Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
The Phenomenal Phoenix Rejuvenation Plan (title pending, Aila really wanted that full alliteration) went like this.
Week one: Strategy.
Aila scrawled their to-do list across several dozen sticky notes and plastered them on the office wall. She inventoried every supply in the phoenix complex, down to the half-empty bags of food pellets in the back cupboard.
Week two: Acquisition.
Aila completed and filed the (frankly excessive) purchase order paperwork for a new refrigerator, new linoleum flooring, new fireproof paint, new olive trees for the exhibit, new towels and heaters and nest platform paneling and anything else the zoo would give her. Rubra deserved the best.
Week three: Deconstruction.
Ordering new flooring was exciting. Tearing up the old flooring required a whole week, several internet videos, a trip to the hardware store for tools, several more internet videos, all crammed in half-hour increments between Aila’s normal routine. She dug out the charred olive trees in the exhibit, broke down the old nest platform.
Week four: Implementation.
The purchase orders started arriving, and the real work began.
Today, Aila’s new olive trees were scheduled for delivery. She arrived at the zoo before the sun touched the palms, before Tom and his coffee settled into the corner of the staff office. The first fall rain had come in the night, distant lightning flashing in her apartment window. The morning came chill, the concrete damp as water dripped off the aviaries.
Aila flew through her morning routine of shuffling animals, feeding, cleaning, all in time to be at the zoo’s cargo gate when the delivery truck arrived. Five young olive trees sat in the open cargo bed. Groundskeeping helped her move them to the exhibit on the back of a golf cart. A brief break for lunch—because Tanya insisted —then Aila spent the afternoon digging holes for the new plantings.
“Just a… little… straighter…”
Aila braced her shoulder against the gray trunk of a sapling, all her meager weight required to tilt the tree a couple of inches. Its roots strained in the soil, shifting until Aila was satisfied with the placement. Her opinion, of course, meant little.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Within the tangle of branches and silver leaves, a ruby head popped into sight. Rubra clucked, her highest form of endorsement. She toyed a leaf with her beak, the fiery plumes of her tail already scorching marks along the (thankfully) flame-resistant bark. Aila envisioned a pair of phoenixes frolicking through the boughs, exchanging leaves and trills for their courtship dance.
Or maybe that was the sleep deprivation. She’d cut her sleep schedule down, just a little bit, cramming a couple of extra hours each night to study phoenix papers. Nothing another afternoon coffee couldn’t fix. She blinked until her vision focused back into a single bird.
“You like it, Rubra?”
The phoenix puffed her cheek feathers and chirped.
“Perfect. Let’s hope the inspector likes it, too.”
Aila assumed the human would be pickier, but Rubra’s vote of confidence was a good start. The first month flew by with prep and paperwork. Only one month left to bring it all together. She surveyed her progress with a groggy grin.
In the exhibit, every olive tree had been pruned or replaced. The ground was raked, regraveled, planted with rock sunflowers that Rubra had played in for an entire afternoon, coating her plumage with yellow petals.
Most important of all, the nesting platform in the back corner had been rebuilt with cedar planks and a heated floor. Every year, instinct compelled Rubra to build a nest of woven olive branches, but she never laid any eggs.
Soon, that could change. If Aila kept her shit together for one more month.
She returned to the breeding complex covered in mud and smelling of olive. Not awful, on a scale of potential substances one could accrue at a zoo. Normally, Aila didn’t mind smelling like kelpie bog or vanishing duck guano.
That opinion swiftly changed when she spotted Connor, waiting at the door with a swoon-worthy smile. She froze like a toad caught in a headlamp.
“Morning, Aila,” he greeted.
Aila’s brain went through a swift reset. Connor was here. At her exhibit. He’d just said hello to her. Shit. Shit! Why are you gawking? Are you sure you don’t smell like bog? Say hello! Say something nice!
“Morning. Connor.” Aila coughed. “It… uh… rained last night.”
He eyed the damp concrete. “So it appears.”
“Sure does.”
Not the worst interaction she’d had with him. Sleep-deprived Aila would take it.
