Here’s a taste of Kristopher Reisz’s first extraordinary tale:

It was after ten on a nothing-better-to-do Thursday night. Hanging out at the gas station, Gilly sipped a Diet Coke and listened to Sam recount the three-way battle she’d gotten into with her mom and stepdad.

Sam crashed on her brother Josh’s couch a lot, escaping the ground-glass angers at her own house. She had a key, but Josh’s roommate was a thug-wannabe full of crude words and wormy stares. Sam didn’t trust him alone, so she went to the Texaco where Josh worked and waited for him to get off at midnight. If she called, Gilly always came up to keep her company.

“Okay, so you pin it up there, and your mom sees it first, right?” Gilly asked, trying to get the details straight.

“Pinned nothing. I glued it up there.” Josh had stepped out back to smoke a cigarette, leaving Sam in charge. As she talked, she straightened the rack of charm necklaces sitting on the counter, separating the pot leaves from the Grateful Dead bears.

“You did not.”

“Hell, yeah, I did. That mother—”

Both girls looked up when the electronic door chime sounded. The homeless man walked into the store trailing the smell of something gone sour. His skin was burnished brown like antique wood, stretched thin across knuckles and the knots of his collarbone. A tamed crow, sleek blue-black, nestled in the crook of his arm.

His name was Meek. Gilly had seen him panhandling around Birmingham before but only once up close.

After church one Sunday, her family had stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. Meek had been there, the crow perched on top of his battered rucksack. He wanted to get some food but only had a handful of change. The manager kept telling him to go, saying he couldn’t be there with the bird, anyway.

As Gilly’s family walked in, the homeless man turned and smiled at her dad.

“’Morning, Officer Stahl.”

“Hey, Meek.”

Her dad stepped into the argument and calmed the manager down. He wound up buying Meek an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee while the old man waited on the sidewalk.

“You know that guy?” Gilly’s little sister Caitlin asked after their dad came back inside.

“Oh, yeah. Meek’s been a legend since before I joined the force.”

“What’s he a legend for?”

“Says strange stuff sometimes,” he said through a mouth full of biscuit. When Caitlin pressed him on what that meant, he shook his head and shrugged. “Just strange stuff. Stuff that gets in people’s heads.”

Now, as Meek entered the Texaco and approached the counter, Gilly noticed the milky blue cataract eclipsing his left eyeball. He said hello in a soft mumble and asked Sam for a pack of Marlboros. She rang him up, stabbing at the cash register keys with one careful finger. Gilly kept quiet, watching the crow watch her.

“That’ll be four eighty-six, please,” Sam said.

The old man made a show of patting his pockets. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.”

“Well … I can’t really let you have the cigarettes, then,” Sam said. “Sorry.”

“Suppose I gave you something better than money?”

Sam scowled at him. “Like what?”

“Well?” Meek looked down at his pet bird. “What does she want?”

Gilly glanced at Sam, then at the silent alarm button underneath the counter. Sam just tried not to laugh. “Look, man—”

The crow fluttered off Meek’s arm and landed on the counter. Both girls jerked back. Talons scratching across glass, the bird regarded them for a few seconds.

“You want to go home,” Meek answered.

Sam smirked. “Not quite. Actually, I’m—”

“I know what you want too, honey.” He turned toward Gilly.

“What’s that?” She wanted him to leave. His eye, like a dead fish’s, grossed her out. It made her squirm when he called her “honey.”

“You’d burn the world down to become beautiful, wouldn’t you?”

“What the hell?” Sam stared at him. “You’re walking around telling people who’s beautiful and not? You don’t have any fucking teeth, crackhead.”

Meek shrugged. “There’s a difference between pretty and beautiful.”

The comment made Gilly smile despite herself. She glimpsed someone new beneath the desperation and the tobacco-stained whiskers, someone who’d been charming once, someone poetic.

“Whatever,” Sam said. “Look, if it was my store, I’d let you have the cigarettes, but it’s not. So—”

“I’ll pay,” Gilly said.

