Phoenix

Pete wouldn’t talk to me, and I couldn’t blame him. He was looking at jail time for the crap I talked him into.

Well, in my defense, I never asked him to punch that cop. But as the plane hefted itself into the sky above the dark city below, I didn’t think it mattered that much.

Whatever happened to Pete was my fault. I did this. I tried to shrink in on myself in the tiny seat, wishing I could be anywhere else. The man who told me it would be over soon on the moving walkway sat in the seat beside me, between me and the isle.

“Are you a cop or something?” I asked him, noticing the way he sat with his hands underneath the coat on his lap.

He looked at me with silver eyes.

Crap, I thought. The crazy is coming on again.

“Or something,” he said.

“Do you have a name?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You know who I am.”

“Fine,” I said, turning to look out the window. There was only darkness out there, but I didn’t care. “Are you really here?” I asked.

“No,” the man said. “I’m not really here, and neither are you.”

“Dude,” I said to him. “You know it’s totally not cool to make fun of crazy people, right?”

The silver-eyed man just looked at me.

“Pete,” I said, bumping the seat in front of me. I saw his shaggy head turn, like he was going to talk to me through the gap in the seats, but he didn’t. “Do you hear this crap?” I asked.

The silver-eyed man looked at me and I looked calmly back. At least I wasn’t flitting away to Eloria.

“So who are you?” I ask him.

“What is this place?” he asks me instead of answering my question.

“What are you talking about?” I hissed. I would have really liked to punch him like I punched Jake. I would have really liked to see blood come pouring down out of his nose. But I didn’t hit him.

He didn’t say anything else.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you without a lawyer or something, right?” I finally said.

The man looked back to me, and his eyes were dark brown, almost black. The silver I thought I saw there was completely gone.

“You say something, kid?” he asked.

I shook my head and gasped as the air around me turned frigid and fresh. My flailing arm connected with a cool body.

I turned my head toward Lexia. She still lay motionless, exactly where I had dragged her. I made myself look at her, at her hollow cheeks and pale skin that seemed to glow though there was no other light. This was a fantasy, and I would wake from it at any moment.

“I’m sorry,” I told Lexia’s still form. “I tried. I really did. I tried with everything I had.”

Lexia didn’t move. Of course she didn’t move.

Phoenix, Lexia’s voice said in my head. You found Light.

“I didn’t find it,” I said to the darkness all around me. “There was nothing on the mountain top.”

You succeeded, Lexia’s voice said. The Darkness tries to make you believe otherwise. The Light is with you.

I just shook my head.

This was completely ridiculous. I couldn’t even stay sane in my fantasy land.

Fight it, I heard her say. Fight it.

“Lexia,” I said. “If I had found Light, this world wouldn’t be dark any more, would it? I mean, you always said this would end when Light was restored. But if I found it, wouldn’t you be able to wake up? Wouldn’t the sun rise?”

There was no answer.

I hadn’t succeeded. Eloria would die in darkness. I would live in a mental institution in Seattle until the day I died. That was that.

I stared up into the dark sky and waited.

The plane lurched when its wheels touched down at Sea-Tac. I breathed out in the roar of air brakes and flaps hitting the wind and brakes slowing the plane. In some ways, admitting I was crazy lifted a weight from me. It was so good not to have to fight it any more.

Fight it, Lexia’s voice urged. Please, fight it.

But there was nothing to fight, except myself. And I was done with that. I followed the man off of the plane, behind Pete and Jewel, bending beneath the overhead bins and watching Pete turn sideways to fit between the rows of seats. We walked silently through the airport to the arrival area. We didn’t check any bags.

Jewel’s parents were there, as were Pete’s. Their faces wore identical expressions of worry and relief. Pete’s mom burst into tears as she reached her arms around him for a hug. Jewel stood facing her parents with her head down, nodding every now and then as they spoke to her. I think she was crying.

