Chapter 8

I’m Sorry

“Ph-Phoenix?” I repeat

He grunts, tail lashing. It stirs up leaves. A growl shakes in his chest.

“Are you ok?” I ask.

“What do you think?” he bites back.

I flinch and look down at my paws. “S-sorry.”

“You ever stand up for yourself, Astra?” Phoenix doesn’t turn around. His ears swivel every so often, listening in all directions.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever looked someone in the eye and told them no and not backed down? Have you ever fought someone off?”

“I… I guess with the Guard and Soldiers,” I murmur.

“Before that?”

I shake my head, then respond when I realize Phoenix is still facing away from me. “No. It was only me and Brook. I didn’t have to tell her no. We knew what the other wanted and didn’t want. We said whatever we thought.”

“That… that sounds like the perfect childhood, yet also the most terrible.”

“It wasn’t bad! Brook is a great stepmother! She’s kept me safe.” I keep my voice at a whisper, but I can’t help rushing over to Phoenix.

He whirls around and blocks my path, keeping me from Ky but lays back down quickly. I do the same, and we face each other.

“I don’t doubt that. She would’ve killed me if she saw me as a threat to you. We wouldn’t be talking right now if she felt you were in danger. But you couldn’t leave the Field. You couldn’t see your own parents. You knew nothing but the Field for ninety years. You are ten years old, and you have never seen Ragdon.”

“Brook kept me safe.” I stare Phoenix down, trying not to show how my skin crawls. He watches back evenly, and I continue. “I might be ten, but I know she’s keeping me safe.”

“I don’t doubt that either. She did what she had to. The cream puff is a truly fucked up guy. He’s terrible beyond words.” Phoenix’s eyes flash with rage I don’t want to see. “Even if Brook was keeping you safe from the cream puff, it doesn’t change the fact that you spent ninety years locked up. A prison is a prison, even if it feels like a perfect paradise.”

But the Field wasn’t a prison. I had nowhere I needed to go. The Field had everything I needed. I didn’t need to leave it. Brook kept me safe from the King and his Dragon, even if I thought they were just stories. She didn’t want me to worry.

“Why do you swear so much?” I ask.

“They’re just words. They express how I’m feeling. Sometimes I know it’ll offend someone, and if they’re sided with the cream puff, I’ll do it to piss them off. I’ll only offend those I wish to kill. Ky makes me stick to the lesser ones, so I have to get creative. And honestly it’s more fun insulting someone when the insult can’t be applied to just about anyone and still be offensive.” Phoenix smiles, and the moonlight glints on his fangs. “You gotta make the insults special.”

“Do you not wanna kill anyone?”

Phoenix looks at me for a moment. I tuck my paws beneath my body and curl my tail around myself when the cold night air soaks into my fur.

“You cold?”

I nod.

“Come closer.”

I do, and Phoenix makes his fire burn hotter. I rest my head on my forepaws. The warmth feels nice.

“I… the only ones I really want to kill are those who side with the cream puff. They all deserve it.”

“Why do you call the King the cream puff?”

Phoenix freezes, and the flames on his body die down to almost nothing before he stands up. His claws sink into the ground, and he bares his teeth, tail lashing to the side. His flames explode and curl as they crackle. Blue glows close to his fur.

“You don't get to ask that fucking question. It’s none of your goddamn business. Go to sleep. Take a fucking nap, Astra.”

I flinch and shrink back, but I nod and turn around, scurrying back to my makeshift bed. I lay close to Brook and nose under my tail to stay cozy.

Things are quiet for a while. Brook occasionally shifts above me and rocks her weight, and Alex rolls over, sending little pebbles bouncing away. I want to chase them but I don’t. A line of birds rustle through the trees down the side of Ragdon Volcano, and I watch them fly across the sky.

Imagine if I could fly, I think. I can already run fast, so imagine how fast I could fly.

I look up at the sky. Stars twinkle, and I trace lines between them to make patterns. Smudges of color brighten the dark sky. Brook once told me they were galaxies super far away, places with other worlds where there might be other beings.

Phoenix breaks the quiet.

“I…” he trails off. When he talks again, his voice is softer. “I’m sorry, Astra.”

