The Heart of the Phoenix

by Brian Knight

  She knew in one glance that she’d found the place she was looking for.

  Ronan’s home.

  There was a large dog bed snugged up against the wall to her right. It was dusty and dull with age, and stuffing leaked from a split seam. To her left she spotted a spill of junk... or what appeared to be junk at first glance. There was a tarnished gleam of brass, and she focused on a familiar object. An old filigreed doorknob. Penny started toward Ronan’s hoard, her eyes fixed on the relics he’d gone through such pains to collect in the wake of the Birdman’s destructive visit to Dogwood, and stumbled. The floor of the cavern was rough and uneven, and she had to watch her step as she crossed.

  Her search uncovered several more of the doorway relics, along with some other junk she’d retrieved from Turoc’s tunnel beneath the landfill the day Katie and she had rescued Ronan from it. She found a cloak pin, and when she touched it a thick mist began to rise from the stone beneath her. She dropped the pin, and the second it slid from her hand, the mist dissipated and vanished. She found a few more mirrors, one cracked down the center and blackened by soot.

  She also found what appeared to be several mundane items, a cigarette lighter, a key fob shaped like a Volkswagen Bug, and with a small shock, a short ivory spear she recognized as a tooth, the one Rocky had knocked from the monster Turoc’s mouth during last spring’s fight in Aurora Hollow.

  There was an old iPod with enough battery life left in it to start up; she saw it was filled with nothing but music from Tom Waits before it ran out of juice and powered down. There was an old and dirty sock.

  That’s my sock, Penny realized. It was the sock she tugged off while escaping Turoc’s homunculi under the landfill. She’d used it to collect the last of the relics Ronan had rescued. The doorknobs had joined the pile, but one item remained inside. She upended it into her hand and was momentarily stunned by the beautiful object that dropped into her palm. It was a small square of opaque red stone that seemed to glow with its own weak inner light.

  A loud squeak and the scrabbling of small claws against rock ripped her attention from the red stone, and it tumbled onto the pile as she stood and pointed her wand in the direction of the disturbance.

  A small black shape, a rat she thought, raced across the cavern floor, passed within a few feet of where Penny stood on its way out.

  She stood, forgetting to breathe for a moment, then stumbled forward on legs that felt unhinged.

  A cairn of stones was piled up against the far cavern wall, and in the light thrown by her wand, Penny saw a thick fall of auburn hair hanging from between the stones.

  As she drew closer, she saw more. A scrap of cloth peeking from a gap between stones, something narrow and white poking out from another gap, and the overall shape of the cairn, the shape of what lay beneath it.

  Penny fell to her knees at the edge of the cairn, reaching for the wave of auburn hair, pausing.

  Who is it, Penny wondered.

  Not what is it, because she knew what it was. The hair, a scrap of rotting cloth, the white bone of a finger, the shape of a body under a thin layer of stones, the closest thing to a burial in this hall of solid rock.

  She pulled a stone away, revealing more of the hair, then another, and another. She stopped when she found the skull, empty eyes blindly watching as her tears began to fall.

  “That’s her,” came a voice from the mouth of the cavern. “They took our mother, they killed her, and hid her away down here.”

  Penny turned and found her doppelganger. She dared to hope that her appearance meant this was only another dream.

  The girl was no longer a true mirror image. She wore simple, dark clothing underneath a black cloak. Her hood was down, revealing her fall of red hair, her pale, freckly face, and her own tears.

  “Hello, sister,” the girl said, and before Penny could reply, she raised a wand of the same black wood the Birdman had once raised against her, and Penny’s world went dark.

  PART 2

  The Land of the Midnight Sun

  Chapter 8

  Trading Places

  Flanna hurried to where Penny lay, unconscious over the cairn of stones that marked their mother’s grave. There was no malice in her heart, and she tucked her wand into an inner pocket of her cloak before kneeling down over her. She lifted Penny’s head from her pillow of stones and held it for a moment, studying the face they shared. She wiped tears from the slack cheeks, then laid her back down.

