A Lion in a Flower Field

Mira’s skin itched around the irritating scent of antiseptic. It was well within her knowledge that hospitals were constantly being sanitized to prevent the spread of further contagion as a precaution, but at this hour it felt so much like overkill that it overwhelmed her senses and burned her nose when she breathed in.

It had taken her and her father nearly twenty-five minutes to arrive on horseback—a trip that would have otherwise taken them at least fifteen—with Mister Oreson’s stallion proceeding at the world’s slowest trot. Every time she’d asked Benji if he could pick up the pace, he’d always hesitated before giving the horse a gentle but stern nudge with his heel that told the animal to speed up but not by much. The ride to Grimmshollow’s clinic had felt more like gallivanting along the towns of Southern Droidell than it did rushing to meet Amelia.

And sitting in the waiting room watching her father pace, his attention easily torn away by the sound of rustling papers and, most notably, how often he fidgeted with the silver watch at his wrist, Mira had a feeling she understood why Benji was so adamant on taking their time.

He might not have wanted to say it, but she had a feeling it was because the idea of being inside of a hospital made him nervous.

Mira’s gut twisted with anxiety. Each time the door to the hallway opened, both she and her father snapped at attention only for another patient to be called through the door and escorted to another part of the clinic.

Of course it wasn’t going to be that quick.

But they’d already been waiting nearly an hour. It was four-thirty when they arrived and it was almost five-twenty; daylight was starting to creep through the windows, filling the clinic’s waiting room with pale, golden light. If merely sitting around waiting for time to pass was making her antsy, then Benji was beside himself. Mira didn’t think she’d seen her father sit down once in the near sixty minutes they’d been waiting and his pacing had only grown more restless much to the annoyance of other civilians in the waiting room. Mira had gotten close to snapping at a few staring eyes to get them to turn around until she realized that, among the crowd of patrons, were parents with sickly children. Grudgingly, she restrained herself.

“Dad,” she whispered, “sit down.”

Benji paused, one hand locked around the silver watch at his wrist as though it were the only thing keeping him around. A tether. A lifeline.

“We can’t go anywhere until they call us in,” Mira continued. “Pacing won’t make it go any faster.”

“No,” conceded her father, “but the back and forth does wonders for keeping me away from here.”

Mira assumed he meant the hospital. It made sense for someone who had been in and out of one so many times, but eventually he caved and sat beside her with little more said on the matter. He looped an arm around her and Mira leaned into his side, wincing at the vice-like grip her father was applying on her shoulder. She did nothing and said nothing, only closed her eyes to dull the pain and listened to her father’s breathing, noting the lingering fear trapped within it.

It was six thirty-seven by the time a head poked out from the hallway leading to the rooms in the clinic. A short woman with black hair cut at the ears opened the door just wide enough to make it clear that she was inviting people in.

“Benjamin?” said the nurse and Mira caught the waver in it. “The room is set and ready.”

Mira had never seen her father stand so quickly, urged to his feet as though a bee stung him. As far as she knew, Mira had only known her father to move this fast when she had gotten herself into a bind. He’d always been very quick—sober or drunk (but not drunk enough to be wasted)—to come to her rescue as a kid.

She followed inside after Benji, keeping close to his side in the asphyxiating hallway; the walls were too narrow to fit all three of them side by side and Mira had to settle for just walking behind her father at an angle. The paint on the walls, blue as they were, looked nearly white in the fluorescents and Mira felt like she could’ve lost all of her eyesight if they stayed here in the corridor. The linoleum floors clacked beneath her shoes and echoed the drumbeat in her chest, the dread in her soul.

Mira hadn’t even realized her father and the nurse had been speaking until Benji held onto her hand.

“…room one seventy-four,” the nurse was saying, a clipboard cradled in her arms. “It’s further down this hallway and towards the left by one of the emergency rooms in case something shifts.”

“Do you expect anything to shift?” asked Benji.

“If his condition is anything like how it was back then, I don’t think so. It’s more a precaution on Tammi’s part just in case.”

“And what is his condition?”

The nurse pursed her lips, hugging the cardboard closer to her chest as all three of them rounded a corner. “That information is classified.”

“With who?” Mira recognized the low tone in his voice, the irritation just before a scolding.

“Family.”

