The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  “The rest of me is taking a nap,” Ronan said. “It has been a very tiring couple of days.”

  “I like him better this way,” Flanna said.

  Ronan ignored her.

  “There is something I have to ask you,” he said, but didn’t right away. He sat down at their feet and stared off across Clover Hill for a while.

  Penny waited patiently, and when Flanna looked ready to tell him to get a move on, Penny nudged her and put a finger across her lips.

  “The Phoenix returned,” Ronan said at last. “We all saw.”

  “Yes,” Penny and Flanna said in unison.

  “So where is she now?” He rose again and faced them, and Penny saw a terrible uncertainty in his oddly expressive vulpine face. “The Phoenix Girls have been here for hundreds of years, I spent the last fifteen waiting for them to come back, so she could return and then leave again?”

  “You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?” Penny sat on the porch steps next to him, and Flanna took a seat on his other side. “You told me we had a serious purpose once, but I don’t think even you knew what it was.”

  “If it was only about revenge,” Ronan said, “then it was unworthy.”

  Penny thought she understood what was troubling him now.

  “Unworthy?” Flanna sounded defensive. “We saved two worlds from unimaginable chaos.”

  “That’s a good night’s work if you ask me,” Penny said. She understood that wasn’t exactly his point, but felt that saving the world from chaos and conquest by an ancient evil revenant was quite an accomplishment.

  Ronan remained silent, perhaps seeing their point, but not willing to abandon his.

  “It wasn’t about revenge,” Penny said at last, “and our job here isn’t finished.”

  “It’s only just begun,” Flanna said.

  Ronan turned from one to the other. “What is it then?”

  “The Phoenix has retuned,” Penny said.

  “Just not in the way you expected,” Flanna said.

  They stood, and Ronan gasped as the flaming wings rose from behind them. Phoenix Fire ignited around them, and they rose slowly into the air.

  “The Phoenix has returned,” Penny repeated.

  “Two of us,” Flanna said.

  “And we’re going to need your help, Ronan, because we still have a lot to learn.”

  Chapter 21

  One Year Later

  Susan lived alone in the house on Clover Hill for thirteen years. Then Penny came, and Zoe.

  These days there were no more spare rooms in the house on Clover Hill.

  Susan now shared the big sprawling home with Penny and Flanna, their cousin Fabia, Zoe, Nancy, Tracy, and, when she wasn’t on tour, Janet. The basement, which had once been thick with dust and untouched for years, was now Janet’s sound studio. Even Jaiden had come back to stay for the week of the Harvest Fair, and her father was hinting that he’d like to settle down in Dogwood so she could go to a regular school and be close to her new friends. At eleven, Jaiden was now the youngest member of the Phoenix Girls.

  Penny had been looking forward to this year’s fair, a chance to show off her extended family to her local friends, and to spend time with her dad in the open. Two years before she’d arrived in town with no family except for her godmother, now she had the largest family of anyone she knew.

  She had spent most of the previous summer in Galatania with Flanna, learning the essentials of life as a Fuilrix Princess, but she preferred Old Earth, just as Flanna still preferred Gallia. Flanna had agreed, with some prompting, to stick it out on Old Earth long enough to finish high school. Fabia’s presence helped ease some of Flanna’s homesickness, but she returned for short visits whenever she could.

  Fabia, meanwhile, enjoyed Old Earth, and had agreed to stay to tutor Penny on Gallia, Galatania, and her family on the other side.

  “You can’t hide over here forever,” Fabia said too frequently for Penny’s liking. “You’re one of us and you have responsibilities to the family.”

  Penny had given up arguing about it, but she’d already decided her place was in Dogwood, with Susan, her aunt Nancy, and her friends.

  The Phoenix Girls.

  * * *

  “Get up, girls! Everyone’s waiting on you!”

  Penny had been ignoring the summons of the rising sun, rolling onto her side and pulling her blankets over her head, and she ignored this latest summons by shoving her head beneath her pillow and going back to sleep.

  Her cousin Fabia was a shameless morning person, her routine was to be awake and active, breakfast made and waiting before even Susan rose, which was nice, but she frequently inflicted her early morning mania on the rest of them. Susan took it in stride, and Flanna was well used to it, but Penny and Zoe continued to resist.

  There was more shouting from below, indistinct, and a sharp thump on the floor in their attic room.

  Penny peeked out long enough to determine that Zoe still slept, sprawled out in the bed across from her like an accident victim, her typical slumbering pose.

  If Zoe was that determined to tough it out and remain unconscious, then Penny would follow her example.

  “Fabia, don’t.” Penny recognized her sister’s voice coming from the foot of her bed. “Let them sleep.”

  A moment later Penny felt herself rise from bed, and not in the way she normally did, grudgingly, under protest, but also under her own power. The pillow slipped off her head, her blanket slipped off, and she opened her eyes to find herself rising toward the ceiling.