  Flanna looked at her mother then, what there was to look at, the hair and partially uncovered skull, and when her own tears began to well in her eyes again, she forced her gaze away.

  She picked up and pocketed Penny’s wand, stood, and walked to the spill of junk piled against the wall. The thing she’d been searching Penny’s memories for lay right on top. A small blood opal box, its lid sealed perfectly by magic to contain the energy of the dangerous artifact inside.

  Flanna didn’t know what was in it, but knew not to open the box. It belonged to her father, and had been stolen years ago by the outlaw Erasmus Pi. The Phoenix Girls were harboring the renegade monk now, another crime they would answer for.

  Flanna put the blood opal box in a drawstring sack hanging from her belt and continued searching Ronan’s hoard. She found Turoc’s broken tooth, inspected the relic doorknobs, reading the shifting symbols etched into the brass until she found the one she needed. The tooth and doorknob joined the blood opal box in her sack.

  She stood, straightened her cloak, and drew her wand. She wanted out of this tomb.

  “Legota,” Flanna whispered.

  The air shivered in front of her, starting at the point of her wand tip and rippling outward in a wave. For just a moment a circle of black rippling air spun like a giant disk in front of her, twirling at the tip of her wand. She envisioned the grove somewhere up above them, Aurora Hollow, and the inky blackness became a spinning doorway, a jump gate, to that place.

  Flanna pocketed her wand again and hurried to Penny’s side. She struggled to lift her, then gave up and dragged Penny by the arms.

  “Sorry, sister. I wish we could have met under friendlier circumstances.” Flanna felt a shiver of gooseflesh as she passed through the barrier. Penny’s muscles spasmed then relaxed as she dragged her through into the hollow. “I had to do it. I have to save you from the Phoenix Girls.”

  “You did what you had to do,” said a voice in the hollow. “For your family.”

  Flanna turned to find a tall man waiting at the edge of the darkness. He stepped forward, and the weak light of the night’s starry sky revealed him. A tall man, and muscular, short flame-red hair framed a face that was stubbled and stern. A long white scar ran up one side of his face. When he smiled, the scared side seemed to grimace instead.

  “Yes, Father,” Flanna said. “I just wish we could have come for her sooner.”

  “We thought she was dead,” he said. “The traitor Ronan kept her existence hidden from us, but we have finally found her.”

  “Our mother is still down there.” For the first time Flanna’s voice betrayed anger. “They left her down there like an animal. They killed her and left her to rot.”

  “And she will remain down there for a time,” he said, calming her. “Once our work here is finished she can come home with us, but they mustn’t learn we’ve come.”

  He took her by the shoulders and looked down into her upturned face. Another tear, a tear of anger this time, wetted her cheek, and he wiped it away with a rough sweep of his thumb.

  “You’re ready for what you must do?”

  “Yes,” Flanna said. “I am.” She tugged the bag from her belt and held it out.

  Tynan es’ Brom Fuilrix took the bag from her, opened the drawstrings and peeked inside. He smiled, and Flanna took an involuntary step away from him. Her father never smiled, and it looked out of place on his face. Made him scary.

  He reached inside and removed the beautiful blood opal box.

  “This must stay with
you. Keep it hidden until it is time to use it.”

  She took it from him, held it in the palm of one hand, careful not to touch the top.

  “What do I do with it?”

  “I will tell you when the time comes.”

  She nodded, tucked the box away inside her cloak.

  He gave his wand a casual wave in Penny’s direction, and she rose into the air like a marionette with cut strings. She bobbed and twirled in the air before them. Flanna grabbed her shoulders and steadied her.

  “Please don’t be mad at her,” Flanna said. “She didn’t know any better.”

  “She has caused a lot of trouble, dear one. She colluded with our enemies. She is responsible for the loss of my most loyal servant.”

