The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she shouted again. “He was a total jerk!”

  Katie’s eyes flicked away from the mirror, and she groaned. “Crap, he’s coming. Probably thinks I’m on my cell phone. Grounded, you know.”

  “Later, okay?” Penny asked.

  Katie nodded and was gone.

  She tried Zoe next.

  “Hey, babe!” Zoe greeted her cheerfully. Penny hoped her good mood was genuine. Someone should be happy today. “You need to talk to Kat.”

  “Already have.” Penny had reached the edge of the canyon trail to the hollow and, given her past near-tumbles down it, decided to wait until she could give it her full attention. She sat, her feet hanging over the drop. “She’s in big trouble.”

  “I know,” Zoe said, actually smiling. “But not as much trouble as her dad.”

  “What?”

  “Michael told their mom about his total freak-out at your party. That guy is feeling no love right now.” Zoe seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in his predicament. “They all hate him.”

  “A lot of good it’ll do Kat,” Penny said.

  “It will if she stops losing her temper. Michael says it’s only a matter of time before their mom wears him down, and Michael won’t even talk to him now.”

  “Wait … you talked to Michael?”

  Zoe blushed and turned her face so a curtain of hair hid it.

  “He called. Wanted to let me know what was going on.”

  “He never called me,” Penny teased.

  “Well, he’s embarrassed. He feels like he ruined your party … and Kat thinks you’re mad at her.”

  “What? That’s just stupid!”

  “I know. I told them the same thing. But you’ve already talked to her ….”

  “Not long I didn’t.” Penny said. “She started yelling and I had to go.”

  “Oh … well, temper runs in that family I guess.”

  “Can you come over today?”

  “Naw,” Zoe said. “Stuck at home.”

  “Why? You’re not grounded too, are you?”

  Zoe hadn’t done anything to tick off her bad-tempered grandma lately, at least not that Penny knew about, but sometimes it seemed like Zoe spent half of her time grounded.

  “No, nothing like that.” She was silent for a moment, and Penny’s perspective changed as Zoe turned.

  “Grandma had a spell yesterday and called the ambulance. So now her doctor has her on new heart medication and she needs me to stay at home today to make sure it doesn’t kill her.” Zoe rolled her eyes. “She’s so paranoid … and I hear her calling. Gotta run, Little Red.”

  Then Zoe, too, was gone.

  Looked like Penny had a little more alone time whether she wanted it or not.

  She pushed the mirror into her pocket and began descending into the hollow.

  Time for a little therapy, she thought.

  Nothing cheered her up quite like setting stuff on fire or blowing it up.

  * * *

  Penny worked out her frustrations with a round of target practice, levitating large rocks onto the ledge on the other side of the creek and blasting them with her wand. She was getting good, too, hitting her targets almost every time. Of course, she was getting a lot of practice, much more than Zoe and Katie. It wasn’t fair to them, her easier access to the hollow and its secrets. She wished there was something she could do to help them.

  She avoided opening The Secrets of The Phoenix Girls. She thought the next time should be an occasion for all of them, not just her.

  When pummeling unoffending rocks grew boring, she sat on one of the big ash’s large, arching roots, kicked off her shoes, and cooled her feet in the water. She thought about the day before, Katie’s revelation of and victory over her fears, the bizarre forming of their circle, and the even more bizarre vision she’d had before it ended.

  And there were the warm but painless flames, what Ronan called Phoenix Fire.

  Phoenix Fire. It’ll only burn what its maker wants it to burn.

  Penny remembered the feeling of it burning harmlessly in the palm of her hand, how Katie, near panic, had asked her to put it down. But she hadn’t put it down or even put it out. She’d simply done what came naturally to her. She’d closed her hand and put it away.

  As she thought about it, she could feel the familiar tingling warmth rising in her chest, as if the flames were hiding inside her and waiting for her to call them.

  Penny laid her wand on her lap and raised her right hand, not forcing the warmth to flow down her arm toward it, but letting it. The tiny hairs on her arm stood on end as the warmth flowed through it, then settled again as it concentrated in her palm.

  She could feel it now, just beneath her skin, and realized she was the only thing stopping it. Her will was the only tether holding it back, so she closed her eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, and let it go.

  When she opened her eyes, the flames danced from her cupped palm, licking up her fingers. For a long moment she simply marveled.

  Then she panicked.

  The flames began to spread along her arm, to her elbow and beyond.

  “Whoa!” Penny jumped from her seat and waved her arm through the air, but the flames only spread.

  She dropped to her belly at the creek’s edge and plunged her arm up to the shoulder in the icy water.

  “I don’t think it’s working,” a voice from across the creek said, and she looked up to see Ronan standing at rigid attention in the mouth of his cave.

  “What do I do?” She cried out, thrashing her arm through the water, though Ronan was right. The flames danced as energetically under the water as they had done out of it. “What do I do?”

  “Calm down!” Ronan leapt into the creek, and as he swam toward her, she saw her wand washing away in the current.

