by Brian Knight
Katie looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. She seemed to have made herself smaller as she spoke. Even her voice got smaller. The others had to lean closer to hear her clearly.
“She was a firebug, like you, Penny. I used to think it was funny … how she’d just go quiet if someone lit a match or a candle in front of her. She’d stop doing whatever she was doing and watch the flame. One night we were in her tree house. She had a candle and a book of matches she stole from her father’s garage. It didn’t seem quite as funny that night, because it was just us up there and she was lighting matches and watching them burn down to her fingers.”
Penny thought she knew where this was going and, more importantly, why. It explained a lot, and though Penny really didn’t want to hear the rest, she knew that didn’t matter. Katie needed her to hear it. Even if Katie’s comparing her old firebug friend to Penny was unfair—Penny was always careful … always—it was how she felt.
Zoe had stood up and moved closer to Katie, very slowly, a step at a time.
“I made her promise to put the matches away and go to bed, but she started again after I fell asleep.”
Now there were tears.
“She fell asleep with the candle burning in her hands and set her sleeping bag on fire. Her screams woke me … her bag was burning and her hair was burning and her face was mostly gone.”
Tears were falling faster now, words coming in a rush.
Zoe slipped beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
Penny couldn’t move.
Ronan jumped from his rock and trotted over to Katie, climbing onto her lap. He had once allowed Penny to hold him in a moment of great stress, but she knew he didn’t like it. When Katie wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his thick fur, Penny felt a surge of affection for him.
For several seconds Katie wept into Ronan’s fur, still apparently unaware of Zoe’s arm around her shoulder.
This was the memory, the fear that she’d been fighting alone, struggling and failing to overcome. Though it hurt Penny to see Katie like this, she knew Ronan was right to force it out of her.
Penny joined them, standing on Katie’s other side and adding her embrace.
Some things you shouldn’t have to face alone.
Katie lifted her face from Ronan’s now-damp fur, and, though her eyes were red, the tears had stopped. She looked at Penny, then Katie. She hugged Ronan even tighter for a moment, then released him.
He leapt down at once and resumed his perch across from her.
Penny and Zoe stayed at her side.
“I tried to beat the flames out with my sleeping bag, but that only made things worse. It caught fire too, and then the floor and ceiling were burning, and my clothes caught.” Her voice was foggy but strong. “I was so scared I just jumped. I broke my leg, but I rolled in the grass until my clothes were out. Then Sam’s dad was there. He kept trying to climb up to her but the fire was too hot. When the firemen arrived the whole tree was burning and he was kneeling beside me and screaming her name. Her mom was outside too, just watching the fire with her mouth hanging open.”
“Was she …?” Zoe couldn’t finish.
“She died,” Katie said. “I broke my leg when I fell and I was burned, but she died.”
Then she turned to look up at Penny. “You scare me sometimes. I see a look in your eyes when you’re playing with that wand, and I think of Sam.”
Penny felt a blush burning in her cheeks.
“I promise to be more careful,” Penny said, and she meant it. Katie’s fears and constant cautions were understandable now, reasonable.
“We’re here with you, Kat,” Zoe said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You girls should get back now,” Ronan said, sounding unusually subdued. “You can practice another day.”
“No, I think I can do this now.” Katie took hold of Penny and Zoe’s hands. “If you’ll stay with me.”
Zoe nodded. “We got your back, Kat.”
“We’ll be right beside you,” Penny said.
Ronan considered them for a moment, then nodded. “Very well, young ladies. You’ll stand together … just as it should be.”
* * *
Katie held Penny’s wand in her right hand and Penny’s hand in her left. Zoe stood by her other side, a comforting hand on her shoulder. Katie raised the wand, pointed it at the fire pit, and closed her eyes.
“Relax, Kat,” Zoe said, lowering her face to hide a small smile. She held her black wand at her side, ready to respond with water if Katie called for it.
Katie’s answering smile was less restrained. “I am.”
Penny squeezed her hand, and Katie squeezed back.
Then she opened her eyes, her face hardening with determination and concentration. “I can do this.”
But for a long time nothing happened.
Penny felt a subtle shift in the air around them, an energizing, and cast a covert look at Katie.
Katie’s focus was on her target and nothing else. She looked fierce but calm.
Penny turned her attention to the wand’s crystal tip and watched.
It began to glow very dimly, then to smoke. A short tongue of flame licked from the end, died.
Then it happened. The wand tip flashed and Penny watched a sliver of bright red light leap from it, striking the cold ashes at the heart of the fire pit.
Flames erupted, dancing high for a second before dying down, then dying out.
Penny felt like leaping into the air and shouting for joy; the triumph of Katie’s face was the most satisfying thing she’d seen in months.
Zoe finally spoke.
“Excellent, Kat! I knew you could do it!”
“The book,” Katie said. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but she grinned at them. “Do we have time?”
Probably not, Penny thought.
“Yes,” Penny said, returning Katie’s grin.
They ran to the chest together, Zoe and Katie standing aside with their wands in their hands while Penny bent down and lifted the book. Beneath it were pieces of broken wands, untouched since the day Penny discovered them almost a year before, and a tarnished brass cup. Penny stood and carried the book back to the fire pit, laying it on one of the boulders.
