A Snicker of Magic (13 page)

“Florentine said I had magic in my veins — word for word,
that’s what she said
!”

“Uh-huh.” Aunt Cleo pulled a red plate out of the sink. She passed it off to me and I swirled the dish towel around it once before setting it off to dry.

“She says she knows things about this town,” I said. “She knows things about people. She says our people might be magic.”

Cleo didn’t say anything. I looked to my uncle instead. “You hear me, Boone? We might have some family magic!”

Boone sat on the couch, fixing shiny new strings to his banjo.

I couldn’t wait to tell Jonah what I’d written. I maybe shouldn’t have drawn a tiny heart in place of the
o
in
songs
, but otherwise I think I did a fine job.

“We got magic in our veins,” Boone sang softly as he turned the banjo pegs extra tight, then plinked a string.

Plink.

Zing.

Thrum-de-ding, thrum-de-thrum. Bing.

“That banjo’s already making happier music.” I grinned.

“Spindiddly!” Boone winked at me. “Mighty sweet of the Beedle.”
Thrum-de-ding. Thrum-de-ding.
“This Florentine person’s talking nonsense, Liss. If we had magic in our veins, we’d be a little luckier than we are. I don’t know anybody with worse luck than a Harness.”

“Pickles have bad luck, too,” said Frannie Jo.

“Ugh,” Cleo groaned and rested her arms on the sink. “I ain’t having this conversation! I promised Holly that I wouldn’t mention those stupid stories.”

Boone and I said at the same time, “What stories?”

Cleo fumbled around in her apron pocket until she found her lighter. The flame on the tip trembled when she tried to touch it to the cigarette in her mouth. “Just silly old folktales,” she mumbled.

But the way Aunt Cleo glanced at me right then told me the exact opposite. I could tell by the sad in her eyes that she didn’t believe those stories were folktales at all.

“Tell me what you know,” I said. “I can handle it. I’m in sixth grade.”

Cleo sighed and set her dripping dish on the counter. Then she stomped out of the room.

When Cleo shuffled back into the kitchen, she was holding the framed picture that hung on the wall of her former craft room, my current bedroom: the picture of the man standing beside a hot air balloon.

“Started with him.” Cleo passed the frame to me. “That man …”

“Is Stone Weatherly.” I nodded. “He was one of the Brothers Threadbare.”

“The magician?” Boone rocketed off the couch. His boots clomped across the kitchen tiles. He was still cradling the banjo in his arms.

I saw our faces reflected in the glass as we leaned in close to study the picture.

“That
magician
,” Cleo said, “was also your no-good-lowdown-deadbeat-drifter great-great-grandfather.”

“We’re part Threadbare?” I nearly hollered out. “Then we do have magic in our veins. BIG magic!”

“I love magic!” Frannie Jo squealed.

Biscuit yipped and wiggled her tail.

“Y’all won’t love this magic.” Cleo shook her head. “We’re kin to Stone Weatherly.
Stone.
You know the story, Felicity. Stone is the brother who
lost
that dadblamed duel.”

Boone held the picture closer to his face. “So … what’s that got to do with us?”

“Means it ain’t magic we got in our veins now,” said Cleo. “All we’ve got is the stupid curse that witch woman gave.”

“Witch woman?” I mumbled. “I’ve never heard anything about a wi —”

Thunder cracked against the sky so loud that the dishes by the sink rattled and the lights flickered.

Frannie Jo ran for Cleo’s arms. Biscuit crawled under the couch.

“We better get the flashlights out,” Cleo said. “Just in case we lose power.”

Boone and I followed Cleo so closely down the hall that we all slammed into each other when she stopped.

The closet door fell off its hinges when Cleo opened it, but she simply sighed and slung the door against the wall. “Before the Brothers Threadbare had their stupid duel, they called on some old witch woman to set a curse on the loser.”

Cleo plopped a big orange shoe box labeled
JUNK, ETC.
into my arms. “And it was a humdinger of a curse:
Cursed to wander through the night, till cords align, and all’s made right.
”

I shivered as Cleo repeated the words Oliver had already told me.

Boone tapped nervously against his banjo. “But that was a long time ago. That’s got nothing to do with us, right?” His voice sounded shrill and crackly.

“Stone Weatherly
lost the duel
,” Cleo repeated loudly, half of her body hidden in the closet, rummaging through
boxes and quilts. She emerged holding a small wooden container, which she settled on top of the junk box. “And because he lost, he had to leave town and live out that curse for the rest of his days. He couldn’t sit still. He’d sleep for a few hours, but then he’d wake up in the middle of the night, sleepwalking, sleep-running, sleep-dancing-a-jig. Stone became
restless
. He managed to marry, eventually. But he never had much of a life. Hardly ever saw his wife or his kids because he couldn’t settle down. He couldn’t set roots in any place. He was cursed with a restless soul.”

“Like Mama.” I gulped.

Cleo didn’t answer. Neither did Boone. But I felt my heart whisper against my ribs:
Yes.

I swallowed down the fear in my throat. “Why’d he fly a balloon?”

“Because that’s the only way he felt any peace.” Cleo scooped up a quilt with her free arm and tossed it into the hallway. “As long as Stone’s body was moving, his heart could rest. He saw the whole world from the basket of that balloon. But the whole world’s nothing compared to people you love. Stone didn’t ever see his family.”