“I’ve got some spare time before closing,” Connor said. “Want to test those incubators? I know you won’t need them for a while, but nothing wrong with getting ahead of the game.”
He smiled wider. Aila fought the instinct to hyperventilate.
The incubators weren’t the only thing she wanted to take a closer look at.
Inside, the breeding complex smelled of bleach. Too much bleach. Needed to air out the bleach, or by all the skies and seas, Aila might pass out today. The linoleum had been ripped up, but not yet replaced. Her boots crackled on the grout-strewn floor as she pranced to the back counter, the stacks of bird pellet boxes replaced by incubators she and Connor had carted up from the dragon aviaries last week.
“Ta-da!” She waved her hand over the spotless glass, the gleaming buttons and knobs. They looked brand new. Whether they worked remained to be seen. Aila hadn’t dared try them out without a mechanic on hand, lest one explode.
“Moment of truth?” Connor plugged in a machine and tapped the LCD screen. It blinked on with a white light followed by a flashing egg logo. Inside the box, a fan whirred. A bulb lit up, illuminating the inner chamber.
“Good sign.” Aila touched the glass, a bloom of warmth against her finger.
“Do you know how to work them?”
“Well, I read through the manual about… five times. Could revisit the temperature calibration section. Don’t quite have all the tables memorized yet, but handy to know how to…”
She paused at Connor’s arched brow.
“Yeah,” she concluded. “I know how to work them.”
He chuckled. “Seems you’re always on top of things.”
“On top? I don’t know, I’ve always considered myself more of a…”
Aila froze.
Connor’s brows climbed higher. She didn’t. She did not nearly say that right when he was starting to talk to her like a normal person.
“ Anyway .” Aila cleared her throat. “Let’s have a look at these incubators!”
She flicked the switch for the heater and tapped through the temperature settings, bumping the thermostat up to phoenix immolation heat—just a few degrees hotter than her cheeks currently, she guessed. The coils in the back glowed orange as the internal thermometer rose. While she worked, Connor plugged in the next incubator. The fan sputtered, a troubling wheeze compared to the first.
“Something loose.” Connor popped open a side panel. “Should be an easy fix.”
Aila sidled as close as she dared. “Would you… um… mind if I watched? To learn, of course. Don’t want to have to call you up here every time something breaks. Not that I mind calling you up here. You’re welcome any time. I just mean… You know.”
“Of course.” He grinned, flashing flawless teeth. “Happy to teach.”
He didn’t smell like mud. Or bog. Or duck guano. Pine drifted off him, a glob of sap clinging to his black polo. Beneath that, the warm dust of dragon feathers, a musk of aviary soil on his boots. Aila would take any one of them bottled like cologne, more pleasant than nose-puckering spice.
She leaned closer, impressed by his deft hands as he sorted incubator wiring. Entranced by the dark hair curled against his forehead, shifting into his eyes as he tilted for a better view of his work. He brushed the stray lock aside with the back of his hand.
His hair looked so soft. Perfect to run fingers through.
Aila’s stomach swirled with butterflies. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“I had to learn on the fly with the dragon hatchlings. Neces-sity breeds innovation.” He tugged a loose wire away from the fan. The whirring stopped. His grin widened. “There we go.”
“Amazing.” Dumb little things like that were never in the manuals. “Thanks, Connor. We’re lucky to have your help.”
“I’m sure you’ll have the hang of it in no time. You’re a quick learner, I can tell.”
He looked at her. Aila could drown in the pools of his eyes. The soft curve of his lips turned the butterflies in her stomach to a swarm.
When had she ever been someone worth looking at?
“Still.” Aila’s throat was sandpaper. “Happy to have you.”
“Happy to help. Us exhibit neighbors have got to look out for each other, right?”
Connor bumped his shoulder to hers. Aila couldn’t breathe, her heart hammering into full-blown panic. He stood too close. Too stunning. Too long a pause as he stared at her. Why was he still staring at her?
This was the point it always went wrong.
