The Heart of the Phoenix (33 page)

“She still thinks she’s Diana, dear,” Tracy said, bending to whisper into Penny’s ear. “And I’m afraid you really don’t look like yourself at the moment.

“But you’re dead,” Susan said staring at Nancy. She clutched at her head and groaned, a thing Penny had seen before when she was confronted with those lost parts of her past that had been taken from her.

Taken by Tracy West.

The pilots seemed at a total loss. They regarded each other, the strangers around them.

“Jackson, where in the heck did you land us?”

Jackson shrugged. “I don’t remember landing at all. Weren’t we dead?” He looked to the others around them for some kind of confirmation. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we died.”

“Welcome back then,” Torin said, and smiled.

“Perhaps,” Ronan said from his perch in the tree, “you should get them back to Susan’s house, Tracy.”

The pilots looked up at the sound of his voice, but he scurried further up the trunk until he was hidden in darkness, avoiding the hysterics that surely would have resulted from them seeing a ten-foot tall bipedal fox.

“Perhaps,” Tracy acknowledged. “I have something that belongs to Susan and Nancy at the house, and they’ll be needing it back.”

One of the gray men wandered back into the hollow, and Torin shooed it discreetly back into the trees.

“What is that... thing?” Jackson pointed to Rocky.

“It’s a Furby,” Penny said, then added, a little lamely she thought, “without the fur.”

Rocky grinned up at Jackson, and the pilot decided to sit down.

Susan finally noticed Penny and did a double take between her and Flanna.

“What is going on?” Susan asked, rubbing more vigorously at her temples.

“I think we’d all like to know that,” Michael said, and when he saw Ernest Price trying to sneak quietly away into the trees, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. “Get back here, you bozo!”

“Inside then,” Tracy said, and motioned to the door Flanna had left open.

One by one, most with more than a little trepidation, they filed through the impossible door and into Susan’s house.

* * *

Ronan stayed behind with the homunculi, and Tracy and Michael took the pilots and Ernest upstairs while Susan, Torin, Nancy, Flanna, and Penny waited in the living room.

“I remember promising to kill you if you ever showed your face in town again,” Susan said to Torin. She was watching him with a sour look while she massaged her temples, Penny noticed Nancy doing the same. “Once this headache is gone I might just do it.”

“She remembers me,” Torin said, and smiled. He was in too good a mood to let Susan spoil it.

“So Tracy and Nancy finally tracked you down?”

“Did they?” Nancy looked around, as if expecting a second Nancy to show herself at any minute.

Penny decided not to try explaining. Tracy was the one who fouled their memories up, so she could sort them out.

Flanna sat between Susan and Nancy on the couch, almost crushed between them, each with an arm around her, Torin lounged in Susan’s recliner, and Penny stood alone by the television, feeling awkward and ignored.

“You know,” Nancy said, finally noticing Penny, “if you put a few pounds on and grew your hair out, you’d be the spitting image of Penny.”

Susan looked Penny over again and nodded. “It’s kind of uncanny, actually.”

“Is that so,” Penny muttered.

Torin laughed, and Susan shot him another glare.

Nancy had ignored Torin since their reunion in the hollow, as if looking at him caused her pain, but she finally turned to him.

“Where have you been all these years, Torin?” she said, and turned away with a wince.

“Did you miss me?” He seemed genuinely curious.

Nancy considered for a short moment, then shook her head.

“No, not really. I guess I used to love you, but...”

“You’re just not feeling it,” Penny said, not surprised. Nancy had not liked Torin at all, and as good as Tracy apparently was at planting false memories, she could not duplicate her mother’s love for him.

“No,” Nancy said.

Michael appeared first, stepping into the living room. He seemed shell-shocked, dazed. He’d just been introduced to his long lost aunt dressed like an extra from Lord of the Rings, after being rescued from a cell of light floating in a universe of void, so Penny supposed he had a right to be a little disoriented.

Tracy followed him in and regarded the strange gathering.

“Our pilot friends...”

“Jackson and Ray,” Nancy volunteered without looking up.

