Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  I ignored him. I’d exhausted the mess of leaves beside me. All I had to show for it was a handful of small stones. It wasn’t good enough. I blinked tears away so they wouldn’t see me wipe them off.

  “Here’s the deal. You come down here, or you can go up there.” He pointed past me, into the rocks and trees of the wilder end of the park. “The lions will take over the hunt.” They were already stepping back from the girls. Moonlight slid along the knives in their hands. “Hey, you might even find your way out up there. Or you might find a friend. Someone who’s not with the Pride. Of course, they play kinda rough up here.” He grinned as he unsheathed his knife. “And if the lions take you, we’ll be wanting a little something extra for our trouble. Before we collect our trophy.”

  My stomach turned. They would rape me, he meant. “I’ll get out, and you will be so dead,” I croaked.

  “When they find the drugs in your backpack? And Reed’s family says we were at their place tonight? Our word against yours, Corey. Those very disturbing things you told my lionesses during all those after-practice get-togethers…” He shook his head. “Sad. You scholarship kids can be so troubled. So out of your element.”

  And I had wanted to be one of them? “At least if I don’t get out of this I’ll die clean,” I mumbled to myself.

  I looked at the meadow, and at the creeps. I looked at the lionesses. They were drinking water and adjusting their blades. I’d tried to break free out there. I wasn’t sure I had the speed to do it now. The thought of letting any of that “audience” get their hands on me made my skin crawl. Turning my head, I looked back and up at the towering trees. Mom’s family called these old parts of the park “godwoods.” They said the old gods of the land still lived here.

  Why was I thinking of their crap now? Look at me, trapped! Look at what their gods had done for me! Even the goddess that was supposed to look after me had done nothing. There she rode in the sky, or so they’d always told me, just a flat white disk. I could count on nothing from her except scratches from the stupid pendant I wore! I began to cry in silent anger. Furious, I shook my blood-streaked fists at the moon.

  That’s when I saw the broken bottle at the edge of the litter on my boulder. I sat casually, dangling my legs over, hiding my side as I grabbed its long neck. It was warm in my hand. Finally, a weapon I could use to do some damage before the Pride cut me down. “Do I get a head start?” I demanded, wiping my eyes with my free arm. “You guys are fresh. I want it. I get into the trees before you so much as take the trail into the rocks.”

  Felix stared at me. “Damn, I wish you didn’t have to die,” he said finally. “You’re a real lioness. A real—”

  “What would you know of lionesses, you perfumed and gelded whelp?”

  A moment ago, when I had looked at the open meadow, she had not been there. Now she strode across it like a queen, a tall, ice-blonde woman in a white tank top and jogging shorts. Her long limbs were so pale they almost seemed to glow. Her ponytail picked up the moon’s gleam as it bounced behind her. Even the woman’s eyes were silver, colorless and icy as she looked the Pride over.

  I don’t know how she got there or what she thought she was doing, but I couldn’t have her stepping into my shitstorm. “Lady, get out of here!” I screamed, or tried to. My throat was too dry for more than a croak, and I coughed as I spoke. “Go on, get out of here, call the cops—do you have a cell phone on you? Run—get—”

  She held up a long-fingered hand as she came to a halt ten feet from the nearest lioness. It was as if she had laid her hand on my mouth. “Hush, maiden. Your courtesy is well intended, but needless. Under the circumstances, it is gallant. I will not forget.” She looked at the Pride, which swung out to encircle her. “You seek a hunt,” she said. “I fear you will not give me a hunt that will satisfy, but times are corrupt. Tonight you shall be my prey.”

  Jeffries laughed. “Wait your turn, bitch.”

  She stooped and picked up a quiver, which she slung over her back, then an unstrung bow—a big one. I knew damned well they hadn’t been on that grass before.

  “Once, you would have known to whom you spoke, and understood your death was before you,” the woman told Jeffries. She took a bowstring from the pocket of her shorts. Everyone watched her. They had to. It wasn’t possible to look anywhere else as she gracefully fitted one end of the string to the end of the bow she had placed between her running shoes. With hardly any effort she bent the heavy bow and slipped the string over the free end. “For your foulness, I shall not soil an arrow on you. I have better things for those of mongrel breeding.”

