The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “Who are you?” Curiously, Penny felt no threat even though she was unarmed and alone, only a growing sense of strangeness.

  “I am you, and I am me,” the face said, rather unhelpfully, Penny thought. “I’m your part of the whole.”

  “Where are Zoe and Kat?” Penny scanned the clearing again.

  “They are here,” the face said simply. “With you.”

  It turned its gaze from Penny to the trees surrounding them, then to the clear water of Little Canyon Creek. The water was higher and swifter than she had ever seen it. Something seemed to be moving within, almost visible, just under the surface. Around her, the trees seemed to shift, to whisper in the wind, to reach for each other with limbs full and green.

  “What you seek is a gift,” the face said, once more facing Penny, more distinct now, more face than flame, and whatever it said, it looked nothing like Penny. It was old. Wild. Beautiful.

  “But it is also a burden,” it said. “If you wish to accept The Phoenix’s gift you must do so with a whole heart. It is a bond that only death or treachery can break.”

  “I know,” Penny said. Her voice trembled, and her legs felt unsteady as she stepped closer to the beautiful face in the fire. “I don’t want to turn back.”

  A fresh breeze blew through Aurora Hollow. Penny’s hair danced in the wind, almost a reflection of the thing she faced.

  The flames rose, and a body appeared under the face. A lean body clothed in fire. It raised an arm and reached for Penny.

  Without realizing she meant to do so, Penny reached back.

  Fingers of flame, hot but not painful, touched Penny’s.

  Then, abruptly, Penny was standing in the circle with Zoe and Katie, their hands still joined over the book. They regarded one another, eyes large with shock.

  They found they could move again, and did, stepping away from each other and from the old book.

  “It’s over,” Penny said.

  “No,” Katie said. She didn’t smile. She seemed almost frightened now. “It’s only started.”

  Chapter 4

  The Party Poopers

  The girls stowed the book and wands in the chest and ran back to Penny’s house, arriving in time to find Susan struggling through the front door with one of the kitchen chairs under each arm. The other two were already set out on the porch, next to what looked like a battalion of folding chairs.

  “How many people did she invite?” Penny asked, alarmed.

  Zoe took hold of her arm before she could start down the hill. “You should go make up with her.”

  For a moment Penny only looked up at Zoe, confused. The strange events in the hollow had driven most of the mundane events of earlier that morning from her mind. Then she remembered … the lavish breakfast, the special attention, Susan’s enthusiasm, and her own less than grateful reception of it. Susan’s hurt expression as she stepped through the front door for her short Saturday workday.

  Penny felt her cheeks flush with shame, and nodded.

  “Yeah, I better. I was kind of a brat to her.”

  “Birthday girl needs a head start.” Zoe dropped an arm over Katie’s shoulder and slowed her down while Penny broke into a trot down the trail they’d beat through the grass. “Is Michael coming to the party?”

  Penny smiled as she left them behind. If Michael did show up, Zoe would probably hide in the attic until the party was over. She wondered if Katie knew about Zoe’s crush and decided she wasn’t going to be the one to enlighten her if she didn’t. Zoe would die of embarrassment.

  Susan dropped the chairs, wiped sweat from her forehead, and watched Penny approach.

  “I thought I’d have to send a search party after you girls. Much longer and you’d have missed your own party.”

  Penny didn’t respond as she crossed the yard and climbed the steps. It took all her nerve to not stop an arm’s length away, to cross into what her mom always referred to as personal space. Even Susan looked a little startled when Penny, who was still as short standing up as Susan was sitting down, leaned over her almost to the tipping point and wrapped her arms around Susan’s neck. As Susan returned her embrace, Penny wondered again if her new suspicions about Susan could possibly be true.

  “Thanks,” Penny said. It didn’t feel like enough, but she couldn’t say the words she felt without sounding stupid. She said what she could and hoped it would be enough. “Thanks for everything, Susan. I’m really lucky to have you.”

  When she disengaged and stepped back into her own comfort zone, Susan was smiling as brightly as Penny had ever seen, and there were tears in her eyes.

  Oh no.

