Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

by Robin McKinley

  ʺThat’s extraordinary, Mr. Moffard! So was I! A hundred years later, of course, but between the last—ʺ

  There was a stillness in the room, a sudden surge of tension, enough to startle Miss Wells into silence and a quick check round the room. She gasped, suppressed the automatic shout of warning and rushed towards the fireplace. The earl was standing actually inside the chimney breast, having worked his way in between the glowing mass of embers and the side wall of the chimney, and was now leaning forward over the fire to crane up into the dark cavern of the chimney above. She reached in, grasped his arm and dragged him out.

  ʺOh, but please—ʺ he began.

  At that moment her fears seemed to be justified. A glowing mass slid down the chimney and landed in the heart of the fire. Flames blazed up around it, too bright to look at. They settled. The mass shook itself and became a distinct shape, which rose and stepped forward onto the hearth. Miss Wells found herself staring at a bird about the size of a farmyard cock, with apparently normal avian plumage, except that it was a brighter, fierier orange-yellow than she would have imagined possible.

  The earl turned to her, earnest-faced.

  ʺWelly, you mustn’t tell anyone,ʺ he commanded. ʺIt’s a secret.ʺ

  ʺNo, no, of course not,ʺ she muttered, still staring.

  ʺThat’s the Phoenix, that is,ʺ said Mr. Moffard calmly. ʺSeems ’e’s wanting for to meet you.ʺ

  Summer 1990

  ʺWe been makin’ a game between us, Welly and me, when you’d get it,ʺ said Dave. ʺShe said as it wouldn’t be that long now.ʺ

  ʺBut how . . . how . . . ?ʺ

  ʺLivin’ backwards. This ninety year that’s what I been doin’. ’Undred afore that was forwards, same as anyone else, so put ’em together and I’m an ’undred an’ ninety. ’Ard to take in, I dessay, but don’t you fret on it now. You’ll get it soon as you’ve met Sonny. Nothin’ to be feared of—’e’s been around since you first come, on’y you won’t ’ave seed ’im. ’E’ll be down when ’e’s through with ’is ’ymn.ʺ

  Ellie continued to stare while Dave returned to his notes as if nothing of more than passing importance had happened. At last he looked up and grinned at her, a normal boy’s grin of pure, harmless mischief.

  ʺBit much to take in, I dessay,ʺ he said. ʺCome along, then. Wouldn’t want you to miss this.ʺ

  They walked together back towards the cottage, past grown trees, some of which, Ellie was creepily aware, must first have shouldered their way out of the soil long after the boy beside her had been born. The idea made her shiver, not with fear, but from its sheer strangeness.

  Back at the cottage she settled beside Welly to help her enter up the day’s notes on the PC while Dave cooked—strong tea with lots of sugar, and fried potato baps with bacon scraps and onion in the mix, greasy but crunchy crisp on the outside, and utterly contrary to all Mum’s dietary rules. Delectable. She was finishing her second helping when Dave picked up his mug, handed it to her and rose.

  ʺ’Bout time now,ʺ he said.

  Welly backed her chair from the table and wheeled herself to the door, down the ramp and round beside the bench, where Dave and Ellie settled. All three waited in silence.

  The front of the cottage was in shadow now, with the setting sun just lighting the topmost branches of the trees along the eastern edge of the clearing. Above that the sky was a soft, pale blue. The evening was full of the good-night calls of birds. They hushed, and the whole wood waited.

  The song began so softly that Ellie wasn’t sure at how long it had been going on when she first heard it, a series of gentle, bubbling notes, close together but distinct, so like a human melody that Ellie felt she could almost have put words to it. It became louder, wilder. Ellie closed her eyes and in her imagination saw the song as a swirling fountain of individual droplets above the trees, each note glittering into rainbow colours in the sideways light, the fountain rising and spreading into a circling canopy of light, which then un-shaped itself and fell in a gentle shower onto the waiting leaves below.

  Again she couldn’t tell for certain when the song ended, but as she opened her eyes the birds of the wood resumed their calling.

  ʺLayin’ it on some tonight,ʺ said Dave. ʺThat’s for you, Ellie. ’Ere ’e comes.ʺ

  Ellie followed his glance in time to see a large bird launch itself from the top of the oak opposite, glistening with the reflected colours of the western sky—or so she imagined. But when the bird glided down into shadow, the sunset hues stayed with it until it landed, glowing, on the hitching rail beside the door.

