The Frozen Menace

by Ursula Vernon

  The worm shook itself off, then began slithering away across the snow. Danny stepped back into the safety of the rocks.

  He was about to say something else—he wasn’t entirely sure what—when there was a final, savage crack and the giant egg split in half.

  Danny’s first thought was that baby phoenixes were incredibly ugly.

  The egg had been beautiful, glowing like alabaster. The adult phoenix was beautiful, like a bird of prey wreathed in flames.

  The baby phoenix looked like a fat, soggy chicken.

  It sat amid the wreckage of the eggshells with its eyes tightly closed. Its feathers were soaking wet and scraggly and the melted snow from the iceworm meant that it was sitting on its tail feathers in a puddle.

  It opened its beak and cried.

  “Wow,” said Christiana. “Just . . . wow.”

  “Do you think it’s supposed to look like that?” asked Danny.

  “I don’t think anything’s supposed to look like that.”

  “SQUONK!” cried the chick again.

  The phoenix swept in from overhead, calling angrily. Its voice sounded like fiery bells, like the crackle of flames, like the hiss of steam.

  It did not sound like “Squonk.”

  For a moment, it looked as if the phoenix would land, and the kids backed away from the infant phoenix to avoid being burned. But all the snow that had landed among the rocks began to melt in the heat of the great bird’s wings. The bowl was suddenly ankle deep in cold water.

  The phoenix cried out in frustration and launched into the air.

  Its wings trailed across the chick’s feathers. The top of the baby phoenix’s head caught fire—not like it was burning, but like the phoenix itself, a white crest of flame.

  For a moment it looked as if the baby would catch fire like its parent—and then the melting snow doused the flame. The chick’s crest guttered and went out.

  “Squonk . . .” said the chick plaintively. The water was up to its wings and it was starting to shiver.

  Danny could see the adult phoenix’s problem. If it stayed to protect the chick, it would melt the snow and the chick would drown. If it left, the chick wouldn’t catch fire the way phoenixes were supposed to do.

  “We have to save it!” said Danny. “It’s getting cold!”

  “And get you some eggshells,” added Wendell.

  “Right, that too.”

  They splashed down to the chick. It was about a third the size of Wendell and didn’t look heavy, it just looked slimy.

  The chick was trying to climb atop one of the eggshells. Danny put out his hand to the eggshell and found it still radiating heat, like bread fresh from the oven.

  “Do we just grab it?” asked Wendell worriedly. “I don’t want to get burned.”

  Christiana scowled and held out her hand over the chick’s feathers. “It doesn’t feel hot . . .”

  Snow poured into the nest, turning the puddle into a slushy mess. Danny took a deep breath, reached out, and grabbed the phoenix chick.

  It wasn’t hot. It was cold, actually, and very soggy. The front of Danny’s shirt was suddenly slimy with water and egg white.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Danny. “Before we all freeze to death.”

  “There’s some higher ground over there,” said Christiana, pointing. “We’ll be out of the water, anyhow.”

  The chick curled into Danny’s chest and shivered.

  They sloshed through the water. Danny wanted another gulp of fireweed tea, but the chick took both hands to carry and he couldn’t get to the thermos. He wasn’t sure if the coldness he was feeling was his fire going out, or the fact that he was clutching twenty pounds of soggy baby bird.

  The wind slithered through chinks in the stone and chilled his wet feet.

  At the top of the stone bowl, where two tall fingers of stone leaned together, there was a small cave. It was barely deep enough for all of them to fit, but it was out of the water and the wind.

  Danny set the baby phoenix down and drank tea. The coldness retreated again, but not quite as far. He hoped the effect wasn’t wearing off. It would be really inconvenient to freeze right now.

  Christiana was shivering. Danny handed her the thermos and she took a sip.

  “Wendell should drink some too,” said Danny, and then—“Wait, where’s Wendell?”

