by Brian Knight
While Torin stood over his fallen brother, a mixture of fury and pity twisting his features, Penny crawled to the body of her fallen sister.
“Flanna,” she grabbed the front of Flanna’s robe and pulled her close, the petrified heart clutched between them. “Wake up!”
Others had come down into Aurora Hollow without her noticing, and they surrounded her now. Zoe, Katie, and Ellen with tears in their eyes, Susan kneeling down beside her with her hands over her face, her aunt Nancy looking dazed by grief, and Tracy, falling to her knees beside Penny, pushing her away and taking Flanna into her arms.
“Stop, Torin.” Imogen’s voice.
Penny turned to find the fury had overcome the pity on her father’s face. He stood over the stirring form of Tynan, his wand pointed and was suddenly seized by a dozen grasping hands. They wrested his wand from his grip and dragged him away from his brother.
“There is something I need to know,” she said, and when he tried to pull away from her, she spoke a strange word, and an atmosphere of calm descended over Penny. She guessed her father felt it too, because he calmed at once. His tearful eyes turned up to her face.
“There is something I need to know,” Imogen repeated, and this time Torin nodded.
“Let me in,” Ronan said, and moved to Tracy’s side, Erasmus close behind him. “Let me see her, Tracy. It may not be too late.”
“It is,” Tracy said, but relinquished her hold on Flanna, and rose unsteadily to her feet. She fell into Nancy’s arms, and the two comforted each other.
“Two bodies,” Imogen said, the familiar words drawing Penny’s attention back to them, “one mind.”
Imogen closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to Torin’s, and the two remained in that strangely intimate pose for several long moments.
“There is nothing I can do,” Ronan said, and lowered Flanna’s body back to the ground. Behind him, Erasmus sagged. One of his dreadlocks swept a tear from his cheek.
There is something you can do, the voice of the Phoenix said. Penny knew the voice was in her head, but in her head or not she was not the only one who heard it. Zoe, Katie, and Ellen tensed and searched the hollow for the speaker. Even Tracy, Nancy, Susan, and Janet seemed to have heard something.
“What can I do?” Penny spoke aloud, not caring about the strange looks this drew her way.
The Phoenix told her.
* * *
Penny lowered herself to the ground and let her grief flow through her. The heart in her hand began to warm, to heat, to blaze through her clutching fingers as she crawled toward her sister.
“Penny, no!” Hands reached for her, brushed her arms, her back, through the short tangles of her shorn hair. All hands drew back as fire leapt from the heart of the Phoenix and wound itself around her.
She reached Flanna’s body, bent low over her, and hugged her slain sister close with her free arm. The heart burned between them, and began to beat in Penny’s hand.
Screams of shock and fear from those who didn’t understand what was happening, shouts of exhalation from those few who did. Penny recognized the voices of her best friends among the latter, and Erasmus, whose extra brains, he’d once claimed, made him much smarted than the humans he was cursed to associate with.
Penny could only hope that what she was doing was the right thing, and she did hope.
What she did was not for power, not for revenge, or even for the adventure of it, but for love.
She had loved Nancy, the woman who had raised her as a mother, but Penny suspected that beneath the false memories Nancy had always understood Penny was not of her. Nancy’s love had always been a distant thing, a separation between them that Penny had never fully recognized until she met Susan, and then Zoe, her first and best good friend, as close as a sister.
Susan and Zoe had taught her to love, and it was their faces most clearly in her mind as she added her flames to those of the Phoenix’s reawakened heart.
The flames rose around them, driving the others away with their intensity. These flames were not harmless or heatless. They burned into Penny’s flesh, then through it, until she was at last consumed.
* * *
The Phoenix rose from the flames, not a revenant, but flesh and fire. She rose on wings of flame and beheld her sanctuary grove for the first time in countless years with living eyes. The tree at the edge of the creek that had once been her staff, planted deep and grown mighty in the hundreds of years of its life. The creek, its waters imparted with the magic of other realms, other worlds that were so close.
The place had been well tended by her girls, green and beautiful, alive in a way no other place in this world was, but all was not as it should have been. The barrier between worlds was breaking down, and the worlds were bleeding together, falling into each other, to the inevitable destruction of all.
The Phoenix gazed upward, and the willow limb canopy above her parted so she could see the sky above. The darkness was populated with the familiar constellations, stars, and planets, but things that did not belong in this world’s sky had appeared as well.
Stars winked out as she beheld them, others to take their place, and the great fiery ring of the midnight sun spun in its tipped orbit high above.
Others followed her gaze and saw it; the Reds, to whom it was a familiar sight, and the people of this world, who had never seen such a sight in their night sky. A drifting cloud revealed the moon, not yet full, but growing, and those of the Reds who had never visited this world before gasped in astonishment.
She regarded the people gathered at the very edge of her grove and those who stood on the edge of the hill above.
Last she regarded Tynan ‘es Brom Fuilrix, whose ambition and hatred had resurrected her old enemy and brought him to power again. She felt Penny’s hatred of the man, a mirror of her own hatred for Tarvus, but stronger than her hatred was the love that had brought her back from the restless death of the immortal. Penny’s love for her sister.
