Phoenix Heart: Episode 1: Ashes Read online

  Phoenix Heart

  Season One

  Episode One

  “Ashes”

  Sarah K. L. Wilson

  Copyright 2021

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Note to the Reader:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Behind the Scenes:

  OTHER BOOK SERIES BY SARAH K. L. WILSON

  For my little phoenixes, may you always rise!

  Note to the Reader:

  Phoenix Heart is a series very much like your favorite streaming tv. There are seasons and episodes. These episodes are designed to be read in roughly two hours, though fast readers will read more quickly and those of you who really like to absorb the story may take longer. They’re intended to be fast-paced, exciting, and they release frequently so that you can keep up with the story even if you have a very busy schedule. Perfect for lunch breaks, a single evening of enjoyment, or younger readers who like bite-sized chunks, this story will keep you wanting more.

  Also of note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Enjoy!

  Chapter One

  The best part of being voiceless is that I’m great at listening. I hear everything people say, and I hear the things they don’t say.

  The worst part is how hard it is to warn people when they are making mistakes.

  My cousin Mally was making a mistake, but since she was across the bustling common room from me, I couldn’t just call to her with a convenient excuse to come over here like my aunt Danna might. I could try to sign, but she’d have to be looking at me for that to work.

  Instead, I gritted my teeth and finished cleaning the pine table while the wind outside howled its destructive intent and rain lashed against the small diamond-paned windows of the Hog’s Head Inn.

  This morning when I’d risen, the sky had been dark and portentous with clouds bubbling over the horizon like the foaming head on the house brew behind our bar. By noon, the good folk of our seaside town had begun tying down everything that could blow away. By suppertime, everyone was hunkered at home or here in the warm firelight of the inn.

  Brave laughter and boisterous talk betrayed them, though. Voices betray people all the time. They think they are using them as shields to hide their fear, or anger, or disgust but they’re like wet parchment. One good swipe and the defense is gone.

  I don’t have that problem.

  I have no words to hold up to hide myself from the world. But I also have no words to slip on my tongue and accidentally reveal my true heart.

  The loud boasting of the sailors my cousin was flirting with betrayed the fear they felt for their boat, hastily docked when the rain began to whip the shore like a broken cur. Even the dancing fire and warm stew couldn’t fully drive the grip of fear from their hearts.

  The calls of “More mead!” from Tyndale the blacksmith – my cousin’s betrothed – were meant to hide his growing irritation at her flirtation. And that flirtation was meant to disguise the panic she was feeling as she realized she’d never leave our village now that she was getting married.

  And despite the loud tune of the pipes playing over the howl of the wind, despite my aunt Danna’s booming laughter as she poured at the bar, despite the stomp of feet and the clapping of hands as couples took up the dance, we were all just little people teetering on the edge of being swept away by the hand of nature, by her feckless rage, by her defiant flinging of water and air against our rocky shores.

  I shivered. I was scaring myself again. I did that sometimes. I glanced at Fon reading a scroll by lantern light behind the bar. He kept chewing his lower lip and I wanted to chew mine, too. It was that kind of night.

  I was the only one to notice Tyndale stand up with a dark look on his face as he wiped mead from his lips with the back of his hand and squared his shoulders. And I couldn’t give a cry of warning as he made his way purposefully between the dancers with black murder in his eyes.

  I dropped my rag and hurried to intercept him, but crowds don’t part for voiceless kitchen girls the way they part for burly blacksmiths and I wasn’t even halfway to him when paused and drew in a breath.

  One of the sailors had his hand on Mally’s waist, fingers splayed across her back. She was winking at him wickedly and laughing. Some barmaids might do that to get an extra coin, but I knew my cousin – who was just a year younger than me. This was what she lived for. She loved it when they wanted her and loved it when they fought. She loved it when her winks caused more trouble than a decree of war from a king. And since she wasn’t married yet she was going to keep tugging that neckline down over her ample figure and tossing her curling chestnut locks over her shoulder and winking like she was the goddess who caused the storm outside. Because this was her favorite game, and it was almost over.

  No one was ready for Tyndale’s reaction except me. I saw it building all night.

  “Get your stinking fishy hands off my betrothed!” he roared, face red and mottled.

  The pipes stopped.

  The dancers spun to a halt.

  The sailor got to his feet.

  Violence lingered just out of earshot. I could feel it there, ready to pounce.

  And the inn door crashed open and we all jumped. My breath caught in my throat like a fishbone and my cousin Fon behind the counter let out a squeak of surprise.

  The door swung drunkenly on its hinges, squeaking, pummeled by the wind as my Uncle Llynd and cousin Gandy hurried inside. Rain and fierce wind whipped around them, soaking the floor, slashing through their clothing, and driving across the wooden floor. Their hair hung in sodden clumps as water cascaded from their clothing.