Then there was my mom, with her dark, wavy fly-away hair and lipstick on her teeth. Her mouth was drawn, her eyes were dry. She stood with her arms folded across her stomach, looking small and lost. I followed the man, whoever he was, over to her and she reached up with one hand to pat my shoulder.

“I’m…” I trailed off. She looked up at me and nodded. I didn’t have to finish my apology.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “We will get you some help.” The man who had sat by me on the plane nodded at Mom as he walked away. Apparently, his job was done now.

I watched him go, listening to Mom go on about Jack and Sage’s baby who had made an early appearance. I pretended to listen, nodding in the right spots.

This is really it, I thought, looking around the dreary airport. This is really real. Jewel was unabashedly crying now, standing before her parents. Eremil was engulfed in a huge hug by both of his parents. I think they were all crying.

Mom led me out of the airport into the parking structure, and I followed.

We got into the Camry.

“I’m taking you right there,” Mom said.

“To see the baby?” I asked. I’d stopped paying attention a while ago and I had to guess at what she was talking about.

“No,” she said slowly, her brows pinching together and making a line between her eyes. “We’re going to the long term care facility.”

I could do was nod. Where else would we be going?

You have Light, Lexia’s voice said in my head. You must wield it.

“What?” I asked.

“I can’t believe there’s not more traffic,” Mom said. “It’s amazing.”

“I don’t have Light,” I told Lexia’s motionless body. Cold tore into me and I shivered. My back against the cold rock has cooled. But I didn’t move. There’s no point. None of this was real. “I told you, I tried,” I said. “I really did. I got to the top of the mountain and there was nothing there.”

I had to accept now that Lexia was dead and that I would never see her again.

You can end it, another voice in my head said. I gave a start. I hadn’t heard that voice in a while and it surprised me.

You must wield it, Lexia’s voice said.

“Wield it?” I scoffed. “There’ s nothing to wield.”

Kill her, the other voice said. There was an air of frenzy to its words.

“Shut up,” I said to the voice. “I won’t do it.”

“Phoenix,” Mom said, the line between her eyes growing deep again. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I told her. The huge hospital loomed beyond the car windows. “Is this it?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. She parked the car and we both got out. I followed her through the parking structure, into the elevator. We entered the hospital and she talked to the people behind the information desk. Pretty soon, I would be on some medication that would ensure I’d never see or hear Lexia again. This would be over soon.

Wield it, Lexia’s voice begged in my head.

I woke with a start. I was dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt beneath the sheets on the bed. I wasn’t strapped to the bed, and that was surprising. Not my usual experience with being committed. But maybe that was because I wasn’t bleeding when I was brought in.

Someone was standing over me, looking down at me. I sat up suddenly.

“Hello there, son,” a familiar smooth voice said. It took me a minute to decide it wasn’t in my head.

“Don’t call me son,” I told Dr. Banks. I was surprised to see her here, standing over me in the dark.

“Are you okay?” she said. “I understand you went on quite the journey.”

I turned away from her, lying back down and wrapping the sheet over my shoulder.

“Phoenix,” she said. “I came all the way here to see you, to make sure you were alright. The least you can do is respond to a simple question.”

She was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to roll over and tell her that, yes, I was fine. Even though my craziness had ruined my friends’ lives.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to do it, I rolled over and sat up. Dr. Banks didn’t meet my eyes. She seemed to be occupied with her hands clasped in her lap.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you for asking.”

“What happened, Phoenix?” Dr. Banks said, sitting beside me on the bed. Her face was concerned, her brow wrinkling and her mouth tugging down at the corners. She squinted at me in the darkness, like looking at me hurt her eyes. Something in me screamed to kick at her, to fight her. But how could I? She was right. She was only trying to help me.

“Well,” I said, shame rolling through me. I didn’t want to tell her how I’d ruined everything. I didn’t want to tell her how I’d convinced my friends to destroy their own lives in pursuit of my fantasy. I didn’t want to tell her, but she sat there with her concerned face and I needed to say something.

