by Charlie Hart
It’s not funny, but I feel on the verge of collapsing in hysteria.
But that isn’t an option. I have to be strong.
Fortune favors the brave.
I leap, and as I do, feathers begin to fall into the audience. Gasps, and sounds of laughter, of glee, escape thousands of mouths; everyone clapping in delight as I leap from branch to branch, as I soar across the stage.
Time stills as I watch Zeus stand, then move to the aisle, and shift into his eagle form.
The audience is transfixed. I am terrified.
No. He doesn’t get to do this. Ruin this night. Take it from the cast and crew and Mark and Melanie. He can’t take it from the casino owner who gave me this show, or from me, the star.
His daughter.
I keep doing my part in the show, leaping and soaring across the massive stage. But my hawks now see what is happening below. They move quickly. Sawyer, Brecken, and North shift before my eyes, before all of our eyes; turning into hawks and moving toward the eagle who is gaining altitude in this massive theater. Feathers are still falling, and the orchestra plays on.
I want everything to stop. For the music and lights to die so that something more powerful than Zeus can end this madness.
But is there something stronger than Zeus?
I don’t think so.
Because from his talons comes bursts of lightning, shooting across the stage. The princess’ tower is set on fire. Remedy moves, running down an aisle, her arm outstretched, putting out the fire caused by the lightning.
Remedy is here.
She didn’t leave when I asked her to. She needs me.
And I turned her away.
Fortune favors the brave.
I keep asking who I am. Where do I come from?
There is my sister, running to help save me. Who am I? I am her family. Where do we come from? Maybe it’s time to help figure that out.
But before I can tell her that, the eagle comes closer.
Close enough to strike.
The lightning comes at me and it is a force to be reckoned with.
One that I don’t have the capacity to fight.
This is the lightning that killed my sister.
The lightning that killed my mother.
I may be the girl who can soar, but this lightning sends me flying.
The lightning hits my heart and my wings catch fire. All of me is burning.
I fall from the sky, and while time seems to still, it all happens in a flash.
The hawks fly toward me, but Zeus is no mere shifter, he is a god of Olympus and he is my father. He knows what he’s doing, and no one can stop him.
He means for me to die.
32
Arrow
She lands on top of the massive tower where the Princess is held captive. It’s a good two stories from the ground. The stage itself is a massive revolving disk, that moves on cranes. It’s not like I can just jump up to the tower and climb to her.
But I can shift. The fire that surrounds her is larger than life. I can hardly see her through the flames.
The audience is on their feet and I want them gone. I want them to understand this is not a part of the show.
This is life.
This is death.
We can’t lose her. Not now.
Not like this.
I love her.
Remedy is on the stage, trying to put out all the fire, and North, Brecken, and Sawyer are fighting with Zeus above us. The entire thing looks like magic because it is. This is no Vegas show. This is a showdown.
“Come on,” I shout to Vaughn, both of us shifting and flying toward her. But the fire keeps getting in our way. It’s more powerful than we can manage on our own. It all happens within seconds, too, so it’s not like anyone realizes what is happening.
The fire only surrounds Lark, and Remedy is trying her best to contain it, by pushing her power toward it.
It helps, and there is no smoke, or any fire alarms blazing. There’s no fire at all, other than the fire on top of the tower. The fire wrapping around the love of my life.
She must be high enough that fire alarms wouldn’t be detected there anyway. I wish they were. I want everyone in this theater gone. I don’t trust Zeus. He is planning on killing Lark and I don’t want anyone to witness that.
I need to protect her.
Suddenly though, the fire turns to ash.
There are no longer any flames at all. Within a minute it vanished, and it wasn’t Remedy’s doing. She is still trying to move close enough to help.
I fly to her, terrified.
There is ash in the air, floating all around the stage. The air is singed, and my heart is still.
No.
The audience is on their feet as I fly closer to Lark.
There is nothing there. The house lights come on. Crew members are running to the stage trying to understand what is happening.
Trying to understand where Lark went.
It’s like the audience doesn’t realize this isn’t part of the show. The bolts of lightning and the men who shift into birds only add to the confusion.
Ash floats to the ground and I can’t accept this.
This is not fate. This is destruction and death.
I shift to human form, standing on top of the tower, looking for her but she’s no longer with us.
Lark is gone.
33
Lark
As the fire surrounds me, I see it clearly for the first time since it happened. Memories must have buried themselves, or maybe my mother put a spell on me to bury it for me.
The memory is painful, but it’s all I see as the lights go out. As I fall down a tunnel of white toward my death.
There we are in the green grass, behind the cottage. Tennyson has my ring in her hand, a naughty smile on her face.
My hands run over the long blades of grass as we sit in the summer heat. “We aren’t allowed to wear it,” I tell her. “We should just go put it back in the jewelry box before she sees that it’s missing.”
Tennyson rolls her eyes and begins to slide the ring on her tiny finger.
