Hand-Me-Down Magic #2

Alma said, knocking hard on her door. “Just for a minute. Just to protect Evie from the mirrors.”
“Is the cat out and about?” Del asked.
“I haven’t seen it all morning,” Alma said.
“Yesterday you promised to protect me from it . . . ,” Del started.
“I didn’t expect it to come up to Oscar!” Alma said. “I thought cats were scared of dogs!”
“I don’t understand that cat,” Del said. “That’s what’s so scary about it.”
“I guess,” Alma said.
Del’s stomach growled. “I can help for one minute. And maybe I can eat a little lunch. But then I’m coming right back up here forever,” she said.
“That’s fair,” Alma said, opening Del’s bedroom door.
The girls walked right upstairs to Titi Rosa’s. There was the beautiful mirror. The last thing left to take down to the garden and get away from Evie. Evie was little. She needed to be protected. And even though Del was scared, she still took her responsibility as a big cousin very seriously.
Del and Alma were careful as they snuck the mirror out of Titi Rosa’s home and down the stairs. They listened for Evie’s little voice to make sure she didn’t catch them. Evie needed to stay as far away from the mirror as possible.
Alma opened the door to Abuelita’s backyard garden, but before Del could put the mirror down somewhere safe, she gasped.
There in the garden, she saw dozens and dozens of black cats. Tall black cats. Skinny black cats. Stumpy black cats. Black cats with tails that looked too long for their bodies. Black cats with smushy faces and black cats with especially long faces. Del had never seen so many cats at once. She had tried so hard to stay away from the little black kitten, and now she was in a garden of black cats.
Del screamed. That made Alma scream.
And with Del and Alma both screaming, something else happened. Those dozens of black cats all started to run at the same time. They ran. They leaped. And there was a crash!
The mirror Del and Alma were holding broke. Del figured it must be one of the evil black cats. Her bad fortune was finally beginning.
But when Del looked to try to see which black cat had broken Titi Rosa’s beautiful mirror, she saw something she hadn’t expected.
A dozen black cats lying down, meowing and licking their paws.
That was strange. That didn’t make any sense at all.
“Why are all the cats hurt?” Del asked.
“There’s only one cat, Del,” Alma said.
“What do you mean?” Del asked. “Look around—there are—Oh.” Del looked around. It did look like there were cats everywhere. But in fact, there were actually mirrors everywhere. There was only one cat being reflected in all the mirrors Alma had brought outside. The mirrors had been at all different angles, making the cats look like they were different shapes and sizes. But it was all the same single cat.
One little black kitten.
One hurt little black kitten.

14
Fraidycat
-Alma-
“What do we do?” Alma asked. She was panicked. She had never seen a cat get hurt before. And it was all her fault. She had told the terrible fortunes. She had bought the crystal ball. She had thought of the plan to bring all the mirrors outside.
Everything Alma had done had gone horribly wrong.
All this time Del had been worried about her bad fortune. But Alma was the one who couldn’t do anything right, no matter how hard she tried!
“You should go upstairs,” Alma said to Del. “You have to protect yourself from the kitten! Who knows what will happen!”
But Del didn’t look so scared of the kitten anymore. In fact, Del was very carefully tiptoeing over to it. She was whispering something to it. She was petting its little head.
“This kitten needs our help,” Del said. “Get some milk. And water. And a dishtowel. And Abuelita.”
“But aren’t you scared of the kitten?” Alma asked.
Alma and Del looked at the little kitten. It was shivering. It was curling itself into a ball. It looked scared. More scared than Alma had been at the party and more scared than Del had been since getting her fortune told.
“I think the kitten is the scared one now,” Del said. She petted the kitten’s head with one gentle finger. Alma ran inside to get Abuelita and water and milk and a towel. And when she returned with all those things, Del was holding the kitten in her lap.
She was singing it “Pon Pon Pon,” the little song Abuelita used to sing her. She was telling it everything would be okay. She was showing it the bracelet on her wrist, and letting the kitten bat the sparkly charm back and forth.
“I thought you couldn’t be anywhere near our little gato,” Abuelita said when she saw them.
“It was hurt,” Del said. “I know what I need when I’m hurt.”
“I thought you thought the kitten was strange,” Alma said. “I thought you didn’t understand the fortune or the kitten.”
Del shrugged. Del’s shrug was a lot like an Abuelita shrug. A little mysterious. A little slow. A little magical.
“We’re all a little strange sometimes, I guess,” Del said.
“And the fortune?” Abuelita asked. She had a twinkle in her eye.
“Being scared of the fortunes only made things worse,” Del said.
Alma nodded. She couldn’t have agreed more. “I thought maybe if I could stop Evie’s fortune from coming true, everything would be okay . . . ,” Alma said.
“And that only caused trouble,” Del finished.
“I guess we don’t really understand fortunes,” Alma said.
“Or crystal balls,” Del said.
“Or kittens,” Alma said.
“Or magic,” Abuelita said.
“Especially magic,” Alma said.
“But we don’t have to understand everything,” Del said.
“We don’t?” Alma asked.
Del did an Abuelita shrug again. Abuelita did one too. “We all get scared sometimes,” Del said. She held the kitten closer and wrapped the dishtowel around its hurt paw. She let it drink milk out of her hands. “And there will always be something or someone we don’t really understand.”
The kitten still looked scared. Del looked a little