  Ellie rose—it seemed rude to stay sitting—and stared, her heart pounding. The bird gazed back considering, judging, her.

  ʺThis is Sonny,ʺ said Welly’s voice behind her. ʺHe’s the Phoenix. You’ve probably read about him. But I’ve always found it easiest to think of him not as a magical creature out of a story-book, but as a god. He comes from Egypt, where they didn’t have just one god, they had lots. But he’s the only one left. Go closer. He won’t hurt you.ʺ

  ʺNo. No. Of course not,ʺ murmured Ellie, allowing her feet to drift her towards the hitching rail. The bird drew itself up and spread its wings wide as she approached, until it seemed to tower over her.

  Yes, she thought. It’s a god. Of course.

  She bowed her head and the wings swept forward until they lay gently against either side of it, a warm, soft, feathery touch. She felt the bird’s brow against her own, the fringes of its scarlet crest mingling into her hair-line.

  They stayed only briefly like that and straightened. Ellie stepped back, feeling not exactly changed, not altered or tampered with, but renewed, fully herself and confident in that selfhood. The gift of the Phoenix. Something she would have until she died.

  ʺThat’s ’is blessin’,ʺ said Dave. ʺWorth ’avin’, eh? It’ll be gettin’ cold for ’im now, an’ ’e’ll be wanting to sit on ’is fire, so we’ll be goin’ in an’ we’ll tell you about it all.ʺ

  It was well past midnight when Ellie crawled into bed, exhausted beyond belief with the excitement of the day but still for a long while unable to sleep for the muddle of thoughts and memories jostling through her mind. . . .

  . . . Sonny, the one and only ever-living Phoenix, blazing on his great mound of embers on the hearth below but filling the whole room with his presence. . . .

  . . . Welly and Dave curled up in each other’s arms in their room on the other side of the landing, husband and wife for forty years now, he getting younger all the time, and she getting older, and still in love. . . .

  . . . And then, almost word for word in her mind still, what they had told her:

  ʺ. . . We’d been together, as people say now, almost since the day we met. I don’t think it was anything Sonny did to us—we just fell for each other, didn’t we, love?ʺ

  ʺThat we did. Couldn’t think what were ’appenin’ to me. Thought I were getting’ the ’fluenza, maybe.ʺ

  ʺBut we couldn’t get married because of Dave needing to change who he was every twenty years or so. That was tricky enough as it was without my having to account for a series of missing husbands. But then, in the winter of nineteen forty-nine—No, I’d better go back a bit. From the very first I wanted to know as much as I could about Sonny—ʺ

  ʺLike that, Welly is. If it aren’t in a book, it aren’t real.ʺ

  ʺI started in the library here, reading everything I could find about ancient Egypt, and I advertised for a tutor—we could afford that, because of the very generous arrangements his lordship had made for Dave here—ʺ

  ʺSonny payin’ ’is debts, that come from. Showed me a pile of jewels in ’is bonfire ’eap to give to ’is lordship, an’ then ’e said I got to ’ang on to ’alf of ’em—ʺ

  ʺAs well as a ninety-nine-year lease on the cottage and the wood. It was still extremely generous, but it meant I could hire a tutor, and I found a wonderful old man, a retired professor of Egyptology who lived in a large old house in Hampstead piled fro
m floor to ceiling with books. I boarded with him all through the war when I was doing war work in one of the ministries. I couldn’t tell him why I wanted to know about the Phoenix, of course, but he got interested and dug out everything he could find, and he taught me to read hieroglyphics, and best of all he got me a place on a dig one of his ex-pupils was running in Heliopolis, and Dave came too—ʺ

  ʺWanted to see where Sonny spent ’is winter, a’ course.ʺ

  ʺThe earl vouched for him so we could get him a passport because he didn’t have a birth certificate. We used to walk in the desert in the evenings, and Sonny would meet us. He seemed to have much more power there—ʺ

  ʺOnly natural, ’im bein’ closer to the sun.ʺ

  ʺWe were excavating a temple of Osiris, and he’d come to me in my dreams and show me how it used to look in his day, so they were very glad to have me on the dig because I seemed to be such a lucky guesser—they used to joke about my having second sight. And then on the last night of the year—we’d told them it was our fiftieth birthday, but of course it was really Dave’s hundred and fiftieth, only his fiftieth from when he began to go backwards—ʺ