So the Phoenix put aside her anger, her undying vengeance, and what she did next, she did with love and mercy.
She opened her hand, and the wand that had come to Penny through her mother, once a part of the tree that had grown from the Phoenix’s own staff, flew into her hand. As she gripped it, it grew, thickening as it spiraled upward and downward, forming new green shoots along its length. The tiny crystal point at its tip grew and blossomed like the bud of some fabulous alien flower, and light spilled from it.
She reached out and from the tip of one pointing finger drew a line in the air. Not the ragged tearing that the Reds made in the skin of the world when they wished to pass through to another, but the smooth parting of a veil. Inside the black gem hung, a singularity that might eventually pull all worlds into it, destroying all that was for something that should never be.
The Phoenix reached into the breach and plucked it from the air, and though she felt the pull of infinite universes, infinite possibilities calling to her, they could not compel her. She was as much an artifact of creation as the Chaos Relic.
The opening closed with a snap and a bang that shook the earth, and for a long, drawn out moment the sepulcher of the Reds fell away, as if down a long tunnel, and then it was gone. In its place was a strangely expanded hollow, somehow larger than before, and at its center, a shimmer like a heat haze that reflected the firelight like the facets of some ethereal gem. The midnight sun was gone and the strange constellations faded back into the dark.
Dogwood had taken its rightful place back on the Old Earth, but a single remnant of the Chaos Relic’s aborted changes remained in Aurora Hollow.
A new Worldgate, like the ones that had existed back when all of the multiverse’s worlds were much closer together, like the rooms of a great mansion.
The Phoenix turned and found Tynan cowering, pressed into the steep earthen path that led out of the hollow.
“Tynan of Brom, rebellious and hateful child of the House of Fuilrix,” the Phoenix spoke in a voice both fa
ir and terrible. “I give you the freedom of all worlds.”
She drew closer to him on her wings of flame, and when he tried to escape her, he found every member of his family standing to block him.
Imogen stood next to Torin, pointing her wand down at Tynan.
“We know the truth now, Tynan Kinslayer. You’ll find no succor from us.”
Torin seemed to have forgotten his brother. He glared at the Phoenix with a mixture of wonder and anger.
“What have you done with my daughters?”
The Phoenix smiled at him, and his anger shrank away. She offered no response, but turned her attention back to Tynan.
Tynan spoke to her then, and though it was his own language, the Phoenix understood it completely. There was no spoken or written language of the two earths that she did not understand.
“Get away from me, unnatural thing.”
“Come to me,” the Phoenix said, and though Tynan’s fearful gaze never wavered, he did.
She took his hand, turned it over, and placed the Chaos Relic in the open palm.
“May you find peace in a world of your liking,” the Phoenix said, and it may have been a blessing or a curse from the horrified face before her. “For if you don’t find peace, you will surely find a hell of your own choosing.”
She closed his hand over the dark crystal and held it while his outline began to first blur, then fade. He did not scream as the Chaos Relic bore him away to worlds unknown, but his eyes never left hers until they at last also vanished.
When Tynan was gone, the Chaos Relic dropped back into her hand.
The Phoenix settled to earth and crouched there for a moment. She found the Blood Opal box, dropped the Chaos Relic inside and closed the lid. Then she looked up into Torin’s eyes.
“We love you, Father.”
Torin cried out in anguish as the flames once more rose up around the Phoenix, and when they died down, she was gone.
In her place stood Penny and Flanna, holding hands, both very much alive, goggling around them. Flanna regarded the transfigured staff in her other hand with mild surprise.
“Did that really just happen?” Flanna asked.
“It really did,” Penny answered.
And above them, Clover Hill erupted in cheers and laughter.
“They’re alive! They’re alive!”
“The Phoenix has returned!”
“King Torin! King Torin!”
Then Aurora Hollow was bursting with celebration, and for several minutes all they saw were the faces of friends and family pressing in around them.
* * *
After the celebration came the sorrow for lost friends, Rocky, Bowen, stricken down in the Blood King’s final explosive rage, the Reds who had tried to stand against Tynan at the last and had paid with their lives. As the night wore down and the first dim light of dawn appeared in the east, the party of Reds, carnival folk, town people, the Phoenix Girls, their friends and family, moved to the house on Clover Hill.
The power was back on, the television speaking aloud to the empty living room as they walked in.
“Commuters in western Washington State reporting that the small town of Dogwood has vanished, apparently into thin air. Attempts to contact the town have failed so far...”
Michael sighed.
“I suppose I better get back to the office. It’s going to be a busy day.”
Katie helped him along by tapping the front door with her wand and opening it on the sheriff’s office.
Mr. and Mrs. West watched this in growing astonishment. Mr. West opened his mouth, about to say something, then closed it again and simply shook his head.
Tracy took him by the arm, and put her other around his wife.
“Come along,” Tracy said. “We have some catching up to do.”
The Wests departed, and Ellen followed a minute later.
“I told Mom I was spending the night, but she’ll expect me back.” She removed her robe and handed it over to Penny.
“How are you going to explain that?” Susan brushed her hair away from the gash in her scalp. They’d cleaned the wound, found it shallow, but there would be no hiding it.
