ASHES OF YESTERDAY

CHAPTER 4- THE SPARK

The swing dropped and caught itself—metal shrieking, chain jolting—then slowed in a series of uneasy arcs. Anna’s scream thinned into a laugh before it ran out of breath. For a heartbeat, the whole courtyard listened: the laundry lines snapped like tongues, a dog barked twice and went quiet, and the evening kept it's secret.

Chase was the first to move, hands on the swing’s chains, steadying them with a breathless grin. “See? Flying. Told you.”

Anna slid off, legs wobbling, then planted her feet harder than she needed to. Her cheeks were bright; her eyes were brighter. “Higher next time,” she said, even though the last of the swing’s shaking traveled through her knees.

Jay stood a few paces away, jaw tight. “There is no next time,” he said. “Enough.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “You’re not Dad.”

Jay’s gaze flicked, uninvited, toward the corner of the apartment where ink-stiff boots and an oil-smelling coat sat like a shrine to absence. “Someone has to be,” he said, softer now, because even saying the word Dad dragged at something inside him.

Anna kicked the toe of her shoe against the ground, scuffing a pale line in the dust. “We’re fine,” she said, though she could still feel the swing in her bones, the world tilting, that moment at the top when everything had gone quiet and she had been alone with the sky. I wasn’t small up there, she thought. I wasn’t anything but fast and high and mine.

The evening slid lower. Window squares bloomed with light, and the fan of a neighbor’s radio sent a broken chorus down the stairwell. Mrs. Rivera’s bell, two streets away, chimed faintly as someone left late and grateful.

“Let’s go inside for a bit,” Jay said finally. “Mama will want to see us.”

Chase groaned, but the heat had worn even his stubbornness thin. They took the stairs two at a time, shoes drumming, a small storm rising to the Hamilton door.

The living room smelled like soap and starch, and something warm that had been set aside—a pot, still radiating the memory of heat. Their mother had spread a sheet across the couch and was folding it in half, then quarters, sharp corners kissing sharp corners. She looked up as they spilled in, and her face did that thing Jay loved: it softened and brightened at once, like a lamp turned low made suddenly warm.

“You look like you’ve wrestled the day to the ground,” she said. “Did the day win?”

“Not even close,” Chase said, flopping on the carpet, then yelping when Jay pinched his ankle.

Anna hovered near the doorway, watching the way Mrs. Hamilton’s hands smoothed the sheet. The hum was back—soft as threading a needle, a sound that made a room hold together. Anna missed it, though she would never say so. Her mother’s love was loud: it fried and simmered, pushing across a counter with an "Eat, you’re too thin" attached. Mrs. Hamilton’s love gathered itself quietly, a blanket over her knees.

“Did you eat well?” she asked.

“Yes, Mama,” Jay said. “Mrs. Rivera sent us back stuffed.”

“We paid in charm,” Chase said. “Mostly mine.”

Mrs. Hamilton’s mouth twitched. “Then I’ll owe her a song,” she said. “And you, a thank-you.”

Anna’s stomach did a slight flip at the sound of her mother’s name paired with owe. Money made adults speak softly, causing them to purse their lips before speaking. She stared at the folded sheet until the pattern of its flowers swam.

They didn’t stay long. The apartment was cool with the window propped open, but the air inside felt too still, and the courtyard waited with its chorus and its cracked invitation. When they turned to go, Jay paused at the door and touched the edge of their father’s coat with one finger, the way you might feel a photo to prove it was real.

“Don’t be late,” Mrs. Hamilton called after them, and the hum of her voice followed them into the stairwell like a good-luck charm tied to a wrist.

Dusk had settled properly by the time they stepped outside again. The sky had traded its bruise for a violet that deepened at the edges. Laundry lines above them snapped more softly; the swing made the small rusty question it always asked when wind wandered by. A sharper smell threaded the air now—something a neighbor had let burn in a pan before saving it, the char sending a thin ribbon of bitterness through the layered scents of dinner. Somewhere below the courtyard’s normal noise, a silence pooled. The concrete held the memory of the sun like a secret.

