Daddy said, “The witch council authorized your mama and me to counter the curses and to bind and detain the witch. She’s in custody in a null cell, and she’ll receive medication and counseling to get her through the mental breakdown.”
“You did well,” Angelina,” Mama said, gently.
Angie nearly peed herself with relief. She gulped the tea, sweetness on her tongue.
Mama’s face was kind and maybe a little proud. Also, she had said,You did well. Not good.Well. Mama almost always used proper English.
“Who was she? The witch?” Angie asked.
Mama and Daddy looked at each other real quick and back to her. This time Angie knew they weren’t going to tell her anything.
“Why was she cursing the taco truck man?” Angie asked. “What’s a mental breakdown? Is it like going crazy?”
“That’s a . . . a grownup problem,” Daddy said.
“Did he cheat on her? Did he have a baby momma on the side? Was he a playa?”
“Son of a witch,” Mama said in witch cussing. “Where did you hear things like that?”
Angie scowled at her parents. “I’m not just a kid. I know stuff. Mrs. Smith’s husband had a baby mama and they got adivorce and she said if she had magic she’d turn his pecker into a wet noodle.”
Mama’s eyes went wide.
“A pecker’s a penis, Mama,” Angie clarified.
Daddy got red in the faced. Well, redder. He was a ginger, too, and he turned red easy. He got up and left the table and went out the kitchen door. Angie and Mama could hear him laughing from inside the house.
“Lord, save me,” Mama said.
Things must really be interesting if Mama was praying.
“Is anyone gonna arrest me for stealing the taco truck?” Angie asked.
“No. No Angie Baby. No arrests, no time out, no suspension from school, because your name did not come up at all and no one knows what part you played in the taco truck disaster. Also no baby mamas, and no . . . no peckers.”
“Okay.” Angie drank half the tea and slid from the chair. “I’m gonna do homework,” she said and left for her room. Angie was satisfied that no one would ever know she was a thief.
Sadly, Angie never learned who the witch turned out to be or what the man did to deserve to be cursed or if his pecker fell off. That was witch counsel stuff. And she never learned why Longfellow was hanging around the taco truck. But at least she didn’t get in trouble. This time.
THE END
Longfellow, Upside-Down
Faith’s Note:This short story is the result of another challenge from RJ Blain, and was seen, in very rough form, as a serial in the newsletter and on my website. I have expanded it a lot, giving more detail and emotional nuance. And getting to know Mud better.
???
Mud was sitting at her desk in middle school, in Knoxville, half-watching out the one tiny window, half-listening to a biology teacher tell the class how seeds sprout, and how plants grow. Likesheknew anything. At all. About how plants grow. “Water, dirt, the right temperatures,” Mrs. Skyfield said, “and sunshine, and seeds will sprout.”
Mud managed to not blow raspberries, but it was a close call. Not all seeds just grew. Some needed scoring, or had to be sprouted between two towels in a specific temperature range. Seeds, some seeds, not all seeds, because there were always duds, had life. Energy. That spark that came from the dawn of the big bang creation. Physicists said life came later, made from the same stuff as stars, but not at the same micro-instant of the big explosion. Wrong also. Life came at the same moment that everything else did. All time, all life, all everything, all potentialities. Bang. And there it was. LIFE! At least, that was how the Green Knight explained it to her when she talked to him about the things she did with plants. The way her magic worked,and why other people couldn’t—or didn’t—feel the power in the Earth and trees. Most humans couldn’t and didn’t. To Mud that was a weird reality.
Something red flew past the window. Red. Long and red. Part of a red wing right where it joins onto a body, a pale red belly. A long . . . long . . .longtail.
Holy mackerel. That was the Dark Queen’s flying red dragon. Outside her classroom window.Flying! Jeeze!It appeared again, hanging upside down from the roof. Peeking in. One big red opaline eye met hers. Then it was gone and all she saw was a wing tip flapping away.
Mud grabbed her stuff, leaped to her feet, and raced to the door.
“Mindy! Return to your seat!”
