Phoenix Heart: Episode 1: Ashes Read online

  He wasn’t much older than me – nineteen or twenty maybe – with longish brown hair hanging wet around his pale face and more freckles than any person ought to have across his nose and cheeks and chest. I unwound the cloth that had been covering his face from his neck – it had fallen there in the commotion of getting him into the bed. His hands were surprisingly soft looking – like he hadn’t even done dishes, never mind a man’s work. And yet there was something about his face that made me think he was as likely to wink as Mally was – some kind of lingering good humor.

  “A lordling, unless I miss my guess,” Mynta said. “Maybe he’ll give us the woman’s name if he survives this. Maybe there will be a coin or two for your aunt and uncle in it, too. So, use your best herbs and let your aunt add that to his bill if he recovers. If he doesn’t, the jacket will fetch enough to cover the expense.”

  I gasped. She didn’t really mean we should rob the dead, did she?

  “Don’t look at me like that, girl.” Mynta shook her head tiredly, rubbing her wrinkled forehead as if she could wipe away both her tiredness and years in a single motion. “Healers know that life is for the living and the dead are past caring. Try to keep him alive, and mayhap it won’t come to that. Strip off these wet clothes and get him in dry blankets. And watch for fever. Your stitching is neat, and you chose right to do it quickly. He seems to have stopped bleeding so much, but who knows if something was nicked inside or if the wound is tainted. Did you clean it?”

  I nodded.

  She seemed pleased at that. “Then get feverfew into him as soon as you can, and willow bark tea, and make sure he’s dry and rested. Someone needs to sit with him all night and it can’t be me. I’m so tired I might fall asleep right now.”

  I nodded at that, too. She looked like she was already half asleep.

  She fussed with his jacket, almost as if she was deciding if it really would cover my aunt’s expenses at helping him, and then she paused, drawing something from the pocket. It was a small silver disk wrapped in a piece of parchment, wet and blurred from the rain with a picture drawn on it of something that looked a bit like a constellation. I’d seen that pattern before.

  I was sure of it.

  But where?

  There was writing above it, too, but neither of us knew our letters.

  “Maybe you should let it dry out,” Mynta said slowly. “He might need it for something.”

  I nodded as she examined the disk. It was the size of my palm and so shiny you could see your face in it.

  “Been a while since I saw a mirror,” Mynta said wistfully. “The years have not been kind.”

  I shook my head at that, and she laughed harshly, laying the mirror beside the parchment on the little bedside table.

  “Best not to look into it, Sersha. Women are better off not knowing what we look like.” And with that, she eased herself back to her feet, moaning and sighing as she rose and tottered out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll return in the morning if the inn is still standing.”

  And then she was gone, leaving me with the two strangers in my care.

  I stared at them helplessly for a moment and then set to work, stripping off wet clothing and hanging them on the little string in the corner that we used to dry our dresses.

  It gave me something to do other than feel bad for myself.

  I had no future. I needed to accept that. I could at least make my present count for something.

  But every time I looked at the fine stitching on the jacket I was hanging up, at the silver embroidery worked across the chest and sleeves, at the silky lining inside, I thought of the apprentices in the city who would have labored over the jacket. Every time my eyes stole toward the mirror on the table, I thought of the silversmith and the apprentices who would carry water for him and pump the bellows. And I couldn’t help but think that there must be a place for me in this world somewhere, if I could just carve it out.

  A place where I could be useful.

  And as the night grew long, I looked often at the faces of the strangers and wondered what their place might be. Had they been seafarers? Or nobles riding on some glorious adventure?

  Perhaps the townsfolk knew the answer, but no one else came all night as the darkness descended and the storm blew on, rattling the timbers of the roof and making my heart leap into my throat.

  The candle clock said it was past midnight when the man moaned the first time. A spear of despair struck through me when I felt his head.

  Fever.

  And after that, the next hours were spent bathing his head and chest with cool water and hoping he could fight off what ailed him.

  Twice, I stole into the quiet kitchen to boil water for feverfew tea and gather fresh rags. The rest of the inn had settled into a fitful slumber and there was no one to note what I did or didn’t do.

  I tried to get feverfew into the man’s lips, but he sputtered and spat and refused it, leaving a sour worry in my mouth. If I couldn’t get him to take his medicine, the fever would keep raging.

  But in this, as in everything, I felt helpless.

  It was a little before dawn when the storm broke and the wind began to settle. I opened the shutter and looked out into the grey of pre-dawn, letting the coolness bathe some of my exhaustion away.

  A terrible, gurgling moan came from my bed.

  I hurried over to the cot where the woman lay. I reached for her hand as she thrashed in the blankets. It was moments like this that I most wished I could talk – could comfort with words where looks just felt like not enough.

  Instead, I stroked her hair and blew quiet shushing sounds – that much I could do. She settled for a moment, her eyes gazing at me blankly, and then her hand thrust toward mine and her fingers uncurled their death grip as the first rays of dawn washed over her dark face.

  For a moment, her eyes seemed to focus on mine as she shoved something in my hand, and then they went blank and she fell back into the blankets, her eyes glazed with the fog of death.

