Daphne and the Silver Ash: A Fairy Tale

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Chapter 4

  The Glass Box

  Despite his great age and all the wealth and honor and respect he had accumulated over his many years of service, Nicodemus still lived in the narrow brick house on the dreary dead-end lane where he had been born and raised. It was a crooked affair of cracked masonry, crooked windows, and crumbling steps leading up to a chipped and faded door. From her perch on the rooftop across the street, it took Daphne a moment to tell the doctor’s house apart from the houses on either side, but after a moment she recognized a certain crack in the window and the slight bluish tint on what remained of the paint on the door, and she knew she had found the right place.

  By now the sun was well above the horizon and many people were out and about, and while they mostly seemed to be going about their usual business of completing household chores and heading off to work, Daphne remained wary of any would-be phoenix hunters lurking below. So she crept low along the rooftops and only peeked out every few moments to see if the dead-end street was empty and the path to the doctor’s door was open to her.

  At last a quiet moment came when there were no children running about, no women marching off to the market with empty baskets on their arms, and no men shoving squeaking carts of old tools. Daphne leapt lightly over the peak of the roof she had been hiding behind and dropped to the street as softly as a feather. She dashed across the way to the doctor’s door and knocked.

  At first there was no answer and she was about to knock again when the door opened and an old man’s white whiskers appeared in the dark gap inside. Without waiting for the door to open farther, Daphne slipped through the narrow opening and shoved the door shut again behind her, and found a very surprised Nicodemus standing just a hair’s breadth from her golden nose.

  The doctor stepped back and stared at her. Then his eyebrows sank down to their usual height and he nodded. “So it’s true. I was there last night, of course, but I was too far away to see what happened, at least not clearly.” He turned and waved for her to follow him back through the house. They shuffled through a sitting room crowded with piles of books and mildewed jars and moldy papers down a long narrow hall to a cramped kitchen where two small wooden chairs stood by a small wooden table, and a small iron stove stood in the corner where a lonely egg was cooking in a pan. The doctor pointed her to one of the small chairs, which creaked when she sat on it. Her ruby feathers tinkled softly like wind chimes as they brushed against the walls. The doctor said, “It all happened so fast. But of course, at my age, everything seems to happen so fast. I suppose I should be more surprised or alarmed at all this, but I haven’t had my breakfast yet, so I’m still feeling a bit tired. I find it hard to think on an empty stomach, unless I want to think about food, of course.”

  Daphne smiled. For a moment she could almost forget the terrible reason that had brought her here and simply enjoy the old man’s company, his musty clothes and books, and his rambling conversation.

  “How’s that little girl of yours?” he asked. “Nearly three months old, isn’t she?”

  “She’s almost sleeping through the night now.”

  He nodded. “Good, good. And your husband?”

  “He doesn’t have any trouble sleeping through the night,” she said with a grin. “Though I could do without his snoring.”

  When his little egg was ready to eat, Nicodemus carried it to the table on a small chipped plate and sat down with a bent fork that was missing one tine. “So, tell me, how do you feel?”

  “Fine, mostly,” she said. “But sort of thin and light, almost hollow. And I can’t help jumping at every little sound and looking at every little thing that moves. I’ve never felt so nervous before.”

  He nodded as he ate his egg. “Interesting. You know, of course, that nothing like this has ever happened before. Not that I know of, anyway. I may not be able to help you.”

  “I know.” Daphne balled her hands into fists, wishing he would finish eating and start helping her. “But I thought that if anyone could help me, it would be you.”

  “What do you think, Serafina?” he asked loudly. “Do you think I can help?”

  “I don’t think so, doctor,” the phoenix said kindly. The warmth and affection in her bodiless voice surprised Daphne. “But then, I’ve never passed my spirit to a human before, so what do I know of these things? Perhaps you can help. But help us both. I don’t want to die.”

  “No one wants you to die,” Nicodemus muttered. “At least, not for very long, of course.” He winked as he stood and set his chipped plate and bent fork down in the wash basin with a few other dishes and what appeared to be some of his laundry. “So. Let’s have a look.”

  For the next few minutes, the elderly doctor peered into Daphne’s eyes and ears and mouth, listened to her breathing, counted her pulse with his tarnished pocket watch, took her temperature with a long, smoky glass tube of mercury, and generally made her feel like a child with a runny nose. Finally he stepped back with a slight frown on his thin lips.

  “What’s wrong?” Daphne asked.