  “My wand!” Penny screamed and lunged for it but missed by several feet and fell headlong into the cold, rushing water. When she had managed to push herself out of the water and back onto the shore, she saw Ronan paddling toward her, the wand clamped between his teeth. She relaxed for a moment, then remembered that she was on fire and panicked again. “Help me, Ronan!”

  Ronan scrambled ashore and shook the water from his thick fur, drenching Penny once again, then spat the wand out next to her.

  “Calm yourself and get control of it,” he shouted, now near panic himself. “It can’t hurt you.”

  Penny closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. She couldn’t shake the image of the flames, harmless to her or not, spreading until she was completely engulfed, running around and flapping her flaming arms through the air and screaming like a lunatic.

  “Calm,” Ronan urged. “Just remember, it’s a part of you. You called it out and you can put it back just as easily.”

  Penny recalled closing her fist and not extinguishing the fire but simply putting it away. How the lovely warmth had settled into her, not dying but going into waiting.

  Putting the fire back was more difficult than letting it out; it was like willing herself to calm down after a fit of anger, but she felt the warmth decrease by slow stages.

  “You’re doing it,” Ronan said, sounding calmer himself. “Open your eyes.”

  Penny did and saw the flames guttering on her arm, then dying. As they died, her arm began to sting with cold. She pulled it from the creek and watched as the flames retreated toward her hand, and, with a regretful little poof, puffed out.

  “That was intense,” Penny said. She regarded her dripping wet arm with suspicion, as if it might burst into flames again. “I’d better learn to get that under control. If I start bursting into flames during class people will definitely know something is up.”

  Ronan settled next to her and began to laugh. “I’m sorry, little lady, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. You have no idea ….”

  Losing complete control, Ronan rolled onto his side and wheezed laughter. “… how … much I’
ve needed this.”

  Penny dropped onto the ground beside Ronan, scowling at him for a moment before the giggles took her, too. There was just no way to watch a large red fox rolling on the ground in gales of laughter without the image tickling your funny bone.

  At last Ronan’s wheezing chuckles died out, and he could look at her without being overcome by them. “You should have seen yourself. It really was amusing.”

  Penny rocked forward with another quick burst of giggles. “I’m happy to have brightened your day.”

  She picked herself up off the ground, grabbed her wand, and resumed her seat on the tree’s arched root. Ronan jumped up beside her.

  “I’ve never seen any of the others do that,” he said, sounding impressed. “In fact, I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

  Penny looked into his upturned, grinning face, and decided that this was as good a time as any to try to press a few answers out of him.

  “Not even my mom or Susan?” Penny waited for a moment, but he didn’t reply. “What about Kat’s aunt?”

  His smile did not fade as she’d expected, but he did turn away from her. She crossed her arms and prepared for more of his artful dodging.

  “Not even them,” he admitted. “Of course, Susan never had the affinity with fire that you share with Diana and Nancy. Her element was always air. She was the first of their generation to learn how to fly.”

  Penny didn’t know which stunned her the most; the fact that Ronan was giving her a straight answer about her mother for once, or that Susan could fly.

  “Susan … can fly?”

  Ronan shook his head. “Not anymore, but back in her day she was like a bird, that one.”

  Ronan appeared lost in reverie, looking back on the old days when Penny’s mother and all of her friends had called Aurora Hollow their place and had done amazing things which Penny couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “You know, I’m not surprised you figured it out,” he said. “I’m not disappointed, either. You’re inquisitive, persistent and intelligent ... your mother would have been pleased.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Penny felt her familiar frustration with Ronan rise, and squelched it. She had learned to trust him in the past year. His advice had never led her wrong, so he must have good reasons for withholding. “Why hasn’t Susan said anything? She has to know what we’re up to.”

  “It’s … complicated,” he said. “And not all of it is nice.”

  “Well,” Penny said, feeling nettled again. “Maybe if you use small words and talk … real … slow … I’ll be able to follow it.”

  Ronan made a small barking sound—she couldn’t tell if it was a sound of amusement or frustration. “There’s not much to tell, honestly.”

  Penny could sense another dodge coming and determined to prevent it.

  “I already know my house used to be an orphanage for girls, and that my great-grandmother grew up there.” She paused to enjoy the effect of her words on Ronan. “I don’t know when she bought the place, but I do know my grandmother grew up there, too. Were they all …?”

  “Yes,” Ronan said. “They were. That’s as far back as my knowledge goes, but you’re right. I suspect what you’re interested in is a little more recent, though.”

  Penny nodded, waited.

  “Your mother and aunt, Susan, Kat’s aunt, and their friend Janet … they were the last, and your grandmother was their teacher.” He rose, stretched, jumped to the ground, and began to pace. “Your grandparents were both dead when I entered the picture, but I’ve gleaned that much from … other sources.”

  “And on the night I was born?”

  “On the night you were born,” he paused, as if considering his next words carefully. “That was the night everything went horribly wrong for them.”

  “What happened?”

  Ronan stopped pacing and fixed her with a stare. “You must know by now you girls aren’t the only ones who can do what you do.”

