“There’s no magic here anymore, my boy.”

My grandma sat in her rocking chair, her withered hands folded in her lap. At first I thought I imagined those words, because I saw no movement in her thin, cracked lips as she spoke them. But she sighed, her eyes fixed on something far away through the window, and I knew they were real. 

“Magic?” I asked her. “What do you mean, Gram?” She took a long pause, and I began to wonder if she had heard me.

“The air is empty,” she said finally. “The springs don’t flow like they used to, dear.”

I sat for a long time waiting for her to say something else, to add something to her sentence, but nothing came. She merely stared out the window, wrapped in layers of sweaters and crochet...

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