  “You can get him back, can’t you?”

  He shook the bag hanging from his clenched fist.

  “It is lucky for him that he left a piece of himself on the physical plane, and that you found the doorway relic that sent him through. I think it is possible to find him and bring him back.”

  Flanna breathed easier. She didn’t like the old serpent, but her father valued him, and things would go easier for Penny if her father could repair the damage she’d caused.

  “Please don’t be mad at her,” Flanna repeated. “Don’t hate her. “

  “I could not hate her, dear one. I can only pity her, and hope she sees the error of her ways.”

  Flanna nodded, relieved. Her father was not an emotive man, he ruled his kingdom with strength, not heart, and though he’d been very indulgent with her that night, she didn’t want to try his patience.

  “I must go,” he said. “And so must you.”

  He slashed his wand down through the air. It parted in a crackling purple line, opening before them until she could see the familiar circular stone room of the sepulcher, the vault where her family kept their most valuable and powerful artifacts. He guided Penny’s still unconscious and floating body through it, then followed her through.

  “Our way back is arranged,” he said, his voice coming through a crack in this world that led to another. “We will come back soon. “

  “I’ll be ready,” she said.

  And she would be.

  Her work in this world had begun.

  They would destroy the Phoenix Girls.

  For killing her mother, she would help end them forever.

  * * *

  Flanna turned away from the glowing oval of the portal, toward the door Penny had come here through. While her back was turned, a gray shape darted from the shadows and toward the shrinking portal. When it snapped shut and sealed itself a moment later, Flanna was alone.

  * * *

  Flanna pulled Penny’s strange, twisted wand from her pocket and performed a spell that she knew from the shared memories that Penny had only just learned, but that she herself had known for a long time. She opened the extra-dimensional space in the air above her head and slid the blood opal box inside of it. The hidden space contracted as she withdrew her empty hand and closed.

  It was time to go now. She had to get back to Penny’s home before that friend of hers, that Phoenix Girl Zoe, awoke and noticed her absence. She removed her cloak and unbuttoned the vest beneath, revealing a plain white spun shirt, not clothing of this world, but close enough not to look out of place if Zoe saw her wearing it upon her return.

  With her own wand and vest wrapped up in her cloak, she tapped the door that stood at the edge of Aurora Hollow, and opened it on her sister’s home and life.

  * * *

  Penny awoke with the feel of cold stone beneath her. She tried to move, tried to push herself off the ground, but her arms wouldn’t support her, and the only movement her legs were capable of were weak twitches. After a brief and futile struggle to get her limbs back under her control, she settled for rolling over onto her back.

  She opened her eyes, hoping for the green willow canopy and starlit night of Aurora Hollow, but not expecting it. She remembered being underground, finding...

  “No!” She bolted upright, remembering everything. Her mother, dead for years and hidden away deep in Ronan’s cave, then the girl from her dreams, her rouge reflection had shown up in the flesh. Not just a part of herself as she’d thought, but a girl who called her sister.

  But this was not the chamber where her mother’s body lay. This was somewhere else. She had no wand to light the darkness, but a weak light fell through a bared opening in the high ceiling. It was the flickering glow of firelight, and it illuminated no more than the patch of floor where Penny had awakened.

  She heard a rattling behind her, like the clanking of chains, and spun to see what was behind her. Whatever made the noise was too deep in darkness to see, but something on the chamber floor caught her eyes. A bolt of thick red hair lay on the floor.

  She reached up tentatively, felt her head, and screamed again.

  Her hair was gone, all of it, and her scalp had the texture of old leather, aged and nerveless. She ran both hands over her head, top and sides, front to back, and felt the back of her head, tufts of short hair and bare scalp crisscrossed by tight leather straps. She found rough edges around her eyes, nose, and mouth, and rediscovered sensation when her fingertips brushed her lips.

