A Lion in a Flower Field

In Magic’s prolonged absence from school, much to the chagrin of the seniors, Mira wore the badge of “courier” in addition to “baker.”

During the spaces between classes and any other free time she managed to find, Mira visited her brother’s teacher to collect work and deliver it to him when she arrived at his house every day after school to help him with it. She ran this routine for a week, collecting work, dropping it off, sitting with Magic and his mother at their dinner table, assuming Magic even had the strength to get out of bed his own. Amelia assisted both of them with their assignments when needed (and if she wasn’t busy completing a work request) and provided small snacks she had laying around the house.

It was a small spread of food, but that didn’t bug her much. Mira was often treated to a tiny container of homemade yogurt with a mashed strawberry mixed in it, while Magic was stuck with nutrient-rich crackers that he’d grudgingly admitted were his every meal (seeing as he didn’t have the appetite nor the energy to eat on a consistent schedule). Every now and again, Mira took pity on her brother; when Amelia wasn’t around to assist them, she slathered some of the yogurt and strawberries onto the crackers.

And as the week went on, she got the same questions from most of his teachers: When will he be back? Is he okay?

Her response each time was, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

Mira never thought herself to be grateful for Magic’s quick thinking—rather, she often found herself jealous of his brain and wished she’d had even the slightest aptitude for picking up on academic work. Now it worked in Magic’s favor. Through a combination of his innate skills and Mira’s old notes that she found crumpled under her bed from years past, they made quick work of some of the assignments his teachers had left behind.

By the middle of the next week, Magic’s ailment seemed to fade, though he was still weak from its lingering effect on his lungs, and he’d made decent progress getting up and down the stairs with assistance to complete his work at the dinner table. He never complained about the help, though Mira knew simply from his silence that he dreaded every second of it.

Sitting at the table made it easier for Amelia to keep an eye on her son from her spot in the sewing room, the tiny little attachment to the side of the house where the seamstress kept her fabrics and flowers for dyes. Magic had shown her that room once when they were young and his mother had been working on repairing a plush toy of a fox. From where Amelia’s chair was stationed, she had a clear view of the kitchen and even with her back facing the room, Mira felt as though the woman’s eyes were boring through her skull while she sat with her brother to solve his math woes.

Now she understood why Magic hated worrying his mother and Mira couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit unnerved by it.

“Stars,” muttered her brother, tapping a pencil against the table before gnawing on the wood just below the eraser. “I don’t like this.”

“The math?” Mira asked. “Or the thing you’re writing with?”

He rolled his eyes, taking the pencil out of his mouth, the blankets he’d dragged with him from his room wrapped tightly around his shoulders. “The math. I’m not a woodpecker.”

“Then stop eating your pencils and write your answers. What’s the question asking you?”

“Ori’s feathers.” Magic’s elbow slid further to the center of the table and he rested the side of his face in his hand. “This is just like being homeschooled. The question wants me to factor 10x² - 8x - 16. But not all of them have an ‘x’ next to them.”

“Look for other commonalities, Mags.”

“They’re even.”

“So take out an even number and put what’s left behind in between two parentheses.”

Magic put his pencil behind his ear and reached into his cracker bag, chewing on the morsels as he considered her instructions. He picked the pencil back up and tapped it repeatedly against his head with enough force that Mira could hear the hollowness of his skull. “Like … the number 2?”

“Try it.”

She watched him scribble furiously on the side of the paper, muttering to himself as he scratched out numbers. When he stopped, Mira peered over his shoulder, scanning the lines. “Does that look right to you?”

“Kinda.”

“Then leave it alone. I’ll bring it back tomorrow and see if there’s anything that needs to be fixed.”

Magic pouted, tapping the pencil against his head one last time before tossing the utensil on the table, tightening his blankets around him. “I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, Mags,” Mira replied, pushing the cracker bag closer to him. “It’s Math. Not many people do.”

“It isn’t the subject I don’t like, it’s the answers. They look weird.”

“And that’s fine, Mags—you haven’t been in the building to listen to Mister Orre teach. When I bring the stuff back tomorrow, I’ll tell him. Trust me, you’ll be fine. The teachers know about everything.”

