Tales in the Midst (Jane Yellowrock)

Angie, the Taco Truck, and the Red Dragon

Faith’s Note: I don’t hang with many writers anymore, but I chat with RJ Blain from time to time.

And RJ? RJ issued me a challenge to write a short-short about a witch, a taco truck, and a dragon.

That’s it, just those three things. This short-short, about the three things in the challenge, appeared in my newsletter in very, very, very rough form, with no true ending.

The following is the story after it was added to, refined, improved, and actually finished.

In this story, Angie is nearly ten years old and trying desperately to fit in with human classmates, in a human world.

Until the dragon showed up, she was doing okay . . .

◆◆◆

Angie sat alone—as she usually did at lunch, ever since she accidently burned a hole in her desk in Mrs. Reynold’s class. She had lost her temper and, because her guardian angel wasn’t around anymore, she let loose of her magic. Kids were not supposed to have magic.

Mama and Daddy had explained it away by saying she had borrowed their magic and it would never happen again. Kids were smarter than adults most of the time, and her friends—her former friends—knew a lie when they heard one. Stole her parent’s magic? Sure she did . . .

Angie bit into her pizza slice lunch. Alone. Always alone.

Terrell, a ten-year-old boy a grade ahead of her, walked in the door from outside—a door that was supposed to be locked and secured against men with guns.

A cold blast of air whirled through the door with Terrell. He carried one arm over his head. In that hand, he was holding a . . . a taco. The scent rushed through the room, pushed by the wind. Angie slid her slimy pizza slice away. It smelled rotten in comparison to the taco.

The room around her went silent. All the kids were staring at Terrell as he lowered his hand and .

. . took a bite. Of the taco. Watching him eat.

The taco. Seconds went by. The teachers stepped as one toward Terrell.

He grinned at them, mouth wide, teeth coated with taco meat and cheese.

Two slivers of cheese fell onto his T-shirt and there was a smear of taco sauce on his school khakis.

“Where did you get that taco?” Mr. Baumgarten asked, his voice awed.

“Taco truck,” Terrell said, his mouth still full. He swallowed down the bite. “Outside.”

Angie watched his throat work. It looked . . . wonderful. Slowly, she stood. So did all the students.

“I’m getting a taco,” Mr. Baumgarten said.

“Me too,” Three other teachers said. As a group they moved toward the doors, speeding up as they reached them.

The kids, the awful people who made fun of Angie and never wanted to be her friends, followed the teachers, pushed through them, and ran ahead, shouting.

Another rush of cold air entered the room, rich with the scent of tacos.

The best scent Angie had ever smelled. She closed her eyes and breathed just so she could keep smelling the tacos.

Within seconds, Angie was alone in the cafeteria with Terrell and the mesmerizing fragrance of tacos.

So good. Angie took a step toward Terrell.

Holding her gaze with his eyes, he put the last bite into his mouth, laughing, showing the mess in his teeth as he chewed.

When he was done chewing, he swallowed, turned, and walked away, toward the outer doors and the taco truck.

Angie blinked and woke. She was standing only a few inches from where Terrell had stood, her hand reaching out, begging.

A screech came from behind her. Even as she jumped and whirled in alarm, she recognized the sound.

The queen’s red striped flying lizard-dragon-thing, Longfellow.

Wings spread, it perched on a chair back, its talons digging into the plastic, its long tail swiping back and forth on the cafeteria tile.

It screeched again and flapped its wings, throwing itself off the chair and dropping, to almost hit the floor before a second wing-flap sent it higher.

Angie followed as the six-foot long dragon flapped and dipped, flapped and dipped.

Its weight was almost too much for the length of its wings.

The creature—the only one of its kind on Earth—flew through the closed door’s glass, straight to the taco truck.

Angie followed it outside, but opening the door and racing through like normal creatures, people, and witches had to do.

She stepped into the cold. It was early spring, the wind still blustery, the air chill beneath the sun’s mild rays.

The smell of tacos was caught in the wind, swirling and spinning.

Tacos. Spellbinding tacos. Magic tacos. Longfellow perched on the top of the taco truck, wings spread, maw open, and he began to screech over and over, as if . . . as if calling for help.

The taco truck was surrounded, the kids shouting and beating on the truck’s walls and door. Mr. Baumgarten was yelling at the man inside to, “Make more! Make more! I have money!”

