Stop!
You think to flee the burning behind, but look ahead of you. You are between two fires now. Dismount! Sit! Here, some of the cordial of the Felicitous Land. Yes, I have been there, and returned. Mmph. Strong, but it is nothing to the fire that is coming. Sit down. I have a tale to tell. I have been to hunt the Phoenix, and it has cost me dear.
You will say, that a man sent by our Princeps—ah, the late Princeps, you say? May his divine memory be exalted! Or is it: may his damnable memory be execrated! Or has it not yet been decided?
Anyway, you will say that a man sent by our late Princeps to bring the unique and wondrous and purely fictitious Phoenix back alive to the City, that its living flesh might be tasted by the royal tongue grown bored of the flesh of beasts and men, that such a man has no cause to complain of cost if he still lives. You will say the probable outcome of such a quest is that he will return empty-handed to be flayed alive to the sound of lyres while the Princeps smiles. Or, if he is luckier, he will wander the waterless hills of the Felicitous Land where the Phoenix is said to dwell, until he dies in agony of heat and thirst. No. What happened to me was more terrible. I found the Phoenix, or it found me, and I was changed.
I will tell you how. Fear no windblown sparks! You are in the safest place you could be now. That is not saying much, but it is so. You know this emblem? Yes, Captain of the Guard I am, or was. No, do not bow. The Captain of the Guard is—must be—the worst man in the City. If I were still the Captain I would not merit your homage, and as I am no longer, I do not wish it.
Now, to my tale. One evening I stood watch at the bacchanal of the Princeps. Yes, I watched. One gets numb. You breathe the charnel air of the tomb awhile and you forget what clean air is. You stare at a terrible thing long enough and it stops looking so terrible. You participate in the terrible thing and it becomes nothing more than the air you breathe. I see you know what I am talking about, Citizen. We do such injury to our souls just to keep breathing bad air.
The Princeps, after witnessing the debasement and massacre of those his whimsy touched, was polishing off a plate of peacocks’ tongues and listening to an old song about the Phoenix. He paused with the last of the birds’ tongues on his own, and said, “I wonder.” Everyone stopped. These were the most dreadful words that could be heard in the Princep’s court.
“I wonder how the flesh of the Phoenix tastes. May its properties be passed to the one who consumes it? If there is only one Phoenix-substance in the world, eternal and eternally renewed, might I, by consuming it, become also eternal and eternally renewed?”
The chamber was silent. The Princeps laughed and his gaze fell on me. I had spent my eight years as Captain trying very hard to prevent that divine gaze from falling on me.
Why then did I seek such a position? Ah, my friend. Have another drink. Would you believe that I once loved the City and wished to protect it? No? Well, by this time, I loved nothing and wished to protect nothing. But once, the City, glory, duty, had been all to me.
“Rufus! You will leave at once for the Felicitous Lands and capture for me the one and only Phoenix.”
The thing in me that longed for escape from the City was already preparing. I would go beyond the River, beyond the reach of empire, and live a simple life and a longer one. The dream had been growing in me, had been planted in the hovel where I was born, nurtured in every damnable muddy march, and germinated on the bloody field where we fixed the River as the northern boundary of the empire. Across that churned and stinking field, I caught a glimpse of a little clearing in the forest, and a wooden house standing untouched, although surely its occupants were now dead in the pile our slaves were raising to burn. Though my mind in those days was fixed on the course of honor that led to the Guard, my heart even then had crossed the River.
I bowed and said, “I go, my Princeps.” Already I could see my way back to that little house.
“Wait,” said he. “Alexander, dear cousin. You will go with Rufus.”
The idiot cousin of the Princeps, heir to the Empire, took the leaden soldier he had been sucking on out of his mouth and grinned the same witless grin he had worn for all his twenty-seven years. “Will it be a pleasant adventure, cousin?”
“Oh, yes,” smiled our Princeps. “You will see such marvels! Few indeed have traveled to the Felicitous Lands and returned.”
