The Heart of the Phoenix (21 page)

“Yes,” Tynan said. “When I took Flanna I did check, but it seems death was only a temporary condition for our young heretic.”

Penny recalled Susan’s words of a year before,
I thought you were dead
, and shivered.

“But however she effected the transformation from one state to the other, I am surprised
you
did not know.”

Tracy remained silent, staring at the floor.

“Surely, you would have told me if you knew there was a Fuilrix heir living on Old Earth.”

Tracy seemed to visibly gather her courage, then looked up, her eyes meeting Tynan’s.

“Yes, I would have told you. They must have suspected me, they hid her from me, then spirited her from Dogwood after I joined you here.”

“Why?” Penny found the question had left her lips before she even knew it was there. “Why did you...?”

“Switch sides?” Tracy finished for her. “What reason would you accept? What reason would you believe?”

Penny didn’t respond. There was no reason Tracy could give for betraying her mother that she
could
accept.

“Torin brought down the anger of the Reds on us,” she said. “There was no way we could win against them, so I proposed a compromise, and King Tynan accepted it.”

“You stole their memories and kept your powers,” Penny said.

“I stayed with Flanna,” Tracy said, her voice lashing out like a whip. “I took their memories and saved their lives.”

“He was not yet the king,” Torin said.

“I was in all but name, brother.” Tynan spoke a phrase that was incomprehensible to Penny.

“
English
,” Penny shouted. “If you’re going to talk around me do it in English!”

“That,” said Tynan, “was between my brother and I.”

Tynan pointed his wand at Penny, and her mask’s mouth hole sealed itself shut. Penny tried to shout a protest, but her mouth would not open.

Turoc chuckled laughter.

“He’s only gloating, Penny,” Torin said. “Nothing worth hearing.”

Her father’s face was hard to read behind his beard, but Ronan had no beard, and apparently no interest in hiding his emotions. He looked wild with anger, ready to lash out.

“I have good news for you, brother,” Tynan said, and his cold, expressionless face broke into a smile that chilled Penny’s blood. “The House of Fuilrix is on the cusp of fulfilling its destiny.”

“Destiny?” Torin sounded barely interested, but Penny wasn’t buying his show of indifference. “What grandiose scheme do you have in mind this time?”

“The old one. The only one that ever mattered.” Tynan’s feigned goodwill vanished along with his cold smile. “The plan that our old teacher disrupted after your betrayal, when he left our service.”

Torin’s forced calm broke and he charged his brother.

Tynan never moved, didn’t even flinch as Torin bore down on him, arms outstretched, shouting.

Torin never came close to his target.

Turoc moved almost too quickly for Penny’s eyes to follow, a scary, slippery speed she remembered from previous encounters. He slipped between Tynan and Tracy, then sprang. He hit Torin hard, knocking him to the floor, pinning his arms over his head, his long, thick tail wrapping around Torin’s body. Turoc opened his mouth, and Penny was sure he was about to strike.

Ronan sprang at Turoc, but flew backward and landed stunned on the stone. He twitched, tried to rise, but the force of Tracy’s spell kept him from continuing his defiance.

“Release him,” Tynan said, and Turoc withdrew. “Don’t do that again. Your blood protects you from him, but it doesn’t protect your familiar. You withdrew that protection when you released him from his bond.”

“I would welcome the chance to kill him,” Turoc said, slipping back from Torin, but staying between the brothers.

“I must confess, I would enjoy the contest,” Tynan said.

“Why would you tell me this,
brother
?” Torin spit the last word out like something nasty.

“Because I want you to know how far lost your cause is,” Tynan said. “Because I am mean.”

Tynan offered them his cold smile once again and stepped back onto his hovering plate. It began to rise, but paused when Torin spoke again.

“You’ve been raiding the sepulcher.” Torin pointed at the pendant hanging from his brother’s neck. It was a red stone, irregularity shaped, rough textured, about three inches in diameter. “That’s an artifact, not jewelry.”