“I’ll say I tripped in the dark and bumped my head.” She brushed the gash with the tips of her fingers and winced.
“I better come with you,” Susan said, then to Penny, “I’ll see you in a bit, Little Red.”
Erasmus left next, exhausted and saddened by the passing of his old friend.
“I’ll take him back home,” Erasmus said, but whether he meant the apartment over his shop or Galatania, Penny didn’t know.
“Where’s Dad?” Penny had searched the crowded living room, the kitchen, the overflowing front porch, but couldn’t find him anywhere.
“He went off with Imogen,” Flanna said. She still seemed dazed in the wake of her death and resurrection, but Penny supposed she would be too. “She has to take the family back home and explain what happened to the rest of the citadel.”
Even as she spoke, Penny saw the gathered Reds waiting a prudent distance from carnival folk they’d brainwashed into helping with Tynan’s attempted invasion. Among them were the subdued and sullen mercenaries and Tynan’s remaining loyalists, the few he’d trusted with his secrets, and who had known the truth about him. Disarmed and bound, Yaegar glared toward Penny and Flanna.
“I never did like him,” Flanna confided.
“He doesn’t seem to be a likable guy,” Janet said. “The sooner the Reds clear out the happier I’ll be.”
Penny and Flanna turned in unison to regard her and found her smiling at them.
“Present company excluded,” Janet said with a wink down at them and drifted away.
Penny went outside, Flanna following, the Phoenix’s staff still clutched in one hand. They found Jaiden and her father waiting.
“Jade told me what you did for her.” He put a hand out and clasped each of theirs in turn. “I owe you.”
“If you can keep them,” Penny nodded toward the rest of the carnival workers, “from talking about any of this, then we’re even.”
He laughed.
“Sweetheart, we traveled with the Reds for a lot of years.” He ruffled her short shock of hair. “We know how to keep a secret.”
He pointed at Yaegar.
“As long as I never see his face in the troupe again, I’ll be happy to keep working with them.”
A few of the others nodded their agreement.
“He’s a nasty piece of work,” an older man said. Penny remembered him from the ticket booth the year before. “The others aren’t so bad.”
Jaiden separated from her father long enough to give Flanna a hug.
“Thank you,” she said, then looked back at her father. He nodded, and she pulled the small wand from her pocket and handed it back to Flanna. “If I come back, will you teach me more?”
Flanna glanced surreptitiously at Jaiden’s father, caught his nod of assent, and said, “If I’m still here I will. If I’m not, my sister will.”
“Absolutely,” Penny said, and smiled.
Jaiden hugged her too, quickly, then broke away and returned to her father.
A few minutes later Torin and Imogen returned, and after a short discussion with her contingent of Reds, a half-dozen of the Red Soldiers Penny and her friends had fought only a few hours earlier led the prisoners away, back to Aurora Hollow and the new Worldgate that led to Galatania. They went to the carnival people and spoke with the elderly ticket taker next, Imogen doing most of the talking. After several minutes, they shook hands, and the carnival people began their walk back to town.
“They want to know if we can persuade Zoe’s father to join our troupe as a trained grizzly bear,” Imogen said to Penny, her expression so severe Penny thought she was serious. Then she smiled and winked.
Imogen’s stern face clicked in Penny’s memory, and she realized she had seen a younger Imogen in her mother’s old photo album.
“You’ve been here b
efore,” Penny said.
“Yes, before King Brom’s death. Before Tynan,” she scowled as the name passed her lips, “put a stop to our visits.”
“They’re not mad?” Flanna had hoped the yearly tours of the Traveling Reds didn’t have to end again because of her uncle’s trickery.
“They aren’t happy,” Imogen said. “But as we’re under new management now they’re willing to give us another chance.”
“I have to go with them, girls.” Torin looked scruffier than ever, but his smile was wide beneath the years’ long tangle of beard. “I need to clean up and get a change of clothes if I’m going to join the troupe.”
Penny and Flanna wouldn’t let him go without a hug and a promise to return as soon as he could.
“I could play a trained bear for a night or two,” Reggie said, making Penny jump.
She turned and found him towering over her.
Before she could escape, he reached down and scooped both Penny and Flanna up in his arms and hugged them.
Penny squirmed in a futile effort to escape, and Flanna screamed with surprised laughter.
“Dad, you’re so embracing,” Zoe said then began to laugh as well.
Dana said something, her voice as usual almost inaudible, but Janet was there to translate.
“She says we’d better get our cars before they’re towed.”
“I’m headed that way now,” Reggie said, putting Penny and Flanna down and taking Zoe’s hand. “It’s going to be a long walk.”
“Then we’ll tag along,” Janet said.
Dana took Reggie’s other hand, and they were off.
They watched Zoe and her family walk down the gravel road, and when they were gone Penny and Flanna found themselves alone... or almost alone.
“Ah, good,” Ronan said, and they were surprised to see him scurry up from under the porch. It was the fox, slightly larger than the average red fox, but in no other way remarkable. Well, except that he spoke perfect, if slightly accented English. “It was much too busy here for my liking.”
“What happened to the rest of you?” Penny said.