What was she supposed to do? Lean closer? Run away? Tell him he was gorgeous and the mere thought of his smile made her legs give out? No, no, that was too forward. She needed to ease in slow, something more like—
The door across the room flew open.
“Fucking prissy bird and his fucking holes!”
Aila went rod-straight as Tanya stormed across the room, raging like a drowned cat. And looking like one. Her clothes were drenched, boots squishing, squiggles of black hair plastered to her cheeks. The streaked mascara could have passed for low-budget monster makeup in one of the movie posters on the wall. All evidence pointed to her having plummeted into a pond.
Or having the pond dropped on her by a magical river bird.
“Smart-ass little feathered prick thinks he’s being so clever.” Tanya’s muttering followed her into the bathroom. “See how he likes it when…”
The door slammed shut. Connor shot Aila a questioning look.
“She’s fighting with her Bix phoenix,” Aila explained. And losing, it looked like. “He likes to hide in holes.”
“Holes?”
She nodded. “Any of your dragons like to hide in holes?”
“No. I can’t say I’ve run into that one.”
“Probably for the best.” All the aviaries had a protective foundation of IMWS certified concrete underneath, but if a five-pound bird could prove so crafty, Aila shuddered to think what a determined dragon could accomplish.
The interruption fizzled any tension between them. Connor returned to work. Aila leaned against the counter a safe distance away, begging the heat in her cheeks to recede.
He was being friendly. A helpful colleague. Dangerous, to hope for anything more.
No matter how much Aila wanted something more.
When Tanya emerged a few minutes later, she’d refreshed her makeup and washed the mud from her braids. Her attire remained soggy, paired with a frown as she squinted between Aila and their visitor.
“Morning, Connor.”
“Morning, Tanya. Sorry to hear about your bird troubles.”
Her lips thinned. “He’ll get what’s coming to him. You helping with the incubators?”
“I was showing Aila how to do some repairs. She learns fast.”
He flashed Aila a dazzling smile. Her heart twirled.
Tanya made a displeased hum. “Sure is kind of you. Mind if I steal Aila for a minute? Got to take a look at the water spigot outside, been acting up again.”
Aila glared, a silent what are you doing? “Can’t be that bad. I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Please, don’t let me keep you,” Connor said. “I’m almost finished. I can take a look at the rest of the incubators, come get you if anything pops up?”
Aila gave him a tight smile. For Tanya, a scowl. “Right. Sure. Sounds perfect.”
Fuming, she followed Tanya outside. They were friends. Best friends. How dare Tanya defy their most sacred of pacts, invoking their code phrase when cute boys were involved?
Out in the public viewing area, a group of teenagers gathered at the exhibit glass, snapping photos with their phones as Rubra rolled on the ground with an olive branch, setting each leaf alight like birthday candles. Tanya drew Aila past the crowd and into a secluded corner beneath the grape arbors, immune to Aila’s glare, tapping an azure nail to her chin.
“Yes?” Aila demanded. “Can I help you?”
“Cute dragon boy’s gotten awful friendly.”
“Yeah. Of course he… Wasn’t that the goal ?”
Tanya made another long hum. “ Too friendly.”
Aila slumped against the stucco wall with a groan. “Tanya. Please. What do you want from me? Because we both know I’m not socially adept enough for whatever is happening in this conversation.”
Tanya sighed. “I don’t mean anything too serious by it, Ailes. Just you’ve got a lot to balance right now. Maybe trying to add romance on top is a little… precarious?”
Fair point, if not for one glaring oversight: Aila was always precarious. In all her meager relationship experience, there was never a right time, only panic and flailing and awkward monologues that should have stayed locked up in her head. Having someone reciprocate even a sliver of her affections was a rarity.
Didn’t Aila deserve that? To not always have to stretch and scrape herself to fit the people around her?
“I just don’t want him hurting your precious little heart.” Tanya laid a hand on her shoulder. “Because if that happens, I’ll have to feed him to the kelpie, and I chipped enough nails today already.”
“No one needs to get fed to the kelpie, Tanya. And he’s… It’s no big deal. No hearts or anything. Just spending some time together.”
