There’s a pause. “Come get me out of this goddamn box, and let’s talk.”
I head back into the kitchen and unzip the backpack. Doris—Maggie—jumps out and struts into the bedroom as if she knows I was just in front of the mirror. She stands there, turning from side to side, raising her crest, her eyes dilating wildly as she regards herself.
“At least I’m not a chicken,” she mutters. “The pink is nice.” She looks up at me. “What the heck am I? The corgi version of a flamingo?”
“You’re a galah, or rose-breasted cockatoo,” I tell her. “The only member of the genusEolophus,originally from Australia. You’re eleven years old, with a possible lifespan of seventy-two. You were purchased from a breeder in Tennessee by an eccentric woman named Hilda, and after she died, you were inherited by her son, my old boss. And you hate him and were constantly trying to peck his eyes out, so I became responsible for you, and now I’m basically your owner, according to a hastily signed piece of notebook paper.”
Her red eye pins me. “You don’t own me.”
“Fine. I’m your babysitter.”
“I don’t need a babysitter!”
“You have no hands, no money, no common sense, no ability to fly more than ten feet, and hundreds of natural predators. Also, you can’t open doors. So unless you want to go peck for scraps at Lindy’s and die early of fatty liver disease, you might as well get back to telling me about the witch thing.”
She blinks at me and shakes her head. “Yeah, you’re definitely a Kirkwood.”
“I’m a Wolfe.”
“Half of you, the important half, is still a Kirkwood.” She bobs her head. “The witchy half.”
I look around the room. “So this isn’t all just wishful thinking? This is real witch shit?”
She sighs tiredly in my head, then launches herself at me. I have to either catch her or deal with her scrabbling against my chest. I naturally tuck her up in the crook of my arm, and she nestles down like this is perfectly normal.
“This is real witch shit,” she says. “Which is how we’re having this conversation.”
“Just one problem, GamGam,” I say. “I’m not a witch. There is literally nothing magical about me. I can barely keep my own life going, much less anyone else’s. People with magic in their blood don’t have leaky roofs.”
I walk over to a front window and peek out through a crack in the blinds, watching the flow of life around the square. It’s somewhere between sleepy and busy, aged and idyllic. The dinner crowd is trundling around, families and couples stopping to look at menus taped in windows as children turn cartwheels on the grass. It’s nice to think I could be something more here, but my talking cockatoo is clucking nonsense.
“Didn’t you feel it?” she says, fidgeting against me.
“Feel what?”
She breaks free of my grasp and flutters to the ground, where she paces back and forth. “The magic! The moment the water of the falls hit you. I still remember when it happened to me. It was like a big ol’ party cracker full of golden glitter breaking over my heart. You’re a Kirkwood, Rhea. I know you felt it, too.”
And I had.
Even flailing in the ashy water, half drowned, coughing, sputtering,I felt it.
Like everything changed and good things were coming, like a swoop in my belly.
“I did,” I say grudgingly.
“The falls—they’re a catalyst.”
“That’s an awfully big word for a cockatoo,” I say, because everything else is so ludicrous that I’m grasping at straws.
“Just because I’m from the mountains doesn’t mean I’m an uneducated fool,” she says coldly.
“But just because I fell in some water and started hallucinating doesn’t mean I’m a witch. It just means my hair’s frizzy and I’m covered in cremains—your cremains! It’s crazy. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”
She flaps her wings and laughs. “They’re all over me, too, but you don’t hear me complaining. Look, honey, I can tell you’re not particularly comfortable right now. The bathroom’s right there, if you want to shower. I always bought the nice shampoo.”
I follow her to the bathroom, with its old-fashioned seafoam-green tile. Her tiny talonsclick-click-click,and she fluffs herself like she’s back on familiar ground. I’m enraptured by the clawfoot tub and glad to see the tiny separate shower stall. I note the folded lavender towels, the bottles of salon shampoo and conditioner. I can imagine how good it would feel, to be completely squeaky clean and putting on dry clothes, but something is still bothering me.
“If I’m a witch, what can I do?” I ask. “Are there magic words? Do I need a wand?”
