The Crimson Brand (11 page)

There was Zoe, who she still wanted to talk to about Susan’s argument.  There was Katie.  Penny wanted desperately to know how things had gone for her after her dramatic exit yesterday.  There was Ronan, and his odd present.

“Ronan?”  Penny peered into the mirror, waiting for the fog to come, bringing Ronan with it, but nothing happened.  “Ronan, are you there?”

Nothing.

Continuing toward the hollow, Penny moved to the next on her mental list.

“Kat?”  Several seconds passed.  She was about to try again when the familiar swirl of fog appeared, then disappeared just as suddenly, leaving Katie’s unhappy face in its place.

“Hi,” she said.  Penny could see the stack of pillows propping her head and guessed she was still in bed, moping or grounded.  Probably both.  Katie settled it for her a second later.  “Dad grounded me.  Two weeks, and I’m not allowed to go back to your house …
of course
.”

Penny had guessed that already too, but it was still disappointing to hear her fear confirmed.  “Are you okay?”

Katie rolled her eyes.  “Oh yeah, I’m just wonderful.  I feel good enough to scream.”

And to Penny’s surprise, she did.

“I’m so pissed right now!”  She glared away for a moment, then looked back at Penny.  “I’m sorry about your party.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she shouted again.  “He was a total jerk!”

Katie’s eyes flicked away from the mirror, and she groaned.  “Crap, he’s coming.  Probably thinks I’m on my cell phone.  Grounded, you know.”

“Later, okay?”  Penny asked.

Katie nodded and was gone.

She tried Zoe next.

“Hey, babe!”  Zoe greeted her cheerfully.  Penny hoped her good mood was genuine. 
Someone
should be happy today.  “You need to talk to Kat.”

“Already have.”  Penny had reached the edge of the canyon trail to the hollow and, given her past near-tumbles down it, decided to wait until she could give it her full attention.  She sat, her feet hanging over the drop.  “She’s in big trouble.”

“I know,” Zoe said, actually smiling.  “But not as much trouble as her dad.”

“What?”

“Michael told their mom about his total freak-out at your party.  That guy is feeling no love right now.”  Zoe seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in his predicament.  “They all hate him.” 

“A lot of good it’ll do Kat,” Penny said.

“It will if she stops losing her temper. Michael says it’s only a matter of time before their mom wears him down, and Michael won’t even talk to him now.”

“Wait … you talked to Michael?”

Zoe blushed and turned her face so a curtain of hair hid it. 

“He called.  Wanted to let me know what was going on.”

“He never called me,” Penny teased.

“Well, he’s embarrassed.  He feels like he ruined your party … and Kat thinks you’re mad at her.”

“What?  That’s just stupid!”

“I know. I told them the same thing.  But you’ve already talked to her ….”

“Not long I didn’t.”  Penny said.  “She started yelling and I had to go.”

“Oh … well, temper runs in that family I guess.”

“Can you come over today?”

“Naw,” Zoe said.  “Stuck at home.”

“Why?  You’re not grounded too, are you?”

Zoe hadn’t done anything to tick off her bad-tempered grandma lately, at least not that Penny knew about, but sometimes it seemed like Zoe spent half of her time grounded.

“No, nothing like that.”  She was silent for a moment, and Penny’s perspective changed as Zoe turned. 

“Grandma had a spell yesterday and called the ambulance.  So now her doctor has her on new heart medication and she needs
me
to stay at home today to make sure it doesn’t kill her.”  Zoe rolled her eyes.  “She’s so paranoid … and I hear her calling.  Gotta run, Little Red.”

Then Zoe, too, was gone.

Looked like Penny had a little more alone time whether she wanted it or not.

She pushed the mirror into her pocket and began descending into the hollow.

Time for a little therapy
, she thought.

Nothing cheered her up quite like setting stuff on fire or blowing it up.

*   *   *

Penny worked out her frustrations with a round of target practice, levitating large rocks onto the ledge on the other side of the creek and blasting them with her wand.  She was getting good, too, hitting her targets almost every time.  Of course, she was getting a lot of practice, much more than Zoe and Katie.  It wasn’t fair to them, her easier access to the hollow and its secrets.  She wished there was something she could do to help them.

She avoided opening
The Secrets of The Phoenix Girls.
  She thought the next time should be an occasion for all of them, not just her.

When pummeling unoffending rocks grew boring, she sat on one of the big ash’s large, arching roots, kicked off her shoes, and cooled her feet in the water.  She thought about the day before, Katie’s revelation of and victory over her fears, the bizarre forming of their circle, and the even more bizarre vision she’d had before it ended.

And there were the warm but painless flames, what Ronan called Phoenix Fire.

Phoenix Fire.  It’ll only burn what its maker wants it to burn
.

Penny remembered the feeling of it burning harmlessly in the palm of her hand, how Katie, near panic, had asked her to put it down.  But she hadn’t put it down or even put it out.  She’d simply done what came naturally to her.  She’d closed her hand and put it away.

As she thought about it, she could feel the familiar tingling warmth rising in her chest, as if the flames were hiding inside her and waiting for her to call them. 

