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The boy gasped awake.
His shaky hands scrambled to his breathless chest. There was a rapid beating in his chest; a manic hummingbird fluttering desperately in his body. All around him, the darkness seemed to edge closer.
The pounding in his head grew. He heaved and shuddered. For a terrifying moment, he thought he was dying.
His hands gripped the sheets, knuckles strained tight against the covers. A headache drilled into his skull, the pain spiralling impossibly across the crevices of his mind to bashing the back of his forehead.
Flowers. A headstone. Crowds of people.
A sofa.
Too much. Everything was too much.
He couldn’t breathe.
Help me, He pinched his eyes shut. Help me!
He didn’t know how to stop it.
The boy’s heart was racing itself against time. The booming was furious, incessant. It seemed to swell impossibly into a mallet, swinging rapidly against his ribcage – and like a drum that had been strung too tight, it might burst any moment.
There was also a great weight bearing him down, crushing him. The boy fought with it, the burning hot mess in his lungs threatening to give up any second. He felt hot and cold all at once. For a fleeting moment, he pathetically tussled with the stone over him, shaky arms and sweaty palms struggling to flex his fingers well enough to have a grip. Flashes of hospital floors and wheezing machines and fluorescent bright lights–
NO!
Just as he thought he would be crushed to death, he flung the boulder off. In a split second, a wave of fresh, frigid air splashed over him. He almost shuddered a sigh of relief–
Then his world dipped.
The next moment, his shoulder hit the floor hard. What little air in him was puffed out by the impact, and tears pricked the corners of his eyes. His empty chest started to cave into itself. He tried to roll onto his back.
Helphelphelphelp-
There was that rock again. Everything was too hard and soft and too much. The chorus of desperate gasps and wet breathing filled the air, shaky hands clamouring to flex flat against the ground.
Make it stop. Anything, please please please.
“Help. H-help,” the boy gasped, painfully knuckling his chest with a tight fist. “Help.”
Tree house ropes. A crack in the pavement.
He strained his stiff neck to the ceiling, lips wobbling with the effort.
The kettle bird-whistle.
Hot, burning tears rolled down Micah’s face.
The edges of his vision were turning dark again, and he wanted to choke and vomit all at once. His ears were stuffed full of cotton, all around him dark and muffled and so so very painful. Why? Why did it hurt to hear, to breathe, to speak? He curled into a ball on the ground, burying his head in the crook of his elbow.
Prickly hair clung to the sides of his sweaty face as he rocked himself back and forth, shaky and weak. His numb fingers tingled at their ends, clenched tightly in fists that refuse to relax.
Schedules on the fridge door. Yellow bottles , white caps. Tiny tablets in the bathroom upstairs.
Then suddenly. Micah could hear thunder booming in his ears, drowning out everything else. THUD! THUD! THUD!
Micah whimpered. He curled around himself impossibly tighter, muscles all wound tight with not a spare inch not shaking uncontrollably. The smallest bit of bitter bile was working its way up his throat, and with effort he didn’t know he had, he forced it down. He continued to cradle himself. Cold, almost blue fingers twitched – a stiff, tortured little jerk of movement, their little frozen ends continuing to prickle endlessly.
He heaved, a shuddering breath creeping into his chest. But the pain was still there; a smouldering wildfire scalding his brain matter and rampaging his chest in its fury and desperation.
Letters in the drawer, crumpled and covered in cursive handwriting.
Micah began to sob. Ugly, heavy cries drowned out his own heartbeats, all strangled sounds amidst the deafened noise. He writhed about on his side, chest convulsing with every wave of pain. Grown-out nails scraped and scratched his cheeks, the gravelly sensation leaving trial in their wake.
“I’m– I’m o-ok-k-kay…” Micah’s chest shook as he sobbed. The words all came tumbling out, short and tight and deathly soft, dissolving as fast as they came in the cotton-filled air. “I’m–I– I’m okay, I’m going to be oka–kay…”
His pyjamas stuck to his burning back, and everything felt like too much too much too muchtoomuchhelpmeGrandpahelpmehelpmetoomuch -
Micah flinched as something touched his shoulder. He whimpered, curling away from the burning touch.
