Chat is very, very different from Mino’s stepfather.

  Somehow, against all odds, she did find the man only two days after leaving the Underground. Most people in that little town didn’t recognize her, but one lady did. She sneered at Mino, told her she wasn’t surprised that Mino came crawling back for help. Mino didn’t know what she meant until the lady said that Mino’s stepfather said good riddance to her back five years ago. Five years ago! Mino had been away from home for five years? Where had she been? She knows now that she was living with Bee and Wilder, but at the time, she had been very confused.

  The lady made fun of her for “tying flowers in her hair,” but Mino went where the lady pointed and found a large house with broken windows and crooked steps. A woman was outside looking after two children, and Mino could hear more young voices from within the house.

  The woman looked at Mino suspiciously. Mino raised her hands. “Does a man live here?” She asked, but the woman only rolled her eyes.

  “We don’t talk like that around here,” she said. “Get gone, I don’t have anything for charity these days. Not even if you make yourself look cute.” She eyed Mino’s flowers suspiciously.

  Mino’s words didn’t float in the air up here. No one had been able to understand her.

  She tried to gesture, she pointed inside. She made a shape with her arms, like big. Big person. The woman just watched her and shook her head. She had a mean nose and hard eyes. Her skin was weathered even though she was young. She was thin everywhere except her belly.

  Mino tried again. She clasped her hands together like she was praying and shook them a bit. Please, please.

  Some kind of recognition seemed to grow in the woman’s eyes and she looked at Mino in a new way. It wasn’t a better way.

  “Myles was telling me about some brat he sponsored,” she said. “Wouldn’t talk to him. Stubborn little thing, didn’t listen. That you?”

  Mino shrugged, tilted her hand like maybe. She pointed to her head, then crossed her arms in an X.

  “You wrong in the head?”

  Mino shook her head in exasperation.

  The woman sighed, looked at the kids who were drawing in the dirt. She stepped away from them and pulled Mino along harshly.

  “Look, kid,” she said. “I don’t have no extra money, no clothes, no food that I can give you. I have four of Myles’ bastards and two of my own to look after, and that’s that. So why are you still here?”

  Mino pulled her arm away from the woman. She dropped to the ground herself and wrote, Myles.

  “So he is your daddy?” She asked. “You wanna talk to him or something?” Mino nodded.

  “He won’t talk to you,” the woman said doubtfully. “He won’t humor any of your handwaving. I’m only doing this much because I really don’t wanna fold the laundry.”

  Amnesia, Mino wrote. The woman tilted her head. “Is that a name or something? I don’t know her.”

  Scowling, Mino resentfully wrote: I’m wrong in the head. No memories.

  “Oh.” The woman seemed taken aback. “Uh, well, that’s. Odd. Did you get thunked?”

  It was then that Myles himself showed up.

  He was short. Overweight when the rest of his family was small. Quiet, with a cruel look in his eye. His hair was dark and straight and it fell in his eyes. His nose was flat, ears round. His lips were full and chapped. He had a scar on the corner of his mouth.

  Mino didn’t even want to wave, really.

  He looked between Mino and the woman. “Who the hell is this?” he asked.

  “Your whelp,” she said. He looked back at Mino.

  I don’t need to be here, Mino realized.

  Mino didn’t need to know anything from this man at all. None of this, none of this life was worth knowing about. Except, maybe, one thing.

  Mino swept away the words in the ground and wrote, Did I have any friends?

  “Is that all you’re gonna say to me?” Myles asked. Mino nodded. He looked at her. She looked at him and felt herself get colder and harder inside. She wanted to get out of this place. She didn’t want to let it make her hard inside, like that lady, like this woman, like Myles. Mino jabbed at the ground where her words were written.

  “Neighbor boy was sweet on you ‘til you kicked him in the face,” Myles said. Mino didn’t believe that. “I never saw you with anyone else.” He was lying, Mino could see that he was lying. He had this little self-satisfied smirk on his lips. She stood and stomped her foot, frustrated.

  “Still not talking?” Myles asked. Mino opened her mouth and tried to scream. She hissed air through her throat until it ached. She looked—no, she glared at Myles. She pointed at the ground again. Did I have any friends?

  “I give you one thing,” he said, “You’re gonna keep on asking for more. You left my house, I told you you can’t walk on back inside. Not even your mother would take you back if she was still here.”