“...are back in San Francisco,” Tracy continued. “I got them a room at the Fisherman’s Wharf. They will wake up tomorrow morning with a reasonable explanation for how they survived the crash of their airplane. It’s the best I could do for them.”

“What, you gave them new memories, like her?” Penny pointed at Nancy, who was too busy staring at her old friend to notice.

“No, I just removed a few inconvenient ones,” Tracy said. “They are perfectly capable of supplying any new ones they need. People are good at that.”

“What about Mr. Price?” Penny was anxious to see him gone, but not crazy about the stories he might take with him.

“I took this from him.” Tracy held a gold colored coin, maybe even real gold, and Penny saw one side of it minted with the complex Celtic looking knot that seemed to be the symbol of her father’s house. “He was also under the impression that his former partner’s employers were going to get rid of Susan and make sure he got control of Clover Hill. He wasn’t expecting to be banished with her.”

“You are all talking nonsense,” Susan said. “We were drugged or something... that’s all.”

“That would sure be simpler,” Michael said under his breath, and fell back into his moody silence.

“I’ve sent him home,” Tracy said, “with the understanding that if I see his face again I will change it in interesting and painful ways.”

“I hope you have a plan to sort this all out,” Torin said. “Susan has promised to kill me when she feels better, and I do believe she means to.”

“Flanna,” Tracy said. “Please fetch me the memory tree.”

Flanna stood to comply, wiggling free of Susan and Nancy, then stopped with her hand stretched out to it.

“Oh!” She turned back to Tracy, eyes wide. “Are they...?”

“Just fetch it dear,” Tracy said, and when Flanna handed it over, Penny understood, or thought she did.

The memory tree hadn’t just been keeping one memory, the one Tracy had saved for Penny and Flanna.

Tracy plucked one of the crystals from its silver branch and held it up for all to see. The light caught it, and Penny saw Susan’s smiling face in it very clearly.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Susan protested, beginning to rise.

“Penny, you know what to do?” Tracy arched her eyebrows at Penny.

Penny nodded and pulled her wand.

Before Susan could take a single step toward them, Tracy tossed her crystal sphere into the air, and Penny fired at it with her wand.

Susan and Nancy both screamed, and Susan backed away as the shards fell to dust and reformed in her image.

The image faded, and Susan fell back into her seat, eyes wide, but unseeing, or at least not seeing anything in that room.

Tracy removed Nancy’s crystal, tossed it, shattered it with a spell of her own, and smiled as a larger than life profile of Nancy appeared and faded.

“Wait for it,” she said.

It seemed like a long time before Susan refocused her eyes on her surroundings, and when she did, they settled on Tracy first.

“I think maybe you have some explaining to do,” she said. She spotted Flanna next. “Don’t tell me you’re involved in all of this now, Penny.”

Penny had finally had enough.

“She’s not Penny,” Penny shouted. “I am!”

Susan looked at her, startled.

“What happened to you?” Another double take between Penny and Flanna. “And who is she then?”

“She’s my sister, apparently,” Penny said, starting to feel a little resentful of her sister.

Susan rose and approached Penny, slowly at first, then rushed headlong and scooped Penny into her arms.

Penny’s resentment subsided as Susan whispered in her ear, and she felt like things might just turn out okay after all.

“Just tell me whose butt I need to kick, kiddo.” She looked down at the wand in Penny’s hand, and sighed. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Tracy.”

“In a minute,” Tracy said.

“I’ve been waiting for fourteen years,” Susan said, and Penny saw the telling anger lines forming on her brow. “You took our memories, you broke us, and I want to know why!”

Last time Penny had seen Susan this angry she’d gone after Morgan Duke with a rolling pin.

“I will tell you everything you want to know,” Tracy said, maintaining her maddening calm, “and probably a lot of things you don’t want to, just wait.”

“
Wait for what
?”

Nancy had risen unnoticed and pushed her way past Flanna, Susan, and Penny. She stopped before Tracy, staring at her with a confusion of emotions on her face. Then she slapped Tracy, hard across the face.

Tracy took the hit without retaliation, but her calm was dissolving into tears.