Alexander clapped his hands and began to tell his toy soldiers that they must make ready.
“Captain Rufus will see to your safety. He would, I am sure, lay down his life to bring you back home to me.”
There are those who think our Princeps is—was—an unthinking monster, ruled only by whatever stray thought came into his head. And those who think he was brilliant, plotting three steps ahead of the countless folk who wanted him dead. To send the Captain of the Guard, famous for his loyalty, his lack of political interest, and his ability to spot an assassin, off on a foolish hunt for a mythical bird, certainly seems like mad whimsy. To send his cousin, who would be a useful and pliant figurehead should the Princeps meet with accident, seems more studied.
Ah, but we of the City are fools and clever schemers at once. I mean no insult, Citizen. I speak of myself too. I maneuvered so adroitly, planned so well, to take myself from the dusty lots to the very halls of the Princeps, as Captain of the Guard, where a sword stroke at the right moment might have handed me the Empire. Very clever I was, but more foolish than the dullest of my childhood friends. I had traded everything for something far worse than where I had begun.
Alexander’s presence would hardly change my course. It was not without guilt that I contemplated my abandonment of the Divine Heir, but I had renounced any claim to be a good man long ago, and anyway, I thought, poor Alexander would have a better chance in whatever lonely place I left him than in the Princeps’ court.
The next morning our company set out to the north, that we might then go south at Compita. A lesson for you, friend, as I see you trying to move politely away: life’s road often takes you in the opposite direction than the one you set out on.
Two dozen soldiers went with us, a show of the Princeps’ fraternal concern for Alexander. To my surprise they were not of the Guard, but of his mother’s household, which meant I did not know them. The Princeps, they said, was loath to further deplete the guard with its beloved Captain gone. Also with us were some servants and a sage of the Great Library, Cornelius, a middle-aged scholar with a hairline in retreat and a belly in advance, who had the expression of a man who had eagerly raised his hand to claim expertise on cats and been thrown to the lions.
Alexander pointed to every bird we passed and asked if it was the Phoenix. Cornelius, whether through patience or love of his topic, explained to the heir what was known of that wondrous creature. That it is said to look like an eagle with a heron’s neck, with plumage of red and gold and a collar of imperial purple (Alexander gleefully pointed to his own purple collar). That it lives in the empty hills of the Felicitous Land, and that once every century…ah, but perhaps you know all this. Alexander, childlike, wanted to know everything. He asked with which spices the Phoenix was embalmed, and whether you could make a cake out of them, and how you would know when its century was past, and whether Cornelius thought his cousin the Princeps would live forever if he ate it. Cornelius never tired of answering Alexander’s questions, or, if he tired, he had only to glance at the guard, who seemed very solicitous that the Divine Heir might not be distressed.
We came to the great shambling crossroads city of Compita. One road went south toward the deserts of the Felicitous Land. Others stretched like strands of a spiderweb to all corners of the world, beyond the sight and knowledge of the City and the Empire.
“We will camp here,” I said.
“But it is not dark yet!” said Alexander.
“Once we turn south the land turns less friendly,” I said, daring to clap a friendly hand on the Divine Heir’s shoulder. “Here we can reprovision and rest, and perhaps find some entertainments for you.”
“Oh!” cried Alexander. “In the northern forests they carve dragons out of wood and when you run a stick over them they croak. Let’s see!” He dragged off two of his guard toward the tents.
In the small hours of morning, when Alexander had collapsed in a pile of honey-sweets and toys, I rose silently, took the pack I’d prepared, and slipped away. My way was as clear as the cursus that had brought me from the shabby house of my father through the legions and to the Guard. Really it was the same road: escape. Only I hoped this one would not lead me false. I could smell pine and fresh-caught fish.
As I passed beyond the tents, a voice both familiar and strange called, “Where are you going, Rufus?”
A lantern unveiled itself. Alexander was on the road behind me, and around him his guard with javelins ready. He was smiling, but it was not the foolish smile I had always known.