A simple word of six letters. Family.

The word chipped at a nameless thing in Mira’s heart.

For all intents and purposes, they were family, hers and the Coopers. The four of them shared no blood but they did share experience. And that counted more to Mira than the scarlet in her veins.

Benji scoffed. “We are family,” he insisted, and Mira’s head shot up, convinced he’d read her mind. She squinted at her father through the glare of the ceiling lights. “Close enough to any family they’ll have.”

The nurse paused in her tracks and Benji stood beside her. The woman must have felt intimidated because she took a step back, not that Mira could blame her. Benji was tall; he towered over the small nurse by at least a foot and Mira couldn’t help but sympathize. She never quite thought of her father as intimidating (only while he was drinking, did Mira truly fear all six feet of him), but she couldn’t quite blame the nurse for shrinking a little in his presence.

“Look,” Benji went on, “I’m not asking you to disclose his entire medical history. Amelia and I are close enough where I’m sure she’ll tell me anyway. I just want to know what his condition is so that I’m prepared when I go into that room.” He motioned with his hand to the closed door where both Amelia and her son were behind. “What’s his condition?”

The nurse gave a defeated shake of her head, her grip on the clipboard against her chest tightening. Mira could see her scrubs shaking. “His blood sugar levels were low,” murmured the nurse. “Dehydrated, too. Whatever illness he had in his lungs has been persistent in resisting the antibiotics—Tammi ordered a new set to be expedited here.” Then she stopped, looked up and down the hallway as if the next sentence were a bomb, and avoided her gaze. “He dropped off into a coma before they could induce one.”

Mira wasn’t quite sure when she stopped listening: after being told that Magic was comatose or after the fact that her brother was so deathly ill that they were going to put him in one anyway. The idea of it stripped the air from her lungs, forced her to catch her breath again.

Her father muttered something to the nurse that Mira couldn’t hear; static overtook her brain, the fritzzing of one thought to the next like a spark jumping between wires and missing its mark before disintegrating into nothingness.

There was nothing more jarring than the squeak of a hinge to open the room door and, between her father’s sharp inhale and the pounding of her own heart in her ears, Mira wasn’t sure she could hear anyone speak, let alone make sense of what she was seeing.

The room they’d holed up Amelia and Magic in was tiny—it didn’t look any larger than Magic’s room, but the lack of furniture gave it far more space—and a single window allowed the light to filter in from the west, a calm gold to push away the eerie dark. Curtains bunched at one end of the room like a crumpled, long-forgotten pile of laundry attached to a ‘U’-shaped rim ove metal bolted to the ceiling. A low hum came from a large, boxy machine off to the side of the bed that Mira couldn’t bring herself to look at just yet; beside that was a heart monitor, its steady beeping increasing the pace of her own.

Opposite the machines and the bed was a singular chair, its arms high enough to be used as pillows—which was exactly how Amelia was using them, though an additional cushion was placed beneath her head for extra comfort. The seamstress was curled with her knees to her chin, her long, black hair acting mysteriously like a veil as though to hide her from the prying eyes of nurses as they walked in and out. A heavy blanket had been cast over her, rising and falling with her sleeping breaths, slightly askew from any kind of movement.

The armchair was pressed against the side of the bed and Mira allowed her gaze to drift and follow Amelia’s hand, which was holding onto Magic’s.

And that was the real killer.

Mira didn’t want to follow the trail of tubes. The wires. The snaking machinery that was keeping her brother alive because of something so unbelievably stupid …

But she did anyway. She had to.

Bundled in as many sweatshirts as he was back at her house, the only sign of Magic’s ailment had been the pallor in his skin, the sickly hollowness of his face and the fact that he spent most of his day sleeping from fatigue.

Here, that buffer had been stripped away in favor of a short sleeved shirt that, in his affliction, looked several times too large for him. His arms, bony and stick-like, lay out in front of him above the covers, a multitude of tubes and wires emerging from his skin to snake up over his shoulders, hooked up and attached to various bags of fluid. A black cube rested snugly on one of his fingers, dark numbers flashing against a pale screen.

One thin tube curled from a pump at his side up into his nose, little more than a strand in comparison to the others. A large strap was secured over his mouth, a giant tube attached to its center, connected to the large, boxy machine she’d seen earlier, its hum low and threatening. The growling of an animal before it lunged.