  Jeffries gasped. He always bragged on his family going back to European nobility in the 1600s and did not like her comment about his breeding. Ignoring him, she put two fingers to her lips and blew a whistle that had everyone clutching their ears. As its echoes faded, I heard sounds in the brush behind me and around me. Dogs trotted down from the rocks and trees. It was then, I think, that a few creeps decided life was better somewhere else. Some of those dogs were really big. They looked like they had rottweiler or wolfhound in them, but it was all part of a mix. Whatever the full mix was, it was dangerous. These were lean, hard-looking animals, cautious as they came out onto open ground.

  The closer they got to Her—by now I understood the truth of Her being—the lighter they were on their feet, until they frisked around Her like puppies, tails wagging. They were glad to see Her. They were strays, their coats tangled, some ribs showing, but they weren’t stray-cautious once they could smell Her.

  “Fuck this.” Reed broke the spell. She had her gun out and had pointed it at Her. “I don’t know who—”

  Up came the bow. I didn’t even see the hand that took an arrow from the quiver. I glimpsed the arrow on the string, the ripple of muscle as She drew the string to her ear, and loosed. The arrow went through one of Reed’s beautiful eyes. She fell, the gun still in her hand.

  The goddess looked at Felix and the Pride. “I said, you are my prey now. You thought to hunt one who is under my protection. Now meet my price. I give you the chance you gave to her—the trees. Linger but a moment more, and I shall lose my patience.” She looked at the dogs. “My children, see that one?” She pointed to Jeffries. “Tear him to pieces.”

  That set the Pride free of Her spell, if she had cast one. All of them, including Jeffries, bolted for the trees of the old forest. She let them go. Despite Her words, the dogs waited around Her feet, panting, scratching, rolling on the grass. She walked over, collected Reed’s gun, and handed it up to me, along with the bottle of water Reed had carried in a holder at her waist. I took both with shaking hands and would not meet Her eyes. The goddess did a few runner’s stretches for her legs, then chirped to the dogs. Running easily, the bow in one hand and an arrow in the other, She headed up into the rocks. The dogs fanned out around Her and caught up, all business now.

  It was a long time before I found the nerve to come down and check Reed. She was dead, her skin as cold as marble. The arrow that had killed her had vanished. There wasn’t even a mark where it had struck her.

  I looked around. All of the creeps were gone. That was probably a good idea. The goddess might decide they were worth hunting next. There was no telling what might offend Her.

  For a long time the only sounds I heard were the dogs’ baying, and an occasional shriek, up among those old dark trees. I drank Reed’s water, then made myself collect my knapsack and everything I had brought. I kept the gun for now, in case anyone decided that I looked like easy prey. I wiped it clean with tissues as I waited. On my way home, I could toss it into a storm drain, into the sewers. At some point there would be cops. I didn’t want them finding anything of mine and tracking me to my door like they did on television. I knew they wouldn’t believe me, but I didn’t want the psychiatrists, or the medication, or the attention. I just wanted to curl up on my bed and think of ways to apologize to my mother’s family for past disrespect.

  Thinking of them, I checked my ce
ll phone. There were no calls, though it was long past midnight. I wondered if Mom knew who I was running around with so late. The thought made me giggle. The giggle sounded a little strange, so I made myself quit. Instead I sat down and waited. It never occurred to me to just go home. I hadn’t been dismissed.

  Sometime before dawn the dogs returned one by one. They were tired. After a look around, and a pee at the base of the rocks, they decided I was harmless. They lay down close to me and got to work licking the dark stains from their fur. Last to appear was their mistress, carrying a small terrier I had missed in all the confusion. His muzzle, too, was dark. He was more interested in trying to kiss Her face than in cleaning himself up.

  I scrambled to my feet, though my legs were jelly from all my running. She would not catch me showing Her disrespect. She stopped in front of me and nodded.

