Hazel hated magic. She didn’t like to talk about it. She didn’t like to acknowledge it existed. And as soon as she could, she ran far away from it. Now, she was only reminded of it when her mother called, like she did just now. Hazel checked the caller ID again and mentally willed the name to change to anyone else’s. As she hit the accept button, she braced herself against her own impatience.

            “Hi, Mom,” she said, trying to keep the annoyed sigh out of her voice.

            “Hazel! It’s been so long since we’ve heard from you, how are you doing?”

            “I’m fi-”

            “Great! Listen, your class’s alumni weekend is coming up in a few weeks. I think you should go. All of your siblings have gone to theirs, when can we expect you home?” her mother asked as she cut her off, and Hazel could practically see the dismissive wave of her hand on the other end of the line.

            She tried to ignore the anger building behind her eyes as she glared at a photo of a Cordelia on her wall, her thumb and pointer finger pinched across the bridge of her nose. “I’m not doing this with you, Mother. You know how I feel about that school.”

            “Well, I already told Caulfield you’ll be there.”

            Hazel threw her head back and swallowed a groan. “Then I guess you’ll have to disappoint Caulfield and tell them I’m not coming. They know damn well why.”

            Her mother started to say something, but she didn’t care to hear any more and ended the call. She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands as she angrily considered that hanging up on her mother wasn’t as cathartic for her as she’d hoped. After a few minutes of silence, she stood from her chair and pushed her short hair out of her face while brushing nonexistent dirt from her pants. Hazel headed outside to tend to her garden and try to forget about magic and her anger once again.

***

“Hazel! Hey, Hazel!” Sean ran up to her garden fence, a newspaper in hand.

            Hazel shielded her eyes from the early summer sun as she looked up at her neighbor. She wrinkled her nose as her eyes moved from his face to what was in his hands. “What the hell are you doing with a newspaper? They still print those?” Cicadas chirped lazily in the trees, a monotonous tone that always came with summer. Hazel enjoyed the sound of the bugs in the woods along her property, so long as they stayed out of her garden.

            He returned her unamused expression. “Ha ha, yes they still print newspapers, Hazel. Do you hate everything?”

            She rolled her eyes before gesturing at the paper with a garden trowel, tossing some soil off the end of it. “Pretty much. What’s so important about it anyway?”

            He grinned, stepping over her short, slightly yellowed picket fence to crouch in the dirt next to where she was working to plant geraniums. She made a noise of protest, attempting to shoo him away from her freshly dug holes like he was a nosy stray cat. “Have you no respect for my craft?”

            “Oh, quit it, Hazel. There aren’t even any seeds in these holes yet. Anyway, look at this,” he said, holding the newspaper out for her to read. She took the paper from him, squinting at the various headlines. When she looked up again with a raised eyebrow, Sean was beaming at her and she couldn’t help but compare his face to that of her goofy Labrador. She wrinkled her nose up once more in response to his enthusiasm, as if she were worried it could be contagious.

            “Which of these articles is so important that you’re squishing my garden to show me?” Hazel grimaced as she glanced at his feet, which were slowly sinking deeper into the moist, fresh soil.

            “There’s a garden and landscape contest. You have to enter,” he replied, his expression never faltering and his enthusiasm undeterred as he rolled forward onto the balls of his feet, his arms on his knees.

            Hazel frowned and looked around her small garden. She didn’t think it was anything fancy. She considered the swath of colors surrounding them, a pool of spring and summer in her backyard. She glanced at her vegetable garden on the other side of the yard, noticing that the cucumbers looked ready to harvest a bit earlier than expected. Hazel shook her head as she turned back to Sean. “I don’t think so, thanks for the suggestion though. Take a cucumber with you on your way out.” Before returning to her seeds, she shot Sean a thin smile that meant his time in her garden was up.

            “You’re kicking me out already?” he pouted and cocked his head to the side as he looked at her.

            “Well, at least I offered you a parting gift.”