  She looked down at her feet before she could catch Susan’s bout of emotion. She hated tears, her own most of all.

  “It’s okay,” Susan said after she’d gotten her emotions in check. “I’m happy to do it, Little Red.”

  Penny looked over her shoulder and saw Zoe and Katie halfway down the hill. The awkward moment was over, and things with Susan were good again. When Zoe and Katie joined them a few seconds later Susan’s eyes were dry again and she launched herself back into party prep.

  It was time to help Penny celebrate another year of managing to stay alive.

  More important than her birthday, to Penny at least, Katie had overcome her last obstacle and they’d be able to move on to new stuff now. Now that was something to celebrate!

  * * *

  Susan enlisted Zoe to help bring the small kitchen table out to the porch while Katie hung a large banner Susan had printed in the copy center of her shop – Happy Birthday Penny! – from the eaves over the front steps. Penny sat on the steps, since Susan wouldn’t allow her to help with anything, and tried to fake enthusiasm for Susan’s sake.

  At least the banner doesn’t say Happy Birthday Little Red, she thought.

  The first guest arrived just as Susan brought the cake out. It was Trey Miller, dropped off by his father, a huge gray-haired man in a black Mercedes that looked far too rich for Penny and Susan’s gravel driveway.

  The second was Michael.

  Zoe blushed bright red as his old Jeep topped the driveway and parked at the far side. Zoe didn’t retreat to Penny’s room but did find an out-of-the-way seat and attempted to make herself as a small as possible. It was a wasted effort. Zoe was simply too tall not to stand out.

  Jodi Lewis showed up a few minutes later with Chelsea, a friend of Katie’s who had quit hanging out with Katie’s old crowd when the group’s new queen bee started getting them into trouble. Penny was surprised Chelsea came; she’d only asked her for Katie’s sake, and Penny had a feeling Chelsea still didn’t like her much, only tolerated her.

  When Katie had broached the subject of letting Chelsea in on their secret a few weeks back, Ronan had reluctantly agreed to tail her for a while and find an opportunity to let her see him, if she could. She couldn’t, so Katie dropped the idea, though with a few hard feelings. They had since agreed to let Ronan make the call on any future memberships to avoid the drama.

  Last to arrive was a surprise guest.

  “I didn’t know she was coming,” Katie said, pointing down the driveway to the approaching figure of Ellen Kelly. She pedaled her bike up the top of the rise, a bag swinging off her shoulder and her long blonde hair blowing back behind her.

  Katie waved at Ellen, and Ellen returned the wave.

  “I didn’t know she was coming either,” Penny said, but she smiled and walked to meet Ellen in the driveway. The others ran to catch up, Katie and Zoe falling in on Penny’s right, Jodi and Chelsea on her left.

  Chelsea brightened for the first time at Ellen’s approach, shouting loudly to be heard over the others. “That blouse is so cute! Where did you get it?”

  Ellen paused for a moment, wobbling a little on her bike, to regard her rather plain teal blouse, then looked at Chelsea with raised eyebrows as if to say seriously?

  Zoe coughed discreetly into her fist, and Penny though she heard a muffled suck-up buried in
the noise.

  Ellen Kelly was a bit of a puzzle to Penny. She was popular, but not part of any school cliques. She had a variety of friends but no best friend, no one you could count on seeing her with. She seemed comfortable enough on her own but lately seemed curious about Dogwood’s new, inseparable trio.

  “Yeah, she just kind of showed up at mine too,” Zoe said. “Just to say happy birthday. I asked her to stay.”

  Chelsea looked impressed against her will.

  “Hi, girls!” Ellen slid from the seat of her bike while still in motion and coasted it to a stop in front of them. “Not crashing your party. Just wanted to bring you this.”

  Ellen thrust her hand into the bag on her shoulder and handed Penny a card.

  Penny caught Jodi and Chelsea watching her with narrowed eyes, as if daring her not to invite Ellen to stay. She sensed an uprising in the making and was determined to head it off. “Thanks. You should stick around.”

  Ellen accepted with a grin and followed them back to the house.

