Phoenix

by Finley Aaron

  And Felix wouldn’t have to worry about hurting Zhi’s feelings if she was more interested in Elmir.

  “May we accompany you?” Chen asked after some silence.

  “Honestly? I think that would be a great idea.”

  They ate a fortifying meal and then set off at sunset—Felix, Ilsa, Elmir, Chen, Zhi, and Zilpha. Felix was pretty sure Zilpha was only going along because she knew Chen was an eligible bachelor, and Zilpha, of all his sisters, was most eager to marry. He’d watched several times as she’d attempted to communicate with Chen, but whatever nonverbal magic Elmir and Zhi had worked out, it appeared to be evading Zilpha and Chen.

  But Zilpha was trying, at least. Things didn’t look promising, but she was trying.

  After flying through most of the night, at dawn they set down in the courtyard of a familiar abandoned castle in Romania. Members of their family had been visiting the spot for years on their travels to and from Azerbaijan and their mother’s native Scotland. Now that Wren had married a Scotsman, they were sure to visit the spot even more often.

  It was a comfortable place, if abandoned. Its remote mountain location meant that, not only had they never seen another human being near the place, but animal life was abundant, and they were able to quickly hunt a meal. The well water in the castle courtyard was cool and fresh, and the many rooms, though showing the effects of long neglect, were nonetheless relatively secure.

  As they ate, Elmir tried to teach Chen and Zhi the English words for various things. While both of them seemed eager to learn, Zhi did more giggling than talking, and Felix redoubled his hopes that his grandmother’s apartment would yield clues to another female dragon.

  The six of them slept through the day, ate again, and then took to the air, flying swiftly in order to reach Edinburgh before the sun rose in order to land without being seen.

  Fortunately, it was still more than an hour before sunrise when they approached the great Isle of Britain, and the land was cloaked in fog. Edinburgh glowed like a beacon through the mist, and the five of them landed in Holyrood Park, on Arthur’s Seat, an ancient, long-dormant volcano. There they quickly peeled off their backpacks and dressed.

  In preparation for the trip, the Melikovs had lent Chen and Zhi contemporary European clothes. Most of them put color-muting contacts in their eyes, but Chen and Zhi were wary of the lenses, and opted for bulky sunglasses. Once everyone was dressed appropriately, both for the weather, and so they wouldn’t draw too much attention to themselves, they hiked down the mountain, just as the first early-morning joggers were making their way up.

  Once they reached the streets of Edinburgh, they saw even more signs of the city awakening. Ed had given Elmir the address for his late wife’s apartment, and they were able to reach the place on foot without too much trouble. A light was on inside, and when Zilpha called her sister to announce their arrival, Ed came down to let them in.

  “I’ve just started the coffee. Wren’s cookin’ up eggs and bacon. We bought plenty, expectin’ ye.”

  Their group filed inside. Felix entered last, pausing to speak to Ed as the Scottish gent closed the door behind them.

  “Have you found anything?”

  “Aye. Many a lovely keepsake by which yer family can remember their grandmum.”

  “What about clues to others?” They were still in the common hallway of the building, and it echoed there. Felix didn’t want any telling words to filter through to the inhabitants of the other apartments.

  “None yet, but we’ve only just begun the search. Didn’t start until after lunch yesterday, and we’ve decided to read every word of every page we find, so’s not to pass over anything; important. But what of these two strangers? Ye found friends in China, did ye?”

  “Yes. We’re trying to teach them English, but it’s slow going. Otherwise they can only communicate through me.”

  Ed followed Felix up to the apartment where Wren was taking orders for eggs and bacon. Zilpha had already picked up a box of letters and found a spot on the sofa to go through them.

  Elmir stood still near one wall, with Ilsa beside him. He was blinking rather rapidly, and Ilsa had her hand on his shoulder.