He scooted his chair closer to the table, bringing his feet up to rest on the seat. “Can I do my Science homework now?”

“Finish the difficult stuff first. Then you can.” Magic tipped his head back and groaned loudly in frustration, but Mira went on anyway. “Look, at least then you can end it off on a high note. Why do you think I’m doing my Geography essay first?” she asked, waving her arm as if to showcase her messy papers.

Magic took one glance at it and scoffed, lifting the cracker bag to cradle it towards his chest. “Because you suck at it.”

She shoved him playfully. The barrier of the blankets seemed to soften the blow. “Rude.”

“Not rude. Factual.”

“Factual and rude. For your information, I’m doing it first because it takes the longest. If I start on it now, I’ll have more time left in the day to do it.”

Magic raised a brow, speaking through the food he was putting into his mouth. “That’s odd coming from a girl who could make friends with a wall.”

“Talking and writing an essay are two very different things, Mags. You’ll know once you get there.” Mira eyed up as he shrugged and shuffled through his papers to look for his next assignment with one hand, snacking with the other. “You’re doing a good job, by the way,” she said. Upon noting the confused look on her brother’s face, she clarified. “With the crackers.”

Immediately, Magic paused, placed his pencil on the table and hung his head. Mira found herself biting into her lips. She should’ve kept her mouth shut.

“Stop,” he whispered.

“Sorry,” she replied. “I’m just happy you’re getting through the crackers.”

“I know. But I just … I don’t feel like I’m making progress. I still have to force myself to eat. I still can’t walk up and down the steps by myself without feeling faint. I barely have enough energy to stitch my projects together. I haven’t been able to work on Dad’s scarf in days. It’s stuck on the last part.”

“If it’s any consolation, you look a little better from last week.”

Magic didn’t reply at first, only dug into the bag to grab a handful of tiny saltines and let them fall from his palms like little drops of water. Then he crinkled the top of the bag and tossed the whole thing on the table. “It’s hard, Mira. It’s really hard eating when you don’t feel like you have to.”

“It isn’t supposed to be easy, Magic,” Mira replied, taking a deep breath. “Especially considering this week …”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish that statement. Mira didn’t think she needed to; the side glance Magic gave her was enough of a signal that he’d received the message. The mining anniversary was this Saturday, four days from now. He didn’t need the explicit reminder. He lived that hell every year for the last seven years.

His eyes held that strange, far away look that she learned to fear, the one that meant she’d lost him to the depths of his own head. She moved to prod at his shoulder and he gently swatted her away, preoccupied with something. “Mags?”

“I won’t have time,” he replied in little more than a whisper after a minute or two of complete silence. “The anniver—the … Saturday is soon. And I’ve been so tired … Mira, I can’t bring it to him unfinished.”

“Would you rather we do that then instead of the rest of your work?” asked Mira.

“I—I want to but if I do that, then I’ll fall behind. And I can’t fall behind because then if I fall behind, I’ll …”

Mira waited for Magic to finish his thought, patiently keeping her mouth shut, though that action was difficult for her to do. She watched her brother fumble around uselessly with his hands, making gestures and signs she didn’t understand. When he’d run out of ways to express himself, Magic slowly shut down, dropping first his hands to the table, then his head to his knees. He heaved a heavy sigh and then knocked his forehead into his legs once.

Despite it, Mira had an idea of what he wanted to say in order to finish that last sentence.

I’ll disappoint Dad.

She rapped the table with her nails to grab his attention. He didn’t budge. “Mags,” she whispered, “you won’t upset anyone in the school building if you fall behind a little. In fact, most of them weren’t even expecting to get the work in on time. They thought you were going to use your absence to rest.”

Magic turned his head to look at her through his right eye, a glossy shimmer in the green. His jaw twitched as though he meant to speak, but nothing came of it despite his deep breaths and unintelligible stammering. He settled for not talking at all, pressing his forehead into his legs, eyes tightly shut.

“Magic,” she pressed, “pick your priority. Which one would put you more at ease?”

“Scarf.”

