The Hungry Ghosts Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Miguel Flores

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  Ebook ISBN 9780451479808

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  Three short letters from the secretary:

  Dear Childhood,

  You were weird.

  Dear Ghosts,

  I am grateful.

  Dear Troublemakers,

  It’s okay to be small.

  this is a story told in parts . . .

  chapter one, part one:

  the house on a hill by the edge of a cliff

  chapter one, part two:

  good stories begin with troublesome girls

  chapter two:

  not everyone chooses to be a mother

  chapter three:

  the living, the dead, and the in-betweens

  chapter four:

  the girl who talks to vegetables

  an introduction to chapter five:

  the little winds

  chapter five:

  in which milly is definitely not a witch

  chapter six, part one:

  on the ineffectiveness of door-to-door marketing

  chapter six, part two:

  on the frightening appearance of a witch’s nose

  chapter six, part three:

  uh-oh

  the first hiatus:

  some girls actually can run forever

  chapter seven:

  sometimes home is the place you run from

  chapter eight, part one:

  a girl without a mother

  chapter eight, part two:

  a world without boundaries

  chapter nine:

  a good witch always follows her nose

  chapter ten:

  dinner with strangers in a house made of puzzles

  chapter eleven, part one:

  we’re off to see the wizard!

  chapter eleven, part two:

  a very unlikely favor

  chapter twelve:

  the house of a witch terrible and beautiful

  the second hiatus:

  some broombranches just really want to play

  chapter thirteen:

  in the heart of the woods

  chapter fourteen:

  a good witch is nothing without regrets

  chapter fifteen:

  the loud sound of silence

  chapter sixteen:

  it’s a bird! it’s a plane! it’s . . .

  an introduction to chapter seventeen:

  rules and regulations of being a witch

  chapter seventeen, part one:

  ask and you might receive

  chapter seventeen, part two:

  be kind and do no harm

  chapter seventeen, part three:

  the magick word

  chapter eighteen:

  the north wind is nothing without its master

  the third hiatus:

  an orphan is nothing without her dreams

  chapter nineteen:

  the making of a witch

  an introduction to chapter twenty:

  a tale of two witches

  chapter twenty:

  how many gnomes does it take to run an effective government?

  chapter twenty-one:

  the secrets of a fyin boomsick

  chapter twenty-two:

  everything has a price

  chapter twenty-three:

  an east wind, who is nobody but themself

  chapter twenty-four, part one:

  a good witch is nothing without her home

  chapter twenty-four, part two:

  a good witch is nothing without her temper

  an introduction to chapter twenty-five:

  a west wind, who quit her job

  chapter twenty-five:

  a good witch is nothing without her kindness

  chapter twenty-six:

  the lost boy

  an outroduction:

  a south wind, who wants for everything

  chapter twenty-seven:

  sometimes all you need is a very good cry

  chapter twenty-eight:

  good stories end with troublesome girls

  CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE

  the house on a hill by the edge of a cliff

  There once lived a wily young world that did not like to be told what to do.

  Their name was Arrett.

  Wild magicks pulsed through all living things on Arrett. They beat deep and thick in the mountains of the Giant’s Teeth. They echoed softly through the green hollows of the Needsy Woods. They cursed harsh and violent in the cascading waves of the Delfin Sea.

  Magicks in Arrett liked trouble. They stirred it up in every windsneeze, pebble, and toe.

  Why, you ask?

  It all started many years ago with the South Wind, who one day in his mischief-making found the heart of Arrett brimming with magicks alone in the middle of the sea. He demanded to know why Arrett wouldn’t share. Arrett responded that no one could handle the weight of magicks, and so they bore the burden alone. But the wind called Arrett selfish and thought they had more magicks than they knew what to do with. So, the South Wind came up with a game.

  The game was this: the South Wind would carry prayers from all around the world—from every green hill, half-stone, and child—and bring them to the heart of Arrett as tithes. If Arrett didn’t fall in love (or pity) with these little magicks-less peoples living on the world by the time the South Wind had brought a thousand prayers, then the game was lost. Arrett could die from a magicks-congested heart for all he cared, and the South Wind would promise to stop running amuck and causing so much trouble.

  But, if the South Wind won, then the heart would have to spill its magicks into the sky and share its great fortune with all the people who lived there. Arrett agreed immediately.

  Now, Arrett’s heart may have been selfish, but it was also delicate. It lost the game at the second story, a story about a small giant named Ovid.