  Concerned by the sudden paleness of his grandfather’s face, Felix went over to them. With eight people in the apartment, there wasn’t much room to maneuver, but he reached them in time to hear Elmir say to his daughter, “It smells like her. I haven’t smelled this scent in forty years.”

  Felix thought the apartment smelled mostly of bacon, with undertones of dust and age, but he wasn’t going to argue. No doubt his grandfather was feeling renewed grief, and Felix felt a pang of concern, not just for his grandfather’s emotional state, but for his love life, as well. Things had looked so promising between Elmir and Zhi the evening before. But what if the experience of going through his late wife’s apartment caused Elmir to decide to devote himself to perpetual widowhood in her honor?

  What if Elmir also rejected Zhi?

  “Felix.” Zilpha patted a spot on the sofa beside her. “Come look at these things.”

  “What did you find?”

  “There’s all sorts of letters and photographs in this box. Check this out.” She held up a photograph of two women dressed in 1940’s era clothing, both of them wearing funny glasses with side shields. “Do you think this one might be Grandma Faye?”

  “She looks a little like mom.” Felix looked back and forth from the picture to their mother, until Ilsa caught him looking.

  “What?” She asked from across the room, over the chatter of egg and bacon orders and Ed’s well-intentioned attempts to forever confuse Chen and Zhi’s limited English with his thick Scottish accent.

  “Come look at this picture, both of you.” Felix motioned for his mother and grandfather to join them.

  Elmir took one look at the photograph and spoke without hesitation. “That’s Faye on the right. The other girl, I don’t know.”

  Felix and Zilpha made room for Ilsa and Elmir to sit between them on the sofa. Isla studied the photograph more closely. “Mom was wearing the glasses to keep her dragon-eyes covered?”

  “Yes,” Elmir explained. “Her parents had intentionally raised her to fit in among humans. I believe that’s why she survived as long as she did. She didn’t change into dragon form until long after she’d finished her schooling, so for many years, she didn’t have to bother with the glasses.”

  “The other girl,” Felix studied what he could of the petite figure, though Elmir sat between him and his mother, who held the picture. “She’s wearing the glasses, too.”

  “I don’t know her.” Elmir shook his head. “Your mother was injured when I rescued her. She spent much of our time together resting, trying to get her strength back. We talked about Eudora, about possible ways we might evade her, but ultimately, the yagi caught up to us. There were many more conversations I would have liked to have. We spoke little of other dragons. I only knew about Ed because I’d asked her if she’d ever married or been engaged, and she told me he was the only one who’d ever asked—even then, she didn’t tell me his name. I was more concerned about establishing that she was single, at the time, than worrying about how I might find others later. Perhaps that was myopic of me.”

  Felix listened patiently, but couldn’t shake one thought. “This other woman—she’s wearing glasses just like Grandma Faye’s. Grandma Faye is wearing the glasses because she’s a dragon. Do you suppose this other woman—?”

  Ilsa turned the photograph over and squinted at the backside. “It says Paris, ’47. No names.”

  “No names,” Zilpha started rifling through the box. “But Paris. That coincides with what Ed remembers. Wasn’t it a French dragon?”

  While Felix called Ed over to clarify all he knew of the dragon—which turned out to be, after much apology, only that it seemed Faye had a friend from France, who may or may not have been a dragon. Ed wasn’t sure. No one had ever said outright that she was, but he’d gotten the impression, based on
the context in which she was spoken of, that she may have been.

  “What’s her name?” Felix pressed, trying not to begrudge his brother-in-law’s ignorance.

  “I dunno.”

  “She never mentioned it?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she did. It’s just I never paid it any heed, and it’s been so many years now. ‘Twas something French, you know. One of those French names.” Ed shrugged, and headed back to the kitchenette where Wren was calling to him to give her a hand dispensing bacon and eggs.

