Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  Well, who cared, anyway? Stupid old Jake. Sad, stupid, misfit Jake. It wouldn’t bother me if I never saw him again.

  Sounds and smells from downstairs convinced me that my grandmother was up and cooking. My room was cold, so I rose, washed, and dressed in the fastest possible time. As I skipped down the steps, I glanced at the door to Jake’s room, visible from the stairwell. His door was closed, and I gave a little sniff. Still sleeping, like a man with no responsibilities or appointments. No ties, no one depending on him, not even his uncle eager to see him. No wonder he had no incentives to get out of bed.

  My foot had just touched the floor at the bottom of the steps when my grandfather called to me. “Lirril, come see this! I’m so tickled.”

  I followed the sound of his voice to the parlor, where the Wintermoon gifts were stacked before the fireplace. I had put my own out the night before, and, as was tradition, my grandparents had added theirs to the pile while the rest of the house lay sleeping. There were dozens of presents laid out before the fire, and there would be dozens more by the time my parents, my aunt, and my uncle made their own contributions.

  My grandfather was holding up a wide, flat board, and it took me a moment to recognize it. “Look at this,” he said, and turned it so I could see the other side. It was the Leaf & Berry sign, lovingly repainted, the red words laid in crisply against a stark white background, small curlicues decorating the four corners.

  I came closer to admire it. “When did you have time to do that?” I asked. The oily, pleasant smell of fresh paint drifted to my nose.

  “I didn’t! I’m guessing it was that young man. He must have stayed up all night to do this.”

  I felt my face suddenly heat with an unidentifiable emotion. “Jake? Did this? Last night after we were all in bed?” I remembered that he told me he had done painting and staining for the carpenter in Oakton. But I hadn’t expected this.

  “Must have,” my grandfather said, turning the sign this way and that as if to detect hidden subtleties. “Or even while Hannah and I were watching the fire. He cleared the walks, too, front and back.”

  I felt a shiver go down my back. Which of the other tasks that I had suggested to him had he also decided to accomplish? “That’s—well. What a nice thing for him to do,” I said.

  My grandfather nodded toward the pile of gifts. “He left you something, too. I didn’t open it, of course.”

  My eyes were pulled irresistibly to the bounty laid out on the hearth. In all that welter, I instantly spotted it—a scroll bound with what looked like a shoelace. My name had been carefully lettered on a scrap of paper. What would I find inside?

  “I’ve got to go thank him again,” my grandfather said, carrying the sign toward the kitchen.

  “I think he’s still asleep.”

  “No, he’s out back, chopping firewood for your grandmother. I must say, I do like that boy,” my grandfather said, and disappeared through the swinging door.

  There was no way I could keep myself from dropping to the floor and untying the makeshift ribbon. I unrolled the single sheet of paper. In handwriting that I instantly knew was Jake’s, I found a poem. I read it as if I were gulping it down.

  Longest night, and coldest, of the year.

  Lights beat back the blackness of the sky:

  Bonfire blazes, jubilantly garish;

  Full moon rises, perfect as a pearl.

  I do not know what fortune brought me here—

  Good or ill—and yet I know that I

  Will not forget, until the day I perish,

  Wintermoon, and the kindness of a girl.

  I could not breathe. My cheeks were so hot I thought they might scald my fingers if I touched my own skin. I read the poem again.

  I heard voices and I leaped to my feet, not sure where to lay the poem so no one could see it, not sure how to hold my hands or what expression to summon to my face. But the voices stayed outside as my grandfather and Jake came around to the front of the inn and began to discuss the best way to hang the fresh sign. A minute after they decided the old hooks would work just fine, my grandfather was hailed by a new voice.

  “Hullo there, Bob! Warm Wintermoon to you and yours!” It was Adam Granger, who owned a tannery a few streets over. He was getting a little frail with age, and there was some talk he might be hiring a younger man to take over his business soon. “Your grandson in town yet?”

  “No, the girls are coming in a few days. Maybe longer, if the roads aren’t clear.”

  “That’s too bad. I had some work I needed done over at the house and I was hoping to hire Renner for a few hours.”