“Then we work on that together and worry about the school stuff later. I won’t be able to come do my homework with you the rest of the week, so I’ll leave it by your door.”

Her brother squinted. “Why?”

“Holiday prep. People are putting basket orders in already, so Dad needs me to help out with making some of the pastries and stuff. But I’ll check in and give you a call if I can.” Mira gave him a reassuring smile, packing her essay into her folder and shoving it to the center of the table. Magic followed suit and closed up his notebook. “Ready to sew your scarf upstairs—It is upstairs, right?”

Magic nodded his head and pushed his chair back, Mira following not far behind as he stood and stumbled a little, gripping the edge of the table, groaning. The color in his face drained immediately and she braced him against her side, wrapping a protective arm over his shoulder, patting his arm concealed by the blanket shield. From the sewing room, a chair squeaked.

“You’re doing good, Mags,” Mira said in a voice far louder than necessary. Hopefully it would reassure Amelia who undoubtedly moved at the sound of her son’s struggle. “Just watch your step. One foot in front of the other, bud.”

She guided Magic around the table and made a quick, but steady beeline for the stairs. Mira was careful not to look in the direction of the sewing room for fear of springing Amelia into action. For her brother’s sake, Mira didn’t want his mother hovering over the two of them.

They made it halfway up the steps before Magic began to falter; he nearly fell over twice, the gradual loss of color rendering him nothing more than a spirit in the night. By the time they made it to the landing, Magic was so pale and so out of it that he didn’t respond when Mira spoke to him. She eventually guided him into sitting on the steps, though she didn’t need to. Magic nearly collapsed to the floor, saved only by Mira propping him up against the wall.

His eyes were half-open when she lightly tapped his face to get a response. “Magic,” she said, sparing a quick glance from beneath the railing to see if Amelia had followed them. When the seamstress was nowhere to be found, Mira refocused on getting her brother to respond. “Mags, stay with me. We still have your scarf to work on.”

“I’m tired,” he wheezed. The rattle in his chest returned. “I want to rest; I’m tired, I just … I need …”

“What? What do you need, Magic? Do you need me to get your crackers and a glass of water?”

“Yes.”

Mira gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and began her trek downstairs. And perhaps she would have made it completely down to the first floor if she hadn’t heard Amelia rummaging around in the kitchen cabinets for a cup to put the water in. Mira couldn’t see Magic’s mother from her spot on the stairs, but every creak of the cabinet hinges was audible alongside the rushing water of the faucet.

She heard everything, Mira thought, gnawing on her inner lip. And I doubt she got any of her work done, either.

Mira had to feign her shock when Amelia rushed over to the staircase, a closed cup of water in one hand with a small straw poking through its lid and the half-finished bag of crackers in the other. “You two headed up?”

“Yeah,” replied Mira, reaching her hands beneath the railing to grab the materials. “He’s sitting on the steps right now. He got a bit faint and tired on the way up.”

Amelia went very still. She poked her head beneath the banister—Mira took a shuffled step back—and eyed her son who was exactly where Mira left him against the wall. “Is he … awake?” she asked.

“Should be. Getting him to speak was a bit of a challenge, though. He isn’t all there, but I think he’ll be a bit more awake once he gets some food into his system.”

“Good.” Amelia took her neck out from the gap between the bottom of the banister and the stairs, patting the shoe mold. “And remember, he doesn’t have to eat everything, only enough of those that he feels okay to move and not feel sick. Just make sure he takes his time with it.”

Mira nodded. She didn’t know what to say after that, so the silence would have to do.

Amelia grabbed her arm just as she was about to turn. The touch was feather-light, a gentle gesture. “Thank you,” whispered the seamstress.

With a tiny, fast fading smile, she watched Magic’s mother return it and then retreat hesitantly back to the sewing room as though she were treading ice barefoot. And Mira could tell, based on Amelia’s wary, repetitive glances back towards the stairs, that even with Mira’s support, she still feared everything for her son’s condition.

And Mira couldn’t blame her. Benji was often the same when Mira had gotten sick as a kid, closing the entire bakery just to stay with her during the day. Of course, he’d never done those things sober—Mira knew that in hindsight now—but he’d still made his frantic efforts to benefit her health.