  Usually, they stood watch just outside the inn to keep trouble out. But right now, Cousin Gandy was supporting a man as tall as he was. The man was shrouded in a dark cloak, his face half-covered with a bright woven scarf. He clasped at his belly where blood poured between his fingers, shockingly scarlet. Everything he wore was too fine for this place – the cloth and ornamentation suggesting a faraway place. I swallowed down a wave of sudden fear. Foreigners brought trouble on their heels.

  In Uncle Llynd’s arms, a dark-skinned woman hung limp like a dead fish, her face grey in the bright light of the inn but splashed with the crimson of fresh blood. Her hair was dark and didn’t disguise the subtle peaks of her ears or the sharpened features of her elfin face.

  I’d only ever heard of the elfin before – never seen one with my own eyes.

  Someone screamed – a little too late, as if their fear had only just caught up with them.

  “Sweet fires preserve us,” one of the pipers moaned.

  The door banged against the wall again, a plaything of the wind, straining at its hinges. I hurried to fight it closed as my aunt Danna rushed out from behind the bar.

  “Inn’s as packed as a barrel of saltfish,” she said authoritatively. “Put them in the girls’ room.” She caught my eye. “Sersha. Go with them.”

  I gave the door one last push, leaning all my weig
ht against it until I heard the click of the latch, and then hurried after them, soaked to my skin and shivering after that single brush with the storm.

  “I told you that wind was an ill one,” one of the sailors muttered. The common room was so still that it carried over us all like a curse. “It carries with it malediction on all who are touched by the fingers of its wrath.”

  He couldn’t have imagined then how right he would turn out to be.

  Chapter Two

  We sleep in the back of the inn, in a few rooms clustered tightly together – one for my uncle and aunt, one for my two boy cousins, and two for the girls since there are five of them and me. By the time I caught up, my uncle was already draping the unconscious woman over my woolen blanket and Cousin Gandy was settling the man onto Mally’s cot.

  “Help her,” the man whispered, so faintly that I barely caught the words. I doubted anyone else had. I usually heard things they didn’t, since I spend all my time listening.

  “We’ll fetch supplies,” Uncle Llynd said and I nodded distractedly as I checked the woman first.

  She was still alive – shockingly – but her breath was thready and faint, her heartbeat slow. It was easy to see why. She’d been hit on the head hard enough that under that glossy black hair I found her skull was sunken in.

  I gasped, my hand trembling as it pulled away. There would be no healing this. We could only make her comfortable and wait. I drew in a wavering breath, trying to steady myself. It wouldn’t help anything to have my fingers shaking with horror.

  When they settled, I opened the clasp of her cloak, freeing her throat, and carefully undid a few of the buttons of her high collar before tucking a blanket around her.

  She whispered something in a language I did not know, and I felt a pang in my heart. There would be no one to understand her last words. No one to speak back words of comfort to her. With luck, she’d never know that, and she’d slip away quietly without feeling the pain of the mortal wound she’d suffered. It seemed too cruel to think that – but the alternative would be crueler yet. No one should die in agony. No one should die alone.

  I swallowed down the urge to cry for her and put a second blanket over her motionless form. At least she could be warm and comfortable. I could give her that last gift.

  I wiped my wet eyes.

  Her friend needed tending.

  He was out cold by the time I turned to him and I began to open his jacket and shirt so I could see his belly wound at the same moment that Aunt Danna came in with the supplies.

  “I’ll go for the midwife. Fon will see to the bar while I’m gone. And Mally will see to the customers,” she said with a wry smile that held both judgment of her daughter’s actions and pride intermingled. “And you’ll tend these two, Sersha.”

  We had no healer in Landsfall. Just a midwife for births and deaths. And everything else was seen to as we could. He wouldn’t be the first patient I’d tended. People liked it when I tended the sick. There was a superstition that the voiceless made the best healers because anything said to them in the throes of illness would stay secret.

  I nodded my agreement and took the hot water and bowl from her, adding the herbs she handed me to the hot water. These frenta leaves made a strong astringent to clean the wound. That was good. She’d also brought feverfew and boneknit which I could give him if he woke again.

  I dipped a cloth and set to work. I needed to clean the wound enough to see what we were dealing with. His breath hitched and I paused until it evened before working at the edges of the wound again. It looked clean – like a sharp blade had been run right through him. There was no hair or dirt in the wound that I could see.

  I caught Aunt Danna’s eye to try to show her the wound, signing that she should look but she waved the idea away.

  “Yes, do whatever you need to with it, Sersha.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “I talked with Fon last night.”

  I froze for a moment and then went back to work. Why was she bringing this up now when I needed to focus?

  My aunt always ran her ideas past my oldest cousin instead of Uncle Llynd. Maybe because Uncle Llynd said almost as little as I did no matter what he was asked. It meant talking to him was a lot like talking to yourself. He wouldn’t even sign with me, just ignored me, and grunted if someone mentioned it.

  “Fon doesn’t think they’ll take you at the Academy.”

