by Amanda Sun
“It’s happening,” he says.
“What, Father?”
“This is why we’ve been throwing the Benu off the continents for the last three hundred years,” he says, and the words sting like ice. “To prevent them from using their power against us. And now it’s happening again.”
Tash was right. My father knew. He knew people were being rounded up and wings cut off, thrown down to the earth to die. And he’d let it happen. “Father...no.”
“I am the wick and the wax,” he says. “I must crumble, or the people will. Forgive me, Kallima.” The betrayal cuts; it stings to think he knew of the genocide. That he continued it. He condoned it, for the people. I shake my head. I can’t accept it. I can’t believe that’s the father I knew.
Griffin’s gentle grip is on my arm, giving me strength. “Come on,” he urges. “We can’t let him get away.”
I’m numb, but with Griffin’s help I turn toward the forest and the lake beyond. I don’t know what’s happening, what power the Benu have that we need to fear. But I know that storm clouds are gathering in the sky, slate gray and laden with rain. I know thunder is rolling in the distance, and I know there was darkness flashing in Jonash’s ice-blue eyes. The air buzzes with electricity, and I know something terrible is about to happen.
And I know that Griffin and I must stop it.
TWENTY-FOUR
“KALI, WAIT!” ELISHA calls after me, tripping over her sandals as she hurries forward. She takes my hands in hers, her eyes wide. “Don’t follow him,” she says. “I lost you once, and I can’t bear it if I lose you again.”
“Elisha, I have to do this. If I don’t stop him, no one will.”
Griffin rests a hand on Elisha’s shoulder, and she looks up at his gentle eyes. “You won’t lose her,” he says. “You didn’t the first time, and you won’t now. Look at the fire in your friend’s eyes, Elisha. It’s tempering her into something stronger than steel. She won’t fail.”
Elisha looks at me, and I gaze at her with all the courage I have. She steps back, and Griffin and I run side by side to the path that leads to Lake Agur.
“I don’t understand,” I shout as we run. “If he’s a Benu, why was he calling for the execution of other Benu? Shouldn’t he want to save them?”
“Perhaps there’s a power the Benu can wield that he’s keeping from the others,” Griffin shouts back. “Even the scavengers squabble among each other for the prime kill.”
He’s right, I know. My father feared some terrible fate from the Benu, but what? What is it that Jonash knows?
The citadel and the shouts of the crowd slip away behind us as we weave through the forest. It’s at least an hour’s run to Lake Agur, and I don’t know why, but I know we need to hurry. I feel lighter on my feet as I race alongside Griffin, thinking about what he’s said and what he thinks of me. He thinks I’m strong; he has faith in me. And all this time I’d been struggling alongside him as we fought monster after monster, knowing that he had a lifetime of hunting behind him and that I was useless. But he never saw it that way, not from the beginning. He believes in me. And that stokes the flames that are already lit, and together we’re going to stop Jonash once and for all.
The path curves on and on, but high above us I can see Jonash soaring on the wind. I can’t believe this secret has been kept for so long, that Jonash and his father are Benu. I wonder how many descendants of the Benu have been thrown over the edge in the past three hundred years to “protect” Ashra and her lands, to keep the Sargon’s line the only permissible survivors from the original populace of the floating continents. They taught others to fear the Benu, when they themselves were descended from the same. It’s sickening.
The lush green of the forest finally breaks away, and we’re at the edge of Lake Agur, my ears filling with the rushing of the waterfall at its northern edge. The packed dirt beach gives way as we near the water, the quiet azure lapping gently against the shore.
Jonash is high above the middle of the lake and I’m not sure how to get to him. He holds his sword in his hand. The members of the Elite Guard each receive a standard-issue blade, although they’re really more symbolic than for actual use—at least, that’s what I’d been led to believe. Now I’m not sure what’s true, but I do know that Jonash’s sword is more elaborate than those of the Elite Guard. The blade is curved like a scimitar, the steel tinted a deep blue like the night sky. And dotted all over the blade are spots of shining silver that haven’t been dyed, that look like stars gleaming. The hilt is made of elaborate swirls of silver that loop around his hand and catch what’s left of the sunlight between the storm clouds.