Mira could have sworn it was going to lunge at her.

So she ran.

Past her father who slouched in the doorway, pale as a sheet of paper.

Past one of the nurses who carried blankets in her arms.

Past a room with its door open, the man inside of it slumbering deeply.

She ran until she reached the corner of the hallway, pressed her hands against it and pushed her forehead into the wall until her muscles began to shake. Her legs wobbled and her knees bent. Tears threatened to gather behind her eyes and she did not want to give them the privilege of falling.

And she tried to flood her brain with reassurances. Tried to push away the roaring accusations in her head.

Your fault.

All of it, your fault.

Mira rammed her right fist into the wall.

You didn’t do nearly enough.

Again.

And now you’re paying for it.

A muffled sob jumped in her throat.

If she could fix it all, she would. If she could help, she would.

If she knew how. But she didn’t.

Somewhere down the hall was the pounding of feet, an urgency carried with them that nearly made Mira jump. Perhaps it was a nurse running to one of the rooms. Were they going to Magic or another unfortunate soul?

“Mirabel!” shouted a voice, shrill and urgent. One Mira recognized.

“Mirabellis!” cried Thalia, loudly approaching.

Mira hadn’t the time to turn around. She’d gotten as far as lifting her head by the time her friend ambushed her with arms around her neck. The momentum caused the two to sway and though Thalia’s hold was tight, Mira couldn’t give it back, couldn’t seek that comfort.

“My mom told me everything,” Thalia said. “Dad and I got here as fast as we could … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Why everyone was apologizing to her, Mira didn’t know. It wasn’t she that needed it.

And when Thalia tightened her hug and whispered, “It isn’t your fault,” Mira felt her blood boil and something frayed within her snapped. Nerves in her body geared back up and she swatted Thalia away.

“Don’t give me that,” Mira snarled. “Do. Not.”

“Mira—” Thalia started.

She refused to let her friend finish. “Do not pull that shit with me knowing damn well that this wouldn’t be happening if I had kept my fucking mouth shut! It is my fault! Always has been!”

The words didn’t register as true until they left her mouth. Thalia stared at her with those wide, brown and amber eyes of hers, the pitying stare in them she couldn’t be bothered to deal with or be around. Not when she’d made her plea and admitted her fault.

Mira pushed past Thalia and, before she knew it, started to run. She didn’t know where she was running until two, heavy wooden doors yielded to her shoulder and she was climbing up one flight, then another.

She was running for the rooftop.

Not for harm, but simply for freedom, a higher standing in the hopes that maybe she could push everything down again.

The last time she did this, she’d been ten. Her father was drunk and asleep on their living room couch. He didn’t pick her up from school that day. Mira walked herself home through the impending storm threatening to drown them. Mira invited both Thalia and Janie to hang out with her by the watchtower when she found her father home and near insensible on the sofa. While her friends arrived with energetic fervor, the excitement of getting to play games, Mira arrived with a torch in her stomach so bright, so hot that it could’ve burned Chrome to the ground.

In the middle of their game (she couldn’t remember the reason now), Mira snapped; she ran to school—the one place sturdy and high enough in Chrome—and scaled its walls until she got to the top where, moments later, Janie burst through one of the doors to meet her. She’d wrapped Mira in a hug so tight that the two of them fell to their knees on the concrete rooftop just to keep the other stable, one relieved, the other trying to staunch a bleeding heart.

Except now Mira just needed to run. She couldn’t bear it all. Not when people who didn’t share that guilt insisted on trying to remove it.

Thalia’s footsteps were rapidly approaching. “Mirabellis, stop!”

Mira ignored her, one part of a railing wrapped in her hands to hoist herself up. It was cool beneath her fingers, in the palm of her hand. It was smooth and it screeched when her nails scratched against it on accident.

“Mira!”

She skidded to a short stop as a crowd of people—doctors, she assumed—congregated in front of the next set of stairs. Mira bolted for the hallway, nearly knocking over monitors and stands and people until something snagged her by the wrist and yanked her back.

Thalia placed her hands on Mira’s shoulders, which heaved in time with her desperate breaths of air. Standing in place, without the wind of running, she realized that her face was wet. And Mira knew how she must have looked because her friend’s expression hardened in a way it normally did whenever Mira had gotten too frazzled.