“ Mm-hm .” Tanya dragged the syllables out to an insulting length.
“OK, you got drenched by a bird this morning, so I don’t want to hear it.”
“Is that the game we’re playing? How many hours of sleep did you get last night?”
“I’ll have you know I got…” Aila paused. She tapped her fingers against the wall, counting. “Four. OK. But studies have shown that required sleep levels are variable across individuals.”
Aila had managed tighter sleep schedules in college. And this was only temporary until the inspection.
It was fine. She was fine .
“All I’m saying is, you’ve been pushing yourself to the bone. Doing all this work on your own, and we’ve still got a plenty big list before that inspector comes.”
“Yes. I’m aware. But—”
“Yet here you are dilly-dallying with cute dragon boy.” Tanya crossed her arms. “Almost as if you’re avoiding something in particular.”
Skies and seas, sometimes Aila hated how well Tanya knew her.
“I will get that talon-mite duster from griffin show,” Aila said. “In time for our scheduled application tomorrow. As promised.”
“Oh?” Tanya dripped skepticism. “And how are you going to do that?”
“Relax, Tanya. I totally have a plan.”
Aila’s plan consisted of waiting until the zoo closed, then sneaking ninja-style into the griffin show complex while no one was around. Genius. She’d pat herself on the back later.
After hours, the amphitheater was less offensive. Quiet. Dark. A little spooky. Aila jumped when the first motion-sensing light snapped on behind the show building. Nothing to be concerned about. The performing creatures were locked away in barns and aviaries. All the keepers appeared to have headed home.
The only person Aila cared about avoiding was Luciana.
It was college all over again. Aila spent most of her freshman year skulking around the teaching exhibits and study halls, yearning for the abilities of a vanishing duck, heart skipping any time Luciana glinted past like a wayward star.
From the start, Aila had a hopeless crush on her. The flawless hair, that regal smirk, those eyes that disintegrated every flirting human who dared push into her orbit. But more than anything, the confidence . Luciana walked that campus like every blade of grass could sing for her, spoke without doubt that any person or beast would hang rapt to her words.
Aila had hoped they could be friends. Silly, naive Aila. She’d have a better chance coaxing a star to join her on the ground.
She’d aced all her college courses—except for one : Animal Outreach Practicum. An entire mandatory class dedicated to crafting educational presentations and speaking them in front of people. Aila hadn’t known such agony since her parents signed her up for a theater summer camp in middle school as an attempt to help her make friends.
Except outreach class had been worse. Aila was supposed to be good at animals, at academics. She’d written her entire script about sunburst hummingbirds, spent weeks memorizing lines about the birds’ native habitat in the Ziclexian rainforest, how they produced multicolored light to accent their plumage while singing, until she started reciting the speech in her sleep (much to Tanya’s annoyance). The day of her practice presentation arrived. She’d stood in front of her entire class, demonstration bird perched on her hand.
She’d gotten one sentence out before the words froze in her throat.
Aila had stood in front of everyone as her legs began to shake. Speechless. Petrified. Helpless as the judging stares of her classmates bored into her, as her instructor frowned over their grading notecard. She’d looked like a fool. She’d looked like a pathetic little kid who’d never been able to do what came so easy for everyone else.
And what was the first sound to break that spell?
A laugh. A perfect, honeyed laugh.
Luciana. Flawless, confident Luciana, sat in the back of that class, laughing as Aila stood numb with stage fright. Years later, the wretched sound still rattled in her skull.
Then add the insult of the following day, when their group projects were assigned. Luciana and Aila, paired together. The witch hadn’t waited thirty seconds before slinking to the instructor, whispering a request for reassignment. A shining comet, refusing to be tethered to a lump of coal.
Each memory churned hot in Aila’s stomach as she crept through the griffin show barns. No people in sight, and she preferred it that way. Less chance for her to look like an idiot. Less chance to disappoint.
Yet when she spotted a barn door ajar, her path veered before she could stop herself.
