The Heart of the Phoenix (8 page)

Penny laughed. She couldn’t help herself.

Erasmus rocked back on his stool and almost overbalanced, then steadied himself and slid off. He planted his cane in the dirt and leaned over it toward the girls.

“Fair enough,” Erasmus said. “You have questions, then ask them.”

For a long and uncomfortable moment all three girls were silent. Penny for one was not used to being given full disclosure, Ronan was always stingy with information, and she was momentarily stumped. She had a hundred questions and didn’t know which to ask first.

“Are you really blind?” Ellen asked, uncharacteristically bold. “I know what a white cane and dark glasses mean, but you don’t fight like you’re blind.”

Erasmus chuckled.

“I see more than any of you.” He pointed at Ellen first, then Katie and Penny. “You are my eyes, and you, and you.”

He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder toward Rocky, who was waste deep in Clear Creek and apparently trying to catch a fish with his over-large hands. “And him.”

Erasmus pursed his lips and gave a high-pitched chirp, an amazing bird imitation, and held a hand up over his head, his index finger extended. An answering chirp sounded down from the braided canopy of willow whips, and a robin flapped down and landed on his finger.

“Even this little fellow.”

“What are you taking about?” Some of the sweetness was wearing off of Katie’s voice. “You promised answers, not metaphors.”

“And I gave you an answer,” Erasmus barked back, startling the robin into flight. “I see the world around me through the eyes of other living creatures, the more complex the creature, the more complex the picture.”

Penny had a whole range of questions lined up not regarding his eyesight, but they were temporarily eclipsed.

“Does it get confusing when a lot of people are around? I think I’d get motion sickness if I was looking through a dozen sets of eyes.”

“No… the more the better. I have extra brains to process the extra information.”

The girls answered this latest claim with silence.

“Just because I kind of look like you doesn’t make me human.” He illustrated this point by letting slip a half dozen waving dreadlocks from beneath his fez, one of which twirled a wand. “I evolved differently from you.”

“What from, a squid?” Katie spoke in a near whisper, which Erasmus heard clearly.

“That’s rich coming from a semi-evolved primate.”

Penny interrupted the bickering before it could evolve into a fully-fledged argument.

“You do have eyes though. I saw them when we were fighting, right before you hypnotized me.” She paused for a moment to consider. “Is that what they’re for?”

“I didn’t hypnotize you… I only borrowed your brain for a moment.” He shrugged. “And I gave it back in roughly the same condition I found it.”

“That’s why you wear dark glasses,” Ellen almost shouted, as if pleased to have solved the mystery. “So you’re not accidentally
borrowing
people’s brains all the time.”

Katie laughed. “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s more of a problem than you’d think,” Erasmus said. “It comes in handy from time to time, but people do get angry when they’ve got them back.”

Ellen favored a stunned Katie with a superior smirk.

“And the cane?” Penny asked, already half-convinced she knew the answer.

Erasmus tapped the red tip of the white cane sharply against the ground, and it began to shrink, shortening into a white wand with a glowing red tip. “I don’t have to explain blindfolds or dark glasses to the simians if they think I’m blind.”

“So, if you’re not human, what are you?” Katie asked.

“Wait,” Ellen said, “did you just call us simians?”

Erasmus ignored Ellen’s question and considered Katie’s for a moment.

“We’ve never been self-important enough to name ourselves, but where I come from everyone else calls us South Island Monks.” He shook his wand and extended it to cane-length again and boosted himself up onto his stool. “My entire race emerged, evolved, and developed our society on one large island off the southern coast of Gallia. The other races used to come to us seeking the storied wisdom of the South Island Monks, but very few of us ever leave the island.”

Erasmus grinned widely, a toothy display that took up more of his face than it should have. “I’m the black sheep of my family.”

In the brief lull following Erasmus’s predatory grin, Penny remembered her most pressing question and sprang it. “How do you know Ronan?”

Erasmus laughed. He laughed until he slid off the stool again.