  ʺSonny’s, too.ʺ

  ʺIn this cycle, anyway, though . . . Yes, Ellie?ʺ

  ʺThey didn’t have our centuries did they? Back in ancient Egypt, I mean.ʺ

  ʺTakes what ’e can get. We got centuries now, so that’s what ’e uses.ʺ

  ʺHe has to have some kind of a cycle that the humans he lives among find important. In Egypt it was a hundred and twenty years, but it’s centuries now. Anyway, my friends on the dig held a party for us, and when it was over Dave and I walked out into the desert and Sonny met us and took us to his temple. It was buried deep in a dune, but Sonny called and a patch of sand slid away and there was a hole we could crawl through—pitch dark, but as soon as we were in, Sonny blazed into light and there it was. Oh, Ellie, it was perfectly wonderful, quite small, but untouched—never been found by anyone, or looted or excavated. Every wall covered with paintings or hieroglyphics, all looking as if they’d been done yesterday. . . .ʺ

  ʺAn’ that’s where ’e married us.ʺ

  ʺYes . . . that was where he married us. . . . I’m sorry . . . I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else about it before . . . that’s why I’m crying. It was so beautiful. It sounds lonely, but it wasn’t, because he brought them all back, everyone who’d ever helped him before, the way we’re doing, not to see or hear or feel, but there, crowding into his temple to welcome and bless us, his fortunate, fortunate friends. . . .

  ʺOf course, when I got back to England I longed to tell my old professor about it, but I couldn’t. So Sonny sent him a dream instead—ʺ

  ʺPayin’ ’is debts again.ʺ

  ʺYes. There’s a sacred text carved onto a stele at Luxor. It’s so battered that no one could read it, and scholars had been arguing for years about what it meant. When we got back from Egypt, I found a letter waiting for me from my old professor, telling me that on New Year’s Eve—the night we got married, remember—he’d dreamed he saw the stele as it was when it was new. It seemed to be lit by flame, and he could read it right through. And he was so excited that he woke up and found that he still remembered it, so he switched on his bedside light and wrote it down. He got up next morning thinking it would be complete nonsense, but he looked at it and saw that it must be right. The Society of Egyptologists gave him their Gold Medal for the paper he wrote on it, and he told me that now he could die happy. He was over ninety.ʺ

  ʺThat’s lovely!ʺ

  ʺThat’s Sonny, that is. You better get on, Welly, or we’ll all be fallin’ asleep.ʺ

  ʺYou’re going to tell me why you really want me. Aren’t you?ʺ

  A pause, and a sigh from Welly.

  ʺWe can’t make ’er. An’ Sonny won’t. Tell ’er that.ʺ

  ʺI suppose it’s a place to start. You see, my dear, after that first time, I used to join a dig and go back to Egypt every winter. Dave would come for a little while and I’d take a break to be with him, and wherever my dig was we’d go to Heliopolis and visit Sonny and his temple. So I got to read all the hieroglyphs and the scrolls, one of which was about the temple ritual. The important thing was that there were always two special priests—sometimes one of them was a priestess—and one of them was getting older and the other one was getting younger. And on ritual days, especially the midwinter solstice, the other priests would make a fire on the altar and the Phoenix would appear and bathe in his flames to renew his strength. Then, right at the end of the cycle when one priest was a very old man and the other was a babe in arms, they’d build a special pyre on the altar and on that last midnight they’d lay the baby—the priest who’d been growing younger—on the pyre, and the Phoenix would appear and nestle down onto the baby as if it were brooding a chick. Then, on the stroke of midnight, the baby would be unborn, and the Phoenix would take its spirit into himself and the pyre would burst into flame. In that same instant, somewhere in Egypt, a new baby would be born, and the old priest would start to live backwards.

  ʺThe priests would watch all night, and in the dawn light they would see a pile of ashes where the pyre had been, and on top of it a great jewelled egg. Then, as the sun rose, its first rays would shine through the eastern portal of the temple and strike the egg, and the shell would open like a flower and the baby Phoenix would be there, ready to begin the cycle again. All that was then needed was for the child who had been born at the sacred moment to find his or her way to the temple and be recognised.ʺ

  ʺWeren’t like that when poor Sonny were born, not a bit. ’Ad to make it all up for ’isself. Touch an’ go from the start. Still is.ʺ

  ʺExactly. We don’t know what went wrong with the cycle. The pyre must have been built and lit and the egg formed, but something prevented it ever being hatched. It may even have been Sonny’s way of enduring the Christian centuries when it would have been difficult for the cult to survive. But the fifth earl picked up the egg up somewhere, still described as a phoenix egg—that’s another mystery—and brought it to the Cabinet House, and Dave was born close by at midnight on the turn of the century, and the cycle could begin again. We don’t know whether Sonny arranged for that himself, or whether it was just the bit of luck he’d been waiting for.

