Phoenix Overture (4 page)

ONLY MOMENTS AFTER that declaration, someone opened the Council chamber door and shooed us away. The three of us retreated to Stef’s house, through the wind and rain.

By the time we reached Stef’s house, a small and worn thing, we were all soaked to the bone, shivering. We headed into the kitchen, where Stef lit the woodstove and grabbed towels from a cupboard.

“Do I want to know why you keep your towels there?” I asked.

Stef hurled a towel at my face. “Don’t judge if you want to get dry.”

I snatched the towel and scrubbed my face, hair, and arms as more towels flew across the room. We were quiet for a few minutes, all of us drying off while the rain pounded harder, drowning out all other noises. Stef’s house was an island.

“You live all by yourself?” Fayden asked.

Stef nodded and tossed his towel into a corner. “My aunts are next door. That’s all the supervision I can handle.”

“Ah.” Fayden eyed the kitchen table and chairs, all piled with parts and gadgets in various states of disassembly. “Can I move this stuff?”

Stef sighed and began rearranging his belongings. “This is why I live alone.”

“So you can cover every surface with your junk?” Fayden rolled his eyes and threw his towel into the same corner Stef had.

“Will they really go after Janan?” I shook my head and dropped into the newly empty chair Stef offered.

“You said Meuric sounded serious.” Stef shoved another empty chair at Fayden, who immediately sat and leaned back, front two legs popping off the floor. Stef shot him a frown.

Fayden’s chair
thunk
ed as the front two legs hit the floor again, and he looked at me. “I guess you think it’s a bad idea?”

I shrugged. “Janan has gone on lots of quests. People die every time. It just seems like sending more people on a quest to recover him—” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Never mind.”

Rain tapped on the woodstove chimney, filling the heartbeats of silence between the three of us.

The rain lasted through the night and next morning. Not until the afternoon did the sun finally peek from behind the heavy black clouds, illuminating the rain-glazed world so streets and houses and puddles glowed golden bright.

Bells clanged, summoning the Community to the Center, and within an hour, bodies flooded into the immense building. I stuck close to Fayden and Stef as we climbed the tiered seats, our footsteps ringing on the metal. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Community—save those working in fields, tending to the young, or infected with plague—crammed into the Center. When the seats were filled and all the aisles and overhead boxes occupied, they poured onto the field of unnaturally bright green grass, leaving only a narrow strip of ground between the front row and the stage.

The stage, worn and streaked with decades of dirt and shoes and memories, waited in the center of the field. Meuric and the other Councilors climbed the rickety stairs and waited for the roar of the crowd to dwindle.

Whispers of speculation ceased as Meuric began: “Weeks ago, Janan gathered his warriors on a quest to deliver our people from death. We all know someone who’s died from plague or attack or hunger. We all know the fear of wondering whether we’re going to be next—that any moment could be our last.

“We inherited this world where fearsome creatures draw ever nearer. They invade our forests, threaten our Community, and destroy what’s left of the old city—and our hopes of one day resurrecting what was taken from us during the Cataclysm.” The other Councilors nodded at Meuric’s statement, and a low hum of agreement swept through the hundreds of thousands of people. The heat of all the bodies crammed into one building made my head swim. I felt sweat pour down the back of my neck, and I wasn’t the only one. The sour stench of hot, fearful bodies filled the Center.

The Center held only a quarter of the Community. There was no safe place for us all.

As though he sensed my thoughts, Meuric spoke up again. “Since the Cataclysm, humanity has grown scarcer and scarcer. If we don’t fight back, soon we will cease to exist altogether.”

Mutters rippled through the audience, carried by an undercurrent of fear. I shivered, too. I couldn’t help it.

“Indeed, many of you came from other Communities—from cities that are now gone forever.” Meuric lifted his voice to shout over the echoing whispers, shifting, and sniffing. “Humans used to be the strongest of creatures, the most feared, because we have superior minds. But now we are so few, and the creatures who hunt us have abilities we have no hope of combating.”

Someone nearby was sobbing. Next to me, Stef and Fayden wore hard, unreadable looks.

