6. Chapter 6
“Hold your breath,” I said, and as soon as Ben complied, I sank us under the water.
Once we submerged, I beat my tail hard, and we rocketed through the spring. I emitted tiny bursts of sound to locate any obstacles that stood in our way. We dodged thick roots and jagged rocks that stuck out from below and scattered startled fish.
When my voice found a wall of wood up ahead, I whipped my tail in front of me to slow our approach. We were at the Tree of Life.
We popped up beneath a tangle of roots and moss, and Ben let go of me to wrap his hands around the roots above. He took a steady breath, a gentle glow from the bioluminescence that shone between the roots lighting up his face.
“You okay?” I asked.
“That was a rush,” he said, grinning.
“It’ll be more of a rush if we don’t get a move on,” I said, swimming along the roots to find a gap.
The last time the forest covens had magically ejected me from the forest felt like skydiving without a parachute.
“Here, look!” Ben called.
He hoisted himself out through a hole, and I followed, slipping my bikini bottoms on before taking his hand to pull me out.
We emerged into a nightmare.
Cracks in the Tree of Life’s hefty trunk glowed with a dark purple effervescence that spread to the leaves. The sombre light cast an ominous sheen upon everything it touched, but that wasn’t the only thing that made me so uneasy in this place. I couldn’t ignore the stillness; the void of movement that so characterised any forest, whether with the scurrying of small animals or the wind in the canopy.
“Does it always look like this?” Ben asked, as he helped me to my feet.
“No,” I muttered. “This is... something else.”
Whatever the phoenix had done to the island had apparently also contaminated the Tree of Life; a tree that magically provided everything required for the island to thrive. It looked like it had transformed into something else. Maybe that was how the phoenix could infect everyone with an illness and created the barrier to surround the island. It was using the tree as a beacon.
We had to find it, and quickly.
“Let’s go.” I took Ben’s hand, and we made our way around the trunk of the tree to find the phoenix’s resting place.
I had spent enough time here to find my way, even in the unnatural light.
Step by step, avoiding every leaf, twig, and root on our way, we reached the hollow in the tree’s gigantic trunk. The phoenix, curled up in a tight ball, had lost its fiery red hue and had taken on a shade of pure charcoal. Its feathers stuck up at all angles, and one foot protruded from underneath it, its claws glinting like steel.
“I don’t remember phoenixes looking like that in the school textbooks,” Ben whispered as we crouched down behind a large root.
“That’s because it doesn’t usually look like this,” I muttered.
Grief had done a number on the phoenix. Not only had it manifested itself in a pure rage that had infected the entire island, but it had reduced the phoenix to something other than itself. Whatever we were looking at, it was no longer the phoenix that had landed on Dusk.
“How do we do this?” I asked.
“You’re asking me? You’re the phoenix expert.”
“Hardly.”
Kira had the best rapport with the phoenix, but this was not her battle. Our families had done this, and we had to find a solution.
But whatever our school textbooks had said, they wouldn’t have included a how-to on appeasing phoenixes. We would have to wing it.
“Come on,” I whispered.
Taking Ben’s hand, I stepped over the root and led us toward the hollow at a careful pace.
As we approached, the phoenix’s eyes snapped open, revealing the monochromatic purple that doused the rest of the forest. We stopped in our tracks, and I knelt, pulling Ben with me. The less intimidating we looked, the better. If the phoenix could curse the entire island, who knew what it could do when concentrating its magic on just the two of us?
But if there was one thing school had taught me that was useful to our situation, it was that phoenixes were a species in the Soul Collective. Like other spirit animals such as Grimalkins and once, dragons, phoenixes communicated the most effectively through soul contact. As far as I knew, the only way we could allow the phoenix to know our intentions was to let it access the most intimate part of us; our very essence.
I extended my palm, face up, to the phoenix. With a spine-tingling squawk, it leapt down from its hollow, its claws digging into the root it landed on. Purple sap spurted between its toes and dripped onto the mossy ground.
I gulped and kept my gaze on the phoenix’s neck, trying my best to avoid its probing glare.
“Maeve,” Ben whispered, staring at the savaged root.
“Sssh.” I held my hand even further out toward the phoenix, and with little caution, the phoenix placed its foot into my palm.
The contact of our souls felt like a formal meeting, with all three of us standing together in a spiritual space. But all formality smashed into a million pieces as the phoenix’s agony and rage spilled into the both of us, infecting our very souls.
Ben’s hand clenched in mine, and pain radiated up my neck as my shoulders tensed. The sensation felt like being dipped into a vat of liquid sorrow and slowly drowned in it. The phoenix had nothing but its egg in the world, and someone had not only snatched it so cruelly, but destroyed it.
Tears welled in my eyes as the phoenix bombarded us with a flurry of emotions, but I could do nothing to interrupt it. At the very least, my family was responsible for this, and I would endure it. Even if Izzy deserved to grovel to the phoenix more than I did.
When the phoenix withdrew its emotions, my soul almost felt like it might throw up. If that was possible, I didn’t want to learn how.
I didn’t entirely know how to communicate via souls, but species of the Soul Collective could pick up emotions and memories at the very least. So I summoned all the humility and guilt that I had harboured for weeks and brought it to the surface, offering them to the phoenix like some tentative dish awaiting inspection. Conjuring memories of Ben and me together and all the hopes and dreams we had for our families to end the feud that had caused all this, I twitched as the phoenix delved into them.
It explored my memories and emotions, probing them, but for what, I didn’t know. Whatever thoughts and feelings it had beyond its agony and fury, it refused to reveal them to us.
With a jerk that snapped us back to reality, the phoenix withdrew its claw and hopped back into its hollow.
I looked up at it, daring to allow a little hope into the tumult of anxiety. My heart thrummed at the speed of a steam train tearing through the countryside, and I begged for every second to be the last it would leave us waiting.
The phoenix lifted its head into the air and let out a horrifying noise that tore leaves from their branches.