“Here,” Katie said, passing the wand to Penny.
“No.” Zoe put her hand over Penny’s and pushed it away. “Kat should do it.”
Penny resisted the urge to push Zoe’s hand away and grab her wand away from Katie, but a glance at Katie’s face, the surprise on it, killed Penny’s irritation.
After months of struggling, after everything she’d had to share that morning, the pain she had to relive … for them.
“Yeah,” Penny whispered. “You’re right.”
Penny stepped back from Katie and nodded at the book. “What are you waiting for?”
A slow grin bloomed on Katie’s face, erasing the last of the morning’s stress. She turned the grin on Zoe, then looked down at the book.
The Secrets of the Phoenix Girls.
Katie touched the wand tip to the large Phoenix coin inlaid in the book’s thick, aged leather cover, and it sprang open. Her left hand hesitated over the open book, then thumbed through the first pages, turning them until she looked down at the page detailing the making of the circle. They knew from previous experience that though Penny and Zoe could see the writing on that page, Katie couldn’t.
Again Katie hesitated, looking over her shoulder at Penny and Zoe.
Zoe nodded her encouragement. “Go on.”
Katie tapped the first blank page, and they waited, breathless.
Nothing happened.
They waited, and nothing continued to happen.
“Ronan!” Penny bellowed, her temper breaking. “What now?”
Zoe faced Ronan, her own frustration barely held in check. She bit her lips to keep her anger from surging out, but her face expressed it clearly enough.
Katie continued to
stare at the open book, her excitement ebbing slowly into disappointment. “What did I do wrong?”
“Yeah, Ronan … gives?” Penny said.
Ronan jumped from his rock, sauntering over to Katie’s side.
“How would I know,” he said, rising up onto his rear legs and placing his front paws on the rock for a closer look into the book. “This is all new to me.”
“What?” Penny realized she was on the verge of shouting again and forced herself to calm down … a bit anyway. “Haven’t you done this before?”
“Yeah,” Zoe said, stepping up behind Penny, and as usual towering over her. “What about the ones before us?”
Ronan dropped back to the ground and chuckled darkly.
“I’m almost as much a newcomer to this as you are. I only knew the others …,” he paused, seemed to consider his next words carefully.
Penny recognized this behavior in him and knew he was withholding something, but she knew better than to press him. If she wanted answers, and she did, she’d have to get them herself.
If she only knew how, or where, to start.
“The ones before you,” Ronan continued. “I only knew them briefly, but from the little I do know of them, there is always someone here to help out and guide them when they need it.”
“Who?” Katie asked, and Penny was peripherally pleased to see she wasn’t letting herself get angry. Penny wished she knew how to turn her temper off like that.
More silence from Ronan.
“Come on,” Zoe urged. “You’re always keeping stuff from us. Why shouldn’t we know?”
Ronan flashed a quick, guilty look at Penny, then turned away from her.
Not from us, Penny thought. From me.
Ronan sighed, then spoke. “The Phoenix Girls always end. They grow up and go their own ways, but one always stays behind to shepherd the next generation. To help them when they need help, but only when they need it.”
“Then where is she?” Penny watched Ronan tense at the question, and thought she’d come close to asking one of the questions he was unwilling to answer, for whatever reason.
“Things ended … badly last time,” he said. “I was only here at the end, but I knew when it was over that I’d have to be the one to stay behind, for when you finally came.”
For a second Penny found it hard to breath, and she thought her heart may have missed a beat.
For when you finally came.
He might have meant them, the next Phoenix Girls, but she didn’t think so. She thought he had meant her, Penny, specifically.
Almost like he’d been expecting her.
And then she remembered something else he’d said to her the day they first met, and felt stupid for not having guessed it sooner.
I wondered when you’d make it this way.
He had been expecting her. He’d known she’d return to her mother’s childhood home someday, and he had waited for her.
My mother’s childhood home, Penny thought again, and knew something she’d only suspected until then. Something so crazy she had not dared ask about it.
Penny forced herself to breathe, tried to keep her expression as blank as possible, so Ronan wouldn’t know how badly he’d just slipped up.
Penny knew who the last Phoenix Girls were.
She knew where to start looking. Now she only had to find out how.
“Bad deal for you, I’m afraid,” Ronan said turning to include Zoe and Katie in the statement. “But you three are smart. You’ve learned much on your own. I know you’ll figure this out too if you work together.”
A long silence followed this declaration, which Katie finally broke.
“Together,” she said.
“What?” Penny and Zoe said.
“Come here, you two,” Katie said. She placed the wand in Penny’s hand, then laid her hand over the top of it. Zoe caught on and laid hers over the top of Zoe’s. “Worth a try.”
Penny was sure Katie was right, it felt right, so she wasn’t surprised when the book responded to her wand’s touch.
How it responded, however, surprised them all.
Flames burst from the open pages, then from between all the other pages, blowing them around like a strong, hot breeze.
