The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  “What happened?” Her father’s voice was heavy with dread. “What did she do?”

  “She killed them,” Penny screamed, and then her strength gave out and she could only lay against the wall, her masked cheek feeling the cold of the old stone through thin leather. When Ronan lifted her up and carried her as she had once cradled and carried him, she had no fight left to offer. She only wept in his arms, and closed her eyes against the unwelcomed light that fell into her cell from the hallway above.

  “Who did she kill?” Torin asked. There was no need to ask who had done the killing. There was only one she whose mind Penny had ever shared.

  “Ernest,” she said, stilling her shaking for long enough to say what she needed to say. “Michael West, Bowen, Erasmus, and...”

  But she couldn’t speak the last name. Her throat locked in defiance of it, as if saying it out loud made it irrevocable.

  She didn’t have to.

  “Susan Taylor,” Ronan said. “Your godmother.”

  * * *

  Flanna put all thoughts of Susan Taylor behind her as she replaced the Conjunction Glass beneath the bed, then retrieved her folded robe and her own wand. She shrugged into her robe, relishing its familiar weight, then cast Penny’s wand aside as she walked to the wardrobe. She touched the door with her wand, and stepped through into Aurora Hollow.

  Dusk was falling. It was too early for their regular nighttime meetings, not that she expected company that night. Erasmus wasn’t around to call any more meetings of the Phoenix Girls and their traitor friends, Zoe was gone now, and Katie and Ellen were no longer speaking with her.

  She closed the door to Penny’s room, opened it again, nothing but trees and darkness past the threshold now. It was an open door that could not be opened again from elsewhere. No one would come to interrupt her work tonight.

  She witnessed the dying of daylight alone, watched through a gap in the willow canopy for the rising of the moon. It would be full in only a few nights, but she didn’t expect to be here to see it, so she was going to wait until it was out before she finished her work here.

  If there was one thing she was going to miss in this world, it was the moon.

  Flanna relished the silence and solitude, the thickening darkness, and when the night became chill with the light splatter of rain and a rising wind the willows could not fully keep out, she made a fire and waited in the wash of its heat and light.

  When the moon finally arrived, she stared up at it until her eyes watered and she had to blink away tears.

  She had been sorry to hurt Zoe and Susan, but Zoe was safely away, a thought that she supposed had been in the back of her mind all along, and Susan... well, Susan was gone as well, and it had at least been quick.

  Flanna stood, drew her wand, and completed the spell to reveal her hiding spot. She found the beautiful Blood Opal box where she’d left it, and set it down beside the fire. Her father had warned her about the artifact inside, powerful and dangerous. Staring at it would be a mistake. When you looked at it, it looked back at you, into you, showing you the promises and possibilities of a million other realities, a million other yous.

  To touch it was to be consumed by it, body and soul, and sent... no one knew where.

  Flanna closed her eyes and considered the difficult spell before her. It was one only taught to older students preparing for far travels to other worlds, and only to those most trusted to keep the secret. Family legend said it was stolen magic, dating back to the Blood King, but legends exaggerated. Her father had told her so.

  She spoke the words in her own head again and again, until she was confident she knew every syllable and intonation, then opened her eyes and raised her wand to begin.

  Flanna slashed downward, from high above her head to the ground, and whispered the words.

  A faint crackle sounded, first challenging, then overpowering the swelling thump of rain. A bright glowing line of purple traced the path of her wand, then split in a thin crack. Flanna moved closer, until her face was almost touching the split in the world, and stared through. It was dark, but her eyes adapted quickly and she recognized the circling stone wall of the sepulcher. High up she saw the mounted head of the rogue avian.

  She stepped back and let out her held breath. The spell had worked.

  She reached through the crack and pulled its edges apart, widening the split until she could have stepped through. She fought a sudden urge to do just that, to put aside this final step in her father’s plan until she could see her sister with her own eyes, to prove to herself that she was fine, healthy, happily joined to the family she’d been hidden from her whole life.

  She wanted Penny’s forgiveness for the deception that had brought her to this place.

  Instead she stepped back again and picked up the Blood Opal box, ran her fingers over it until the invisible join of the lid revealed itself.

  She opened the box, turning her eyes away from the object inside, and holding the box tightly, hurled the Chaos Relic, the World Breaker, through the split between her world and this one.

  Her father had told her it was possible to move the Chaos Relic between worlds, but only safely encased in the priceless Blood Opal container. He had told her to take it through unshielded would break the connecting portal forever, and send the dangerous relic to some other far plain of existence.

  She had expected the portal between Aurora Hollow and her world to break and close forever, and when her father joined her he would take her back home with one of the old doorway relics.

  She was not prepared for what did happen.

  A bright spark ignited, exploded, shattering the glowing edges of the crack, and Flanna dove out of the way of a swelling bubble of bright light that expanded from the shattered portal. She crawled away as it swelled again, and then it stopped.

  Flanna stood slowly, faced the shimmering, mirror surfaced bubble floating above the ground of Aurora Hollow. It seemed to be spinning in place, stirring the willow whips and leaves closest to it.