His fingernails dug painfully into his neck, his clawing frantic and desperate. It hurt and stung, but… It felt different, like something that wasn’t this buzzing sensation that surrounded Micah, like stinging needle-sharp nails ripping into his skin. So, he didn’t stop. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. But he continued to squeeze his eyes shut, and didn’t stop digging despaired lines into his flesh.
Micah couldn’t tell up from right, or where he was, or what he was even doing. He just felt like he was being punished.
Old Maid cards. Quipus on the poster board. Pictures on the bedroom walls. Bitter, black tea.
Hazy stars exploded behind his eyelids. His chest thundered beneath his head.
This time, the burning touch came back, but it felt… gentle. Before Micah could squeeze himself tighter into a taut ball of nerves, the glowing warmth on his shoulder graced tenderly to his back. It started to rub small, gentle circles across the arch of his mid-back.
Micah’s breathing quickened. Dr Simon’s car parked on the street. The Gorilla balloon. Bibi. The tents.
Bibi. The tents. The sofa.
Oh god. The body on the sofa.
A tortured, strangled sound came from deep within Micah. He had the front of his pyjamas tightly fisted in a ball, his ribcage pressing painfully against the white knuckles of his hand. Not too far from the shallow surface of his chest, there was a thunderous beating, fast and hot and seemingly close to spontaneous combustion. The scratching on his neck quickened.
The body on the sofa– Wrinkled hands on the sofa– Thebodyonthesofathebody-
“Grandpa– grandpa,” Tears continued to flow down Micah’s face as he gasped. “Help–”
Something soft and hard at the same time gently laid itself onto Micah’s hand, the one clawing at his neck, and for a frightening moment Micah thought he was really going to vomit. He turned his face away from the lights above. Slowly, he felt his hand gently pried away from his neck. His hand was still tightly fitted in a shaky fist.
He was so, so scared.
The body. Oh lord, his body.
Micah was too scared to fight back. He buried his face deeper to the ground.
The circles on his back never stopped dancing.
“It’s all right,” A soft voice murmured. “You’re safe.”
It was barely a whisper against the drones of memories – but it edged Micah forward, away from everything. Without thinking, he felt his thoughts slow.
He bit down, hard, on his lips, and the tangy stab of rich iron coated his tongue in seconds. But just like the stinging needles on his neck, the stab led him adrift from the whirlpool of buzz that assaulted his ears, and ears, and skin, like a polished sword wielded to cut through the thick fog. Micah found himself biting down again on the blood wound, white teeth scraping the rich red like a pauper searching for gold.
Melted Maltesers at the theatre. Cold orangeade.
“You’re safe Micah,” The voice continued, softer now. The faintest breeze of a warm breath ghosted his ear. Over him, the gentlest weight fell over his side, warm and soft against the sticky heat of his pyjamas. “You’re safe now.”
8pm crazy golf. Knots on the bootlace. Grandpa Ephraim’s memories.
Grandpa Ephraim.
Micah didn’t resist when something – or someone – gently scooped his rocking body. He braced himself as his world spun on its axis. He felt strong hands hold him close, one side of his face smooshed to a warm body of heat.
Micah trembled, nausea oozing through every inch of his head. His knees were locked close to his chest – muscles too tense to relax and too out of breath to prop himself properly.
He didn’t dare to open his eyes. He really didn't. His eyebrows had knitted themselves in a knot too tight to unwind, and Micah had no energy left for magic to try.
A hand, much larger than Micah’s, gently pried his hand away from his face, easing between his grief-stricken fingers to release them. Micah's sweaty body shuddered and shook with every breath he tried to take in.
His eyes fluttered open a few times. Each time, he couldn’t open them fully. Nothing he felt or saw made sense.
“Help. Help me,” Micah whimpered.
Shapes too strange to understand and blinding yellow light danced across his eyes. But all the while, a giant, blurry mess of… ecru and grey crowded half of vision, and there was a creeping thought in the back of Micah's head that it was looking back at him.