            He chuckled as he stood and walked past Hazel to her vegetable garden, playfully tapping the brim of her hat as he passed. Hazel made a quiet noise of annoyance before looking up to watch him go. When he was back in his own yard she turned back to her gardening tools, picking up the trowel and getting back to work. She noticed he had left the newspaper neatly folded on top of her tool cart and pressed her lips together, studying the article that faced the sky. Show Us Who Has the Best Garden in Concord! It couldn’t hurt to consider it, though she wouldn’t give Sean the satisfaction of knowing that.

***

When the sun found its way to the horizon beyond the trees, Hazel stood up from her garden and headed inside. As she closed the glass sliding door to her living room behind her, her dog, Jasper, bounded up to her. She thought she heard Sean yelling something beyond her yard. Hazel crouched next to Jasper and started scratching his head as she looked out over the space between her and Sean’s yards. He was running in a circle just outside of her garden fence, arms outstretched towards something on the ground. She smiled as she watched him and stood up to go investigate what was going on.

            She stepped into her yard once more today and crossed her arms across her chest as she walked through her garden to the back fence. “Hey, Sean, what are you-” she began, cutting herself off as she looked down at what he was chasing. Her jaw dropped the slightest amount as she looked from the tiny creature on the grass back up to Sean and down again.

            “You can see them?” they said in unison, as Sean pointed a finger accusingly in her direction. They stared at each other in shocked silence before Hazel shook her head and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

            “Seriously? What are the odds…” she trailed off and tapped her finger against her chin as she opened her eyes again and stared down at the creature. She recognized it as the small, blue, mouse-like animals known as chisans to the magic users who can see them. Hazel looked back up at Sean and narrowed her eyes at him. He stood silently staring back at her with his arms hung defeatedly at his sides, eyes wide. “And you were going to tell me… when exactly?”

            “Tell you? When were you going to tell me? How was I even supposed to know you can use magic too?” he replied, exasperation laced through his voice as he threw his hands up.

            “Well- I don’t know, I guess you couldn’t have known.” The chisan had stopped running around the yard and instead sat staring at the two of them, his front paws up and his tiny nose twitching. “It doesn’t matter, anyway, I don’t use magic. I haven’t since high school. I suppose there was no reason for either of us to know.”

            “You went to a school for magic?”

            “You didn’t?” Hazel raised an eyebrow as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She still couldn’t believe Sean of all people was a magic user. It’s not like they’re rare, but she hadn’t really crossed paths with anyone since she left school. At least, not that she knew of.

            “No, I grew up here,” he replied, and gestured back towards his yard, sparing it only a quick glance. “My parents didn’t see the need to send me to one, so they taught me. I probably don’t know nearly as much as you,” he said, crossing his arms and looking down at the chisan. Sean swiftly glanced back up at her a moment later. “Did you say you don’t use magic?”

            Hazel grimaced. “No, I don’t. I swore it off. It’s not…worth the trouble.”

            “Why? I don’t know all that much, but what I do know just makes life easier.”

            Hazel scoffed and turned to face him fully, her anger towards magic on full display now. Her face flushed as she yelled, “It makes life easier? It killed my best friend.”

            Sean inhaled sharply and dropped his arms, eyes widening again as he stared at her. “I- what?”

            “Yeah. The school I went to taught us a dangerous spell before they felt the need to teach us the counterspell for a potential backfire. We were practicing alone, and I…I couldn’t save her.” Hazel looked down at her feet, avoiding his gaze. She noticed the chisan was still there and had moved closer to her sandal. He looked up at her with big eyes and she thought he looked almost…sympathetic. She blinked back tears and hoped Sean wouldn’t notice.

            They stood in silence for far longer than she would have liked. The quiet gave her mind too much room to dredge up old memories, ones she buried for a reason. Hazel enjoyed magic, at some point. But what was supposedly the best magic school in the country had also grown reckless, blinded by their own pride. Their students made no mistakes. No need to teach based on the typical curriculum, nothing bad had happened yet.

            “I- I’m so sorry,” Sean started, nervously scratching the back of his neck. “Can I…ask what their name was? That must have been awful for you.”