  I gritted my teeth. I’d been counting on going. It was the only way I’d ever have a future beyond washing dishes and tables and making soup in the back room of the Hog’s Head Inn. I could have even lived with that life if it had been permanent, but it wouldn’t be.

  Because as generous as Aunt Danna was, she had seven children. And even with Fon and Mally settled elsewhere, that left five more to settle. One would get the inn – probably Gandy who was next in age to Mally – and I was one too many to feed and house. Once he had a family of his own, there would be plenty of hands for cooking and cleaning here. And I’d be asked to find my own way to make room for them.

  I shook my head in denial as I probed the wound. There was no bad smell to it. Could it be possible this man was so lucky that the blade hadn’t ruptured any organs? Maybe his luck would hold and he’d recover from this.

  “Fon doesn’t think they’ll want you anywhere else either, Sersha. You need to be able to talk to do almost anything well – even serve pies from a cart. And you can’t speak.” She was trying to be kind – I could tell – but her words left wounds on my heart. It always came down to what I couldn’t do instead of all the things I could do. “And why waste the money on your journey just to see you disappointed? You’ll just have to stay here with us at the Hog’s Head Inn. With Mally getting married next moon, I’ll move Nessy into front of house and we’ll all be so happy to have you running the back. You know what you’re doing. It will give Nessy time to find her feet in Mally’s place.”

  My heart made a painful little stutter. Because she wasn’t wrong. It would work for now. And all my daydreams had always glossed over how I couldn’t speak. They’d always highlighted what I could do which was work and listen. And in those dreams, the potential employers in the city had been pleased with my hard work and attentiveness and my voicelessness hadn’t caused them to even blink. The real world was different. People noticed every discrepancy and picked at it like a loose thread in a shirt. It made things worse and worse and yet they couldn’t help but keep on picking.

  I eased the man onto his side and checked his back. His skin was shockingly pale and well-muscled for a man so slender, but there was no wound there. So perhaps the one he did have was shallow. The blade hadn’t gone all the way through. I could stitch it, and hope for the best. He’d lost a lot of blood, though. That was worrisome. And I didn’t know if I’d cleaned the wound in time. It could still become infected and give him a fever.

  I bit my lip as I worked and tried not to think about how Fon would leave next week for his apprenticeship as a scribe for the Academy. You didn’t get to be a real student, but you did get to learn to read and write, and you got to transcribe for the real scholars and work in the libraries. And if you were lucky, they kept you and paid you for the rest of your life and offered a pension when you were eighty – if you lived that long. One of the Academy Masters had selected Fon from among the hopefuls in the countryside to go and train with them.

  And now I would remain at the inn until I faded into nothing more than a background for everyone else’s lives.

  “And you needn’t fear, Sersha,” my aunt said, setting a hand on my shoulder as I reached for the needle and thread that we kept in the little crate beside our cots. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “We know full well that the village lads aren’t keen to marry you, but my girls are all full of energy and sass and they’ll marry quickly. You’ll be needed here for as long as you can stay. You shouldn’t fear that you won’t be.”

  Which was very generous. And so very, very heart-wrenchingly wrong.

  B
ecause my life had a ticking clock. Gandy would marry next year or the year after. And then I’d be one too many for this house. And all my aunt’s generous heart and kindness wouldn’t be enough to feed and house one extra person. I should just be grateful that she’d been doing it since I was a toddler and my parents were killed by raiders. She’d raised me with Fon – the same age as me minus a single moon – as if I were her own. But we both knew I wasn’t that. I could never be that.

  I was as unheeded as my voice. And being ignored was the thing I feared most.

  My aunt left at the same moment that my needle bit into the skin of the unconscious man, my tears of disappointment washing his blood away as I worked to close his wound.

  Whoever he was, he had more of a future than I did – even with this wound in his side.

  I had just tied off the thread when the door opened with a loud creak.

  Chapter Three

  Mother Mynta, the local midwife, wasn’t much of one for privacy or politeness. Neither was useful to her.

  “Danna found me at the Ranga birth,” she said tiredly, wringing her long braid out so the water splashed across the floor. I frowned at that. I would be the one to have to clean it up – just like everything else. “Twins. Second one was breech. What a struggle.” She yawned. “I’ve been up two days and nights in a row, and I want my bed, so, let’s look to it then, shall we?”

  I got up and led her to the woman, pointing to the dent in her head. Mynta grunted.

  “No hope for her, Sersha,” she said, confirming my fears. “The blankets are a kindness. If she wakes enough to take a dose, try to convince your aunt to give her some of the good stuff from behind the bar – dulls the pain. That’s the best that can be done. Poor thing. Foreign. We won’t even know what name to put on her stone. Let’s see the other one, then.”

  She knelt by Mally’s cot and examined the man there, checking his forehead for fever and then checking the wound I’d stitched. It was the first time I’d really had a good look at him.