“What?”

Pulling a five-dollar bill out of her pocket, Gilly offered it to Sam. “I’ll pay for the cigarettes.”

Sam glared at her and took the money, handing Gilly fourteen cents change.

“Thank you.” The cigarettes vanished into the pocket of Meek’s ratty coat.

“So, now what?” Sam asked. “You read her palm or something?”

He scooped the crow off the counter, cooing to it. “Aruspicy’s better,” he whispered.

“Huh?”

“Reading the entrails of an animal sacrifice.”

“Huh?” Sam looked at the bird in his hands, then jumped back, smashing into a rack of cigars and rolling papers. “Whoa! No!”

Hollow bones cracked and popped. The crow screeched. One free wing flapped madly. With steady, calloused hands, Meek tore the bird in two.

“You motherfucking psycho! Get the hell out. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Kool-Aid-bright blood pattered to the floor. It ran down his wrists and stained his fingers slippery black. Intestines and tea-colored organs dangled from the crow’s body. Meek dropped the halves of the bird onto the counter and began poking through its guts.

Sam’s shouting brought Josh charging out of the back. “Hey, motherfucker. Hey!” Grabbing Sam, he jerked her away from Meek, putting himself between his little sister and the old man.

Meek stirred the crow’s guts with his fingers, ignoring the brother-and-sister torrent raging on the other side of the counter. Gilly stood silent against the wall. She stared at the dead bird. Its polished obsidian eyes still watched her.

Meek looked up. “The Witches’ Carnival is stopping in Atlanta tonight.”

“Get out. Get the fuck out now!” Rounding the counter, Josh snatched Meek by the shoulder of his tattered coat as Meek snatched the torn-apart crow off the counter.

“Yeah! Take your fucking bird with you,” Sam yelled after him.

Josh almost had him out the door when Meek raised the mass of feathers, bones, and guts to his lips. He kissed them. The bird cawed sharp and angry. It beat its wings. Gilly and Sam both screamed as the crow fluttered up to perch on his shoulder.

Meek turned toward Gilly. His blind eye seemed to pierce her chest. “Run fast. Leave everything behind. And you can catch them.” Stepping around Josh, he shuffled off into the night.

The episode left Gilly so rattled, her hands shook for an hour. She’d been certain Josh would murder Meek. They helped Josh clean crow’s blood off the counter and killed another hour until the third-shift girl showed up.

After Melissa finally arrived, Josh started his final check of the store. Gilly and Sam told Melissa about Meek, his crow, and the Witches’ Carnival.

Melissa snorted. “My cousin has sworn for twenty years that he met the Witches’ Carnival down in New Orleans once.”

“You think he really did?” Sam asked.

“’Course not. He just drinks too much.”

Gilly started for home around twelve thirty, the only person on the highway. The image of Meek’s eye, the color of a gathering storm, floated through her brain and made her skin crawl. She tried to figure out how he’d made tearing up the crow look so realistic. All three of them had been fooled. She turned up the stereo to keep from falling asleep. Her thoughts drifted toward the Witches’ Carnival.

Rock is dead. Punk is dead. Everything’s dead.

Hollow-eyed girls and empty-headed boys drifting through neon constellations. Hipster ghosts haunting black-light dance clubs.

They were in New York before that. There’s always something ready to explode in New York. And the San Francisco thing before that, dirty feet and grotty acid rock. They skipped out before it went sour.

And before that, howling nights in Mexico City. Smoke-filled jazz clubs in Paris before that, getting drunk and stoned with black GIs who never bothered going home.

Before that, the Great War plunged Europe into darkness, lamp by lamp. But titles and peers held galas beneath twinkling chandelier light, certain the trouble would be over by Christmas.

Before that, Vienna. Before that, London and Berlin. Before that, Renaissance Italy maybe, or Beijing’s Forbidden City or the music halls of the Ottoman Turks.