“Where,” Thalia said, panting, “are you going?”

Mira was silent for a while. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

“What were you going to do?”

“I don’t … I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me. I didn’t chase you up four flights of stairs for you to ‘I don’t know’ me to death.” Thalia moved her hands down to Mira’s arms and held tight. “Where are you going?”

The air was too heavy. Too hard to breathe.

“Anywhere,” she whispered. Every carefully constructed wall started to crumble, and Mira couldn’t be bothered to put them back up. “Because I can’t stay there. I can’t stay there knowing that if it weren’t my stupid ass suggestion that we wouldn’t be in this fucking position right now, Thalia!”

“That’s a fallacy, Mirabel, even you know that. It isn’t the suggestion that’s the problem!”

“Then what is?” The snarl came from a deep, unnamed place in her soul and Mira channeled it. All of the frustration, all of the anger. “I still couldn’t keep him safe! That was my one job, my single responsibility! Even my father said it—he told me that first day to keep him safe and I couldn’t, Thalia! Now Magic is suffering, Amelia is suffering; even my father”—Mira placed her hands over her face and sobbed. She didn’t even know if her father would last a day being sober in a hospital and didn’t want to think of what would happen if he couldn’t—“I want to make it right, I want to take everything back, but I can’t do anything!”

Thalia wrapped her arms around Mira’s neck. Hugged her tight. “You don’t have to do everything, y’know. That’s a lot to ask of one person.”

“I should. It—”

“Are your ears working? It’s not your responsibility to fix.”

“Doesn’t fucking feel that way.”

Mira could hear the exasperation in her friend’s sigh. Thalia took a step back, but kept her hands on Mira’s shoulders. “Mirabellis,” she said, “did I ever tell you that, when my mom was our age or a little younger, she chopped most of her hair off?”

Even through her rapidly falling tears, Mira squinted. What the hell kind of conversational turn was that? “Lia, I don’t—”

“Don’t talk. Let me finish. My mom wanted to cut off her hair because she was tired of it being long. She hated the way that she felt with it and then one day, took my grandmother's shears and just”—Thalia made a snipping motion with one of her hands before placing it back where it was—“chopped it. She adored how it looked. My grandmother was a bit surprised, but she supported my mom’s decision.

“The next day, every kid in class made fun of her for it. They were able to flick her ears because it was so short and my mom came home sobbing her eyes out. She didn’t want to go to school with her haircut anymore. My grandmother saw her walking around with a wig to make her hair longer and told her that there was nothing wrong with her decision to chop off her hair. It made her happy. It was the people who couldn’t keep their mouths shut that was the problem. And they’re the ones at fault. Same issue here: there is nothing wrong with you asking Magic to go to school with you—with all of us. Was it a bit stupid knowing the possibilities? Yeah. But he should be able to exist without being tortured. And that part, at the very least, is not on you.”

Mira blinked, wiping away remnants of tears from her face. Thalia had a point. No one should have to live their life in fear. The fact that people had purposely went out of their way to start the domino chain reaction of Magic’s declining health was an active choice. Though she still felt the slightest bit of guilt for bringing Magic into that space, what control did she have over other people’s actions?

None.

The hardest pill to swallow was knowing that there was never anything she could have done to prevent the free will of others.

And they would reap what they sewed.

Thalia pushed down on Mira’s shoulders, sinking to the floor with her. Mira leaned into her friend’s shoulder, suddenly weary from the pause, muscles and bones tired. Her eyes felt weighed down, heavy like a stack of flour in her arms. “Do you think we should go back down?” she asked. “Would Tammi be looking for you?”

“My mom has her own things to handle,” Thalia replied. “Get some sleep here. I’ll contact my mom as soon as another nurse comes around to page her and get you settled somewhere with your dad if you guys plan on staying overnight. But worry about that later. I haven’t seen your eyes this bloodshot since the all nighter we pulled two years ago getting our final paper in for Literature.”

Mira chuckled, though it came out more like a huff.

“Even if you just want to close your eyes and rest, it’ll be better than being awake right now. Let my mom and her staff handle this part. They’ve done it before, they can do it again. Besides, we have to figure out what we do next.”