Angie realized she was running toward the truck and stopped, stepped back, uncertain. A little girl at the back of the crowd fell. Terrell stomped on her hand and laughed. It was an awful laugh.

Terrell wasn’t Angie’s friend but he wasn’t normally mean, just a coward.

It was the tacos. The magic tacos. No. The cursed tacos.

Angie blinked hard and a shiver caught her as her strawberry blonde curls brushed her face, tossed by the taco-wind.

She looked at the taco truck with her witch vision.

Unlike most witches, Angie didn’t have to cast a seeing working to see magic.

It was always there, swirls of power and light, color and sparks, and deepest shadows.

The taco truck was encased in shadows. Dark twirls of taco smoke swirled up from the windows like tiny tornadoes.

Orange sparks danced across the truck body.

A puke green tendril of dark magic ran through it all.

Angie’s gaze followed that green strand away from the truck, to a woman in the next block, standing on the curb, leaning against a telephone pole.

Magic pooled and shifted around her, encasing her. Her power was clouded, a rotted green and putrid orange: dark motes of curses swayed drunkenly around her.

Angie couldn’t stop the curse, not with the bindings Mama and Daddy had put on her power. But . . . But . . .

She could steal all the tacos.

Mama and Daddy would be mad.

Worse . . . Angie might go to jail.

Mr. Baumgarten roared with anger. He pulled back his fist to hit his Mrs. Stockmeyer.

“Stop him!” Angie yelled at the red dragon.

Instantly, the dragon was hovering above the crowd, its wings flapping hard.

It pooped on Mr. Baumgarten’s bald head.

In the commotion that followed, Angie cast am obfuscation working over herself and raced to the taco truck.

Elbowing and pushing, she fought through the crowd for the driver’s door.

The kids and teachers were so angry she didn’t think they would have noticed her even without the don’t-see-me working.

Standing on her tiptoes, Angie grabbed the handle and turned. Pulled. Yanked. The taco truck door was locked. There was no way in. Unless she did something she wasn’t supposed to be able to do.

She was gonna be in so much trouble.

Fighting the bindings on her magic, Angie pressed her hand to the driver’s door and shoved with her gift. The lock heated, then popped. With all the yelling, no one noticed her using magic. She climbed in, crawled into the tall driver’s seat, and shut the door.

The keys were in the ignition. She had seen Mama drive. It didn’t look that hard, except Angie couldn’t reach the pedals. When there were problems and dangers, Angie’s Ant Jane always said to fly by the seat of her pants. Of course, Ant Jane was always in trouble . . .

Angie started the truck, figured out how to make the stick thing go into drive, and, with a terrible lurch, she was rolling down the street. She didn’t roll over any bumps so she was pretty sure she didn’t kill anyone with the truck.

The cook in back was a man, and when the truck started its slow roll, he dropped down to sit on the floor of the truck, moaning.

Holding his head. At a slow crawl, the truck moved down the street, away from the school and the crowd that had gathered around.

And the woman at the telephone pole. The witch at the telephone pole.

The red dragon popped through the passenger door and settled onto the passenger seat. Longfellow looked at her. “Meep,” it said. It sounded happy but Angie didn’t speak dragon. No one did.

Angie asked, “Can you chase the woman at the pole and find out where she lives? And maybe then find a way to tell Mama and Daddy? ’Cause I’m in enough trouble as it is, stealing a bunch of tacos. And a taco truck. And kidnapping a taco cook.”

Oh man. She was a kidnapper.

The red dragon said, “Meep-meep,” sounding a lot like the Roadrunner cartoon character in that old cartoon. Longfellow popped through the door of the taco truck and flapped away, its body bouncing up and down with each wing-stroke, visible in the side mirror.

Two blocks away from the school, Angie scooted forward and put her toe on the brake.

The truck slowly, very slowly, came to a stop, and Angie put it in park.

Turned it off and stuck the keys in her pocket.

She slipped down to the street. Running faster than she ever had, she raced back to the school, avoiding the crowd of people now milling uncertainly in the street.

Remembering to drop the obfuscation working just in time, she sped inside the school.

Warm air hit her, reminding her she was cold.

Really cold. Shivers hit and her teeth clacked.