Wasn’t this where she’d visited Nimit, the aging peacock griffin? The other keepers ought to be long gone, and she’d hate to think someone left an enclosure open. Golden light spilled through the crack. Wary, she peeked inside.
Nimit lay curled in his stall, wrapped in a spray of blue and green tail feathers, breaths heavy as his head rested in the lap of a familiar figure.
Luciana. She sat with her back to the door, shoulders slumped and hair coated in hay dust, combing her fingers through Nimit’s cobalt neck feathers.
Aila should have scurried off, grabbed the equipment she needed while Luciana was distracted. Confusion kept her rooted. She’d seen Luciana affectionate toward the griffin, yet assumed it an act, part of the stage persona. This was different. The silence of the barn tugged at Aila like claws, a gravity hanging between Luciana and her beast, pulling the proud woman’s head down lower than it had ever hung. Lower than a star should hang.
Aila shouldn’t be watching this.
Heart pounding, she backed away.
With new urgency, she dove into the storage barns behind the aviaries. A quick trip. That was all she’d meant this to be. No distractions, no run-ins with colleagues or their uncomfortable emotions. Without bothering to switch on the light, Aila scrambled into a shed and beelined for the talon-mite sprayer, nudging aside boxes of leather handling gloves and a couple of transport crates she could have sworn belonged to the phoenix exhibit. A battle for another day. She pulled the apparatus free, a long metal sprayer attached to a plastic backpack.
The light to the shed flicked on.
Aila gasped and clutched the sprayer to her chest like a busted jewel thief.
Her worst nightmare stood in the doorway: Luciana, with one manicured finger raised beside the light switch, coral lips pressed into a scowl, eyes like phoenix embers beneath veiled lashes. In the harsh light of the exposed bulb, Luciana’s eyeshadow smudged into tired shadows. A blush of red puffed her nose.
Wait wait wait.
Had she…?
Had she been crying?
“You could have asked,” Luciana said.
Aila blinked, stumbling over Luciana’s less than flawless appearance, her slumped shoulders in the barn.
“Hello?” Luciana snapped her fingers, breaking Aila’s spell. “Were you going to let me know about taking our equipment, or abscond with it in the night like a skulking purserat?”
“I knew Nimit was getting old,” Aila said, quiet. “I’m sorry, I… didn’t realize he was that bad.”
This was, it turned out, as far as possible from the correct thing to say. Luciana flinched, a flash of shock replaced by a dragon’s snarl.
“You’re sorry?” Luciana scoffed. “That’s a first.”
The words stung like a slap. This was what Aila got for trying to be nice ? “Will you give it a break? You don’t have to act all perfect and tough all the time.”
Luciana laughed, humorless. “You’re one to talk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, please. I’d be honored for our star performer to educate me .”
Luciana swept a hand over Aila’s defensive stance, the sprayer clutched to her chest. “Everyone in the zoo knows about your renovation project. Yet have we heard a peep about it here at griffin show?”
Of course. Always about her . “I haven’t had time to—”
“Of course you haven’t. Instead, you think you can tackle this whole thing on your own. You come sneaking in here after hours when we’d have gladly handed that equipment over. Why is it always like this, Aila? Are you that embarrassed to ask us for help?”
“I just don’t want to ask you for help!”
The words crackled between them.
Aila wanted to shrink away. Not the smartest tactic. Every survival guide said running from predators was the surest path to doom. Not to mention, Luciana blocked the door. Puffy-eyed or not, her glower weighed heavy enough to crack bones.
“If you need our help,” Luciana said, too quiet, “we’d give it in a heartbeat. All you have to do is suck up your pride and ask .”
The offer came out less like a kindness, more like a threat. It sank venomous into Aila’s skin, prickling even after Luciana marched off into the night. Even after Aila was alone again, a trespasser caught in rumpled clothes and stark fluorescent light.
Fuck Luciana. Of course she could claim the high ground, the world revolving around her as usual. When she spoke, people listened. When she called, people answered. Aila had to claw her way here without all that. She’d keep clawing if she had to.
She fled in the opposite direction, sprayer in hand, determined to prove that witch wrong.