Phoenix Overture

7

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 thunked 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.”