  “Like Tovar?”

  “Yes,” Ronan nodded. “Like him. The others are from another place, far away, but they come here from time to time; and when they discovered your mother’s circle of friends, these others determined to stop them.”

  Penny felt herself grow cold and wasn’t sure if she wanted him to answer her next question.

  “What did the others do?”

  “They sent representatives here to watch and to learn and, when the time was right, to sabotage.”

  “How?”

  Ronan took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “They befriended your mother and the rest of them and destroyed them from within.”

  Penny waited, arms crossed.

  “Only hours after your birth, one of your mother’s friends betrayed the rest, and when the circle broke, she stole something from them.”

  Penny was beginning to feel the chill from her dunk in the creek. That was what she told herself, at least. She had begun to shake slightly. “What did she take from them?”

  “Their memories,” Ronan said. “Of everything to do with Aurora Hollow.”

  Penny’s arms dropped into her lap and she sagged against the ash.

  “Mom would never talk about her past with me,” she said. “And the one time Susan did … it was like there was nothing in the world she wouldn’t rather do.”

  “It can be painful,” Ronan said, “when you have to think past holes in your memory. It can also be dangerous. They will never know what they’re missing, but for them the past is a book they never want to open again.”

  “Which one was it?” Penny leaned closer to him, one hand on her knee, the other gripping her wand. “Which one of them was it?”

  “No,” Ronan said, and shook his head, twice, firmly. “I won’t tell you that. No good could come from you knowing.”

  Penny shot to her feet. “Why not? You can tell me the rest of it, but not that?”

  “Penny, you needed to know the rest of it.” He paced back and forth in front of her. “Those others know about you now. They know the Phoenix Girls are back, and they’ll try to stop you, which is why you three need to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can. You have to be ready!”

  Penny’s agitation grew.

  “How? How are we supposed to fight off people who have been doing this their whole lives?”

  “You did okay against Tovar.”

  “That was luck,” Penny said. She hated to admit it, probably because she knew how true it was.

  “Some of it was,” Ronan conceded, but he remained unperturbed. “Most of it was courage and intuition.”

  “He underestimated us. He thought we were a couple of silly little girls, and he underestimated us.”

  “Well,” Ronan said, his hackles rising, “the others won’t. They will come, and they will not underestimate you. They take you seriously. If you don’t start taking yourselves seriously, then they will beat you, easily. You three need to learn.”

  “Then we might as well snap our wands and just give up!” Penny told Ronan what had happened at the party and that Katie was banned from her house.

  “Well, that certainly complicates things,” Ronan said, sounding only mildly concerned.

  “Complicates?” Penny nearly shouted. “She’ll never be able to come here again.”

  “Never say never,” Ronan advised. “The situation with her father may work itself out sooner than you think.”

  “But ….”

  “And in the meantime ….” He rose and sprinted to the door wedged between two scrawny willows. “Bring that wand of yours over here.”

  Her irritation turned to excitement as she realized what he was about to do. It was one of the things he had always steadfastly refused to help them with in the past. Today, however, things seemed to have changed.

  “This is risky,” he warned her. “You can never know who might be standing on the other side of a distant door, so you must promise me never to take unnecessary chances.”

  “Okay,” Penny said, nearl
y breathless with anticipation. “I promise.”

  “I’m not sure if this is a good idea. The temptation to use tools like this might prove too much some day.”

  “We’ll be good,” Penny assured him.

  Ronan nodded in the direction of the door.

  “Come here then.”

  It was so simple that Penny felt stupid for not having figured it out herself.

  * * *

  By Sunday night things at home were pretty much back to routine, Susan curled up in her favorite living room chair with a book before making dinner, Penny helping in the kitchen when Susan would allow, homework, and finally some time playing on the internet. Penny had had internet in her apartment in the city and had spent much of her days back then either playing online or watching television. After almost a year of small-town life, with the freedom to go just about anywhere she wanted without constant adult supervision, she didn’t particularly enjoy idle time spent in front of a screen.

  Sunday night routine was all about mental preparation, Penny thought. For the coming school week, or work week in Susan’s case. It was an early-to-bed night.

  But not that night.

  She already had it planned out. First Zoe, then together, they would surprise Katie and maybe give her one thing to be happy about.

  “Bedtime, kiddo,” Susan said on her way past the kitchen to the stairs.

  “Okay.” She closed the laptop and slid it into the recently emptied top drawer of the kitchen buffet.

  Better not to have the temptation of the internet in her bedroom on school nights, Susan had explained. Penny was fine with that, since the internet wasn’t high on her list of temptations anyway.

  “G’nite,” Penny called as she climbed the ladder to her attic room. She heard Susan’s reply, something about bedbugs.

  She waited for a quarter hour, making sure Susan was done roaming the house for the night, then used her mirror to call on Zoe.

  “Hey Penny.” Zoe looked surprised but pleased. “What’s going on? Something wrong?”

  “Nope,” Penny said, almost giddy with excitement. “Is your grandma sleeping?”