Daphne and the Silver Ash: A Fairy Tale Read online

  Chapter 2

  Panic in the Park

  A month passed since her visit to the Silver Ash and her unexpected meeting with the golden phoenix Serafina. Time and again, Daphne had promised herself she would return to the park to speak with Bryn and to sing to Violet, and perhaps to see the great shining creature nesting in the tall ash tree. But time and again, some errand or chore would carry her off to a friend’s house to watch another woman’s children or to the doctor’s house where old Nicodemus would glance at Violet and mutter that she was “Fine” or to the tailor’s shop for a few hours’ work mending coats for the coming winter. Each morning she would tell herself that she would leave time in the evening to walk up to the park, and each evening she forgot or was too tired to go. And so a month passed.

  Then one evening as Daphne and Justin were sitting down to yet another supper of warmed leftovers they heard a light knocking at the door. It was very fast, very insistent knocking, yet not at all loud. Justin raised a curious eyebrow as he went to the door, and he opened it to reveal a young soldier who looked vaguely familiar, but the lad’s name escaped him. The soldier doubled over gasping for breath, his face awash in sweat.

  “Excuse me, sir. We need Daphne!” he wheezed. “Please, come quickly. Bryn needs you at the Silver Ash!”

  Daphne gave one nervous look at her sleeping Violet on the bed behind her and then rushed to the door. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll go,” Justin said. “I’ll help you.”

  “No,” the boy said breathlessly. “She needs Daphne, she said. Daphne’s the only one who might be able to help.”

  “Help with what?” Daphne asked.

  “It’s Serafina. Her time has come, but something is wrong, terribly wrong!” The young soldier stared at them with wide, wild eyes.

  “If there’s any danger—” Justin began.

  “Bryn said the only danger is to Serafina and the Ash, I swear to you. Now please, we have to go!” The boy stumbled back into the street and stared up the hill toward the park.

  “Yes, of course, I’ll come.” Daphne grabbed her shawl from the back of a chair and gave her husband a light kiss on the cheek as she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Justin nodded solemnly. “All right then. Help her as best you can. It’s very important that the phoenix is reborn, and soon.”

  “I know, I know!” She patted his arm.

  “No,” he said. “It’s more important than you know. Just help her. Go.”

  She glanced back at him once more, wondering what he meant, and then she dashed out the door and ran off into the night.

  Daphne ran on calloused feet on the cold streets of Trevell, running up and up one street after another, darting around corners and through unfamiliar alleyways behind the fleet-footed soldier.

  “What’s wrong with her?” she called out. “What can I do?”

  “Sing!” he called back over his shoulder. “She needs you to sing to her!”

  Before Daphne could ask another question, they burst out of the dark city streets into the wide open square at the top of the hill and they dashed through the gate in the low brick wall and onto the thick grass of the park. The soldier stopped short to catch his breath and she went on without him. She threaded her way through a growing crowd of men and woman who stood shivering and staring up at the tree in silence, all huddled together with fear and wonder in their eyes.

  The great tree towered over them all, its branches and leaves dancing in and out of shadows as the wind ran this way and that across the hill top. High in the tree and screened in by the leaves, Daphne could see the inconstant flashes and flickers of red and yellow flames dancing in the darkness. The fire growled and woofed like a hungry hound and the gray smoke curled up into the sky where it vanished on the whistling wind.

  The pale nymph stood beside the trunk and glanced at Daphne. “I didn’t know what else to do. This has never happened before. I was with her, up there, but I had to come back down here. She’s gone wild.”

  “What happened?” Daphne asked.

  “Serafina!” Bryn shouted up through the rising wind. “Can you hear me?”

  The only answer was a sudden beating of wings and the wooden chaos of branches shaking and crashing together.

  “Serafina!” Daphne called. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  They heard more wings beating and branches crackling and leaves shivering, and then a great golden shape leapt up and away from the red flames and the phoenix flew out and away from the tree, gliding on long silent wings in a great circle around the Silver Ash before sweeping back in to perch on the lowest branch of the tree, just as she did on the evening a month before as Daphne stood singing to a restless Violet.

  “I dare not!” The phoenix’s voice cried out from nowhere and everywhere, echoing off the walls of the houses across from the park. Her talons squeezed the branch until the wood creaked and groaned. She twisted her long curving neck from side to side, gazing down at the young woman below with one dark golden eye and then the other. She shuddered and shook. “I dare not! I will not!”

  “Will not what?” Daphne asked, one arm raised to shield her face from the whipping wind.

  “The fire!” Serafina suddenly stood quite still on her branch, staring down with one unblinking eye. “Tonight is the night when I must sleep in the fire, to go down into darkness and rise again into the light. But I dare not! Not now, not again!”