  While the rest of the crowd ate, Felix and Zilpha divided up the box of old correspondence, which was mostly letters and postcards from all over the world. They agreed they’d go through it again later and read every word, if they needed to, but at the moment they were scouring for French postmarks, return addresses, anything that might be a link to France. Some of the papers were faded, many aged to a delicate condition over time, and even those that seemed best preserved were written in such scrawling script, it was difficult to make out what they said at all.

  Suddenly Zilpha pulled an envelope from the stack with a little shriek. “Paris!” She held it out to Felix and tapped the postmark almost reverently. “Paris, Postes Française, juil 21, 1927.” She read aloud all the words in the stamped circle.

  The listed address was for the apartment they were in, right there in Edinburgh, though it took Felix a few moments of blinking at the archaic, scrawled letters to be sure that was so. At the same time, he was looking from that address, to the blank corner where a return address should have been. “Is it on the back side?” He asked his sister, who flipped the envelope over to reveal nothing but creamy aged whiteness.

  “There’s nothing, then? No return address? Isn’t it illegal to send mail without a return address?”

  Elmir must have overheard them, because he leaned over and explained, “It wasn’t necessarily a common practice until the last fifty years or so. Some people did it, some didn’t. If a person was in the habit of trying to hide…” he let the implication linger in the air as he shrugged and took another bite of eggs.

  “What about inside? There’s a letter inside?”

  Zilpha opened the envelope and pulled out two pages, which were filled with the name archaic scrawling on front and back, which had bled through the paper over time, making it difficult to say which words belonged on which side—especially since they were all in French. “I give up. I’m going to eat, and I don’t want to get food on this. You’re welcome to scour it for an address.” Zilpha handed Felix the papers.

  Felix scoured the pages and was about to give up, himself, when he recognized something near the bottom of the second page. “Paris. It says Paris, again, and those may be numbers a bit before it. Whatever these letters are, that may be the street address. She left an address, just inside the letter.”

  “Are you sure?” Zilpha had finished eating and washed her hands before rejoining him.

  “The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m hungry. You take a look at it. I’m going to eat.”

  While Felix devoured eggs and bacon, Zilpha took out a fresh notebook and wrote variations of what the letters might be. “The first number is either a one or a seven. The last one may be a two or three, or possibly eight. And the one in the middle—either a five or a six, or possibly an eight, but only if that last number is not an eight.”

  Felix compared them to the numbers on the envelope, the address in Edinburgh whose numbers they knew. “That’s a one. The rest, I don’t know.”

  “There’s a café down the block with a sign in the window, advertising free internet for customers,” Wren suggested from the doorway of the kitchen. “Why don’t you take my laptop down there, and look up variations of the address until you find some that exist?”

  “That’s a great idea,” Felix acknowledged, “but I just ate breakfast.”

  Isla laughed at him. “And I’m sure you can’t hold any more? Go, look it up, and let us know what you find. If we discover anything more, one of us will bring it to you.”

  So Felix went. And he found he was able to eat an entire breakfast special while downing several cups of coffee, searching with multiple tabs open, and jotting more possibilities in Zilpha’s notebook. He sketched quick maps of the locations of existing interpretations of the scrawled address.

  Then he returned to the apartment to report what he’d found.

  “Anything new here?” He asked upon his arrival.

  While several interesting and charming objects had been found, there wasn’t anything that might help Felix in his search.

  “I’d like to fly over to Paris and take a look, but it’s still morning, and the clouds have all lifted. I don’t dare fly out until nightfall, and then I won’t be able to start knocking on doors until tomorrow.”

  “Did you bring your passport?” Ilsa asked. “Paris is less than a two-hour flight from Edinburgh. I’m sure they have nonstop flights leaving several times every day. You could be there this afternoon.”

  “Good call. I’m on it.”

  Felix booked a flight on his phone while Ed drove him to the airport. “Any idea if this person speaks English?” Felix asked. “I don’t even know her name. All I’ve got is this picture and letter.”

