When I got home, Gram asked me how things had gone with my young man. I wasn’t sure what to say. If I admitted I’d had a good time, she might want to invite Travis over, which could give him the wrong idea. On the other hand, if I told her about the mix-up, she might hunt down Sonny Wentz and thrash him for hurting my feelings.
I finally settled on, “Our buttons and collar tabs matched. He didn’t try to kiss me.”
“That’s . . . promising, I reckon.” She reached into her sewing bag for a new ball of yarn. “By the by, your new friend, Jura, stopped by to pick up that biscuit you left for her. And she wants you to meet her at the library tomorrow. Something about a cornucopia. Says you should get set for a busy week,” Gram told me.
“A cornucopia?” It took me a minute. “Oh! Cornucopio!”
“What on earth’s that?” Gram asked.
“It’s a thing with profiles and swaps. And college applications, for Jura, at least.” I bit my lip. Maybe now was the time to tell her about our plans to feed the world. “To be honest—”
“College, huh?” Gram mused. “I don’t know but what the smart ones always have some sort of big plan. Well, good for her, I say. Not enough big plans in Sass, of late.”
“No. Right. You’re exactly right. Which brings me to—”
“You don’t mind if I turn in early, do you, Gen? I worked myself to the bone today.”
I looked at the clock. “It’s not even five.”
“Old people tucker out fast.”
And with that, she shuffled off to her room.
She’d left me a frittata in the skillet, still warm, so I helped myself. After a little homework, I grabbed my starlight cup and headed into the woods.
It was a Saturday night, so the older kids were out being rowdy. I could hear them in the distance hooting and laughing, engines revving and tires a-squealing. It was all the usual business, and I was used to it, so it wasn’t hard to put it out of mind.
The air was a little cool. Winter’d be upon us before long, and I remembered I still had to figure a way to negotiate with the power company. It was one thing to trade for wishes with a person, but businesses, I guess, didn’t have spots in their ledgers for payments in wish biscuits.
Wasn’t long before I forgot about that, too, though. The stars shone so brightly, and even the white wisps of the Milky Way were on display if you relaxed your eyes and let yourself take it all in. I was standing that way, looking but not exactly staring, when I thought I heard something like a song.
I reckoned it might be the high schoolers fooling around, but no, it wasn’t. The Fort brothers never belched out a sound like this. It was high and sweet, and a little tricky, so I couldn’t be sure I’d really heard anything at all.
I plugged my ears with my fingers to see if it was something coming from inside my own head, but the sound disappeared until I unplugged them again.
“Hello?” I called into the night.
The song didn’t stop, but I thought it might have grown just a little louder. And maybe—were those words? Sometimes it seemed they were, and sometimes it seemed the words were my name. But when I tried to listen harder, it wasn’t my name at all. It was something else. Bells. Or a sound like the metal triangle the drummer plays in band, but constant, a single, long ringing, so high and silvery it wasn’t quite real.
It was coming from the sky, I realized.
The stars were singing.
For a while, I could only listen. But then, as the music swirled and grew, I couldn’t help opening my own mouth and trying to sing along. And I’ll tell you what, I am no singer, but it seemed to me, in that starlit clearing, that my voice suited that music just perfectly, and I knew the words to the song, even though I couldn’t hear them with my ears, precisely.
All shall be well and all shall be well
and all manner of thing shall be well . . .
And everything was well. Electricity or no. Pa, drunk or sober. For just that moment, I felt safe and content. I felt one other thing, too: my ma was there, and somehow, she was hugging me and loving me through that song.
I’m not ashamed to admit I cried a little. But it wasn’t because she was gone and I missed her. It was because she was there, right there, and—in a way I didn’t quite understand—she always had been.
There came a time that it felt right to raise my cup and whistle down some magic from the stars. It was then that I realized: the light was the song, which was the light. It was more than that, too, but what more, I couldn’t fathom. It was a mystery far bigger than me.
And you know what? I took a great deal of comfort from that.
After I made a double batch of wish biscuits—an especially fine-looking bunch, if I say so myself—I used the last of the starlight to light the stove for a batch of plain old breakfast biscuits. I couldn’t help feeling pleased as I tucked them in the breadbasket and folded the cloth over them. Having those biscuits made would save Gram a little work in the morning.
The bag of miracle flour was as full as it had been when I first brought it home.
11
El Lizard Primaro
ONE OF THE NICE THINGS ABOUT THE PUBLIC library sharing a building with the Sass Police Department is, even if the librarian goes home, the library itself is never closed. True, it’s no fun having to do your studying in full view of a holding cell where a certain town drunkard might be sleeping it off, but every rose has a few thorns.
Jura was there when I arrived.
“So-o?” She pushed her face at me and fluttered her lashes.
I laughed. “‘So’ what?”
“Yesterday! Your date!”
I’d told her about the notes from Travis, of course, though at the time I’d thought they were from Sonny. Now the whole thing was just embarrassing.
I fessed up.
“Travis!” Jura exclaimed. A look of concern crossed her face. “You were nice about it, weren’t you?”