“Come down and fight if you aren’t a coward,” I shout. Griffin has nocked an arrow with the chimera’s venom, and he points it at Jonash while his wide wings flap silently.
“It’s not cowardly to use my lineage as an advantage,” Jonash shouts back. “If your Neanderthal friend here still had his, he’d be up here, too, no doubt.”
Griffin tightens his grip on the bowstring and adjusts his aim. “I can face you without them. I’ve brought down larger beasts than you.” He looses the arrow and it flies toward him, but Jonash wraps his wings around himself and plummets below the shot. The arrow splashes into the water’s surface and floats there, bobbing as it’s pulled by the current of the waterfall.
Jonash laughs. “Is any of this necessary? Don’t waste your time and arrows on me. Go back to your barren earth and leave us in peace.”
“You tried to kill my father,” I say. “You threw me over the edge of Ashra and fired on me from the airship. You and your father tried to raise a rebellion against us. I’d say this is pretty necessary, yes.” I draw my dagger, the sun glinting on the orange garnet set in the hilt.
Jonash shrugs. “As you wish,” he says, and then he flaps his wings with a blast of air. He tumbles suddenly toward us and we brace for the impact. I lunge at his approaching shape with my dagger, but he’s a blur, and his wing slaps into my face and knocks me down to a mouthful of sand. Griffin grabs a handful of feathers out of his other wing and punches him in the jaw before he can lift up again. Jonash collapses backward, the flames of his wings rippling against the ground. The water laps against one feather and it singes, sending a tiny spiral of gray smoke up toward the sky.
I quickly roll onto my knees and press on Jonash’s shoulder with all my might to keep him down. He’s beating his giant fiery wings and they’re wafting uncomfortable heat everywhere, but they don’t burn where they graze my arms. Jonash swings his sword and it clangs against my dagger with a spray of sparks that drops like shooting stars. His leather boot collides with Griffin’s chest and he falls backward, gasping. Jonash grabs my hand on his shoulder and rolls sideways, pulling my wrist backward. I cry out and let go, and he’s up in the air again, flapping higher. I grab his boot to stop him, but the rush of his wings beats against my face and I can’t hold on much longer.
Griffin’s there, grabbing at Jonash’s wing. He has one of his daggers out and he’s cutting into the quills in a crescent down Jonash’s back. The prince cries out as the feathers drift like glinting embers to the sand, snuffing out as the water touches them. Jonash shrieks in agony and flaps wildly to escape Griffin, but he can’t, and the whole scene is horrific, because this isn’t a monster we’re fighting but a person. Despite everything he’s done, I feel pity for him as he wails like that. I think of Griffin screaming as a baby as they carved his wings off, too.
But it was my father who ordered it done. And the Sargon, too. If I let Griffin do it, am I not the same?
There’s no time to know what’s right, only to act on instinct. And so I grab Griffin’s hands and try to pull them away from the quills. Only a half-broken wing remains as Jonash slips free into the sky. Griffin looks at me, questioning, but he’s not angry, only confused.
“I’m sorry,” I say
. “I don’t... I don’t know why I did that.”
I do know. Because I want to save Ashra and her lands. But I don’t want to be a monster, too.
“I get it,” Griffin says, looking at my confused expression. Somehow he knows what I’m thinking even as I’m just sorting it out myself. “We’ll bring him down, but I won’t kill him.”
“Such grandiose ideals of mercy and justice!” Jonash shouts from above. He flies lopsided now, lurching and panting as the one good wing beats and the other flaps, frail and fragmented. “My thanks to you, dear fiancée, but I’m afraid your heart will get you into more trouble than it’s worth. If you hadn’t cared so much, I never would have had to throw you from the edge.”
“Bah,” Griffin says, though his cheeks flush at the use of fiancée. “Save us all some time and come down now. Then maybe the Monarch won’t have you executed.”