  “Jake, here, he’s good with his hands,” my grandfather said. “What do you want done?”

  “Oh, I need a couple windows reframed and there’s a table that’s missing a leg. Small things, but I recall that your grandson helped me out last summer, so—”

  “I can do all that,” Jake spoke up. His voice was quiet and confident. He didn’t sound like a man who had stayed up all night, thinking up ways to show people his appreciation.

  Adam sounded pleased. “Really? I got two, three more things like that you could do if you had the time.”

  “Stage to Thrush Hollow probably won’t be through till tomorrow or the day after,” my grandfather said. “Good chance for you to earn a little extra money.”

  “When could you come over?” Adam asked.

  “Soon as the sign’s hung,” Jake replied. “Give me a minute.”

  I felt myself start to breathe again. Adam could come up with a million tasks for a strong young man. Jake might not be taking the first stage out of Merendon after all, even if it came tomorrow.

  I heard some clattering above the front door as the sign was put in place, and then the fading sound of voices as Jake and Adam walked down the street. I crossed to the front window to watch them go, but all I could see was Jake’s back, slim but somehow sturdier in my father’s rejected coat.

  My grandmother stepped into the parlor just as my grandfather came in through the front door, bringing icy air with him. “Well, I was about to ask where everyone’s gone off to,” my grandmother said. “I’ve got a meal almost ready. Where’s Jake?”

  “Headed out with Adam Granger to do a few chores. Seemed mighty happy at the idea of earning a few coins, too,” my grandfather said.

  My grandmother looked pleased. “Now, that’s good for both of them,” she said. “I do like that young man. Did you see all that wood he split and set up against the door? You’re not going to have to lift an ax all winter.”

  My grandfather grinned. “Fine by me. I’ve got a few chores of my own I can set Jake to when he’s done at Adam’s.”

  I looked up at that, feeling even more hopeful. My hand was behind my back, holding the poem so no one could see it, but I had a feeling that my grandfather knew what I was hiding, anyway. My grandmother almost certainly realized I was concealing something, and could guess that it was a token of someone’s affection. She had probably even figured out whose. She was very good at sorting out secrets.

  “Do you think Jake’ll stay, then?” my grandmother asked. “Here in Merendon?”

  My grandfather glanced at me and he almost laughed. “Oh, I think he might,” he answered. “If we give him a little encouragement.”

  My grandmother nodded. “I’m going to set the table. Lirril, you can run out and check the ashes if you like. See if anything’s survived the fire.”

  “Oh—yes—that is—I will,” I said, and they both turned away to hide their smiles at my disjointed speech. I waited till they were out of the room, then carefully rolled up my poem and tied it with the shoelace. Grabbing my coat from the hall closet, I hurried through the kitchen and out into the cold air, which was not at all warmed by the cheerful sunshine. Shivering a little, I knelt beside the coals and began sorting through the remains of the bonfire.

  I was really only looking for one thing, and I found it almost immediately—the small metal button from
Jake’s shirt. The heat of the fire had contorted it to a strange shape and darkened its shiny surface, but it was whole, recognizable, too stubborn to give way to neglect and misuse. I cleaned it in the snow and slipped it into my pocket. I would only give it back if Jake thought to ask for it, but I was sure he wouldn’t.

  The button had carried a wish that wasn’t mine, but I could make it come true.

  SHARON SHINNhas won the William C. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer, and was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is the author of Archangel and four other books in the Samaria world, which have all been Locus best-sellers. Her many other books include three set in the world of this story: The Safe-Keeper’s Secret (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults), The Truth-Teller’s Tale, and the forthcoming The Dream-Maker’s Magic.

  A graduate of Northwestern University, Sharon Shinn now works as a journalist for a trade magazine. She has lived in the Midwest most of her life.

  AUTHOR ’S NOTE

  I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to write a Christmas story—or at least the kind of Christmas story that would unfold in a fantasy setting. The world would be full of cold, snow, and darkness, but small, determined lights and acts of simple charity would provide moments of hope and luminous beauty.

