A Phoenix Anew

A Phoenix Anew
by Sara King

Jilan stood on the cold edge of the cliff, staring down at the abyss only inches from her bloody toes.  Her ankles, still scabbed over from the rawhide ropes her captors had cruelly twisted around them, wobbled slightly as they kept her balance, stubbornly refusing to send her over the edge. 

But she would go over the edge.  Her pursuers were close--she could hear their dogs over the last ridge--and he refused to let them find her again, whatever the other captives said.  She didn’t care if being chattel in the city would be different than being chattel to a dozen cruel, laughing, soulless murderers.  A few more breaths on the bosom of the Earth Mother was not worth that sort of Hell. 

Jilan took another deep breath and shuddered.  Her entire naked body was covered in goosebumps, and every gust of snow-flavored wind from the mountain slopes behind her was nudging her back gently towards the edge.

Just let go, the wind seemed to say to her.  It will be over soon.

But her raw feet remained tightly in place, her blood-caked wrists clinging fiercely to her sides.  Something within her refused to let go.  Her entire life, she had been taught that to take one’s own life was a coward’s way out.  A true warrior in spirit, her father had said, would face her fears.

She knew her father had never been tied to a tree and raped.

Still, looking at the drop below, she knew she was choosing between two hells.  The first, a detestable place where her life had no meaning, her body no longer her own.  The second, a place of eternal sorrow, where she would never meet her ancestors because she had not died a warrior’s death.

Behind her, Jilan heard her pursuers scrambling over the loose rocks.  Her heart gave a terrified spasm and she looked over her shoulder.

Two dirty, hulking slavers, their bright-eyed beasts straining at the edges of their leashes, tongues lolling at her, had slowed twenty feet away.  One laughed and said something in his harsh language.  The tone said all she needed to know.

Coward.

She was a coward.  Even with them there, leering at her, knowing they’d have her body again mercilessly the moment she stepped from the edge, she was unable to take the plunge.

Coward.

Her heart ached with every beat, the searing pain of her true nature climbing through her freezing tissue, sending spikes of agony through her limbs.  All she had to do was step away.  One step...

Jilan lifted her foot and the laughter behind her went silent.  She took a deep breath, but when she looked down, the sudden realization of the distance of the drop left her dizzy.  She gasped and fell to one knee, fingers clutching the edge, heart hammering against her eardrums.

Behind her, one of the slavers began to laugh again, and she heard the crunch of boots against loose stone as the other began to approach.

He’s coming, a terrified part of her whispered.  Just do it.  You don’t want to go back.  They’ll make an example of you.

But as much as she tried, she couldn’t tear her fingers from the ledge.

The footsteps grew closer.  Fifteen feet.  Then six.  Then three.

Go! her mind screamed.

The booted footsteps stopped behind her, and Jilan closed her eyes and prayed the ancestors would forgive her cowardice.

A moment later, a big hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her back.  The force with which she was pulled drew her fingers from the ledge and left her sprawled on the sharp rocks, staring up at the big man who had spent many an hour at her tree.

He gave her a malicious grin and flicked a tuft of long black hair from his fingers.  He leaned down on one knee and spoke softly, though there was no mercy in his eyes.  Only anger--and promise.

Jilan stared past his face, into the blue sky above. 

Coward.  This time it was her father’s familiar voice speaking in low notes of condemnation.  You let your village die, let them take you captive and couldn’t even bring yourself to die the death you deserve.  Coward.  The Mountain Gods do not allow themselves to become chattel.  Better to die first, than let them take you from your homeland.

Jilan closed her eyes against the tears, remembering.  “I couldn’t stop them,” she whispered, feeling the agony of her cowardice in her chest.  “They hit me over the head, Papa.  I woke in bonds.”

You could if you’d tried, her father’s voice retorted in her mind.  We are descended of the Mountain Gods.  We do not bend our will to fear of a whip.  We die first.

“Papa,” Jilan whimpered.  “I never had the choice.”

The barbarian looming above her laughed, obviously taking her tears for an apology.  He reached a dirty hand down for her wrist.

A flash of light in the sky above set the mountainside--which was set in shadows at this time of morning--into sudden, searing color.  The slaver paused and looked up, a puzzled look on his greasy face.  The dogs, which had been panting before, now began to whine.  The other slaver began to curse and scrabble against the slope.

Then a flash of heat and the dogs went silent.

Above her, the slaver’s hand tightened around her wrist in a painful grip.  He spat and cursed in his alien tongue, then yanked her up toward him, even as he took a step backwards.

