SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

When the dust cleared, the djinn was able to push away some of the smaller rocks pinning him down and get to his feet. The phoenix was still trapped somewhere beneath the rubble, but where was the boy?

“Abdullah!” he called, “Where are you?!”

“Here! I’m here, Uncle!” He was clambering up the mountain of rubble, dusty but otherwise unharmed. The djinn held him tightly. “Are you sure?” he asked, “No cuts, no bruises?” The boy said no.

The djinn sighed, and turned to inspect the scree of crushed rocks and boulders. He had to find the phoenix quickly, before it began to regenerate—

He heard a muffled scream and a large rock went sailing over his head. The phoenix pulled its way out of the wreckage, now in its human form. Its robes were in tatters and the jeweled collar it had worn was missing. The djinn’s spear had been pushed down deep, and the star-metal blade emerged clean from between his ribs, bloodless.

The phoenix staggered, and placed a hand against its chest. “What is this?” he said, panting. Its entire body had changed color. It was grey now. As grey as ash.

The djinn stepped up to him and grabbed the tip of the spearhead gingerly. “This is the magic that will finally defeat you.”

“How?”

“Can you feel it?” the djinn asked, “Can you feel the fire inside you, dying? Can you feel the connection between you and the desert now? It’s only dawn, and the sands are still cool. They will sap your fire, suck it from you, absorb it like they absorb the heat of the sun.” He leaned forward, so his words were better heard. “All the deserts, not just this one. The cold deserts to the north, the rocky deserts to the east, to the west and south and every direction there is, every bit of land, every little rock, is bound to the sword which pierces your heart. Slowly, bit by bit, the fire is dying, choked like a cookfire doused with water. Yes, even the deserts above, cold and black and airless, everything is working against you. You don’t have much time left. The desert sucks up heat quickly, don’t you know?”

He danced around and grabbed the spear from the back and gave it a violent pull. It came out cleanly, and he spun it hand over hand and shoved it back inside, neatly as a key fitting into a lock. The phoenix roared and arched its back in agony, hands clenching at empty air. It took a step forward and staggered, and looked at him hatefully. Then its eyes slipped past him, behind him, and its face lit up with glee. A bolt of red fire shot from its mouth, and the djinn heard the muffled sound of a toppling body from behind him.

He turned and ran, knees slamming into the ground as he came face to face with the boy, and cradled him in his arms. His eyes were closed and a lock of hair had fallen over his brow, and the area directly over his heart was blackened ash. It had burned straight through his clothing and skin and muscle, searing him from the inside and damaging all his vital organs in an instant. There was no chance of survival.

The djinn did nothing but stare at his blank face, till he felt the heat of an explosion wash over his naked back and heard the sound of a final, triumphant, bird-like scream. Gently placing the boy on the ground, he revolved to look at the crater. The fire had been so hot it had turned the sand to glass, and his spearhead had melted to form a depression of mirrors with splotches of silvery grey. In the center of this small hole was a red sphere that glowed dully with heat.

The heart of the sun, the ifreet had said, it is the phoenix’s true connection to fire, and it will remain for a while after it dies. You must take it while it lasts, it will momentarily bear the regenerating life-force of the bird. Use it to return your wife to the realm of the living. He had looked almost sad then, and had said, I hope you find what you seek. Then he crumbled into dust as the djinn released him from his bonds. One more prison without a captive.

The heart of the sun. It looked like a pomegranate, but when he peeled open its tough red skin there was only a single seed inside, ripe and swollen with juice.

It was his. Finally, after two hundred years of dreaming and waiting and plotting, it was his. He could feel the power through his fingers. I can take it. I can take it and become a god. His wife had died in one of his experiments. He’d been looking for a way to live forever.

And now I can. No one will ever bind me, or tell me what to do. No master. Nothing, no one, will ever control me. Nothing…

He looked over his shoulder at the boy.

He turned it over in his hands, whispering under his breath. He heard a new voice say, “My beloved.”

She was just as beautiful as he remembered, and stood on the glass floor in the silks and jewels she had worn on the day of their wedding. She reached out and brushed his face, and he began to cry when he felt the warmth in her fingers.

“My beloved,” she went on, “You cannot.”

“It was my fault,” he sobbed, “You only died because I was blinded by my greed. I wanted to live forever and I lost you for it. But I can fix it now! I can be with you again, you can be with me again. My sweet desert rose, we will be together forever.”

She was crying too. “I know, my sweet. I know. But it cannot be. What is gone must stay gone; it would be a perversion of nature for the dead to return to life. Please, my love. Use it wisely. The boy is near death, but he is not yet gone.”

“No, no, I won’t! I won’t lose you again!”

She smiled faintly, and in the light of the oncoming dawn her eyes shimmered with tears. She began to sing, softly. His heart nearly broke when he heard her sing. It was the song she had sung for him when they first met, the song she promised to sing to their children. “Is it me, said the rose, is it mine heart you desire? Or is it my fragrance that soothes your heart, or my petals, red as fire? For in the desert few flowers bloom, and we take what beauty we may. And live our lives on the sands, with each brand new day.”

Still crying, he pulled her close, and held her for a while. He held her till the ache in his heart began to soothe, and he realized his arms were only wrapped around empty air.

He knelt down beside the boy, and held the fruit of the sun over his lips. The djinn crushed it in his fingers, and the bright red juice dribbled down his fingers into the boy’s mouth. The boy’s chest began to heave, and he opened his eyes.

The djinn folded him in his arms, and then he was crying all over again and the boy was looking dumbfounded and asking what happened. The djinn laughed and kissed his forehead. Then the boy asked what he was holding.

All that remained of the fruit was the skin, still wet. He stared at it, wondering…and then made up his mind.

The djinn put the fruit back in the glass hollow alongside the leathery skin, and recited a simple summoning spell. Small pouches of cowhide materialized in his hands and he opened them and began to pour the contents into the hollow. Frankincense, camphor, myrrh, vermillion saffron and dark cinnamon, sprigs of lavender and vanilla, twigs from elder, ash and olive. Cardamom and cloves, and jewels from far-off lands that shone in colours he could not name, beaten silverleaf, the juice and oils of fruits. He poured more expensive spices and the roots of ancient trees, and sprinkled it all with a covering of fine, white sand. Then he stood, took a step back, and uttered a single word in a tongue rich in magic.

“Burn.”

The light from the blaze was reflected and thrown in a hundred different directions by the facets of glass, and it burned clean and hot and fast. And when the flames died down and the coals smoldered, a beak poked its way out of the ash. With a cry wilder and fiercer than any bird, the new phoenix rose, a falcon with a plumage of silver and wings of dusky midnight-black, and circled twice in the sky before landing on the djinn’s outstretched arm. A silver sun. It looked at him with eyes that were now white swimming in silver, and he fancied he saw a touch of amusement in them.