  “I know,” Mino signed, and rage flashed across his face. He shoved her to the ground. Mino landed, hard, and a cloud of dust poofed around her. She coughed, stunned by the impact.

  “You lived this long,” Myles said. “Go back wherever you came from.” He turned and walked into the house. He slammed the door hard.

  Mino looked up at the woman. “You heard him,” she said. Mino looked at the children. One of them was pale, like this woman. The other was dark like Mino. He could have been nine or ten. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, but carried on drawing.

  She was not going to be able to take six children with her anywhere.

  She tried again to catch that boy’s eye, tried to forge even the barest hint of connection. He grabbed the little one’s hand and pulled them inside the house too.

  Mino wanted to cry. She got up again, balled her hands into tight fists, and stiffly walked away.

  So yes, Chat is very different. Composed even when distressed, clearly invested in doing good despite his mistakes. Mino suspects that he is the source of the big heart that Bee and especially Wilder have. Those two are her big brothers now, and a tiny part of her hopes that maybe Chat could be like a father to her, a good father that she’s apparently never had.

  But Mino has never seen Bee so angry.

  They leave the home with a spare magiscan, which Wilder carries. Chat tries to give them more, food and a variety of tools Mino doesn’t recognize or understand. Bee refuses all of it. He starts walking away, so Mino, Wilder, and Iris can only follow. None of them talk much even on the long ride between Brindle and Finlow. Occasionally Iris and Wilder tilt their heads together and mumble for a while, but that’s all.

  Mino watches Bee a lot in the days that follow, even as more and more flowers crowd around the edges of her narrowing vision. He’s scattered, easily losing track of what he’s doing, often lost in thought. He tugs on his bangs, mutters vague things that Mino can’t see or hear. He shuts himself in his room for long hours, and Mino suspects that he’s examining the magiscan that Chat gave to them. Chat had built two or three modeled off of the original, and while he said they aren’t all perfect, this one must be functional enough for Bee to be interested in.

  Iris doesn’t visit very much anymore, busy with her job. This means that Wilder can’t see her as often, since he doesn’t like leaving Mino alone while Bee is in his room. One day Mino decides she’s had enough and pushes Wilder out the front door, closing it behind herself.

  “Go see Iris,” Mino says. “I am going to go talk to some neighbors!”

  Wilder glances up, probably thinking about Bee.

  “He’s a big boy and I’m a big girl,” Mino says. “Everything will be fine.”

  Wilder shakes his head with a little laugh. “You should not be the one reassuring me,” he says. He looks as though he wants to say more, but then he closes his mouth.

  “See you for dinner!” Mino replies. She turns and walks up the hill. She’s never been to the very top of Finlow before—at least, she doesn’t remember being there.

  It’s not far, they live up high. Mino passes a few blocks of homes, pergolas weighted with flowering vines a common feature. She travels under the spreading branches of a fat, round tree which is heavy with slightly glowing fruit. As she walks along a low stone wall, she squishes her fingers into some of the moss clinging to it.

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  Things are changing, Mino is growing, flowers are sprouting. Will she be able to find her place here? Mino reaches down and slips her shoes off, then continues walking with them in one hand. She takes one careful step after another, feeling the cool ground meet the soles of her feet. How much more will things change? How much more will she change? How many more flowers can her body hold?

  Maybe one day Mino will simply be a walking bush of flowers with no skin left visible at all.

  Mino feels something brush against her ankle. She stops and looks at the ground. A single flower sprouts at her feet. That… wasn’t there before.

  Mino looks behind herself. Two more little blossoms wave up at her.

  Mino lifts her foot off of another flower, which springs into the air cheerfully. She sets that foot down carefully and lifts up her other foot. There is grass below it where there shouldn’t be any.

  Mino walks backwards up the hill, slowly. Every footstep spreads a little patch of life beneath her. Mino holds out her arms, turns them and examines them. She examines her torso and legs. There are no more flowers sprouting from her body anywhere that she can see.

  “That’s really cool,” a voice says.

  Mino looks around. She’s reached the top of the hill, where there is a clear field and a view unobstructed by any homes. A single old tree surrounded by a stone circle juts from the hill, reaching up into the air. Lev is sitting in the field, looking at her.