  “As I thought. They were better prey than hunters,” She said in that chill and distant voice. “Here is my sign, to safeguard you on your way home.” She pressed a blood-smeared thumb to my forehead and drew a crescent there. It felt as cold as her voice. I swayed and tried not to faint, either from Her touch or from the thought that I now had Pride blood on me. “Tell your family they have served Me well. I am pleased.” She dropped something on the ground between us.

  I looked down at Felix’s braid. “I didn’t ask for this,” I whispered. “Or for them to die.”

  She smiled. “I answer prayers as I will, maiden. Only remember the others who perished at their hands. They would have taken more, in time.” She yawned, and pulled the tie out of her ponytail. Ivory hair cascaded down over her shoulders. “Good night to you, maiden. Or rather, good day.”

  I watched as she strolled across the meadow, still carrying her terrier. A quick whistle called the rest of her pack. They followed her, panting, tails wagging. Somewhere in the middle of that long expanse of grass, with no trees or rocks to hide them, they all vanished.

  TAMORA PIERCEis the New York Times best-selling author of twenty-three fantasy novels for teenagers, which are published worldwide in English and in translation in more than six languages. She is currently awaiting the publication of an anthology that she coedited, the publication of two other short stories in addition to “Huntress,” and the production of her next audio book with Full Cast Audio. She would also like to get some sleep at some point. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Tim Liebe, a Web designer and administrator, as well as their four cats and two parakeets.

  Her Web site is www.tamora-pierce.com, and she maintains an active presence on www.sheroescentral.com, a message board she founded with author Meg Cabot.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The idea for “Huntress” came to me in 1990, when the case of the Central Park jogger and stories of teenagers “wilding,” or playing criminal games in New York City’s Central Park, were in the news. They came together in an unpleasant stew with images from the Robert Chambers 1988 assault on Jennifer Levin in that same park, and the story bubbled out of that. Originally my narrator was a bag lady, a schizophrenic former professor of mythology and folklore now known as Crayfish, who simply told what she observed. When Sharyn November asked me for a story for Firebirds Rising, I knew I would have to rewrite “Huntress” from the point of view of a teenage outsider. Writing it from a lioness’s point of view was too alienating—not everyone wants to swim through the thoughts of a sociopath. I would have written it, but if my husband refused to read it, I knew everyone else would hate it, too.

  The thing is, I still wish I could do that. I still wish I could call the merciless Huntress down to deal with some of the girl-killers we have out there. I bet the number of murders of girls and young women would fall off sharply if word got out that their killers were showing up dead, and the killer was untraceable. I suppose that makes me a bad person. What do you suppose it makes the people who prey on those who can’t fight back?

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  UNWRAPPING

  Brenna, her arms around a black garbage bag stuffed with all the ingredients of her mummy costume, followed her best friend Nadia upstairs to Nadia’s bedroom.

  “Why won’t you tell me what you’re going to wear to the Halloween dance?” Brenna asked. “I get that you don’t want Adam to know, and that’s why you wouldn’t talk about it at lunch.” Adam and Jason had sat with them in the middle-school cafeteria, and not for the first time. It was the first time Jason had spoken directly to Brenna, though. “But we’re alone now,” she continued. “You can tell me.”

  Nadia smiled over her shoulder. “You’ll see.”

  “Did you make your costume or buy it?” Brenna asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Most of Nadia’s house smelled like steamed broccoli, which Brenna hated. But Nadia’s room smelled like incense and cinnamon. It looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. The bed was swathed in a rose satin coverlet. A pile of plump pillows in shades of pink and red overlapped one another at the head of the bed. The red carpet was thick; when you walked on it, you felt like you were walking on bubble wrap without the pops, bouncy, never quite touching the ground. The curtains were dark red, and the walls were hung with quilted silk squares in red, gold, and purple scattered with small round mirrors.

  Brenna dumped her garbage bag on the floor and sank into one of the puffy, red chairs by the wooden dresser. She’d been coming to Nadia’s house for three years now, since they were both eleven, and she was still pleased and delighted every time she saw this room.