“That is a long story, and for another day. I think we’re done for today, girls.” He held up a small mirror, identical to the ones they all carried. “Ronan told me about your adventures with my Conjuring Glass and supplied me with this, so I’ll be in touch.”

“
Your
Conjuring Glass?” Penny planted her hands on her hips and planted her feet firmly to brace for an argument. “I took it from the Birdman. It’s mine.”

“And he took it from me,” Erasmus said. “Along with all the other relics Ronan tracked down.”

At this revelation, Penny forgot her irritation. “What?”

“All those doorknobs?” Katie held up her own mirror. “These?”

Ellen resumed her pacing and failed to look interested.

“You can hold on to the Conjuring Glass for now,” Erasmus conceded. “Just be careful. That thing’s not a toy.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “I haven’t broken it yet.”

“If I thought you could break it I would give you my blessing to try. Just be careful it doesn’t break you.”

* * *

The rest of Penny’s day passed in the usual monotonous blur of activity. She helped with afternoon deliveries, listening to Susan fret constantly that inventory was running dangerously short thanks to limited space for warehousing.

“The spare rooms just don’t have enough space for my regular deliveries.”

Overhead expenses had also dropped, but so had orders. It was an uneasy balancing act. When Susan said she would have to convert the long unused basement into warehousing space, Penny almost objected. There were still a lot of personal things, her dead mother’s things, that she wanted to explore in relative peace in the old basement, but she thought she would have a hard time explaining the reasons to Susan.

Penny resolved to finish searching the old boxes in the basement while she could still do it privately.

They stopped at Grumpy’s Tavern on the way home for burgers and fries and found her least favorite person in Dogwood, Tucker “Rooster” Price at a table with his older brother James. The two sat alone, surrounded by empty tables, and ate in silence. When Rooster noticed Penny noticing him, he looked like he might say something, but Susan caught his eye and he turned away at once.

Rooster and James’s father, Ernest Price, once one of the most respected and influential men in Dogwood, had lost a lot of money and respect in the past few months, and was lucky, in Susan’s opinion, to have avoided jail time. His business dealings with the shady Morgan Duke, and Duke’s dangerous and mysterious benefactors, had allowed him to buy up much of the property in and around Dogwood over the years, the eventual goal being the acquisition of Penny’s home, Clover Hill, and more importantly, Aurora Hollow. Ernest Price’s continued failure had finally prompted Duke’s direct involvement, and an endgame that had destroyed much of downtown Dogwood. Morgan Duke’s firebug son had started the blaze in the Price owned business block before Katie’s Deputy brother captured him… with a little help from Penny and Katie. Duke himself had later started a series of fires near Penny’s home, nearly killing Susan, Penny, and Zoe in the process.

Ernest Price’s reputation and income had both suffered in the aftermath. Even Ernest’s brother, Sheriff Avery Duke, was caught in the backlash and was hanging on to his job by the fingernails. There had been some talk of Katie’s brother, Michael West, taking over as Sheriff, but he wouldn’t dignify the gossip.

Ernest Price’s wife was now mysteriously gone, off to stay with distant family if the rumors were true, and the boys, Rooster and James, found themselves mostly friendless in a town where they had once been treated like princes.

James Price shoved his plate away, his food barely touched, and threw his napkin down with a grunt. “I’m outa here.”

Rooster had to hurry to catch up with his older brother, turning to give Penny one short, and strangely flat glance. There was none of the previous distain or hate in his face. He was unreadable.

“Any plans tonight?” Susan forced calm into her voice, seeing the Price boys had upset her more than she wanted to let on. “The girls coming over?”

Penny shook her head. “No, I just plan on sleeping… a lot.”

“Sleep,” Susan said. “There’s an idea I can get behind.”

* * *

Penny met her double again, but not in the cavern of previous nights. They were in Aurora Hollow, and the dark around them was complete. No stars shone through the gaps in the overhead willow canopy, and the woods beyond the clearing’s border seemed to have vanished. Only the fire burning high in the stone pit pushed the darkness back. Only the hollow existed.

