Pale Phoenix (25 page)

"Well, yes. They'd have to hide me from the rest of the people in Garnet, or else help me find a place to stay somewhere else. You'll be grown up, and there I'll be."

"I know they'd help you all they could." Miranda had a brief flash into a distant future when she herself was grown up and had children. She would bring her children here to visit their grandparents, and there would be Abby, still thirteen-pretending-to-be-fifteen, still with long, pale hair, blue jeans, a smirky smile, leafing through all her old photographs or pounding the piano keys ... unchanged. It was a dreadful thought, and she pushed the vision away. "I think you might be able to stay a while longer," was all she said. "I've been thinking about it."

***

Susannah took Miranda aside after their gym class later that week. "It seems like I never see you anymore since Abby moved in. Are you going crazy? I know I would be."

"Things are getting better." Miranda hesitated. She had not told her friend anything at all about Abby's real predicament, nor would she, though sometimes the secret was hard to hold in.

"It's really weird," Susannah continued. "Abby was such a
disaster,
but now she's being really friendly. Totally Jekyll and Hyde. How about coming over today after school, both of you? It'll give us a chance to catch up with each other, and Nonny is still going on about how much Abby's picture in the newspaper looks like that girl she knew so many years ago. I think she'd get a kick out of meeting Abby. She's really tied to the past. Comes from being so old, I guess."

For a second Miranda felt confused.
How can Sue know Abby's secret?
Then she realized her friend was talking about Nonny. "Sounds fun," she said. "Let's ask Abby."

The three girls walked to Susannah's house together and headed straight for the kitchen. Nonny sat at the table, her arm in a cast resting on the tabletop as she tore lettuce leaves with her crooked fingers.

"Hiya, Nonny," said Susannah. She walked around the table and kissed her great-grandmother. "Put your glasses on and look who I've brought to see you."

The old woman fumbled for the glasses that dangled on a fine gold chain about her neck. She perched them on her nose and peered at Miranda. "Hello, Mandy, dear." Then she looked at Abby. "Oh, my, you're the girl from the newspaper photo!"

Abby stared back, spots of red staining her pale cheeks. "Hello, Mrs. Johnston."

"I can't tell you, child, how much you resemble a student I had once. Years ago—oh,
decades
ago now. You're the spitting image. My stars, it's like seeing a ghost."

Abby murmured a polite response. Susannah and Miranda left them alone while they collected the things needed for brownies: mixing bowl, spoons, milk, egg, chocolate, flour, sugar.... Miranda brought the ingredients to the table where Nonny was leaning toward Abby.

"It seems like only yesterday I was a young teacher," Nonny was saying. "And now here I am, older than the hills." She laughed merrily. "Time just flies, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does." Abby nodded solemnly. "Whether you're having fun—or not."

Was
time flying yet for Abby? Miranda, still holding the mixing bowl, looked at Abby with appraising eyes. If only her hunch were right...

They should know any day now.

"Any day now" turned out to be the very next day. Another snowy Saturday morning and Dan's happy voice in the kitchen brought a sleepy Miranda downstairs quickly. He was sitting with Abby and Helen at the kitchen table, eating stacks of pancakes.

"Mmm!" he greeted her, mouth full. "Lazybones don't git no pancakes."

"Can you believe this weather?" asked Abby. "This is unreal, all this snow. I don't remember a winter like this since—" She broke off, glancing at Helen. "Well, in years."

Miranda laughed. "Years and years and years, perhaps?"

Helen looked puzzled. She slipped a plate of warm pancakes onto the table at Miranda's place. "Well, you three can stay cozy and have fun. But it's business as usual for me. I wish babies took days off for snow." She kissed Miranda and Abby before shrugging on her coat and calling good-bye up the stairs to Philip.

After she left, the kitchen was enveloped in a deep calm. Dan picked up the newspaper and turned to the sports section. Abby carried the empty plates to the sink and began washing up. Miranda watched the heavy flakes fly past the window over the sink, and she thought for a moment she heard a bird's song faintly from the tree outside, but then all was still again. She felt the snow had been falling forever. Suddenly the silence was broken by a shriek from Abby as a steel knife she had cleaned and dried slipped out of her hands. It nicked her foot as it dropped to the floor.

"Oww, oww!" yelped Abby, hopping around the kitchen on her uninjured foot. "I'll never walk again!"

"Melodrama." Dan grinned, pulling her into the nearest chair. "Take your sock off and let's see if you're going to bleed to death."

"Don't stain the linoleum, whatever you do," teased Miranda. "Bloodstains are
so
hard to get out."

Abby glowered at them both, but stripped off her sock and held her foot up. The cut was no more than a scratch, and Miranda's eyes brushed over it, caught instead by a far more riveting sight.

"Look," she breathed, grabbing Abby's foot in both hands.

"Ouch!" protested Abby. "What are you doing?"

"Don't move the patient," cautioned Dan, crouching at her side. "She may go into shock."

"Oh, cut it out." Abby attempted to pull her foot from Miranda's grasp. "Lay off me, you two. I guess I'll recover after all."