  I had already written three novels that featured the Wintermoon ceremony, my own amalgamation of solstice, the Yule log, and New Year’s resolutions. So I decided to set my tale at Wintermoon, when a self-absorbed young woman comes to realize that a material gift given to a desperate stranger will be repaid a thousandfold.

  Kelly Link

  THE WIZARDS OF PERFIL

  The woman who sold leech-grass baskets and pickled beets in the Perfil market took pity on Onion’s aunt. “On your own, my love?”

  Onion’s aunt nodded. She was still holding out the earrings she’d hoped someone would buy. There was a train leaving in the morning for Qual, but the tickets were dear. Her daughter Halsa, Onion’s cousin, was sulking. She’d wanted the earrings for herself. The twins held hands and stared about the market.

  Onion thought the beets were more beautiful than the earrings, which had belonged to his mother. The beets were rich and velvety and mysterious as pickled stars in shining jars. Onion had had nothing to eat all day. His stomach was empty, and his head was full of the thoughts of the people in the market: Halsa thinking of the earrings, the market woman’s disinterested kindness, his aunt’s dull worry. There was a man at another stall whose wife was sick. She was coughing up blood. A girl went by. She was thinking about a man who had gone to the war. The man wouldn’t come back. Onion went back to thinking about the beets.

  “Just you to look after all these children,” the market woman said. “These are bad times. Where’s your lot from?”

  “Come from Labbit, and Larch before that,” Onion’s aunt said. “We’re trying to get to Qual. My husband had family there. I have these earrings and these candlesticks.”

  The woman shook her head. “No one will buy these,” she said. “Not for any good price. The market is full of refugees selling off their bits and pieces.”

  Onion’s aunt said, “Then what should I do?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer, but the woman said, “There’s a man who comes to the market today, who buys children for the wizards of Perfil. He pays good money and they say that the children are treated well.”

  All wizards are strange, but the wizards of Perfil are strangest of all. They build tall towers in the marshes of Perfil, and there they live like anchorites in lonely little rooms at the top of their towers. They rarely come down at all, and no one is sure what their magic is good for. There are balls of sickly green fire that dash around the marshes at night, hunting for who knows what, and sometimes a tower tumbles down and then the prickly reeds and marsh lilies that look like ghostly white hands grow up over the tumbled stones and the marsh mud sucks the rubble down.

  Everyone knows that there are wizard bones under the marsh mud and that the fish and the birds that live in the marsh are strange creatures. They have got magic in them. Children dare each other to go into the marsh and catch fish. Sometimes when a brave child catches a fish in the murky, muddy marsh pools, the fish will call the child by name and beg to be released. And if you don’t let that fish go, it will tell you, gasping for air, when and how you will die. And if you cook the fish and eat it, you will dream wizard dreams. But if you let your fish go, it will tell you a secret.

  This is what the people of Perfil say about the wizards of Perfil.

  Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil talk to demons and hate sunlight and have long twitching noses like rats. They never bathe.

  Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil are hundreds and hundreds of years old. They sit and dangle their fishing lines out of the windows of their towers and they use magic to bait their hooks. They eat their fish raw and they throw the fish bones out of the window the same way that they empty their chamber pots. The wizards of Perfil have filthy habits and no manners at all.

  Everyone knows that the wizards of Perfil eat children when they grow tired of fish.

  This is what Halsa told her brothers and Onion while Onion’s aunt bargained in the Perfil markets with the wizard’s secretary.

  The wizard’s secretary was a man named Tolcet and he wore a sword in his belt. He was a black man with white-pink spatters on his face and across the backs of his hands. Onion had never seen a man who was two colors.

  Tolcet gave Onion and his cousins pieces of candy. He said to Onion’s aunt, “Can any of them sing?”

  Onion’s aunt indicated that the children should sing. The twins, Mik and Bonti, had strong, clear soprano voices, and when Halsa sang, everyone in the market fell silent and listened. Halsa’s voice was like honey and sunlight and sweet water.

  Onion loved to sing, but no one loved to hear it. When it was his turn and he opened his mouth to sing, he thought of his mother and tears came to his eyes. The song that came out of his mouth wasn’t one he knew. It wasn’t even in a proper language and Halsa crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Onion went on singing.

