Page 55 of Tiger's Destiny
The pain washed away as if it had never been, but my torso was burned almost past the point of recognition. I didn’t care. As long as the pain was gone, I’d contentedly lie on my bed of fire and fall into “that sleep of death.”
The Phoenix continued, “What would you give to have your parents and Mr. Kadam back again?”
“Anything,” I whispered roughly through burned, cracked lips.
“Would you sacrifice your young men?”
My drifting mind focused.Would I sacrifice Ren and Kishan to get my parents back?I thought of my family’s little library, of baking cookies with my mom, of picnics by waterfalls. I remembered when I had graduated middle school, and my dad leapt to his feet, clapping, brushing tears away from beneath his glasses, even though none of the other parents stood up. I thought of Mr. Kadam and of how we enjoyed cooking dinner together in the evenings, how he loved to ramble on and on about fast cars and spices and of how much I missed him.
But then my thoughts drifted to Ren and Kishan.I loved them both. Could I give up Kishan’s teasing or Ren’s smile? Could I give up Kishan’s bear hugs or Ren’s touch?
I answered the Phoenix, “No, I will not trade their lives for my parents’ or Mr. Kadam’s. You can have my life though.” I coughed, my voice sounding like crackling leaves. “. . . for what it’s worth.”
Tentatively, I reached up and felt my bald scalp. I lowered my trembling hand and managed to squeeze out a tear.
“Poor broken fledgling,” the bird whispered. “You’re right that your life isn’t worth much. Certainly not worth the full lives of three souls who have passed beyond. Perhaps if you’d been willing to experience love and had had a few years of happiness, you might have amounted to something. As it is, your life is rather pathetic. What a waste.”
I tried to nod in agreement, but I had lost control of my body. The Phoenix was right. Iwaspathetic. I had wasted my life. I’d been so afraid of losing that I’d never tried to win.
“Still, I suppose you might amount to something someday. You certainly seem important enough to those young men.” After a moment he continued. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer. Until I deem you ready to appreciate it, your life is mine. Come.”
I heard the heavy thump of wings as the Phoenix rose in the air and stirred up a wind that blew around my blackened body. As it descended toward me, I heard its beautiful song once again. Then I felt the sensation of being picked up and flown through the sky. As we soared over the flaming forest through the dark sky, I fell into a deep slumber, gently rocked to sleep on the softest of clouds.
I dreamt of a great kingdom of the past. In an ancient library, Lokesh was torturing a lowly record keeper for information on Queen Panhtwar Beikthano, the Burmese Queen of Pyu, whose brother had given her a magic drum. When she beat upon the drum, the nearby river rose up and fell upon her enemies. It also brought rain during a drought and cast off floodwaters. The evil magician smiled and murmured, “The drum was a diversion.” Lokesh’s eyes blazed with fire before the vision shifted to a dark evening.
Next, I saw Lokesh try to barter with the queen’s grandson for his piece of the amulet, but he refused to sell. Lokesh killed him and then bent over the dead man and slipped a gold ring from the grandson’s finger onto his own hand. Lokesh smirked and stretched his hand over a fountain. Water lifted from the basin and swirled in a circle. Then the dream ended.
Water, I thought.One of the pieces of Lokesh’s amulet controlled water.
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the pink skin of my hand. My nails were perfectly round and shiny. The Phoenix was nowhere to be seen. I reached up to touch my hair and found it thick and full and silky. When I rubbed the skin on my arm it was as soft as down. My body was clothed in a golden dress, and instead of boots, I now wore soft slippers.
I sat up and realized I was in a large nest next to dozens of gem-like eggs. The nest was resting on a precarious ledge at the top of a black rock mountain thousands of feet high. There was no way for me to climb down, not without the Scarf’s ropes. A forest of fire trees stretched out over the hills as far as I could see.
My stomach growled, and I guessed breakfast was several hours, if not days, behind me.
On a nearby mountain, a molten flow of lava plummeted over a jagged cliff. It tumbled through the air, slightly cooling in the process. The radiant falls dropped into a fiery pool below, and the molten liquid sprayed up in a lava fountain that splashed against the surrounding rocks, coating them with darkening layers. Woodland fire trees thickly ringed the pool and seemed to lap up the hot magma as if it was the freshest of spring water.
A musical voice broke the silence. “It’s like a newborn’s.”
I raised my eyes to the Phoenix, who was perched on a ledge overhead, preening its feathers.
“What is like a newborn’s?” I asked.
“Your skin. Your hair and nails.”
“You healed me?”
“You healed yourself. When you admitted the truth, your heart healed you. A part of you fought to live.” The Phoenix tilted its feathered head to peer at me. “I wonder if you will squander this gift.”
“Did you need a companion? Is that why you wanted a Sati wife?”
“The Sati wife is a symbol of fidelity and devotion. It gave me no pleasure to see you burn, but I wanted to teach you that the body is immaterial. It is the fire, the passion of the heart, I wished to examine. This heart-fire never ebbs and will never still. It burns brightly, faithfully, for millennia. I could sense your troubled heart when you entered the forest and knew what you needed.
“I have offered you the rare opportunity to purge the sadness that weighs down your soul, but you now have a choice to make: the choice to either take up that burden once again or to remain free of it. Once, we Phoenixes offered our cleansing fire to humans all over Earth, but humankind has forgotten our power, and their hearts suffer all the more for it.”
“Sometimes I think that the sadness helps me to remember them,” I told the Phoenix.
“That is a false belief.”
