Real magic is the kind that, deep in our human hearts, we know makes the most sense. Magic should feel attainable, just one evolution away. To fly, to sprout wings like a robin, to be able to go upwards until we can’t breathe, does not make sense, and did not make sense to the little girl with the darkest hair. This was the last thing she thought of as she heard her parents die through the cracks in the floorboards beneath the sitting room of her grandfather’s ranch house. The little girl with the darkest hair consumed fairy tales like a snake swallowing living things whole, suffocating each pixie lung, broiling each desperate, blushing princess in the stomach until they were nothing but bone and yellow locks. She swallowed the Little Mermaid, Icarus, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Babayaga. She swallowed the prettiness of them, the horror of them, the bowed-up lessons. Be good, they told her. Be good. But the girl with the darkest hair was too curious and too logical and knew, even