by Brian Knight
“No,” Nancy said.
Michael appeared first, stepping into the living room. He seemed shell-shocked, dazed. He’d just been introduced to his long lost aunt dressed like an extra from Lord of the Rings, after being rescued from a cell of light floating in a universe of void, so Penny supposed he had a right to be a little disoriented.
Tracy followed him in and regarded the strange gathering.
“Our pilot friends...”
“Jackson and Ray,” Nancy volunteered without looking up.
“...are back in San Francisco,” Tracy continued. “I got them a room at the Fisherman’s Wharf. They will wake up tomorrow morning with a reasonable explanation for how they survived the crash of their airplane. It’s the best I could do for them.”
“What, you gave them new memories, like her?” Penny pointed at Nancy, who was too busy staring at her old friend to notice.
“No, I just removed a few inconvenient ones,” Tracy said. “They are perfectly capable of supplying any new ones they need. People are good at that.”
“What about Mr. Price?” Penny was anxious to see him gone, but not crazy about the stories he might take with him.
“I took this from him.” Tracy held a gold colored coin, maybe even real gold, and Penny saw one side of it minted with the complex Celtic looking knot that seemed to be the symbol of her father’s house. “He was also under the impression that his former partner’s employers were going to get rid of Susan and make sure he got control of Clover Hill. He wasn’t expecting to be banished with her.”
“You are all talking nonsense,” Susan said. “We were drugged or something... that’s all.”
“That would sure be simpler,” Michael said under his breath, and fell back into his moody silence.
“I’ve sent him home,” Tracy said, “with the understanding that if I see his face again I will change it in interesting and painful ways.”
“I hope you have a plan to sort this all out,” Torin said. “Susan has promised to kill me when she feels better, and I do believe she means to.”
“Flanna,” Tracy said. “Please fetch me the memory tree.”
Flanna stood to comply, wiggling free of Susan and Nancy, then stopped with her hand stretched out to it.
“Oh!” She turned back to Tracy, eyes wide. “Are they...?”
“Just fetch it dear,” Tracy said, and when Flanna handed it over, Penny understood, or thought she did.
The memory tree hadn’t just been keeping one memory, the one Tracy had saved for Penny and Flanna.
Tracy plucked one of the crystals from its silver branch and held it up for all to see. The light caught it, and Penny saw Susan’s smiling face in it very clearly.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Susan protested, beginning to rise.
“Penny, you know what to do?” Tracy arched her eyebrows at Penny.
Penny nodded and pulled her wand.
Before Susan could take a single step toward them, Tracy tossed her crystal sphere into the air, and Penny fired at it with her wand.
Susan and Nancy both screamed, and Susan backed away as the shards fell to dust and reformed in her image.
The image faded, and Susan fell back into her seat, eyes wide, but unseeing, or at least not seeing anything in that room.
Tracy removed Nancy’s crystal, tossed it, shattered it with a spell of her own, and smiled as a larger than life profile of Nancy appeared and faded.
“Wait for it,” she said.
It seemed like a long time before Susan refocused her eyes on her surroundings, and when she did, they settled on Tracy first.
“I think maybe you have some explaining to do,” she said. She spotted Flanna next. “Don’t tell me you’re involved in all of this now, Penny.”
Penny had finally had enough.
“She’s not Penny,” Penny shouted. “I am!”
Susan looked at her, startled.
“What happened to you?” Another double take between Penny and Flanna. “And who is she then?”
“She’s my sister, apparently,” Penny said, starting to feel a little resentful of her sister.
Susan rose and approached Penny, slowly at first, then rushed headlong and scooped Penny into her arms.
Penny’s resentment subsided as Susan whispered in her ear, and she felt like things might just turn out okay after all.
“Just tell me whose butt I need to kick, kiddo.” She looked down at the wand in Penny’s hand, and sighed. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Tracy.”
“In a minute,” Tracy said.
“I’ve been waiting for fourteen years,” Susan said, and Penny saw the telling anger lines forming on her brow. “You took our memories, you broke us, and I want to know why!”
Last time Penny had seen Susan this angry she’d gone after Morgan Duke with a rolling pin.
“I will tell you everything you want to know,” Tracy said, maintaining her maddening calm, “and probably a lot of things you don’t want to, just wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Nancy had risen unnoticed and pushed her way past Flanna, Susan, and Penny. She stopped before Tracy, staring at her with a confusion of emotions on her face. Then she slapped Tracy, hard across the face.
Tracy took the hit without retaliation, but her calm was dissolving into tears.
“Nancy, I...”
Nancy stopped Tracy’s words with a kiss. She grabbed Tracy by the shoulders and leaned into her, not giving her an inch of room to retreat.
Tracy hesitated for only a moment, then cast her wand aside, and put her arms around Nancy, giving in to the moment.
Penny watched the display with astonishment. She remembered Katie sharing the rumor that their aunts had been more than friends, and tried to remember if she had ever shown the slightest interest in men. She could remember no one, not even a simple date.
It must have been very lonely for her, Penny thought, and allowed herself a smile.
They were together again.