By the time she got back to Magic, he was half-awake, muttering something to himself with the slow, soft, yet raspy cadence that reminded Mira of a lullaby. He sang it under his breath for an audience of one person, oblivious to the fact that Mira could hear every word. As to what he was saying, she had no idea. She didn’t recognize the words as being any language she knew, only that it felt very similar to something you would soothe a child with.

Mira placed a hand on his shoulder and lightly shook him from his trance. His head briefly jolted up before falling back down as though it weighed a ton. When he finally gathered himself enough to look at her, Magic snaked his hands out from the blankets to grab the cup of water, sipping from it with his eyes closed.

He looked so pitifully tiny, wrapped in his quilts.

Just looking at Magic now reminded her so much of the boy he was when she first met him.

She sat beside him on the landing. “You doing okay?”

“No,” he mumbled, gnawing on the straw.

“How do you physically feel, Magic?”

“Nauseous.” Magic took the cup away from his mouth, trading it over for the foil package of crackers, though he did nothing with it. He only crinkled the aluminum sheet between his fingers. “Tired. My head hurts, my chest hurts … I hate this, Mira. I hate everything about this.”

“I know you do. But Amelia said you don’t have to eat everything, just enough so that you feel a bit better. And then, once you feel better, we can get you up and moving. Plus, maybe you’ll want more of the crackers when we get you settled.”

“Don’t say that. The idea of eating more than I am right now makes me dizzy.”

“So focus on what you have right now. And then, when you’re ready to move, you let me know.”

Magic leaned against her shoulder and again Mira found it hard not to picture him as anything other than a distraught seven year-old boy who desperately needed the comfort. She gave that to him, wrapping her arm around him in a side hug which he didn’t refuse. “Can I lay down in my bed when I get upstairs?” he asked. “When my head stops pounding and I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up?”

“Are you going to be able to sew your scarf while you’re laying down?”

“Probably not.”

“How do you feel about sitting up against the headboard? Would be better if you’re also taking sips of water, wouldn’t it?”

Magic made a noise of disagreement mid-chew. “It’s not comfortable.”

“I’ll prop your pillow behind you,” Mira suggested. “How does that sound?”

“Passable.”

“I mean, hey, at least if you fall asleep, it’ll be in your own bed against a pillow and not in weird places.”

“Don’t remind me. My arm and shoulder still ache from passing out in the bathroom yesterday.”

Mira cringed. She remembered the sickening thud that followed his body hitting the tile of his downstairs bathroom and the frantic footsteps of his mother running to see what was wrong. Mira stayed at her seat at the table listening to the commotion that followed. All she gathered from it was that he’d been low to the ground when he fainted, so he walked away from that embarrassing incident relatively unscathed.

Aside from the damage it did to his pride, that is.

“Well,” Mira said, patting his shoulder, “at least you don’t have to worry about slipping on tile.”

The laugh that came from Magic was dry and brittle. They both knew it wasn’t the tile itself that caused his fall, but the less that could be said about his poor health, the better.

When he was satisfied with his food intake, Magic handed over the package of crackers and poorly pushed himself to his feet using Mira as a form of support. Once he was up, wobbly and unsteady as he was, Mira stood beside him and walked slowly beside him towards his room.

It was a tiny little box, his room and now, with the late afternoon sun shining through his window, Mira didn’t have to squint to know where she was going. Designed with dark, wooden panels for walls, Magic’s room had only the space for a tiny, twin-sized bed, a night table beside with a large dresser directly across from the foot of the bed. Nestled in the corner of his room was a rounded, full-body mirror, its length covered by a blue, felt blanket. It reminded Mira a lot of what people did to cover furniture to hide it from dust mites, but she knew there was more Magic was trying to hide his mirror from.

Her brother practically collapsed face first onto his mattress, wheezing and gasping from the strain; Mira had the feeling that his sickness hadn’t fully abated if just the walk to his room was enough to wind him. She let him stay there for a minute, waiting until he struggled to hoist himself up, his wrists wobbling back and forth like a metronome keeping time with a racing rhythm, before assisting.

