by Peter David
I cleared my throat uncomfortably.
“Wellllllll?”
I looked at the princess. Her head was flat against the ground, one of the Harpers keeping her head immobilized by the simple expedient of having one of his taloned feet atop it. And for a moment—just a moment—I saw fear in her eyes. She had been so filled with arrogance, so confident that Tacit was going to be taking her away, so sure that she would be associated with me for the briefest of times and then whisked off by her hero. And now, in just a few short moments, it had all fallen apart. Despite her bluster and bravado, she was a ship with no anchor, and she was looking to me—her last hope—for some sort of succor.
I did not hesitate.
“She’s lying,” I said.
“Apropos!” she bellowed, or at least came as close as she could to bellowing considering she was near to being smothered.
“I’m not even one of them, okay?” I was speaking very quickly, nearly babbling. “I’m not a knight or anything … I’m just a guide … look at me! Look at my leg! See? It’s crippled! I’m a cripple! Who’s going to want a cripple for a knight?”
“Apropos!” I now knew why purple was considered the royal color, because that was certainly the hue her face was becoming.
“Hoooowww abooouuuut,” Aileron crowed, “if we killllll her … and let yoooouuu go. Yeeesss or noooo?”
“You … you’d do that?” I couldn’t believe it.
Aileron waved in the direction of the dead Harper. “Yooooouuu kiiiiill Seeeeefla the Annoyyyyying. No mooore annnoooyyyance, thanks to you. Yooouuu beg for liiiife … weeeee let you gooooo.”
So I begged.
Naturally.
Five minutes of imploring and pleading, with outright sobbing visible toward the end. I thought Entipy’s head was going to explode, she was clearly so furious. I didn’t care. She’d been a right pain in the ass and whatever she had coming to her, I didn’t give two figs about.
My display was greeted with great amusement by the Harpers Bizarre, however, who hung on every word and chortled and laughed and in general had a great old time. Finally Aileron put up a hand, his chest so convulsed with laughter that he clearly could barely get a word out. “Yooooouu go! Goooo, cooowwardd! Gooo and liiiiive full, coooowwardly life. As for giiiirl … we haaaave plaaaaans. We sennnnnd home to faaaather … one piiiiiece at a tiiiime. You oooookay with thaaaat, Aproooopos?”
I bobbed my head. The princess was beyond fury. If she could have killed me with a glance, I would have been dead on the spot.
“Faaaaareweeelllll!” cried the Harper Bizarre, and the rest of his kind joined in. With their contemptuous laughter and wishes for a safe journey ringing in my ears, I hobbled off into the forest as fast as my good leg would carry me.
Once upon a time, I had been able to move through the woods with something vaguely resembling alacrity. The woodcraft that Tacit had taught me had served me well. Certainly I had not been at Tacit’s level, but I could nevertheless handle myself quite well in virtually any forest environment. At least, I could do so when my mind was clear, my thoughts not tumbling helter-skelter over one another.
Such was unfortunately not the case here.
I tripped, I fell, I sprawled, I pulled myself to my feet and kept on going, and all that was going through my head as I did so was that I had to put as much distance between myself and the Harpers Bizarre as I possibly could. I was giving no thought to the princess whatsoever, nor considering my failed mission. She had been a royal pain in the ass to me, and I held little sympathy for her.
Still …“little” sympathy I did have. I envisioned her in the clutches of those creatures, and felt that she was probably more than a little frightened. Then again, I could not be sure. Considering the princess’s temperament, it was entirely possible that at that moment, the Harpers were the ones finding themselves in a disadvantageous position. I tended to doubt that they were going to kill her. She was far too valuable a prize. But I certainly didn’t think they were going to make life easy on her. Not that she had tried to make life easy on me, or anyone else. She was a bully, an arsonist (I suspected), and not particularly lovable.
Still … did anyone, anyone, deserve to fall into the clutches of the Harpers Bizarre with no means, no hope of escape? With no one to act as her hero or rescue her?
