More Than Magic Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Kathryn Lasky

  Cover and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Ricardo Tercio

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Lasky, Kathryn, author.

  Title: More than magic / Kathryn Lasky.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Wendy Lamb Books, [2016] | Summary: “Ryder always thought something special would happen when she turned eleven, and this year she misses her mom, who died several years ago, more than ever. Ryder’s parents created a cartoon show featuring an eleven-year-old hero named Rory. Then on Ryder’s eleventh birthday, Rory steps out of the screen—Rory needs help!”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015031864 | ISBN 9780553498912 (trade : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-553-49892-9 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-553-49893-6 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-49894-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Grief—Fiction. | Cartoon characters—Fiction. | Cartoons and comics—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.L3274 Mq 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780553498936

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Prologue: The Most Miserable Birthday—Everrr…

  Chapter 1: Deadwood

  Chapter 2: Glitter Bombing and Other Unnatural Disasters

  Chapter 3: Home Not-So-Sweet Home

  Chapter 4: A Phone Call to Granny

  Chapter 5: The Invisible Shrinking Me

  Chapter 6: Shazam!!!

  Chapter 7: The Reluctant Royal

  Chapter 8: Back in Make-Believe

  Chapter 9: Forever Seventy-one

  Chapter 10: Crossing to Make-Believe

  Chapter 11: Script Sick

  Chapter 12: A Mysterious Gap

  Chapter 13: The Glower in the Tower

  Chapter 14: An Inspiration Unknown

  Chapter 15: Back to Reality

  Chapter 16: A Sob in the Night

  Chapter 17: The Teardrop

  Chapter 18: The Miracle That Is Me

  Chapter 19: A Tear and a Trash Can

  Part 2

  Chapter 20: Her Name Is Constance

  Chapter 21: Super Byogen!

  Chapter 22: Hearts!

  Chapter 23: A Player Switches Teams

  Chapter 24: Grounded!

  Chapter 25: “It Happened in Wireframe”

  Chapter 26: Soul on Wire

  Chapter 27: Saving Souls

  Chapter 28: Going After Rustlers

  Chapter 29: Of Slops and Valor

  Chapter 30: The in-Between

  Chapter 31: Something Is Happening

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  For those two animation geniuses—Simon Whiteley and Grant Freckelton—who brought “Owls in Helmets” to life and truly inspired this story

  “Happy birthday, dear Ryder!” The eleven birthday candles and the one to grow on barely flicker on my cake. I look around our table. Everyone is smiling and cheering, but underneath, no one is happy. Not my dad. Not our family friend Cassie Simon, and not my pal Eli Weckstein. Two important people are missing from my party. The first is my best friend, Penny, who just moved from California to London. I look down at my cell phone. I thought she would call and wish me happy birthday, or text me. But she hasn’t. I guess it’s already tomorrow in London. Maybe she got confused. The second person missing from the party is my mom.

  My mom, Andrea Holmsby, one of the greatest animators ever—and I mean everrr—died unexpectedly about two years ago. She gave birth to me, Ryder Eloise Holmsby. Her beautiful brain gave birth to Rory, a TV character. Mom and Dad worked together at Starlight Movie Studios, where they made Super-Rory-Us, Rory’s cartoon show. Rory is based on me, but that’s a secret, because Mom and Dad wanted to protect me. Viewers wouldn’t guess the connection because Rory and I don’t really look alike. Rory the cartoon has brown hair like mine, but hers is curly. My hair is straight, and I’m cursed with a thousand cowlicks. I always look as if I have a Category 5 hurricane blowing around my head. Rory’s snub nose is upturned. Mine is sharp. I have gray eyes and Rory’s are brown. We each have a freckle on our thumb, and Rory does have certain expressions that are exactly like mine—like what Dad calls my NE: nonnegotiable expression.

  My parents thought up Rory in Deadwood, South Dakota, when they were living with Mom’s mother, Granny Ryder, after they graduated from art school. Mom was expecting me, but they weren’t expecting Rory. She just showed up. An inspiration. The most important thing about Rory is that she’s a hero. Rory fights crime. She fights injustice. She sticks up for the little guys and sticks it to the baddies. In short, she kicks butt!

  Rory lives in Ecalpon, which is No Place spelled backward. Ecalpon is a bit like Scotland. The time period is a little bit Robin Hood–ish.

  I have been eleven for fourteen hours. I was born at six o’clock in the morning West Coast time. Rory started her animated life as an eleven-year-old when I was five. Today is our only overlapping birthday. I always thought amazing things would happen on this day.

  As I blow out the candles on the cake, I’m sort of out of wishes. Dad and I look at each other and I know he’s thinking about Mom. I think he might be out of wishes too. But then his eyes sparkle and we smile at each other.