“Rufus,” he said, without a trace of the stutter that had been his for all the years I had known him. “My dear cousin entrusted you with a quest, not to mention my personal safety. Why are you walking away?”
“Alexander familiarly,” I gasped.
“‘Divine Heir to the Empire’ is how I shall be addressed.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “We have a job to do. We have to catch the Phoenix for my dear cousin.”
“The Phoenix is a fable,” I said. “Ask Cornelius.”
“I have,” he said. “As you have not. It is no fable.”
“Even if that were so, how do you expect us to catch this thing?”
“You weren’t listening to Cornelius at all, were you? I know where its altar is. I know when its century is. And—what do you know?—we will be just in time. Who do you think got our dear Princeps thinking about such things? Who had the musicians sing the songs that sparked his fancy?”
It was all too much to believe. “What will you do with it?” I asked.
“Why, Rufus. I will do as my cousin asked. I will bring it back to the City. When I ride in with the Phoenix, mere days after my cousin’s untimely demise from some poorly cooked fish that did not receive proper scrutiny from your second-in-command, I will be greeted warmly by his party—for did I not fulfil his quest at peril of my life?—and by the people—for do I not bring the Phoenix to brighten their empty lives?—and by the Guard—for shall I not return with their dear Rufus to clear the blot on their name? Why, for the Empire it will be a rebirth to rival that of the Phoenix itself! I need you with me, Rufus. There is a perilous way ahead. And it will not do for me to return without the Captain of the Guard. Get some rest. We will not be stopping before sundown again until we reach the Felicitous Land.”
Have you known anyone who has kept up such a façade through a lifetime, to preserve one’s true self against all odds for a day that may never come? Ha! Of course, we all do it. But none of us so well as Alexander. Please, friend, be at ease. These people do not even know which way they are running now. All will be well. Well, not all, but perhaps enough.
Now that he had shed his disguise, the true Alexander emerged. He rode often with Cornelius, making his plans, but nearly as often he rode next to me. I kept my eyes wide for my chance to escape, but Alexander’s own eyes—and those of his loyal guard—were on me.
“Rufus,” he chided. “I need you. You know that if I return without the Captain of the Guard, there will be those ready to set you up in opposition to me.”
“I swear on my honor that I would never return to that wretched City.” I thought of my bloody sword, my bloody hands, my hungry stomach as a child, my sick stomach as I walked the streets, clearing a way for the Princeps with sword and fist. And I thought of a clean spring, icy wind, and a fire in the hearth—a world away from all of it.
Alexander seemed to guess my thought. “It would not matter if you were to go beyond the River forever. In fact, it would be worse. It is harder to crush rebellion when its head cannot be made to recant and die. I need you, Rufus, and you need me. Surely you did not think my dear cousin sent you with me so that you might return in triumph and continue to serve in his good graces?”
“Of course not. Though I do not know what I did to merit the Princeps’ suspicion. I have been loyal as few have ever been.”
Alexander smirked. “Do you not see why my cousin found that suspicious?”
“Gods, what a miserable life!” I exploded. “To suspect everyone, most of all those few who are faithful.”
Alexander smiled. “Have you been a happy, trusting man as Captain, Rufus? I remember many traitors in your own ranks—or, let us say, suspected traitors—that you had crucified. I remember a double watch at your chamber door, one set of guards to watch the other.”
“Yes, Divine Heir. Mine, too, has been an unhappy life.”
Alexander nodded kindly. “Well, after our triumphal return, I’m sure we can put an end to your unhappiness soon enough.”
I shook my head. “Divine Heir, I do not think I will have to wait that long. The Felicitous Land will make us all so happy.”
“Have faith, Captain. If we are to make this journey, if we are to find this legend and redeem the Empire and the City, I will need people who have faith in the Phoenix, and in me.”
“Divine Heir. I have always given my loyal service and my strong hand. But faith…I have none to give.”
“Well, then. I will have to find others.”