Chase found a half-straight stick near the shed and, against all logic, immediately wanted it. “Sword,” he announced, twirling it until dust rose. “Trials of bravery, round two.”

“No more flying,” Jay said.

“No flying,” Chase agreed easily, then cocked his head at Anna. “But trials. We owe her a champion’s crown, right?”

Anna lifted her chin, hearing the challenge and the kindness braided together. “I don’t want a crown,” she said. “I want you to stop acting like I’ll blow away if you sneeze.”

“Fine,” Chase said. “Then you win trials and we’ll retire the word ‘sparrow.’”

Jay sighed. “This is how people break bones.”

“This is how people win legends,” Chase said, and he looked pleased with the phrase, as if he’d found something shiny just by saying it.

They started small, and then they turned slippery. Balance along the low wall, which Anna did with arms out like wings. Duck under three laundry lines without touching a sheet—Chase sent one flapping; Anna glided under all three and came up grinning. Leap from the second step to the chalk circle Chase drew in the dust; Jay scolded; Anna landed with a grunt and a scrape that made Jay flinch harder than she did.

“See?” she said, breath high, pain tucked away. “Not small.”

“You’re bleeding,” Jay said.

“It’s red paint,” she lied, too quickly.

They laughed then, because it was easier than stopping. Their laughter felt bright and slightly wrong, like a song sung too fast. The air pressed at their backs, warm and close. The courtyard, faithful as a pet all day, watched them with a different eye—a cat’s, perhaps, amused and distant.

“Okay,” Chase said, planting the stick like a flag. “Last one. Winner takes the—what did you say?—legend.”

“What is it?” Anna asked, the answer already building as a dare in her throat.

“Something new,” Chase said, wheels turning, and then he faltered. He had run out of bravery that wasn’t stupid.

“Maybe…” Anna began, then bit the word in half. It tasted like metal.

“Maybe what?” Jay’s voice was a thread pulled too tight.

“Nothing,” Anna said. But now that she had taken the word into her mouth, it made a home there. Fire. The syllable glowed behind her teeth. She thought of the little circle of flame from the stove when her mother lit it with a match—the way it jumped up hungry and then calmed into a blue halo, the way her mother did not fear it, merely told it what size to be with the turn of a wrist. Not a monster. A tool. She pictured herself mastering it the way her mother did, the boys watching: not laughing, not calling her small, but looking.

“Let’s walk,” she said abruptly, because motion always disguised deciding. “I need to take the plate back anyway.”

“You already took the bag,” Jay said.

Anna shrugged. “Mama forgets, but she counts plates in her head.” Another lie. The truth was, she wanted her feet moving toward the place where fire slept.

The street on the way to the restaurant was changing clothes—day’s shirt coming off, night’s jacket sliding on. A vendor folded his table with the weary grace of practice. A boy kicked a burst football until it gave up and lay like a tired animal. The bell on the restaurant door chimed when Anna pushed it open, gentler than in the afternoon. At this hour, the room felt emptied of everyone’s voices, but still full of their warmth. The fan’s rattle had softened. The counters smelled like lemon and oil. On the stove, lids wore pots like hats.

Mrs. Rivera was wiping down a bench with a damp cloth, her shoulders slumped lower than they had been at noon. She looked up, and tiredness stepped aside for love. “You,” she said. “Did you come to wash more plates with your elbows?”

Anna’s mouth made a smile without her telling it to. “Brought the plate back,” she said, though nothing sat in her hands. She held them behind her, as if guilt had weight. “And to say we’re going back out.”

“You’re always going back out,” Mrs. Rivera said, not scolding, just stating one of the facts of the children’s weather. “Five minutes,” she added. “Ten if you find a lost queen and you have to escort her home.”

“What if I am the lost queen?” Anna asked.

“Then I will tow you home by your ear, Your Majesty,” her mother said, and her laugh was soft, the soft that has tired at its edges. The cloth swept in circles. Her bangles clicked like a quiet clock.