“Very sweet,” Susan said. Her own anger seemed to ebb a little. “Now can you explain all of this to us?”
* * *
Penny returned to the hollow just long enough to awaken Erasmus, who seemed surprised and pleased to find himself back on the material plain, and returned to the house with him, Ronan, and Rocky. The rest of the milling homunculi were content to wait. They began to clear away the duff and debris of the past seasons, feeding the fire with anything flammable and tossing stray stones into the creek.
They stayed clear of the ever-swelling gateway. The surface was becoming translucent, Penny could now see the outlines of shapes, furnishings, displays she had ignored on their rush through the room earlier, and a few humanoid shapes that looked like guards posted to keep watch in the sepulcher.
She wondered how large the thing would grow if they were unable to stop it.
Two worlds merging into one, her father had said, learning that his brother had taken possession of the Chaos Relic. 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.
A reality ruled by chaos, and whoever ruled the chaos would rule that new reality.
She returned, fleeing back to her house behind the others.
With the entire company now present, Tracy began.
* * *
Tynan and Torin had never been close, they had been as different as brothers could be, and though Tynan was the oldest, the family favored Torin to succeed their father, King Brom. The animosity between brothers worsened when Tynan discovered his brother’s relationship with Diana Sinclair, one of the Phoenix Girls that the Traveling Reds investigated every year during the fair season, when they could come to Dogwood without drawing attention to themselves.
Torin nodded his agreement at this part of Tracy’s story.
When his relationship came into the open, the family was divided. Some thought it the worst betrayal, while
others agreed that the Phoenix Girls would be ideal allies, helping keep the portal to Galatania protected from the barbarians of the old world.
“Why do they insist on calling us barbarians?” Not for the first time, Penny bristled at the slur.
“Because when we lived in this world they slaughtered us, overran our lands.” Flanna’s cheeks grew flushed as she spoke. “If Fuilrix hadn’t destroyed the last Worldgate behind him they would have followed us into the new world and finished their slaughter.”
“We’ve been holding that grudge for a while,” Torin said.
“What’s a Worldgate?” Michael seemed more curious about that than millennia-old grudges.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Erasmus said. “A gate between the worlds. There used to be hundreds of them. Some of them closed on their own, and successive Fuilrix dynasties closed others when it looked like you guys were close to finding them. The one they used is called Stonehenge now. They don’t exist anymore, but there are still a few thin spots where the right magic can open a temporary doorway.”
“Like the hollow,” Penny said.
Erasmus nodded, but didn’t speak again. Tracy was looking anxious to resume the story they were all gathered to hear, even if it was old news to some.
King Brom is still remembered for his even temper, and a rare willingness to change his mind, given the right arguments or evidence. He was angry when Torin married Diana without his blessing, but he was also intrigued by the idea that the Phoenix Girls might make an alliance.
The alliance was already half-formed the night King Brom died; the Phoenix Girls had agreed with only one dissenting voice, Tracy’s. She didn’t trust Torin, and it was that distrust that made her a target for Tynan when he made his move.
“He was waiting for me after the accident that killed your mother.” Tracy looked at Flanna, then Penny.
“It was no accident,” Penny said, the memory still fresh in her mind.
Tracy nodded, then continued.
“He knew I was against it, so he singled me out and offered me a choice.” She took Nancy’s hand. “He was prepared to bring an army to Dogwood and kill us all, to repair the damage his brother had done.”
“I thought Torin was in line to take over the family,” Susan said.
“He was until one of their cousins found poison in his private chambers. The same poison that killed King Brom.”
The tale of Torin’s crime spread quickly in the Fuilrix citadel, a crime that would remove the last obstacle to his ascension, and raise a Phoenix Girl to the station of queen.
“The killing of a family member is more than just a crime,” Torin said. “It’s a reminder of the Phoenix’s curse against the Blood King, it’s an abomination.”
May your house be ever divided, Penny thought, recalling the Phoenix’s final words in Erasmus’s telling of the old story.
Tracy waited patiently through this latest digression, then continued.
“Tynan gave me a choice,” Tracy repeated. “I could watch my friends die, one by one, before he finally killed me, or I could join him, betray my friends, but save their lives. I would have to leave this world and never return. I was a tool to use against the Phoenix Girls if they ever did return, and a trophy, Tynan’s living proof that he had finally rid both worlds of the last influence of the Phoenix.”
She had agreed, but had done more than steal her friends’ memories, she had saved them, stored them in the crystal spheres of the memory tree.
“We were broken,” Tracy said. “Di was gone and our circle was weak.”
She looked at Penny with clear admiration.
“But we’re not broken now. You brought us back.”
“We are broken though,” Penny said. “Zoe’s gone.”
Ronan spoke, and the derision in his voice cut.
“Faithless child. I thought you knew Zoe better than that.”
Penny glared at him.
“She will be back,” he said, as if it was self-evident.
“I don’t see how we’re better off now than we were fourteen years ago,” Nancy said. “The gate is wide open now.”
“They’re already here,” Flanna said, and closed her eyes to avoid the sight of all the accusing faces turned toward her. “The carnival arrived last night, and he is with them.”