“I don’t fear the Monarch,” Jonash spits back. “Or you, wingless abomination and disgrace to the Benu. No, I’m here to fulfill a prophecy made long ago, to ensure the rule of Ashra belongs to me and mine for aeons to come.”
What’s he even talking about? What prophecy?
Jonash laughs, his one wing holding him crooked and aloft above the lake. “You look confused, Kallima. Have you forgotten the prayer to our divine ancestor?” His lip curls in a threatening smile, his blue eyes gleaming as the thunder claps in the sky. “May she rise anew.”
The Phoenix. He’s talking about the Phoenix.
“Joke’s on you,” I shout back. “There never was a Phoenix. It was only a military code.”
The thunder is louder now, rolling in around us. The ashen clouds have blotted out the sun, and the world is dark and ominous. “Oh, there was a Phoenix,” he says in a dark voice. “She was the ancestor of the Benu. And it’s time for her to rise again and purge all who will not follow her prince.”
Jonash begins speaking another language, its intonation ancient and strange. His tongue curls off the syllables, and I remember vaguely hearing something like it once before. Then I remember—when Elder Aban read from that secret first volume of the annals. That archaic tongue must have belonged to the Benu. Was it passed down the Sargon’s line all this time?
The thunder rolls, the lightning claps. The cold wind whirls around and nearly knocks us over. The surface of Lake Agur is pockmarked and murky, the roar of the waterfall overcome by the fury of the storm.
Griffin nocks an arrow, but in this wind there’s no way for it to hit its target. He lets the bowstring snap and the arrow flies astray, spinning head over tail before it splashes into the lake far to Jonash’s right.
There’s a strange mist lifting off the waters. It’s floating upward in spirals of white around the arrow’s shaft. It’s curling in clouds of fog near the waterfall, and then it’s rising from the entire surface of the lake. The wind is whipping the mist away as quickly as it forms, while Jonash’s voice drones above it all, echoing with a strange vibration that makes the ground shudder.
I crawl toward the edge of the water and put my hand over the curling white wisps. The water condenses on my palm like drops of thick, hot rain. I pull my hand back and look at Griffin.
It’s steam. The white mist is steam.
And now the surface of the water is rippling more than before, and it isn’t the wind stirring it up. The white mist is frothing and roiling. Fish are going belly-up, and frogs are hopping onto the shore by the dozens.
Lake Agur is boiling. It’s bubbling like a stew pot over a fire.
And then there’s a flash of yellow light so blinding that even with my eyes closed I can see searing starbursts on the insides of my eyelids. The water surges everywhere with the roaring crash of a tidal wave. It floods over Griffin and me so that suddenly we are drowning, pulled backward by the immense current. The wave slams against the shore and far into the forest before it retreats back to the lake. I sputter and rub my eyes, searching the ground for my dagger. It’s buried in the sand tossed around by the wave, a tiny fish flopping around on the hilt. I grab the weapon in my hand, the freezing wind whipping against my soaking wet skin. I look into the sky, and there’s a light as bright as the sun, so bright that I have to squint to see its shape.
The Phoenix. She has risen anew.
Every feather smolders with flame, the very sky around her rippling with waves of intense heat. Her wingspan is as wide as the lake that tosses against itself as it resettles. Her beak gleams with golden fire, her talons a darker gold, and a bronze ridge of bony plates runs down the back of her spine. Her eyes glint black like hot oil, and flames roll off her like a blazing fire in the sky. Her tail trails behind her in a feathery fan, three extra-long plumes hanging from the end of it like the strings of a kite blowing in the wind.
She was sleeping in the lake all this time. Three hundred years, since the Rending? Or three thousand since the Benu created the floating isles? I don’t know when, but she was here the whole time on Ashra, and she is magnificent.