  Flanna bent, never taking her eyes from it, and fumbled in the dirt until her fingers closed around a stone. She straightened, paused, then threw the stone. It hit the shimmering mirror surface, broke through with a pop, and for a few seconds the simmering surface became transparent.

  Through it she saw the sepulcher.

  “What did I do?”

  Slowly the surface went from clear to opaque, then took on the mirror sheen.

  The face staring back at her was not her own.

  “What did you do?”

  The reflection wore a familiar leather mask and gray rags, her voice was also familiar, but Flanna refused to believe it.

  “Who are you?”

  “Look at my eyes,” the reflection said, and Flanna did.

  Her eyes.

  “I am you,” her reflection said.

  “You are?”

  “No, you dork, I already told you who I was,” the reflection snapped. “I’m Penny!”

  Flanna stumbled back a step, raised her wand.

  “Go ahead, it won’t do you any good though.” Her reflection, her sister, looked around her. “Was this what you were expecting?”

  “Something went wrong,” Flanna said. “Father can fix it when he gets here.”

  “Tynan lied to you,” Penny said. “And he is not our father.“

  Flanna fired a spell at her sister, but it passed through her, disrupting her reflection for a long moment. When she returned, she stood with crossed arms.

  “I told you that wouldn’t work.”

  “Would you just leave me alone?” Frustrated beyond her ability to cope, Flanna stomped a foot and screamed, “What do I have to do to get you to leave me alone?”

  “Take Tracy’s crystal from the memory tree and break it, then I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”

  Flanna glared at Penny, then turned back to the door at the hollow’s edge, slammed it closed, and opened it again on the foyer of Penny’s house.
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br />   She returned a few minutes later with Tracy’s crystal sphere and found Penny waiting in the reflection of the doorway that should have been closed forever. She held it high, turning it to regard Tracy West’s face in the moonlight, then brought it down and hurled it against the stones of the fire pit.

  Chapter 14

  Jailbreak

  There was a moment of dead silence after the crystal shattered, a million tiny stars spreading out from the impact like a miniature galaxy, caught up in the rotating wake of the open door between the worlds for a timeless moment, then falling to the ground with a whisper.

  Penny and Flanna watched from different worlds as between them, the opaque apparition of a woman rose from dirt and duff of Aurora Hollow.

  “Tracy,” they said in unison.

  The apparition paid them no attention. She floated, a still image identical to the one that had been in the broken crystal. She wore the clothing of her old world, jeans and a t-shirt, no high leather boots or robes, and Penny thought this must be Tracy West as she was before her betrayal of the Phoenix Girls and her defection to Galatania.

  Then the apparition turned her head, looking neither at Penny or Flanna, but into the distance somewhere between them, and it spoke.

  “My name is Tracy West, I am a member of the Phoenix Girls. This message is meant for the daughters of Diana Sinclair Fuilrix and Prince Torin ‘es Brom Fuilrix.”

  “No,” Flanna whispered, a weak denial. “It’s not true.”

  Penny ignored her, focused on the apparition before them.

  “I have a gift for you, your birthright. It’s not an easy gift to give, and it won’t be easy to accept, but it is yours. These are the last memories of your mother, my friend, but before you accept them, I want you to know that I never betrayed her, and I never betrayed my friends. I did what I did to save them, to keep them safe, and to keep you safe as well.

  “You will have grown in different worlds, but I know that with the grace of the Phoenix you will be together again. When that day comes, it will be up to you to reunite the Phoenix Girls.”

  Tracy’s apparition went silent, still, then faded.

  Penny waited with held breath, bracing herself for whatever came next.

  Flanna stood red-faced and defiant, as if daring the departed apparition to prove its lies.

  The memories came so suddenly that at first Penny didn’t even notice the transition. She was sitting inside a car, an old one from the retro design of the dashboard and controls, and she realized that she was driving. She turned her head without thought or effort and saw Torin, younger and smooth faced, smiling back at her from the passenger seat.

  Eyes back on the road, she drove through the darkness on a winding country road that Penny knew. It was the road west out of Dogwood, the same road that had once brought her to her new home.

  She tried to look at her father again, but could not, and she realized that she was only a passenger after all.

  A passenger in her mother’s memories.

  * * *

  Flanna could feel the upholstery beneath her, could feel her hands on the wheel and every bump in the road as her mother piloted this strange mechanical conveyance through the night, but she was not in control.

  “Where are you taking me, Di?” The voice of Torin, the man she’d been taught to revile as Torin the Traitor.

  “I’m taking you to the coast,” Diana said. “Grays Harbor. That beach with all the sand dollars.”

  Torin laughed.

  “Really? We could have been there in an instant.” He motioned at the interior of the car. “No need for all of this.”

  Diana looked into the rear view mirror for a second before turning back to Torin, and the love Flanna saw in her eyes told a truer story than she had ever heard from Tynan, or even Tracy, who had always parroted Tynan’s words, and whom she loved and trusted as much as she had the man she had called father her whole life.

  Her mother was in love with Torin, and Flanna saw that same love reflected in Torin’s eyes.

  “You’re missing the point, love. The destination is not the point. The journey is.”