Chase and Jay had stopped in the doorway, as boys do when a space is not theirs, their shoes suddenly too loud. Jay noticed what he always noticed: the fray on the towel, the hair escaping the knot at Mrs. Rivera’s nape, the way she sat down for exactly one count of five and then stood again. He felt a fondness that was tinged with something that hurt, like pressing a bruise. He thought of his own mother’s hum, the steadiness of it, how it stitched a room. He glanced at the clock above the counter and made a note in his head of when they should go home.

Anna slipped behind the counter with the ease of habit and reached for a rag, ostensibly, for something to carry, for anything that made her hands look like they belonged there. Her fingers found the drawer where long spoons slept, the shelf where the salt lived, the box near the stove where—tonight of all nights—someone had left the matches uncovered, the lid set aside like a thought interrupted.

Her breath sped up without sound. The box was half-full; the sides were dented from being struck. Her mother’s hand had made those dents, not fearfully but firmly. Tool, Anna told herself again. She picked up the box as if she were measuring whether it needed to be replaced. She turned and tucked it into the pocket of her dress so quickly her own eye barely saw it. The cardboard pressed against her thigh was warm from the stove's nearness.

“Your mother,” Mrs. Rivera said to Jay and Chase, “is she all right? She sent a song with you today, but not a note.” There was a tiny joke in it, but also a question, the way adults fold two things into one when they’re too tired to separate them.

“She’s fine,” Jay said. “She told us not to be late.”

“Then don’t be,” Mrs. Rivera said. She looked at Anna for a heartbeat too long, and Anna’s face went hot and guilty for no reason any adult would see. “Come kiss me,” her mother said, and Anna did, the familiar smell of lemon soap and pepper clinging to both of them. The kiss felt like a signature you put on a promise you had not read.

Outside again, the night had stepped forward. The sky stretched farther when the sun left, like a room after a guest has gone and taken their chatter with them. Streetlamps threw coins of light onto the concrete. A mop of cloud moved over the moon and slid off. From high windows, televisions murmured, blue flicker touching curtains. A neighbor lifted a lid from a pot and released a puff of steam that smelled faintly scorched before sweetness took it back.

Chase bumped Anna’s shoulder. “What took you so long? Did the queen need rescuing?”

“I found her,” Anna said. “She refused the escort.”

Jay’s eyes narrowed, not because he saw anything but because he felt the air around Anna change—some small electricity in the way she held herself. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Then home.”

They returned to the courtyard as if it had missed them, though tonight it did not open its arms. The swing offered a minor complaint when a breeze touched it, like a door deciding whether to close. The chalk circle Chase had drawn still lingered as a ghost of dust. The shed’s dark mouth was darker than usual. The low wall waited, patient by nature.

Anna’s hand went to her pocket. The matchbox shifted against her thigh like a creature wanting to be let out. The thought had been a bright pebble in her mouth since she’d spoken it silently: Not a monster. A tool. Her heart thudded its small, insistent drum. She saw herself as she wanted the boys to see her—stillness, control, a flame held like a coin she could make appear and vanish without fuss.

“Final trial,” she said, and her voice surprised her by sounding almost calm. “No running. No jumping. Just this.”

Jay looked at her, then at the pocket, though he had no reason to. “What's this?”

Anna reached into the fabric and brought the matchbox into the light. The cardboard looked ordinary, a little frayed at the edges, with two black stripes where friction had lived. Chase’s mouth fell open. Awe made his face younger.

“Anna,” Jay said, and her name was suddenly a new word, the n a warning, the a a plea. “Put it back.”

“Back where?” Chase asked, fascinated, as if he could swallow the flame by staring hard enough.

Anna met Jay’s eyes, and for a heartbeat, they were not children in a courtyard but two people standing on either side of a line they had drawn without meaning to. “I won’t burn anything,” she said. “I’ll show you I can do it right like my mother does. Like a grown-up.”

“You’re not one,” Jay said. “I’m not one. None of us is.”

“I know how to be careful,” Anna insisted. “I know how to listen to it.”

Chase stepped closer, the matchbox throwing a shadow that looked larger than it was. “Just one,” he said, quietly, as if speaking in a church. “One and then put it away.”

Jay turned on him. “Don’t.”