  Penny was beginning to feel pleased about the turnout; it was nice to know she was liked, or at least tolerated in some cases, until a familiar old white VW Bug pulled up next to Michael’s Jeep driven by Miss Riggs, Susan’s older sister and Penny’s least-favorite teacher. She, like Katie’s father, had a long-standing grudge against Penny’s family that now extended to Penny herself.

  Beside her, Zoe groaned.

  Miss Riggs climbed from the car and approached the porch in a stiff-backed march, as if someone held a gun to her back and was forcing her to be there. She was dressed more casually than Penny had ever seen her, crisp new blue jeans and a pink western-style shirt, but her hair was pulled back into its customary, painfully tight bun. She carried a small package under one arm, which shot down Penny’s hope that she was only there for something quick and entirely unrelated to Penny’s party.

  Susan saw her and excused herself from conversation with Katie’s older brother, who then turned his attention to Trey. Trey, looking All-American with his crew-cut hair and football letterman jacket, was trying unsuccessfully to flirt with Zoe.

  Zoe, already rather red in the cheeks, went even redder and slid down a few more inches in her chair.

  Susan smiled and waved at her sister, but the smile was considerably lower-wattage than usual. “Hi, June.”

  When her classmates saw the dreaded Miss Riggs approaching, their enthusiastic chatter became subdued, as if they were afraid of being told off for talking too loudly out of class.

  Susan offered her standard hug, which Miss Riggs accepted with obvious bad grace and broke too quickly, then, seeing her sister’s effect on the party, led her inside.

  Nervous eyes watched the two pass, and obvious relief filled the crowded porch when the door closed behind them.

  “What is she doing here?” Katie and Ellen flanked Penny, Katie looking darkly amused, Ellen a little startled. Chelsea stood next to Jodi, her arms crossed and looking as if she were planning her escape route.

  “She’s here to lead us in a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday,’” Michael said, sliding in smoothly on Katie’s other side.

  Zoe flicked her nervous eyes from the closed front door to Michael and giggled.

  “Penny’s just lucky I guess,” Chelsea said, favoring Penny with a look that was almost sympathetic.

  Katie ignored them. “Seriously … who invited that killjoy?”

  “Shhh … not so loud,” Jodi moaned. “She’ll hear you.”

  “I can hear them fighting,” Zoe said in a low voice, and made room for Penny to stand beside the kitchen window and listen. Katie and the others kept a distance from them, but waited with curiosity.

  Whatever the fight was about, it was a short one. Penny heard only retreating footsteps from her side of the kitchen window, and a moment later Miss Riggs was striding past them again, toward her car, and without the package.

  “What…?”

  Zoe cut Penny’s question off with a quick shake of her head, and then Susan was behind her.

  “Everyone ready for some cake?” Susan carried a knife and a short stack of paper plates, but not her sister’s package. Her good cheer was definitely forced now.

  Later, Zoe mouthed at Penny, and jumped up to help serve cake.

  Afterward, Susan led them in a single, lackluster chorus of “Happy Birthday,” and Penny opened her gifts. There were only two on the table, one from Susan and, though Penny had told her friends no gifts, one from Zoe and Katie. Penny was relieved that Miss Riggs’s mysterious package wasn’t on the table. She had no idea what Miss Riggs would consider an appropriate gift for a fourteen-year-old, and didn’t want to find out.

  Susan’s was a laptop computer, the tiniest one Penny had ever seen.

  “I’m having internet installed this afternoon,” she said as Penny tore open the box. “I’m always thoroughly sick of computers by the time I leave work, but I thought you might like to join the twenty-first century.”

  Penny liked it so much she gave Susan another hug, which seemed to cheer Susan up a bit. Her smile as Penny moved on to her second gift was less brilliant than usual, but also less fake than the one she’d offered after her sister’s quick exit.

  Zoe and Katie’s gift was a pair of CDs, from the new/used music store in Centralia, Penny guessed, since Dogwood didn’t have one. They had been trying desperately to introduce Penny to more modern music. Her taste in music, old rock ‘n’ roll and classical, quite frankly disturbed them.