Nobody knew where they’d come from, but like dragons and angels, the Witches’ Carnival tapped deep into myth and appeared in every culture. They were the Council of Spirits in China and the Wandering Lords of the Hindu Vedas. Homer wrote about the Lotus-Eaters, Shakespeare about Oberon and his court, and Jung explained the trickster archetype. According to what legends you believed, they might have invented tarot cards or could turn themselves into foxes.

Nobody knew where they’d come from, but they’d been everywhere, climbing the Jacob’s ladder of man’s history. They’d borne witness to autumn decrees and October days during the French Revolution and had a lovely picnic on a grassy knoll in Dallas.

A band of gypsies tramped across the earth, sweeping the bonds and boundaries of the modern world away with a brush of a hand. Nobody knew where they came from. Nobody knew where they’d turn up, but the Witches’ Carnival was always headed somewhere. They moved on the edge of your vision and melted away like fog the moment you turned to look.

Gilly pulled into her driveway two hours past curfew. She knew she was in trouble and hardened herself to face it. Pushing open the door, she saw her dad sitting on the couch. Gilly didn’t look at him. Keeping her eyes forward, she walked through the living room and down the hall.

Her dad followed her into her bedroom without a word. As Gilly flipped on the light, he held out his hand.

“Give me your keys.”

Gilly handed him her key chain. It vanished into his pocket.

“When you learn to mind the rules, you can drive again,” he said. “Until then, I’m keeping these.”

“Fine.” Gilly stared at her bed, the blanket twisted and kicked to the floor. Her dad stood behind her for several seconds. Gilly tried not to say anything else. She wanted him to think she didn’t care. But as he started to leave, it snuck out. Gilly couldn’t stop it.

“We weren’t doing anything.”

Andy Stahl turned on his heel. “I don’t want to know what you were doing, Gilly. It doesn’t matter. You’re supposed to be home by eleven o’clock. Why can’t you manage that?”

Because Sam was upset and needed someone to talk to. Because there were things she could tell Sam that her dad never heard. Because she was hanging out at a gas station, not in the projects buying crack.

“Okay, Dad.”

“No, it’s not okay,” he said. Gilly hated when he did that. “I can’t figure out how come you’re the only person on Earth who doesn’t have to follow the rules. I can’t figure out how you got so lucky.”

“I’m not.” If she had kept her mouth shut, he’d be gone by now.

“That’s right, you’re not.” He jingled the keys in his pocket. “And when you think you can be home when you’re supposed to be, you can ask for these back.”

Gilly still refused to look at him. “Fine. Whatever.”

Her dad left, shutting the door behind him.

Afterward, Gilly couldn’t lie down. She paced her room for an hour, yelling at her dad in a voice barely above a whisper. She jabbed a finger at her reflection in the mirror and said all the things she wished she’d said while he was there.

She told her dad that she’d been helping a friend. She didn’t care if he punished her; she’d do it again tomorrow if she had to. She told him she was gay, and if he was going to freak out about it, fine, but at least he could admit he was freaked out. Gilly told him that she loved him, and how much she wished that could still be as simple as it had been when she’d been little. Gilly found herself standing by her window, looking at the road running in front of her house. It connected to the parkway. Take Interstate 20, and Atlanta was three hours away. If Gilly left now, she could get there by sunrise.

The Witches’ Carnival was the name and shape given to every fantasy of running away and leaving it all behind. It was the fantasy of the open road, the fantasy of motion and speed until all your problems became a blur. But most importantly, it was a fantasy.

Gilly let the Venetian blinds drop over the window. Undressing, she flipped off the lights and went to bed. The Witches’ Carnival wasn’t real. That couldn’t stop dreams, glittering like sunlight across water, from closing around her as she drifted down to sleep.

The red-faced bluster of morning talk shows spilled out of the car’s stereo. Gilly sat in the front seat beside her dad. As they neared the school, Gilly turned toward the student parking lot, searching for Sam.

