Read Online A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic by Lisa Papademetriou - Free Book Online

about?”
    Doodle stormed ahead like a hurricane. She didn’t stop; she didn’t slow down. She only spoke one word. “Pettyfer,” she said.
    The pale blue pearl in the net receded as Doodle stomped on. Kai wondered if it really was a cocoon.
    And, if so, she wondered what was inside.
T HE E XQUISITE C ORPSE
    What was inside? Ralph peered at the vial. It was small and flat, made of smoky purple glass. The man had told him to open it only when he was alone. There are threemagics inside, he had said. Don’t let them all out at once.
    Ralph hurried toward home, but he did not make it all the way. He passed American Casket and walked through a field of bright red flowers. Halfway across, he looked up at the sky, which was bleached close to white by the harsh sun. Around him, there were no sounds but the music of the grasshoppers at his feet. He stood in the shade of a slender sycamore and pressed his back against the patchy gray-and-white bark. Carefully, he unscrewed the silver cap on his vial. Like mist, fine white powder rose from the vial and a light breeze blew it against the tree. Ralph peered up at the canopy of wide, seven pointed green leaves, wondering for a moment if he was like Jack and the Beanstalk, and if the tree might rise into the bleached sky.
    The grasshoppers whirred on. Nothing happened.
    Perhaps I need to make a wish, Ralph thought. “I wish,” Ralph said aloud, “that something would happen.”
    Above him, the leaves whispered for a moment, and then were still.
    Ralph fought the urge to dump out all of the powder in the vial. Be patient, Ralph told himself. Even Jack’s beanstalk didn’t grow right away. He screwed the capback onto the vial and hurried home.
    The smell of cabbage overwhelmed him the moment he walked into the kitchen. As usual, his mother was at the stove, stirring. Ralph and his entire family stank of sauerkraut. All of their clothes stank of sauerkraut. That’s because Ralph’s mother put sauerkraut on everything. His parents were even starting to sell it at the store. It was his great-grandmother’s secret recipe, and she said that it was what had helped her live to the age of 103. Sometimes Ralph wondered if he wanted to be a stinky, sauerkrauty 103-year-old, but he never said so to his mother, as it would have broken her heart.
    â€œWhere’ve you been?” Ralph’s mother asked the moment he banged open the door.
    â€œIn town,” Ralph said. His hand automatically went to the vial in his pocket, and he closed his fingers around it.
    â€œWhat’ve you got there?” Mrs. Flabbergast planted her fists on her wide hips.
    â€œNothing.” Ralph blushed as red as a boiled lobster.
    â€œRalph . . .”
    â€œIt’s nothing, really,” Ralph said, pulling the vial out of his pocket and holding it out to his mother. “It’s just . . . um . . .”
    â€œLooks like a fancy salt shaker.”
    â€œIt is! Yes! I found it.” Ralph did not have much practice lying, and it showed.
    â€œHm.” Then, to Ralph’s horror, Mrs. Flabbergast opened the vial and shook a bit of the white powder into the sauerkraut cabbage. “Well, I hope this does something for the sauerkraut,” she said. Then she handed the vial back to Ralph, whose jaw dangled dangerously close to the floor.
    That evening, a storm blew in around dinnertime. Lightning flashed; thunder boomed. Nobody in the Flabbergast family noticed. They were too busy devouring sauerkraut, which—everyone agreed—was (for once) scrumptious.
    Almost magically so.

CHAPTER SIX
Leila
    T HE MORNING SUN ROSE feebly through the smoky Lahore sky. Leila was still jet lagged, and was only now—too late—beginning to feel tired after a sleepless night, but she didn’t go back to bed. She had not dared to step out into the hallway until the sun rose. Elizabeth and Jennifer Dear often discovered mysteries when roaming