Phoenix
Chapter Fourteen

Sweat rolled down my face, and the air was thick with smoke. Lexia ran ahead of me, stealing glances over her shoulder.

“What’s happening?” I shouted.

Around us, the forest burned. Bright orange flames tore through the trees. The pines popped and the aspens shriveled. Something called to me from the fire around us, and it wasn’t just heat. I tried to tell myself I was imagining it, but I just wasn’t a very good liar. I focused on running.

“Since you are back with me,” Lexia said, stifling a cough, “do you think you might do something about this?”

“What?” I said. My legs pumped, straining to stay ahead of the fire. “I did this?”

“Who else?” Lexia gasped. “The trees did not light themselves.”

“I wasn’t even here,” I protested.

“Well,” she choked. “You are here now.”

“Lexia,” I coughed, “I wish I could.”

Lexia’s mouth turned in disgust and she visibly strained for more speed.

“I never thought I would be in danger of freezing and burning on the same night,” she griped.

“Look on the bright side,” I said, choking for breath. “At least you’re not cold anymore.”

“Go jump in the river,” she retorted. Sweat glistened on her cheeks in the flickering orange light. “We cannot outrun it. You really must –“

“I can’t,” I yelled. “Alright? You’ve got to get that through your head.”

“Actually,” she said calmly. “You can. And you have to get that through your head. The Darkness makes you doubt yourself. But you started this. And you can control it. If you try.”

So trying was the key? Trying?

Well, I’ll show her, I thought. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNovᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

I stopped running. The fire swooped into the trees all around me. Sweat jumped out of every pore on my body. Instantly.

“Phoenix!” Lexia screamed. I barely heard her over the roar of the flames, the cracking of the trees.

I closed my eyes, trying to center myself, trying to understand the sensory information flooding into my brain.

“Are you coming or what?” Jewel asked. I jumped. I had been ready to try to stop a wildfire and now I was here? My heart pounded wildly in my chest and the smell of smoke still stung my nose. But I was here. A jacket and slippers lay on the floor by my feet.

“Yeah,” I said, shuffling into the slippers. They were too big, of course, but they were way better than walking around outside with absolutely nothing on my feet. “Let’s go.”

We got into the blue Sentra and Jewel cranked the heater before putting the car in gear.

“You realize that’s blowing cold air, right?” I asked. It actually kind of felt good.

“Wimp,” she said. She glanced at me and hit the re-circulate button. “It’s got a fogging-up problem.”

Hoobastank pumped through the car’s stereo.

“What is it with you and the old music?” I asked.

She shrugged, but she didn’t change it. The little blue car rocketed up the road.

“So what are we going to do when we get there?” she asked me.

I looked out into the darkness and my face reflected weakly back at me in the car window. It was me, of course. But in that shadowed darkness, I could see Lexia too. I could see her in the shape of my face, of the way my cheekbones slanted to my ears, in the set of my eyes. She was my twin and, when you didn’t pay attention to our disparate coloring, we looked alike. I could almost see her there, in the shadows.

Kill her.

“I don’t know what we’ll do when we get to Pete’s,” I said. “I guess we’re going to ask him if he sees another world when he touches me.”

Jewel laughed out loud.

“That sounds so gay,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” I said. Sweat prickled all over me. “Sheesh. That has to be the world’s greatest heater.”

“He’s too cold,” she said, turning the dial. “Then he’s too hot. Is it possible to please you?”

The car still felt like an oven to me. I pushed the button to roll the window down and icy air rushed in. But I was still so hot.

“I think I’m gonna barf,” I said, leaning out the window. Jewel swerved.

“Should I stop?” she asked. I swallowed hard.

“No,” I said. “Drive faster.”

The car jumped forward. I put both of my hands out the window, trying to draw more cold air onto myself. It felt like I was cooking. Then the car skidded to a stop and the wash of icy air stopped flowing over my tortured skin.