“I really screwed up,” I said. The feeling I had before, how I wanted to fight Dr. Banks, seemed to be growing. It was almost uncontrollable. I kept seeing my fingers wrap around her throat.

Dr. Banks pushed her lips together in a line and nodded as her forehead wrinkled. She folded her arms across her chest and took another furtive look at me, her eyes still scrunched up. What was wrong with her? I might look like that if I was trying to look at the sun, but it was dim in here, not bright, and she only squinted when he looked directly at me.

“And,” I said, swallowing against the urge to use violence against her, “the worst thing is I got my friends involved,” I said.

“Wow,” Dr. Banks said. She was within reach and I wasn’t tied down. I could do it. I clenched my fists. I wouldn’t do it. “It impresses me how you’re taking responsibility for this,” Dr. Banks said, leaning forward. She squinted at me, though the room was dim.

“I’m tired,” I said. Dr. Banks smiled. I didn’t know why this would please him. “And that other place,” I said, “I don’t ever want to go there again.”

“It’s good you want Eloria to disappear,” Dr. Banks said. Her voice sounded exactly like the smooth voice in my head, the voice that had encouraged me to kill my helpless sister. It sent a shiver down my spine.

“None of it was real,” I said. Dr. Banks’s smile broadened. “I can prescribe medications that will make it so you will never have to deal with that ever again,” Dr. Banks said. “But it helps that you are coming to this realization on your own. So I have to ask you: were there other people with you in Eloria? People you knew? Maybe people who are here as well?”

“There were other people,” I say quietly. “But they…” I trailed off. I felt so exposed. I didn’t want to tell her this. I didn’t want to tell her anything. She squinted at me.

“Is there something wrong with your eyes?” I asked. The smile instantly disappeared.

“Uh,” she said, “I had an eye exam today and they dilated them. Everything is a little bright.”

“But it’s dark in here,” I said.

“Let’s get back on topic,” she said. “What happened to the other people in Eloria?”

A chill ran through me so hard that I shuddered. I thought of Eremil dead, and Lexia lying beneath the Seven Pillars in the cold night, waiting to die. I thought of Lexia, urging me to carry on even when there was no hope.

“I need you to do something,” Dr. Banks said. “If you see them again. It will make it much easier for you to accept the fantasy as fantasy and reality as reality.”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I said.

“If you go back to Eloria,” she said. “If you see them again, you need to kill her.”

“What?” I said.

“If you kill her,” Dr. Banks said, the corners of her lips quirking up, “It will shock your mind and force it to accept reality, this reality, as the only reality.”

I rolled that over in my head for a minute. Maybe it was Dr. Banks’s voice I heard when I was in Eloria. Maybe I already knew what I needed to do to end this horrible experience.

Phoenix, I heard Lexia’s voice say in my head. Fight it.

Dr. Banks’s head whipped up, her eyes glinting in the dimness.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. I shook my head. “I didn’t say anything.”

Dr. Banks folded her arms across her chest, holding his elbows. She nodded and shrugged, her mouth pulling down in a frown.

“Maybe that’s enough for today. Why don’t you get some rest, son?” Dr. Banks said, moving toward the door. “It’s late. I’ll be back tomorrow. I think we made some great progress. You know what you need to do if you go back.”

I nodded, but it all seemed strange. I knew what I had to do. I had to make it end. I had to make it be over.

But then I realized that I didn’t want it to be over. As bad as it was. As painful and cold and lonely as that world was, I didn’t want it to be gone. I didn’t want the only place my sister was still alive to be gone.

“I can’t,” I said.

Dr. Banks paused.

And then Lexia appeared. She stood before me, weak and dirty, wan with purple circles under her silver eyes. Her clothes looked just as they did in Eloria. She was so real.

“I can’t kill her,” I said to her. “Even if she’s not real. Even if it ruins my life. I can’t kill her.”

“If?” Dr. Banks asked, she tilted his head, like she was looking around her instead of through her. “If she’s not real? What have we been talking about? How can you agree with me one moment and the next moment say “if”. She’s not real, Phoenix! She’s dead!”