They jumped back, Penny barely holding on to her wand in her haste. All three shouted in surprise, Katie the loudest of all. Even Ronan shouted in alarm. But when Penny pointed her wand at the book to try to put the fire out Ronan stopped her.
“No, Penny! Let it burn!”
“What?” Penny kept her wand pointed but didn’t use it.
“Are you crazy?” Zoe shouted. “Put it out!”
“No,” Ronan repeated. “Look at it. The fire isn’t hurting it.”
And Penny saw he was right. The flames poured from the leather of the cover, from the creased binding, from between the fluttering pages, but didn’t consume anything. And the heat that should have poured up from the inferno wasn’t there.
Penny moved closer to the book, extended a hand toward the raging flames.
“No!” Katie rushed past Zoe and grabbed at Penny, but not before Penny had plunged a hand into the heatless inferno, then retracted it. She held her hand out, open palm up, and stared with her mouth agape. Flames danced in her open hand, but did not burn her skin.
Katie and Zoe watched in stunned amazement.
“Phoenix Fire,” Ronan explained. “It’ll only burn what its maker wants it to burn.”
“Come on, Penny,” Katie groaned. “Put it down!”
“Cool,” Zoe said, grinning broadly now.
Katie glared at her.
Penny closed her hand, and the fire in her palm vanished.
When they turned their attention back to the book, they saw the flames were lower, and the book itself ….
Katie moved closer, her fear departing now that the flames seemed to be dying down, and stepped beside Penny. “What happened to it?”
“It is made new in the flames, like the Phoenix itself,” Ronan said, and Penny heard wonder in his voice.
And it was newer. The heavy, yellowed paper was bone white now, the aged leather cover lighter, suppler. The brass at the corners of the thick cover was no longer tarnished with age but bright and shining.
Then the flames died, and Katie stared down at the previously blank page. First the strange, runic writing appearing, then danced across the page until the markings reassembled themselves into words Katie could read.
“Does this mean we’re all on the same page now?” Katie looked at Ronan, raising a sardonic eyebrow.
Ronan barked laughter.
“Yes, I suppose it does, and if there is still time, I suggest you get on with it.” He trotted to the water’s edge and leapt, clearing the stream and landing on the stone ledge before the entrance to his cave.
“Hey, where are you going?” They had all waited a long time for this moment, and Penny thought Ronan should stick around for it.
“This isn’t for me,” he said. “I’m not a Phoenix Girl, am I?”
He winked and disappeared through the cavern opening.
Zoe watched him depart with a half-smile on her face, then turned to her friends.
“Let’s do this.”
* * *
The Secrets of the Phoenix Girls lay closed on the rock, the girls surrounding it. Penny placed her right hand over the brass Phoenix and nodded at Zoe. Zoe regarded her for a moment, looking nervous now that the time had come, then placed her right hand over Penny’s. A moment later, Katie followed suit.
“You start, Penny,” Katie said.
Penny considered for a moment. The instructions that had seemed so easy when they’d first read them now seemed too simple, too vague, to have any power. It called for a declaration of loyalty, a dedication to your friends.
Penny had filled the brass cup with water from the creek as the book instructed and now regarded it a little dubiously.
“Shouldn’t we boil that water first or something?” Katie asked,
frowning at the cup as Penny reached for it.
Penny picked it up, and began.
“I promise to be loyal to my friends, Zoe and Katie.” Somehow that didn’t seem enough. “I dedicate myself to learning with them and promise to help them whenever they need me.”
Penny drank.
The moment the water passed her lips she felt an energy gathering and spreading through her. Her hair began to rise, as if it were charged with static.
She passed the cup to Zoe.
Zoe took it, regarding Penny with mild alarm. Katie was watching, too, her eyes wide.
“I promise to be faithful to my friends.” Zoe watched Penny for a second, then turned to Katie. “I’ll be here for you whenever you need me.”
Zoe drank, and Penny saw her long black hair begin to rise and flutter around her head. Her skin became slightly radiant. If it had been night, Penny thought she might start glowing.
Katie was next. She took the cup and spoke.
“I promise to be loyal to you ….” She seemed to become tongue-tied, then finished in a quick burst. “No matter what my old friends or my father think, you are my best friends.”
She drank, and her hair began to dance around her head. The strange luminescence lit her face and spread down her arms. Then it reached her right hand, placed over the top of Zoe’s and Penny’s.
Suddenly their hands were bound by light, welded by their shared energy. The book beneath them seemed to vibrate with it.
For a moment, Penny thought it would burst into flames again.
Then Zoe and Katie were gone.
“Hey!” Penny spun in place, but the others were nowhere in sight. “Kat? Zoe?”
No one answered.
Penny ran to the chest to get her wand, but the chest wasn’t there either, and when she turned back to the center of the clearing, toward the ring of stones surrounding the fire pit, she realized that she wasn’t alone anymore.
It wasn’t Zoe, or Kat, or even Ronan, but a strange face, wreathed in flames, rising from the fire pit. The face was featureless, just red coal eyes, a mouth, and the suggestion of a nose. The flames dancing around it looked like wind-tossed hair.