            “Her…name was Diana, and it was. I never dared do magic again after that. I’ll never forgive it or that school, especially after how they treated the whole incident. To perfect Caulfield, it was something to be swept under the rug.” She continued staring down at the chisan, who was now looking up at her with his little paws pressed together, and she remembered how intelligent they could be. Hazel didn’t dare look back up at Sean, she knew the expression he would undoubtedly have all too well. Pity was not something she wanted or needed.

            A sharp pinch on her palm brought Hazel back to reality and she realized she’d been clenching her hands hard enough that her nails drew blood. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. Good luck with…whatever you were doing with the chisan.” She turned away swiftly and walked back inside her house as Sean stood quietly watching her go, despite looking like he wanted to say something. When she got inside, she closed the sliding door behind her and fell against it. Jasper was eagerly awaiting her return and Hazel slid down the door to sit next to him on the floor. She dropped her head on her knees, no longer able to fight off the tears that had threatened to fall earlier.

***

Sean left her alone for a few days after that, but the chisan did not. And he brought friends. For about a week, they terrorized her garden and her poor plants, eating her vegetables and trampling her flowers. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get them to go away. What seemed like an entire colony was now living in her garden. They dug holes through her potting soil and ate the roots of plants she’d been growing for several seasons. Chisans destroyed what took years of work in the hot sun in a matter of days. As Hazel stood on her deck looking over her sad garden, she considered what to do. She didn’t want to talk to Sean about it, perfectly happy to go back to her magic-free life in what she thought was her magic-free neighborhood, but she supposed that just wasn’t an option anymore. Besides, they’d been good friends since she moved here, and he wouldn’t mind helping her, she reasoned with herself.

            As she stepped down from her porch to walk through the yard and towards Sean’s house, the chisans scattered from the path, squeaking and squealing as they ran. She brushed her hand over one of the last remaining coneflowers as she passed, reminiscing about her once lush garden. Hazel was about halfway through the yard when Sean walked up to her.

            “Oh, hey, Sean. I was just coming to find you…” she said, trailing off into an awkward silence.

            Sean nervously cleared his throat. “What’s up?” He looked past her towards her fence.

            “Listen, uh, I need your help. That chisan you were chasing apparently brought his friends. A whole lot of them. They’ve destroyed my garden and I need you to find out what drove them out of their own colony.”

            “Sure, Hazel. Just one problem, I can’t talk to animals,” Sean replied as he finally looked in her direction.

            Hazel stared at him, eyebrows drawn together. “What? I learned how to do it in school, your parents never taught you?”

            “I wasn’t even told that was possible, let alone taught how to do it,” Sean said, surprise written on his face. “But, if you know how to do it, can’t you?”

            Hazel sighed and crossed her arms, looking down. A chisan had followed her out of the garden and was now running circles around her sandals. “No, it’s a spell, not a skill.”

            Sean raised his hands and took a step back as he scrambled for what to say. “Uh, right, sorry. I didn’t know.”

            Hazel waved him off, trying to assuage his discomfort. “I know, don’t worry about it. Come with me, I’ve got some old books in the basement somewhere. You can have them. In return, look for the spell and get these damn magic rodents out of my garden.”

            “Why do you have old spellbooks?” Sean asked, jogging a bit to catch up with Hazel’s short but quick strides.

            “My mother packed them in one of my boxes without telling me. I’m the youngest of seven kids, they didn’t need them anymore and she thought maybe I’d pick magic up again at some point. Obviously, that never happened and will never happen, she just can’t respect that.”

            She threw open the gate and it bounced back as it swung around and hit the fence. The cracking noise it made on impact scared some of the chisans and they began swarming the garden path again, squealing in panic. Sean jumped back and continued with careful strides.

            “Why didn’t you just get rid of them?” Sean asked.

            Hazel shrugged. “I never really thought about it, I guess. I was so mad when I found them, and now I just forget that I have them for the most part. They’ve never left the basement.”