Anyhow, he could feel his body rock with steady rhythm, long arms holding him tight to something that felt soft and hard all at once.
Jazz music in the car. Sour candy after school.
So tired. Micah's head felt heavier with every passing second. Without thinking, he leaned his heavy head against the support. The hand on his back continued to rub soothing circles. Breathing felt easier.
He could feel his sweaty palms gently – but firmly – held together, a hand preventing them from tugging on himself. Before he knew it, there were fingers wiping his hot tears away. His neck stung in the cool air.
Late night movies at home.
“That’s it. Good job… You’re doing so well, Micah,” that voice mumbled again, softer.
His fingers blindly searched for a trail of where he was. Still shaking, Micah tried to untangle his hand from the firm hold of the stranger, and they tightened their hold just so . Not enough to hurt, but enough to show they weren't letting go anytime soon.
Micah turned, smothering his face closer to his blind support. It smelled of earthy oakmoss soap, a whisper of lactonic and dust – and the faintest whiff of black coffee. His breaths slowed.
“That’s it,” The voice seemed to relax, too.
He wanted to open his mouth. He wanted to ask, who are you? But the stark iron tang in his mouth came back, and Micah could feel it dripping down his lower lip – mixing with his saliva, and flooding his tongue. He cringed at the taste. His lips were sticky with blood, snot and saliva.
The left side of his head was smoothed into something soft. Something warm and strong thud-thudded beneath the soft material, and Micah leant impossibly closer to it. He felt it reverb through his head, feeling the deep rhythm sinking into his weary bones, slowly untangling the tension in his stomach.
Slowly, Micah began to orientate himself.
He winced as he opened his eyes. The warmth around him grew firmer, and he felt, somehow impossible to explain, much more safe. He tried to focus his failing attention on his hands first, because those were the parts of him he knew best. But even they felt an ocean away.
He realised they were being firmly held in a much bigger hand. A pale thumb– not his own – gently stroked the skin over Micah’s strained knuckles, his sweaty palms clammy and sticky inside their tight fists. He tried to relax them.
Micah's eyes fluttered wider. His breathing deepened.
Someone was still holding him close, and now they were using their other hand – the one that wasn't hugging him close and keeping a firm hold on his hands – to smoothen his hair down. The hand was covered in long, Windham Cream-coloured sleeves.
Micah watched all of it with vacant eyes. He felt sticky.
A bead of sweat trickled down his neck, and it was only then Micah noticed how sweaty he was. But he wasn’t feeling particularly hot or cold — just scared. And, maybe, a little thirsty. His limp head rested easy on the hard-but-soft pillar.
Glancing around, he saw he was on the floor of his bedroom. The oversized quilt from the Strongmen laid not far from him, the limp blue covers trailing off the edge of his rumpled bed to the ground. Not to mention; the glass floor lamps by his bed glowed a soft hue. Everything in his bedroom was basked in their gentle, amber warmth. For a moment, Micah closed his weary eyes.
When he did finally look up, however, he found the Lightbender looking back at him.
Their faces were a mere few inches apart from one another – the Lightbender’s nose was almost touching his forehead – and Micah could feel the faintest ghost of his guardian’s breath against his head. For a moment, Micah didn’t believe what he was seeing.
His blood ran cold.
The silence couldn't have stretched on for too long, because the Lightbender cleared his throat – almost like a nervous gesture. He didn’t loosen his hold on Micah. He softly asked, “How are you feeling?”
Words died in Micah’s mouth. All the remaining moisture mysteriously evaporated in his mouth. He inwardly sputtered and tripped over every thought he had in his clouded head. What were you supposed to say after your guardian found you flopping on the floor of your bedroom like a fish out of water, breathless and spiralling into something nothing short of unpleasant?
Hot shame burned in Micah’s face. He couldn’t believe the Lightbender saw him acting like this. Oh God, what was he going to think? Was he going to tell someone? Was he going to tell Mr Head? Would he get kicked out of the circus?
I should– I should apologise.
He didn’t even know where he should even begin – the tight ball in his stomach was coiling so fast, and he could feel bile rise to his throat. A thousand versions of I’m sorry and please don’t leave me alone and I’m so sorry for bothering you flashed through him.