“For what?”

I creep out from beneath Brook and walk closer. Phoenix turns around. He draws his ears back and looks off to the side.

“I was rude to you. I’ve… I’ve been rude to you.” Phoenix presses his shoulder into Ky’s shoulder. He takes a breath. “Ky would’ve told me that, and it’s true. So, uh, there we go. I apologized. I’m sorry.”

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Ok.”

“You don’t gotta just shrug and accept it. You can be angry at me.”

I tilt my head to the side. “But I’m not.”

“Why? I’ve acted pretty shitty toward you. You can be angry at me.”

“You didn’t let the Guard and Soldiers take me. You helped to fight them off.”

Phoenix rolls his eyes. “They had it coming.”

We fall into silence again, and I lay my head on my paws. The fire on Phoenix’s fur keeps me from getting too cold. Phoenix scans the mountainside of Ragdon Volcano, then goes back to grooming Ky. He bites at a stick and pulls it from his brother’s body.

“Go to sleep, Astra,” Phoenix eventually says. “No one’s coming, and if they do, they’re dead anyway.”

“I can’t,” I reply.

Phoenix huffs. “Why not?”

I pause when my mind freezes. There’s too many words, too many thoughts swirling around in my head like a storm. I can’t figure out how to put them all together and form a sentence.

“Why not?” Phoenix repeats.

I tense and try to get my head to work, try to figure out what words I want and how to line them up in a row.

“I-I… the King… Freedom. She’s dead.”

Phoenix turns around fully and raises his head. He looks at me for a while, and I can’t read his expression. But eventually, he talks.

“Yeah, that sucks,” he says. “Cream puff is a fucker who’s gonna meet Lucius sooner rather than later. He’ll fall at my paws and my claws. I’ll make him pay for everything. And if when Lucius takes you, it’s not just eternal sleep and there’s something waiting for you when your heart finally gives out, I hope the cream puff gets to suffer for an eternity.”

“But… Arcane killed Freedom. Arcane isn’t the King.”

Phoenix nods. “That’s true, but still. Can’t see a world in which the Midnight Wolf wasn’t made to go against the cream puff. All that power to just sit around? Doesn’t make sense. The cream puff killed Freedom indirectly. His bloodstained little fingers are everywhere. I’m gonna chew off each and every one of his sticky fingers until he squeals like the pig he is.”

I don’t know what to say, and Phoenix tells me to sleep.

xxxx

I do sleep. Eventually, I doze off and find my way to Dreamland.

I awake to Phoenix glaring at Grey, and Alex inching her way in front of her brother.

“I wasn’t going to harm Ky,” Grey says.

“You were touching him without my permission,” Phoenix shoots back.

“I apologized, and I truly mean it. I know we all want to keep moving, and so I wanted to carefully pick up Ky so I could carry him in my arms.”

“Phoenix,” Alex says, “the longer we stay here, the longer it will take us to reach the top of Ragdon Volcano and find Arcane.”

I get to my paws and creep over to Brook, pressing myself to her foreleg.

Brook leans her head down. “Phoenix caught you these mice earlier today.”

She nudges two mice toward me with her nose. Their bodies look so similar to Ky’s. They roll over when Brook pushes them, limbs floppy. Their arms splay out to the sides. I settle down and pick them up to place the two mice between my paws, and I bend down to begin eating, but then I stop.

It feels wrong, eating the mice. They look so much like Ky.

If Ky isn’t dead, then why do the mice look so much like him? If the mice met Lucius, then where did Ky go? Where is Ky, if he’s not with Lucius?

When my stomach gurgles at me, I do eat, but I do so quickly.

“Fine, pick up my brother. See if I care. But you’d better not fucking drop Ky,” Phoenix spits.

“I do not wish harm upon your brother, Phoenix,” Grey replies. He doesn’t flinch.

“He’s gone because we came to the Field.” Phoenix stalks ahead, tail lashing. The yellow horns on his forehead look so sharp and pointy in the sunlight.

“He’s gone because the King sent his Guard and Soldiers to the Field,” Brook says. “The King is responsible for what happened to Ky.”

“If y’all had just fought better,” Phoenix snarls.