  With a loud hoot, the South Wind called upon the other three great winds and all their reckless little siblings to spread magicks to those with little h
ope or in great need. In return, the heart asked for nothing but more prayers. Prayers with enough weight to balance a curious heart.

  Since then, the winds found purpose for their running. They traveled the world and traded prayers for magicks. To anyone, anywhere, in all corners of the cornerless world.

  Until, of course, the prayers stopped coming.

  The South Wind had forgotten that most hearts are selfish. That hearts are often full of much want and little give. Arrett grew worried. They knew their magicks were too much for small hearts to bear, that the more a heart grew and grew but never gave back, the easier it would be for a heart to burst.

  But we’ll get to that later.

  For now, I must tell you about the town that kept on praying—even though it had very little reason to and saw even less return on investment. It lay fractured and broken, a place that no longer sang or danced or made any kind of merry.

  Shabby little West Ernost.*

  As far as municipal districts go, West Ernost was not an interesting place. It was plotted with more roads than houses and housed more rice farms than trees. It was so boring that it was commonly considered worse than East Ernost, which didn’t even exist. West Ernost was widely agreed to be a place for passing through, not for staying in. Which is unfortunate for a place teetering on the edge of the world: there’s not much left to go to.

  The most interesting thing about West Ernost was that it had developed a bit of a shadow infestation. No one was quite sure where these strange things, otherwise known as “gripes” and “gobblers,” had come from, though many suspected that the witches had cursed the land right before the last of them vanished. Although largely benign, the shadows had become pests. They tunneled through farms and made late-night snacks of herb gardens. They were harmless, shapeless bodies with nothing more than appetite.

  But all in all, West Ernost was perfectly boring.

  There did, however, live a funny little house on top of a flat hill by the edge of the cliff. His name was St. George’s Home for Wayward Girls.

  St. George’s front door faced most of West Ernost, which consisted of rice terraces stacked on top of one another. Behind him was a smooth slope that led down to the cliffs of the Delfin Sea. St. George’s boasted two floors, five and a half walls made of bamboo-slatted windows, a red-faded-to-brown thatch door, a squash garden, one sleeping moss-bull, fourteen orphaned girls, and an old headmistress named Doris Barterby.

  When St. George’s had been nothing more than a middle-aged broombranch tree, he had prayed to leave the Needsy Woods. He asked to be a boat. He wanted nothing more than to discover the sea’s secrets, to trade his roots for an anchor and listen to Delfin sing her raucous songs.

  One day, a funny little woman named Doris arrived in his forest. She had wiry hair twisted into a messy bun and a glint in her left eye. St. George’s had never before seen a woman with head leaves so wild or a chest song so lively.

  Doris came to his woods with nothing but a metal saw, a green moss-bull, and a sled as wide as his very self. For an entire month, she put her saw to his trunk, determined to cut him apart piece by piece to make a house.

  At first, St. George’s resisted. This wasn’t what he had asked for! When Doris climbed into his branches, he shook violently and threw her down. When she tried to draw lines in his bark for measurement, he stiffened and broke her pens.*

  And yet, Doris never gave up. Day after day, she persisted and spoke kindly to him of the dreams she had. Dreams not of a boat to traverse Delfin’s terrible seas but of a house with roots in place and walls sinking into the deep earth. In her dreams, there was a garden and children whose laughter would fill the rafters. She called it a . . . oh, what is that funny word again?

  (A foster home.)

  Oh yes, a “foster” home. I remembered all on my own with no help at all.

  (Sigh.)

  One day, in a moment of deep frustration, Doris threw down her instruments and finally asked for permission to turn this tree into a house. It shocked St. George’s, and he took a whole day to consider the request.

  He’d gotten to know this funny little person quite well, and hearing her plans made him think that maybe being a house might be more exciting than being a tree. Or a boat. So St. George’s relented, and he gave his dreams to her. For a tree, this is what love is. And St. George’s had fallen slowly, but surely, in love with Doris Barterby.

  The next day he told his broombranches to leave and let Doris cut him down.

  When Doris finished pulling him apart into dozens of pieces, he didn’t worry. Not when the moss-bull pulled him out of the Needsy Woods, around Ahari’s Creek, past the city-state of Nignip, and to the very edge of West Ernost. He didn’t grumble when Doris hammered him into the ground or threaded needles through his roof or nailed his sides together. Doris even gave him windows that looked out toward the sea.

  A tree’s heart is his entirety, and he trusted her with every piece. Through everything, Doris never lost a single splinter of him, carefully putting him back together until he was a house.

  After some time, he grew into a home.