“Yes,” Tracy said. “But we have a hundred guards standing at the gate, and he was counting on a few clueless girls as his only opposition.”
“The gate’s growing,” Penny said.
“It’s not a gate,” Erasmus said. “The boundary between the worlds has torn wide open, and the tear won’t stop until it has encompassed all of this reality.”
“That’s been his goal all along,” Tracy said. “When Penny and her friends banished that avian back to your world, Tynan learned that the avians had found you and taken your hoard of stolen relics. He realized the World Breaker must still be in Dogwood, so he sent Turoc to find it, and to secure the hollow.”
“Is that who Price and Duke were working for?” Penny saw Susan’s temper rising, and thought Duke was lucky to be dead and out of her reach.
“Yes,” Tracy said. “Penny and her friends stopped them.”
“Who is Turoc?” Susan asked Tracy, but Penny answered.
“Giant snake man. Four arms, huge fangs, bad personality.”
“I hate snakes,” Nancy said and shuddered.
“You’ll probably get to meet him soon,” Tracy said, and squeezed Nancy’s hand. “Along with the mercenaries he sent after Erasmus.”
“So we get to fight Tynan and his mercenaries on this side, defend the hollow against reinforcements from the citadel, and find a way to save two worlds from a growing tear in reality?” Erasmus had passed sarcasm and gone straight to full-fledged fatalism.
“I think that about sums it up, old friend,” Ronan said.
“You should have let the mercenaries have me,” Erasmus said. “I’d be dead already and this wouldn’t be my problem.”
That cheerful remark killed conversation for a moment, and that was when the power went out.
The lights dimmed and died, the glow of digital displays on the television and DVD player winked out. The hum of the refrigerator, so low it was almost subliminal, was noticeable only in its absence.
In the new darkness of the house, they noticed the glow from without.
Dawn had come.
Chapter 17
The Harvest Fair
“Where’s my mirror?” Penny said, rounding on Flanna. “We need Katie and Ellen.”
“I left it in Bowen’s shop,” Flanna said. “Where...” She couldn’t finish, and turned away from Penny’s hard glare.
“Where Price met with us?” Bowen seemed less than thrilled at this information. “Was that your work?”
“It was Tynan’s plan,” Flanna said.
“You just carried it out for him,” Michael said, matching Bowen’s hard look with his own.
“Leave her alone,” Torin said, stepping up beside Flanna and putting an arm around her. “She thought she was avenging her mother and protecting her people from the aggressive incursion from your world.”
Penny pushed away her own hard feelings for Flanna. “Tynan kidnapped her after she was born and told her he was her father.” Penny caught Susan’s eye, then her aunt Nancy’s. “He told her that you killed her mother. She learned the truth last night. Cut her some slack.”
After a moment, Susan sighed and nodded. Nancy’s anger seemed to ebb as well, and she joined Torin on Flanna’s other side, squeezed her shoulder.
“Okay, moving on,” Nancy said, and Flanna relaxed visibly. “What do we do now?”
“We get my mirror back so we can let Katie and Ellen know what’s going on.”
“No,” Michael said. “I don’t want Katie involved.”
“She’s already involved,” Tracy said. “She’s been involved since that avian slaver tried to kidnap her last year.”
“And she’s
better equipped to defend herself from the Reds than you are, sonny,” Bowen said. “We need all the casters we can get on our side. “
“Casters?” Michael looked confused and irritated in equal parts.
Bowen rolled his eyes and waved an imaginary wand.
“Yes, we do,” Tracy removed another of the crystal spheres from the memory tree, Zoe’s aunt Janet, and stepped outside with it. Now only Diana Sinclair Fuilrix’s remained.
Penny pulled the curtain aside and watched her smash it. A moment later she returned.
“I was hoping you would all be here when the time came, but it may still work. If she brings Dana we can arm her too.”
“Dana?” Penny almost shouted. “Zoe’s mom?”
“She used to be a Phoenix Girl,” Susan confirmed. “Her magic was less predictable than ours. It scared her. She quit after Janet joined us.”
“Tynan never knew about her, and she was long gone when everything in Dogwood fell apart,” Tracy said. “I was spared tracking her down.”
“Are there any more surprises you’d care to spring on me?” Penny grumbled, but also smiled. She wondered if Zoe knew about her mother; wondering about her absent friend wilted her smile.
Ronan said she would be back, and Penny could only hope he was right, but she had two closer friends who had no idea what was happening, and when Tynan’s Traveling Reds arrived their ignorance wouldn’t save them from him.
“Where’s my wand?” Penny said, passing the black one she’d taken from the citadel to her aunt. “It was our mother’s, and I want it back.”
“In your room,” Flanna said. “I’ll get it.”
Flanna fled the living room, and with a look back at her father, Penny followed. “We’ll be right back.”
* * *
Penny climbed the folding steps into her room and found Flanna bent down, retrieving her mother’s old wand from the floor in front of her bed stand. Irritation flared, seeing her mom’s wand treated so shabbily, but she forced it back down. She had decided to forgive her sister, and constant fits of temper weren’t going to help them.
“Penny, I’m...”