But when Micah opened his mouth, he began to sputter and choke, his thick tongue limp. All that came out was a tight, wheezy gasp of air. He began to convulse. The violent force of his fit blew him to sit up straight, a stark rip away from the warmth of the Lightbender’s arms. Micah could feel explosive blasts of dry sandpaper scraping their way up his throat and gutting him up from the inside, the vingarish blanch making his eyes water.
When the Lightbender merely shifted them slightly to rub circles into Micah’s back, shame only burned deeper in him.
Cough. Cough. I’m sorry. Cough. He couldn’t even breathe properly. Choke. Micah coughed and tripped on his own thoughts, and all the while not a single word came out of him sounding right. It was all just garbled garbage. Cough.
I’m – Cough. Gasp.
— Really — Choke. Cough.
Sorry. Cough. Cough.
He felt the Lightbender continue to look at him. Was that concern within the furrow of his brow? Were his lips pressed tight, words unwilling to be said – because he was speechless? Cough. Was it something else, something more painful to bear? To hear? The grey of his guardian’s behold bore a shameful bullet into Micah. Cough. Cough. He wondered, under his guardian’s watchful gaze, if perhaps the Lightbender was regretting ever adopting him.
A kid like him, prone to nightmares. Cough.
Micah’s throat was sucked dry. He turned away, shoulders continuing to jerk with his fit.
The Lightbender must think him silly now; almost 11 years old – and still having night terrors. Micah’s lips wobbled as he gently tugged free of the Lightbender’s grasp to wipe at his tear-stricken face. He sniffled into his pyjama sleeves. And it’s not as though they had known each other for long, it had barely been a month since Grandpa Ephraim had –
Since he left him and…
Micah couldn’t finish that thought. As his fit calmed down, his darkening vision swam, and he found himself swaying, wobbling on the jelly hands he leaned on. His eyes drooped without his permission, hair falling over his half-lidded eyes. His shallow breaths were unnaturally loud in his own ears.
“Come, now,” A hand gently grasped his shoulder, another landing lightly over his chest to guide him back to lean on the Lightbender’s chest.
He wanted nothing more than to pull himself from the Lightbender’s arms.
And maybe find a place to bury himself forever.
…But it’d been weeks since he’d been hugged like this.
This wasn’t like those crushing bear hugs he sometimes got when Firesleight saw him after performances, or a friendly slap on the shoulder from Geoffrey whenever the ticket-taker spotted him in the crowd.
This was something else. Micah had no idea how to describe it – not even to himself. It wasn’t quite like the usual goodnight squeezes Grandpa Ephraim used to give him whenever they finished a movie marathon, nor quite similar to the pecks they gave each other before Micah went off for school. The Lightbender hugged like – like he meant it, like he was trying to envelope Micah in his arms, trying to shield him from something he couldn’t see. It wasn’t smothering like Firesleight’s hugs. Nor as fleeting as Geoffrey’s version of one.
This was… This was very new.
But Micah didn’t know why he was even thinking of this. He felt a lot like he was watching time move around him from outer space. Everything moved weirdly, as though he was breathing underwater, except the oxygen still worked its way into his lungs and his toes felt less tingly in the waves of almost-nothingness.
He was also very cold. The Lightbender’s embrace felt so good, and Micah found his body refusing to move. Begrudgingly, he found himself relaxing even further in his guardian’s arms. The Lightbender seemed agreeable with this arrangement – he wrapped his arms firmly around Micah’ pyjama-clad ones, and that only magnified the heavy stone in Micah’s gut.
Time passed generously as they sat on the floor of Micah’s bedroom, the bed-side lamps keeping vigilant over them.
The Lightbender smoothed the hair on the top of his head, gently rocking them both. And all the while Micah stared at his own nails, nails streaked with something dark and red beneath the whites, and he tried not to let himself go to the alluring almost-nothingness that threatened to swallow him up.
But after a while, Micah began to come back to himself.