“Stay here,” Jewel said, jumping out of the car.

I was so nauseous, I didn’t have a choice. Jewel ran up to Pete’s door and knocked. No lights were on. What time was it? Jewel folded her arms and danced a little bit to stay warm, hopping from foot to foot.

After a minute, Pete appeared at the door, dressed in a long sleeved T-shirt and warm up pants. From the car I could tell his hair was messed up. Pete must have been asleep. Jewel said something to him and he leaned forward, peering toward the car in the darkness. He nodded and disappeared back into the house. In a second, he emerged wearing a hoodie and sneakers. They ran back to the car together and Pete slid into the back seat.

“Nix,” he said, reaching forward to grab me by the shoulders. Shock jolted through me, cutting through the nausea. What had I expected? Just because he was dead in Eloria, did I expect him to be less real here? Jewel looked at me, and at him, her eyebrows raised. “Good to see you,” he said.

The nausea rolled back in. I had to keep my mouth shut. I was worried something besides words might come out if I tried to speak.

“Dude,” Pete said. “You’re burning up. Are you running a fever?”

“He could be,” Jewel said. “When I found him, he was running around outside soaking wet. In this weather.”

“What did you do?” Pete asked. “Bust out of the loony bin?”

Jewel shot him an angry look over her shoulder. I just shrugged.

“No way, Nix,” Pete laughed, pounding the back of the seat in excitement. “You really broke out of the loony bin, didn’t you? This calls for a celebration. Let’s go get some breakfast at Shari’s!”

“Pete,” Jewel chided. “He’s obviously sick. I should just take him home.”

“No,” I said. Nothing followed the word out of my mouth so I decided to try a couple more words. “We have to get to the red desert. In Utah. To save Light.”

I closed my eyes against the nausea and my skin seared in sudden heat. The roar of silence enveloped me. Sparks from the burning forest around me seared into my skin. I opened my eyes.

The heat rolled into me like an ocean wave. The flames crept closer, cutting off the path, cutting off any hope of escape.

I had to stop the fire, or die.

If I die here, I wondered. Will I just live in the real world like Pete and not have to worry about this place anymore?

It would be nice to let it all go. To just be a regular kid. No more crazy. No more Lexia. No more voices—

A pine tree exploded like a firework, the cones bursting into the air like miniature bombs. Flecks and cinders pelted my face, singeing and burning. I shied away from them.

That is what the Darkness wants, I realized. The Darkness wants me to forget what I am, who I am. The Darkness wants there to be no more Lexia, no more Eloria, no more Light.

I will not give the Darkness what it wants.

I tried to remember being able to feel the fire. What had it felt like? I tried to draw the memory, the feeling, from my mind, to immerse myself in it, to be the person who could remember it. The heat of the fire bore down on me, and my body drank it in like remembering how it felt to feel the heat of the sun on my skin after the coldest winter. The fire grew around me.

My fists bloodied themselves against the cabin’s smoldering walls. Pine trees exploded like fireworks. And screaming. My ears filled with screaming. I could not get her out.

“Phoenix!” Lexia screamed. But this time it was no memory. Her shriek brought me back to where I was and what I was doing. Absolutely nothing. “No,” Lexia said, taking my face in her hands. She stared at me with her silver eyes. “No, it never happened.”

I breathed out, pushing the memory away. I could feel Lexia’s hands on my face, sweat streaming down my back. This was real.

I had to believe this was real. I had to be Phoenix of Eloria, or we would die.

There’s fire in my soul, I realized. Fire is my soul.

I breathed in. I had been here before, facing death in fire. I had conquered it then, I would conquer it now. The air scorched as I breathed it in. But as I drew that breath in, the heat felt right somehow. I flexed my scarred hands, spreading the fingers wide. My eyes traced the scars, my mind wandering despite the flames bearing down. I heard the voice of memory in my head. The words begged to be spoken.