Backwards?  Jilan sat up, eyes searching the sky for the source of his fear.  She found nothing.  The second slaver and the dogs were gone, the air filled with grayish dust where they had been.

Then she saw it.  Like a sliver of the sun, it arced backwards toward their ledge, wings pummeling the air with fingers of flame.  Searing yellow eyes that glowed beneath moving, twisting feathers of red and orange fire, it fanned its wings backwards and alighted where the second slaver had stood.

The ancient firebird was a dozen feet tall, showering the mountainside in vibrant color as if it were the sun itself.  Jilan had to raise a trembling hand against her face, to protect her eyes.

The sheer heat emanating off the creature left her skin feeling dry and brittle, like she’d spent too much time in front of a bonfire.  Where its head-sized feet clasped the stone, the rock had begun to melt and pool around its blood-red talons.  It folded its wings and watched them.

The slaver gripping Jilan’s wrist cursed and grabbed a rock at his feet.  He wrenched Jilan to her feet and lobbed it at the creature’s head.

Before it hit, the rock dissolved against the creature’s body, orange droplets running down its feathers as water off those of a lake bird.  It opened its fiery orange beak--curved in the deadly shape of an eagle--and Jilan could sense laughter in its sun-yellow eyes.

The bird un-flexed a foot and its toes made tiny suctioning sounds as its talons popped loose from the stone.

Then it stepped toward them, eyes filled with evil intent, and Jilan completely forgot about the cliff at her back.  She, like the slaver, backed away, her heart hammering in terror.

It burned them, she realized, her horror building as she remembered the dusty gray ash filtering to the ground.  One second they were there, the next they were dust.

Her people had told stories of these creatures, of the phoenix.  Only two ever existed at a time, and they hated humans.  They would kill them on sight, sometimes sparing them long enough to roast their flesh and devour their bodies whole.

Jilan’s terror was real when she took another step back and ran into the chest of the slaver.  As soon as she felt her naked flesh make contact with his ill-kept, stinking body, her disgust returned her to her senses.  She glanced down at the edge of the cliff, realizing it was all too close, now.  She pulled away and tried to yank her wrist from the slaver’s hand.

The slaver refused to let go.  Worse, he yanked her toward him, closer to the edge, and cuffed her upon the head as he shouted something at the great bird.

On the mountainside, the phoenix had frozen in place, watching them.  The intelligence in the sun-bright eyes was unmistakable.  They flickered to Jilan, then remained locked on the slaver’s.

Release her.

The sound came not as a voice, but as an essence in her mind, transcending language altogether, rattling her inner brain with the voice of the gods.  Even though the words were directed at the slaver, Jilan trembled with their power.

The slaver began to laugh.  Not the laugh of a man enamored with Life, but rather the laugh of someone looking at the end of it.  He pulled Jilan closer and she heard rocks scraping as his feet moved out over the edge.  Wrapping his big arm underneath her breasts, he cinched her body tight to his and shouted at the creature.

Then he pulled her backwards.

And backwards.

With horror, Jilan realized they were falling.  She scrambled and strained to make a grab for the edge of the cliff as it passed, but her fingers would not hold.  The last thing she saw before the abyss claimed her was the phoenix surging forward across the barren slopes, toward them.

#

Jilan opened her eyes to a cloudless blue sky.  She had a brief, horrible memory of falling, of tumbling against jagged outcroppings, and then nothingness.  A dream?

She sat up and her hands touched something cold and soft.

The slaver’s face stared back at her beneath her fingers, icy blue eyes wide and focused on the sky, his face gray and dead.

Jilan screamed and lurched away from him, scrambling over the fallen rocks that marked the bottom of the cliff.  Panting, she stared at the slaver’s mangled, broken body, then up at the jagged fall that had caused it.

She could not have survived that fall.  Not unscathed.  Not when his entire body was a pathetic lump of torn and unnatural angles.

Further, when she looked at where the rope had burned into her skin, the bloody marks had completely disappeared.  Even the old scar over her heart--a near miss from an enemy warrior’s arrow--had vanished.

Puzzling over this, Jilan realized the shadow-covered stone under her hands was warm.

Not just warm, but hot.

Gasping, she skirted away, stunned to find the footprint of a great eagle melted into the stone.  The footprints led from a great rock a few dozen feet away, and proceeded directly to where Jilan and the slaver had lain.

The footsteps that departed, however, were human.

