Jane Fade Merrick - Ashes Of The Phoenix

Once they arrived close to their 'secret hiding place' the girl suddenly stopped, then she caught the boy by the collar and pulled him back. “What’s the matter?” asked Jag, quite annoyed by the interruption of his daydream. She frowned and motioned for him to follow her to an alley, and then they started spying from around the corner. A police car and a fire truck were stationed in front of the building in which the girl lived; several policemen investigated by stopping passers-by. A fireman came out and spoke to an agent. “Yes, the house is inhabited: the electric cable that was reported to us was illegally redirected to this condemned building.” At those words, Fade felt the impulse to choke her improvised companion, but she controlled herself, “Do you see what you did?” she said, whispering, despite the desire to yell at him “I told you not to install those stupid electric appliances! Now they found me out!”

He didn’t answer but seemed visibly disturbed. After a moment of hesitation he suggested, “Then come away with me, I'll give you a new home in the place where I'm going.”

The girl looked at him, she was almost sending him to hell, but something made her hesitate. She remembered too well how much sacrifice it had been to find that room, how hard it was to find a place among thousands of homeless people and build a life from scratch. The thought of having to start it all over again in a city with an already high population density — with the tangible risk of getting in trouble and having no home to come back to; to search for all the items that were part of her daily life, to arrange the spaces around her, to ration the supplies, and then, to suddenly find herself without all the things that represented the world drove her crazy. Her mind was about to collapse, but she was startled by the noise from the firefighters that carried out boxes in which they had packed all of her stuff.

She couldn't stand it, she couldn't believe she had to accept his offer, but she realized that, by the present time, whatever she had built for herself was gone. “Let's get out of here,” she said, turning away in her skates.

The next few minutes they walked in total silence. Jag followed the girl with his head bent, holding the cover of his new CD, but his mood was definitely different from when he had bought it. She broke the ice by asking:

“So where's this place you're headed? The one on the map, I guess...” The boy stopped suddenly “Yes. We can leave at once!” He exclaimed, heartened.

“What are you talking about?” But she couldn’t finish her sentence because a car with dark windows stopped beside them. The driver came out and spoke to the boy obsequiously, while he opened the door for them: “Have a seat, sir.”

Jag jumped in excitedly as if he had never experienced such a similar experience before, but the girl was reluctant to get into the car.

“Have a seat, miss” the driver said, bending lightly.

“Come on Fade, hop in!” The childish voice from inside the car prompted her “We have a plane to catch!”

“A plane? Are you crazy? I don’t even have any documents! How do you think...?”

“It's a private plane, silly! Get in!”

That last sentence shocked her so much that she got into the car without realizing it. The door closed carefully behind her.

“Who the hell are you, the son of a prince?” She asked.

“Yes, the son of the Devil!”

“Get over it,” she hushed him, annoyed, while leaning her face on her hand and looking out, from the window, the constant flow of all things.

The car stopped at a small out-of-the-way airport on the outskirts of the city. The girl began to show the first doubts about her sudden departure: “I have nothing with me; I don’t even have an identity...”

“We’ll fly with a private airline, for now you don’t need an identity. When we get there, we'll see what we can do”, in saying so, he waited for the door to open and then got out of the car. Fade sat in the car, confused, but when her door opened, she followed him.

As they climbed the ladder to the small airplane, he couldn’t help but ask, “How do you manage to go everywhere on those skates?”

“They're rollerblades,” she said, “and I've been wearing them almost forever...” she answered, thinking that it was more than enough of an explanation.

Inside the passenger compartment, the boy amusedly watched the girl who was having a lot of trouble settling in her seat. Despite the fact that the plane had far fewer passenger seats than a normal flight, Fade banged into everything; furthermore, she clumsily hit the flight attendants who tried to help her to her seat with her hairdo.

Once the funny demonstration was over and the two unfortunate and stunned stewards had been dismissed, she snorted: “Was it necessary for them to ruin my hair?” She complained. “It’s not really suitable for sitting in an airplane; you can fix it once we land...” was his answer.

The rest of the journey proceeded in total silence.

The girl looked out of the window and reflected on a strange similarity: despite a lifetime of escaping, the world around her had continued to go round while she was still standing in the same spot. Being there, in that precise moment, on that plane, forced her to wonder if she could have considered it a first true step towards some undetermined direction.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the boy. “Is it the first time that you travel by plane?”

The girl answered without even turning. “Yes”

“Are you scared?”

This time she turned towards him in surprise: “Why should I be scared?”

“Well I don’t know, many people are afraid of traveling by plane: they fear a disaster. Not having an escape route makes them restless and they begin to say things like they prefer to travel attached to the ground...”

“I'm not concerned,” she said dryly as she turned back to the window.

“Rather, what are you going to do once we get there?” She asked, to break the silence.

“I'm going to find the Momuhts! I want to be part of their band!”

“What a terrible idea!” The girl continued, without giving him too much importance.

“No it’s not! They’ll welcome me! My arrival will change their lives!”

The ascending tone of his voice caught the girl’s attention: the child seemed to be obsessed by that band.

“You've never seemed like a normal guy to me. Now I have a solid proof of that”, she concluded in disapproval.

Jag leaned back in his seat with an evil grin on his face. He had great projects in his mind for his addition to the band and he had every intention of using any means to gain the favour of the group’s leader. He dozed off indulging in his childish dreams, fantasizing on the wonderful prospects for his future.

The next morning, Fade woke up in the comfortable bed of the private two room apartment they had rented. She stretched out and slipped out of the thick duvet, and sat in awe on the mattress; for her it had always been a struggle to get out of the warm bed of her shelter to face the cold mornings; waking up and finding herself in a warm and comfortable environment brought back memories she had lost many years earlier.

She slipped on the skates she had left at the foot of her bed and skated to the window. She was wearing flannel pyjamas, prepared by the owners of the apartment.