  The doctor sighed. “If you were a sparrow or a mouse, I’d say nothing was wrong at all. But for a grown woman, something is very wrong indeed. Everything is running too fast and too lightly. Your heart is meant to beat slowly and powerfully, but right now yours is pattering away like the little gears and springs in my pocket watch. Your lungs are barely drawing in enough fresh air. Don’t you feel it?”

  Of course she felt it, but with all the running and the leaping and the fear of the mob throughout the night and morning, she had taken all her symptoms to be simple fright and adrenaline. “And what does that mean?”

  Nicodemus frowned a little deeper. “I’m sorry, my dear, but at this rate your body is being starved of the blood and air it needs to survive. You’ll begin to feel cold and weak soon, first in your hands and feet, then your arms and legs, and then everywhere else.”

  “And then?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “No!” Serafina cried out. “Daphne, you cannot die! I cannot die! Please save me!”

  Daphne’s hands shook. It was hard enough to accept the thought that she herself was dying without the terrified spirit of the phoenix thrashing about her heart, wailing and fluttering and filling her with a fresh, cold panic. She squeezed her eyes closed and said, “Doctor, please, tell me what to do. Serafina said it would be months before she was strong enough to pass to another body. How can we help her do that? Or how can we make my body strong enough to last? You must have some sort of medicine that can help us.”

  Nicodemus sniffed and rubbed his wrinkled forehead. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you. The person you need to speak to is Bryn. She was here in the beginning. Perhaps not the beginning, but close enough if you catch my meaning. If anyone can tell you about these sorts of spirit things, she can.”

  “There must be guards at the Silver Ash now,” Daphne said. “How could I ever hope to get close enough to speak to her without being seen? And even if I did speak to her, she seemed as surprised as the rest of us when Serafina said the Silver Ash was dying. Well, mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  Daphne nodded. “There was a moment, just a moment, when she looked more guilty than surprised. I didn’t think anything of it last night. There wasn’t time.”

  “Hmm. Wait here a moment.” Nicodemus shuffled out of the kitchen and left Daphne to stare at her golden hands and to tug gently at her ruby feathers while she listened to the doctor thumping around his old house, knocking over papers, and mumbling to himself. Finally he returned and placed a small glass box on the table in front of her. Inside the box was a leaf. “Three hundred years ago, the doctor of Trevell went to Bryn and asked for a single leaf of the Silver Ash that he could study, and this is that very same leaf. It has been passed from doctor to doctor for generations. And when I received it, it was as supple and silvery as any living leaf could hope to be. But then, about ten
years ago, I noticed these spots.”

  Daphne saw the spots. They were small black and brown stains scattered along the outer edges of the leaf, edges that looked rough and ragged and torn.

  “I assumed that the leaf was withering because we were coming to the end of the great cycle, and that when the phoenix was reborn and the tree was revived, then the leaf too would be restored. After all, none of the previous doctors had ever mentioned any changes in the leaf.” Nicodemus sighed. “I assumed that everything was fine. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  “How will this help me?” Daphne turned the box from side to side, watching the glass lid catch the morning light streaming in through the dirty, cracked windows.

  “Show the leaf to Bryn. She’ll remember it. She’s the one who plucked it and gave it to the doctor all those years ago. Make her listen. Make her tell you whatever secrets she’s keeping. After all, they aren’t her secrets to keep anymore. If the tree is dying, then we will all suffer as the city crumbles to dust. Though you and Serafina will be long lost to us by then.” The doctor pushed the box into her hands with trembling fingers. “Go on, go to her. Get your answers.”

  Daphne took the box, nodding as she stood up.

  Yes, Bryn, of course. She’ll have the answers. And she’ll have to tell me if she wants to save Serafina, the Silver Ash, and herself.

  “All right, I’ll go. But how will I get past the guards?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a bright young woman. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He smiled as he ushered her to the back door of the house that opened out onto a small, sheltered garden. Three dry and lifeless beds of earth stood around a small, gnarled apple tree wearing only a few dozen leaves and single, miserable yellow apple. “Could you do me a favor, if you get a chance?”

  Daphne glanced back at him. “What?”

  “If you do figure it all out, could you come back and tell me? So often, I tend to some poor soul and they promise to come back so I can check them again, but they don’t come back and I’m left to wonder whatever became of them. And I, well, I’d just like to know that you’re all right. If you can.”

  She dashed back and gave the old man a quick peck on his rough, wrinkled cheek and said, “I promise, I will come back and tell you everything.” Then she turned and leapt up onto the roofs and dashed away with the small glass box clutched in her hand.