Copper Girl by Jennifer Allis Provost Page B

asked gently.
    “We don’t know. Yeah. Probably.” Micah pulled me against him, and I rested my head on his strong shoulder. “I mean, why else wouldn’t he come back? Unless he thought we were dead; no, even then, he’d have come back to the house.” He would have had to return to the Raven Compound, since one just didn’t abandon more than a thousand years of family legacy. Even if one thought that family had died.
    “When I was younger, I imagined that he was in hiding, and that someday he’d just come walking through the front door,” I continued in a small voice. “But that hasn’t happened.”
    The few times I’d told this story, people usually told me to keep my chin up, that I should never give up hope that Dad might come home. Juliana, my confidant in all things, had always gone out of her way to assure me that Dad would find his way home, somehow, some way. Micah didn’t do that; he just gave me the space to speak. “You were very small?” he asked at length.
    I nodded. “I was seven, and my little sister, Sadie, was three. Almost four.” I wondered if Sadie would be able to recognize Dad. My own memory of him was hazy; I remembered strong arms and bright copper hair, and riding on his shoulders. I remembered laughter and happiness.
    “Your brother, Max is his name?” Micah prompted, rousing me from my memories. I nodded, and he continued, “He is older than you?”
    “Yes. He’s two years older than me.” I took a deep breath, and burrowed further into Micah’s arms. “After the war ended, the government outlawed all magic. No leniency was given; if you were caught practicing, you were taken by the Peacekeepers. If you came from a known magical clan, you were put under guard.” I was silent for a moment. “We were watched, me and Max and Sadie and Mom. The three of us still are. As soon as Dad disappeared, before the war even ended, Peacekeepers served Mom with papers dissolving her marriage. They said that Dad was a political criminal, so the government just divorced them and put everything in Mom’s name. Max didn’t like that.”
    “A good man never lets an insult to his mother pass,” Micah observed.
    “He wouldn’t stop practicing. No matter how much we begged, no matter how much Mom yelled and Sadie cried, he just wouldn’t stop.” I pushed up Micah’s sleeve and traced the edge of the copper cuff. “So they took him. They just walked in uninvited, went into his room, and took him. He was only fifteen.”
    I babbled on for a while about my mother’s repeated attempts to find out where Max was being held, as she had asked all over again how the government could act so heinously against a child, what the specific charges were, if we would ever see him again. I hadn’t openly spoken of Max in so long, it was like ripping open a wound, and a waterfall of pain and anger came rushing forth. Throughout it all, Micah just listened.
    “So, when you weren’t there this morning, I thought the Peacekeepers had taken you,” I finished at last. “I didn’t see them take Max. I just woke up and he was gone.” Micah smoothed back my hair.
    “Max’s metal is copper, as yours is?”
    “I’m not sure. All three of us have the same coloring. So yeah, probably.” He was still messing with my hair, picking through it like a monkey searching for lice. “What are you doing?”
    “Looking at your true color.” Oh, roots. “Why cover such loveliness?” Micah murmured, as he stroked my dark brown tresses.
    “After Max was taken, Mom started dyeing my hair, and Sadie’s,” I replied. “She said we looked too much like Max and Dad.” At that, Micah became serious again, and took my hands in his.
    “Then Max must be like you, of copper. If he lives, the Iron Queen should be able to find him.”
    “What?” I nearly choked on my disbelief. After all this time, to finally be able to learn what had happened to my brother. “Dad, too?”
    “Since his power is of metal, then it