As he laid in the Lightbender’s arms, the cold shiver of the air biting into the exposed sides of his neck, Micah began to realize the Lightbender hadn’t spoken a word at all since he started coughing. The seconds of silence from his guardian stretched out between them, and Micah couldn’t bear it anymore. He hunched his shoulders in, eyes fixated to the opposite wall of his bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. His voice was so, so small.
Above him, the Lightbender made a hmm sound. Micah didn’t know what to make of it. The arms around him tightened just a tiny bit, and he braced himself to be let go. (Maybe, it really was starting to feel a bit awkward to be held and rocked slowly, like a newborn baby in his cradle. But it also felt impossibly good too.)
Yet, the Lightbender did none of that. Micah heard the soft rustle of hair above his head, and he imagined his guardian cocking his head to the side, messy blonde hair sticking up in all directions, one eyebrow raised as he often did whenever he was amused. “Whatever have you apologized for?”
Micah didn’t know where to even begin.
The Lightbender carried on in that soft voice, his recognizable and familiar lilt carrying through. “Has this happened before?”
Micah looked down to his hands, interlocked and sweaty as he played with his fingers. The Lightbender had stopped smoothening his head, leaving another warm arm to encompass him.
“No,” Micah said.
His own arms were trapped under the Lightbender’s embrace, and it was then Micah realised the Lightbender was dressed in a nightgown tonight. Which was weird, he thought the longer he stared at his guardian’s much-longer sleeves. Most days the Lightbender woke up before him and slept after he went to bed– Micah knew it because he rarely saw him eat breakfast at the same time in the Kitchen tent.
“Is… that so?” The Lightbender didn’t quite sound convinced. After that, he didn’t say anything for a while.
Micah continued to stare at his guardian’s flannel sleeves. He must’ve been getting ready to sleep after his midnight performance, or got woken up by the ruckus of his fall from the bed, Micah thought. He spared no time to even pick up a robe to cover himself. Micah could see his bare leg peek out from the edges of his long nightgown. The Lightbender was almost swaddling him, his long legs sitting awkwardly on the carpeted ground as his arms wrapped securely around Micah's tense body.
The realisation made the guilt in Micah multiply ten-folds. He wanted to be useful, to stay out of the way of all the magicians – he was supposed to fit in. Now, he’d caused a nuisance. And even worse, he had to bother the Lightbender to wake up and tend to him.
Maybe the Lightbender had misunderstood – or maybe he was pretending. Was this a test? To see if Micah was truly sorry for all of this?
He wrung his hands. “Um, I meant, that… I…”
The Lightbender waited patiently as he found his words. Micah licked his lips, cringing inwardly at the bitter mess on his mouth.
“I meant that, um, I’m – I’m sorry for disturbing you. And for waking you up, I mean.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop. “I just had a bad dream, but I’m okay now, so, um, I should probably go back to sleep. I feel better now, so I don’t think this will ever happen again, and– and I won’t bother you next time. I’ll try not to. Uh, I, um…”
At the Lightbender’s silence, he hastily added, “I won’t do it again. I’m really sorry.”
Micah waited with bated breath for the Lightbender to say something. His entire arms were tensed up, and he trained his eyes onto the edges of his pyjama pants. With the way they were sitting he couldn’t see the Lightbender’s face.
He couldn’t keep quiet about one more thing. “Please, please don’t tell anyone. Especially not Mr Head, please I’m begging just don’t–”
“Micah.” The Lightbender said softly.
His heart skipped.
Gently, the Lightbender moved them until they both sat on the ground opposite each other, with Micah’s knees locked and folded beneath him while his guardian sat cross-legged. For the first time that night, he got a clear look at the Lightbender’s face. He’d imagined him scowling or with an annoyed flare of a nostril, but now…
His guardian’s hair was somehow even messier than it was during the day, with strands of ashy-blonde hair sticking up on one side. Both of his nightgown’s collars were bent the wrong way. And as he stared at the state of the Lightbender, he was also looking back at Micah, grey eyes sharply assessing the state of his puffy eyes, bleeding lip and scratched neck.
His guardian started again, slowly this time. “You have had a very long night, and I think you need some rest more than anything, don’t you agree?”