“Janan is tired of burying our people,” cried Meuric. “And so am I. I’m finished hiding from our enemies, quietly rebuilding after they’ve gone. I’m finished being hunted. I’m ready to fight back. That is what Janan wants for our Community. That is what he left to pursue on his quest.”

The assembly grew utterly quiet. This was what they’d been waiting to hear: where Janan was. What Fayden, Stef, and I already knew.

“Janan took his best warriors on his quest to deliver us from death. But when he was close to success, our enemies swooped down and seized him—and the rest of his warriors. Janan: our leader and our deliverer. Janan wants so much for us—and has risked so much for us—but now he needs our help. All of our help.”

In the immense chamber filled with people packed shoulder against shoulder, squeezed into small spaces, and pressed against walls—there was not a sound above the rustle of breath and clothing, and the creak of metal benches and stands.

Tension grew thick, palpable. Every eye was trained on Meuric.

“Janan is being held alive. I know that much.” Meuric gazed all around the Center, as though he could meet everyone’s eyes. “He will be
kept
alive, according to what I’ve learned. That gives us some time. And the upper hand. The enemy believes we will not pursue, but we’re about to shock them: we’re going to free Janan. All of us.”

There was a collective gasp, and Meuric had to shout over the flurry of whispers.

“Pack what you can carry. This will not be an easy journey, so prepare yourself for anything—everything. In one month, we will leave this place and travel north into unknown lands. In one month, we travel toward new life.”

NOT EVERYONE WAS willing to leave the outskirts of the city.

Riots erupted throughout the Community, sending people to the Center to be treated for injuries. Plague victims were quarantined even more fiercely—taken to forgotten quarters of the old city and left with food and water and a handful of barely trained medics to treat hundreds of people.

People began stealing food and supplies from one another, and scavengers were in even more demand, sent to retrieve necessities in the old city. Stef’s trap was abandoned, and the three of us hardly saw the inside of the concert hall. Instead, Stef and I accompanied Fayden on his scavenging missions, both for provisions for the three of us, and for what other people sent him to find.

It was hard work, made even more difficult by the dilapidated state of the buildings. We braved rotting floors and roofs that shuddered in the faintest of winds. Where homes and towers had slumped sideways after earthquakes, we had to secure ourselves with rope and slide or rappel into treacherous areas; all the easy marks had been looted long ago.

Animals prowled the ruins, hunting for food. When it was my turn to stand guard, Fayden armed me with a lit torch and ordered me to shoo away anything that drew too near. Feral cats and dogs slinked around the edges of whatever area we searched, while snakes, spiders, and insects filled the cracks and crevices of this ancient city.

Conditions in the Community deteriorated. Fayden and I saw Father only once, days after we’d sneaked into his house and stolen our belongings. We stayed with Stef, hidden in his parent-free house whenever we had to return to the Community. Some nights, we just stayed in the old city like Fayden used to do.

In some ways, it was the freest I’d ever been, with no Father to threaten me.

One night, when the three of us were laying out our sleeping bags atop a high-rise building, Stef asked, “We’re going, right? With the rest of the Community?”

“I don’t really
want
to go. I like this. Here.” Fayden motioned across the dark city and glanced at me. “But I guess we don’t have much of a choice. What do you think, Sam?”

I shrugged. “It seems ridiculous to take
everyone
. That’s over two million people. Why do we all have to go? What can a bunch of farmers and scavengers do to rescue Janan?”

“I know, but you wouldn’t stay here, would you?” Fayden scowled. “You’d go with the rest of the Community, right?”

I looked at Stef, who was slicing a wedge of cheese for our dinner. He wore a thoughtful expression. “What about your trap?” I asked.

He lowered the cheese and knife. “If we’re somewhere else, we won’t need the trap.”

“You won’t ever know if they’d have approved it for wider use.”

“There will be other opportunities to petition them for work. I’m sure they’ll come up with lots of reasons to need my services while we travel. Whenever we get where we’re going.”

“But the glass. The trolls.” The revenge I needed.