  “But why?” Bryn asked. “You and I have done this many times and we shall do it many times to come. All will be well, just as it always has been. You will sleep and you will wake, and when we are both reborn the tree will blossom and the city will shine brighter and better than ever before. Why are you afraid?”

  “Look at your feet!” The phoenix commanded.

  Daphne looked down at her bare toes half-hidden in the soft grass. “I don’t understand.”

  “The leaves. The sticks.” Serafina was as still as death and for a moment the only sound in the square was the crackle of her burning nest high above her.

  Daphne glanced around at the pale dry leaves that had fallen from the tree and the dry little twigs that lay trampled on the ground. “What about them?”

  The phoenix said, “Never before has anything fallen from the Silver Ash. Never in any season, never in any year. Never a single leaf. Has it, Bryn?”

  The nymph frowned. “Perhaps not, no.”

  “But now it does. Now the tree is failing. The tree is dying!” She threw up her wings like war banners shining in the dark. “Look at your people and see how tired and ill they have become. Look at your homes and see how filthy and broken they have become. Look at the sky and see how angry and lifeless it has become.”

  Daphne looked around and saw the same people she had always seen. Yes, they were tired but all people were tired after a long day’s work. And yes some were ill, but such was always the case at this time of the year. The streets were dirty and the houses crumbling and sagging, but the city itself was ancient beyond memory and nothing could be expected to look strong and new forever, especially not in Trevell.

  Looking up at the sky, Daphne watching the dark iron clouds drift slowly across the face of the heavens, hiding all but a few stars. It was true that it had been a dry and difficult summer. What few harvests had begun were poor, and those that remained were likely to be just as disappointing. But there had always been lean years in between the bountiful ones. Daphne frowned. She couldn’t quite remember the last harvest that had not been poor. But still.

  She turned to the little nymph beside her and said, “But isn’t it always like this at the end, in the years before the rebirth?”

  “More or less.” But Bryn’s mouth was stern and small, her eyes fixed on her immortal companion above, her brow lined and wrinkled as never before.

  “No!” Serafina’s voice rang out over the square with the commanding majesty of no less than an empress if not a goddess in her own r
ight. “Never before! Always in the waning years the harvests become lean, the skies fade to gray, and the people grow weary. But never has there been sickness, or drought, or darkness, and never has a single leaf fallen from the Silver Ash!”

  “Then perhaps this is merely a harder century, a bleaker age in even greater need of our rebirth,” Daphne said. “Perhaps when we awaken again, the city will be even brighter and stronger than ever before.”

  “No, I dare not sleep in the fire again,” the phoenix said. “The Silver Ash is the root and the life and the flower of this place and its people. The Silver Ash is the heart and blood of Trevell, its health and prosperity across the generations of men and women. The Silver Ash is my shelter and my sustenance. And now the Silver Ash is dying!”

  She shook her long neck and flung a dark shape down to the grass. “Look! Look!”

  Daphne looked at the broken stick lying at her feet. It wasn’t white or silver or even gray. It was a dry pale brown and from the cracks in the bark oozed something thick and white that she did not wish to touch. “What is it?”

  “Death,” the phoenix said. “Your death, Bryn, and mine too if I give my spirit to your flames tonight.”

  A hushed gasp ran across the crowd around her and Daphne felt a cold fear in her belly at the phoenix’s words.

  “So I dare not sleep in the fire again.” The phoenix opened and closed her talons nervously on her perch. “I fear I will not wake, will not rise, will not live again. And I do want to live. More than anything. And more than ever before.”

  Again Daphne turned to Bryn and said, “Has this ever happened before?”

  “No, never.” The nymph leaned close to her tree. “I only feel a little weaker. Truly.”

  “But you can’t die, you’re the Silver Ash.” Daphne swallowed. The Silver Ash had stood upon the hill for a thousand years, the living heart of the city standing high where all could see it from any quarter. Their ancestors had settled upon the hill just to be near the lovely tree, not suspecting its wondrous power until many years later. And as the tree had grown, so too had the city. Every story that she knew about the city began or ended with the Silver Ash, one way or another. She couldn’t imagine Trevell without the tree. They were one and the same. “What can I do?”

  “Sing.” Bryn turned to stare into Daphne’s eyes. “Please, sing your song to her. Serafina hasn’t come down from her nest in a dozen years, but she came down to hear your singing. It’s the only thing that has touched her heart in a very long time. Sing again now, and maybe she will be calm and see reason, and go to sleep with me. Sing to her, please.”

  Daphne nodded and swallowed and looked up again at the great golden bird roosting above her. She cleared her throat and fumbled through her memory for the words and where to begin and a moment later she sang,

  High on the green hillside where cool winds meander

  when twilight is fading I dream quietly.

  And at the bright noontide in solitude wander

  amid the dark shades of the lonely ash tree.