Micah didn’t realise he was waiting for an answer. He continued staring at a very specific strand of hair on the top of his guardian’s head. It wasn’t until the Lightbender gently touched his shoulder that he flinched, violently.
At the flicker of alarm on his guardian’s face, Micah hastily said, “I-I’m sorry.”
The Lightbender kept his voice soft and low, almost as though he was afraid of frightening Micah – like he was some feral animal that needed cooing and beckoning to go back to the nest. He kept his hands where Micah could see them. “Micah, are you sure you are feeling better?”
“Yes.” He didn’t blink.
The Lightbender frowned.
Micah’s hands wrung into tiny, sweaty fists again, and he shifted about on his strained knees. He’s angry, a part of him chittered nervously, what did I do wrong?
Mentally, Micah tried to recount if he had done or said anything offensive or rude in the past few moments, mind fighting with the oncoming fog to understand repressed blanks in memory. He frowned down at the ground in front of him, eyes searching for a clue of what went wrong.
“I want to assure you,” The Lightbender said slowly, eyeing the way Micah wrung his clammy hands and smeared the drying blood around. “I am not angry at you. Nor do I plan to tell the manager about tonight’s events.”
“Oh.” Micah didn’t dare to breathe a sigh of relief. “Um, thank you.”
The Lightbender hesitated. “But, about… Before that, I do not want you to think—”
“ You’re having a secret meeting without me ?!”
Micah winced at the shrill, squawking voice by his ear. He heard the Lightbender groan as a large parrot swooped in, landing not-so-gracefully on the bed beside them. Chintzy casted one beady yellow eye at the both of them, not even bothering to hide her Sherlock-esque inspection.
“Why’re you sitting on the floor?” She bobbed her head up and down, almost as if to motion to their entire bodies seated on the carpeted bedroom floor. She jerked her head to face Micah. “And why is your lip bleeding?”
Micah quickly wiped at his lip with his sleeve.
“Chintzy,” the Lightbender said with exasperation, “should you not be in your perch?”
She waddled closer to him, sticking her head up impossibly higher to glare at him through on yellow eye. “And shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“As you can see, I am discussing important matters right now.”
“On the floor?” She stuck her head up to the Lightbender, angrily shaking her tail feathers as she paced around on the bed. “And you tell me not to pick food off of it. Typical!”
The Lightbender crossed his arms. “As you can see, we are not eating off of it at this very moment.”
“ Hmph .” Chintzy waddled away from him. But in doing so, she was headed towards Micah's side, and he didn't miss her scrutinizing gaze as she judged him. “You still haven't said why your lip was bleeding. It also looks like Bibi mauled your neck. Wait!” She flapped her wings frantically, “don't tell her I said that!”
The Lightbender spared an apologetic glance at Micah. Chintzy was easy to fool sometimes, but once she bit on a matter – she’d refused to let go. Micah learnt that the hard way before.
He nodded back in understanding, trying to muster a small smile. He wasn’t sure if it worked, if it looked less like a wince and more like a normal smile.
“It’s okay… I needed to sleep soon, anyways.” Micah said, still reaching for a smile that looked like a smile. Slowly, he tried to stand up, gripping the sides of the bed’s blanket with shaky hands as he dragged his bent knees out from beneath him. But his muscles spasmed painfully, sore and over-used from earlier, and he yelped as the blanket slipped from his grip.
The Lightbender jerked forward, catching Micah in his arms before he hit the floor.
“Oof!”
Micah, red-faced, scrambled out of the Lightbender's hold. Chintzy waddled closer to them and muttered, “this one failed standing school.”
“That's not even a thing!” Micah exclaimed, embarrassed and angry. He struggled to sit up straight.
“ You won't know because you never went to it!”
“Now you're just making it up!”
Chintzy’s chest feathers puffed out. “I’m not a liar.”
“I never called you one.” Micah pushed himself to a semi-comfortable position.
“It sounded like it!”
“Well, maybe you heard it wrong!” He turned to glare at her.
