Youve got to learn to spot the magic.
Moving to a new town feels like turning the page of a book youve only just opened, never quite grasping the plot of the first chapters. My wife Poppy, our son Harry, and I slammed that page shut with a dull rustle when exhausted movers hauled the last cardboard box into our new flat on the edge of an unfamiliar city.
The decision hadnt come easy. Six months earlier, after fifteen years as an engineer at the old steelworks in Bristol, I was caught up in a wave of restructuring. The word sounded bureaucratic and cold, like an axe falling. The plant stayed open, but half the workshops were closed. I, who always knew how to coax life into any machine, suddenly found myself redundant. Months of job hunting in our sleepy town ran into a wall of No vacancies, Well consider you, but the pay will be lower. And the suggestion to reskill sounded like a joke.
Bristol had been a faded photographcharming, familiar, but offering no future. It was Poppy, ever quiet and sensitive, who finally gathered her resolve. Watching me scroll through vacancy sites for the umpteenth time without any real hope, and seeing Harry, infected by the same gloom, abandon his paperairplane inventions, she made a decision.
Were moving, she said one evening at dinner, her tone more command than request. Well go to a big city. Theres work there. Theres life. If we stay, well just wilt.
She showed me an advert: a major logistics hub in Manchester was hunting designers, technicians, and equipment setup specialists. Plenty of roles, salaries one and a half to two times what Id earned before. The city seemed vast and intimidating, but we had no other option.
The price of the move was our spacious, highceilinged house with a garden viewHarrys own room with a window onto the yard, and Poppys bright sewing studio. We sold that piece of our past, that comfortable nest, and with the proceeds bought a modest onebedroom flat in the pricey, unfamiliar city. A halfflat, I called it grimly as we signed the lease. It had a tiny living room, a cramped bedroom for Harry, and a kitchen no larger than a school locker.
Now were here. The flats air sits still, smelling of dust, sharp fresh paint on the sill, and that nervous freedom of a clean slate, terrifying enough to make a wrong first step feel disastrous.
I, tiredlooking, immediately went looking at the sockets. Poppy, overwhelmed by the chaos, placed a single familiar thinga potted gardeniaon the windowsill. Harry slipped into his tiny room.
A week passed as we settled. I landed a job, Harry was accepted at the nearby school, and Poppy spent her time unpacking and tidying.
The first miracle came one evening after school. Harry sat at the table, poking at his meatball with a fork, and said, Theres a dragon living in our courtyard.
Poppy and I exchanged looks. Just an imagination, I muttered. Its fine as long as it doesnt set the bins on fire, Poppy replied dryly.
But Harry was serious. The next morning he went to school with a tiny torch and a packet of vanilla biscuits in his pocket. For the dragon, he explained.
The first real wonder happened a week later. Poppy, missing our old home, was staring out at the grey, drizzly yard when she noticed our gardenia, usually temperamental, blooming with delicate white flowers. She leaned closer. Each blossom looked like a tiny star and smelled of candythose same sherbet sweets shed loved as a child. The scent was so strong and joyous that the melancholy lifted on its own.
Harry, did you see? Our plants in flower, she asked at dinner.
I know, the boy nodded. The dragon sneezed this morning. He caught a cold. His sneeze is magical.
I snorted, but the candyscented gardenia was undeniable.
The second miracle was mine. At work a crucial project stalled. I spent sleepless nights at my desk, frustrated. One morning Harry handed me a strange stoneflat, with a hole in the centre, looking like a tiny wheel from a model cart.
Keep it in your pocket while you work, he instructed solemnly. The dragon says its a stone of solutions.
I didnt believe him, but out of solidarity I slipped it into my jacket. Later, as I was reviewing the schematics, the error that had eluded me for three days suddenly jumped out, as if someone whispered the fix in my ear. The project was saved.
From then on the house held a cautious reverence. Poppy watered the enchanted gardenia, I touched the stone in my pocket, and Harry became our unofficial link to the unseen.
The biggest miracle, however, lay ahead. At school Harry struggled with his classmates. He was the new, odd boy who talked about dragons. The other children didnt bully him; they simply ignored him, and Harry withdrew.
One day he stayed home, claiming a sore throat. Poppy, feeling his forehead chill, realised his soul was hurting.
What are we to do? she asked, desperate, that evening. We had no friends, no relatives here.
Harry stayed silent all night, then, before bed, said, We need to ask the dragon. But its hard. He needs a real reason.
The next Sunday morning a knock sounded at the door. A girl with twin braids and wide eyes stood there.
Is Harry home? she asked. Im Lena from the next class. My balloon drifted onto your balcony. It was multicoloured.
There was no balloon on the balcony, but Harry perked up and offered to search the courtyard together. They left, and an hour later returned, cheeks flushed, emptyhanded but with pockets full of chestnuts. Lena turned out to be a neighbour who built model ships and also believed that fairies roamed the old park behind our houses.
That evening the flat smelled not only of sherbet from the gardenia but also of apple crumble, which Poppy baked for the unexpected visitors. I laughed, watching Harrys newfound excitement.
When Lena left, Harry approached us.
The dragon helped, he said mysteriously. He brushed her diary, and she remembered she wanted a friend.
Poppy and I exchanged a look, this time without the usual condescension or doubtjust pure delight.
We realised we hadnt just moved to another city. Wed moved to a place where magic could exist. And the greatest miracle in our new life wasnt the dragon, the candyscented plant, or the stone of solutions. It was our son, who could turn loneliness into friendship, melancholy into hope, and an alien town into his own enchanted world.
Who knows if that dragon truly lived beneath the old chestnut trees, watching over its small friend? After all, miracles always find those who truly believe.
Six months later the halfflat had gathered habits and memories. On the livingroom wall hung Harrys first drawing from his new schoola colourful dragon, scribbly but with kindly eyes. On the kitchen sill the gardenia, once again in magical bloom, released its sherbet scent whenever Poppy felt nostalgic for the old house.
One Saturday morning they all ate breakfast together. Harry, now with a few new, still tentative friends, set his spoon down and said, The dragon is leaving.
Poppy and I looked at each other. After months of wonders wed grown accustomed to the extraordinary.
Why? Poppy asked, a note of worry in her voice.
He says his work here is done, Harry replied seriously. He came to help us settle, but now well manage on our own.
That day we walked to the old park the same one Lena claimed held fairies. Autumn was warm, the air smelling of wilted leaves and sweet fruit pastilles. We sat on a bench while Harry hopped from tree to tree, tossing golden leaves into the air.
You know, I said, watching my son, that dragon turned up at just the right time. It was like someone sent him when we needed it most.
Poppy took his hand. Maybe miracles dont disappear, Simon, she whispered. Maybe they just change shape.
Just then Harry ran back, breathless, clutching a huge, featherlike crimson maple leaf.
Look! he shouted. The dragon left us this feather as a keepsake! He said, if we ever need him, just call and hell hear us!
I took the leaf. It was warm, as if it truly held a fragment of light. In that moment the truth resurfaced: the miracle wasnt the dragon. It was us. It was our ability to shrink from three rooms to a halfflat without shrinking our spirits. It was Harrys talent for turning solitude into fantasy, Poppys strength to keep us all afloat, and my willingness to start anew.
We headed home to our cramped yet genuinely ours flat. The wind chased clouds across the sky, shapes like strange beasts, while Harry cradled the scarlet feather. I knew our story was only beginning, and the next page would be even more exciting. Because the greatest miracle isnt where dragons hide; its where a family, tested by hardship, stays together, and where in the tiniest room lives a boy who can see magic in an ordinary autumn leaf.
