The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  Flanna forgot her anger with Penny, pushed past her and dropped to her knees next to the cairn, as Penny had on her last visit.

  “Flanna!” Penny shouted, reached down for her sister’s shoulder, but her hand passed through it.

  She was fading now, she could feel it, could see it. The ground felt less solid beneath her feet, the stone around her grew slightly fuzzy.

  “Flanna!” Penny shouted again, and this time Flanna turned to regard her, confusion on her face.

  “What do you want?”

  “There’s a picture of our mom and dad in the album under the bed. You have to look at it.” There was something she was forgetting. She grasped for it, and floundered.

  She awoke to almost perfect darkness. Only a faint light fell down through the bars of the ceiling gate, and the warbling whisper of Ronan’s snoring.

  “I was supposed to tell her about the crystal,” Penny said. “And I was supposed to slap her.”

  Ronan’s snores stopped for a moment.

  Penny held her breath until they started up again, and then lay back down to try to sleep.

  * * *

  Flanna awoke with tears on her cheeks, remembering only vaguely how they got there. She dreamed of her mother, watching her alive, moving and laughing in the Conjuring Glass, then kneeling over her remains beneath a thin cairn of stone underground.

  There was someone else too, but she couldn’t remember who it was. Someone scary.

  She wiped her eyes and sat up, started to slip out of bed, thinking some alone time in the hollow would be nice. She liked the place, she found to her surprise. She also liked the moon. She thought the sky would be clear tonight, she would have a good view.

  She found Zoe watching her.

  “What?” Flanna didn’t try to hide her irritation with Zoe. She’d been sure the girl would be gone by now. She’d come home from school, asked if Flanna was okay, and then ignored her for the rest of the night. Flanna had expected Zoe to collect her stuff and then step through a magic door to chase down her parents.

  “Nothing,” Zoe said, then rolled over onto her other side.

  Flanna waited until she could hear the sound of Zoe’s snores from the other bed, then pulled her wand from the night stand, slipped her shoes on, and tip-toed to the wardrobe. She touched Penny’s wand to the door and opened it to find Aurora Hollow waiting for her.

  The nights were getting cooler, but Penny’s pajamas were sufficient to keep the chills away. She didn’t want a fire this night. She wanted to see the enchanting cream glow of this world’s strange nighttime companion. She was staring upward at it when the fluttering of paper wings distracted her.

  A small white bird dropped down through a gap in the limbs and hovered in front of her. She held out a hand, and it landed, unfolding as it settled on her palm.

  A note from her father, and sitting atop the unfolding paper was a small wooden box and a small gold coin with the sigil of the House of Fuilrix on one side, and a profile of the Fuilrix patriarch on the other.

  Flanna read the letter twice, then folded it and put it in her pocket with the coin.

  Her father was on his way, and it was time to contact that boy’s father. It was time for Ernest Price to do his part, small as it was.

  Tomorrow.

  Flanna took a seat next to the cold fire pit and stared back up at the sky until the moon had moved out of her line of sight.

  * * *

  Penny dreamed she was watching the moon, and awoke the next morning expecting to feel the soft ground of the hollow beneath her. It was the same cold stone as the morning before. She sighed, decided to go back to sleep, then sat up instead.

  It was still mostly dark, early dusk she thought from the low light, and her cellmates were still sleeping.

  She had work to do and wanted to take advantage of the quiet while it lasted. She settled into a comfortable position, her legs folded beneath her, hands folded in her lap. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, in through her nose, out through her mouth.

  After a few minutes she felt her consciousness wandering far, then settling somewhere near the back of her twin sister’s mind.

  * * *

  “Are you and Zoe fighting?” Susan had waited until Zoe was out the door and on her way to school before broaching the question.

  Flanna shrugged, then nodded.

  “You’ll make up,” she said, confidently. “You’ve been apart for a few months. You just have to get used to each other again. “

  Flanna doubted it, but kept silent.

