3. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Isoria
In the air, I basked in a stolen moment of peace.
There was joy in feeling the wind caress my wing feathers and the sun’s warmth fuel my strength.
Phoenix form always made me feel freer, more powerful, like I could swallow all my problems or make them as small as the shrinking trees beneath my claws.
With a cry of delight, I unleashed my flames, fire bursting to life along my feathers and trailing from my wings in a beautiful display of red and gold.
For these few sweet, stolen moments, I could pretend my heart wasn’t breaking. Each day that Mama woke in more pain, another crack split through my chest. I sought these morning flights for the brief reprieve they were.
All too soon, I started my descent back toward Cinderwood Forest and home.
I tucked in my wings and, right before my claws touched the earth, I shifted.
The process was as easy as breathing. My fae feet, still in the sandals I’d tied up my calves this morning, slapped against the earth and signaled the end of my flight.
My feathers vanished into my skin, covered now only by my shift dress.
Dyed a rich purple and reaching to my mid-thigh, its color was the only elaborate thing about it.
My talents didn’t extend to fashioning clothes.
When I made them, I didn’t spend time stitching designs along the hem or collar like some of the other females did.
Instead, I’d kept it simple and light, something to keep me cool in the muggy heat while working.
As I made my way back toward Everhaven, our sanctuary village hidden deep in the Cinderwood, I passed a group harvesting acai berries, their baskets nearly overflowing.
“Good flight, Iz?” Brook asked as she plopped a berry from her basket into her mouth.
“I wanted to go this morning, but…” Her smile dimmed, and guilt instantly pricked me.
My best friend rarely flew anymore, not since her mother had grown sick like mine.
But while Mama could still get around and care for herself, her dearest friend, so close Bren and I called her Aunt Aurora, was practically bedbound.
Brook spent more time at her bedside than anywhere else these days.
“How is she?” I asked gently.
“She’s sleeping, so I figured now was a good time to help pick berries.” Brook set another on her tongue, savoring the taste before chewing.
“You’re eating them faster than I can gather them!” my brother Brenton, still halfway up the tree picking berries, grouched.
Brook merely tossed her hair over her shoulder, the strands of fiery golden-red flashing in the sunlight as she did. “They’re for eating, aren’t they?”
I rolled my eyes—they were always bantering, making me tease Brook endlessly whenever we were in private about the fact that someday, surely, we would be sisters. She always vehemently denied that anything would happen, that he was “just my younger brother.”
I stole a handful of berries from Brook’s basket and joined her in savoring the explosion of flavor as it danced across my tongue. “Is Mama awake, Bren?” I called to my brother.
“Awake and hungry,” Mama’s voice interrupted us. I turned, greeted as usual by her wide smile despite the dark circles painted beneath her eyes.
My stomach flipped. Had she slept at all?
The pain in her expression was evident, though whatever ailed her was invisible, just like it was for Aunt Aurora and the other afflicted phoenixes.
But she didn’t like us fussing over her, not when there were others suffering more, and with no sign of their magic returning.
No flames. No phoenix form. No healing. They had woken one day without any of their powers, as if it all had been snuffed out like a flame.
Soon afterward, they’d begun to struggle with pain and weakness we didn’t understand and none of us could heal.
Only the younger generations, like Brook and myself and the little children of our village, could shift and manipulate fire the same as ever, but something had changed in our healing abilities.
Now, whenever any of us healed one another, we suffered the pain of the injuries we mended.
It was a stark warning that perhaps our days of magic were numbered as well.
Something was deeply wrong, and none of our pleas to the sun goddess Solea or the life goddess Vithenna had brought any answers.
But I never let Mama see my worries, instead matching her smile with one of my own. “I was planning on baking banana bread with the flour Fern smuggled us yesterday,” I told her. “I’ll get right to work.”
Brushing a kiss to her cheek as I hugged her, I tried not to notice how frail her frame felt or how there seemed to be more white in her black curtain of hair than there’d been the day before.
Instead, I hurried to our treehouse, climbing the steps and pausing in the kitchen to collect ingredients.
Children across the clearing were playing games, leaping from their treehouse porches and transforming mid-air.
Their laughter would have once brought me joy, but now my heart stung.
How long before the mysterious, invisible plague hurting our older people started to strike the younger as well?