The parrot shifted on her feet, ready for a glaring contest, but just as she opened her beak, she suddenly closed it. Chintzy cocked her head, waddling closer to Micah’s face. Her bright red tail feathers waved threateningly behind her big body. “You were crying.”
“No I wasn't.” Micah quickly said, wiping at his face.
“ Hah! Liar!”
“Oh, you–”
“ I think,” The Lightbender scooped Chintzy up to his chest, ignoring her squawks of ‘ not my tail feathers!’ (he wasn't even touching them), “it is best if we all retire to bed.”
This time, Micah accepted the Lightbender’s extended hand to stand on wobbly knees. He gently let him down on the bed's soft mattress.
“Wait a moment, please.”
Before the Lightbender explained further, he promptly turned around, his back turned towards his ward. However, instead of returning to his bedroom, he continued to stand at the side of the bed, a few feet away from Micah. Whispers of discussion floated between his guardian and messenger.
It was unintelligible, but Micah thought his guardian may have been using his magic to muffle their words, because Chintzy was never one to use her indoor voice. But it didn’t make it anymore bearable. He didn’t like being ignored – it was a part of himself that he hated, a slice of himself that felt like a piece of discarded furniture when people, like Aunt Gertrudis, pretended he didn’t exist. But he’s not her, he tried to rationalise with himself.
A bitter, small part of Micah wanted to toss the blanket over himself and go back to sleep (however futile that attempt might be). Another bigger part of him had to resist the urge to bite his fingernails.
He squirmed in his place on the bed, staring down at the dry blood under his nails. Tentatively, he touched the sides of his neck, wincing at the fresh, long cuts that ran from jaw to collarbone.
He looked back down at his fingers.The wounds weren’t freshly bleeding, so, maybe that meant something good. At least.
He rested both palms, flat, on the sides of his neck. They stung like little ants were biting him.
Maybe he should just wash his neck with water. And then go back to bed.
But by then, the Lightbender must have won whatever discussion he was having, because the loud womp-womp of wings beating the air jerked Micah out of his thoughts. Chintzy flapped out of the room, muttering mutinously.
When the Lightbender turned back around, Micah swallowed nervously. The warm amber lighting from the bedside lamps drew soft shadows on his guardian’s face, and in the thermal glow, it made grey eyes seem almost a warm brown. Micah’s clammy hands wrung around each other, all thoughts about washing them clean of blood wiped from his mind.
After a few moments, the Lightbender straightened his back, and he raised his hands – almost as if to adjust the lapels of his leather coat – before he realised he wasn’t wearing it. He dropped them. But just as swiftly, he motioned to the space beside where Micah sat on his bed. “May I?”
Micah moved to make space for his guardian, and he felt the bed dip as he sat down. For a few seconds, neither said anything as they stared at the ground.
It was mostly Micah that did the staring. He could feel the Lightbender’s eyes on him.
“Micah,” The Lightbender said softly, breaking the silence, “what happened?”
This time, he knew he couldn’t lie. He’d already lied once tonight – and he knew the Lightbender saw right through it.
Micah didn’t move his eyes from the ground. “I think I had a nightmare. ‘S all.” He shrugged.
He couldn’t see the Lightbender, but he guessed he was processing this.
“I… See.”
Micah’s eyes wandered to his own hands. At the dried grime and blood stuck under his nails.
Hesitation. “Earlier, when I asked if you’ve had experienced a similar… episode before,” Micah frowned at that word (what did that mean?), “I was also referring to your time before, with… Your grandfather.”
At the mention of him, Micah’s chest ached. He drew himself closer, pulling his legs up to hug them. He felt the bed dip as the Lightbender slid closer to him. But he didn’t reach out to touch him like he thought he might’ve. His guardian stayed a respectful few inches from him, watching him carefully.
Suddenly, Micah felt as his breath caught, a shallow hiccup in the thrum of the rhythm. When he opened his mouth, his exhale was shaky; fragile and broken. He closed it. Instead, he wiped at his eyes again.
“Look at me, Micah.” The Lightbender said softly.
Micah bit his lip.
“Look at me. Please.”