  “I’m off to work.” Susan grabbed her purse and keys off the table. “You sure you don’t want to spend the day at the shop.”

  “No thanks, I’ll just stay home today.” A lie. “I’ll study.”

  She waited until the dust settled behind Susan’s departing van before going back upstairs and dressing for her trip, and was walking through the blackened and burned field between Susan and Price’s houses ten minutes later.

  She remembered the fire that had decimated the field the previous spring, both from her father and from Penny’s memories of it. The events of that night had been the final straw for her father, who had only wanted to ensure the security of their world against the savages of this one. For years her father had tried to gain ownership of Aurora Hollow and the land surrounding it through his agents in this world, a man named Gentry, his son, and their agent in Dogwood, Ernest Price. The miraculous return of her sister, Penny, had prompted more extreme measures, and her father had sent his familiar, Turoc, to help Grant.

  The Phoenix Girls’ intervention had smashed their plans in a night of utter chaos. Failing to procure Aurora Hollow, Grant had tried to destroy it, as he had done other gateways, but the Phoenix Girls had prevented that. Grant had died, his son had been imprisoned, Ernest Price discredited, and Penny herself had thrown the terrifying familiar, Turoc, into the formless space between worlds. Only Flanna’s discovery of the old monster’s broken fang and the right doorway relic in the cavern hoard, and her father’s great skill, had saved her father’s familiar from a slow annihilation as body and spirit both were slowly absorbed into the sub-matter of formless space.

  It seemed her father would have to accept a more passive role regarding Aurora Hollow and the dangerous Phoenix Girls when the traitor Torin’s former familiar Ronan was returned to them. Mental interrogation revealed the existence of a long lost, and long sought, artifact her father called the Chaos Relic, or sometimes the World Breaker, a dangerous but powerful object capable of closing the door between worlds forever. After weeks of intrusions into her twin sister’s mind, Flanna had learned what she needed to find the hidden relic.

  She had done everything he’d asked of her, she had made him happy, made him proud of her, and when her work here was complete she would go home to her family. She would go home to her sister, and try to make her understand that she’d only done what she had to do.

  Penny was smart, she had met her father now, finally knew the fate of her mother and who had caused it. Penny would forgive her, and after fourteen years, they would be family again.

  But first, there was Ernest Price to deal with.

  She crossed the blackened field and ducked through the barbed wire fence around his backyard.

  Still loitering in the back of Flanna’s mind, Penny got all of it.

  * * *

  Penny opened her eyes and found her father in a silent huddle with Ronan.

  “Guys, I know what they’re planning.” She unfolded her legs slowly, wincing as the muscles tried to cramp, then stood to stretch them out. They broke their huddle and waited for her to continue. She had their full attention. “I know why they sent Flanna to Dogwood.”

  Penny told them everything she’d picked up from Flanna while she walked to Price’s house, and waited while her father stood apart in a brooding silence.

  “Flanna has the World Breaker?” Ronan spoke when the silence grew too uncomfortable. “She has the Chaos Reli
c?”

  Penny nodded. “They interrogated you. Didn’t you know?”

  “A magical interrogation can be subtle,” Torin said. He rubbed his face, ran his fingers through his beard, sighed. “Who did you see before they brought you here?”

  “Yaegar,” Ronan said. “He questioned me for a while, then knocked me out when I wouldn’t speak.”

  Torin nodded, frowning.

  “Burning Aurora Hollow would not destroy the link to the sepulcher,” Ronan said, switching to a subject that clearly interested him more. “It’s a primordial gateway. It cannot be severed.”

  Torin barked a short, sharp laugh.

  “That was never his intension, whatever he told the family or Flanna. You heard him recite the Blood King’s catechism when he came to taunt us?”

  “What catechism?” Penny didn’t like the utter defeat in his voice. “Was it what he said in that other language?”