  Many years later, St. George’s stood where he always stood, watching over his squash garden and Doris and the fourteen little girls with a wary, nervous eye.

  Above him, the yellow moon sat peacefully atop thick layers of clouds. It was all a ruse. The clouds hid a secret.

  Over the past few days, the sea had grown frantic and was reaching its arms up the cliff. Like it was trying to escape. A cold, unfamiliar wind blew through the unpatched hole in St. George’s roof. All the magicks in his timbers cried out in worry. Something strange—very strange—had awoken. And it was moving.

  St. George’s tried to listen. He tried to make out what it was he ought to be listening for. But he was still only a house. He could not warn Doris and the girls. He could not tell them to run far, far away. He could not tell them anything at all. The only thing he could offer them was the comfort of a place to sleep.

  So instead, he sat there. He deafened the sounds of the world outside and whispered soft dreams into their little ears. For the first time in years, St. George’s prayed.

  CHAPTER ONE, PART TWO

  good stories begin with troublesome girls

  The three saddest things in the world are a book without an ending, a broombranch without flight, and a child without dreams.

  Milly without-a-last-name was a twelve-year-old girl trapped inside what she considered to be a horrible ten-year-old’s body. She had irresponsibly curly hair, freckled brown skin, and a small button nose. She was only sometimes fond of St. George’s. I often wondered if those feelings were mutual.

  When you are a twelve-year-old girl, it is essential to feed your furnace of a heart on a steadily controlled diet of dreams, hopes, and aspirations. They’re what keep the machinery going. However, if filled to the brim, a girl’s heart is at risk of becoming a forest fire—wicked, selfish, and always hungry for more.

  Milly did not have this problem.

  “I have no need for dreams,” she’d declared long ago. Now her head was a few years too old and her heart a couple sizes too big. She’d had the misfortune of growing up too fast. There were no longer any dreams large enough to fit her.

  As St. George’s oldest resident, she had more talent for problem-solving than she did for dream-chasing. It’s not like she couldn’t hear the house’s whispered dreams. In fact, she heard them better than anyone.

  That’s why she knew better than to listen.

  She knew that no kid was worth anything if they didn’t have a title. A job. An occupation. Maybe a career, if they were lucky.

  Milly was assigned her title the very first day she arrived at St. George’s. She wore it across her chest in careful, fragile letters: big sister. In fact, because of how frazzled Doris’s mind had become, Milly was basically a mother. She only
lacked the gray hairs.

  Milly was the one who’d taught her sisters how to clean their dishes and braid their hair. She showed them how to tie their shoes and make rice noodles. She did this every minute of every day of her life.

  Except for very, very early mornings—when the whole world was still asleep. Milly spent that part of her day in St. George’s attic. Pointedly not dreaming. She couldn’t dream if she didn’t sleep . . . right?*

  Downstairs the entire house lay wrapped in silence while she read The Misfortunate Adventures of Tom Fool. She pressed her back against the thin wooden slats of a half-window and used the soft blue light slipping in to illuminate the text. Next to her were a number of books she’d read time and time again: All Strange Things Live in the Dark, Jeddison Licks and the Magnanimous Balloon, Harsh Airs and Little Winds, and The Two Hundred Half-Moons of Tahena. These were the splinters she fed to her ember of a heart: dreams of people she’d never met.

  There was another book, however, hidden in the floor beneath the others. The thing that had awoken this particular morning. Milly put down the book in her hand and put her ear to the floor. She knew, logically, that everyone would be asleep, but she had to make sure.

  Milly moved the other books aside and pried open the floorboards. She pulled out the hidden text: A Witch’s Guide to Rudimentary Magicks.

  Milly wasn’t sure where it’d come from. She’d found it while cleaning out one of the rooms a couple weeks ago. Doris told her to get rid of it, but she never did. Obviously.

  Milly ran her fingers over the cover. Intricate gold-laced patterns were engraved into the leather. Someone else had smudged two letters inside the cover, an inconsequential person with the initials E.S.

  It smelled old. Musty. Most of all, familiar.

  Milly looked around and sank into the floor. Witch literature had been banned ever since the Wizarding Wars. Ever since the witches disappeared. Ever since the wizards made being a witch illegal. She could never risk anyone thinking she might be a witch. Or that one of her sisters was one. Even—especially—if it wasn’t true.

  But though dreams didn’t burn in her, curiosity did. She opened the book to the middle of Chapter 6: “How to Summon a Wind.” On the right were sketches of currents twisting inside and around each other. On the left were a few broken paragraphs.