  “I imagine she’d speak English, though I seem to recall Faye was good with French, so maybe not. Either way, if you can get her to open the door, just hold up that picture and watch her face, you’ll know when you’ve found her.”

  “Assuming she’s the one who opens the door. If she has a housekeeper or butler or something, a picture may not get me past them.”

  “True. Findin’ our own kind isn’t easy, seein’ how we have to hide from everyone, includin’ ourselves. Makes it that much more remarkable your sister and I found each other.”

  They reached the airport in time for Felix to go through security and make his gate not long before they announced boarding.

  He was glad there wouldn’t be much of a wait. Generally he, like most almost-immortal dragons, was infinitely patient. But after all he’d been through searching for a mate, he wanted the flight to be over quickly.

  Fortunately it was. From the airport, he took the train to central Paris, then followed his notes to find the closest address. He rang the bell, but received no reply. Marking the entry in his notebook as a possibility to check back later, he moved on to the next possibility.

  This door was opened by a white-haired man, neatly dressed.

  Felix mustered his best French. “Pardon? Mademoiselle?” He held up the picture and pulled his face into a hopeful, quizzical expression.

  The man said something in French which Felix couldn’t understand. Most of his working knowledge of the language came from reading the alternate French label on cereal boxes when he was bored during breakfast. And he didn’t eat much cereal, being a mostly-carnivorous dragon.

  So his French was not very good.

  But from what he could see of the interior of the townhouse, whose décor was upscale yet dated, it looked promising. Besides which, the white-haired man was looking at the picture with an expression that smacked of wonderment, with perhaps a hint of recognition. “I’m sorry,” he admitted in English, speaking softly to avoid coming on too strong and frightening the man. “I’m looking for the woman in this picture.”

  “Ze woman.” The man spoke with a heavy French accent, but his words were distinctly English. “You seek her, why?”

  “This woman,” Felix pointed to Faye, “was my grandmother. I found this letter among her things.” He pulled out the letter and showed the man the scrawled address. “Is this the correct address?”

  “Hmm.” The man took the paper and held it at some distance, then pulled a slender pair of reading glasses from his pocket. “It iz so difficult to read. But yes, I think, this may be the place.”

  “Is there a woman living here, who looks like this woman?” Felix held up the picture again. Maybe he should have brought his mother, or sisters at least. If th
ere was a petite dragon woman inside the house, the man surely felt it necessary to protect her.

  The man looked up from the paper, and Felix realized he was scrutinizing his eyes.

  Felix had in color-dulling contacts. Did Grandma Faye’s old friend even know about such a thing, or did she still wear the glasses?

  He didn’t want to risk giving away that he was a dragon if the man at the door wasn’t hiding a dragon. But something about the man’s hesitation told Felix he’d have been turned away already if there wasn’t some connection.

  Hoping he wasn’t making a foolish mistake—and hoping even more that he didn’t frighten the old man into calling the police—Felix reached up and slipped one contact lens to the side of his eye, revealing a wide sliver of bright red before letting the lens slip back into place.

  “Oh. Oh my. Wait right here.” The man closed the door.

  From the sound of clunking metal, Felix guessed the man was engaging every lock on the door. Then footsteps pattered away somewhere inside the house.

  Felix took a step back on the stoop and waited, as instructed. Surely if the man called the police, they’d arrive with lights flashing and Felix would have a chance to get away.

  He looked up at the windows above him and saw movement behind one curtain. Felix still had the picture of his grandmother, but the man had taken the letter.

  Felix would need it back if it turned out he had the wrong house.

  But no, there was a petite, dark-haired woman looking down at him from one of the windows above. It was difficult to say for sure, from his vantage point below, but she appeared to resemble the woman in the picture.

  Sure enough, after a wait that was so long, it went past rude to plain annoying, the man came back down and let Felix enter, leading him to a parlor where the woman sat on a tall chair, almost like a queen, with a toy poodle on her lap and two more on the floor at her feet.