Penny laid her wand on her lap and raised her right hand, not forcing the warmth to flow down her arm toward it, but
letting
it.  The tiny hairs on her arm stood on end as the warmth flowed through it, then settled again as it concentrated in her palm.

She could feel it now, just beneath her skin, and realized she was the only thing stopping it.  Her will was the only tether holding it back, so she closed her eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, and let it go.

When she opened her eyes, the flames danced from her cupped palm, licking up her fingers.  For a long moment she simply marveled.

Then she panicked.

The flames began to spread along her arm, to her elbow and beyond.

“Whoa!”  Penny jumped from her seat and waved her arm through the air, but the flames only spread.

She dropped to her belly at the creek’s edge and plunged her arm up to the shoulder in the icy water.

“I don’t think it’s working,” a voice from across the creek said, and she looked up to see Ronan standing at rigid attention in the mouth of his cave.

“What do I do?”  She cried out, thrashing her arm through the water, though Ronan was right.  The flames danced as energetically under the water as they had done out of it.  “
What do I do
?”

“Calm down!” Ronan leapt into the creek, and as he swam toward her, she saw her wand washing away in the current. 

 “My wand!”  Penny screamed and lunged for it but missed by several feet and fell headlong into the cold, rushing water.  When she had managed to push herself out of the water and back onto the shore, she saw Ronan paddling toward her, the wand clamped between his teeth.  She relaxed for a moment, then remembered that she was on fire and panicked again.  “Help me, Ronan!”

Ronan scrambled ashore and shook the water from his thick fur, drenching Penny once again, then spat the wand out next to her.

“Calm yourself and get control of it,” he shouted, now near panic himself.  “It can’t hurt you.”

Penny closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing.  She couldn’t shake the image of the flames, harmless to her or not, spreading until she was completely engulfed, running around and flapping her flaming arms through the air and screaming like a lunatic.

“Calm,” Ronan urged.  “Just remember, it’s a part of you.  You called it out and you can put it back just as easily.”

Penny recalled closing her fist and not extinguishing the fire but simply putting it away.  How the lovely warmth had settled into her, not dying but going into waiting.

Putting the fire back
was
more difficult than letting it out; it was like willing herself to calm down after a fit of anger, but she felt the warmth decrease by slow stages.

“You’re doing it,” Ronan said, sounding calmer himself.  “Open your eyes.”

Penny did and saw the flames guttering on her arm, then dying.  As they died, her arm began to sting with cold.  She pulled it from the creek and watched as the flames retreated toward her hand, and, with a regretful little
poof
, puffed out. 

“That was intense,” Penny said.  She regarded her dripping wet arm with suspicion, as if it might burst into flames again.  “I’d better learn to get that under control.  If I start bursting into flames during class people will definitely know something is up.”

Ronan settled next to her and began to laugh.  “I’m sorry, little lady, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.  You have no idea ….”

Losing complete control, Ronan rolled onto his side and wheezed laughter.  “… how … much I’ve needed this.”

Penny dropped onto the ground beside Ronan, scowling at him for a moment before the giggles took her, too.  There was just no way to watch a large red fox rolling on the ground in gales of laughter without the image tickling your funny bone.

At last Ronan’s wheezing chuckles died out, and he could look at her without being overcome by them.  “You should have seen yourself.  It really was amusing.”

Penny rocked forward with another quick burst of giggles.  “I’m happy to have brightened your day.”

She picked herself up off the ground, grabbed her wand, and resumed her seat on the tree’s arched root.  Ronan jumped up beside her.

“I’ve never seen any of the others do that,” he said, sounding impressed.  “In fact, I’ve never seen
anyone
do that.”

Penny looked into his upturned, grinning face, and decided that this was as good a time as any to try to press a few answers out of him.

“Not even my mom or Susan?”  Penny waited for a moment, but he didn’t reply.  “What about Kat’s aunt?”

His smile did not fade as she’d expected, but he did turn away from her.  She crossed her arms and prepared for more of his artful dodging.

“Not even them,” he admitted.  “Of course, Susan never had the affinity with fire that you share with Diana and Nancy.  Her element was always air.  She was the first of their generation to learn how to fly.”

Penny didn’t know which stunned her the most; the fact that Ronan was giving her a straight answer about her mother for once, or that Susan could fly.

“Susan … can fly?”

Ronan shook his head.  “Not anymore, but back in her day she was like a bird, that one.”

Ronan appeared lost in reverie, looking back on the old days when Penny’s mother and all of her friends had called Aurora Hollow their place and had done amazing things which Penny couldn’t begin to imagine. 

“You know, I’m not surprised you figured it out,” he said.  “I’m not disappointed, either.  You’re inquisitive, persistent and intelligent ... your mother would have been pleased.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”  Penny felt her familiar frustration with Ronan rise, and squelched it.  She had learned to trust him in the past year. His advice had never led her wrong, so he must have good reasons for withholding.  “Why hasn’t Susan said anything?  She has to know what we’re up to.”

“It’s … complicated,” he said.  “And not all of it is nice.”

“Well,” Penny said, feeling nettled again.  “Maybe if you use small words and talk … real … slow … I’ll be able to follow it.”

Ronan made a small barking sound
—
she couldn’t tell if it was a sound of amusement or frustration.  “There’s not much to tell, honestly.”