Tynan said nothing, but tucked the stone back inside his robe, and continued his ascent. Turoc coiled his tail beneath himself and sprang through the hole behind Tynan, leaving Tracy.

Tracy looked up at the ceiling, then at Penny.

“When I came here, I left a part of myself behind in Dogwood. It was the part that loved your aunt, your mother, and our friends... all of the
memories
we shared.” Her gaze had become so intense that Penny had to struggle to hold it. “I can see them as clear as crystal, all of my old sisters gathered around that old ash tree in Aurora Hollow. We were young then, when your grandmother first introduced the secrets of that place. She had no idea of the real secrets hidden there.”

Penny didn’t respond to Tracy, had no idea why Katie’s long lost aunt had chosen to reminisce on her lost friends and squandered innocence in that dark and squalid place, but the woman’s words called up the memory of another tree she had once given Susan as a gift, a silver tree with crystal fruit, the crystal spheres laser etched with the images of herself and her friends, the Phoenix Girls.

Susan had called it a memory tree.

Penny wondered if that silver tree was meant to be the old ash from the hollow, and decided it probably was.

“I wish I could have gotten to know you as well as I did your sister,” Tracy said, stepping backward onto her own metal disk. “If you happen to see her again in your dreams, tell her I said to remember me, and that I’ll see her soon.”

She waved her wand a spoke a word, and Penny felt the mouth-hole in her mask open up again. She also felt her throat unlock and the return of her power of speech.

“Can’t leave you like that. I imagine you and your father have some catching up to do.” She began her ascent out of the cell. “Also, the king would be upset if you weren’t able to eat and starved to death while he was gone.”

Torin and Ronan watching her in astonishment, and when she was gone and their cell door had banged back into place, they looked at each other.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that woman so loquacious before,” Torin said. “Any idea what prompted that stroll down memory lane?”

Ronan only shrugged his wide hairy shoulders.

Penny had a thought, but since her father had not asked her, and because her idea made little or no sense, she kept it to herself.

* * *

Flanna stepped into Aurora Hollow ahead of Zoe, through the wardrobe door in the attic bedroom, and found the strange little man Erasmus waiting, perched cross-legged on the seat of a spinning stool and turning in slow circles.

“Good evening, ladies.” Erasmus stopped spinning and faced them, and for a moment only stared in their direction. “Are you okay, Penny?”

Flanna felt a prickle of fear, not even here for a full day and she was found out, and forced herself to calm down.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You seem... different.” Erasmus reached up to his glasses, and Flanna thought he was going to take them off.

She’d heard much about the South Island Monk’s ability to read and control minds, and didn’t want to be caught by his mind-probing stare.

He only adjusted them back on his bulbous nose, then tapped his temple with a finger.

“Up here, you seem different, troubled.”

“She’s been in a bad mood ever since we came home from Grumpy’s,” Zoe said.

“I am not in a bad mood,” Flanna growled, and Zoe rolled her eyes.

Erasmus only had a moment to consider that before the door opened again and Ellen stepped through to join them.

“Am I late? Have you started yet?”

Erasmus’s probing gaze finally left Flanna, and she breathed a bit easier.

“We’re still waiting for Miss West. I think tonight’s lesson will be right up her lane.”

“Up her alley,” Zoe said. “Right up her alley.”

Erasmus shrugged as if to say,
whatever
, and started spinning on his stool again.

Katie arrived a minute later, and Flanna couldn’t help but stare. She remembered Katie from her shared memories with Penny, but seeing her was still a shock. This was her godmother’s niece, and as much a sister to Penny as Flanna was. It was almost like looking back in time at a much younger version of Tracy West. The major differences were her hair, a few shades lighter than Tracy’s, and a certain litheness that was absent from her aunt, maybe from her mother’s side.