  “I rather think the destination is the point,” Torin said. “Any place where my brother can’t find us will do.”

  “He’ll come around... eventually.”

  “He won’t, but King Brom is.” There was hope in his voice, an optimism that Flanna knew was doomed. King Brom, beloved of the people of Galatania, was old, and had died shortly after she had been born.

  “Erasmus has convinced him that the Phoenix Girls are no threat to Galatania. He knows that an alliance is in everyone’s best interest. You keep the sepulcher gate safe from the barbarians of your world.”

  “It’s not nice to call us barbarians, you know.”

  “Not you, love,” Torin said. “Only everyone else.”

  He reached out and stroked the crimson tattoo on her wrist, then lowered his hand to the plump dome of her belly.

  “Or you, my son,” he said, and dodged a light slap Diana aimed at his hand.

  “You don’t know it’s a boy,” Diana said. “What if we have a girl?”

  “Then I shall give her with my whole heart,” he said, and Diana turned her attention back to the road.

  “But it is a boy,” he said, and flashed a quick grin. “I have a special sense about these things.”

  Whatever special senses he possessed, he did not feel the sudden sense of danger, of being watched, but her mother did, and so did Flanna.

  “Torin, something...” Diana got no further in her warning, and the things that happened next were a jumble of violence, pain, darkness, and terror.

  * * *

  Penny sensed the danger as her mother did, nearly shouted a warning of her own as her mother spoke.

  A shimmer just ahead, like a heat mirage, catching and reflecting the beams of the car’s headlights. She didn’t know what it was, but had experienced enough magic since her introduction to The Secrets of the Phoenix Girls at age eleven to know the signs.

  She stepped on the brakes, barely keeping her old Mustang under control as it skidded, began to slide sideways, but she was not quick enough. The right front fender passed through the heat-haze shimmer and jerked violently upward, bringing the front of her car into the air. Then the whole car was airborne and spinning. It corkscrewed through the air, continuing to rise until it passed through the spell and came back down nose first.

  Penny watched the pavement, bright under the Mustang’s headlight, rise to hit her, to kill her...

  There was noise, grinding, twisting metal, screaming, but only darkness where there had been light. There was pain, her head, her chest, her abdomen, but the pain was muted, almost unimportant. There was motion, rolling, spinning, dizzying, making her think of the rides at the fair, the day she first met Torin as a member of the Traveling Reds, and how she had forgotten to breathe for a moment the first time he looked at her.

  She couldn’t breathe now, as something was pressing into her chest.

  Next to her, Torin screamed.

  Darkness.

  Awakening to the gentle rocking of the car around her. She was no longer sitting, and she recognized the thing squeezing her chest as the shoulder harness of her seat belt. She opened her eyes and saw light. One of the Mustang’s headlights was still working, but growing dimmer. She was upside down, and the car rocked, grinding gravel and wreckage beneath the collapsed hood. She turned to Torin, reached for him, and found his seat empty, the seatbelt hanging unlatched, the door torn from its hinges.

  “Torin.” A whisper only, and she felt blood on her lips, warm, salty, wet.

  A cramp in her belly, a contraction. A scream ripped from her throat.

  The baby!

  Darkness.

  She struggled with the belt, ran her hand along it until she found the latch, grabbed the wheel with her other hand to slow her fall, and released the latch.

  Darkness.

  She awoke on her back, her
legs twisted around each other, the heel of her right foot caught on the steering wheel. Her right knee bent at an unnatural angle. Another contraction ripped through her, turning her belly to stone.

  It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. The baby wasn’t ready.

  “Torin,” she said, and was surprised to rediscover her voice. “Torin!”

  No reply. Had he been ejected in the crash? Was he still alive?

  She braced her palms against the roof of her car and pushed herself toward the open passenger door. Her right shoe slipped over her heel, and her feet slid free of the wheel. Her legs crashed down and she screamed, cursed, called for her husband again.

  “Please excuse my brother,” came a voice she knew, a voice she had hoped not to hear again soon. “He’s alive, if that’s your concern, but in no condition to rescue anyone else.”

  “You did this,” she said, and coughed. Blood sprayed from her mouth. She wiped it off her lips with the back of her hand.

  “You have had an unfortunate accident,” Tynan said. “I do hope your child is unharmed.”

  Diana did not reply. She pushed herself a few inches closer to the exit, then reached up for the glove box. Her wand was in there. Her finger brushed the release button, slipped off, and she fell to her back again.

  There was another contraction, the worst yet.

  Diana shrieked, and Penny shared her mother’s pain. All of it.

  This is what dying feels like.

  Darkness.

  She awoke and shoved herself closer to the door, closer to the glove box, reached up and pushed the button. A flood of paper, coins, and road snacks poured out. Her wand landed next to her.

  “What are you doing in there, sister?” There was laughter in Tynan’s voice. This was the first time Diana had ever heard real humor in this man’s voice. His normal mode of speech was inflectionless, sharp, cold.

  Diana ignored him, clutched her wand to her chest, braced her feet and pushed with them. There was no strength in the right, only pain, but her left was strong enough to propel her closer to the open air.