“Hi Penny.” She sat on the other side of the creek, her back against the rough rock that disappeared only ten feet above her. She nodded toward the entrance to Ronan’s cave. “You ever wonder what he keeps down there?”

“Sometimes,” Penny said, though only ever in passing. The question hadn’t seemed important until this strange reflection had mentioned it. “I guess if you’re curious about it I must be.”

“You should be. You know he hides things from you.”

Penny did know that. Ronan had admitted that much to her, and she’d always resented his presumption, keeping secrets that were not his to keep.

The brief silence between them grew uncomfortable. She gazed around, as if she didn’t already know every inch of the hollow, and finally sat down near the fire. When she returned her gaze to the other girl, the girl was staring back unselfconsciously, a small smile curving her lips. The boldness of this scrutiny made Penny want to turn away again.

“What?”

“There’s something you wanna ask me,” she said, not a question. “Just ask me.”

“Why are you here?” Penny almost shouted in her frustration. “What do you want?”

“I’ve forgotten something,” Penny’s double said, “it’s something important, and I need you to help me remember.”

“Okay,” Penny said, giving in at last. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about yourself,” the girl said. “Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

Penny talked, starting slowly and beginning with her time in San Francisco, and was soon lost in storytelling. She talked the night away in Aurora Hollow, and her strange counterpart took it all in, hungry for every word.

Penny talked until the fire burned down and the dark around them lightened, and she awoke to Susan knocking on the trap door to her room.

“Penny, wake up. Your friends are here.”

* * *

Penny had no more than swung her feet to the floor before she heard the trap door fall open and the stairs slide down to the hallway below. Ellen’s blonde head popped up into her room seconds later.

“Did you plan on sleeping until dark or what?” Ellen took four quick strides and plopped down next to Penny.

Katie’s appearance was less energetic and her demeanor much less bubbly. She tugged the sliding steps and trapdoor closed behind her, then whispered, “Michael wants to talk to us.” She looked less than thrilled by the prospect.

“What? Why?” Penny cast her thoughts back over the past few weeks in search of something, anything, they had done that might have attracted his attention. “What did we do?”

“I don’t know.” Katie’s voice was an urgent rasp. “He wanted Zoe too but I told him he was out of luck. He’s waiting for us.”

“Where?” Penny peered groggily around her room, as if expecting to see Michael crouched in a corner waiting for them. She spotted her shoes next to her dresser and shambled over to them, stepping into them while she frowned at her reflection in the mirror. She waited for a moment to see if her reflection would do anything unexpected, but it continued to frown back, so she grabbed her hair pick and started attacking her tangles.

“He wants us to meet him at Golden Arts.”

“Oh.” Penny was stuck for a more intelligible reply.

“I have a feeling Erasmus and Bowen are going to complicate things for us,” Ellen said with an uncharacteristic scowl.

“Let’s get it over with,” Penny said, starting toward the trap door.

“Going casual today, Penny?” Katie gave an amused chuckle.

Penny paused at the door to look herself over, and decided she could take a minute to change out of her rumpled pajamas.

Five minutes later she met Katie and Ellen in the second floor hallway.

“I’m taking off, Susan. When do you want me back?”

“I’ll be fine, Penny,” Susan called from her office. “Hang out with your friends today.”

They hurried to the front door, and Ellen paused to look back up the stairs before taking her wand out of her bag. She touched the door, then opened it on a view of the cluttered back room of Golden Arts.

Ellen wrinkled her nose as she stepped through. The fire that had gutted half the businesses in the downtown complex had stopped just short of the jewelry and gem shop, but there had been smoke and water damage. The place still smelled like burnt hair and plastic. Katie and Penny followed closely, and Penny swept the door closed behind them before Susan could come down and stumble upon the strange scene her open front door would have presented.

“We’re here,” Katie called out, and they heard a startled shout from the showroom.

A moment later Michael poked his head through the doorway to the back room once devoted to the bins and displays of raw minerals and uncut stones that Zoe loved so much, but which was now stacked high with boxes waiting to be unpacked.

“Why can’t you guys just get around like everyone else?” He joined them in the back room.