Mira placed his pillow vertically behind him and pulled his bed covers over his already large defensive swaddle of blankets to keep him warm. Just looking at Magic made her feel uncomfortably hot despite the draft coming through from his window. How he could survive like that, wrapped and encased in so many quilts like a cocoon, Mira wasn’t sure.

She shook her head with a chuckle. She’d never get that answer.

“What?” Magic asked, his calculating gaze shifting in her direction.

“Nothing. Where’s your scarf?”

“Big dresser,” he yawned, tucking his chin closer to his chest. “By the mirror.”

Mira made her way over to the scarf, dramatically turning on her toes and stumbling around the room. The tiny chuckle from behind her gave her a bit more incentive to continue exaggerating her movements.

As Magic told her, the unfinished scarf—which looked like a mount of light blue denim, with patches of red flannel embedded into it and a fuzzy, deep blue underside, was resting atop the dresser. It was still attached to the needle and thread, so Mira carefully lifted it and walked slowly, careful not to drop the fragile materials in her arms.

Her brother held his hands out as she approached, opening and closing his palms in a silent request for her to hand it over.

She sat beside him and did as he asked, watching Magic adjust himself within his cluster of blankets before taking up the sewing needle and resuming his work. Mira recognized the softer fabrics as the roll that Miss Flannise had given to him during one of the Art Club meetings and she couldn’t help but smile at it.

Mira pointed towards the flannel patches. “Where’d you get those?” she asked.

“Miss Flannise gave them to me during class when I was last at school,” Magic replied. He didn’t look at her when he spoke, only kept his eyes on his project. “I … didn’t have much to choose from at home. So during class, she asked me how my progress was and gave me this as a gift. So I attached it to the denim.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to do that. Didn’t you say that it would take too long?”

“No, I said I wouldn’t embroider a pattern into the denim. Which was what you suggested that I do. Embroidering would’ve taken too long because then I would’ve had to think of something to include. And this was easier to do because, according to Mom, Dad liked flannels.”

Mira couldn’t argue with that. Every mental image she had of Bennett usually included a flannel sweater to some degree. It was a favorite of his after he stopped by the bakery from working at the mines.

“So,” Magic continued, “because I didn’t have to create something from scratch, it was a detail I could easily add or get rid of if I decide not to use it anymore. If I had designed a pattern into the denim—Ori’s feathers!” Magic dropped the needle and immediately popped a finger into his mouth, wincing. It took him a few seconds to ride out the pain and he took his finger out and wiped it on his blankets. “Shit …”

“Pricked yourself?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, but it hurt a lot.”

Mira shrugged her shoulders. “Can’t do much about it now aside from keep a better eye out.”

“That’s the issue, though, Mira. No matter how slow I go, I still end up hurting myself. You know how many times I’ve pricked myself with the needle on this project alone? I’ll be lucky if I don’t have holes in my fingers by the time it’s finished.”

“You said you didn’t have much left to go earlier,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll finish it today.”

Magic shook his head, moving the unfinished scarf up and down in his arms. “I don’t know … My eyes are losing focus and everything keeps blurring, which makes it really difficult.”

“Think about it this way: you’re almost done with it. You don’t have much more of it to do, and it looks really good, Mags.”

She watched him rub the fabrics between his fingers, his hand lingering on the washed out denim. The far-away glaze in his eyes returned and Mira waited, ready to act at a moment’s notice. But Magic didn’t look like he was dissociating, more like he was thinking about what he wanted to say. He shook his head and tenderly pressed the unfinished project against him so that it was nearly pressed against his chest. “I want to finish it for him on time, Mira.”

“You will,” she assured him.

His knuckles blanched. “No, I need to finish it on time, Mira. It’ll upset him more if it isn’t done.”

Mira squinted. Magic always talked about his project with an undertone of guilt, but the implication that Bennett was already annoyed with him from beyond the grave was new. She didn’t know if it was a result of the recurring nightmares that worried Amelia so much, or if it was some kind of delusion from his overall poor health, but the idea made her anxious. “What do you mean by ‘more,’ Mags?”