  ʺBut I don’t think he can have known about me, or he’d have arranged it differently. I’ve got this hereditary disease. My mother died when she was forty-eight, and one of my sisters when she was fifty-three. None of us who’ve had it has ever lived beyond sixty, that we know of. So Sonny’s kept me going thirty years beyond my time. He can do that. There’s no record in the scrolls of any of the growing-older priests having died before the cycle was up, and it was a hundred and twenty years then, remember. That’s a tremendous age at any time. A lot of Egyptian mummies have been carbon dated, and their average age at death was thirty-one.ʺ

  ʺTaken it out of ’im, it ’as, an’ then some, doin’ it for Welly. An’ the summers, they aren’t nowhere near ’ot enough for ’im, not comparing to Egypt, and flyin’ out an’ ’ome spring an’ fall, that’s takin’ it out of ’im too. ’E gets old, same as anyone else, each time round, on’y ’e’s found this way o’ stayin’ immortal. But like I say, it’s goin’ to be touch an’ go for ’im this time, an’ touch an’ go for Welly, an’ that means touch’ an’ go for me. Don’t care to think what’ll happen if I get to be unborn ’thout Sonny bein’ around to sort things out.ʺ

  ʺIn a few years’ time, Ellie, I’m going to be almost completely helpless, and Dave’s going to be five, going on four, and Sonny’s going to be trying to survive our English winters on sun-lamps and log fires. In Egypt there were always other priests who helped our predecessors survive those difficult years. Now we are alone.ʺ

  ʺAnd you want me to help.ʺ

  ʺWe are asking you to join the Priesthood of the Temple of the Phoenix until the cycle of the death and rebirth of our god is fulfilled.ʺ

  ʺAll right. Can y
ou wait till I’ve finished school? I don’t think my dad will want me go to university, not if he has to pay for it.ʺ

  ʺI think we can do better than that. I’ve already talked to his lordship. When you’ve finished school, he’ll take you on as assistant forester on the estate, with special responsibility for the wood. I’ll introduce you to some of my forestry friends—I still keep up with them by e-mail. You’ll have the diaries, and once we’ve gone, there’ll be no need for you to keep the wood secret. You’ll have an absolutely unique resource to bargain with. Any university that runs a forestry course will be thrilled to have you.ʺ

  ʺI don’t need any of that. Really I don’t. I . . . I’d do it whatever it cost me.ʺ

  ʺMebbe you would, too, but Sonny aren’t goin’ to let you. ’E’ll look after you, ’cos of ’e pays ’is debts. Not a lot o’ gods you can say that of.ʺ

  At long last Ellie drowsed off into sleep. Her last conscious thought was I wish I’d been at their wedding. It must have been wonderful. Perhaps Sonny will send me a dream.

  He did.

  Midnight, 31 December 1999

  A cold night, almost clear. The moon already set. A swath of brilliant stars overhead, and another to the east above a horizon of low hills, visible through a gap in the trees. A large hand torch illuminates part of the clearing, in its beam a pyramidal pile of logs with a flattened top. A light ladder rests against the pile, and an elaborately patterned cloth is draped over its top.

  The person holding the hand torch turns. Now the beam illuminates an object something between a hospital stretcher-trolley and a high-tech wheel-chair. Propped on it, swathed in shawls and piled with rugs, lies a very old woman with a bundle on her lap. The torch is settled on the foot of the bed, so that it once more illuminates the pile. Its bearer moves up beside the bundle, opens it and holds its contents to the old woman’s face, as if for her to kiss, and moves into the light of the torch. Now it can be seen that she is a young woman, heavily wrapped against the cold, but the baby she is carrying is stark naked, though apparently almost newborn. Carefully she climbs the ladder, kisses the baby, places it in the centre of the cloth and folds the four corners over it. The underside of the cloth is brilliant with jewels that flash with all the colours of fire in the torch-light. She descends and returns to the trolley, bringing the ladder with her.