Jonash flies beside her, his eyes glistening. He’s as stunned as I am, just watching her. She’s real. She’s huge and benevolent and incredible. And for a moment I forget everything else. I’ve looked to her my whole life to protect me, and she was here in the wilderness of Ashra, in one of the places I’ve always been drawn to.
She opens her beak and lets out a shriek like a hazu bird, a great screech that seems to shake the very sky. The thunder claps in response, which startles me. She’s so brilliant that I’d forgotten the dark storm clouds around us.
Griffin’s hand clasps mine, and I look over to him, speechless. But he’s not stunned like Jonash and me. He’s not taken in by her beauty. “A monster’s a monster,” he says quietly.
But not the Phoenix. She’s the only monster who ever looked after us. That’s what we’ve been taught.
Jonash knows, too, as he hovers beside her in the sky, as she flaps her great wings gently and tilts her head to look at him.
“Sacred Phoenix,” he shouts at her. “I am Jonash, your devoted descendant. I have called you forth once more to purify the lands of Ashra with your intense flame. Restore this land to its rightful heir!”
His words don’t frighten me. I’ve served the Phoenix my entire life. She will not betray me now.
The Phoenix opens her beak widely, her feathers flapping in rippling waves as she soars through the sky toward Jonash. He spreads his arms, a smile on his face. He reaches a hand out to catch hold of the flaming plumes on the back of her neck, but he never gets that far.
She snaps him in her beak as he shrieks. She shakes him back and forth, lifting her sharp talons up to his struggling form.
The world is devoured in panic and flame.
I scream. Griffin grabs me and holds me to his chest, turning me away from the nightmarish scene. Jonash screams again and then is silent, and I manage to pull away from Griffin in time to see the starry blue scimitar splash into the lake below.
The tears flood my eyes as the Phoenix circles over the lake, screeching as her giant wings flap gales of hot wind against us.
And then the Phoenix stops circling and sets her wings flat and tilted forward. Lightning streaks in the sky behind her, and she is closer now, diving toward us, her beak open and her eyes wild.
And I only have a moment to realize that Griffin is right before we turn to run.
This is not the Phoenix I’ve prayed to, the one romanticized over hundreds of years of tradition and storytelling.
This is an ancient sky beast, one so powerful that she was said to have rent the floating continents from the very earth, leaving craters of shadow and death behind in her wake.
She is a monster on an epic scale, larger than one ever faced before.
A monster is a monster. And she will do what monsters do.
She will kill us.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE WORLD BUBBLES with heat as we run, the air wavy and streaked like a mirage. We dive for the tree line as the Phoenix swoops over us and into the sky again. The air is heavy with the smell of burning wood as we look up. The trees above us are lit with flames, all burning down around us. Birds and pikas are scattering with a flurry of squawks and chatters as the Phoenix makes a wide loop around the edge of the continent.
This can’t be happening. The Phoenix was the defender of the floating lands, but she’s lighting them on fire like she doesn’t care.
And I remember then, looking at Griffin’s grim face as we hurry back to the lake—she doesn’t care. She’s a monster, and we’re prey, and that’s it.
We have to stop her, and I can’t let my upbringing hinder me. I can’t revere her, I can’t hesitate, or all of Ashra will go up in flames.
“What do we do?” I shout to Griffin. The only monster I’ve ever seen that nearly rivaled the Phoenix’s size was the dragon that carried off the striped cat.
“Same as any other monster,” Griffin yells back over the thunder and winds. “Find its weakness and bring it down.”
The Phoenix is on fire as she flaps her wings, rounding the distant cloud of mist at the northern waterfall. “Water, right?” Water puts out a fire. But the Phoenix was sleeping inside Lake Agur, and she only made the water bubble and boil. It’s not enough to extinguish her flames.
There’s no time for Griffin to answer, because she’s swooping again. Griffin has one of his venom-tipped arrows nocked, and he looses it at the Phoenix’s chest. It lodges in the feathers and promptly burns up like a stick of kindling. I don’t know how long the chimera venom stays potent, but I doubt it’s strong enough for a tiny dose like that to affect such a huge sky beast.
