The Magic Finger

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of bullying, animal cruelty, and animal death.

The Magic Finger is narrated by an unnamed eight-year-old girl who has an uncontrollable superpower: She has a Magic Finger that can cause big changes in the world around her. The girl lives on a farm and often plays with the two sons of her neighbors the Greggs. The narrator likes the Greggs but hates the fact that they go hunting for sport. 

When the Greggs come home one day carrying a deer, the girl can take no more and tries to tell them to stop. They don’t listen, instead teasing her, and her Magic Finger does its work. She recalls how the finger worked once before, on her teacher, when the woman called her “stupid” in class. The girl’s Magic Finger turned her teacher into a cat, and she never went back to being human. 

The girl waits to see the effects of her finger, but the Gregg family goes back out to hunt again. That day, they shoot 16 ducks but cannot shoot the last four in the flock. That night, the remaining four ducks circle the farmhouse.