“Don’t,” I say pushing her hand away, the ring falling to the grass.
I look at her; she’s the picture of perfection sitting there, yet something is off. I knew it then. She scared me.
“Why would you want to get into trouble?” I ask softly.
She smirks, her lips curling and her eyes growing fierce.
“Because it’s fun to get in trouble.” And then she snatches back the ring.
“If you want a ring, wear your own.”
“No, Auntie hid it and I don’t know where,” she whines. “Besides, I like what isn’t mine. I like what’s yours.” And then Tennyson slips the ring on her tiny finger.
That is when the lightning strikes her, straight in the heart. A storm sweeps in, rain falling faster than I’ve ever imagined in my life.
I watch myself take the ring from her finger and hold it tightly in my palm as Auntie runs from the cottage wailing over her daughter’s lifeless body. We watch in horror as a gust of wind breaks through the rain filled sky, sweeping Tennyson away.
Auntie screams, blaming me for Tennyson’s death.
But Tenny was the one who wore the ring. She was the one who wanted trouble. She was the one who changed everything.
Now I am nothing but a fiery flame.
I didn’t tell Remedy that I wanted to find answers together. She came to me, a sister I never knew, and I sent her away. And now I can’t even live with that because now there is no more living.
There is only death.
Me. Dying.
Dead.
The lights are bright, and the tunnel is narrow, and this is the end.
I’m alone in the fire and this is where I remember Tennyson’s sweet, sweet, voice.
I remember Tennyson’s sweet, sweet, face.
I remember Tennyson’s dark, dark, heart.
Ash falls all around me an
d I blink.
I should be gone but instead, I am on a tower, a tower that is on a stage. Lights shine down on me, and ash moves in a gust of wind around the massive theater.
I’m not dead. This is not hell.
This is... the stage of SOAR.
I kneel, looking out at the massive crowd. The eagle is on the stage in the distance, flapping its wings as Brecken, Sawyer, and North fight him off. But everyone seems to stop mid-fight and instead, turns to face me. Vaughn and Arrow are near, I feel their presence. I don’t turn and look. No, I don’t turn at all.
Instead, I rise.
The orchestra begins to play, and the crew returns backstage and everything is changed and yet everything is the same.
I am still the star of the show.
Only now, it’s a different kind of show altogether.
I’m not just soaring.
Now I’m literally rising from the ashes.
I stand and shake out my hair and brightly colored feathers.
Looking at my hands, I see my fingertips, but my body has changed. Feathers form a dress around my torso, and I have a massive tail sweeping the floor.
Half bird, half woman.
Orange feathers and green flickers of light. I am purple, and I am green, and I am red.
I’m not a sparrow and I’m certainly not a starling. Not even a lark.
Taking a deep breath, my first breath in this new form, I feel comfortable in my own skin. More than comfortable.
I am a phoenix rising from the ashes, ready to fight. I don’t know how this happened. Maybe it’s magic from my mother. Maybe it’s the ring. Maybe it’s both or maybe it is nothing.
Maybe it’s just me.
I step off the tower, but I don’t fall to the ground. Instead, harnessing my strength as a phoenix, I move toward my father, my arms outstretched as I draw the eagle toward me. I remember the way Gaia used the wind to send the eagle away. I use the same force now. But instead of sending him away, I am bringing him near.
After all, Remedy can make an earthquake end and a fire cease. She told me Harlow can stop a tsunami or a hurricane or flood. I can move the wind and end a storm.
This storm.
The one Zeus created. It’s ending tonight.
“Who am I?” I ask the eagle as he flies closer and closer to me. He still doesn’t see me as a threat. He thinks because he is Zeus that he is more powerful than me.
But he is wrong. He knows nothing about me.
“You are my daughter,” he says.
“Then why do you want me dead?”
“Because you are my enemy.”
“How can I be your enemy when I don’t even know you are?”
“You are your mother’s daughter.”
I smile at that because the words are true. My mother was strong. She was selfless. She did what she could, and she did her best and she did enough.
And maybe I have another mother. A mother who met this evil man and brought me into this world and left me as an orphan and I don’t know what that even means but it doesn’t matter right now.
My father wants me dead, and I don’t know why, except I remind him of something that is scary.
A woman who is strong. My strength scared him before I even realized I was powerful.
That in and of itself is enough to make me burst into tears.
I am more than I thought I was.
But I will not cry. Not here. Not in front of him.
“You will pay for what you did to my sister and my mother,” I tell him, aware that my voice is booming across the theater. “You will pay for what you tried to do to me.”
And then I push my arms out and I send a gust of wind toward him, channeling the wind as it moves, forcing it around the eagle. I send him down to the stage floor. I move toward him and I grab him, holding him in my hand. Ordinarily, a bird of this magnitude would scare me. But he doesn’t worry me in the least.
His talons can’t hurt me. I am a phoenix.
I put him in the birdcage, the cage large enough to fit me during the show.
He screams.
