(First this month, I got news. Faith just has a new story, below)
As friends are wont to do, I yelled at Faith the other day, telling her that she was losing her relevance. She was boring. She was… No, I very nicely told her I was going to spend all her money to get a new design or the Newsletter.
She decided that perhaps I was right, and put Todd (her web guy) to work. And we have a NEW BANNER. AND A NEW NEWSLETTER. I have to tell you, Mud might have been a population geneticist in a previous life, but this new tech stuff is going to take me some time to learn. I hope you enjoy the new look, and the meaning, while murky currently, will be made clear over time.
However, in the interim, if you want to email me a possible new, fun name for the newsletter, I might find something in my prize closet to send to the name I, erm, Faith chooses!
The pretty flowers are cymbidiums, currently blooming in my basement. Because…I am Mud.
FAITH’S WORDS
(I really need a better newsletter name -Mud)
Three weeks ago RJ Blain / Lilith Daniels and I embarked on a challenge. After reading her book Grave Affairs, about a titanium dragon (what’s not to love?), I demanded she write a short-short about cupcakes and dragons. Sadly, (for my schedule) she demanded I write one about a little girl who is forced to steal tacos.
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. She bit into her pizza slice lunch. Alone.
Always alone.
Terrell, a ten year-old boy two grades ahead of her, walked in the door carrying a … a taco. The scent rushed through the room as if a wind pushed it. 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. Watching him eat. The taco. Seconds went by. The teachers stepped as one toward Terrell. He grinned at them, mouth wide, teeth coated by taco.
“Where did you get that taco?” Mr. Baumgarten asked.
“Taco truck,” Terrell, his mouth still full. He swallowed down the bite.
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,” The other teachers said. As a bunch they moved toward the doors. The kids, the awful people who made fun of her and never wanted to be her friends, followed the teachers, then ran ahead, shouting.
Within seconds, Angie was alone in the cafeteria with Terrell and the mesmerizing scent of his taco. So good. Angie took a step toward him. 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 in to the plastic, its long tail swiping back and forth on the cafeteria tile. It screeched again and flapped its wings, dropping from the chair back 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 glass, straight to the taco truck. It perched on the top, wings spread, maw open. Longfellow began to screech over and over, as if calling for help.
She opened the door and stepped out. It was spring, the wind blustery, the air chill but the sun warm. The smell of tacos was caught in the wind. Tacos. Magic tacos. Spellbinding tacos.
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 stepped back, uncertain. And then a little girl fell. Terrell stomped on her hand. Laughed. Terrell wasn’t her friend but he wasn’t mean. It was the tacos. The tacos were cursed.
She blinked and looked at the taco truck with her witch vision. Dark twirls of taco smoke swirled up like tiny tornadoes. Orange lights danced across the truck body. A puke green of dark magic tendril ran through it all, and Angie followed that green strand of to a woman, standing on the curb, leaning against a telephone pole in the next block. Her magic was rotten green, rotten orange, and dark motes of curses clouded around her.
Angie couldn’t stop the curse, not with the bindings Mama and Daddy had put on her power. But … She could steal all the tacos.
Mama and Daddy would be mad. And worse … She might go to jail.
Mr. Baumgarten pulled back his fist to hit Mrs. Stockmeyer.
“Stop him!” Angie yelled at the red dragon.
Instantly, the dragon was hovering above the crowd, its wings flapping hard. And it pooped on Mr. Baumgarten’s bald head. In the commotion that followed, Angie cast an obfuscation working over herself and raced to the taco truck. Fighting the bindings on her magic, she pressed her hand to the driver’s door and the lock popped. With all the yelling, no one noticed. She climbed in.
The keys were in the ignition. She had seen mama drive. It didn’t look that hard, except she couldn’t touch the pedals. She 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 he dropped down to sit down on the floor of the taco 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 settled into the passenger seat and looked at her.
“Meep,” it said. It sounded happy but she didn’t speak dragon.
No one did.
“Can you chase the woman at the pole and find out where she lives?” Angie asked Longfellow. “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.”
The red dragon said, “Meep-meep,” sounding a lot like the Roadrunner cartoon character. It popped through the door of the taco truck and flapped away, its body bouncing up and down with each wing-stroke.
Angie put the truck in park and slipped down to the street. Running faster than she ever had, she raced back to the school and inside, remembering to drop the obfuscation working just in time.
That afternoon, Mama and Daddy sat her down, saying they and the witch council had handled the curse working witch. They told her she had done well. Not good. Well. Angle nearly peed herself with relief.
No one would ever know she was a thief.
Angie never learned who the witch turned out to be. That was witch counsel stuff. But at least she didn’t get in trouble. This time…
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