“I … I don’t know,” he squeaked. The scarf migrated to being against his mouth, muffling his speech. “It’s already late …”

Based on his trailing words and the uncharacteristic jumpiness in his limbs, Mira knew he had more to say. It was also evident in the way he opened his mouth and hesitated to speak words through it, the intermittent shakes of his head. When Magic couldn’t come up with the words, he buried his entire face in the fabrics, sighing deeply into them out of frustration.

“Something’s bugging you, Magic,” Mira pressed, placing a hand on his shoulder. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you rather me not ask you about it yet?”

Magic nodded. “Not until I can figure out how or what to say. I just … I need to refocus. I stopped working for too long.”

“Would you rather I be quiet to help you focus? Or do you want background noise—”

“Tell me about Mabel.”

Mira found herself grinning like an idiot. As much as her adopted cat occasionally got on her nerves, she couldn’t thank Mabel enough for the comfort she gave her brother. “Mabel’s doing okay,” she said, “though she’s very large and very heavy. Same as she was when you walked back with her to school the other week. Which reminds me: did you spoil her when she was here?”

“She had most of my plates,” said Magic, resuming his methodical strokes with the needle. “Mom fed her plates, too, though. So she ate double.”

“Okay, good. I wanted to make sure it was food and not babies. Because if it was babies, then we’d have a big problem.”

“What would be so bad about Mabel having babies?”

“There’d be more mouths to feed every morning.”

“And more cats to pet.”

Mira chuckled, crossing her legs like a pretzel. “Mabel wouldn’t let us touch them with a ten-foot pole, Magic. Not immediately after they were born. She’d need at least a few days—maybe weeks—before she even considered trusting us with her theoretical babies. Aside from her pleasant roundness, she’s been okay. Just very needy.”

“Define needy,” he said, maneuvering quickly through the edges of the scarf.

“She keeps yelling at me every morning to give her more food because you and Amelia went and spoiled her. Now she expects more than her usual every morning.”

“I didn’t spoil her. Blame Mom for Mabel being as needy as she is.”

“How was she, by the way, with Mabel around? Over the phone, when she called us the first time, she didn’t say much other than that she was appreciative of Mabel being there.”

The question seemed to have perked Magic up a little; he didn’t look as exhausted as he had mere moments ago and his motions were far more animated as he weaved the sewing needle in and out of the fabrics with terrifying accuracy and speed. Still, his responses showed his fatigue, retaining his usual flat and tired tone.

“When you dropped off Mabel,” Magic said, “she asked why you left her here. I told her I liked having Mabel around because she helped. I didn’t know how to explain what she helped with, but Mom seemed to understand what I meant, so she didn’t ask me again. While I was stuck in my room—sleeping, usually—Mom would leave my food on a chair next to my bed with stuff for Mabel on the floor. She ended up eating the stuff I didn’t have the energy to eat.

“Once I felt a little better and had the door open,” he went on, occasionally pulling his hand back to avoid being pricked, “I know there was one day where I was … I was taking a nap. I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but I know I woke up in a panic—Mom was there also helping me calm down. She told me I was screaming. But Mabel helped. She helped a lot with the aftermath … Mom started taking care of Mabel more after she realized that, too.”

Mira nodded and almost opened her mouth to say something when she saw Magic tie a knot in the thread and tear the sewing thread with his teeth. He shook the loose strands away from the needle and placed the materials on the night table. With a satisfied sigh, Magic sank into his pillow and held the scarf in her direction. “Put it on.”

She frowned, annoyed at the phrasing. It felt like a demand, not a request. “Why?”

“Because you said we’d work on the scarf together. And I need to see it on someone.”

“You … don’t check your projects yourself?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to see them on me.”

It wasn’t a true answer. Mira knew it was more about his reflection—what he saw in the reflection, rather, that Magic hated: the image staring back that made her brother so uncomfortable that he would rather cover the mirror with a blanket than risk catching a glance at his passing resemblance to the man he didn’t remember. The man she knew he desperately missed.