And he did. Somehow, as we traveled south through the polyglot lands beyond Compita, he gathered the faithful to himself. Have you ever felt that your home is not truly your home? That your life is not truly the life you ought to have? Then maybe you are one of us. Alexander had a talent for finding such people. Most from the City, cast off like sparks from the whetstone. Some from elsewhere. All of them ground down by life, by hoping, by wanting and not getting, by seeing a better world. Alexander gave them a dream in red and gold and royal purple. A fire in the desert, a rebirth.
There was Sulpicius. He had been a teacher of logic, but his love for his art had been wrung out of him until he turned on his heel from his spoiled, wealthy students. There was Veleda, who had been a healer among the people we call the Olerii, grown tired of bringing her folk back from the gate of death to see them throw themselves against it again. There was Marius, a painter and a true artist, whom the City folk treated as an unskilled laborer. There was Aemilia the baker, who had lost patience with bad flour cut with sawdust and who now made nourishing loaves at a nameless inn. There were disillusioned veterans and youths who could not find their fit; exiles and poets. Alexander found them in caravans and taverns and alone on the road, and he gave them vision, gave them hope.
As we neared the last settlement before the Felicitous Lands. Cornelius said to the others, in response to some despairing remark of mine, “Forgive him. He is our resident cynic.”
I said, “It is not cynicism to see what is.” I threw a glance over my shoulder to be sure he was far away. “Alexander is a deceiver, and the Felicitous Lands are empty and wide.”
“And yet,” said Cornelius, “the Phoenix may be there.”
“May be!” I turned to Sulpicius. “Logician, if death is certain and a fool’s hope may be, which ought we believe in?”
Sulpicius considered. “One might believe in both, and do no harm to the truth.”
“Healer. What would you say if one of your patients told you he was going into the desert to be cured of his fever?”
Veleda said, in her strange accent: “If all else had failed…what more harm can be done?”
Cornelius said, “Captain, I called you cynic, but I think maybe you, alone among us, have not yet lost hope.”
“Indeed?” I snorted.
“Indeed. Perhaps you do not yet need the Phoenix as we do.”
“Do you not see that Alexander…?”
At that moment the Divine Heir himself came striding into our circle, “Yes, Captain?”
I bowed to hide the reddening of my cheeks. “We spoke of the Phoenix, Divine Heir.”
Alexander smiled his basilisk smile. “Good. Keep your thoughts on the Phoenix, for the Felicitous Lands are before us, and they are indeed empty and wide.”
I know you are impatient. I will try to be brief, for it is hard to sit still while your world is burning.
Long we wandered among the bone-dry hills. Though Alexander rarely lost his air of confidence, he consulted often with Cornelius, and we crossed our own footsteps more than once. Carefully he rationed the water, and of course his ration came first. More than one of our number was unable to go on. I argued with the others, begged them to join me to overpower Alexander’s guard and leave, but they plodded on as stubbornly if not as sturdily as the camels.
“Cornelius!” I cried. “What are we looking for?”
Cornelius lifted his arm, then clapped his hands, and gave perhaps the first true smile the Felicitous Lands had ever seen.
“That,” he said. Far ahead of us there was a line of red cliffs.
Alexander himself could scarcely conceal his relief. “That is the place?”
Cornelius nodded.
With renewed purpose we set off for the cliffs. Yet by some trick of heat or light they seemed never to draw nearer, only higher. The sun was as merciless as Alexander himself, as punishing as these fools’ hopes. Days piled on days. We had barely strength to lift our feet. Perhaps, I thought, there was no strength left in the arms of the guard.
I had grown fond of my companions, Cornelius especially, so in the blazing afternoon as our party lay in panting sleep like exhausted dogs, I shook him awake.
“Will you come?” I whispered. “At least we will die on the way to something and not nothing.”
“Not nothing,” he croaked. “The Phoenix appears when all hope is lost. It will not be long.”
Perhaps, I thought, it was for the best: here at least Alexander’s victims would be few. If he had made it back to the City they would be legion.
“Captain,” Cornelius said. “If you get back to the City, try to do some good there.”