  “Enough,” Tolcet said. He pointed at Onion. “You sing like a toad, boy. Do you know when to be quiet?”

  “He’s quiet,” Onion’s aunt said. “His parents are dead. He doesn’t eat much, and he’s strong enough. We walked here from Larch. And he’s not afraid of witchy folk, begging your pardon. There were no wizards in Larch, but his mother could find things when you lost them. She could charm your cows so that they always came home.”

  “How old is he?” Tolcet said.

  “Eleven,” Onion’s aunt said, and Tolcet grunted.

  “Small for his age.” Tolcet looked at Onion. He looked at Halsa, who crossed her arms and scowled hard. “Will you come with me, boy?”

  Onion’s aunt nudged him. He nodded.

  “I’m sorry for it,” his aunt said to Onion, “but it can’t be helped. I promised your mother I’d see you were taken care of. This is the best I can do.”

  Onion said nothing. He knew his aunt would have sold Halsa to the wizard’s secretary and hoped it was a piece of luck for her daughter. But there was also a part of his aunt that was glad that Tolcet wanted Onion instead. Onion could see it in her mind.

  Tolcet paid Onion’s aunt twenty-four brass fish, which was slightly more than it had cost to bury Onion’s parents, but slightly less than Onion’s father had paid for their best milk cow, two years before. It was important to know how much things were worth. The cow was dead and so was Onion’s father.

  “Be good,” Onion’s aunt said. “Here. Take this.” She gave Onion one of the earrings that had belonged to his mother. It was shaped like a snake. Its writhing tail hooked into its narrow mouth, and Onion had always wondered if the snake was surprised about that, to end up with a mouthful of itself like that, for all eternity. Or maybe it was eternally furious, like Halsa.

  Halsa’s mouth was screwed up
like a button. When she hugged Onion good-bye, she said, “Brat. Give it to me.” Halsa had already taken the wooden horse that Onion’s father had carved, and Onion’s knife, the one with the bone handle.

  Onion tried to pull away, but she held him tightly, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. “He wants to eat you,” she said. “The wizard will put you in an oven and roast you like a suckling pig. So give me the earring. Suckling pigs don’t need earrings.”

  Onion wriggled away. The wizard’s secretary was watching, and Onion wondered if he’d heard Halsa. Of course, anyone who wanted a child to eat would have taken Halsa, not Onion. Halsa was older and bigger and plumper. Then again, anyone who looked hard at Halsa would suspect she would taste sour and unpleasant. The only sweetness in Halsa was in her singing. Even Onion loved to listen to Halsa when she sang.

  Mik and Bonti gave Onion shy little kisses on his cheek. He knew they wished the wizard’s secretary had bought Halsa instead. Now that Onion was gone, it would be the twins that Halsa pinched and bullied and teased.

  Tolcet swung a long leg over his horse. Then he leaned down. “Come on, boy,” he said, and held his speckled hand out to Onion. Onion took it.

  The horse was warm and its back was broad and high. There was no saddle and no reins, only a kind of woven harness with a basket on either flank, filled with goods from the market. Tolcet held the horse quiet with his knees, and Onion held on tight to Tolcet’s belt.

  “That song you sang,” Tolcet said. “Where did you learn it?”

  “I don’t know,” Onion said. It came to him that the song had been a song that Tolcet’s mother had sung to her son, when Tolcet was a child. Onion wasn’t sure what the words meant because Tolcet wasn’t sure either. There was something about a lake and a boat, something about a girl who had eaten the moon.

  The marketplace was full of people selling things. From his vantage point Onion felt like a prince: as if he could afford to buy anything he saw. He looked down at a stall selling apples and potatoes and hot leek pies. His mouth watered. Over here was an incense seller’s stall, and there was a woman telling fortunes. At the train station, people were lining up to buy tickets for Qual. In the morning a train would leave and Onion’s aunt and Halsa and the twins would be on it. It was a dangerous passage. There were unfriendly armies between here and Qual. When Onion looked back at his aunt, he knew it would do no good, she would only think he was begging her not to leave him with the wizard’s secretary, but he said it all the same: “Don’t go to Qual.”