The last was mere thought, but Stef looked at me as though he understood. “The world is full of monsters. Be angry about what happened. Fight back when you can. But don’t let that anger and fight consume your life. You deserve to live, too.”

Was that why I was so resistant to go? Because I couldn’t see beyond my own pain?

Certainly that was part of it, but I didn’t think I was wrong about Meuric’s declaration that we would
all
go to rescue Janan. If he was such a great warrior, and he’d taken all the best warriors with him, why couldn’t he rescue himself? What could the rest of us do? We had numbers, certainly, but with the drought and hunger and plague, population wouldn’t be on our side for long. Especially since—as Stef said—the world was full of monsters.

How many would die on this journey north?

Would I even survive it?

Fayden and Stef would look out for me. And I couldn’t abandon them, either.

“I still think it’s a dumb idea.”

“No one’s arguing that.” Stef flashed a grin. “It’s a Meuric idea, though. He’s absolutely certain that we all worship Janan just as much as he does, so to him, this is a reasonable demand. We all go.”

What about the people who couldn’t?

Well, unless music could help them make the journey, I was useless to them.

“If you’re both going, then I’m going.” I said it with a smile, but I knew neither of them bought it. “Besides, someone has to keep you two out of trouble.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Fayden grabbed a bit of cheese, ignoring Stef’s scowling. “We have to stick together, all three of us.”

And that was the truth. I’d already lost my mother. I couldn’t lose my brother and best friend, too.

“What’s going to happen to the people who stay behind?” I asked. From this rooftop, I could just spot the fires of the plague quarantine area. “What about the people who are sick, who won’t be able to make the journey Meuric is proposing?”

“You want the truth?” Fayden raised an eyebrow.

I nodded.

“I don’t think they’re going to survive anyway, but especially not without the Community.” His voice turned lower, sadder. “I think they’re all going to die here, stuck in the memories of a city that’s crumbling to nothing.”

Those words haunted me all through the night, and rang through my thoughts as sunlight poured across the city. Maybe it was guilt, or some repressed sense of obligation, but after Stef, Fayden, and I ate a quick breakfast, I announced that I wanted to go back to the Community. I wanted to see Father.

“You
want
to see him?” Stef’s face twisted in disbelief. “After what he did to you?”

“I want to find out whether he’s going.” I looked at my hands. “I know what he did to me. And I don’t want to travel with him. I just . . . need to know, I guess.” It felt presumptuous to say, but: “Mother would want someone to check on him.”

“Do you think this is a smart idea?” Fayden scowled and finished loading his backpack.

“I don’t know. Maybe not.” Still, I had to try.

That afternoon, the three of us headed back to the Community—Stef to his aunts’ house, where he was helping pack the wagon we’d all be sharing, and Fayden and me to our father’s house at the far edge of the Community.

The walks would take longer than usual, because we had to go around areas that were consumed with riots. Even from here, I could hear the crackle and scream of fire, and smell the acrid smoke.

“Don’t be upset,” Fayden said, after a few minutes of walking in charged silence.

“Discussions that start like that never lead anywhere good.” I shoved my hands into my pockets as we ducked around a gaggle of children carrying baskets of supplies. With the riots not far off, it was incredible their parents would let them out. Unless they had fathers like Fayden and I did, who didn’t care at all.

My brother hesitated. “I’ve been wondering why Mother chose you. For music, I mean. Why did you get to see that part of her, but not me? And did Father know? Was I the only one who didn’t?”

I pressed my mouth into a line and shrugged. “I don’t know. She never told me whether anyone else knew. Her mother did, obviously. But I don’t know if her friends knew. I’ve never been able to bring myself to ask, in case they didn’t. In case they decided that selling the instruments for parts was more important than preserving them.”

“Preserving them for what?”

“For everyone?” I kept my eyes on the ground. “I guess— I guess there’s always been a part of me that’s wanted to share music. When you and Stef started listening to my playing, that was amazing. And just think about the fact that there’s a concert hall in the city, where people used to come from all over to hear music performed. Our grandmother was a performer. Mother said music was Grandmother’s
job
.”

“I can’t even imagine what her world must have been like.” Fayden shook his head.

