A Lion in a Flower Field

Chrome sang with the light hum of summer cicadas and buzzing street lamps.

The scent of the roads, earthy from last night’s rain, was one of the few things keeping Mira’s nerves at bay. Only owls and ravens, moonlight glinting on splayed wings, accompanied her on the hour-long walk from Northern to Southern Chrome. Her father had long since retired to bed; she left the house once the coast was clear in the hopes that her brother was as restless as she was.

Every residential-business home had their lights off, all except one: her destination. Faint candle light reflected in a window on the second floor and, shuffling the potted plants that half-blocked the front door, Mira knocked with her usual signal, the same signal she’d been using to announce her presence for the last seven years—four raps with her knuckles in a set of three—before stepping back with her hands clasped behind her.

Chrome’s mellow silence made the thumping of the stairs audible from her spot in front of the house. It wasn’t befitting of Amelia to stomp around like that, nor had Mira ever known the seamstress to be up this late, so Mira hid her knowledge of Magic’s presence when he opened the door just far enough to poke his head through.

His hair, mussed from unsuccessful sleep, stuck out at odd angles, curling to escape the messy bun it was trapped in. Tiny gray hollows dressed the olive skin beneath his eyelids and he was exactly as Mira had seen him earlier in the day: dressed in a white, long sleeved shirt that stopped at the middle of his thighs and lightly washed denim jeans adorned with holes in every place imaginable along his knees and shins. The pants swallowed his feet whole—Mira couldn’t tell if he was even wearing shoes—and his shirt billowed in the late summer breeze.

Magic didn’t look like he’d rolled out of bed to greet her. It looked more like he’d simply forgotten to go to bed altogether.

She didn’t know what kept Magic up this late, but he said nothing for several long seconds in a way that made Mira nervous to even ask. When he was finally done surveying the scene, his eyes looking her up and down, he yawned, rubbed his face, and leaned against the doorframe. “Why are you here?”

The question made her chuckle before she could stop herself. By all accounts, Mira should have been offended by the question and if anyone else had asked her that as dismissive and flat as Magic had, she would have. But Mira had long since grown used to her brother’s blunt expressional tone to the point where now most of his questions simply amused her.

“Y’know,” she said, elevated on her toes, tilted forward, “most people answer the door with a ‘Hi, how are you,’ instead of being rude about it, so I’m just going to pretend you asked that instead.” Her posture righted itself. “I’m okay. Bored and antsy, so I can’t sleep.”

Magic frowned. “That makes two of us, then.”

There was her opening. “Why’s that? Something keeping you up?”

“August ends next week.”

“And? What’s happening at the end of August? Special trip?”

He drummed his fingers along the side of the door, gnawing on his bottom lip. “Mom and I don’t take trips.” The drumming stopped in exchange for a solid grip on the wood, hard enough to whiten his knuckles. “I’m behind on the scarf. It’s not done yet, so I’m trying to speed up the process.”

Bennett’s scarf, she realized, lightly biting her tongue. Magic had taken to sewing handmade scarves for his father as a way to process his grief since he was ten. Mira didn’t know the specifics, only that the activity seemed to be helping him cope.

At least, Mira wanted to hope it was.

After the mine collapse, Mira hadn’t seen her brother so much as smile or laugh at anything. It wasn’t until three years later, when her father suggested Magic make something for his deceased parent, that Mira saw the change. He’d taken up the task with a kind of confidence she’d never seen before, a determination capable of moving the rocks of the northern mountains.

Now, Magic lacked that conviction when he spoke and his eyes quickly found the wood of the front porch. She pushed the conversation gently. “Has it been going well at least?”

Magic shrugged, sucking in the sides of his cheeks, creating small craters that accentuated the narrow slant of his face. “No,” he said, barely a whisper. “It hasn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“Low on materials. I don’t have enough.”

“I don’t know much about sewing, but do you want help with—?”

Her brother recoiled, nearly smacking himself in the head with the side of the door. “No,” he snapped. “It’s my project.” Pink tinted the topmost portion of his cheekbones as he scuffed his shoes against the porch, his feet briefly escaping from their denim prison when they moved. “It’s my project,” Magic repeated, as though Mira hadn’t already heard him the first time, “I want it to come from me.”

Taking a small breath through her nose, Mira backed up and leaned against the rickety wood railing. “Do you know what you sound like right now?” she asked, swinging one of her feet back and forth through the gaps in the poles.

“What?”

“You sound like someone who needs a break.” Magic’s head snapped up and he locked eyes with her, something wild in his bicolored green and hazel gaze. He opened his mouth to interrupt her, but Mira continued. “You look exhausted, bud, and it’s midnight. How long have you been working on it for?”

“Since we came back from doing errands.”

No fucking way. “Since two in the afternoon!? Mags, that’s ten hours of consecutive work!”

Magic’s brows furrowed. “No it isn’t. I stopped for dinner when Mom called me down.”

“And you’re going to stop again for another break because I’m taking you for a walk.”

“You don’t get it, Mira, it needs to be done at least by the end of the month. It isn’t—I haven’t even gotten—”

“Take. A break, Magic,” Mira repeated, exchanging her usual bright and airy tone for something more flat. Magic stiffened at her words. “Leave the scarf alone, and come with me.”

His fingers danced along the side of the door anxiously. Magic looked back into the dark abyss of the house, closing the door as though he were about to run and hide. Mira waved him over enthusiastically and he took a shaky breath, chin lifted towards the sky before shaking his head. “Fine.”

Mira turned on her heel and began to walk. She saw no point in waiting for him. Magic would catch up with her eventually and when the sound of a door latching onto its lock rang out into the silent town followed by his voice, she grinned. “Where to?” he asked.