  “Hey!” Penny kicked and flailed, trying to find a handhold, and found herself spinning slowly upside down for her efforts. She decided to retain what little dignity she had left and pulled her nightshirt down to her knees as her feet rotated toward the ceiling. “I’m gonna get you for this!”

  Fabia’s cackling laughter rang out, and a moment later Penny saw Zoe, arms and legs flopping casually, still snoring, floating up to join her.

  Flanna shook her head and yelled down the open attic door.

  “They’re up!”

  * * *

  Penny emerged a half-hour later onto her front porch, and stopped to survey the colossal crowd gathered outside. The Traveling Reds were present, this year’s troupe including many new faces, family she’d met only briefly in her visits to Galatania, with Imogen as troupe leader.

  Others had come through the Worldgate to greet them on their last stop of the tour, and Penny saw her father among them. He spoke with Flanna and Susan next to a large table laden with plates stacked high with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and bagels. Some of the gathered helped themselves to breakfast, but most were simply enjoying the company.

  She saw a handful of carnival workers circulating through the crowd; the old ticket taker, a few operators she recognized from the previous year’s fair, and Jaiden sitting down in the grass with her father.

  “What’s all this about?” Zoe pushed her way past Penny, then spotted the food and decided she was more interested in sustenance than answers. She left Penny standing before the open front door, trying to decide if it was time to escape back inside.

  Flanna spotted Zoe eyeing the spread like a hungry young lion, and then found Penny.

  “Come on!” Flanna waved her over.

  Penny sighed, braced herself for an excess of human interaction.

  Ronan trotted through the gathered Reds, carnival workers, and friends, garnering only the occasional startled look. The Reds all knew him well, and the carnival people simply thought Penny had a well-behaved pet fox. He intercepted Penny, and she bent down, ostensibly to stroke his head. No need to freak out the carnival people.

  “What’s all this?” Penny whispered, and bent even lower for his whispered reply.

  “If they didn’t tell you, they probably don’t want you to know,” he said, then moved off to accept a strip of bacon from Jaiden.

  Torin met her with a hug, then ran a hand through her hair. It had grown out to a pert,
curly bob, and Penny was thinking about leaving it short to avoid confusion. Flanna had grown her hair out even longer now, and their hair was the only way people could tell her and Flanna apart.

  “What’s all of this about?” She held her father with what Zoe liked to call her death stare, just to let him know she was serious.

  He laughed, seriously undermining her faith in her skills of intimidation, but answered her.

  “It’s not about anything,” he said, then switching to Galatanian, which Penny was still struggling to learn, “I wanted to see my daughters, and Susan thought I should bring the family.”

  “I thought we should celebrate the anniversary,” Susan said. “A whole year of no one trying to kill any of us.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Zoe said, and downed a Dixie cup of orange juice.

  Faces beamed at her, hands patted her shoulders, people noticing her from a distance waved.

  “I need coffee if you expect me to deal with people this early,” Penny grumbled.

  Flanna made a face. “So nasty.”

  Penny rejoined the party minutes later with one cup in her hand and another in her other hand, and saw Katie and Ellen arrive with their families.

  Marcus and Lynne West had learned the truth about their daughter on that night a year ago, the blow to their sensibilities softened somewhat by the news that their son and Marcus’s newly returned sister had the same abilities. They had insisted that the Kellys be let in on the secret as well, and over Ronan’s grumbling objections, Susan, Nancy, Tracy, and Janet invited them over for dinner and the shock of their lives barely a week after the battle on Clover Hill and the strangeness that kicked off the Harvest Fair.

  The circle of trust around the Phoenix Girls continued to expand, and both Katie and Ellen seemed pleased to not have to hide who and what they were from their parents any longer.

  Erasmus arrived a few minutes later in the passenger seat of Susan’s old blue Falcon, now cleaned up and restored to near new condition. Behind the wheel, Michael West stuck an arm out and waved at his parents and sister as he glided to a stop beside their car. The new sheriff was out of uniform, the first time in a long time Penny had seen him in civilian clothes.

  The guests demolished Fabia’s huge breakfast spread and began departing for town, Flanna tagging along with the Traveling Reds to keep Jaiden company. The fair was set up, and the festivities were scheduled to begin that morning. The Reds who were not a part of that year’s troupe began to drift back to Aurora Hollow and the Worldgate, and before long only the Phoenix Girls, old and new, Erasmus, Michael, and Ronan remained.

  “We should get going,” Erasmus said, patting Susan’s arm while staring somewhere into the distance over her left shoulder, his blind act as immaculate as ever. “We need to open up.”

  Taylor and Pi had been an instant hit, its lounge always full, an oasis for the coffee loving people of Dogwood, the book department doing a respectable business, the town happy to have a local place to buy books again, and the stationery sales rebounded.