  Nadia’s mom, Emily, was an antiques dealer, so the house was full of interesting furniture, but no other room was the color of Nadia’s. Nadia’s room didn’t belong to the house the same way Nadia didn’t seem to belong to her family. Mr. and Mrs. Wood were pleasant and friendly and normal, brown-haired, brown-eyed, not too plump and not too thin. Her older brother, Lewis, also brown-haired and brown-eyed, was the sort of boy you noticed the second or third time you looked at a group of boys.

  If Nadia was anywhere in a room, you knew it, not just because of her red hair and amber eyes, but because of her electric spirit. Brenna suspected that Nadia was adopted, but she’d never asked. Sometimes it was nice to let a mystery alone.

  Brenna had brown-gold hair and hazel eyes. Whenever she and Nadia shared a bathroom mirror, Brenna felt like Nadia’s shadow. It was a role she liked. She got invited everywhere Nadia did because everyone knew Nadia didn’t go anywhere without Brenna, but no one paid attention to Brenna, so she could enjoy herself watching other people. Even before she met Nadia, sitting in the shadows and watching was something Brenna had been good at: her older sister, Amy, was a genius and an artist. Being someone’s shadow felt natural to Brenna.

  Unlike Amy, Nadia actually listened to Brenna and liked her.

  Nadia squatted and opened Brenna’s bag, pulled out the rolls of white medical gauze Brenna’s mother had brought home from the hospital. “All right, Bren. Take off your clothes.”

  “Nadia!”

  “What, you think mummies wore clothes before they got wrapped? Not hardly. Just an amulet here and there inside the wrappings. I’ve got a nice green scarab to place over your heart.”

  “I’m not going to strip.”

  “I knew you’d say that.” Nadia straightened. “So I got out my body stocking. You will wear it.” She picked up a wad of stretchy beige cloth from the other puffy chair and handed it to Brenna.

  Brenna shook it out. It was leotard material that covered the entire body except the hands and head; it had snaps at the back and at the crotch. “Eww,” she said, examining the crotch and wondering how to get it to work.

  “Right, that part isn’t fun, so don’t drink anything.”

  “I’m wearing my underwear and bra.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “I’m going to the bathroom first.”

  “Good idea.”

  Brenna took the body stocking into Nadia’s bathroom. The dance started in an hour, and it was supposed to last until midnight
, maybe longer. Could she really go seven hours without peeing? Why hadn’t she thought of that when she came up with her costume?

  She stripped, peed, and pulled on the body stocking over her underwear. From the neck down, she looked like a creepy Skipper doll. She came out of the bathroom with her arms straight in front of her, jerk-walking like Frankenstein’s monster. “Night of the Living Doll,” she said in her spookiest voice.

  “Oh yeah? Just you wait. Hold that pose.” Nadia grabbed the gauze and started wrapping Brenna. She overlapped each layer neatly and evenly, and fastened the gauze with small gold safety pins every time she got to the end of a roll or a body part. Brenna watched as her arms and then the rest of her was enveloped in a white pattern that looked like wickerwork. Nadia held a palm-sized green scarab against the center of Brenna’s chest and wrapped it there, continuing the pattern. Brenna felt its weight. Trust Nadia to make even this beautiful: everything she did came out like art.

  How had Brenna found such a great friend? Nadia had sat next to her in the cafeteria on her first day at school. “What’s in your lunch?” Nadia had asked, and Brenna had showed Nadia one of the reasons she usually sat alone: she had a whole avocado from the organic market. She sliced it at the table to put on her cheese sandwich. Nadia had never seen an avocado before, or a satsuma mandarin orange. She loved them.

  Brenna’s first friend-capture method had been food.

  Her second was listening, and answering weird questions without flinching. Nadia asked things nobody else did, like “What do you do when no one’s looking that would embarrass you the most if anyone saw?” and “What do you think about just before you fall asleep?”

  Brenna’s third method was to be as honest as she could. Nadia trusted her judgment. No one else in her life ever had. Nadia listened to Brenna talk about TV shows, movies, books, and boys. She went off to check things out, and usually came back and said Brenna was right. They watched TV and movies together, read the same books at the same time, sat on the wall outside school and watched boys together—when boys weren’t coming over to hit on Nadia. This led to many discussions, but very few arguments.