  She was wearing a mask of hard, rough leather, fit perfectly to the contours of her face, snug beneath her chin. Her fingers clawed at the straps, for a way to take the thing off, but there was none.

  Her clothes were different too; plain gray blouse and pants that stopped at her knees, well-worn and raggedy.

  Someone had kidnapped her, cut off her hair, put this mask on her and dressed her in rags, and thrown her into a dark hole.

  She ripped and tugged where the mask closed around her throat, clawed at the straps, shrieked in frustration and fell to her knees on the hard stone floor.

  The rattle of chains came again, and a voice with it. It called out in a language she didn’t understand. It advanced from the shadows far enough for her to see its shape, then stopped.

  “Who are you?” Penny screamed and stumbled to her feet, reaching down automatically to her pocket for the wand that wasn’t there. She backed a step away, braced herself to run. “Where am I?”

  The chain rattled as he took another step forward. His shape was clearer, a tall man, scrawny.

  He laughed.

  “I am a prisoner, same as you.” He took another step forward. He was dressed in rags, his face, somehow familiar, was gaunt, the cheeks sunken. His hair fell down over his shoulders in tangles. He took another step, and the shadows fell off him like a shroud. His hair was bright, fiery red, his face lightly bearded, dirty, and very familiar.

  “You!” Penny screamed and restrained the desire to charge the man, to attack him with her bare hands.

  Tovar the Red.

  “Yes, me. And who do you imagine I am?”

  “Tovar.” Penny spat the word out like something nasty. “You’re the Birdman.”

  “Him? The feathered fellow who blundered into the sepulcher last year?” He laughed again. “He’s dead.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re lying!”

  “His head is currently decorating the sepulcher wall from what I’ve heard.”

  He took another step forward, and Penny matched it with one backward.

  “Stay back!” Penny wished she were able to muster a little strength to match the volume in her voice.

  “Calm down, you strange little thing. If you take off running you’ll hit a wall.” The man tugged on the chain clamped around his ankle. “I won’t be chasing after you.”

  He sat down cross-legged on the floor and put his face in his hands.

  Penny began to relax, just a little, when a renewed rattle of chains sounded behind her, and a pair of huge, powerful hands gripped her shoulders.

  “But my friend has your blind side, an inquisitive nature, and a longer reach.” He looked up again and Penny saw the grin he’d been hiding in his hands. “Ronan, what do you make of our
small visitor? I’m thinking spy. Only high servants of the household speak English, and someone doesn’t want us to see her face.”

  Ronan? Surely she’d misheard.

  “She’s no spy,” the voice was a low rumble, but familiar. “Turn around. Let me see your eyes.”

  The hands loosened their grip and Penny shrugged free. She almost bolted, any courage that remained to her had fled when those large hands had clasped her from behind, but where was there to run?

  She turned slowly, and the first thing she saw was a thick, muscular chest covered in thick reddish fur. She raised her eyes, and somewhere far above she saw the creature’s head, a long canine face atop a muscular neck. The head was definitely familiar, even if it was on an unfamiliar body.

  Suppressing the lingering urge to scream and run away, Penny opened her mouth and attempted to speak. A dry croak came out, and the red-haired man behind her saved her from having to ask the question stuck to the tip of her tongue by asking one of his own.

  “If you know something, old friend, I sure wish you would educate me.”

  The thing standing in front of her remained silent, seemed to be waiting on her.

  “Ronan?” She managed speech at last. “Is that you?”

  “Indeed, and may I ask how you ended up here, Penny?”

  Penny heard the man behind her rise, rattling his chain.

  “Penny?”

  “Yes,” Penny and Ronan said together.

  “My dead daughter who turned out not to be dead?” The red-haired man’s voice dripped with skepticism. “The one I still don’t believe in?”

  “Yes, Torin,” Ronan said.

  “What?” Penny goggled at the man and mentally compared him to the few photos she had seen of her father. “What?”