Burning High

"Go pet the phoenix," Mallory had said. "Or are you too much of a coward?"

Letha tried to keep her eyes scrunched closed. Opening them again would only have the same result as it had the last time. The nearly unbroken stretch of treetops, made up mostly of the canopies of massive oaks, had looked like a mass of embroidery knots. Mum would be proud of that analogy, she was certain, because Letha had never been the slightest bit interested in embroidery.

She shifted about, trying to find a comfortable place amongst the phoenix's feathers. The burnt orange feathers were slick, too slick to ride safely on, but she had found that burrowing under them into the down kept her from sliding off to certain death. What had possessed her to be foolishly fearless enough to go touch the wretched bird?

In a way, her bed of down was pleasant enough. There were too many quills for it to be entirely pleasant, but the soft feathers enveloped her nicely and kept the damp night air away from her skin. Now that the bird had stopped trying to get rid of its unwilling passenger, the flight was almost relaxing. Lazy wingbeats created a gentle rise and fall, all the while propelling them forward to, well, to somewhere.

Mallory had been tormenting her for literally centuries. She should have known better than to rise to the bait. Letha had always admired the sylph, with her billowing cloud of white-blonde hair and luminescent blue wings. By contrast, Mallory seemed to only have contempt for her. When Letha had hesitated at her challenge, Mallory had fluttered off in disgust.

"What can you expect from a pixie!" she had exclaimed.

She wasn't a pixie! Pixies were huge and silly and didn't even have wings for sun's sake. She might not be a sylph, but being a sprite was plenty honorable enough! She should have just danced on by and told Mallory that her mother had a misspent youth hanging out in cobblers' shops. But no. She had to pet the phoenix.

"Are you alive back there, little creature?"

The words rang unbidden in her head. Letha grasped the thick stalk of a long neck feather and rose to her feet. She was alone. If she had expected to find an air sprite floating next to her, she was sorely disappointed. Letha wanted to cry out, "I'm not a creature! I'm a sprite!" but the wind stole her voice from her.

"I've never known a sprite to ride a phoenix before," the voice said. "What gives me that great honor?"

The phoenix? It was just a bird. How could it speak to her?

"Just a bird? My kind is ancient, noble, possessed of many powers. We have dined on your kind for generations, if we were bored and not rapacious. One dive it would take to dislodge you, one dive and a tasty morsel for my journey."

"No! No!" The thought of being dislodged and falling from this height was enough to turn her stomach, let alone being consumed by a bird. Mallory had told her that birds have no teeth. You died of suffocation, if you were fortunate, or were ground up slowly by the stones in the bird's crop. She thought she heard a chuckle.

"Falling? I thought sprites were creatures of the air. If you can hear me, you must be."

Letha tried to speak again. Failing, again, she formed the explanation in her mind.

"Some sprites are. Some sprites are from the water or from the fire. I have wings." Letha's face burned with shame. "I'll fall if you dislodge me."

"Better than being ground up in my crop, perhaps?" The chuckle was repeated.

"Barely. You don't have to dive to dislodge me. All I need to do is open my eyes. If I . . . if I think about flying . . . "

There was no way her mind's voice could be taken by the wind, but there it was. The silence hung between them, even if the roar of the phoenix's flight still surrounded them. Even without words, Letha could feel the bird prompting her to continue.

"At this height, I couldn't fly. At this height, I would just fall."

The silence continued. Would the phoenix accept her words? Or would it press her for more details? The bird must have heard her inner questioning, as she heard its voice again.

"I have seen insects as large as you at great heights. What would make you fall, little creature?"

"Creature" again! Anger flowed through her. Although she wanted to make a sarcastic retort, she knew that doing so would bring her great risk. As if proof of her vulnerability, the phoenix began a slow descent. He banked into the gyre, causing her to slide toward one pinion. Once she reached those smooth feathers, she would continue unabated to the ground. The bitterness she tasted was not just of shame.

"I can't fly this high. If I think about flying I can't move my wings. I just stop moving them and don't know how to start them again."

The phoenix didn't respond, but the gyre ceased. Level flight continued at their new height, drawing ever closer to their unknown destination.

"I've had nearly as many burnings as I have toes and that is the first time I've heard of such."

"I can't fly above the reeds," Letha admitted. "The last time I tried, I fell into the water. Mallory was the one who got me back to the bank."

"The one who dared you to pet me."

"To her, you're just a bird. A big, scary bird that we've never seen in our part of the world. She thinks she's smart because she was trapped for a week inside a library."

"Not a cobbler's shop?"

"No. That was mean of me. Mallory isn't nice, but her mother isn't anything like a brownie."

The phoenix stopped flapping his wings, gliding and floating on a warm current of air. It was a pleasant, drifting feeling, almost soothing somehow. He started to lose altitude again, so he flapped his wings, propelling them forward again. For a moment, she envied the great bird. Her wings didn't permit her to glide far at all.

"My feathers are good for many things," the bird thought to her. "Gliding is only one of them."

"And they're very pretty, too. I like burnt orange."

"When I was very young, my feathers were bright: yellow, orange, white, blue as the morning sky. But now that I am old, even molting fails to return them to their former brilliance. You are kind to say they are pretty, little creature."

Letha's temper flared for a third time. "Don't call me that!"

"Then what am I to call you? Do sprites have names?"

"Of course, we do!" It occured to Letha that the bird might be teasing her, as she had already referred to Mallory by name. "I'm Letha."

"And I am Bennu. Take care not to fall, Letha."