“I am not going to the City. I will not see it, or you again.”
I would not risk stealing a camel, and though I had secreted four waterskins, I left all but one behind. I do not know why. I had never been a tender man. And I had no hopes for them—or for me. Perhaps that is why. If anyone but Cornelius saw me go, they made no sign, and when I looked back at the camp, it could have been the resting place of the dead.
And what was I? A lone wanderer in the desert. But at least, I told myself again, I would die on my way…where? In those days I could scarcely remember the little cabin of my dreams. I just wanted to be walking away from where I was. The water ran out after a week. Then there was nothing, just the white sky of day and the stars of night and the wastes of sand and stone, the burning of my skin and my cracked throat and mouth. I no longer knew or cared where I was going. Only, something kept me going. Something, somehow, always keeps us going.
Until, at last, it cannot. I sank down one night, thinking never to rise again. When the dawn came, I would have laughed if I had had the strength. In front of me were the same red cliffs. My head sank to the hot ground, and my eyes closed, and my final thought was that at least I would not have to see the City, or Alexander, or the Princeps, ever again.
Then the Phoenix came.
How could fire bring life to one as burnt as I was? How could I feel cool in the shadow thrown by a bird of flame? Red and molten gold its wings, and purple like jewels shining on its throat, and in my heart something that I had not known for years, if ever. Something different even from my dreams of flight across the frozen river. Something that I would name hope, if the word could give an inkling of what it was. What it was, was life. I stood now, without weariness, as it circled lower and lower. By what miracle did I have water for tears?
It came to rest on the ground before me. The sun turned its feathers to amethyst and garnet and gold. Its eyes were pools of ruby and brass. I felt such vigor that I knew that I could walk easily to the edge of the desert and keep walking until I reached the River and the cold forests of the north, and that never a whisper of the City or our Princeps or Alexander would reach me again. But the Phoenix took off for the cliffs, and I followed.
Why? A good question, friend. What was the Phoenix to me? I had never wanted this thing the way Cornelius and the others had. The strength it had given me would have been enough to carry me where I had long wished to go. So why did I follow? Let me answer like the oracles, with a riddle. I followed because I knew that it would lead me where I was meant to go.
I followed with no trouble, as though I had drunk of cool water and rested long. I followed over scree and stone, up and down the jagged red hills, as the Phoenix led me on.
Then at the crest of a hill I saw below me a wonder: a temple, carved of living stone, like a thing out of a traveler’s wonder-story. Green herbs grew and there was the sound of water. In the center of the little valley, before the temple, there was an altar of stone on which sat a brazier of polished bronze. It was to this that the Phoenix flew, and I ran after. Even knowing what was to come, I felt it was my own heart that was pierced when the bird settled into the brazier and struck itself cruelly with its beak. Three times it struck, three times it screamed, and three times I felt as if I myself were dying. I felt the weariness of the journey, the weariness of a lifetime, returning.
The Phoenix died.
I cried again, not tears of relief as when the Phoenix came, but great heaving sobs for a life wasted and lost.
At last I collected myself and came down to the altar. The Phoenix looked pathetic and ridiculous. Its neck flopped over the edge of the brazier; though it had moments before possessed splendor beyond measure, now it had the look of a strangled goose in a housewife’s basket. The altar smelled of cinnamon. There were supposed to be priests, I thought. To kindle a flame, to resurrect it.
I heard a sound from within the cavernous temple, and I approached cautiously. My sun-drenched eyes could not penetrate the dark, so I drew back and secreted myself as best I could in a niche of the façade. People in hooded robes of white and gold came out of the darkness. Their leader carried a burning brand in one hand and a cage in the other.
As he set the brand to the pyre it kindled, and as the flames licked the body that had saved me, I could not help but gasp.
The lead priest turned to me and lifted his hood.
“Greetings, Captain,” said Alexander. “I am most pleased that you have returned with my prize.”
Cornelius came to me as we watched the Phoenix burn. He looked not much better than the walking corpse I had left on the desert sands, though it was clear he had drunk and rested. He handed me a bottle of this very cordial we are sharing now.
