rope.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “But if I don’t shower soon, we’re going to have a bigger problem, and the problem is me sitting on the floor and screaming.”
“That’s totally fair, honey, but I’ve got needs, too. First of all, food. Birds are built to eat all day, you know?”
I’m about to cry from the stress of it all—I don’t like conflict—but it’s so absurd that, as always, I go for bad puns. “So you’re feeling peckish, huh?”
She shakes her feathery crest. “Just throw some crackers at me and get in the shower or I’ll start screaming, too.”
“Absolutely not. Crackers are junk food. But I’ll get you some nice pellets.”
I head out to the car to fetch the feeder and waterer that once belonged to a cockatoo named Doris.
It feels strange, watching Maggie consider the little pellets with a critical eye, like I’m trying to poison her, and then figure out how to eat with a beak.
I miss the old Doris, the brainless one that I snuggled like a football while reading books in my dad’s old recliner.
Still, I get to have a relationship with the grandmother I’ve never met, even if she’s annoying, and…