  “I’m right here,” panted the iguana. He came up from the bowl, carrying one of the eggshells. “You forgot this.”

  “You’re the best, Wendell.”

  Danny snapped off a chunk of eggshell. When it broke, sparks flashed and it smelled like burning.

  It was a little weird to eat something that he’d just watch something get born from, but . . . well . . .

  He took a bite.

  It was crunchy and tasted like cinnamon. Some of the shell fragments were rather sharp, so he had to chew carefully.

  “I think phoenix eggs are cooked sort of by definition,” said Christiana.

  Danny bit off another chunk of eggshell. When he swallowed, the cold spot inside his chest began to feel strangely warm.

  “Squonk!” said the chick miserably. Christiana took off her jacket and began rubbing the chick down with it. When she finished, it looked twice as miserable and its fluff stood up in all directions.

  “What do we do?” asked Wendell. “I’m afraid it’s going to freeze to death.”

  “It’s supposed to be on fire,” said Danny. “I’m sure of it. The phoenix tried to set it on fire, but then it was wet, so it didn’t take.”

  “Can you breathe fire on it? Is the eggshell working?”

  Danny rubbed his sternum. Underneath it, he could feel things shifting and fizzing, sort of like when he drank a soda too fast and had to burp.

  He tried breathing fire. Oily, cinnamon-scented smoke poured out of his mouth, but that was all.

  “It’s not there yet,” said Danny. He broke off another chunk of eggshell and sparks flashed around the interior of the cave.

  “Can we light it on fire with those?” asked Christiana.

  “Good question . . .”

  Danny hunched over the chick and broke the eggshell into smaller pieces. Bright fragments of light landed on the chick, and for a moment he was hopeful, but they fizzled out.

  He shook his head. “It’s not lasting long enough,” he said. He ate the eggshell bits and belched. More smoke came out. Christiana scowled.

  The chick fell on its side, as if it didn’t have the strength to sit up any longer. Its chest moved shallowly.

  “Do something!” said Wendell frantically. “It’s dying! Danny—!”

  “What am I supposed to do?!” said Danny. “I’m a dragon! I’m not a phoenix or a veterinarian!” He looked around and grabbed the thermos of fireweed tea. “Maybe if it drinks a little of this . . .”

  Wendell held the chick’s head while Danny dribbled a few drops into its beak. The baby phoenix did not resist. After a moment, it chirped.

  “That’s helping!” said Wendell. “Give it more!”

  “There’s hardly any left,” said Danny.

  Danny looked at Christiana. She looked from him to the chick and back. Then she sighed.

  “Do it,” she said. “I mean, we shouldn’t, because we’ll probably die, but that’s gonna be hours from now and the chick’s gonna freeze right now.”

  Danny nodded. “As long as we all agree,” he said, and poured the rest of the fireweed tea down the phoenix’s throat.

  The chick spluttered. For a long minute, Danny was afraid that it had been too little too late, and he’d just doomed them all for nothing—or worse, that he’d doomed them all and drowned the chick in the process.

  Then it swallowed. And a moment later, it sighed happily and emitted a tiny burp.

  Wendell’s breath
went out in a whoosh and he wrapped his arms around the baby phoenix.

  “Now what?” asked Christiana. She poked her head out of the front of the cave. “The phoenix is still gone . . .”

  The distant roars of iceworms echoed through the stone. The nest-bowl was waist-deep in slush. Danny wasn’t looking forward to wading through it.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said. “I’ve eaten the eggshell, and it’s definitely doing something, so I guess we can just go home.”

  “We can’t go yet,” said Wendell firmly.

  “What?” said Danny. “Why not?”

  “We can’t leave Herbert,” said Wendell.

  “He looks like a Herbert,” said Wendell. “And we can’t leave him until he’s on fire like a proper phoenix should be. What if the tea wears off while we’re gone?”

  Danny wasn’t used to Wendell sounding so confident. He looked at Christiana, who shrugged helplessly.