“You can’t do this. I am Zeus, God of Olympus. You will pay for this, child!”
His shouts don’t scare me. He doesn’t seem to realize I just came into my strength. This, poor father, has only just begun.
I use my strength to bind him there. Gathering my power, I find a surge of wind, which begins to rise, carrying the cage off the floor of the theater. Pushing it out and away, above the audience, and through the ceiling. It cracks open the theater ceiling and the audience gasps, horrified, and now scared. Pieces of the structure fall and people run, terrified.
This power is strong enough to break through walls and bind a Greek god. I will not temper it to make the people here happy, to make them feel safe and secure. It isn’t my job.
Right now, my only task is to keep that monster from hurting anyone. I don’t trust him for a minute. He had one intention: to kill me.
I need that cage to hang in the sky, binding my father, keeping him far away from hurting me. From hurting anyone.
My hawks circle me, all of us magical, all of us a miracle. They come to the floor of the stage, meeting me in human form. Only I can’t seem to change back to what I once was.
Maybe Lark is gone forever.
“Everyone is freaking out, Lark,” Arrow says. “We have to go.”
“Not Lark,” I say, shaking my head. “Phoenix.”
He smiles. “Phoenix, I mean it. Look.” He points behind us, and the audience is still running for exits. The orchestra has disbanded, and the house lights are on. There’s a massive hole in the center of this multi-million-dollar theater and half the stage has been burned to the ground. Remedy and her mates are running toward us, and behind them are security guards and police officers. I see Mark in the distance and I try to tell him with my eyes that I am sorry.
But really, I know we don’t have time for apologies.
We need to go before we get arrested.
“Can they arrest birds?” Sawyer asks.
“I don’t know,” North says. “But we aren’t going to wait around to find out.”
“Let’s go find Tennyson,” I tell them.
“Who?” Remedy asks.
“Our sister. Gaia put her somewhere safe, I know it.”
Her face breaks out into a smile. And I reach for her hand, clasping it tightly.
I’m ready to face whatever comes next.
“You’re amazing, you know that, right?” she says.
“We better be,” I say with a grin. “We’re the daughters of Olympus, right?”
Epilogue
Phoenix
It takes a bit of practice, but I learn that I can, in fact, still shift from a phoenix to human, it just takes more focus, but I find that there is a strength inside me I never knew. Once I harness it, I can shift easily.
We’ve had to remain winged, not wanting to be seen while still in Vegas.
But now we can go.
Remedy and her mates are in wolf form at the tree line. The hawks and I sit perched high in a tree, watching as Mom, in her casket, is buried six feet deep.
Her friends and clients from over the years attend the funeral. It’s brief and solemn and everyone seems to be whispering about Lark, the daughter who ruined the theater at Spades Royale, who is missing and wanted for a police investigation.
The articles on the Internet the day after opening night were no exaggeration.
The biggest catastrophe in Vegas history.
Looking for answers where there are none.
Were they birds or men?
Is the star of SOAR a robot gone wrong?
Some quotes from guests in attendance that night make me smile, at least. The truth is, there is nothing I could have done to stop what went down. It was inevitable.
“SOAR was a masterpiece, and Lark literally brought down the house,” Emmy, the wife of Ace, owner of Spades Royale was quoted in the Las Vegas Times.
“It was terrifying, electric, and a night I will never forget.”
I won’t end up as Vegas royalty, but at least she liked the show.
“You ready to go?” North asks.
I nod, watching as dirt is shoveled back into the ground, covering Mom’s casket.
Everything from this life is over. It’s time to move on and find answers.
My eyes lock on Remedy. Our smiles are sad ones, she knows this isn’t easy. Then her and her wolves begin to run.
We’re all packed, and we have a few cars at the edge of town filled with fuel and ready to take us east.
After the show, we made a plan. Remedy and her mates sold everything of worth in my mother’s house to pawn shops and I gave them the codes to bank accounts, so they could transfer her funds. That’s how we bought two cars.
At first, Remedy said no to the car, wanting to keep traveling in wolf form, but she’s pregnant and can’t keep that pace up.
In my mother’s old notebooks we found a photo of two women. My mother and a woman who looked just like her.
On the back, there were two names. Tabitha and Deana Montague.
My aunt Tabitha. It must be.
Thanks to Facebook, Remedy tracked her down. She reads palms in New Orleans, so that’s where we’re headed. Harlow is already on her way.
We may be half-sisters who just met, but we’re ready for answers.
And we won’t stop until we have them.
“Come on, then, little bird,” Sawyer teases.
“All for one, one for all.”
They nod, and I take off, flying first.
They may be my hawks, but I am their phoenix.
And I’m no longer little.
Now, the only thing I am is fierce.
After
It wouldn’t end well.
Jealousy can kill just as swiftly as a sword.
Their hatred terrified me.
I couldn’t make everyone happy.
But by then, I didn’t care about everyone.
I only cared for you, my daughters.