            Sean nodded before turning his attention back to the path. “Jeez, you really weren’t kidding. How many do you think are here?” he asked, dancing around the path as he followed Hazel, who didn’t bother trying to avoid them. They scattered around her instead, just barely staying out of her way.

            “Dunno, but I’d guess the whole colony.” She shrugged as she gave her sad garden a final once-over as she took the steps up the back porch.

            They finally reached the back door and Jasper leapt up, his front paws landing on Sean’s chest as he licked his face. Sean laughed, scratching behind his ears as Hazel tried to get him down. She gave up and told him to wait there, returning a few minutes later from the basement with a dusty box. Jasper had finally calmed down and was sitting next to Sean, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.          

            “Here,” Hazel said, handing Sean the box. “There’s a lot of books in there. Find the spell, get rid of the chisans, and I’ll love you forever for saving my garden, okay?”

            Sean chuckled as he placed the old box down on her kitchen table, dust flying off it in thick clouds that painted her kitchen in a hazy light. “Man, you really haven’t opened this since you moved here?”

            “Yeah. I never confronted my mother about it either, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. Somewhere deep down she knows I despise magic. My siblings are less annoying about it, but still bother me sometimes…”

            Sean smiled slightly as he listened to her rant about her family. Hazel eventually realized how long she’d been rambling and cut herself off with a sheepish apology. When Sean left with the box tucked under his arm, he promised he’d get rid of the chisans as soon as he could.

***

It took a few days for Sean to figure out the right spell from the right book. Hazel could feel her impatience growing as she waited and watched the last remaining shreds of her garden get ruined, but she had given him a ridiculous amount of spellbooks. She assumed he must already know a decent amount of the spells in those books, but he still had to go through each one looking for the animal communication spell. When he finally came running up to her back door with that stupid goofy grin on his face, she knew he’d found something.

            “Alright, I assume you’ve got it. Now, please tell them to go away,” Hazel said, throwing open the sliding door as he raised his hand to knock.

            Sean’s face fell and he raised an eyebrow at her, his fist still raised to the door. “Well, hello to you too on this fine summer morning, Hazel.”

            “Sean, seriously, get these vermin out of my garden.” She clasped her hands together as she pleaded with him, her impatience about ready to boil over.

            He took a step back and shrugged, dropping his arm and opening the book in his other hand. Sean walked off her porch and into the trampled plants, crouching down next to a group of chisans. Hazel stayed inside the open door and crossed her arms as she watched him, frowning as she glanced at the book in his hands. She didn’t know if she recognized the cover or not, it had been so long since she’d read any of them she couldn’t be sure. It’s not like she cared one way or the other, either.

            After a few minutes he finally stood and returned to her porch. “So? What’s their problem?” Hazel asked, tapping her foot against her wood floor. She noticed that Sean was frowning, looking doubtful.

            “They said that something moved into the trees above their colony. It’s been…attacking them. They came here to escape it after a few were, um, killed.” Sean looked down at the page in the book that had the spell on it. The edges of the book were decorated with an ornate gold pattern, reminding Hazel of the ivy vines crawling up the side of her house. Most spellbooks had patterns like this, making them look more ancient than they really were. They were mass produced every year for magic schools like any regular textbook. It was something else about magic and Caulfield she couldn’t stand, that façade of class and elitism. They were no better than any regular people, but sometimes Hazel felt she was the only one who saw that.

            She shook the thoughts from her head as her eyes widened in shock. Hazel figured they just liked the easy access to food, but she never imagined they were escaping something awful. She knew a thing or two about that. “Did they…say what it was?”

            Sean shook his head. “Whatever it was, it can’t be that hard to deal with. I’m ten times the size of those little guys. Surely it can’t be that much bigger.”

            “Mm, I don’t know about that, Sean. I have a bad feeling about this,” Hazel sighed and let her arms drop to her sides. “I’m gonna come with you.” She had started to feel bad for the chisans, she couldn’t imagine something wanting to kill them.