“She sees me,” Lexia said. She looked from me to Dr. Banks, surprise widening her eyes.

She can see Lexia? I wondered. Then I realized what I was thinking. Or so says my hallucination.

“She can see me, Phoenix,” Lexia said. “She knows I am real.”

“What are you looking at, son?” Dr. Banks asked, her eyes traveling up and down Lexia.

“She’s real to me,” I said. “And I will take seeing her over not seeing her. Even if it means I have to stay here for the rest of my life.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t leave just yet,” Dr. Banks said. She sat back down in her chair. Lexia paced back and forth between us. It was all I could do to look past her and keep my eyes on Dr. Banks. I’m sure if she caught my eyes wandering to follow her path, it wouldn’t help me at all. I purposefully looked past her. This was between me and Dr. Banks. No matter what Lexia said.

“Close your eyes,” Dr. Banks said. “It will help you block out distractions.” She sat forward in the chair, reaching behind her for a clip board. I started to close my eyes.

“Keep them open!” Lexia shouted.

I blinked.

The Seven Pillars stood before me. Lexia lay motionless beside me. We sacrificed everything to get here. And for what? Why had we come? Because it was the one place in the world where someone with a little bit of magic and a little bit of luck could travel from one plane to another.

“Phoenix,” Lexia breathed, coughing. Her eyes opened just a bit, as though she was too tired to open them fully. “She can see me, and she wants you to close your eyes.” Lexia’s hand reached slowly for mine and I grabbed it.

The world jumped back to reality. Dr. Banks stood before her chair now, squinting down at me. The ethereal form of Lexia stood protectively between Dr. Banks and me. Lexia drew her long dagger from its sheath strapped to her thigh.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Dr. Banks.

“We are going to do…” Dr. Banks hesitated. Was it my imagination, or did her eyes flit toward Lexia? Lexia advanced slowly on Dr. banks. “A memory exercise,” Dr. Banks said. “Go ahead,” she urged. “Close your eyes, Phoenix.”

“Phoenix!” Lexia screamed.

My eyes popped open. Dr. Banks stood over me, her arms raised above her head, her face contorted in a snarl. In her hands, she clutched a blade similar to Lexia’s, only longer. She drove the sword downward in a smooth motion, but Lexia’s blade met hers, deterring it. Blue sparks arced away from the blades.

“Oh crap!” I yelled, rolling off the couch.

Dr. Banks pushed Lexia backward. She stumbled away from her.

“Let’s go back to the moment you decided to indulge the fantasy,” Dr. Banks coaxed. She spoke to me, but she circled Lexia, her teeth bared. She pushed her hair from her face with the back of her hand, licking her lips. They held their weapons before them, waiting for the other to strike.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

“What?” Dr. Banks said, sparing half a glance for me.

“You’re fighting with Lexia and trying to talk to me at the same time like nothing’s going on! You gotta be kidding me!”

“Is that what you see?” she asked calmly. Lexia and she exchanged blows, Dr. Banks tried to advance on my position and Lexia drove her back.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s what’s going on.”

“No, Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said. “It’s not. You need to listen to me.”

I remembered that after Dad and Lexia died and I started seeing Lexia, Dr. Banks told me I was having some psychotic episode and I just accepted that I was. The pain, the numbness, the loss was so overwhelming. I moved through my life and did everything I was supposed to, everything I thought I was supposed to do. And I saw her, everywhere. The drugs didn’t seem to stop that. I thought grief was driving me mad, making me see things that weren’t there.

“Go ahead,” Dr. Banks urged again. “Close your eyes.”

“No!” Lexia barked.

“Phoenix,” Dr. Banks said soothingly. “You’re lying on my couch. You’re trying to remember when you decided to follow the fantasy. Just close your eyes.”

“No,” I said. “I’m on the floor watching you fight with my dead sister.”

Lexia struck, quick as lightning. Dr. Banks parried. The daggers sparked against Dr. Bank’s black sword.