  I swallowed, blinking back sudden tears, and opened my palm.

  It was full of black ashes.

  Chapter Four

  I didn’t have the heart to get rid of the ashes.

  I stared at them in my palm for long minutes. This woman had been someone important. She’d lived a life that probably didn’t involve washing an endless stream of dishes or peeling potatoes for soup. And when it was over, all she’d had to hand on to the next person was a handful of ashes. A clump of black flakes and grey dust that made my palm itch a little.

  I blinked away tears and after long moments, I brought my breathing back under control and put the ashes in the pocket of my dress. I felt silly doing it. And yet there had been something about the way she’d given them to me that felt like a last request.

  Throwing them away would be wrong.

  Burying them with her would be just as bad.

  And I couldn’t have explained why, I just knew it in my heart.

  The storm had faded to a heavy mist when we brought her body out to the stable and stitched the blanket around her as we always do for our dead.

  “Bury her when the mist clears,” Uncle Llynd advised practically and strode back to his job watching the front of the inn.

  My aunt Danna went back inside, too, worried about Mistress Mynta. She’d arrived just after dawn to take a turn watching the patients, but her eyes were still heavy with exhaustion.

  It was my turn to sleep.

  But I didn’t want to go back into the inn to my bed where this woman had just died. I didn’t want to have to think about how meaningless my life was – and how quickly it could be snatched away.

  Instead, I found a place in the straw of the stable, curled into a ball, and slept the morning away there.

  “He’s getting worse,” Mistress Mynta told me, in late afternoon when I roused myself to spell her off of her duties. The thin pallet that was usually on my cot was hanging outside to air out. She’d been kind enough to clean th
e bedding for me. “I managed to get a little tea into him, but you need to try again as soon as you can. I’ve already brewed feverfew and willow. I even put a little honey in it for the flavor. Get him to drink something. I need to check on the newborn twins.”

  And then she was off again. I took up the cloth to wash his lined forehead and dutifully watched him.

  Who was he out in the wide world? Was he carrying some important message? Or perhaps he was the important thing – a prince perhaps, or a knight. Maybe they’d been waylaid by usurpers to the crown. Or maybe by brigands. Maybe he alone knew a secret too dark to let out.

  Or maybe she was the precious thing and he’d taken that wound trying to protect her. Maybe, when he woke and found her dead, he would go mad with grief.

  I reached into my pocket and felt at the ashes there, stroking them between my fingers. What secret could ashes possibly hold? And what significance? They must have meant something for the foreign woman to have given them to me. Unless she was so far removed from sanity that she didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe she was simply clutching them because they were in her hand when she was struck over the head. The young man must have brought her a long way before they stumbled to Uncle Llynd at our door. No one had seen a ship or horses. We always noticed things that were out of place in this town. There was so little variety that a change stuck out like a blue horse.

  I was pulled out of my daydream by a sharp pain in my chest.

  I clutched my palm to the pain, smearing black ash across the front of my dress. Sparks! It would be hard to wash that out.

  A second pain flared, worse than the first and hot – like I was burning on the inside.

  I bit my lip and sucked in a long breath, gasping as the agony filled me, leaving my head spinning and nausea rising up through my throat. I lunged for the bucket in the corner just in time to empty myself.

  And still, it seared through me.

  I was on fire on the inside.

  I was burning up.

  I was going to die.

  Little half-breaths were rippling out of my throat as I stumbled through the door and out into the hall, past the shocked face of my youngest cousin Marra and out through the bustling kitchen.

  There was a crash. Mally had dropped a plate. I pushed past her, not caring about dishes when the pain was so intense.

  “Sersha? Are you hurt?”

  I shoved the door open and stumbled out into the heavy fog, running as if I could get away from the pain if I just ran fast enough. I hit the side of Old Duggan’s shed and spun, uncertain where I was as I clawed at my chest.

  Make it stop.

  Make it stop.

  My pulse roared in my ears as the flames licked me from within.

  I stumbled uphill, kicking rocks, smashing into branches, scratching at my chest, my throat, my chin. The pain burned and burned and burned, filling me up until nothing else was inside me but that.

  Behind, I heard voices calling, but they were faint, and I couldn’t have answered anyway.

  Tears rolled down my face as I clambered up the crown of the hill and collapsed on the ground, clutching at my chest. Darkness descended, leaving me shrouded in the black of night.

  I would die here.

  This was the end.

  And it didn’t even matter that this was my death. I had no future, anyway.

  No future?

  A voice – raw and almost spitting – spoke to me, and it seemed to be coming from inside my chest. I looked down by instinct. Light glowed from my torso with such brilliance that it pierced through my dress and lit the ground nearby, making the fog glow.

  What in the –?

  Who has no future?

  I was going insane. I had no voice – but now I had one in my head.

  No voice? I hear your voice loud and clear in your heart. It is very bright indeed. But where is Veela?

  You can ... you can hear me think?

  I can hear you feel and that is even stronger. Who are you, little human?

  My heart was racing so fast that it felt tight and tense like the string of a bow. What was happening to me?