“What are you gawking at, Little Red?” Katie asked, taken aback by Flanna’s scrutiny. “There a booger hanging outa my nose?”

* * *

Erasmus was right, the lesson certainly seemed to be right up Katie’s alley.

“Our sciencey people here will know the five states of matter... yes?” Erasmus waited, bemused, for Ellen to lower her hand and speak.

“There are only four states of matter,” Ellen said, then counted them off on her fingers. “Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.”

Flanna looked at Zoe, who looked as bewildered as she felt.

Katie grinned from ear to ear, turning from Ellen back to Erasmus.

“There is a fifth,” Erasmus corrected. “Who here can tell us what the fifth state of matter is?”

Katie predictably was the only one with the answer.

“The fifth state of matter is called the Bose-Einstein Condensate.”

“The who whaty-what?” Zoe frowned at Katie as if she’d started speaking in Portuguese. “You’re making stuff up.”

“She is not,” Erasmus said, flashing them all with his uncannily wide grin.

Katie stuck her tongue out at Zoe.

“A Bose-Einstein Condensate is a dilute gas of bosons created in a lab and cooled to almost absolute zero,” Erasmus explained. “A similar state of matter exists in the unformed space.”

“What’s with the science lesson anyway?” Ellen had started losing interest after her first wrong answer.

Flanna had no idea what they were talking about. She prompted Penny’s memories for anything to do with science, but got only a surly grunt of dismissal. Apparently Penny wasn’t as sciencey as Katie either.

She had hoped Penny’s memories would be better organized in her own head by now, but she still had to chase them down more often than not.

“Because,” Erasmus said, some of the excitement leaving his voice, “when you girls start shooting magical bolts, fireballs, and lightning everywhere, when you change the weather and make trees grow an inch a minute, the energy you’re using doesn’t come from nowhere.”

“It’s an Albert Frankenstein Condor,” Zoe said.

Ellen started giggling.

“I’m ashamed to know you,” Katie said.

Flanna waited patiently for the point of the lesson.

“Not exactly,” Erasmus said. “Energy is liberated from matter, and matter is condensed energy. My theory is that magical energy is a liberated form of that fifth state of matter.”

“Fascinating,” Zoe said, and yawned.

Erasmus sighed.

“Shut up and get your book,” he said. “I’ll just sit and spin for a while.”

They all turned to stare at Flanna.

“What?”

“Call Rocky,” Katie snapped. “He has the key.”

Flanna was lost for a moment, then remembered Penny’s homunculus, and the key Penny gave to her little gray man for safe keeping.

“Rocky,” Flanna called out, nervous about how he would react when he showed up. Would he know she wasn’t Penny?

They waited for several seconds, then Zoe called out to him as well. When minutes passed without Rocky showing up they turned to Flanna again.

“Well?” Zoe’s tone, her attitude since she’d come home after her lunch out with her parents and Susan, was beginning to make Flanna angry.

“Well what?” Flanna snapped. “He’s not coming.”

“Forget this,” Katie said, throwing the pair of them a dirty look as she retrieved the old chest they kept their book locked up in from its hiding place in the burnt out hollow of the old ash tree.

“Are you sure this is wise?” Erasmus paused his spinning to watch Katie take aim at the box with her wand.

Instead of responding, she blasted the brass lock on the front of the box. Her spell ricocheted off and smacked the cliff face above the mouth of Ronan’s cave.

“Maybe we should just call it a night,” Ellen said in a carefully neutral tone.

Grumbles of agreement followed, and they went their separate ways.

As Flanna stepped back through the door and into her bedroom, she heard Ellen say, “I wonder where Rocky is?”

* * *

Penny thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep on the hard floor of the cell, but exhaustion won out and she began her first full night as a prisoner with a strange, lucid dream. Not of her sister this time, but of a strange place of stone walls, high ceilinged rooms, and tight corridors where she was sure no human would fit. In the dream, she was not human, but something else.