Jilan could see the five individual toes, the balls of the feet, the arches--all molded into solid stone like it had been clay.  As they continued, they grew more shallow, as if there were less weight pressing them down, until they disappeared entirely.  She was staring at this, trying to decipher it, when someone cleared his throat nearby.

“Hi.”

Jilan all but jumped out of her skin.  Swiveling, her eyes came to rest on a man squatting in the shadows between the boulders.  His skin seemed discolored somehow, almost as if he had red, orange, and yellow flames tattooed over his skin.  But they weren’t tattoos.  They were moving.  They also held a general pattern, like jagged, flaming feathers. 

Oh gods, she thought.  It’s the phoenix.

“Thought you could use some help,” the creature--man?--said.  He gave her a sheepish smile.  “Didn’t mean to send you over the cliff.” 

Jilan took a step backwards, remembering the stories, horrified.

“Wait,” he cried.  He got up out of his crouch and lifted a hand towards her.  Out of the shadows, his hair shone alternately yellow, red, and orange in the light, as if it couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be.

He wasn’t completely naked--she saw he had stripped the leggings from the slaver and put them on himself--but the skin that did touch the sun glittered metallic in the light.

Jilan lowered herself behind a boulder, until only her head was exposed.  “You’re the phoenix,” she whispered.

He looked just as nervous as she felt.  “When I choose to be,” he said.  Then, glancing at the ledge high above them, he said, “So, uh, how do you feel?”

“Better,” Jilan managed.  “Did I really fall?”

The phoenix nodded, and when he did, his hair moved with a life of its own, like the pull of Mother Earth had lost all control over it.  For a moment, it looked like flames dancing around his skull.

“And you healed me?”

“Yes.”

Jilan stared in awe, knowing her mouth was falling open, yet not caring.

The phoenix gave a nervous laugh and combed his hair back into place with his fingers.  “Sorry.”  When he lowered his hands, she saw traces of ethereal fire along the edges of his arms, where the moving feathers seemed to flow off his skin and kiss the air.

Now that she was steady enough to look, she saw that his eyes began yellow at the pupil, then faded to orange, red, and then purple where the iris touched the whites.

It was too much.  Heart hammering, Jilan said, “What do you want?”

The phoenix flinched.  “Nothing.”  He said it too quickly, like a child caught in a lie.  Then he winced.  “Well, that’s a lie.  I do want something.  I was going to offer to walk you back home, if that’s what you want, but I had a favor to ask of you beforehand.”

“What?” Jilan asked.

“Help me build a pyre.”

When Jilan only stared at him, the phoenix quickly continued, “I’m growing old, and it’s my time to renew.  I need someone I can trust to help me--I can’t do it alone...” 

“Why not?” Jilan asked, enraptured by the glittering threads of fire working their way over his body.  Looking upon a being like this, she could imagine him capable of anything.

He actually smiled at her, and when he did, the light seemed to increase around him.  “Because burning to death hurts like hell, and it’s hard to hold still.”  Then he lowered his gaze to his fingers.  “That, and I’m terrified of fire.”

Jilan blinked, remembering the stories.  Terrified of...fire?  “Don’t you have priests who can help you?”

The phoenix’s smile left him instantly, darkening like a thunderhead.  He made a fist and his hair began to flow around his face again, flickering with ethereal sparks.  “The last time I went to a priest, instead of putting me in the pyre, they put me in an iron box and sold me to an emperor’s menagerie.  I spent thirty years in darkness before he grew tired of me and tried to sell me to a neighboring prince.  They had grown lax in their precautions to keep me in darkness, however, thinking the thirty years had ‘tamed’ me.  I escaped and killed them both.  Slowly.”

“Oh.”  Jilan swallowed, feeling the phoenix’s rage the way a dog pup would sense the rage of a rabid wolf.  Then the full meaning of his words hit home.  “So you want me to burn you?”

His gaze returned to her and instantly, his hair stopped flowing, fear evident in his eyes.  “Yes.”

“Because you’re old.”

“Yes.”

Jilan could find no normal signs of age upon his body.  His hair held no hint of gray, his bones were not thick with arthritis, his face seemed ageless.  “How old?”

“This life?”  He smiled at her, and air about him once more brightened.  “Five hundred and thirty two.”

“Why?” she asked.  “What good would it do?”

He sighed, for the first time the stress of nerves leaving his face as he looked up at the sky.  “It’s a return to the Source, a meshing of pure Element that I cannot accomplish in this fleshy body.  A rejuvenation.  A rebirth.”

At that, Jilan realized she was being asked to partake in something incredibly special, something that only happened once in twenty generations.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered.