Sam sat on the hood of her Civic. Colby was beside her, his arm around Sam’s waist and one foot on the car’s bumper. Alex and Dawn stood hugging belly-to-back. Everyone watched Sam. Forming her hands into a circle, she yanked them apart. Alex laughed. Dawn clapped a hand over her mouth and started walking away.

Sam wore her long-sleeved black shirt. She had on the jeans with the frayed cuffs. Through the car window, Gilly watched Sam brush strands of dark hair out of her eyes, tucking them behind her ear. She turned toward something Colby said and smiled.

Gilly felt her dad glaring at her. She dropped her gaze to her sneakers. “She’s just a friend, Dad.”

Andy Stahl pulled to the curb and didn’t answer. “Me or your mom’ll pick you up at three.”

“I’ll get a ride.”

“Yeah. With me or your mom.”

Curling her lip into a practiced sneer, Gilly climbed out and slammed the door. Pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up, adjusting the straps of her backpack, Gilly dragged her feet along the sidewalk until her dad was out of sight. Once his car had rounded the corner, she loped across the parking lot toward her friends.

“… and Josh is just—hey, G.”

“What’s up?”

“Where’s your car?” Dawn asked.

“Dad took it away for staying out too late.”

“That sucks. How long?”

“I don’t know. Until he stops being an asshole.”

Sam grabbed Gilly’s arm hard enough to hurt. “What the hell was that last night?”

Gilly shook her head and laughed. “Some fucked-up shit. That’s all I know.”

Hugging herself against the steel-gray weather, Gilly listened to Sam tell the story. Sam told stories with a dry intensity. She never edited her own embarrassing moments. If anything, she exaggerated them for comic effect. She even did decent impersonations of Josh and Meek.

Once she’d finished, Dawn said she’d seen a magician do a trick like that on TV. She figured Meek had killed one crow and had another hidden somewhere. Colby asked where a homeless guy bought crows in bulk. His guess was that Meek had trained the crow to lie limp, then splattered chicken guts around to make it look like he’d killed it.

“He didn’t just kill it,” Sam said. “He ripped the thing in fucking half.”

“That’s just what you think you saw. It’s power-of-suggestion stuff.”

The seven forty-five bell rang. Alex and Dawn said goodbye and hustled off for class. Sam looked at Colby, her fingers twining with his. “Hey, I need to talk to Gilly for a second, okay?”

“What about?”

“Nothing big.” She kissed him. “I’ll see you in Mrs. Badford’s class, okay?”

“You won’t even tell me what it’s about?”

“Shit.” Sam jumped off the hood of the car. Taking Gilly’s wrist, she pulled her into the bright, chattering stream of people pouring through the school’s main entrance.

Inside, students and gossip flowed down every hall. Lockers clanged. Sneakers squeaked across the green-specked tile. A cluster of boys near the Coke machines burst into thick laughter.

Sam leaned close, her warm breath brushing Gilly’s cheek. “I’m going to go look for them.”

“Who? The Witches’ Carnival?”

“Wanna come?”

“Sam, he’s just some sick fuck homeless guy. He pulled the whole thing out of his ass.” They stopped at Gilly’s locker. She started dialing the combination.

“Did that look like chicken guts to you?” Sam asked.

“No, but …” Gilly pulled her algebra book out and shut her locker. They started down the hall again. “The Witches’ Carnival is a fairy tale.”

“Maybe.”

“C’mon. If they’re real and Meek knows where they are, why’s he hanging around Birmingham doing magic tricks for cigarettes?”

“I don’t know. He’s a sick fuck homeless guy. They march to a different drummer.”

Gilly looked at Sam. “You’re thinking about going. Seriously?”

“I’m not thinking, I’m going.”

“When?”

“Today. Now. I only came to school to see if you wanted to come with me.”

The second bell rang. The hallway clamor rose, footsteps scattering off to class. Gilly and Sam stood motionless.

“What about school?”

“Fuck school.”

“What about Colby?”