  “Don’t look at me, he’s the one who named it.”

  “But how are we going to set him on fire?” asked Danny. “We don’t have anything that burns! I can’t breathe fire!” (Actually, he thought he was getting heartburn. His innards were definitely roiling now.)

  “We could set a backpack on fire,” said Wendell. “Or our clothes . . .”

  “Clothes are surprisingly hard to set on fire,” said Danny.

  “If you were only a trifle more competent, you’d be a juvenile delinquent,” said Christiana.

  “So’s your m—grandmother.”

  “I’m not leaving Herbert,” said Wendell stubbornly. “You two go on without me if you want.”

  Christiana rolled her eyes. “Like we’re going to do that.”

  They sat glumly in the cave, listening to the roar of the worms. Danny tried to breathe fire again and thought for a second that he was going to throw up. He clamped both hands over his snout and his eyes streamed.

  Wendell reached into his backpack and squirted hand sanitizer onto his hands. When Danny raised his eyebrow, he said “What? I’m not leaving Herbert, but I don’t want to get . . . I dunno, firebird flu or something.”

  Christiana suddenly sat bolt upright. “That’s it!” she said.

  “Firebird flu?” asked Wendell.

  “No!” She snatched the bottle away from him and waved it in the air.

  “Hey, I need that!”

  “Herbert needs it more,” she said.

  “If my mom ever finds out that I am playing with fire, I will be grounded,” said Wendell. “And then shot. And then grounded again.”

  “Very sensible,” said Christiana. “A lot of wildfires are started by kids being stupid and then the next thing you know, half the world’s burning down. But I think when you’re surrounded on all sides by snow, it’s not quite the same. I mean, what are we gonna burn out here?”

  “Ourselves,” said Wendell glumly.

  “That’s why Danny’s gonna do it.”

  “Hey!” said Danny, who wasn’t sure if this meant that he was the most competent person or just that Christiana didn’t care if he got burned.

  “Look, you’re a dragon,” said Christiana. “You’re more fireproof than the rest of us, at least a little.”

  “I’m worried about this,” said Wendell. “What if phoenix fire isn’t like regular fire and we hurt Herbert?”

  “We’ll douse my jacket,” said Christiana, “and set it on fire with the sparks from the eggshell. If it’s some special kind of fire, then the eggshell should do it, right? And then if Herbert wants to get close to it, we let him, and if he doesn’t, we won’t have lost anything. Except my jacket.”

  “And my hope of not contracting a horrible disease on this trip,” said Wendell.

  “One of these days, we’ve got to talk about this recreational hypochondria of yours, Wendell. It’s not healthy.”

  “The what?” asked Danny.

  “He thinks he’s sick for fun,” whispered Christiana.

  “Do not . . .” muttered Wendell.

  After a moment, the iguana sighed. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll try it. But if it looks like Herbert might get burned, we’re stopping, okay?”

  “Instantly,” said Danny.

  “Faster than you can say ‘hypochondria,’” said Christiana.

  “It better be a lot faster than that,” said Wendell, scowling.

  Christiana laid out her jacket and Danny pumped hand sanitizer onto it until the bottle made empty splorching sounds.

  “It’ll be okay,” Wendell told Herbert. “You don’t have to go near the fire if you don’t want to.”

  But the instant Danny cracked the eggshell, it became obvious that Herbert wanted to very much.

  Sparks landed on the jacket and it blazed up so fast that Danny jumped back. The fire was electric white, the color of phoenix feathers. The air smelled sharp and acrid.

  Herbert rolled out of Wendell’s arms and lunged toward the flame.

  “Herbert!” said Wendell. “Wait! It’s not your mom, it’s a jacket—”

  The baby phoenix dove into the white flame. All three reptiles held their breath, at first from anticipation and then because the cave was filling up with smoke.

  “Gah!” said Christiana. Wendell began to cough.