Her feet pivoted—a tiny, airborne pirouette that lacked grace—and she walked backwards with her arms clasped above her head in a stretch like a cat freshly awake from a nap. “Now, if I told you that, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, would it?” she said, tugging her sweatshirt hood over her head to tuck her light auburn curls out of her face. She twirled again, oblivious to her brother’s huffs of annoyance. “I’m not going to tell you simply because you asked, Magic.”

“You never said anything about it being a surprise.”

“That’s because saying it’s a surprise would ruin the element of surprise.” She cast a glance over her shoulder to catch his gaze. “You don’t tell someone you’re throwing them a surprise party and then expect them to be shocked when they get there. You have to be sneaky about it. It’s about finesse, Magic.”

Magic squinted. The moon’s hard glow painted his mismatched olive and hazel eyes an odd, snow-like gray—having the same color in both eyes didn’t look right on him. He undid his messy bun, trading it for a low ponytail. “I don’t get you, Mira.”

“Oh, and I doubt you ever will, Mags!” Mira replied, matter-of-factly, her voice light and airy, as though she were singing an assigned part of a chorus. “You’ll be asking that question for the rest of your life, probably. And I can’t give you any of the answers because I don’t know them.”

“How ironic,” Magic droned.

“Ironic and tragic,” she corrected. “I’d kill for those answers, too, y’know.”

Her brother’s scoff was audible even from a distance. “Better start searching then.”

Mira faced him again, resuming her backwards pace. The moonlight swept unpleasantly over Magic, painting him sickly and frail. He was all skin and bones: a bony olive twig with long hair the shade of a raven’s wing that was seldom cut, only trimmed. Mira couldn’t remember a time where her brother had shorter hair than her own, which sat nicely atop her shoulders, curled beneath the shell of her ears. By contrast, Magic’s was thin and straight, capable of reaching just between his shoulder blades when it was set free.

He walked with a persistent slouch that masked his newfound height; Magic was not yet fourteen, but they were around even in height and Magic still sported a child-like weight in his face. Growth made his features sharper and more pronounced—angular cheekbones and chin making him look far older than he was at some angles—and his freckles that crossed from one bottom eyelid to the other, dark from their exposure to the sun, was a faded, dull tan in the silver of the moon.

Mira’s father, Benji, had once made a passing comment that Magic looked a lot like Bennett from a side profile. She never thought anything of it when they were younger, but it was harder to deny, now that Magic was slightly more mature, that his left profile was like seeing him and his father in one image, right down to the shade of hazel in his eye.

Despite their similarities, though, Mira trained herself to notice them less. She’d seen the way he shut down and stopped talking when people mentioned it or, on worse days, blatantly dismissed any of his shared traits. The comparisons only served to agitate rather than compliment him, so Mira left it alone.

Their trek continued in silence, shattered only by the scuffing of dirt from Magic behind her. They passed through the empty market streets, beyond the old, rusted watchtower that served as the halfway point between their houses. Mira took a deep breath through her nose, the remnants of gentle rain from earlier that washed away the prevailing scent of coal smoke—for now. Chrome was peaceful the way it was with only the chirping of crickets and hum of the lights and the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the scaling of buildings without prying eyes to notice.

Mira knew the inner workings of Chrome from both ground level and above; it was by no means a careful activity, but leaping through the rooftops was the only reliable way she had to dispel her energy that built up over the course of the day and the only one that felt natural. Benji once brought her to a facility in Magnus during one of their northern business trips that specialized in climbing, but the thrill hadn’t felt the same with all the safety precautions.

The familiar sights of Chrome Mira had known for seventeen years wouldn’t fail her—she was confident enough in her knowledge of the village’s layout that enabled her to take as many risks as she wanted. Beneath the moon and the sprinkle of shining stars in the deep midnight sky, there was only her and freedom.

Freedom.

Now wouldn’t that be nice?

Her love of Chrome’s simplicity and easy navigation was only canceled out by its monotony and unending whispers of secrets passed from household to household. On some days it was enough to drive her insane. Gossip was a currency heavy enough to suffocate her and it was the only reason why Mira chose to fly at night. But perhaps one of these days, she’d be granted her freedom.

Mira exaggerated her steps with boundless energy, approaching the abandoned florist’s building on the town’s eastern side that was once a bookstore and, before that, a lawyer’s firm. Its weathered mahogany bricks and broken glass windows decorated the earth, little fallen stars along the dirt. Had it not been for the rusted wire fence that surrounded the rumpled looking building with its droopy metallic ceiling and peeling brown shingles, Mira might have considered her favorite climbing spot a miraculous haven. An odd one, but a refuge nonetheless.

The chains jangled as she lifted them away from the dirt, creating a tiny passageway and, from Magic’s shuffling feet and annoyingly loud groan, Mira knew he was not pleased with what she was going to ask him to do. “Stop that.”

Magic crossed his arms. “No.”

“You’re being the worst killjoy right now, y’know that?”

“Not a killjoy. I just like my bones the way they are. Intact.”

Mira pouted and dropped the fence. “You say that like I’ve intentionally twisted your arm and broken it. Just trust me.”

“Do you remember what happened the last time you said that? I slipped off the dumpster and broke my left wrist.” He rubbed at his arm as if to prove his point. “I’m not climbing.”

“Magic, please? I don’t think I ask you for too much.”

“I can think of a few examples.”

“Magic.”

His lips twisted as he ran a hand furiously back and forth along his scalp like he were considering every possible way this endeavor could backfire. Mira shook the metal fence again; it jangled and clanged while she waited for his response and, when he finally consented with the barest shrug of his shoulders, she held the fence open for them as they trespassed quietly into abandoned territory supervised only by the moon.