Trembling, Micah shifted his body to face the Lightbender entirely, because Grandpa Ephraim taught him good manners meant no one should have to ask you more than twice to finish something minor. But, suddenly, looking his guardian in the eye seemed like a tremendous task.
When he finally met the Lightbender’s eyes, his own flicked away. His guardian waited patiently as he found the strength to make them stay.
The Lightbender’s gaze was soft as he took in Micah’s tear-stricken face, his neck. Micah saw his eyes linger on the scratches along his neck, and he wished he had cooled their angry red marks with water before. His guardian had been so patient with him thus far. Micah had to give something back, even if it was small. Especially since it was his fault this happened.
“I’d never… Experienced this before, back when I used to live with my grandpa,” he murmured. “I guess, I’d started having all these bad dreams, only after…” He trailed off.
His guardian nodded understandingly. For a moment, he didn’t say anything else, his eyes casted to Micah’s hands. His ward couldn’t read minds, but he could guess he was having deep thoughts about this revelation.
Even though he’d only been living with the circus for a month, everyone had been trying so hard to make him feel welcome. The presents he’d received – the oversize patchwork quilt from the Strongmen, the miniature bookcase the Inventor gifted him that he used for a bedside table, the glass floor lamps, his chest of drawers… They’d all been lovely gifts, and they helped to remind Micah of all the friends that surrounded him whenever he woke up to a new day, regardless of how much his heart squeezed at the realisation his grandpa wasn’t here anymore.
The Lightbende was studying him, voice still on that soft, soothing train of timbre, “Would you like a hug?”
Micah wasn’t sure if he managed to hide the relief in his voice. “ Yes.”
The Lightbender didn’ move, so Micah took it as a sign he was letting Micah decide what he’s comfortable with and what he’s not. He carefully leaned in, covering the short distance between them, and made a tiny, incoherent sound when his face connected with his guardian’s nightgown’s front. Micah sighed, and threw caution into the wind. He wraps his arms around the Lightbender’s torso. He lightly smooshed his face into the Lightbender’s chest, accidentally taking a full whiff of oakmoss from his guardian’s favourite bar soap under his sleeping wear.
Micah tried to keep the hug brief, because this was the Lightbender – an immortal with probably a list of duties to attend to in the morning – and he didn’t want to keep him from his well-deserved rest. But to his surprise, when he pulls away, the Lightbender’s hand removed itself from the back of Micah’s neck, where it had lightly settled without him realising.
Micah settles back fully on the bed, feeling a thousand times better from the whiplash of emotions and events. He gave his guardian a wobbly smile. This time, it was genuine. “Thank you.”
The Lightbender dipped his head. “There is no need for you to thank me. However,” He motioned to Micah’s neck, “might you want me to accompany you to visit Rosebud?”
Micah considers hiding under his bed to hide his embarrassment, but he suspects that might make the Lightbender rethink his evaluation of his mental state of mind. “I don’t think it needs, uh, medical attention?”
“It might be best to play it safe. It seems swollen.”
“Oh.” Micah reached up with a hand to rub at it. Maybe the Lightbender was right, but maybe he wasn’t, but his neck felt mostly numb now.
His guardian stood up from the bed, causing the bed to un-dip. “Don’t touch it, it might get infected. I will change out of my sleeping wear before we go.”
Micah quickly moved to stand up too. “I could go myself, I know the way.”
The Lightbender stopped on his way out of the room, eyes softening when he turned back. He gave a small smile. “I know. But it would ease my mind to know you didn’t get hurt too badly.”
Micah’s chest slowly began to unclench itself as the Lightbender left his bedroom, his nightgown sweeping the ground just as his leather coat usually does. As he reached to change out of his pyjamas too, he heard the familiar squawking of Chintzy’s flurry of questions.
A short while later, the Lightbender’s muffled voice floated through the entrance of his bedroom. “Ready?”
“Yes!” Micah buttoned the last of his coat.
Together, they left the tent of The Man Who Bends Light, chilly air biting at their noses, the voices and laughter of children floating through the twilight, none aware of the two walking through the midway; both headed together toward Rosebud’s bright green wagon.