“I am Phoenix of Eloria,” I heard myself say. I said it, my lips remembered the shape of the words as though I’d spoken them before.

I will not die here.

My fists clenched and something in me clenched too.

The flames winked out and shadowed darkness overtook my vision. I was back in Jewel’s car, staring out the window. I breathed out and fog shrouded the glass.

“NIx?” Jewel asked. I looked over at her. The darkness outside outlined her strawberry hair and her fair-skinned face was paler for it.

“What?” I said.

“What just happened there?” she asked. “You went all still and then it’s like you went to sleep with your eyes open.”

“I’m fine,” I said. And I really was. The heat was gone. The nausea was gone.

“Dude,” Pete said, “Is it suddenly colder in here?” He reached between the front seats to turn the dial on the heater. Hot air blasted over me, but it didn’t seem that hot.

Not after what I had just endured.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To get some food,” Jewel said uncertainly glancing at me.

“No,” I said. “We’ve got to go south. To Utah.”

“What?” Pete said leaning forward between the seats. “You’re kidding, right? He’s kidding.”

“Why do you think I’m kidding?” I asked. Pete stiffened. I grabbed his hand on the seat, and he jerked it back. “What did you see?” I asked. Pete licked his lips and looked from me to Jewel.

“Nix,” he said. “Maybe we should take you back—“

“Listen to me, Pete!” I shouted. “We’ve got to get to the red desert in Utah. That’s where she took the Scepter. It’s the only way to make it all stop.”

I saw Pete and Jewel glance at each other with matching questioning expressions, but I didn’t care.

“Scepters?” Pete asked. “Make what stop?”

“The switching,” I said. “I can’t take the switching back and forth any more. I need to be in just one place.”

“What does that even mean?” Jewel said. I realized we were heading back across the bridge. That was the wrong way.

“Jewel,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Checkers,” she said. “By Hastings.”

“Oh, by the hospital?” I asked. She was taking me back there. Despite what had happened earlier, she believed I was crazy. Her blue car moving through the empty streets back to the psych ward proved that.

“NIx,” she said. “You’ve got to go back. You should hear yourself.”

“You need help,” Pete said.

“I do need help,” I said, but I didn’t mean the type of help they did. I needed them to help me get to Utah, to help me find Light. But I needed to convince them Eloria was real, I needed to show them in a way they couldn’t deny. What could I do? Could I light the air on fire? I had managed to stop the forest fire in Eloria, but summoning fire here...fire anywhere...The thought still made my hands sweat.

Maybe Lexia could come. They would see her, I was sure. I felt like they were no more here, no more a part of this world that I was.

“Lexia!” I yelled. Jewel and Pete both jumped when I yelled, the car jerking to the side before straightening. “Lexia, you better help me out here!”

Automatically I looked to the only place in the car where she could appear, the empty seat beside Pete. I couldn’t help but see Pete’s face. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging slightly open.

Lexia didn’t appear.

We were only a couple of lights away from the hospital. Something had to happen fast, or I would never get to that scene Lucius had showed me while he lay dying, that canyon in Utah.

Oh my crap, I thought. I really am crazy. I’m trying to convince them that Eloria is real. But somehow I couldn’t stop.

Show them, Lexia’s voice said. I looked around the car for her, but she wasn’t there. Maybe she didn’t have enough energy left to come to me.

“Jewel,” I said. “What do you see when we touch?” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she swallowed.

“Whoa,” Pete said. “I don’t want to know.” I reached back and punched Pete in the shoulder.

“Tell him,” I said to Jewel. Her eyes flitted up to the rearview mirror and then back to the road.

“I see another world.” She said. “A place I’ve never been.”

“Still don’t want to know,” Pete sing-songed.

“She sees the place we are all from,” I said.

“East Wenatchee?” Pete asked.

“Eloria,” I said, turning around to look at Pete.

Pete stared back at me with blank blue eyes. He looked up at the rearview mirror.