“Well,” she said through gritted teeth. “If she’s here, maybe you should help me kill her. She’s dead anyway. She just needs to accept that and get out of your life.” She unleashed on Lexia a flurry of blows. Lexia deflected them, but only just. If I helped Dr. Banks, even just a little, Lexia would lose.

“No,” I said.

“Alright then,” Dr. Banks said like it didn’t matter, like she wasn’t fighting my sister. “What happened to make you think reality wasn’t real?”

Dr. Banks’s attack intensified and she backed Lexia into the corner. Dr. Banks struck and Lexia defended, pushing the blade to the side. He struck again and she deflected again. Her face was the image of strain, her lips pulled back to show her teeth, her eyes narrowed.

“Phoenix!” Lexia shouted. “I need your help!”

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked her.

“Just remember the day you—started—seeing--her,” Dr. Banks said through a series of quick jabs. Lexia dropped down and rolled forward, escaping the corner. She came smoothly to her feet, readying herself once again.

“Phoenix!” Lexia said. “Help me!”

My heart raced. Could I believe what I was seeing? I was crazy.

But, what if?

What if I’m not crazy?

“I can’t,” I breathed.

“Sure you can,” Dr. Banks said, she moved toward Lexia balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to dart any direction. “I know it’s hard to relive the experience, Phoenix, but you have to explore those feelings, to understand them. Just try.”

“You are Phoenix of Eloria!” Lexia shouted. She moved like a whirlwind, her silver blades flashing. Dr. Banks met her at every advance, turning her back. Lexia was losing. I was going to lose my sister, again. “You are Phoenix the Scarred,” she shouted, her voice was desperate. “You are Phoenix the Pyromancer!”

“I can’t,” I said again, not knowing if I was talking to Lexia or Dr. Banks.

I can’t lose her again, I thought.

I needed to do something. I needed to believe Lexia and fight, or I needed to believe Dr. Banks and just lie there. My hands tingled with the familiar forgotten feel of magic.

When all is lost, when all hope is gone, you must believe.

I held my hands out. It seemed I could remember doing that. The scars stretched over the backs of my hands. My body burned with strange anticipation. But it felt different too: like anxiety, like the way I felt when I was near an open flame. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

“You must believe!” Lexia pleaded. With a fierce slice of his sword, Dr. Banks knocked Lexia’s last silver dagger from her hand and sent her sprawling to her knees. Dr. Banks smirked as she moved into position above her.

Breath slammed into the back of my throat. My lungs ached, they burned. I had an overwhelming feeling, a need to encompass, to consume everything around me.

I ached with it.

Dr. Banks kicked Lexia. She collided with the wall and grunted on impact. But that wasn’t possible. Not if she was a ghost, or a figment of my imagination.

“Stop it!” I shouted.

“Stop what?” Dr. Banks said calmly, kicking Lexia again.

“Stop!” I heard the break in my voice. It matched the break in my heart. I couldn’t watch this. “Stop it!”

“Stop what?” Dr. Banks asked again, innocently. Her foot connected with her Lexia’s ribs again and this time she didn’t get back up to her knees. “We are sitting in a quiet room having a discussion. You want me to stop talking?”

“You’re the Darkness,” I said. I wasn’t sure where the words came from. I wasn’t sure I believed them. But right then, as they left my mouth, I knew they were true.

“Now Phoenix,” he said in a patronizing tone. “That’s a pretty bad thing to accuse somebody of, isn’t it? In your fantasy, the Darkness is the embodiment of all evil, isn’t it? What makes you think I’m the Darkness?”

“Because you are,” I said. Strength flowed into me. Speaking the truth after lying to myself for so long filled me with power. “All you ever needed to do was convince me I was not myself. And you almost did.”

“Phoenix,” Dr. Banks tsked. She stood over Lexia, staring down at her. Contempt sneered from her mouth, hate blazed from her eyes, but her voice was perfectly calm, just as it always was. “What makes you think that?”

“You tried to get me to kill my sister,” I said. “That’s a pretty good indication.”