Bennu began to perform a course correction, banking deeply as he turned. Despite her best efforts, Letha found herself sliding once again toward the bird's pinion. She felt herself slide across the slick flight feathers, off into the air currents that surrounded them. She fluttered her wings as best she could, but it was of no use. Letha folded them against her back to keep them from being battered by the wind, then felt herself fall toward the unforgiving surface world.

"Bennu!"

Could he hear her? She found it almost impossible to hear herself. Her thoughts were jumbled, fear swallowing her whole. Here, far away from everyone she had ever known, she would end her life like a gnat on a windscreen.

"You do fall."

Letha landed none too gently on Bennu's back. Even the soft down was not enough to keep her from feeling the bump as she landed. Nothing was damaged, however, except for a small feather quill or two.

"Did you do that deliberately?"

"No, Letha. I simply banked too deeply."

It was difficult to know if he was telling the truth or not. His mental voice carried no inflection, just information. Even that was sparing enough."

"What would you have me tell you?

"Where we're going, for one."

"I was on my way to my burning place when you interrupted my journey," Bennu said. "I had stopped for rest when you disturbed me."

"I'm sorry."

And she was, sorry. All the same, "burning place" didn't sound like a promising destination. "Taking a spin around the island" would have been much better, as they would have returned to--or at least passed--her home once again.

"And now?

"I don't know. You trouble me, little Letha. You cannot fly. How are you to return to your home if you cannot fly?"

"We've been flying for almost the entire day. I don't know that I could return to begin with. I don't know where I am."

"I must continue, despite that. I must return to my burning place. If I return you to your home, then I will not live to see that place again."

"Can you, um, go to your, um, burning place, and then return me when you're done?"

"No."

The sky was darkening around them. Bennu began to spiral downward, gradually this time, so that she did not slide toward those terrible pinions. As the light dimmed, she could see that his feathers took on a slight glow, like coals after the fire has died.

"My fire is just rising," he told her. "Not dying. You will be safe, little Letha. I will not burn until I have found my resting place. Tomorrow, we shall see to getting you flying again."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Letha awoke to find Bennu already in flight. She was more hopelessly confused about their destination than she had been the day before. The previous day, they had been flying toward the rising sun. Today, they seemed to be flying away from it.

"Today, I fly low to the ground. It is not comfortable for me, but I will do my best. When I reach the treetops, you must try to fly above my back."

Above the treetops! Low! She would have to try, even if the phoenix had an odd idea of what "low" meant.

"I fly high enough to drink from the clouds, little Letha. The ground has a great pull on my wings when I am near the trees. If I fly slowly, as I must for you to rise above me, the pull becomes even greater."

True to his word, Bennu descended to the treetops. Had he stopped, she could have hopped safely from his back to one of the leaves below. Even she would have been able to swoop to safety from that height.

"If I let you leap from my back, you might be safe, but you are still far from home. Would you be able to fly there without me?"

"No, not likely."

Bennu dipped closer to the tree canopies below them. Letha's wings fluttered madly, elevating her above Bennu's feathers. She flew apace with him, rising almost to the level of his wrist in an upstroke. She was flying! High! Above the ground--above the trees! Beneath her, Bennu began another descent, as if he were going to land on a tree branch. Letha's wings began to falter. She fell to the phoenix's back.

"You must keep trying, little Letha. I will bring you as far as I can, but you must keep trying, in case--"

In case he could not stop from burning. She knew that she was being selfish. She knew that she needed to do for herself. She just couldn't.

"You can't make it to your burning place now? Will you be able to resurr-- resurr-- rise?"

"It does not matter where I burn, but this was to be my last journey home. I do not plan to rise again, little Letha. I grow weary of this world. I remember it before you were even an egg, with yellow sands and pyramids shining white in the sun. The world is too crowded now and I no longer belong here."

Letha was torn between annoyance at his implication that she had hatched from an egg and sadness at his lack of desire to rise from the ashes. The phoenix, unlike the day before, did not offer even a psychic chuckle. They flew on in silence, his massive wingbeats bringing them closer to her home. More than once, he lowered himself to the trees again. More than once, she was able to fly only when he was close beneath her. Conversation faded over the day. As they reached the familiar valley, Letha could tell that Bennu was struggling to stay aloft. She took wing as he descended to the riverbank and took his place on a rocky perch. Bennu's feathers shone brilliantly in the twilight. Even though she had never seen such a thing before, Letha knew his time was short. He raised his wings in the semblance of flight, as tiny flames began to lick at his primary feathers. She flew close to him and began to sing.

"Not close, little Letha."

The pixies on the ground approached the phoenix as the flames began to leap forward. They danced, clapping and spinning in celebration of the bird who was returning to the element of the air. The sprites of the valley joined Letha in song, an ancient melody that was sung only when one of their immortal clan found his or her way Beyond. The sound rang forward until the last feather had been consumed in flame when nothing but ash remained.

"Goodbye, Bennu," Letha thought aloud. There was no response. Bennu had already flown ahead of her.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Dawn broke, clear, bright, and cool. Letha skimmed the ground, dancing just a little to be back in her valley. She tried not to look at the ground along the river's edge, trying to avoid the ashes that she knew were there. And yet . . . was the fire entirely out? Did she see a glow?

"It's just the dew, reflecting the sunrise."

She flew faster, rising above the water to avoid its spray. The ashes had become brightly colored as she had slept: orange, yellow, blue, and white. As she fluttered there, a tiny piece of down appeared. Was it new?

"I am here, little Letha!"

The words were faint, as if she had imagined them. The down rose above the ashes, captured in the wind. Like the down, Letha rose on the wind. She followed it, above the water, above the reeds, to the treetops above. Bennu would rise again, and she would be there to greet him!