I slowed in my flight. This was as much an acknowledgment of the reality of my personal situation as it was any thought being given to the princess’s predicament. My breath was ragged in my chest, sweat cascading down my face. My good leg was throbbing since I had been favoring it so heavily. I balanced myself on my staff, taking in great lungsful of air, licking my dry lips and wiping the stinging perspiration from my eyes.
I pondered. I thought, Should I do it? Should I risk myself, in the hope of doing the genuine, heroic thing? Even though it meant likely throwing my life away—
The thought got no further as I resumed my voyage away from the princess. I felt a sizable degree of self-disgust and selfloathing, but these paled in comparison to self-preservation, so my survival instinct told my newborn (stillborn would be more correct) conscience to shut up and let me get on with the important business of saving my own hide. Truthfully, I have no idea how far or how long I ran. Every time I slowed down, I was certain I could feel the wings of the Harpers beating somewhere nearby, as if they were tracking me and waiting to descend upon me when I slowed down or displayed weakness. It was always more than enough to spur me on, and I kept going.
I felt a chill beginning to settle into my lungs. The air was cooling again. I had to admit, this was beginning to disturb me. We had developed some very odd weather patterns, and I had no idea what that could possibly portend. Although there were cold seasons moving into other regions, Isteria should have been fairly temperate. The paranoid aspect of me began to wonder if this weren’t happening for the simple and sole reason of inconveniencing me. Certainly the colder it got, the more raw my lungs began to feel. With my luck, some sort of virus would settle into them. How ironic—and yet just—a way that would be for me to expire. Not at the point of a sword, as I feared, and not of old age, a peaceful death that I never truly figured would be mine. No, I would probably meet my end thanks to a really nasty cough that developed into something worse.
It was then that I felt a gust of warmth. The contrast between that and the air around me was so significant that it felt like a hammer blow of heat. I almost ran past it when the current snagged my attention, and I took a few steps back to appreciate truly the warmth of it. I stood there a moment, allowing the warmth to wash over me. It seemed to be coming from somewhere to the south. I didn’t know what was causing it, but I did know that warmth was preferable for my purposes than cold, and so I set off in that direction.
I continued to cast furtive glances over my shoulder every so often, still alert for any possible pursuit by the Harpers Bizarre. But as time passed (how much, as I noted, I could not discern nor do I really know now), I slowly became more confident that they would not be after me. I posed no threat to them. They thought me an object of contempt. Indeed, they probably would not have wanted to waste a claw on tearing me to pieces. Such efforts would likely have been considered a needless squandering of effort.
I should have been insulted, I suppose. But the fact was that I was able to see me from their point of view, and to be honest, if I had been in their position, I wouldn’t have bothered with me, either.
The warmth was growing, indicating that I was getting closer to the source. I didn’t know what that source might be, but I tried to be alert to all possibilities. It might very well have been some sort of enemy camp, with a great fire burning in the middle being stoked by individuals who would take one look at me and see me as potential kindling, just another fagot to be tossed onto the fire. Well, I had no intention of being considered a fagot.
I strained my ears, tried to listen for the sound of talking, or boasting, or snoring … anything that might indicate that a large n
umber of men had gathered and therefore posed a potential threat. And after a time, I did hear something. I heard it only once, and even as I heard it, I didn’t know what it was. Not at first.
What I heard was a high-pitched screech. At first I thought it to be a cry torn from a female throat, and I wondered whether I hadn’t accidentally gone in a giant circle. Perhaps what I’d perceived was the dying screams of Princess Entipy herself. For the briefest of moments, I felt a twinge of guilt, but quickly pushed it away. Better her than me, I kept telling myself.
But even as the screech died away, I ran the echoes of it through my mind and came to the conclusion that I had been mistaken. That was no human sound. It was the sound of a creature … a bird, most likely. From the depth and volume of it, though, I was certain that it was a large one.
A very large one.