  Lev had been her friend before Mino lost her memories. They reconnected after Mino returned to the Underground, and he told her a little bit about what she used to do around Finlow. Even though she doesn’t remember much about him, he still treats her like they’ve been friends for years, and Mino truly feels like they have been. Even though he holds magical fire in his body, Lev is just a really chill guy.

  “I think I felt you coming up the hill,” Lev says. “Could you feel me?”

  Mino shakes her head. She walks over to sit next to him. As she does, she sits into a patch of wide-leafed grass and flower buds that wasn’t there just a moment ago. She looks around herself, a little perplexed.

  “You were probably focusing on your magic,” Lev says. “It’s coming in more.” Mino nods. For some reason, she finds it easy to be quiet around Lev. There isn’t as much pressure for them to talk when the silence is so comfortable.

  They sit together for a while, looking out across the Underground. It’s hard to see far even during the daytime. Mino has suspected for a while that there’s some kind of mist constantly clinging to the uppermost air of the cavernous space.

  “Do your flowers still hurt you?” Lev asks. Mino reaches up and pulls one as his eyes widen. “Wait, I didn’t mean you should—”

  Too late. Mino makes a mild face as the stem pulls. It’s uncomfortable, but not painful.

  “Not bad,” she says. “I think they’re trying to tell me that I don’t have a reason to pull them out. They’re part of me.”

  “Weird,” Lev says. “Can you feel these ones in the ground?”

  Mino looks down and picks one of the grass stems. She feels nothing. She looks back up and meets Lev’s eyes. He hums thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know how to ungrow them,” Mino realizes.

  “That’s alright, they can just hang out here,” Lev says. “Flowers belong outside. They’ll be happy.”

  Mino smiles, gleeful.

  “We could experiment, though,” Lev says, a devilish gleam in his eye. “Can I try burning them?”

  What a 180 degree turn! Mino shifts onto her knees and scoots to the side, holding her arms out like have at ‘em. It’s a good chance for her to learn more about how her magic works, and she can always make more flowers (probably).

  A spark snaps through the air and Lev’s fingers flicker into flame. He lowers the orange-yellow heat to the ground with an excited grin. A true pyromaniac.

  Mino leans forward, one hand on her knees and the other holding some flowers away from her eyes. The flames lick at the plants she made on the ground, but even after a few seconds, they don’t catch.

  “Huh,” Lev leans back and shakes his hand out. “I can’t burn them.”

  “Try to burn these ones?” Mino offers, leaning her head towards him.

  “What!? Mino, no way,” Lev laughs. Mino’s shoulders shake as she laughs silently with him.

  “Can you do any cool tricks with your magic?” Mino says.

  “Thought you’d never ask.” Lev looks at her, and his eyes are burning. Mino falls back, startled, then she laughs again.

  “Wait, what about this one,” Lev says. He holds out his hand and a small flame floats above his palm. He concentrates on it for a few moments, and slowly, it begins to twist and bend in peculiar shapes, even as it burns. Mino tilts her head, watching. Oh! She can see it now—the flame looks like a flower!

  Not just any flower. It looks like her flowers.

  “If you touch it, it won’t burn you,” Lev says, still focusing on the fire.

  Mino tilts her head forward before Lev can pull away. Some of the flowers around her face fall over Lev’s palm, but they don’t burn.

  “Mino!” Lev snatches his hand back. “You’re wild.” He shakes his head, a disbelieving smile on his lips.

  “You said it wouldn’t burn,” Mino explains. But then, she smells smoke.

  “Shit!” Lev’s eyes widen and he grabs some of Mino’s hair between two fingers.

  Mino looks down. “What happened?” she asks.

  “If you scare me, I can’t control it as well,” Lev complains. “I think some sparks fell on your hair.” He pulls his fingers away, and a little bit of Mino’s hair falls away with it.

  “Yeah, definitely singed it,” he grimaces. “Sorry, Mino.”

  She shrugs. “It was my fault,” she says. “I don’t really care about my hair, though.”

  Lev eyes her. “You really can’t do things like that, Mino,” he says.

  “I trust you.” She wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t. Lev shakes his head.

  “Even if you trust me, you still gotta be careful. I don’t have perfect control, you know. Just like you, I’m still learning things.”

  Mino touches the broken ends of her hair. “Burn more.”

  At this, Lev pauses.

  “Mino, are you okay?” She looks up at him. She wants to smile, but she shrugs instead. Lev doesn’t say anything more, just looks at her. They sit together for a while longer, quietly.