“And we’re cursed the same as him.” I didn’t ask it like a question. I said it in the for-sure affirmative. We were cursed. Cursed Pickles. Cursed Harnesses.

“S’only a story,” Cleo murmured. She huffed as she reached farther back into the closet, pulling out extra pillows and another shoe box of flashlights and batteries. Then she propped the door back against the closet.

We piled all of our survival gear plus a bag of Cheetos into the hallway.

Boone didn’t help us. He was still studying the picture of Stone Weatherly.

“Cleo.” Boone narrowed his eyes at the picture. “Is that a banjo on his back?”

“Guitar,” Cleo said. “Stone’s brother, Berry, played the banjo. He played the very same one you’re holding, in fact.”

Boone’s eyes glanced up slowly from the picture. “Come again?”

Cleo’s nostrils flared as she looked away. She took a long draw of her cigarette. “I’m done telling these stories. I promised Holly I wouldn’t mention them. Y’all are going to get me in a heap of trouble.”

Boone’s eyes sparkled mad-blue. He pulled the banjo off his shoulders and shook it at Cleo. “
Why
do I have a banjo that belonged to the Brothers Threadbare?”

Cleo heaved a sad sigh as she leaned back against the wall. The lights flickered again. Thunder pounded against the rooftop. Cleo narrowed her eyes up at the ceiling, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and hollered, “Hush!”

Cleo was the only woman I knew who was brave enough to yell at a storm.

“Cleo!” Boone clipped. He was the only man brave enough to yell at my aunt.

“Fine!” Cleo seethed. “Our mother’s family lived way up in the backwoods of Virginia. One day when she was still a little bitty thing, she saw a fancy old car zooming
down the gravel road toward her house. Mother said an old man stepped out of the car; he was a scrawny feller with sad eyes and shaky hands. The man said he’d come there looking for Stone Weatherly. Well, Mother’d grown up hearing stories about her grandfather, of course, but she’d never met the man. Mother told the visitor all that. She told him about the day Stone Weatherly’s balloon drifted off into the sunset and never came back. Nobody’d seen Stone Weatherly in years. Nobody ever saw him again, as far as I know.”

I let out a shattered breath. Because I
knew
somebody had seen Stone Weatherly again. Oliver had seen him. Stone had gone looking for Berry, the same as Berry had gone looking for him. I opened my mouth to tell Aunt Cleo, but my heart kicked hard against my ribs:
WAIT
. And then again,
NOT YET
.

Cleo spoke softly, “Mama told the old visitor that Stone Weatherly was gone. She’d no more than said it when the old man sat down on the porch and cried a waterfall of tears. The visitor introduced himself as Berry Weatherly, and then he told her the
real
story of what happened to the Brothers Threadbare. He told her about that mean old witch woman who set the curse. Before Berry left, he gave mother the banjo that he’d played alongside his brother all those years ago. Said the banjo didn’t sound good without his brother playing, too. He told her to give the banjo to Stone if she ever saw him again. If not, he told her to find a good place for it. Mother gave the banjo to me. I passed it on along to you. And there was something else, too —”

Cleo popped open the wooden container she’d pulled from the closet. She rummaged past piles of pictures and postcards and pulled out an oval-shaped locket dangling from a long silver chain. She handed the locket to me.

“Berry Weatherly gave
this
to Mother, too,” Cleo said. “He said it reminded him of better times. You can hear something rattling around in the locket if you shake it, but nobody’s ever been able to get it open.”

Cleo was right. I pried at the locket with my fingernails but it wouldn’t budge.

“You can keep it if you want.” Cleo shrugged. “I don’t figure you can put much magic in a locket. It’s safe.”

The locket was kind of big and tacky but spindiddly, too. I looped it around my neck.

The lights flickered and dimmed, then flashed back to bright again.

“Cleo,” Boone said thoughtfully, “… am I playing a cursed banjo?”

“Nah,” Cleo said. “The banjo ain’t cursed. It just doesn’t make good music anymore.”

“That’s good to hear
now
.” Boone pressed his palm against his forehead and wailed, “No wonder my career won’t kick-start, Cleo! I’m playing a moody banjo!”

“Your ca-
reer
,” Cleo huffed, “won’t kick-start because you keep saying you’re Boone Taylor instead of Boone Harness.”

“Cleo,” I interrupted, “you do know that Oliver Weatherly is …”

“Of course I know he’s related.” Cleo waved off my question. “But I don’t want to talk to him about those brothers, and I don’t want to talk to y’all about them anymore, either. That story is done; it was done a hundred years ago. We can’t change the past. So I don’t want to hear anything about it ever again.”

“But, Cleo —”

“No. More. Questions!”

Lightning-colored words flashed against the wall:

FIERCE

DETERMINED

PURPOSED

I sat up tall and pushed my shoulders back. I traced my thumb back and forth across the smooth surface of Berry Weatherly’s locket. “At least tell me what our curse says, exactly. I won’t ask you any more about it after that.”

“Not
our
curse,” Cleo whispered. “
His
curse. When Stone Weatherly lost the duel, the old witch woman locked her hand around his wrist and said these words:

“It means
we
…” Cleo’s voice trailed off. She cleared her throat and said, “It means
he
was cursed to wander and never rest. Cursed to fail at everything he put his hand to. But that’s only if you believe the stories, which I most certainly do
not
. And I don’t want to talk about them again after this.”