The Impossible Destiny of Cutie Grackle by Shawn K. Stout

Author:Shawn K. Stout [Stout, Shawn K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I was glad when that memory was over and I was back at the G.H.B. I’d never been so happy to see the Giant Horse Butt. The raven with blue eyes was still here. It hopped onto the toe of my shoe and started pecking at the metal eyelet around my shoelaces. I let it. What did I care?

It was a terrible thing to see somebody get swallowed up by molasses. A terrible, terrible thing. It was bad enough to hear a stranger at the food pantry tell you about mysterious deaths and disappearances on the mountain, but to see it happen with your own eyes!

I felt heavy, like someone had dumped a pile of curtains on top of me. The thick, dusty kind that blocked out the sun. It was hard to breathe under curtains.

“That poor Pearlie Mae woman,” I said, when I could catch my breath. “And her little dog. All that molasses.” And then I realized. “Murderation! So that’s why the mountain sometimes smells like pancakes!”

I also remembered where I had heard that name. In the memory from the fortune, my mama said that she had lost so much. First Grandma Pearlie Mae, she had said. Pearlie Mae must’ve been my mama’s grandmother. Which meant that she was my great-grandmother! Mama also said that she had lost “Mother and Pa.” My grandparents. Did the curse take them too?

Something inside me told me yes.

I knew I wouldn’t get an answer from the raven, but I couldn’t help myself. “But why is there a curse in the first place?”

The raven, who was busy stripping my shoelace from my shoe, stopped for a moment and looked up at me with its blue eyes.

“Something must’ve caused the curse, right?” I didn’t know much about the inner workings of curses, but I knew they didn’t just show up on their own and for no reason.

There was only a tiny end of my shoelace threaded through the last eyelet on my shoe. Instead of giving me an answer, the bird pulled my shoelace free with its beak and took it away into the trees.

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