  —

  When we get home, I turn on the TV in my bedroom. Rory fills the screen: a rerun, one of the last episodes Mom worked on. Rory’s climbing the wall of a stone tower to the Witch of Wenham’s secret chambers. She swings across the tower’s outer wall to a high, narrow window. It’s dizzying to watch as she dangles a hundred feet in the air, but she easily makes it to the window and slithers into a secret chamber where the witch does horrible experiments. A rock sits in a birdcage, not a bird. But that rock was once a lovely barn owl. The witch plans on turning it into gold. She’s crazy for gold—she’s tried turning a mouse into gold, then a rabbit, and now an owl.

  I sigh as I watch Rory, and think: I’ve caught up with you. At last I’m eleven, just like you.

  Rory approaches the birdcage. Am I imagining it, or is Rory distracted for a split second? Do her eyes flash directly to me? She’s undoing the witch’s magic by reciting the original spell—Oh, owl so white and bright, make gold for me tonight—backward. So Rory says thginot em rof dlog ekam thgirb dna etihw os lwo ho. That takes a lot of concentration! But I swear she looks at me just when she reverses the word make into ekam. That glance can’t have been in the script. It’s not like Rory gets to decide; she doesn’t have free will. People draw her, write for her. She’s a cartoon!

  “Shazam!” we both cry. That’s Rory’s special magic word for when she makes things happen.

  The rock melts into a beautiful and surprised barn owl. Then the bird spreads its tawny wings and flies out the window of the stone tower. Free!

  Rory gives a little
salute to the owl as it flies off.

  Salute me. Look at me, Rory! I want to say. It’s our birthday. We’re both eleven.

  —

  Dad comes in to kiss me good night. “Oh, that one,” he says as I turn off the TV. He sinks down on my bed. “Your mom always loved barn owls. The only owls with black eyes, I think. Mom had more plans for that owl.” He sighs. “You know, Ryder…I…I think that maybe I haven’t been the—”

  “Don’t say you haven’t been a good dad.”

  “I’ve been a mopey dad.”

  “I’ve been a mopey daughter.”

  “Yeah, well…” He pauses. “But with the Rory film, I’ve been—so distracted.”

  “If you’re talking about how you forgot to pick me up last week after pottery class, don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry about it. It’s like I misplaced my brain!” Dad pretends to pop open his brain and put it on my nightstand. I giggle.

  “It was the first week of summer vacation. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re both losing our brains a little.” I pretend to put my brain next to his. We both laugh.

  “I’m going to do better, I promise. The class at the Inner Radiance Meditation Center is helping me a bit. It helps people with a lot of things, like grief.”

  “Well, that’s good, Dad.”

  “Yes. I’ve signed up for a few more sessions….And how are you doing? It’s hard not having Mom here, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “I was thinking, how would you like to spend a few weeks with Granny Ryder out in Deadwood?”

  “Really, Dad?” I squeeze my eyes shut and see Granny and me horseback riding. The flash of the sun on the river. The little stone house where Mom grew up…and best of all, Granny!

  “Yes, really. I called her tonight after we got home from your party. I’ll miss you so much, Ryder. But you and Granny will have fun riding, and doing all the things you love to do there. Granny can’t wait to see you. I’ll finish up the movie, and when you come back, you and I can spend much more time together.”

  He strokes my hair and I nod. “That sounds good.”

  “Maybe…maybe…”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Well, I know this is an important birthday for you. You’re Rory’s age now.” My eyes widen. I didn’t realize that Dad felt the way I do. “You were born in Deadwood Community Hospital. And Mom thought up Rory in Deadwood. So it seems kind of fitting that you go back.”

  “To our birthplace!”

  I jump up and hug him as hard as I can. He hugs back. I tell him, “Dad, I’ll miss you. Every minute. I promise I’ll be back in time for the movie opening.”

  “Of course you will!” He kisses the top of my head. “You have to be there.”

  “So when do I go?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes!”

  The sun slides like a dull copper coin behind a sky filled with dust as Granny and I ride our horses through the valley. All you can hear is the squeak of our saddles and the horses’ hooves on the hard-packed dirt.

  “Dust storm coming up the valley,” Granny says. A minute later two whirlwinds peel off from the storm. Granny tugs her scarf up to cover her mouth and keep the dust out. Skinny as a split rail, my grandmother sits tall in the saddle. I tug up my scarf too. “Let’s pull a Calamity,” she says.

  Calamity, the sorrel mare that Granny rides, is named for Calamity Jane, the most famous person who ever lived in Deadwood, South Dakota. She was a master of terrific escapes from everything from bad guys to weather. I am behind Granny on my pinto pony, Delbert. The human Delbert was a leading citizen of Deadwood. He and his wife, Delberta, invented the Delbert ice cream bar, chocolate and vanilla all in one. Delbert and Delberta became very rich and my mom went to art school on a D&D scholarship.

  Granny digs the heels of her boots into her mare’s flanks and gallops down into a steep gorge to escape the marauding dust devils that have multiplied into four swirling cones. By the time we’re safe in the gorge, it starts to rain.

  “Over here, Ryder!”

  Granny finds a ledge with an overhang to protect us. The rain is bucketing down, and when I reach her, my flat-brimmed cowboy hat is spilling sheets of water down my neck and face.