I could, a little. The music parts, anyway. “I guess,” I went on, “there’s a piece of me that’s always hoped to do the same. To be like her—that one day the Community wouldn’t be focused solely on survival. That one day the Community would be able to take in something more. Like music.”

“That’s not a bad dream.” My brother smiled a little.

“Mother had the same dream, she said once.” I hesitated. “When I told her I wanted to be like Grandmother, she said she wanted the same thing. For me. For her.”

Tense silence stretched between us as we rounded a corner.

“I don’t think she
chose
me,” I said at last. “I think she saw me roaming through the forest one day, mimicking birdsongs. Or I saw her doing it, and copied. I’m not sure. I only remember a little of that day. She actually did take me foraging then, because I was too young to leave alone.”

Fayden nodded.

I’d never told anyone this before, except Mother: “I remember hearing this overwhelming sound, and it just filled me up. Like my heart was too big for my chest. I asked about it, why the forest sounds made me feel like that.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘You have music in you.’”

Fayden lowered his eyes. “I was always jealous that she took you foraging, that she spent time with you and never seemed to care that you didn’t come home with much food. I didn’t realize what was actually happening, which makes me feel incredibly stupid.”

I released a weak chuckle. “I was always jealous that Father actually liked you, and that Mother didn’t have to make weekly appeals for your life.”

He scowled. “Was it that bad?”

“Seems like it.”

“And yet you want to make sure he comes with us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think he should be left behind. He doesn’t deserve to die.” And I couldn’t stop thinking about what Fayden had said, that grim proclamation that everyone left here would die without the Community.

“All right.” He didn’t say whether he agreed, though I wished he would. His expression stayed thoughtful the remainder of the walk, and too soon, we stood before Father’s house.

Heart pounding, I knocked on the door.

It took several minutes before he answered, and he clutched the doorknob as though it was the only thing keeping him upright. He listed to one side, eyelids drooping, and his mouth pulled into a sneer when he recognized us.

“What are you doing here?” His words slurred, and his breath reeked of alcohol, enough to make me want to stagger back.

Fayden was a pillar of strength beside me, though when he spoke, his words were clipped and his eyes were hard. “We came to find out whether you’re going with the rest of the Community to find Janan.”

Father’s slowly shifting expression was the hush before a thunderstorm.

“And,” I added quickly, “whether we can help you pack or . . . or if you need anything.”

With a withering look, Father took a shaking step toward us. “What I’m going to do is no longer your business. You abandoned me here. First your mother left, and now you.” He turned on me. “And
you
! Why would I want
your
help with anything? You useless boy.”

I steeled myself and tried to keep my voice steady, but the edges cracked like glass. “Father, we need to know. Are you going with the rest of the Community?”

“No.” He spat a brown glob that landed at my feet. “No, I’m not going with the rest of the Community.”

I glanced at Fayden, but his jaw was set and his fists curled behind his back.

“Why won’t you go?” I’d always thought Father was as devoted to Janan as anyone else, what with him wanting to send me on Janan’s quest. If I’d gone, I’d be one of those warriors no one cared about—as long as the Community found
Janan
.

Father’s tone grew savage and raw. “What care do I have for the Community? My wife is gone because
someone
let her die. My only son abandoned me when I needed him. He abandoned me for a murderer, a boy who’d just as soon let everyone around him die, as long as it meant he could stay safe.”

“I didn’t—”

Fayden jerked my arm, making me stumble backward just as Father’s fist flew through the air where my head had been a moment before.

“You did let her die!” Father’s rage crescendoed, drawing looks from neighbors and passersby. “You did nothing when you could have saved her. Her death is your fault, you stupid, selfish, useless boy. I wish it had been you who died.”

I staggered back as my brother stepped in front of me. “Don’t talk that way, Father,” Fayden said. “He’s still your son.”

“Neither of you are my sons.” The door slammed shut, and rattled in its frame.

I clenched my jaw so hard that my eyes watered.

“Come on,” said Fayden. “If he wants to stay, we can’t force him.”

“But he’s our father,” I whispered.

My brother shook his head. “We don’t have a father anymore. We have each other.”