“We have to get him back to the hospital,” Pete said.

“Come on, Pete,” I said. “Aren’t you the one who wanted magic to be real? Magic is real in Eloria, but we have to find Light and get it back there before all the elves die.”

“He’s serious?” Pete asked Jewel. She nodded and he looked back to me.

“Jewel sees it,” I said, but Jewel was shaking her head.

“I see something,” she said. “But I don’t know anything about magic or elves.”

“But you see another world when I touch you,” I protested. “You see something. Shouldn’t that be a pretty good indication?”

“Of what?” Pete asked. His eyes met mine in the rear view mirror.

“A pretty good indication that none of this is real,” I said.

There. I’d said it.

The car screeched and skidded to a stop.

“You’re...not...serious,” Pete breathed.

“He’s totally serious,” Jewel said, her eyes met Pete’s in the rearview mirror. Her lips drew downward, her face grew heavy with concern. His face matched hers.

They thought I was crazy.

“Can’t you see it?” I asked, slightly hurt. “This place, this life, isn’t real. The color drained from Pete’s face.

“Holy crap,” Jewel said, turning to me. Her mouth hung open.

“So we’re all hallucinating,” Pete said leaning forward between the seats.

“Kind of,” I said. “I think this world might be real. Maybe a different plane of existence or dimension or something, but I’m not really here.”

“You’re…not….really here?” Pete said.

“No, I mean, I am here,” I said. “Whatever here is. But not really here. I’m somewhere else and this is just a lie.”

Did they believe me?

Did it matter if they did? No matter that the longer I talked, the dumber this all seemed. I was finally beginning to believe me.

My vision turned, twisting away from my friends staring at me in the dark car. I blinked to clear it and saw ash raining down.

My other friends, the real ones, stood in the night just beyond the smoking trees. I walked toward them through falling black ash, like dark snow drifting on the still-warm air.

“You did it!” Lexia said, throwing her arms around me.

I pushed back from her a little bit, looking down into her gleaming silver eyes. It was good to see hope there. Lexia’s still-damp clothes steamed a little. Soot streaked her face with black lines and covered her clothes. She looked at me, her mouth pulled down at the corners.

“Took you long enough,” she said.

“So?” I asked, looking at the burned trees and the sorry state of our clothes. The air began to cool, gusting ash. “We have no supplies. We have no horses. I’m not sure I wanna stick around with you. At least in the psych ward they feed me.”

“Verily?” Lexia asked.

“Never mind,” I said. “What do we do now?”

“Sleep or walk,” Lexia said. “Our journey is not yet complete.”

“Let’s walk,” I said. Exhaustion rolled through me like fog in the valley, but I couldn’t imagine lying down to sleep in a place where we had almost died. I ignored the way my damp clothes cooled against my spider-bitten skin and started walking.

“Phoenix,” Lexia called. “Wrong way.”

“Okay,” I said. “You lead. Let’s get moving.”

“Why didn’t you come?” I asked Lexia. A chill that had nothing to do with wet clothes swept through me. Couldn’t she hear me calling for her? I could have convinced Jewel and Pete to help me get to Utah if they had seen her.

“I am weakening,” Lexia said quietly. She walked far enough ahead of me that I shouldn’t have been able to hear her, but her quiet voice was strong. “And the Darkness only grows stronger.”

“How are we going to get to Utah?” I asked. The charred forest was silent beneath our feet. An icy gust of wind swirled flurries of ash into the air. “It’s not even in this world.”

“I do not know,” Lexia said.

“Then what are we doing?” I asked. “Why don’t we go back to the fortress and figure things out?”

“We lack the time,” she said. “And my heart tells me the answer lies to the south. You described a red desert?”

“Yes,” I said, the vista sweeping through my head again. “But what good will it do? The Scepter isn’t even in this world.”

“I do not know,” she said, watching ash puff up around her boots. “But it is the only thing I can think to try.”

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