            Sean shook his head and put a hand up, his palm facing her. “No, I’ve got this. Let me do this on my own, Hazel. I’ve been learning a few interesting things while searching these books. Let me prove it.” He grinned proudly at her and held the book above his head, and she was relieved to see him being less serious. She wasn’t used to him not constantly cracking jokes or making light of things. Despite the sick feeling in her gut, she smiled back at him. She could convince herself she was just being paranoid. It was magic she didn’t trust, not Sean.

            “If you’re sure, I guess you could probably take care of whatever it is.” Hazel considered how eager he seemed to be to go after this by himself. Afterall, he didn’t get a formal education and was probably tearing through these pages faster than anyone she went to school with might have. She could let him go; it was the only thing he’d ever really asked of her so earnestly.

            Sean closed his eyes, bringing the book back down and tucking it under his arm. “Yeah, it’s alright. After this is over you can go back to pretending you’ve always had a perfectly normal life.” He looked down at her and chuckled before pulling Hazel into a hug that caught her by surprise. She stood completely still for a moment before returning it and wishing him luck and sternly reminding him to be careful.

***

Hazel tried to distract herself as she waited for Sean to come back. She reasoned with herself that it was super unlikely whatever was out there was anything serious. Chisans are a lot smaller than humans, after all. But she couldn’t ignore the pit in her stomach that told her she should have gone with him, even if she couldn’t have done much to help. Magical creatures require magic to take down, and magic was not something she could supply. Not anymore.

            Hazel sat down in her living room with a book. Jasper curled up next to her with his head in her lap. He had been glued to her side since Sean left. Her house was quiet, the ticking of a clock the only thing that carried through the hall. It was all she could focus on. She read the same few paragraphs over and over again for a while as the fear she’d pushed away earlier settled under her skin. After what felt like days, she heard a loud thud in her backyard. Her pulse immediately picked up and her stomach dropped as she stood to investigate.

            Hazel ran to the backdoor and saw Sean, limp and lifeless on the ground. She clapped a hand over her mouth and threw open the door, running across the garden and dropping to his side. When he opened his eyes to look at her she fought off the urge to cry out in relief. He looked terrible. The usual color in his face was gone, replaced by a deadly pallor. His eyes were dull. He started coughing and handed Hazel the spellbook, opened to an all too familiar page. She took it from him with shaking hands, fear permeating through her body. “You used this spell?” she asked, her voice haggard and weak. She wasn’t sure he could hear her at all. Panic rose in her chest as she stared down at that page. Hazel remembered throwing this book out after the incident. Her mother didn’t respect boundaries, but this crossed a line. She gritted her teeth together as she tried to calm both the panic and rage tearing across her brain.

            Sean nodded, managing a small, sheepish smile before he started coughing again and closed his eyes against whatever pain he must be in. When he spoke, Hazel was surprised he even could. “I didn’t know…I thought…it would be fine…it’s gone now.”

            “You got rid of whatever was attacking the chisans?” Hazel asked, frantic as she read the page. Sean nodded. “And you traded your life to do it?” Her voice rose as her anger swelled, but she knew it was misdirected. This wasn’t his fault, it was hers. Again.

            He shrugged so weakly Hazel could barely tell he did it. “Guess…so.”

            Hazel shook her head. She knew this spell. She knew how dangerous it was. If she had known it was in the same book, she would have warned him. But this godforsaken book was supposed to have been destroyed. This is my fault, I needed to be more careful. She closed the book and threw it to the side. There was only one spell she still knew how to perform by heart- the counterspell for when the other goes wrong. She had memorized it after Diana was killed, after she couldn’t save her. Hazel looked down at Sean. He was fading fast, his breathing becoming more and more labored, his eyes closed and one arm wrapped around himself as he shook. He coughed violently and brought a hand to his mouth. When he pulled it away, his palm was painted in crimson. Hazel’s eyes widened as she stared at it. This was exactly how it happened with Diana. A spell powerful enough to get rid of something in an instant, and powerful enough to kill you if it backfires. It never should have been taught, no matter how rare a backfire might be.

            “It’s…okay, Hazel.”