The phoenix relaxed, the tension leaving his muscles, the ethereal feathers flowing more easily across his skin.  “Thank you.”  He glanced at the sun as it made its way to the horizon.  “Then let us get this over with.  Come.  I’ll repay you well afterwards.”

“You already have,” Jilan said.  But when the phoenix turned to go, she followed, stopping only long enough to strip the slaver of his filthy shirt. 

“I have something you could wear in my home,” the phoenix said, turning back to watch her.

“He owes me this much,” Jilan replied, jerking the shirt free.  She pulled it over her head to lock out the chill.  Then, without looking back, she said, “Let’s go.”

The phoenix took her up a winding stream that led up amongst the crags and rocks, then into a depression in the rock carved by the water.  As they ducked inside, what at first appeared to be a small depression turned into a cathedral-like cave.

In its center, near the pool carved by the stream, a pile of dead trees, dry branches, and weather-beaten logs was piled almost to the ceiling.

“I thought you needed help building it,” Jilan said, a bit taken aback.

The phoenix laughed, his nerves obviously returning.  “I’ve had it built for awhile, now.  I’ve just been looking for someone to light it.”

In various places around the cave, she saw scorch marks and vast piles of ash in dozens of mounds.  Some had footprints scattered through them, both bird and man.  When her eyes leveled on one of the larger piles, the phoenix gave another nervous smile.  “Failed attempts,” he said.

With his bare toes, the nails orange-red and ending in wisplike, ethereal talons, the phoenix nudged a coil of thick hemp rope on the floor near the door.  Beside the rope were torches, flint, a good knife, and open barrels of oil.  “Implements of my demise,” he said, then gave an unhappy laugh.  Looking at her, he said, “Are you ready?”

Jilan nodded.

The phoenix bent and swept up the coil of rope into a hand.  “Then come with me,” he said, moving towards the enormous pyre.  Jilan stayed where she was, watching him, thinking about the oil.  He wants me to burn him, she thought, getting a sickly feeling in her stomach.  As Jilan watched, the phoenix began to climb the mass, to the man-sized wooden platform at the top.  Once there, he sat down and made an encouraging gesture, patting the logs beside him.  “Come on,” he called down to her.  “It’ll be fine--you won’t light it until later.”

Jilan did as she was bid, though her body was beginning to balk at the thought of what was to come.

“Good,” the phoenix said, once she had come abreast of him.  He measured out a length of rope and started winding it around his ankles.  Pulling it tight, he pulled himself onto the platform and held the remainder out to her.  “You’ll need to bind my hands well, then loop it around the platform a few times to keep me from rolling off.”

Taking the rope, Jilan balked at the fiery feathers glittering along his hands.  “No offense intended, Great One, but what will keep you from...”

“Retaking my natural form and burning the whole cave--including you--to ashes in my fury?” he supplied, grinning sheepishly.

Blushing, Jilan said, “Yes.”

“I’ve cut myself off from my Element,” the phoenix said.  “I won’t be able to take my fire-form until I again stand in the light of the sun.”

Automatically, Jilan glanced at the tiny entrance to the cave, far across the room.

“So you see,” the phoenix said, gently pushing the rope back into her hands, “My fate is in your hands.”  He smiled, but there was pain there, and fear.

“Why don’t you get the other phoenix to do it?” she whispered, still hesitating.

His face darkened with visible pain.  “The priests sold us both to the same menagerie, but she couldn’t stand the darkness.  Not for so many years.  She stole a dagger and killed herself in that dank pit, and refused to let me heal her.”

His fingers, Jilan noticed, were trembling.

“I’m sorry,” Jilan whispered.  “Does that mean you’re the last of your kind?”

The phoenix’s eyes flickered to her, then he nodded.  “For now.”

“And you would trust me with this?  After all that?”  She looked down at the rope.  “A stranger?”

“I have to,” he said.  “I have no one else, and I’ve never quite been able to master the instinct of self-preservation.”  He gave a nervous grin.

Looking down at the rope in her hands, remembering the cold stone of the cliff at her feet, Jilan knew exactly what he was talking about.  “Okay.”

The phoenix held out his wrists to her.  “Be sure to get them tight.”  The anxiety had returned to his face, and once more, Jilan realized just how vulnerable this glorious creature was making himself.  It humbled her.

“I’ll take good care of you,” she whispered.