She didn’t get a chance to tell Thalia that what she wanted to do next was give Bentley and his gang of lowlives what they deserved. That what she truly wanted was for them to understand the pain they’d dealt her.

Mira didn’t get that chance.

Slumber pulled her under merely seconds after.

That night, Mira dreamed she was home. Home, and sitting by the watchtower with Magic beside her tossing rocks along the dirt roads of Chrome. There was a heat in the summertime sun—Mira had a countdown in her head until the summer months—and next to her, Magic was talking about something she didn’t quite understand, something about sewing and stitches. It played out like an old movie, blissful and serene, a bit of respite in the chaos.

What would it take to be here again? To rewind everything to make it right? Put things back to normal?

Comatose as he was, Mira didn’t know if it was possible that he’d make it back to the living world. If he was still alive attached to all those machines.

But here, she didn’t have to think about that. Here, she could forget about the myriad of wires keeping her brother around.

Mira closed her eyes, tipping her head back to bask in the sun’s rays until she heard the loud flutter of wings, the creaking of the wood against the old structure in Chrome’s heart. A crow, perhaps, or a raven must have landed on it and she opened one eye to catch its shadow, but there was something off about it.

Black wings sprawled out on the dirt, larger than the wings of a crow and more like that of the occasional hawk she’d seen flying around near the town outskirts by the forest. The wings arched upwards, meeting to create a circle and quickly returning to its sides, the profile visible as it shook out its feathers. The silhouette sported a hooked beak, a large crest at the top and what looked like a long, flowing tail undulated up and down in a manner that made it look like it was splitting into three. Two thin arcs curled from the top of the creature’s head, bouncing up and down.

You care for them, said a high-pitched voice, and Mira found herself locked in place, able to stare only into the shadow’s form. To her left, Magic was still talking, still rambling on as though Mira were actively listening to everything he was saying, but his voice was faded, like she was listening to him speak through water. You care for them all.

“Yes.” The word left her mouth before she was fully aware of it. “I do. They’re my family.”

Yet you have conflict in your heart, dear niece. You cannot claim to care when you wish him dead instead.

Mira winced. She didn’t want Magic dead, but she would be lying if she said that she wasn’t sure what would be a kinder fate.

The shadow, as if privy to her thoughts, tutted at her. It is not merciful, it said, to wish death upon him. But I can see the struggle within you. You wish the best for him. For your family, though they lack your blood.

“Blood is nothing compared to everything we’ve been through,” Mira replied. “I want the people who did this to pay.”

The shadow ruffled, feathers on the ends of its wings shaking—with joy or intrigue, Mira couldn’t tell, but it seemed to delight the being she couldn’t see, the one she was certain she was imagining. Even though you share nothing, you would scorch the ends of the world for them. Intriguing. I can sense it; it burns in your heart like a fire. Torchlight to guide your path. You carry great strength to be so fiercely devoted to those you hold dear.

“Of course,” Mira said, feeling ever so slightly offended by the words, as if that much wasn’t obvious. “They mean everything to me.”

First, the creature giggled, a shrill, bone-chilling sound.

Then, sudden pain gripped Mira’s chest.

A set of talons digging into her ribs. She yelped and leaned backwards, smacking her head against the rotted wood of the watchtower, unable to look over at her brother who seemed oblivious to it all. Not a dream, Mira realized. This was a nightmare. It had to be. No other dream could feel so real.

The shadow was atop her chest now—Mira didn’t know when she’d toppled over to the floor—and it had an iron grip on her ribs. She couldn’t make out the shape of it. The sunlight obscured its figure, rendered it nothing more than a glaring orange and yellow light.

Tell me, Torchbearer, said the shadow—no, the light—as warmth cupped her cheek, traced the line of her jaw, what will you do? How will you repay the pain they have given you?

The terror Mira felt faded for something else. Comfort. Resolve. A tamed version of the fury that rattled in her chest like a snake ready to lunge. She grit her teeth, tipped her chin up with a breath, and said, “With a plan. Whatever that takes.”

She couldn’t see the light’s face, but she could hear its smile. Then you have work to do, my dear niece.

And when Mira woke the next morning, the dream was nothing more than a fragment of memory she forgot shortly after waking, but the resolve in her chest burned slow and bright.