Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
But despite my weight, he easily places me down on the ground, my slippers sinking slightly into the dew-damp earth. We’re so close here that I suck in my breath, suddenly feeling too shy to meet his gaze. How odd it is that someone can go from feeling like your friend to feeling like a stranger and so quickly.
“The barn?” he murmurs, and I finally meet his eyes. They’ve always been dark, the deepest shade of brown, but in the shadows, they are coal black and brimming with an intensity that I can’t read.
I nod, and he grabs my hand, taking it in his, leading me silently along the side of the house and across the back meadow, the grass now short and stiff from a dry August. We don’t have a working farm anymore, not since my father passed, so we lease out the fields to neighboring farmers to use. The red barn that sits amongst leafy oaks remains neglected, though the two of us used to use it all the time as a secret clubhouse of sorts, a place where we could escape our families.
“Is everything alright?” I ask him quietly as we approach the barn. I don’t think I’ve ever come here in the middle of the night, and the half-opened doors remind me of a jaw about to shut. I suppress a shudder, not liking where my thoughts are going.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives my hand a squeeze, his skin damp now and not as warm as it first was.
Brom has always been a moody boy. I think that’s why we’ve gotten along so well. I’m prone to similar tempers, so I know when he needs space and time to work through things. Often, we’ll just sit together in silence, enjoying each other’s company but letting each other be lost in our own thoughts.
Tonight feels different though. There’s something unsettled and tense about him, more so than normal, and the early September air feels thick and electric.
Change is coming.
For a moment, I close my eyes, my body wanting to become one with the cool breeze, to join with the natural world and uncover its secrets, but I remember what I had promised my father. My inner witch is to stay buried.
But I’d already broken that promise years ago.
Brom walks to the barn, his strides long, and pauses at the door, poking his head in. With his near-black hair, he disappears into the dark chasm of the building. Then he nudges one door open with his shoulder, making it creak like rattling bones.
He pulls me inside. It’s pitch-black for a moment until my eyes adjust. There are several holes in the roof, gaping wounds that show the night sky, and moonlight filters through, illuminating old bales of hay and rusted tools piled in corners. The smell of hay brings me back to when I used to help trample it down for my father, and tears threaten the corners of my eyes. I blink them away in surprise. How sneaky grief can be.
Brom leads me over to the hayloft ladder. “Think this will still hold me?” he asks over his shoulder as he drops my hand and places both of his on the sides of the ladder, one boot bouncing lightly on the bottom rung, testing it.
“I’m fairly certain the last time we were up there, we were both half the size,” I point out. Brom was a stocky kid growing up, and now that he’s eighteen, an adult, he’s tall and broad-shouldered, equipped with muscle that wasn’t there before, suiting his nickname of Brom Bones. I’ve been trying hard not to notice these manly changes in him, but perhaps I haven’t been trying hard enough.
“I’ll go first,” he says, seemingly satisfied with the condition of the ladder, and goes up slowly. The wood groans under his weight but doesn’t break.
He reaches the top and pulls himself up onto the loft, then turns around and offers his hand, beckoning me to come. “Come on, Daffy,” he says, using the nickname he had given me when I was young. Daffodil.
I take in a deep breath and follow him. My dressing gown is long, and I have to bunch it in my hand, and my slippers feel thin against the rungs, but I manage to climb just like I once did.
He grabs my hand and pulls me the rest of the way until the scattered hay is digging into my knees and I’m flipping over onto my seat. I give the loft a cursory glance. The hole in the roof above is large and ragged, and the moon illuminates what we used to call our secret meeting place: the bales we used to sit on, an apple crate stacked with molding books, a chipped tea set that is probably home to creepy crawlies. Somewhere in these ruins of our childhood is a deck of tarot cards from when I used to practice on Brom. That was the promise I had broken to my father. I don’t show my meager magic around my mother or anyone else in town, but I have shown it to Brom. I can’t keep anything from him, even though it often feels like he’s keeping everything from me.