  “There’s too much to tell,” Mino says. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”

  Lev just listens and nods. Mino looks up. The air is getting darker, just a little. It will be dinnertime soon, but she’s not ready to go back home yet.

  “I’m trying to understand myself,” Mino says. “I’m trying to understand the people around me. I want to help people.”

  She shakes her head. “There’s a lot on my mind right now. I want to do something fun so that I don’t feel so heavy anymore.”

  Lev hums. “I think I know how you feel,” he says. “My parents are pushing me really hard right now to find an apprenticeship if I don’t want to take over for them. That’s why I like coming up here. It reminds me that there’s so much out there, and so many people to meet. So many new things to try.”

  Mino looks across the hillside. Twinkling lights are beginning to gleam across the Underground, at least as far as Mino can see. She wonders how Chat is doing all the way in Brindle. She wonders if any of those lights belong to Riel and Lonnie. She wonders if the light is on at home, if Bee is still in his room, if Wilder has gotten back from visiting Iris yet.

  Mino turns. “Burn my hair,” she says. “I can just cut it later.”

  “This is really your idea of fun?” Lev questions.

  “Isn’t it yours?” Mino shoots back.

  “Well, yeah, but you don’t gotta say it like that,” Lev laughs. “This is really dangerous.”

  “You’re gonna do it anyways.”

  “Yeah, I am.” Lev stands and holds out his hand. Mino grabs it, and he pulls her off the ground.

  Lev borrows (read: steals) a bucket from one of the nearest houses and fills it with water as quietly as he can. “Just in case,” he insists, though Mino trusts that he will be able to control his fire without any issue.

  Mino sits down in the dirt, and Lev lifts her hair as far away from her body as he can. She can feel the heat at her back, but she isn’t afraid. The heat begins to fade away. Then a wall of water slaps into her from behind, and she gasps as droplets plink into the earth. The chill soaks through her.

  She turns and glares over her shoulder at Lev. He’s grinning impishly, wooden bucket falling from his fingers. It hits the ground with a dull thunk.

  “You did that on purpose,” Mino says.

  “I was just putting the fire out,” he says innocently.

  “Liar!” Mino leaps at him and they wrestle. Mino grapples at Lev’s arms, trying to push him down, but his biceps flex and he’s stronger than her, he’s forcing her arms too far apart. He wraps his leg around her calf and she trips. They tumble, breathless and sweaty.

  “You okay?” Lev asks. Mino nods and grins.

  A sound echoes out from down the lane. Someone has come out from one of the homes. Mino and Lev scramble to their feet and run back towards the tree. Mino feels giddy and cold. It’s getting darker and darker, creeping closer to night.

  “I should get back,” Mino says. “My brothers are expecting me for dinner.”

  “Sure,” Lev says easily. “See you around.”

  “Thanks for the haircut. See ya!” Mino grabs her shoes and skips back home.

  When she walks in the door, Bee is at the oven, cooking. He turns to look at her. His face deadpans and all he says is: “What the hell, Mino.”

  Mino laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and then she’s crying a little and Wilder has joined them in the kitchen. Bee stops what he was doing and comes over to her and her brothers gather her in their arms.

  “Did someone hurt you?” Wilder questions her hotly. “What happened?” Mino shakes her head.

  “Promise me you’ll be okay,” she signs at Bee. Guilt surfaces in his eyes.

  “I’m okay, sweetheart,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” Mino nods.

  “Where did your hair go?” Wilder asks, baffled. He runs his fingers through the wet, singed-short strands.

  “Time for a haircut!” Mino says. Bee sighs and holds her close.

  “I’ll ask Iris to come over tomorrow,” Wilder says. “But Mino, you also need to promise us.” She looks up, confused.

  “Promise us you’ll be okay,” Bee says. “And if you’re not, you gotta talk to us.”

  “I’m okay,” Mino says, but Bee pushes her hands down, shaking his head.

  “Don’t bottle it up,” he says. “I’m a bad example. We’re here, we love you. Promise us. Promise me.”

  Mino blinks a few tears away. She hates thinking about bad things, and hates talking about them even more, but she knows this is important. “I promise.”

  Bee looks at Wilder, who gives him a small nod.

  “Come on, Mino mine,” Wilder says. “Let’s all finish making dinner together.”