  Jenny, Susan’s only employee at Sullivan’s, arrived just as Susan was loading one of Penny’s new CDs into the living room stereo. She parked and approached the house slowly, shading her eyes with a hand and scanning the growing crowd around the front of Penny’s house. As if unsatisfied by her brief search of the partygoers, she turned her scrutiny to the cars and bikes parked around the edge of the driveway.

  Penny waved and stepped down to greet her.

  She was young, only a few years out of high school, plump, with brown hair and thick glasses that magnified her wide eyes. She reminded Penny of a cheerful owl.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  Jenny gave up her search with a shrug and a grin at Penny. “I thought Susan’s boyfriend might show up.”

  Boyfriend? Penny thought, then said. “Boyfriend? Susan doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Well, not yet,” Jenny said. “Is that Adele?”

  Jenny danced her way up to the porch, depositing her gift into Penny’s hands before going inside to dance to Zoe and Katie’s attempt at bringing Penny’s music collection into the twenty-first century.

  Jenny’s gift was, of course, a book, but still one of the biggest surprises that day. The Aikido Student Handbook, a volume Penny had owned a few years before when she still lived with her mother in San Francisco and her runty size had made her a favorite target of neighborhood bullies. Her brief lessons had not turned her into the Karate Kid, but she’d learned to defend herself, and more importantly, as far as her mother was concerned anyway, to control the hot temper that would never let her walk away from a fight. She supposed that Susan had known about the lessons and told Jenny.

  “Aikido,” Chelsea said, almost sneering at the book in Penny’s hands, then at Penny. Her expression seemed to say, right … as if.

  At Chelsea’s words, the others gathered around to see what was up.

  “You never told me you were a kung fu master,” Katie teased.

  “Aikido,” Penny corrected, blushing all the way from her neck to her forehead. “I was a novice.”

  She’d never mentioned it to Zoe or Katie because it was a part of her past life in the city and not something she’d planned taking up again. Her learned skills were rusty now, and the self-control she’d gained had gone out the window after her mom had died and Child Protective Services stuck her in that lousy children’s home.

  “Oh yeah, I knew that,” Zoe said, tipping Penny a not-so-sly wink. “She beat Rooster up in the park the day I
met her.”

  “Fun, isn’t it?” Trey said, and nervous laughter filled the awkward silence that followed Zoe’s fond reminiscence. “I shoved him in a trashcan once.”

  They were gathering trash and seeing off the first of her guests—Trey, Jodi, and Chelsea—when Penny felt the little mirror in her front pocket begin to warm and vibrate slightly, someone trying to speak to her through it. She wondered who other than Zoe and Katie, standing only feet from her and perfectly able to speak directly to her, would try to reach her through the mirrors, then remembered Ronan’s advice to always keep one handy.

  Penny excused herself, ducked into the downstairs bathroom, and answered it.

  “Ronan?”

  Ronan’s face swam from a brief, obscuring mist, grinning his foxy grin at her.

  “Didn’t have time to give you your gift before you ran off,” he said.

  “What?” Of all the people, or non-people, she expected a birthday gift from, Ronan was not one. Not that he wasn’t a giving or generous … uh, whatever he was, but he couldn’t just trot into the Centralia Mall’s Hot Topic and buy her a gift card.

  Ronan rolled his eyes, which was quite something to see a fox do, no matter how many times she’d seen him do it. “I believe it is human custom to give the birthday girl a token of one’s friendship, is it not?”

  “Well … yeah, but….”

  “Then when you have a chance to get away, go to your back porch and reach under the bottom step. No one but Kat and Zoe are to see it. I had to leave somewhat precipitously when I brought it over.” He wrinkled his upper lip, showing teeth. “I think Kat’s brother spotted me going around the house.”

  “Michael can see you?” She didn’t realize she’d all but shouted until he shushed her. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  It hadn’t occurred to Penny that any of the boys in Dogwood might have the same latent abilities that she, Zoe, and Katie had, but now that the idea was in her head, it seemed kind of silly that she’d never thought of it before. After all, Tovar the Red, who had actually been the Birdman in disguise, had been able to see Ronan. She was pretty sure that even without his human disguise, the monster had been male.