Jodi Meadows: Phoenix Overture

“Yes, sir.” Sometimes, those felt like the only words I was allowed to say to him.

“Get this place cleaned up. No more cooking. You’re terrible at it and it’s too hot anyway.” Father yanked the frying pan off the stove and doused the fire. “Then go to the Center and volunteer. Maybe Janan can get you to do something besides hum to yourself all day. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and you’ll gut yourself with your own knife.” He stormed from the kitchen and slammed the front door.

The house rattled with his exit, and the quiet rang shrilly in my ears as I sank into a chair and touched my swollen cheek. It was tender and would bruise, but he hadn’t split the skin this time.

Maybe I’d gut myself with my own knife.

He’d never have dared say anything like that with Mother around, though the sentiment had always been there, hovering just beneath every word he spoke to me. The useless second son. Not strong like him, nor hardy enough to spend days at a time in the old city. Not coordinated enough to be a fighter. Not smart enough to be a scholar.

A year ago, I’d overheard him tell Mother, “If he’d been a girl, he’d at least have been useful for making children, but he hasn’t even got that.”

“No one will ever understand what Dossam has to offer,” Mother had replied, but her defense went unacknowledged. After all, what was music when there was food to grow, or water to collect, or fields to defend? What was music when humanity’s survival was a desperate hope, not a guarantee?

What was music in the face of imminent annihilation by trolls or chimeras or worse?

Useless.

Footfalls thumped on the floorboards, and I tensed, but it was just my brother, Fayden, clomping into the kitchen. He eyed my slumped posture and the blackened bacon smoking on the counter. “What happened this time?” His voice was deep with a note of uncertainty, like my new bruise might truly be my fault.

“He thought I hid the flask.” I heaved myself out of the creaking chair and began closing cupboard doors. “Thanks for warning me you’d done that.”

“You were asleep when I got in.” Fayden picked a slice of bacon from the pan and inspected it with disdain before he took a bite. “Sorry he blamed you.”

He wasn’t sorry. Not really. But I didn’t contradict him as I worked to straighten the kitchen. “He wants me to volunteer for Janan’s quest. If I don’t, he’s kicking me out.”

“What quest?” Fayden grabbed a plate off the counter and swept all the bacon onto it. Grease dripped onto the floor.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t hear the announcement. Father just said Janan wants warriors.”

Fayden barked a laugh. “And he thought you should volunteer? A skinny fifteen-year-old who can barely stand to see raw meat?”

It was laughable, so I didn’t say anything, just began scrubbing the handprints off the wall.

“Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Janan would never accept you , of course, but it would get Father off your back for a while.”

My rag fell to the floor with a wet plop as I glared at him. “Do you think so? Do you think that he wouldn’t punish me for being rejected for something he already knows I’m not suited to do?”

“Well, what are you suited for?” Fayden gestured around the kitchen. “Not cooking. Not cleaning. You refuse to go tend plague victims.”

“I don’t want to get the plague!” I scooped up my rag and threw it onto the counter.

“You’re not strong enough to haul water. Scavenging is too dangerous for you.” He slammed the filthy plate onto the counter. “And you couldn’t even—”

“Go ahead,” I growled. “Say it.”

He shoved away from the counter, rattling the plate, and marched from the kitchen. “You know what you couldn’t do, Dossam.”

I wanted to snarl back at him, but he was gone, his boots pounding through the house.

Anyway, he was right.

I knew what I couldn’t do.

EVERYTHING ENDED WITH death.

Death claimed entire civilizations, leaving wastelands and ruins, forever stretches of destruction and darkness.

Death claimed memories, the knowledge of what had come before, and promises of futures dreamt.

And death claimed mothers.

It was that loss that cut the deepest, that loss that would never heal. If Father or Fayden recognized the sucking grief inside of me, that consuming hollow that pulled me ever further from them, they never said. If I vanished from the world, would they even notice? Would they care?

They’d been able to continue with their lives, sadder, but no different. But for me, her absence meant I had nothing. She’d been the only person who’d seen the worth of my music, and now she was gone.

The rest of the world kept spinning, even though mine had stopped.

Father wanted to me to meet Janan in the Center at noon. Maybe I would. Or maybe he’d be disappointed in me once again. As I headed away from the Community, stretching my legs to reach the solitude of the woods more quickly, I honestly didn’t know whether I’d make it back.

If I thought I stood a chance on my own, against the rocs and trolls and griffons, I might never go back to the Community. The concert hall was quiet and hidden; there hadn’t been a day since Mother’s death that I didn’t dream about packing my belongings and staying there for the rest of my life.

But I barely survived with the Community. I wouldn’t make it a day on my own, especially not in the middle of the old city, without food or clean water.

Sunlight broke through the clouds and their false promise of rain. Insects droned lazily in the heat.

More than anything now, I wanted to be alone with the music of the forest: the wind sighing through the tall conifers, the rustle of feathers as birds took flight, and the bubble of shrinking streams in their rocky paths. The woods sang a dark and lovely melody that haunted my thoughts.

Grief was a chasm in my heart, unaffected by the beauty of the morning-clad woods. I pushed myself down the path. Walking nowhere was better than hanging about the Community, missing someone who could never come back.

A loud crack sounded above me, followed by the noise of crashing and cursing. A deep voice shouted from the trees. “Watch out!”

I jerked up just in time to see a metal beam swing toward me, bringing with it a shower of pine needles and cones.

I ducked to the left, but not quickly enough.

Sharp pain splintered down my right arm as the impact shoved me backward, leaving me sprawled over a log. The beam sailed back and forth, inches from my face, held by only a fraying rope.

Rust flaked off the iron and into my eyes as I clutched my shoulder and rolled off the log. “What—”

“Sorry!” The voice came again from above, but a moment later, boots thumped onto the ground next to me. The boy from the trees crouched, his dark eyebrows pulled inward. “Are you okay?”

“No.” My breath coming short and fast, I waved away the stranger’s extended hand and sat up. Conifer needles and cones cracked and dug at my knees, and fire raced down my arm and shoulder blade. My cheek and shoulder throbbed off tempo from each other, encouraging a headache that formed just behind my eyes. “I think you broke my shoulder. What were you doing up there?”

“Nonsense. If I’d broken it, you’d be a lot angrier with me.” The stranger gripped my arm in both hands and shoved. Bone crunched. An inferno ripped through my shoulder and back. But when he sat on his heels and smirked, the pain faded to something more manageable. “How’s that?”

“Better.” I reached around and massaged the muscles, vainly trying to ignore the pop and groan of the tree. A thread of the rope snapped, and the beam dropped lower; if I hadn’t moved, my face would now be a much flatter thing.