  “Conquest through Chaos,” Torin recited. “It was the Blood King’s catechism.”

  Ronan seemed to understand.

  “He wants to finish the Blood King’s work,” Ronan said. “The old plan.”

  “What plan?” Penny was fed up with ambiguities.

  “Tynan never wanted to cut the ties between the worlds,” Torin said. “He wants to bring them together and make them one.”

  Torin sat and resumed his earlier brooding.

  “The Blood King was obsessed with reconquering the Old World, but the only way he could have accomplished his conquest was to merge the two worlds into one and take advantage of the chaos of conflicting geographies and physics, the chaos of disintegrating civilization. It would begin in Dogwood and spread to every corner of our worlds.”

  “It would create a new reality,” Ronan said. “A reality ruled by chaos, and whoever ruled the chaos would rule that new reality.”

  Penny was speechless.

  “Erasmus taught us from our early childhood, and he knew Tynan was dangerously ambitious,” Ronan said. “Which was why he stole many of the House of Fuilrix’s most dangerous relics when Tynan ascended and he left the family’s service.”

  “And the World Breaker can do that?” Penny managed at last.

  “Yes,” Torin and Ronan said together.

  “The World Breaker is a relic from the universe’s earliest history, a leftover of the breaking symmetry that transformed a lifeless void into a million physical universes.” Torin spoke like a man reciting a learned lesson.

  “Our worlds happen to be very close to each other, very similar,” he continued. “Because of primordial gateways like Aurora Hollow that link them.”

  “This sounds like one of Erasmus’s science lessons,” Penny said, skeptically.

  “It was,” Torin said. “He was always a big fan of your science, and he was better at it than most of your scientists.”

  “He was also a fan of history,” Ronan said. “He believed that the Blood King killed the Phoenix because he knew she would stand against him, as she had during his other destructive conquests.”

  “The Phoenix was a real person then,” Penny said. She wasn’t sure her brain could handle many more revelations.

  “She still is,” Ronan said. “She exists in Aurora Hollow, where her body died. She has been directing you for generations.”

  “Directing us toward what?”

  “Who knows,” Ronan said. “To resurrect her, to share her knowledge, revenge against the Reds.”

  Penny had no more questions, she was already beginning to regret the ones they had answered for her.

  “You need to try again, Penny,” Torin said after the silence stretched out. “She’s about to do a horrible thing, and you might be the only one who can stop her.”

  * * *

  Rooster saw Flanna coming before his father did, and charged from the house to meet her.

  “You can’t come here!” he screamed at her as he ran, fists raised before his reddening face, his split and swollen lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Get off my property!”

  Flanna ignored him and kept walking toward his house, right hand in her pocket and closed around the tiny wand she’d found in the basement. When he had closed the distance between them to mere feet, she drew and fired. The spell was a weak one, as she’d expected coming from the miniature wand, but was powerful enough to stop the boy. He stumbled and slowed, his arms dropping to his sides. Then his legs wobbled and buckled beneath him, and he fell in a heap to the dirt.

  Flanna walked past him without comment, without looking down, and with only a smile in response to his renewed bellow of panic as all feeling and control drained from his limbs.

  The back door of the huge Price home banged open, and Flanna waited to see if she would have to take down Ernest Price’s other son, or if the man himself would come out to meet her.

  It was the man himself, and if Rooster had been angry to see her walking calmly across their backyard, his father was livid.

  “You get the hell out of here!” Ernest ran outside in a pair of dirty slacks and a stained white t-shirt, his hair a disheveled mess, his face covered in a ragged growth that could not properly be called a beard. He stopped his charge when he saw his son lying twitching in the grass, and bellowed his name. “What did you do to my son?”

  “He’ll live,” Flanna said, and when Ernest resumed his clumsy charge, she raised the tiny wand, cupped in her palm to hide it. A purple bolt of lightning arched out toward Ernest and crashed into the ground in front of him, missing his feet by inches.