  Erasmus Pi had remained on Old Earth, visiting Gallia only infrequently, to indulge in his love of gadgets and science, and help run the store he founded.

  “Is it that time?” Susan checked her watch, then cast panicked eyes over the mess left behind by her guests.

  “Past that time,” Erasmus said.

  “I’ll clean up,” Fabia said. “The girls can help.”

  “Actually, I need to borrow Penny,” Torin said. “I won’t keep her long.”

  Fabia waved them off with a smile, and began directing Zoe, Katie, and Ellen in the cleanup.

  “Why do we have to clean up?” Katie grumbled, but began gathering paper plates and plastic cutlery for the trash.

  Ellen glanced surreptitiously around, then pulled her wand out and levitated the garbage out of Katie’s hands and toward the trash.

  “Show off,” Katie said and began to gather chairs.

  Zoe snatched the last scraps of bacon before gathering the serving dishes.

  Penny walked to the hollow with her father, almost asked what he needed her for, but didn’t. He seemed deep in thought as he walked.

  Ronan, not his cute fox avatar, but the full grown and ferocious looking manimal, greeted them. The trail at his back was now blocked by what appeared to be a wall of solid stone, but when Ronan brushed it with a hand it began to move, and then disassemble itself into a couple dozen black-eyed homunculi. They yawned, stretched, and stood aside for Ronan, Torin, and Penny to pass.

  Penny patted the nearest gray man on the head as she passed, feeling a pang of grief she’d thought long past. She’d lost Rocky a year ago, and she still missed him.

  Memories of Rocky led to memories of Bowen, and a wish that she’d gotten to know him better before he’d died.

  She followed her father down into Aurora Hollow, waited for a long moment, then finally asked, “What?”

  “There’s something I want to show you.” He pointed to the ever-present heat-haze shimmer in the center of the hollow, the Worldgate.

  Penny gave a shrug of resignation and walked through.

  * * *

  The sepulcher of the Reds was gone. In its place was a grove, larger than the sepulcher had been, but still confined by walls inside the citadel of the Reds. Open to the sky, bright sunlight shone down on a landscape that might have existed untouched since the dawn of this Earth. Trees great and small lined the walls, and the only door stood free, like the door in the hollow, at the end of a stone path.

  A creek ran through it, meandering, bisecting the grove, coming from nowhere at one end, disappearing into nowhere at the other.

  “We’ve moved the artifacts and relics,” Torin explained. “I decided it was time for a change.”

  Penny took a tentative step away from the Worldgate, deeper into the grove. A bird, something large and only vaguely familiar, dropped down from the sky and roosted on a boulder next to the running water.

  “That’s Clear Creek, from Aurora Hollow.” He pointed out the stream. “When we moved the walls and tore up the floor to plant, it was there.”

  The bird, a condor of some kind, Penny thought, dipped its beak into the creek, then leapt into the air again and circled the clearing before taking to the wide open sky.

  “We call it the Conservatory.”

  “That door,” Penny pointed.

  “Is the only way in or out, unless you can fly,” Torin said. He took Penny by the arm and led her away, toward a cluster of willows near the inlet of this improbable branch of Clear Creek. “Zoe helped with the trees, they’d still be saplings without her help. Look in there.”

  Penny looked, and for a while saw nothing.

  “Dad, I…”

  Then she saw, gasped, backed up a step until Torin caught her and held her steady.

  A glow started from the darkness inside the clustered willows, and emerged as the shape of a woman. A woman with flowing, curly hair, gowned in flowing light. She turned, and Penny saw her face.

  Her mother.

  “Tracy helped me,” Torin said, and Penny saw the moisture of tears on his cheeks. He held up the final crystal sphere from Susan’s memory tree, the one with the likeness of her mother, Diana Sinclair Fuilrix. “This was your mother’s final memory, a memory Tracy saved for us, in this. Now it’s free.”

  “Has Flanna seen?”

  “Yes, this morning while you were still sleeping.”

  Two more figures emerged behind this glowing apparition of her mother, twin girls with their mother’s flowing hair. Diana turned back to them and smiled, then crossed to the water, waded through it, and vanished into the trees on the other side. The twin girls chased after, and vanished.

  “That never happened,” Penny said. She felt her legs unlock at the knees, would have fallen if her father hadn’t caught her. “How can this be her memory?”

  “It was real to her,” Torin said, and left it at that. Penny smiled.

  About Brian Knig
ht

  Brian Knight lives in Washington State with his family and the voices in his head. He has published over a dozen novels and novellas and two short story collections in the horror, dark fantasy, and crime genres. Several of his short stories have received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. The Crimson Brand is his second book in The Phoenix Girls series.

  Photo by Judi Key