The farmhouse is warm and cozy. Hand-stitched crazy quilts draping over the sagging sofa and rough-hewn chairs. A wide, hand-planked wooden table with a bowl of field flowers in the center.
There are five people who live in this house—two parents and three boys. The youngest, not quite eleven, still attends Obedience School. The older boys are thirteen and seventeen, and they both work the farm.
The junk man’s daughter knows this family well. She has sat with them at their dinner table as they ate. She has listened at the foot of the boys’ shared bed as their mother or father took turns snuggling in and reading the stories from ancient copies of illegal books. (Books with numbers and diagrams. Books with stories and histories. Books with plants and microbes and far-off galaxies and sliced-open stars. Old volumes. Carefully rebound. Remnants from another world. The family regards them as precious.) She has peered over the mother’s shoulder as she worked through the arithmetic of farming, weeping as the numbers didn’t add up. She has lain on the floor while they made music in the living room with homemade instruments. They never see her. They have no idea.
The oldest boy, Jonah, seventeen years old and taller than his father, has taken to building contraband telescopes in the backyard. The junk man’s daughter has stood near him as he peered into the sky in the darkest hours of the night, her breath clouding before her face like ghosts. She has listened as he muttered to himself—rattling names that she has never heard—Antares, Canis Majoris, Andromeda.
She has peered over his shoulder. She has watched him fuss over his own charts. She has listened to his whispery voice. He has no conscious memory of her.
And yet.
He wears a locket around his neck. He doesn’t know where it came from. He wears it anyway. She has watched him wrap his fingers around the locket and hang on tight. She has felt how their breathing in and their breathing out becomes synchronized. Noticed moments when he speaks into the darkness. A question, always.
There are moments when she almost answers back.
But there is no Jonah this morning. And no Isaac and no Benjamin. There is only the voice of the Vox, and its announcer’s excitement reaching a fever pitch.
“Can you turn that thing down, my Sparrow?” the junk man slurs, though she can tell that he is still dreaming. No one can turn down a Vox. And dismantling them sets off an alarm.
Whole families have disappeared following Vox infractions.
“I’ve already done it, Papa,” she says. “Sleep.” And her voice, heavily laden with intention, does what she hopes it would do. The junk man sinks into unconsciousness. He will not rouse before noon.
“HE IS HERE, CITIZENS!” the announcer nearly screeches. His voice is hoarse. He trembles and panics. “THE MINISTER IS HERE! ALL HAIL THE MINISTER!”
The junk man’s daughter, the Sparrow, the child that never lived, the guttersnipe, the tramp, the trash-spawn, the dirty thief, the tart-in-training, and every other name that has been assigned to her in her young life, presses her hands against the glass. The family may notice her fingerprints. She hopes they do.
The Vox scrambles a bit, static scratching the quiet world. The Minister has no magic, of course, but he has spent enough of his overly extended life in the presence of magic. And it interferes with radio signals. His voice stutters and halts. It is far away. It is in a cloud.
The girl holds her breath.
“Are you listening?” the Minister says through the Vox. His voice is tender. Loving. Stern. And underneath it all, terribly, terribly afraid.
The junk man’s daughter nods.
The Minister clears his throat. “It has come to my attention, my beloved children, that . . .” His voice trails off. He clucks his tongue. Even his bodiless voice seems to shake its head. “Well. It seems so crazy to say it out loud.”
A bugle, very far away, plays the anthem. Its long, sad notes slide under the Minister’s voice.
“Have I not loved you, my children? Have I not cared for you? Have I not kept your bellies full and your wounds healed and your homes safe from harm?”
His voice, she can hear, is amplified, not by the radio, but by magic. Whose magic, she has no idea. The last remnants from the depleted magic children—dying now, if they aren’t dead already. The Sparrow shivers, thinking of them.
“Nonetheless, I have heard reports of . . . oddness. Here and there. Things that have no right to be happening. It is astonishing to me that there could be, somewhere in this nation, an unlicensed magician. Laughable, even. It is beyond ludicrous to believe that such a level of flagrant rule-breaking could exist here, in this most blessed nation.”
The junk man’s daughter’s heart gives a little thrill. She presses her lips lightly against the glass. Gives it a kiss. The house shivers.
“And yet, the facts prove otherwise. An unlicensed magician now walks among us. But not for long. Not if we can help it. You and me together.”
His voice trembles. He worries. He yearns. He fears. He is beside himself. The girl is moved with compassion.
“To you, my beloved citizens, I say this: Watch. Observe. Report. Even small things. I am relying on you.”
She loves the house. She loves the family. She loves the Minister too. She is suffocating from so much love. Her very skin is stretched tight with it, like a balloon about to burst.
“And to you—little magician.” His breath rattles.