“Hypotheticals cannot change the present,” Grey says.

Phoenix fluffs up his fur and turns around.

“You think I don’t know that?” There’s an anger in his words that confuses me. Phoenix was grumpy before, but now he’s furious. “You think I don’t know that hypotheticals can never change anything? That all they can do is make you sit there thinking over and over and over about every single ‘what if’ your mind can churn up in the depths of your brain. You think I don’t know that every second I spend stuck on what could’ve gone differently won’t magically bring back my brother to me? You think I don’t know that no matter how deep into every tantalizing hypothetical that they’ll always remain fake and never real?”

Phoenix’s sides heave with each breath he takes through his teeth. His long canines look just as sharp and pointy as his horns do. He looks so angry.

“Arcane can bring Ky back,” Phoenix continues. “Arcane will bring Ky back, because there is no world in which he does not.”

Phoenix stalks ahead, steps heavy on the rock. “He has to,” he whispers.

We walk for a long time.

As we continue moving uphill, I dash around, trying to see everything Ragdon Volcano has to offer. Brook calls me back every so often, and I return. When I get tired, I take a nap on her back, and then, reenergized, I skip around the group and race after rabbits.

The closer we get to the top of Ragdon Volcano, the more rabbits I see.

“Shouldn’t it be fewer rabbits?” Grey asks when Alex comments about them.

“Probably,” Alex replies. “But we’ve never been up here. It seems they’re just really common.”

“I thought rabbits only had two eyes,” Grey says. “And brown fur.”

A rabbit pauses in hopping around and stares at us through too many black eyes to count. Its nose wiggles as it watches us. Two antennae grow from its forehead like Phoenix’s horns, and its fur is rainbow, like the rainbow barrier around the Field. Its fur is covered in patches of every color.

When I start to run after it, Brook tells me no.

“I’m sorry, Astra, but I don’t know if the rabbit has any powers. I don’t recognize it, so I don’t know if it’s safe.”

“Ok,” I reply.

We continue on, until we all start walking slower from exhaustion.

When the top of Ragdon Volcano comes into view, I feel like I’m about to walk out into the sky. I turn around for a moment, and the rest of Ragdon looks so tiny. I can still see the purple castle and the smudge of white beyond it. Everything looks so small.

Phoenix trots ahead, and I follow.

Maybe I’ll be able to fly out into the sky since I’m so far up.

Grey gently sets down Ky’s body when we do reach the top.

We all look around, and I wonder if Arcane is about to pop out from one of the many boulders I see scattered across the top of Ragdon Volcano. More rabbits hop around.

Their hind legs are so long!

“So here’s what’s gonna happen,” Phoenix says, “Arcane is around here somewhere, and we’re all gonna go off and look and find him. When someone finds him, make him stop and call for the rest of us. Grey and Alex, you’re splitting up. Brook and Astra, I don’t care what you do. I might not be very nice, but I ain’t so much of a monster that I’m gonna make you see the guy who killed your mother or friend.”

Phoenix flicks his tail and walks off. Grey and Alex follow suit, and the three each go a different way.

“Do you want to search?” Brook asks me.

“Do you?” I reply.

“I am fine either way. I do not wish to see Arcane, but I also would like some answers as to what happened. I will leave it up to you.”

I look at my paws. If what happened to Freedom was what happened to the Guard and Soldiers in the Field, then Lucius would’ve come. Lucius doesn’t return anyone they take. But I also want to hear what happened, but I don’t think it will change anything.

“We can help Phoenix,” I say.

Brook nods. “Very well, let’s search for Arcane.”

I walk next to Brook with my nose to the ground. I sniff and listen, angling my ears this way and that. We continue wandering for a while, long enough to the point I begin to grow bored and lose focus. The flowers I keep passing look more and more interesting.

But just when I’m about to trot off and look at the flowers, I start running, ignoring Brook’s calls for me to stop.

I take off at a sprint, just slow enough that I don’t break the speed of sound and create the whistling clap but fast enough that I can get to where I want to go. I’m across the top of Ragdon Volcano in a few seconds, and I slow down to turn the corner around a particularly large boulder.

I tumble back into a somersault when I crash into a leg.