The phoenix laughed, startling her.  “I’m hoping you’ll kill me,” he said, his hair flowing around him in ethereal waves.  Then, grinning, he said, “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

Jilan began winding the ropes around the creature’s wrists, and the phoenix shook his head.  “Gotta be tighter than that.”  When she took them apart and began to rewind them, he shook his head again.  “Imagine I’m that big bastard on the cliff and you’ve got me at your mercy.  Make it that tight, okay?”

Meeting his gaze, Jilan saw the honesty there.  Jilan closed her eyes and pulled the rope tight.  She imagined it sinking into the thick, muscled wrists of the man who had tied her to a tree.  Tighter and tighter, tugging until she could imagine blood seeping from the skin of the slaver’s wrists. 

The phoenix hissed, and suddenly Jilan was brought back to the present.  She froze, realizing her bonds had turned his glittering fingers purple.  “Sorry,” she whispered, backing away.

“No!” the phoenix cried, desperation in his voice, “No, finish it.”

Reluctantly, Jilan tied the knot and backed away.

Using his knees and elbows, the phoenix levered himself lengthwise onto the platform and lay down.

“Okay,” he said, “A wrap or two around the throat, another around the torso, and one around the feet.”

Jilan did what she was asked.  But, when told to fetch the oil, she paused in the doorway and hesitated, not liking the thought of what was to come.

“You still there?”  The phoenix’s voice sounded ragged with fear from the top of the platform. 

“Yes,” Jilan said, climbing up beside him.

The phoenix took a ragged breath, though his hair was once more flickering around him with the strength of his unease.  His multi-hued eyes fell on her with relief.  “Keep...”  She saw him lick his lips.  “Keep talking to me, will you?”

He’s terrified of fire.  Jilan nodded.  “So what are you going to look like when this is all over?” she asked, beginning to sprinkle oil over the platform and its occupant.

“Before or after I hatch?” he asked.  His voice was calm, but his breath was coming more quickly and he was beginning to strain unconsciously against the ropes, twisting his hands back and forth.

Watching this, Jilan paused in the pouring of the oil.

“Keep going!” he snapped.  Then his face softened with dual guilt and fear.  “Please.  The faster this is over, the better.”

Jilan believed him.  She dumped the rest of that pot and went back for the rest.

Once both phoenix and its pyre were soaked, she went for the flint and tinder.  From atop the platform, she heard panting gasps that ended in whimpers.  Biting her lip, she climbed back to the top of the platform and, as the phoenix’s eyes rolled toward her in fear, she touched his arm.

“Are you sure?” she whispered.

This time, he didn’t respond--he merely squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

Her soul ached for him.  Jilan climbed back to the bottom and began settling the tinder under the sticks.  Then, at the sound of her knife scraping across the flint, the phoenix gasped and began to babble like a terrified child to let her down.

Blinking against tears, Jilan struck the flint three more times, until a tiny spark caught the fluffy bark and began to ignite.  Above her, the phoenix continued to beg. 

Then it began to scream.  It was an otherworldly sound, the sound of an eagle in terror.  Jilan almost stamped the tiny flames out at that point, her soul torn.  The first wisps of smoke were working their way up through the logs, settling under the roof of the cave, right above the phoenix’s head.

Then, seeing the flames would catch, Jilan turned and ran.

She followed the creek downward, into the canyon, and stayed there, scavenging food from mice and lizards, sleeping in the sandy riverbed for six days until she was sure the fire had run its course.

When she returned, there was a new pile of ash on the floor of the cave.  Unlike the others, however, when she stuck her fingers into its warm depths, she found something hard inside.

She retrieved a spherical stone the size of both fists put together.  Even in the cave’s weak light, it glittered metallic copper, bronze, and gold.  Lifting it was difficult, because it weighed more than gold.  Almost as much as a man.

Knowing instinctively it needed the sun, she dragged it outside and set it upon a rock facing the sunset.  Then she sat down to wait.

As the sun passed its zenith and the first rays of light touched its glittering surface, the rock began to change shape.

It grew, gaining size and color, thin hairline cracks taking on a fiery hue as something burned it from the inside.  The air around it began to heat, and, throwing up her arm, Jilan lunged from her seat and backed away.

All at once, the rock exploded outwards in all directions, and the creature that emerged was the same that had sent her over the cliff the week before.

Beholding this one, however, was like gazing upon the sun-god himself.  Its feathers now luminesced with a metallic sheen, each individual fiber alive with ethereal energy.  The phoenix spread its wings toward the sun and the sight was so beautiful that Jilan had to sink to her knees or weep.