Shaking off my fears, I returned to the clearing and the communal stone ovens. Before long, I’d lost myself in the joy of baking: mixing ingredients, heating the oven with my fire, and sitting back and enjoying the scent of banana bread enveloping me.
“Mmm, make enough for me?” Brook asked, sitting beside me on the bench I’d settled upon, watching the village awaken and go about their morning tasks.
Some were using the other ovens, some were still gathering fruits and other plants from the garden, and others had set off toward the river to fish or hunt.
A few had taken morning flights to stretch their wings and soak up the sun like I had, but never for long and never straying far.
Except for the few who made the dangerous trips to nearby villages outside our sanctuary to obtain needed supplies, we didn’t leave our haven tucked away in the jungle.
Not when the outside world wanted to kill us.
“Always.” I smiled and rested my head on her shoulder.
Noticing Mama was settled with some other females across the clearing, enjoying morning tea and gossip, I dared to speak freely. “Do you think she looks more worn today?”
Brook sighed. She understood my pain intimately. “I’m afraid so. She does a good job of concealing it, but she’s in pain. She doesn’t want you to worry.”
“How can I not worry? Luna is at death’s door and I’m afraid Mama and the others will follow. There must be a cure. Our magic doesn’t just…vanish.” I swallowed thickly and sat up, turning to study Brook’s expression. “What if Maris has an answer?”
Brook frowned. “The oracle? She only sees each of us once. As children. You’d never gain entrance to her cottage again. The way is magically barred unless she opens it, remember?”
I huffed in frustration. “What if those are only stories? This is urgent. Shouldn’t we try?”
Turning toward me conspiratorially, Brook lowered her voice.
“On my walk to the Passionfire this morning, I ran into Brenton. He confessed everything when I demanded where he’d been.
He’d snuck away last night and flew all the way to the mountains to try to speak with Maris, but the way was barred. ”
I held my breath. Bren went to see Maris? Without even telling me?
“He said boulders shifted, trees reached their branches toward him, and the mountain itself quaked when he tried to climb the path,” Brook continued. “He never even saw Maris’ cottage. The rumors that the oracle blocks off the way to her are true, I’m afraid.”
“So she’ll only accept visits from children due for a prophecy.” My eyes stung with tears I refused to shed, not when Mama might look over and notice. “Then what do we do? How do we save them?”
Brook bit her lip, her gaze turning distant. “I don’t know, Isa.”
But I had an idea. Another, aside from the trip to Maris, that had been growing in my mind. One so dangerous, I didn’t dare speak it aloud, because it was forbidden.
And yet…if I didn’t take the risk, what if we all lost our magic and slowly perished from this illness?
A scream startled me from my thoughts.
“Zinnia!” a male shouted.
Brook and I turned together in time to see a child transform back into her fae form mid-air, her wings vanishing without warning and her body spasming as if hurt. She tumbled toward the ground, plummeting so fast that her father couldn’t reach her before her little body slammed to the dirt.
My stomach hollowed out as I leapt to my feet and charged, time slowing and speeding up all at once.
I reached her the same moment her father did.
Her face was pale, but when she cracked her eyes open and whimpered, I exhaled my relief and dropped to my knees, placing my hands on her leg, which was twisted under her at an odd angle.
Strengthen my magic, Sanvo, I prayed to the god of healing as I closed my eyes, drawing on my power.
Warmth spread through my body as my mind connected with her, tuning me to each broken place.
The broken bones in her leg and arm, the fractured rib, the bruised flesh.
And something else, something dark and painfully familiar that pushed back at me.
I directed my magic into her, sensing as the bones fused back together and the bruising began to slowly fade and heal.
Unfortunately, that darkness didn’t leave, because it never did.
It was the same sensation I experienced when trying to heal Mama or Aunt Aurora or any of the other older fae who’d lost their magic.
Zinnia’s magic was gone, the lingering pain she now felt no longer from physical injuries but a nefarious ailment we couldn’t fight against.
Even as the pain I’d taken from her stole my breath and I gritted my teeth, I turned to her father. The male threw his arms around Zinnia, holding her close and openly weeping. I met his gaze, seeing the same despair consuming me now mirrored in his eyes.
If the young phoenix shifters were losing their magic too, it was only a matter of time before we all did. With no solution in sight, we would all waste away from this curse.
We were running out of time.