“Fuck him. There’s no way he’d go. Probably whine. I’m not even telling him.”

“Sam, it’s not real.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” She plucked at the strand of Mardi Gras beads wrapped around her wrist. “One way or another, I’m leaving. I’m sick of living in the same house as Greg. I’m sick of spending every night at Josh’s place.”

Gilly chewed her lip. “Yeah.” It was a sound to fill the quiet, meaning nothing.

“So come with me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because …” Gilly didn’t have an answer.

“Miss Grace, Miss Stahl, the bell’s already rung.”

They glanced up. The hall was nearly empty. Mrs. Schiff, Gilly’s homeroom teacher, stood beside her door smiling a tight, unfriendly smile.

Sam and Gilly looked back at each other.

“You got until the end of first period,” Sam said. “Then I’m outta here whether you’re with me or not.” With that, she started down the hall.

“Sam, c’mon.”

Sam turned, walking backward and grinning a wicked, sharp-cornered smile. “Remember, G, if you ain’t pretty, start trouble.” Turning back around, she hurried to class.

“Miss Stahl, do you plan on coming to class today?” Mrs. Schiff asked.

Simplify the following exponential expression. Remember to write it so each base is written one time with one positive exponent.

(24 × 3)(x − 5) (6x − 20)

Gilly stared at her textbook, the page covered with numbers and symbols. She only had hazy ideas what any of them meant. Mrs. Schiff stood by the overhead projector and went on about integer exponents. The classroom’s stuffy heat made Gilly’s scalp itch. She ran her fingers through her hair, dyed a violent shade of red, and wiped a damp palm on her pant leg. She glanced at the clock, then her watch, then outside at the rows of cars filling the parking lot.

Gilly knew Sam didn’t believe in the Witches’ Carnival. Nobody did anymore, not really. But it was too wonderful a story to let go of completely. Sam wanted to believe in somewhere she could escape to, some real home far away from the peeling-paint split-level she shared with her mom and stepdad. She wanted to believe in it so bad, she’d fooled herself into trusting a rambling, half-mad crackhead.

The bell rang. There was a clatter of voices and chairs scraping across the floor. Gilly joined the rest of the class streaming into the corridor’s din. Lockers were jerked open and banged shut. Kevin Carney bolted past her with two of his friends after him.

Gilly walked with her head down, trying to figure out what to do. She had photography next period in Mr. Byrne’s room on the second floor. Instead of heading up the stairs, though, she found herself walking past them. The hallway ended in a steel door with wire mesh over the window. She stood and watched the student parking lot. Sam appeared a few seconds later, cutting between the cars toward her Civic.

She was really going.

Gilly thought about her dad taking her keys away for nothing. She thought about how miserable school was going to be without Sam around. She couldn’t make herself believe in the Witches’ Carnival, but Gilly imagined climbing out of days like a labyrinth and breathing fresh air for a while. The door swung open. Gilly heard the soles of her sneakers beat against the asphalt. A mean October wind scoured her face.

Sam had already ducked into her car. She saw Gilly and unlocked the passenger side door.

“All right. I’m going,” Gilly panted, collapsing into the seat. “What the hell, I’m going with you.”

“Fucking bitch.” Sam punched her in the shoulder, then cranked the engine. “Why’d you act like that in the hall? I almost thought you really weren’t coming.”

“Sorry. You sprung it on me so all of a sudden, I was kind of stunned.”

Steering around the wooden barrier guarding the parking lot’s entrance, Sam slung out onto the street. Two wheels popped the curb, and the car’s chassis jolted against the pavement.

Winter-bare trees lined the curving road leading away from school. Gilly watched them pass for a few seconds before speaking up. “Hey. Let’s stop by my house on the way.”

“What for?”

“Money.”

“Cool. How much you got?”

“I’m broke, but you know my dad’s a cop, right?” “Yeah.”

Gilly took a deep breath. She was already in trouble, she might as well enjoy it. “Did you know he’s crooked?”