  They couldn’t see Herbert anymore. All they could see was roiling smoke.

  Danny grabbed them both by the arm and pulled them out of the cave.

  “You’ll suffocate!” said Christiana. “Jeez! How did one jacket make that much smoke?”

  “But Herbert—!”

  And then from the cave came a crackling sound and a roar and a blaze of light—

  The baby phoenix came out of the cave. He was still covered in down and looked a bit unfinished, but his eyes were open and white fire poured off him. The smoke coming out of the cave made a stark black backdrop.

  He spread his wings. They didn’t look big enough to fly yet.

  He flapped once or twice, thoughtfully.

  Then he folded his wings and stomped determinedly toward Wendell.

  “Herbert!” said Wendell happily. “You did it! It was the right kind of fire after all!”

  The chick walked up to Wendell, and before the iguana could get out of the way, leaned against him.

  “Wendell!” said Danny, expecting the iguana to catch fire himself.

  Herbert gazed adoringly up at Wendell.

  “Who’s a good phoenix, then? Are you a good phoenix? Are you the best little phoenix ever?” Wendell scratched Herbert’s crest and the chick chirped happily and closed his eyes.

  “Well, I’m gonna be sick,” said Christiana.

  “Okay,” said Danny. “Herbert’s fine, he’s on fire like a phoenix should be, I ate the eggshell, so let’s go home now.” (He actually wanted to go lie down for a while. His stomach felt very weird and wiggly. Apparently getting your fire restarted was not a pleasant process.)

  “Right,” said Wendell. “Herbert, you be a good phoenix and stay here. Your mom—or dad, or whatever—will be along shortly.” He patted the little phoenix’s head. “And you grow up to be a great big phoenix and maybe I’ll be able to come back and see you someday, okay?”

  The trio walked away, along the rim of the bowl. Herbert looked puzzled, then fell into step behind Wendell.

  “No,” said Wendell. “You have to stay here. Stay. Stay.”

  He backed away, holding up his hands. Herbert blinked a few times.

  “That’s right,” said Wendell. “Stay . . . stay . . . good phoenix . . .”

  Herbert’s beak opened. The chick struggled for a moment, and then . . .

  “Oh crud,” said Christiana. “They talk! The big one didn’t talk!”

  “Well, it didn’t really get a chance,” Danny admitted. “I mean, it was all in and out and f
ight iceworms and back . . .”

  “Mama!” said Herbert again, and waddled up to Wendell.

  “But I’m not your mama!” said Wendell.

  Herbert sat on his foot.

  “I think he imprinted on you,” said Christiana. “Some baby birds do that—the first thing that moves, it sees and thinks that’s its mom.”

  “So do something!” said Danny. “Imprint Herbert on something else!”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said Christiana. “They fixate on one particular thing. When people are raising super-endangered birds to release in the wild, they have to feed them with hand-puppets that look like the adult birds, or the baby will think it’s a person.”

  She considered this. “I suppose we should probably have had some kind of burning phoenix hand puppet for Herbert . . .”

  “Mama!” said Herbert happily, gazing up at Wendell.

  “. . . We’re doomed,” said Danny, covering his eyes.

  Because his eyes were covered, he missed the phoenix landing in the stone bowl. All he heard was a whoosh of wings.

  “What have you done?” cried the adult phoenix, in a voice like shattered bells. “What have you done?”

  Under the phoenix, the ice water began to bubble.

  “Somehow I don’t think we have to worry about freezing to death anymore . . .” said Christiana under her breath.

  “No, we’re going to get roasted,” Danny whispered back.

  “I’m sorry!” cried Wendell. “I didn’t mean to—I mean—he was going to freeze, and we had to get his fires going, but I didn’t expect him to—”

  “We didn’t mean to wake the iceworms,” Christiana piped up. “We didn’t know they were under the snow like that, or we wouldn’t have walked on them.”