  I needed to calm down. I was Sersha. I was a simple village girl in the coastal town of Landsfall.

  Sersha. The voice said the name as if it was savoring it, but then I felt a burst of panic inside me, sharp and jagged. But I wasn’t feeling panicked. It was as if the feeling was independent of me.

  I am the one who is panicked! The voice sounded just as erratic as the feeling. Where is Veela? Where?

  Who was Veela?

  Veela is a Flame Rider, powerful among her people, one hundred years my friend and companion. She is strong of spirit and firm of purpose.

  Was she an elfin? An elfin with short dark hair, a slight build, and really rich wine-colored clothes?

  Yes! The voice sounded eager now.

  An elfin with a young man for a friend who had been stabbed with a sword?

  Perhaps. And now it sounded wary.

  I tried very hard not to think of Veela. Not to think of her wounded in my cot. Not to think of the ashes in her hand.

  Noooo!

  The voice sounded like the howl of a wolf as it ripped through my heart and mind. My head felt like it would split in two. I gripped it in both hands as the howl went on and on.

  She gave you something, the voice said, a little breathlessly when it was done, as if part of it were still howling while the rest was speaking to me.

  Ashes. A handful of ashes.

  The howling stuttered to a stop and there was a pause that felt heavy, as if it carried something in its quiet.

  The master passes the ashes down to her successor and so the Phoenix is reborn in a new heart. And some of who the new Flame Rider is bleeds into the Phoenix as he loses the flavor of his old Flame Rider.

  Flame Rider? What was that?

  Untouched by flame. Unburned by fire. Bound by ash and oath to her phoenix. That is the Flame Rider. And I have lost mine. She has taken the great journey to the beyond without me.

  I’d never been able to apologize to anyone before. But I felt like I should now.

  I wish I could have saved her.

  There is a deep well of compassion within you.

  I wished I could have taken her place.

  The voice paused as if considering that. And when he spoke again, he sounded like he could barely think the words.

  She chose well. She did. You are deep of heart and true in courage. We shall soar together, little hawk. The Phoenix and the Flame Rider.

  He was a phoenix? Like the bright burning birds of legend? I looked around me, wishing I could catch a glimpse of bright flames of a flutter of a wing.

  I am within you.

  And you’ll stay here then? In my heart? Burning up?

  The rumbling in my chest felt like a sorrowful laugh.

  You are my home now, little hawk. But do not fear the fire. It will not burn you up – or not any more than fires of the heart always do.

  What could that possibly mean? Fires of the heart?

  Passions. Obsessions. Visions. Surely you have known people who burn to create or to excel. It burns them up – but not in a bad way. Without the burning, there would be no soaring.

  I took a long breath. It wasn’t going to kill me. Or at least not right away. I could breathe. I could take a moment to calm down.

  Cup your hands and hold them out in front of you.

  I did as I was asked, cupping each hand, and raising it in front of me.

  No, no, hold them together. We’re both being reborn here.

  We were being what?

  I shifted my hands so that they formed a bowl and as soon as I did, a glowing egg appeared in them. It seemed to be made of molten fire.

  I gasped, nearly dropping the egg.

  Steady now. This hurts me, too. I must let go of Veela, my true friend, to embrace you.

  Then he shouldn’t let go.

  Where she has gone, I cannot follow.
r />   I swallowed a lump in my throat. I knew what it was like to be abandoned by those you loved. My parents hadn’t wanted to leave me. But they’d had to go when they were taken from this life.

  We must be reborn, the phoenix breathed and then the egg cracked like a branch snapping and something that looked like fiery honey poured out of it. I was sure it would burn my hands. I began to pull away.

  Keep steady, now!

  I gritted my teeth and kept my hands in place and then, struggling out of the thick, flaming honey, emerged a bright, blazing bird.

  Chapter Five

  The bird shook himself, splashing molten honey droplets in every direction. His scarlet feathers were edged in bright flame and his black eyes held tiny flames of their own. He was not just beautiful but also deadly. His beak and talons were sharper than any bird’s I’d ever seen.

  Bird? A phoenix is no bird.

  He looked awfully bird-like not to be a type of bird.

  You look awfully ape-like not to be a type of ape, but you don’t hear me mentioning it.

  What in all the world was an ape?

  Better that you don’t know.

  A streak of red fire spilled from his eye and down his cheek.

  I reached for it, gently, so gently, wiping it away.

  I feel as though there is a hole in my heart. Even now that I am new and fresh, he said.

  I bit my lip, wiping a second tear from his eye. He was just like me. Hurting. Alone.

  Broken. Bereft.

  He preened his feathers sadly and then leapt from my hands to a rock on the grass beside me. I sank to my knees with him. If I could take his hurt I would.

  If I could take yours, I would, too.

  I smiled slightly. But I was not the one who was hurting. He tilted his head slightly to the side.

  Aren’t you? It feels as though you are.

  The night was cold, the ground soaked and muddy from the storm, but it felt wrong for this magical creature to perch on the sodden ground and I’d thought that phoenixes would be bigger.

  You try being reborn and attaining your normal size in a single day. Demanding, aren’t you, little hawk?