Carefully, Mira took the scarf from him and stood, folded the scarf into an “8,” and placed the loops over her neck as she stumbled her way towards the mirror. The weights did the job, though they were definitely not what Mira would consider “conducive” for a scarf. But she couldn’t deny that it was nicely made, as none of the weights slipped through the stitching.

She hesitated by the mirror and gave one small glance back at her brother, who took a deep, preparing breath, and nodded.

As the drape fell from the cracked and splintered frame, Mira took a step to situate herself in the center. Magic’s tired gaze snapped to hers almost immediately, but she didn’t miss the small flinch before his eyes found hers in the reflection.

Mira found herself surprised to see how well the scarf fit. Despite its weights, the denim wasn’t rough or otherwise rigid. Rather, it was surprisingly loose, and the fuzzy cotton along the bottom was warm and welcome in the crisp room. She pivoted on her toes, seeing the scarf from every possible angle.

Bennett would have loved this scarf if he were here.

She turned on her heel, ready and raring to express her enthusiasm and excitement over the scarf’s completion, but those words never left her lips.

Magic’s chin was tucked against his chest, his eyes closed, shoulders just barely moving in time with his breathing from beneath his barrier of blankets. In the time it had taken for Mira to examine and admire the scarf’s craftsmanship, her brother had dozed off. She snorted. Why was she so surprised? Magic had been actively resisting the urge to sleep the entire time he worked to finish the scarf. If anything, Mira commended him for staying up as long as he did.

She looped the scarf onto Magic’s neck, tucking the ends of it into the blankets still securely wrapped around his shoulder. Once she was situated on the edge of the bed beside him, Mira shook him lightly by the shoulder. His eyes fluttered rapidly, unable to open more than halfway. “Huh?”

“I checked your scarf,” Mira said. “It works. And it looks nice, too. Bennett’s gonna love it when we go there on Saturday.”

Magic blinked. The words hadn’t fully sunk in yet. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“You, Amelia, me, and my dad. Don’t forget, Mags, Bennett was my dad’s best friend. He meant a lot to us, too.”

“You and Benji are coming with us?”

“He doesn’t know yet, but he will when I tell him tonight.”

Magic said nothing, but the tired glaze in his eyes was fading for something Mira couldn’t grasp. Was he annoyed that they’d be there? Irritated at the idea of having additional support? Or was he glad? Grateful that he wouldn’t have to bear that pain with only his mother at his side.

Instead of getting answers, Mira adjusted herself as Magic leaned against her shoulder. She shifted to sit beside him, resting the back of her head against the headboard. He didn’t have to say anything in the end—this was more than enough for Mira to know that he was glad for the support.

Mira rested the side of her head against his. “Whatever happens this Saturday,” she said, “we’ll brave together. Understand?”

“What’s supposed to happen on Saturday?” he mumbled.

She thought of her friends’ message, the warning they had so desperately pleaded with her to ignore. The supposed hitlist of the kids who attended the phoenix wake the same year as Magic.

The plan they’d heard nothing more of in the last few weeks that left Janie and Thalia convinced it was nothing but a rumor to rile her.

Mira closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. At least that much was honest. “What I do know is that, if someone tries to pull something funny, or do some dumb shit that day, I will knock some sense into them. I can promise you that.”

Magic made no response; she’d expected a scoff or some kind of eye roll at her bold declaration. But he said nothing; his head lolled a little off her shoulder and down towards his own chest. Amusing as it was, it sent a prickle of fear through Mira’s limbs.

She went into autopilot, moving her brother off her shoulder and pushing off the covers to lift him—his inconsistent back and forth with food left him dangerously lightweight for his height and age—and laid him down flat on the mattress instead. Mira shuffled the pillow to be centered under her brother’s head. Magic moved around lazily in his sleep and dragged the cushion to make it function like a body pillow, vertically pressed against him.

In the silence of the tiny room, broken only by the rattles of Magic’s wheezing, Mira sat at his bedside. If a higher being was going to hear her wishes, now would be the time, and she kept her hands pressed together in an imitation of prayer.

“If they mess with you on Saturday,” she whispered, “they will have to beg me for mercy.”