Chase’s grin faltered, then he shot his brother a look that said, "Let her be and don’t make me small, too." He stood back, though his body leaned forward.

Anna slid the box open. The thin sticks lay like bones, pale, waiting. She pinched one between finger and thumb. It’s a tool, she told her body, which had begun to shake, soft as a leaf on a quiet tree. It’s not bigger than you.

She struck. The first scrape made only a whisper of sulfur. The second flared thinly and died. The third bloomed—sudden and alive, a little flower punched from darkness, its heart blue and its petals yellow licking at the air.

All three children gasped, the sound making a small room around the flame. The match threw light onto their faces: Anna’s set in fierce concentration, Chase’s lit with awe, Jay’s pinched tight with fear he didn’t have time to disguise.

“See,” Anna whispered, as if the fire were a small animal she didn’t want to startle. The wood hissed, giving itself up. The sulfur smell was sharp, then sweet, then something like nothing at all. The flame leaned, curious, toward her skin. Heat kissed the pads of her fingers, and she lifted her hand a little, keeping the distance exact the way she had seen her mother do.

“Now put it out,” Jay said, low.

“In a second,” Anna said. Because now that it was here in her hand, she didn’t want to let it go yet. The match was a coin of power, an answer to a thousand small, small, smalls. The world was edged in gold for a breath. She felt—ridiculously, wonderfully—taller.

Chase watched the flame and not her, hunger and fear braided in his chest. “Blow it,” he said, hardly moving his mouth, as if speaking too loud might yank the flame the wrong way.

Anna waited a heartbeat longer. The match burned down quicker than watching could catch; its light folded in on itself the way day does when you stop noticing.

Then heat licked her fingers hard, and the pain was a bite.

She sucked a breath, surprised, and the surprise made her clumsy. She tried to pinch the flame out the way she had seen adults do, but the fear had already arrived, big and with sharp elbows, and her fingers jumped their job. The match popped free.

It fell.

The flame, small as it was, kissed the ground where it landed. For an instant, nothing happened; then the dry tuft of grass that had shoved itself through a crack found itself given a language it had longed for without knowing. It answered. A filament of orange walked along a blade. A smoke thread rose, as thin and innocent as a string tied to a child’s balloon.

Anna’s breath went high and stuck. Chase’s eyes widened, making him look like a younger boy. Jay moved first, shoe scuffing at the grass, heel grinding. The flame dodged his heel the way light does when you try to step on it, then settled and took a small breath of its own.

“Stamp it,” Jay snapped, the words snapping him too.

“I’m—” Anna began, and in the beat between I’m and whatever might have come next, the smoke found more of itself. A neighbor’s window coughed out a burnt smell, as if the air itself were remembering the wrong thing.

Chase lifted his foot. Anna reached for the match, then flinched back. The flame licked another blade, practiced now, and the smoke line thickened from thread to string to something you could see even if you didn’t know to look.

The courtyard held its breath with them—the swing still, the laundry quiet for once, even the radio upstairs a moment late in its song. Somewhere a dog barked, then thought better of it.

“Stamp it,” Jay said again, and his voice carried the authority of their father without the man himself being present.

Chase’s heel came down—too soft, as if afraid to hurt what should not be alive. The flame bent, laughed a silent laugh, and came back thinner, meaner. It moved along the crack’s path like it had always known the way.

“Get water,” Jay said, turning, already measuring the steps to the tap that sometimes coughed and sometimes sang. He looked back once, and what he saw knocked something loose in his chest: Anna’s face, stripped of all its bravado, young and terrified, and beneath that another thing—astonishment, at herself.

She had not meant to make anything bigger than a match. She had not meant to create a world that could say no to her hands.

“Jay—” she said, but the word was not a word anymore, only a shape her mouth made to ask for something too late.

The smoke drew one more breath, and the tiny flame—no larger than a thumb—reached for the next dry tuft as if reaching were what it had been made for.

In the upstairs window, the radio found its song again, too cheerful by half. The swing offered a single, very slight moan, as if a giant’s fingertip had brushed it.

They ran as the flame lifted its head.