  The man stopped, his hair dancing on end, and did an amusing little jig where he stood.

  Flanna smiled. It was really quite amusing. The smile vanished quickly though. She had no taste for what came next. Despite everything she knew about the Phoenix Girls, she liked Susan and did not want to see the woman hurt.

  Before Ernest could recover and resume his bellowing charge, Flanna flicked a coin in the air toward him, then held it aloft in the air before his face. As his jittering came to a stop he noticed the coin, gold with the sigil of the House of Fuilrix on one side, and a man’s face in profile on the other. Ernest Price would not know the face, but he did know the sigil, the looping intertwined knots, and he recognized the coin. This wasn’t the first like it he had seen.

  “You?” He reached up slowly and took the coin from the air, turned it over to inspect it more closely, as if he didn’t trust his first impression.

  “Me,” Flanna said. She produced the small wooden box from her pocket and held it out to him. When he made no move to take it, she nodded in encouragement. “This is for you. You have a job to do, and you’ll need it.”

  He gulped, nodded, and inched forward slowly until he was close enough to take the box from her palm. He immediately backed off a step, and when he saw Rooster rising from the ground behind her, stuffed the box deep in his pants pocket.

  “Go inside, Tucker.”

  She heard the boy moving toward her from behind, then stop.

  “But, pa...”

  “Inside,” Ernest said again.

  Flanna stood silent until Rooster passed her. He paused at the threshold of his house and looked back at her.

  Flanna smiled and pointed at the door.

  The sight of her pointing finger made him jump in place, and he was inside with the door closed between them a second later.

  “Do I need to worry about anyone else sneaking up on me?” Flanna didn’t want any witnesses to what was about to transpire.

  “No,” Ernest said. “It’s just Tucker and me.”

  “Where are your wife and James?”

  “James is in town and... she left. She’s with her mother.” He blushed a deep red. “What do you want me to do?”

  Flanna told him.

  Chapter 13

  Her Life in Ashes

  The rest of the week passed without event. Flanna stayed at the house on Clover Hill during the day, did the schoolwork that Zoe brought her, relying heavily on notes fr
om Katie and a lot of studying from her books to tackle subjects she had never encountered in her education at the citadel in Galatania. They had meetings and practice in Aurora Hollow along with Erasmus, Bowen, and Katie’s brother Michael, who had been appointed interim Sheriff of Dogwood County. Michael was participating at Katie’s insistence, but was less than thrilled with the discovery of his hitherto unknown abilities. He seemed to view them as an insult to his good sense.

  Zoe was still living in the house on Clover Hill, but not speaking to Flanna. If Zoe had told them about her kiss with Trey, they had decided not to mention it.

  Trey had come by after school for the first few days of her suspension, and she’d ignored his knocking until he’d gone away, and when he’d showed up the next Saturday morning Zoe had answered the door. After a very brief exchange that Flanna could not hear from her attic window, Zoe had slammed the door in his face, and Trey had stayed away.

  On Flanna’s first day back at school she was applauded as she walked down the hallway to her first class.

  “Have you seen Rooster yet?” Penny’s shared memories identified the girl as Jodi Lewis, a friend she shared with the other Phoenix Girls, but not one herself, nor privy to their secrets.

  “No,” Flanna had been watching out for him, just in case he’d rediscovered his guts, but didn’t honestly expect any trouble following her visit to his house. “Is he looking for me?”

  “I think he’d take another week off if they’d let him.” Jodi laughed. “He won’t look anyone in the face. I’ve never seen him so well behaved.”

  Flanna saw the truth in this a few minutes later as she rounded a corner and came face to face with him.

  Rooster looked up in time to avoid running into her, uttered a sharp little eep sound, and went the other way in a hurry.

  There was laughter, a slap on the back from someone who was gone too quickly to identify, and generally too much attention for her liking, but by the time lunch arrived the unwanted attention was ebbing.