I had stopped walking and didn’t even realize it at first, because my mind was racing so frantically that it had left my body far behind. All my mother’s blatherings about destiny and such came roaring back to me, for I was remembering things that she had told me about when she had witnessed the death and birth of a phoenix. Of how that rare event seemed somehow inextricably intertwined with my own fate, right down to the flame-shaped birthmark I bore. Could it be … ? Was it possible … ? A phoenix, dying and being reborn somewhere nearby?
Suddenly, everything seemed to make a hopeful sort of sense. Even as it clicked into place, I was moving. Believe it or not, it was as if my lameness of leg was forgotten, a minor thing, a triviality. I moved through the forest with the speed of a deer. Well … a lame deer, admittedly, for I did trip a few times, but I did not let such mishaps even begin to slow me down. I was absolutely positive that the warmth was definitely wafting from the south, and the gusts of wind that bore it into my face only confirmed it. Moreover, the faster I moved, the more intense the warmth became. I felt it searing the hairs of my eyebrows and inside my nostrils, and my mouth and throat were becoming completely dried out. I didn’t care. At that point, it would have been irrelevant to me if my entire body became overheated and blistered. I was dedicated … no. No, not dedicated. Consumed. Consumed with a need to witness the miracle that my mother had spoken of so often.
I had spent so much of my life drifting, and hadn’t even realized it. I had told myself that the fact that my existence seemed to have no purpose was not a problem for me. It was only at that moment, on the trail of the possible phoenix, that I really and truly began to think for the first time that there might be something more. Not only that, but that if there was something more, then I might indeed be entitled to some of it.
I gave up any effort to move with stealth. Branches cracked under me, brush was rudely shoved aside, and at least twice I sent small animals running away while making annoyed chittering noises. Anyone who was listening for an intruder would have no trouble detecting my approach, but it didn’t matter. I felt as if events directly pertinent to my life were moving forward with unstoppable force, and I was happy—no, delighted—to be a part of them. I suppose the timing factored into it, in part. After all, the men all around me had been wiped out, and I dared not return to the palace at that point. Not without the princess. I was going to wind up with less than I’d started out with.
But if there was a phoenix up ahead … truly a phoenix …
The tapestry, as I’m sure you can surmise, was uppermost in my mind. The tapestry that hung on the wall back in the palace, depicting the great hero of Isteria, the savior who was to come. There was coincidence there that could not be ignored. It could be me. Why not me? Granted, it didn’t seem terribly likely. I had never had aspirations to be anyone’s savior aside from my own, but … anything was possible. The timing was just too perfect. To be snatched from my lowest ebb and brought up to a point of triumph … why not indeed?
I heard a second screech, and this one was of a different timbre than what I’d heard before, I was sure of it. Instantly, even as I clambered over a fallen tree, I realized what the difference was. The first cry had tapered off with what could easily have been a sort of fading energy. It was a death cry, the last gasp of something aged. What I had just detected now was the birth cry of the new. It was young and vital. The first cry had been like a last answer being provided; the second cry was that of a first question being asked.
The heat was now almost overwhelming. The energy being unleashed in the process must have been unimaginable. It was coming from just over a rise, and I climbed it with no problem, as if my lame leg were a thing of the past.
It was then that I heard another voice. This, however, was not a bird or some other creature. This was a voice emerging from an all too human throat. Worse: Not only was it all too human, but it was all too familiar.
I peered over the rise, my heart pounding, knowing what I was going to see before I even saw it.
It was Tacit.
He looked a bit banged up, and his clothes were still a bit sodden, obviously from having been tossed into the river by Aileron of the Harpers Bizarre. However, he was clearly not dead, but simply a bit the worse for wear. Furthermore, his clothes were rapidly drying off from the heat of the emerging phoenix.
And that was definitely what it was: A phoenix. The ashes of its predecessor were scattered everywhere, and the newborn was sniffing the air in curiosity. It did not appear to have focused its vision upon Tacit yet, but it was definitely aware of his presence. It let out another ear-piercing screech, then leaned forward and nuzzled Tacit’s chest. For a joyous moment, I thought the creature was going to bite him in half, but it did no such thing. Instead it seemed quite content to bring its entire massive head up against him. Even though the creature was newborn, it was still as big as five full-grown men, and when it experimentally beat the air with its wings, all the brush and undergrowth within a thirty-foot radius bent.