            She felt a hand land gently on her arm as she thought, her mind racing along with the rhythm of her heart. She had memorized that spell for this reason, but she hesitated. It felt like betrayal. She closed her eyes as tears spilled from them and splashed onto her hands, clasped into fists on her bent legs. Hazel willed her hands to move. She willed herself to say the words that would save his life. She hadn’t done magic in so long, part of her worried she couldn’t anymore. The other part couldn’t forgive herself for daring to do it again.

            No. I have to do this. She died but he can live.

            With a deep breath, Hazel closed her eyes and lifted her shaking hands, placing them about a foot above Sean’s body. She began to whisper the words that have been seared into her mind since the day she learned them. The air around the two of them began to shift, electric. Hazel could feel it on her skin and in her hair. Magic.

            When she finished the spell, she opened her eyes to see the air still shimmering, almost fluid. She hadn’t seen anything like it since she left school and she couldn’t help but stare at the pool of glittering air surrounding them. Sean, who had been all too quiet in the last few minutes, finally started coughing and looked up at Hazel. There was no longer blood on his hands when he was done coughing, but his face was still as white as a sheet and his once blue eyes looked nearly gray.

            “What…did you do?” he asked, trying to prop himself up on his elbows but collapsing back down to the ground, shaking like she had been when she found him.

            “What I couldn’t do for Diana,” she replied, looking away and wrapping her arms around herself. “Don’t move too much.”

            “I’m-,” he began, but was interrupted by another coughing fit. With each cough his lungs sounded clearer and Hazel could feel some relief wash over her. “I’m…sorry.”

            “No, don’t apologize for my mistake. I shouldn’t have let you go alone and I should have checked each and every one of those books,” she spat out the last word in disdain then whipped her head back to Sean. “What the hell was there that you picked that spell?”

            He was finally able to prop himself up the slightest bit on one elbow and picked up the book with his other arm. “I’m not sure, honestly. Whatever…it was, it was huge. When it lunged at me from…the trees above my head, I panicked and it was the first…spell to come to mind.” Talking for even that short amount of time set him off again and Hazel winced as he coughed and gasped.

             “It’s an insanely powerful spell. Which is also why it’s so dangerous. I don’t know why it’s even taught.” She frowned at him and crossed her arms. Hazel shook her head and managed a tired, pained smile. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

            “Yeah…thank you. For saving me, that is. I didn’t mean to make you break your anti-magic…vows or whatever.” Sean said, laying back down on the grass. “Have you…considered using magic to…fix your garden?”

            Hazel grimaced and sighed. “No, Sean. I’ll fix it the right way.” She didn’t want to snap at him right now, but he was basically asking for it.

            He managed a quiet chuckle that sent him into coughing hysterics once again. “Alright, alright. Seriously, thank you.”

            Shaking her head as she waved him off, she laid down in the grass next to him and they watched clouds float lazily by as if nothing had happened. Everything else seemed normal. “You know, I actually wanted to enter that contest you told me about. Too bad I can’t now.” He didn’t reply, but when she turned her head to look at him, he was smiling.

***

The next morning, Hazel gathered her gardening supplies and pulled on her gloves before getting ready to work on her disastrous garden. She and Sean had remained on the ground in her yard for a while as he recovered enough to get up and walk home. Helping him get home with an arm draped across her shoulders had been an endless cycle of thanks and apologies from each of them, and she was exhausted. With the box of her tools under her arm she sighed and walked to her back door. Upon opening it, she looked up to see an array of color and fresh greens. She gasped, looking out over her once ruined garden. She slid the door open and placed her tools down on her porch, pulling off her gloves and tossing them absentmindedly in the box. There was a note attached to the railing with her name written on it in a haphazard scrawl. Hazel pulled the pin out of it and picked it up, sitting down on the top step of her porch to read it.

            The note read:

            I felt like I probably owed you an extra favor for saving my life. By the way, the contest judges will be here next week.

            Hazel shook her head and smiled as she put her chin in her hand and surveyed her garden. There was no trace of any chisans nor a trace of any of their destruction. She’d have to get mad at him for doing this when he should have been resting later; right now, she had a garden to prepare.