  And there while the phoenix was cheerfully singing

  I first met my dear one, the joy of my heart.

  Around us for gladness the bluebells were springing

  the ash tree did whisper, we never shall part.

  She stopped, partly because she wasn’t sure if her singing was doing any good and partly because she had suddenly forgotten how the next verse began. Her mind had gone blank as she stared up at the magnificent golden creature perched just above her head. Serafina did not move, did not even blink, and for a moment Daphne dared to think she might have quieted the phoenix’s frightened heart after all.

  Bryn exhaled, her warm breath swirling in white and silver vapor in the cold night air. “Serafina? Dear sister, please, I know you were afraid a moment ago, but that is all past now. We have been here, at the cusp of this moment, preparing for your great sleep and rebirth countless times before and I will be here at your side for countless times to come. The centuries mean nothing to you and me. Go now and sleep in your cleansing fires, and when you awaken I will be here to greet you, we will all be here to greet you, and we will celebrate the dawn of another hundred years of life together.”

  The phoenix said nothing. She twisted her long, elegant neck to look up at the crackling orange flames of her nest high in the Silver Ash behind her and for a long moment the entire crowd held its breath in anticipation.

  Then Serafina turned back to face the two women standing beneath her, and she spread her shining wings wide. As she leaned forward and her talons came free of her perch, her thunderous voice whispered, “I dare not.”

  The golden phoenix leapt from the branch of the Silver Ash and plummeted to the ground with her wings stretched wide to catch the autumn wind. At the last moment her gleaming feathers swept her up and away from the green grass and the phoenix flew forward, toward the two women, and crashed into Daphne’s arms.

  Daphne did not raise her arms to embrace the huge bird but to shield her face. Serafina’s fall to earth had been so unexpected and so fast that there was no time to think and no time to run. Only some tiny gasp of fear in the bottom of her heart spurred her to act, and the only thing she could manage to do was to raise her arms and turn her head and hope that she would be all right.

  The phoenix crashed into the woman’s chest and both fell to the ground together, arms and wings entangled. Daphne felt the air rush from her lungs as the bird’s belly struck her own belly and for the first few seconds she could only lie still on the grass and gasp for breath.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes.

  Serafina, the great golden phoenix of the Silver Ash, the spirit of growth and change and death and rebirth for the entire city of Trevell, lay still in her arms. Up close she found the creature was not quite as large as she had seemed when perched in the tree, for now she only seemed to be a very large heron with very large eyes and very large talons, and nothing more.

  Daphne could hear the whispers of the crowd above her and behind her but she paid them no mind. She could feel Bryn standing over her, watching her, but Daphne paid her no mind either. All she could see was the phoenix.

  Serafina opened one dark eye and stared at her. The bird was not moving, not even breathing. And then her eye closed.

  Suddenly every feather on the phoenix’s body glowed with a rich golden light, pouring out great burning beams of sunlight and starlight and moonlight from her head to her tail. Daphne pulled away and covered her eyes, but the light vanished just as suddenly, and she lowered her hands.

  Serafina, the great golden phoenix, was gone and only an old gray goose lay in her place. A small, mottled creature, thin and ragged, lay across Daphne’s arm. And then Daphne saw her arm. Her own arm. Her shining, golden arm.

  With her heart pounding in her chest and a great heat in her skin, she scrambled away from the old gray goose and stood up. She held out her arms and saw the dark gleaming gold of her skin. Daphne pulled up her sleeves and saw the strange color covering her from fingertips to shoulder, and she lifted her skirts to see the golden hue on her legs and feet as well.

  What does it mean?

  What just happened?

  Daphne looked up into Bryn’s pale green eyes and saw a terrible fear in the nymph’s gaze. Never before had the tree spirit looked so frightened, so frozen with terror, and so miserable with despair.

  “What did you do?” Bryn whispered. “What have you done?”

  Daphne looked down at her golden hands again. “Nothing. I don’t know. I just sang to her. What happened to her?” She pointed at the goose.

  Bryn glanced at the goose, but only for a moment. She turned her gaze back to Daphne. “I don’t know. This has never happened before. Your face!”

  Daphne touched her cheeks, realizing that of course her face must be golden as well as every other part of her body. Absently, as an afterthought, she reached back to touch her hair. But unlike her skin, which had merely changed hue, her ha
ir was no longer hair.

  She jerked her hand away, and then slowly reached back to touch it again. No, not hair, but feathers, a great plume of soft downy feathers that hung from her head and cascaded down around her shoulders, and not the color of her own black locks but red, dark red, an angry crimson that sparkled like rubies in the night.

  “Daphne.” Bryn stepped back. And then she stepped back again. “You’ve taken the spirit of the phoenix. You are the phoenix now.”