Not Tacit, though. He kept a firm grip on the phoenix’s feathers and held his place. He was singing to the damned thing. Naturally he had a great singing voice.
It was a ballad that he sang. From the refrain, I could discern that it was about the Coming of the Great Hero. It was further evident, from the way that he sang it, that he was quite certain that he was singing it about himself. The verses all centered on mighty deeds that the Great Hero was to accomplish, of the enemies and dangers that he was to overcome. It smacked of prophecy, of verses crafted by farweavers who enjoyed producing “future histories,” as they liked to call them. I had heard them from time to time in my life, but since they usually involved matters that were of little consequence to me, I’d rarely paid them any mind. They were of a unique style, though, and I could recognize their cadences and rhythms.
What Tacit was singing now, though, had tremendous relevance to me. Because every word out of his mouth sounded like aspects of his life; at least, some of them were aspects that I was familiar with. And as he sang each successive verse, the phoenix bobbing its mighty head up and down as if keeping time, it became clear from the touch of pride in his voice that all the accomplishments of the “Great Hero” in the ditty were things that he himself had done.
And then I heard the one that brought the greatest chill over me, even though the warmth of the newly born phoenix bird still filled the air.
“The Hero grew to help the poor, and they all cheered his name
“Except for one, a foolish lad, who had a leg so lame
“Who cursed the hero’s name because his nature was so frail
“And wandered to obscurity, to vanish from our tale,
“And then our hero—”
So the song went on as Tacit bonded with the phoenix and sang of the Great Hero’s future, rescuing the princess, ruling the land.
And I stared into the small ring of fire that surrounded the phoenix … and I understood.
For the first time in my life … I truly understood.
Most people do not have an epiphany, a sudden revelation and comprehension that realigns their thinking. Usually something occur
s to them, but even if it is a major revelation, they cannot encompass it or embrace it all at once. It filters through their sensibilities a bit at a time, and does not have an immediate impact upon their lives. Instead it changes things for them in a hundred different ways, and it is only upon looking back, with clear hindsight, that one is able to localize one moment in a life and say, “Yes. Yes, that is when it all changed for me. That began it.”
Such was not the case here. I got it all, right then and there.
In retrospect, I would have to recommend against epiphanies. They are very difficult on an emotional level, and they also sometimes move you to foolish and inopportune acts, which was what happened in my case.
My epiphany, in case you are wondering, was this:
All people are, at heart, egocentric. We all exist in the center of our own little universes. We believe that we are living out our lives as best we can, and that we have our own sphere of influence which exists of both friends and enemies. They in turn have their own friends and enemies with whom they interact. That is a given. But we, each of us, tend to put ourselves ahead of others because we believe that we are significant. We must attend to our own needs, desires, wants, and aspirations, because each of us is our own greatest priority. No one else cares for us as much as we do, no one else can exist in our skin. We think we’re important. It is where our sense of self-worth comes up, where our egos reside, where “we” are. And we believe that each of our lives means something.
In staring into the great truth of the fire of the phoenix, in seeing Tacit bond with the creature and prepare for his next great deed, I came to an understanding that I would have reached even if I hadn’t heard Tacit performing his charming ditty to point the way.
My life meant nothing.
I meant nothing.
In all these years of attending to my mother’s talk about my great and glorious, but unknown, fate, and even nursing the hope that she was right, I had overlooked one of the inescapable realities of destiny. If it truly existed—and I was beginning to believe that it did—it meant that nothing I did mattered. Everything was preordained. Destiny, and predictions thereof—ranging from my mother’s convictions to the Great Hero tapestry in the palace—hinged entirely on the concept that the future was immutable. It was all laid out, all planned, and all foreseeable if one had the foresight to see it.