“It seems you have found better medicine than this,” said Cornelius.
I stared at the flames.
“The priests of this place found us,” he told me. “Soon after you left us. They gave us water and food. Alexan—the Divine Heir told them we were pilgrims who yearned to see the Phoenix—true enough. They brought us back, nursed us to health, told us all they knew about the Phoenix, though only their grandsires had seen the last resurrection.”
“Where are they now?”
Cornelius inclined his head to the darkness of the temple, shuddering. “The Divine Heir believed they would not allow us to depart with the Phoenix reborn.”
The flames climbed higher. All hoods were thrown back now, all eyes fixed on the altar. As the fire stretched its fingers to the heavens, I thought I saw the bird again, alive and magnificent, reborn. Then the fire went out, as quickly as if smothered.
After a time Alexander reached into the brazier. He withdrew a sooty black thing, no bigger than a pullet. Without ceremony he set it in the cage. I could see its little chest moving.
“Perhaps…” ventured Cornelius. “it would be best to leave it embalmed on the altar until it has truly returned to itself.”
Alexander turned. “Perhaps. However, events are moving in the City, and our wanderings in the desert under your misguidance have cost us. The City awaits its redeemer. And, Cornelius,” he smiled mercilessly. “You will not offer advice unsolicited again.”
Fortified by the provisions and the cordial, and more certain of our way, the trek back through the Felicitous Lands was easier on our flesh, but harder on our souls. The Phoenix lay small and sullen in its cage, refusing to eat. Alexander maintained his certainty that all was going according to plan, although perhaps he had left some of his skill at dissembling behind in the Felicitous Land, for it was easy to see that he was deeply troubled. And he made us hurry, as though there were a schedule to keep.
As I sat watching it one evening, Marius the painter came up. “You saw it?” he asked.
It was only then that I realized that the others, hidden in the temple with the slain priests, had not seen the Phoenix until it was dead and burning.
“I saw it.”
“What was it like?” he asked me, desperately.
“It was…I think it was all that you would have hoped for.”
Veleda our healer tended the Phoenix, and despite Alexander’s harangues, she insisted that there was nothing more she could do. It would not eat, though Aemilia offered it, as the texts instructed, cakes spiced with cinnamon, myrrh, and saffron, and the scent of them baking was like a memory of the moment the Phoenix had first come.
After two months of travel, as we drew near to the City, the Phoenix was as grey and small and listless as it had been on the altar, though Cornelius assured us that the Phoenix should have been reborn exactly as it had died.
“Then what is wrong?”
“I…do not know,” he said. Then he summoned his resolve. “Yet we have the Phoenix, and the City will be restored. I still believe it.”
“Cornelius. He will destroy the City, Phoenix or no.”
He looked at me reproachfully. “What do you care for the City?”
I did not have the words for the feeling in me then. But I had found myself thinking more and more of the City, of the filthy streets of my youth, of the charnel house that was the palace, of the Principes in their succession, each worse than the last.
Messengers began to arrive from the City for Alexander. It seemed everything was going according to plan. Everything but the Phoenix. Not far from this spot where we now stand, we made a halt. Alexander alternated between pacing and staring at the Phoenix.
“I will have my triumph,” he said at last. “Marius. You will paint this creature to look as it should.”
“Paint it?” asked Marius, astonished.
“Veleda,” Alexander continued. “You will feed it whatever drugs, cause it whatever pain you must, to make it look alive, as the cockfighters torment their birds to get their fighting spirits up. It must last a day, no more.”
His followers stared at him.
Veleda said, “The creature is not strong, Divine Heir. I do not know if it will survive such treatment.”
“Then let it be born again.”
Cornelius said, quietly. “Divine Heir, the bird may not be reborn at all if it dies in such a state, before its strength has returned and its century has passed.”
Alexander looked at him, and with the speed of a striking snake, drew his sword and sliced Cornelius’ belly open. Some among us leapt forward, but Alexander’s guard drew their weapons.