“Nancy, I...”

Nancy stopped Tracy’s words with a kiss. She grabbed Tracy by the shoulders and leaned into her, not giving her an inch of room to retreat.

Tracy hesitated for only a moment, then cast her wand aside, and put her arms around Nancy, giving in to the moment.

Penny watched the display with astonishment. She remembered Katie sharing the rumor that their aunts had been more than friends, and tried to remember if she had ever shown the slightest interest in men. She could remember no one, not even a simple date.

It must have been very lonely for her
, Penny thought, and allowed herself a smile.

They were together again.

“Very sweet,” Susan said. Her own anger seemed to ebb a little. “Now can you explain all of this to us?”

* * *

Penny returned to the hollow just long enough to awaken Erasmus, who seemed surprised and pleased to find himself back on the material plain, and returned to the house with him, Ronan, and Rocky. The rest of the milling homunculi were content to wait. They began to clear away the duff and debris of the past seasons, feeding the fire with anything flammable and tossing stray stones into the creek.

They stayed clear of the ever-swelling gateway. The surface was becoming translucent, Penny could now see the outlines of shapes, furnishings, displays she had ignored on their rush through the room earlier, and a few humanoid shapes that looked like guards posted to keep watch in the sepulcher.

She wondered how large the thing would grow if they were unable to stop it.

Two worlds merging into one
, her father had said, learning that his brother had taken possession of the Chaos Relic.
The chaos of conflicting geographies and physics, the chaos of disintegrating civilization
.
It would begin in Dogwood and spread to every corner of our worlds
.

A reality ruled by chaos, and whoever ruled the chaos would rule that new reality
.

She returned, fleeing back to her house behind the others.

With the entire company now present, Tracy began.

* * *

Tynan and Torin had never been close, they had been as different as brothers could be, and though Tynan was the oldest, the family favored Torin to succeed their father, King Brom. The animosity between brothers worsened when Tynan discovered his brother’s relationship with Diana Sinclair, one of the Phoenix Girls that the Traveling Reds investigated every year during the fair season, when they could come to Dogwood without drawing attention to themselves.

Torin nodded his agreement at this part of Tracy’s story.

When his relationship came into the open, the family was divided. Some thought it the worst betrayal, while others agreed that the Phoenix Girls would be ideal allies, helping keep the portal to Galatania protected from the barbarians of the old world.

“Why do they insist on calling us barbarians?” Not for the first time, Penny bristled at the slur.

“Because when we lived in this world they slaughtered us, overran our lands.” Flanna’s cheeks grew flushed as she spoke. “If Fuilrix hadn’t destroyed the last Worldgate behind him they would have followed us into the new world and finished their slaughter.”

“We’ve been holding that grudge for a while,” Torin said.

“What’s a Worldgate?” Michael seemed more curious about that than millennia-old grudges.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Erasmus said. “A gate between the worlds. There used to be hundreds of them. Some of them closed on their own, and successive Fuilrix dynasties closed others when it looked like you guys were close to finding them. The one they used is called Stonehenge now. They don’t exist anymore, but there are still a few thin spots where the right magic can open a temporary doorway.”

“Like the hollow,” Penny said.

Erasmus nodded, but didn’t speak again. Tracy was looking anxious to resume the story they were all gathered to hear, even if it was old news to some.

King Brom is still remembered for his even temper, and a rare willingness to change his mind, given the right arguments or evidence. He was angry when Torin married Diana without his blessing, but he was also intrigued by the idea that the Phoenix Girls might make an alliance.

The alliance was already half-formed the night King Brom died; the Phoenix Girls had agreed with only one dissenting voice, Tracy’s. She didn’t trust Torin, and it was that distrust that made her a target for Tynan when he made his move.

“He was waiting for me after the accident that killed your mother.” Tracy looked at Flanna, then Penny.

“It was no accident,” Penny said, the memory still fresh in her mind.

Tracy nodded, then continued.

“He knew I was against it, so he singled me out and offered me a choice.” She took Nancy’s hand. “He was prepared to bring an army to Dogwood and kill us all, to repair the damage his brother had done.”