  “Why, you’re wet as an old wet hen.” She chuckles. Granny has a funny little gap between her front teeth that makes her smile extra sweet. She whistles through that gap.

  I’m so happy to be riding with Granny on the prairie. Dad was right; this visit was a good idea. Every time he calls, he sounds brighter. Last night he said he had been out to dinner a few times with a lady named Bernice, who is the director of the Radiance place. He said it to me gently, as if I might be worried that he was dating someone. But it’s okay. For the first time in almost two years, Dad and I are both sort of happy.

  —

  “You know, it was right here that a rattler dropped down on your mom when she was a kid,” Granny says.

  “What!”

  “Yes siree Bob, right over there.” She nods toward a rusty patch of stone.

  “What did she do?”

  “Took her piggin’ string and whupped the daylights out of it.”

  “Piggin’ string? But that’s what calf ropers use to tie up calves’ feet.”

  “Works on a rattler too. She gave it a few mean swats, then, Lord knows how, but she looped that string round his head and slip-knotted it. Nearly took his whole head off. His rattles are hanging up in the living room—the very ones.”

  “The ones with the little decorations painted on them?”

  “Yes indeed. There wasn’t anything your mom couldn’t paint or draw on. What an artist! And everything she touched with her paintbrush or her pen—every piece of her art, including all those lovely hats she made with the chicken feathers—they all had soul. Just pure soul.” She sighs. “And you, Ryder, were as much of an inspiration as any old bad-butt rattlesnake.”

  “Granny, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “Believe me, it is, dollin’.”

  Nobody says “darling” the way Granny does. Granny’s other term of endearment for me is “chicken.” Not that she thinks I’m chicken like being afraid of stuff. No, she has a sweet spot for chickens. She raises the prettiest ones—Rhode Island Reds, New Zealand spotted guinea hens. That’s where my mom got all the feathers for her hat designs. I have two of the spotted guinea feathers in my hatband. Granny has a Golden Polish in hers.

  The rain lets up after about ten minutes and we ride out into the newly rinsed world. It’s always beautiful after a downpour. A soft mist rises from the river and curls like a ribbon through the valley. Birds sing, and golden light washes out of the sky. The air is clean and the grass has a tangy sweetness. I bet the earthworms are doing little jigs under the ground.

  —

  It isn’t long before we see the house crouching under the only grove of cottonwoods on a huge plain. I love Granny’s house. A bunch of Mom’s things are here. Granny lets me take anything I want. But I don’t like taking things back to our house in California. I’m afraid they’d get homesick. Like the patchwork quilt Mom made that I always sleep under here.

  Mom was a wonderful quilter. I love the small patches of cloth that she picked out and carefully stitched together into what’s called a crazy quilt, with odd shapes colliding, unexpected fabrics next to each other, like velvet next to plain gingham, and all sorts of stitches, from curlicue embroidery to delicate feather stitches. There might be fun things besides fabric—beads, lace, ribbons, buttons, medals, and maybe a feather or two. She did many patterns, but crazy quilts were her favorite. And they’re mine too.

  In our house in Bel Air, outside of Los Angeles, things are too bright, too perfect. There’s a swimming pool where the water looks like blue Jell-O, and the air-conditioning thrums all day and all night. The grass is too green and has no smell. The ice maker in the refrigerator sounds like bones crunching. But it was Mom and Dad’s dream house. Once I
asked Mom how the Bel Air house could be her dream house when she also said that about Granny’s little stone house. She said, “Nothing wrong with having a lot of dreams, sweetie.”

  But you can only live in one dream, I think. Granny’s house is mine. It’s all on one level with a wraparound porch. The porch has what they call out here a brush arbor roof so the sun doesn’t broil you during the day and the moonlight can trickle through at night. No lawn. Granny says it’s immoral to feed a lawn when children are starving all over the world. But the best thing is she has a garden growing right out of her roof. She has a sod roof, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder did in Little House on the Prairie. All kinds of stuff sprouts from that roof, and it’s my job to tend it. We don’t plant anything, the flowers just come—oxeye daisies; dame’s rocket with its soft purple bursts of blossoms; Queen Anne’s lace; beardtongue, which doesn’t have a beard or tongue but looks like teensy-weensy trumpets for mice to toot. We don’t mind the weeds. We like to go up there for star watching.

  When we get home from our ride, we unsaddle the horses and brush them down. Granny gives them each a groat cake. Calamity especially loves groat cakes. It’s time for our supper, but first I want to see Mom’s painted rattles again.

  In the living room, I look at the picture of Granny presenting my mom with her diploma. Mom looks slightly embarrassed. It must have been weird to have your own mother be the principal of your school. And there they are—eight rattles. “Holy moly, they’re huge!”

  “Yep,” says Granny. “Look how pretty she painted them. They might be huge rattles for a rattlesnake, but they’re kind of a small canvas for a painter. And she did it so delicate-like. That gal could have crocheted a sweater for a hummingbird.” I giggle picturing it.