“She’s already dead,” Dr. Banks protested.

“You have Light”, Lexia whimpered. “You must wield her!”

Dr. Banks lunged at Lexia and seized the back of her neck.

“Do you want it to be over or not?” Dr. Banks asked. She lifted Lexia from the floor and smashed her back down. Lexia’s head rebounded, and she lay still. Dr. Banks raised her sword high above her head.

My heart throbbed in my chest and my hands were sweaty. She was going to kill my sister. Maybe. But maybe I was seeing things. Maybe this was me, being crazy. The heat in my chest was stifling. My hands tingled. Fire waited to burst forth and save my sister. Dr. Banks and I stared into one another’s eyes as he held the sword aloft.

You must believe, Lexia’s voice feathered across my mind.

“No,” I said. “I do not want it to be over.”

I held up my hands and Dr. Banks looked at me, terror chasing all the contempt from her face. A feeling like jumping off of a cliff rushed through me, and fire roared to life from the palms of my hands. It fanned outward in a burst of flame that scorched the walls and the ceiling, but left my sister untouched. I wasn’t afraid of the flames. I wasn’t afraid of the fire at all. I could feel it. It was a part of me.

It was my soul.

The room burned and just…disappeared. The walls, the floor, all of it burning away like spider webs.

The Darkness fell backward as the world around her disappeared, scrambling away from the sudden heat on elbows and backside, and then she changed. For a second, she was the woman I knew as Dr. Banks, but then she dissolved into a black nothingness, darker than the night-shrouded desert.

I truly had been trapped in a fantasy.

The realization of that burned through me like my soul had, chasing away the last shadows of doubt. I exhaled, feeling as though steel bands fell away from my chest. I looked down at my flame-scarred hands, the distinct scars marking me as what I was: a pyromancer, a magic-user. I called forth my soul, willing it into form, believing in the feeling I had that morning on the mountaintop. I closed my eyes and I knew that I held Light in my hand.

And it was there.

The weight of the golden scepter in my hand was glorious, like the weight of the sun shining down. With it in my hand, I felt…everything. I felt the sky, the earth beneath my feet, I felt the magic-- the life force of the earth—coursing through every living thing. There was so much. It was all familiar. I had felt all of this before, just not like this. The world was a different place with Light bonded to my soul.

Lexia lay where I had dragged her, motionless at the foot of the Seven Pillars. The ethereal Darkness moved toward her, twisting and floating on the air like black wind.

“Sominette,” I whispered. The Darkness paused. “Why?”

The Darkness billowed toward the helpless Lexia, blackness rolling over itself.

“Stop!” I commanded. Again the cloud of blackness stopped. “Why are you doing this?” I asked again. The Darkness roiled and words formed in my mind.

I have to save the world, my son, she said.

“And I have to stop you,” I replied.

I pointed the scepter of Light straight at the Darkness. Bright light shone forth, consuming the world in a flash of pure white. When the flash faded, the full, heavy, sun blazed overhead. Birds flew across the sky, singing their morning songs and dancing along the breeze. The Seven Pillars reached for the clear sky, shining brightly. Of the Darkness, there was not a trace. I fell to my knees, holding Light in both hands.

It was real. Magic was real. Eloria was real.

Lexia was alive.

“Light has returned,” she said weakly, sitting up to squint toward the sun. She was haggard and beaten, but with the light shining on her, I knew she would recover. She closed her eyes and her face tilted to the sun, drinking it in. “You did it,” Lexia breathed, taking my hand in hers.

Eloria would not die in darkness. I held the scepter in my flame-scarred hands, my eyes traveling her shining length. There was work still to do, other scepters we still needed to awaken.

I thought of Jewel, of her loyalty and strength, of her courage and resourcefulness. I knew I wouldn’t be sitting here in the light of Eloria without her.

It made me feel empty to be here without her, and then it dawned on me, like the still-climbing sun overhead. I took Lexia’s hands in both of mine.

“I know where Hope is.”