“Then let it die,” said Alexander. “Perhaps I will eat its flesh as my mad cousin wished, and we will see what happens.” He turned to Marius. “To your work, artist.” He touched Cornelius with his toe. “Rufus,” he said. “Dispose of this body. Especially now, with our Phoenix not playing its part, I will need your help as I save our beloved City.”
The wrath in my gut was such then that I might have dared to say that I did not love the City, if I were sure that it was true.
Marius had pigments mixed, and I carried Cornelius away. I saw Aemilia and Veleda talking quietly together, and then Aemilia went to prepare the meal. I dug the grave for Cornelius myself in a little clearing, and as I put the ferryman’s fee over his eyes, I whispered to him: “I have heard it said that it is when all hope is lost that the Phoenix appears.”
By the time I returned, the others had eaten, and Marius had done his work well. The Phoenix shone in garnet, amethyst, and gold. It would, I thought, fool the people, though to me it looked like a painted clown. And its eyes were dark as old coals.
“Make it hurt,” said Alexander, “so that it flutters and screams in its gilded cage. Make it hurt so that it feels alive.”
Veleda stepped to the cage, a razor in her shaking hand. She hesitated.
Alexander pushed her aside, drew his short blade, and opened the door of the cage. The painted Phoenix sat unmoving.
“I will begin,” he said. “And I will not forget that you were slow to obey.”
As he pricked the bird’s chest, he smiled, as if he had long been waiting for some chance to hurt this thing that was not following his plan. A drop of blood appeared through Marius’ gold paint, but the bird did not move.
“More, then,” he said. He drew back his blade.
I ran forward and pulled the cage away. It clattered on its side and I pulled its fine bars wide. I heard the Phoenix stirring as I whirled to face Alexander, felt wind and feathers. I saw Alexander leaping up from the ground, and I saw the flash of his sword. In the corner of my eye, I saw his guard moving strangely slowly. I saw Alexander’s sword arm go back, and I closed my eyes, for I had no weapon.
But no blow fell. I opened my eyes, and saw gentle Veleda, the healer, and Alexander gurgling, and a little razor red with fresh blood. I saw Alexander’s guard staggering, and I heard Aemilia telling them that she had baked their bread special that day, and then everyone went silent, except for a massive rush of wings, and I felt something rising in me that I had felt once before.
“I thought,” I gasped to Veleda, “I thought you believed in Alexander’s vision.”
“It was never his vision,” she said. “Never his at all.”
Behind us, from the broken cage, above the dying body of the divine Alexander, the Phoenix rose.
Listen, friend. The City is burning, but it will be rebuilt. The Princeps is dead. Alexander is dead. But more will arise. If I wanted, it could be me. But I do not. There is something else coming now.
I am going back to the City. I will make my house in its wicked heart, and it will not be my house alone. Aemilia will make good bread, unadulterated by sawdust, and sell it fair to those with means and give it to those without. Veleda will make it a place of healing, and Marius will make it beautiful, and Sulpicius will make it a school. And slowly the City will be reborn. We will do it under their feet, under their noses. The Principes in their villas, the great in their mansions, will not even know as it is happening. We will grow like fireweed in waste places, and our roots will creep under every palace. And when the time comes, the bloom will cover the City.
Look, the sky is red in the east. Is it yet another fire, or is it the dawn? That is always the question. But you know the story now. Already the City behind us is tumbling into ash. But there is something coming now, something rising red and gold, and it is not coming alone.
So go back to the City that we love. Yes, you love it too. I know. Go back and tell them.
We are coming.
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S.L. Harris is a writer, educator, and sometime archaeologist who can be found digging around in gardens, libraries, tea cabinets, and ancient houses. His fiction has appeared in venues like Strange Horizons, Apex, and Lightspeed. Originally from Appalachia, he currently lives in the Midwest with his wife, two children, and many books. You can find him online at ifchanceyoucallit.wordpress.com and @slharris.bsky.social. |