Then, slowly, the phoenix’s body began to shift, the light draining into the air around it.  Its wings seemed to fold in on themselves, leaving thin arms and legs.  The arms and legs of a man.

This time, there was no mistaking the glittering markings across his skin.  They glowed with otherworldly fire, and a sense of newness emanated off of him so powerful she felt that she herself could be revived.  The ethereal feathers that had once been vague--more something to catch from the corner of the eye than something that could be seen directly--were now bold and vibrant in the air around him, moving with his every breath.

Jilan bent her head toward the ground, knowing she was looking upon something mortals were not meant to behold.

The phoenix stepped forward and knelt in front of her, and she felt the energy of the spirit-feathers as they brushed her, leaving her feeling fresh and renewed.  Their touch was like sipping from the pool of Life itself.  Jilan held her breath in a gasp.

The phoenix’s finger touched her chin, and drew her face up to face him.

Jilan was surprised to see him smiling.

“Thank you,” the phoenix said.

The words touched her as if they had come from Father Sun himself.  She felt her breath burn in her chest, her blood racing in her fingertips.  She could only swallow, speechless.

“And now,” the phoenix said, “Are you ready for your reward?”

She nodded, unable to do anything else.

“Take off your shirt, so the sun can reach you.”

“My shirt?”  Jilan looked down, feeling a brief stab of panic.  She hadn’t been naked since the slavers had taken her, yet the look in the phoenix’s eyes, the absolute trust and peace there, drew away her worries and her fear subsided in the sheer power vibrating around her.  She did as she was asked.

The phoenix took the sides of her head in his hands, then leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers.

In that instant, it was like something within her rushed out, and something else--something a thousand times more powerful--rushed in to take its place.  She felt it flood through her head, down her spine, into her legs and organs.  Her fingers started to vibrate.  Her very essence felt like pure, cleansing, liquid fire.

And then she saw the lines begin to form on her skin, the fiery traces of feathers spreading outward from her solar plexus, across her breasts, down her arms, up her neck.  Tendrils of ethereal fire spread out behind her arms, quivering with her every breath.  She felt the same energy flood into her hair, giving it life.

Jilan could only stare at the phoenix as he leaned away.  He smiled at her.  “I’ll walk you home now, if you like.”

Staring down at the glowing feathers coursing over her skin, Jilan couldn’t speak.

Taking her hands gently in his own, the phoenix helped her to stand.  “You will be all right?”

“I’m...”  Jilan swallowed, looked into his eyes, trying to regroup her thoughts.  “I’m a...phoenix? she whispered, quietly, so as not to offend the gods at such a gross mistake.

He kissed her forehead again.  “I hope this is reward enough for the boon you’ve given me?”

Jilan could only nod.  All she could manage to say was, “How?”

The phoenix gestured at the rock around them.  “You descended from mountain gods.  I sensed their blood flowing in you the moment I saw you.  It acted as a conduit for the energy, like a bed for a river.”  He looked back at her.  “So it was for more than one reason I asked you to help me.” 

“So you wouldn't be the last of your kind.”

He gave a shy look at the ground.  “Not anymore."  He gave her a nervous look.  "I hope you're not angry?"

"Angry?" she whispered.  What he had given her was beyond anger.  It was a rebirth, a new life, a new state of being.

"I sensed the immortal blood in you and knew I had to act," he said, his words speeding up in apology.  "I couldn’t have passed on the gift in my old state.  It must be done when I’m fresh.  I can still take it back--you have until the sun rises into its zenith tomorrow before you have to decide.”  The look he gave her was one of agony.  "I just wanted to give you a taste before you made the decision..."

He doesn't want to be alone again, she thought.  Her heart went out to him.  Jilan touched his hand.  "I'm not angry."

He exhaled, his face slack with relief.  "Thank you."

But Jilan's mind was remembering another myth, the myth that the phoenix’s boon could only be given to one with a warrior’s spirit.  Even now, after everything, the gods had deemed her worthy of this gift?  It was like a balm on her soul, soothing all the fears that her ancestors had abandoned her.  All she had to do was gaze upon the golden lines upon her flesh and know the truth.

“It will take some getting used to,” she whispered.

He smiled at her and took her hand.  “You’ll have time.  I promise you that.”


(5300 Words)


-Sara King
http://www.kingfiction.com

Author’s Note:  This was a rush-job, and I’m thinking this needs a lot more time and length than I’ve given it.  I’m definitely interested in hearing ideas on how to draw more emotion into the scenes, and whether or not the story should be expanded further.  Thanks for reading!