"Look!"

Both Dan and Abby stared at Miranda, then down at Abby's foot.

"What is it?" asked Abby.

"Your foot, Abby. Look."

"That's just a scratch," said Dan. He stood up. "You'll live, won't you, poor girl?"

"No, Dan,
look.
" Miranda pointed to Abby's toe, to the toe that had been bruised for three hundred years.

"Oh my God," murmured Abby. It sounded like a prayer.

"I don't get it." Dan stared at Abby's foot, perplexed. "What are you talking about? It's just an ordinary toe. A little knobbier than most, maybe, but—"

"But a toe," breathed Abby, "without a bruise."

Miranda's eyes locked with Abby's in wonderment. "You know what this means?"

"It means somehow I've
changed.
" She leapt up and wrapped her arms around Miranda. "But I
never
change."

"How long now since you've been back to the ruin?"

"I don't get it," muttered Dan. "What are you talking about?"

"I told you. I had a theory that she had to stay in the present. She had to accept the gift of the phoenix in order to grow." Miranda examined Abby's toe again. "And I was right!"

"It's been twelve days," Abby told them, her voice shrill with excitement. "No—wait, maybe thirteen? Going on two weeks." Right then and there, Abby undid the button on her jeans, unzipped them and stepped out, flinging them onto a kitchen chair.

Dan gaped at her. "What are you—?"

But Miranda knew, and leaned over to peer at Abby's thigh.

"Oh, Mandy, Mandy, look. Is it really true?" asked Abby, her voice trembling.

And to Miranda's eyes it did seem that the narrow scarlet burn had faded and grown smaller. The skin around the edges was light pink now, not angry red, as if new skin were trying to grow. She nodded. "It's true."

Abby sank wordlessly into a chair.

Miranda handed her back the blue jeans. "You're growing now," she said matter-of-factly. "Changing and growing, just like everybody else." She struggled to keep her voice under control, but she wanted to yell it to the treetops, scattering the snow. Her theory had been right. Abby could
live.

Dan collapsed into a chair. "This is amazing. What happens now?"

Abby shrugged, still staring at her bruiseless toe and healing burn. But Miranda spoke confidently. "Now comes the hard part. If it's staying in the present that lets you grow, you have to be sure never, ever to go back. No one else gets to escape to another time when the present is bad news. Why should you? If you want to be real, you have to stick around and deal with it."

"Simple as that, huh?" muttered Dan.

Miranda shook her head, eyes on Abby. "Probably the hardest thing you will ever have to do." She placed a hand on Abby's knee. "But it might be worth it in the end."

"When is the end?" Abby's voice was a whisper.

"Well—"

"When I die, right?"

Miranda was silent. Choosing life meant choosing death, but at least a death not by her own hand. Life and death—each was a part of the other, part of a cycle that no one could avoid. And yet the phoenix had given Abby the chance to choose. She could be a ghost and exist on and on forever—or she could be a real person and grow and change and, yes, eventually die, just like every other person in the world. But choosing would not be easy, even so.
What would I choose?
Miranda asked herself and was surprised when she could not answer that question right away.

But Abby had had a much longer time to dwell on the meaning of eternal existence. She raised her head and smiled at Miranda and Dan, and Miranda saw tears in the corners of her eyes. "It is simple, after all," Abby murmured. "Even if it does mean I can never go back. I'll go crazy if I have to be stuck for even one more second. I
want
to grow up. I
want
to become an old lady—I
want
to become wise!" She grinned at them tremulously through her tears and brushed her pale hair back over her shoulders. "And when I do die—," she hesitated. "When I'm very old and die at last, maybe
then
I'll see my family again—and William, too."

"Probably you will," said Miranda softly. "Probably they will have been waiting."

Dan went home for lunch, promising to return in the late afternoon. Miranda and Abby donned their boots and skidded down the hill into town. While Miranda had a flute lesson with Mrs. Wainwright, Abby trudged purposefully through the drifts around the common to the stationery store on Main Street. When she returned at the end of Miranda's lesson, she carried a bulky plastic bag.

"Nice to see you again," said Mrs. Wainwright, shaking Abby's thin hand. She turned Abby's hand over in her own. "You have strong fingers, my dear. Do you play the piano?"

"A bit," Abby admitted.

"Does she ever," said Miranda. "She's played for many years."

Mrs. Wainwright looked at Abby appraisingly. "Are you interested in auditioning to play in the spring concert? We have room on the program for one more performer."

Abby started to shake her head, then stopped. A hesitant smile broke across her face. "Yes, I'd like to," she said. "Very much."

"Then let's set up a time for you to come play for me after school, and we'll see what we can do." Mrs. Wainwright went to get her calendar.

"It's been so long since I've felt like throwing myself into things," Abby whispered to Miranda as they waited for the music teacher. "I've almost forgotten how to say yes to something."

After arrangements had been made for Abby's audition, the two girls headed back up the hill. Abby opened her plastic bag to show Miranda her purchase: two large photograph albums bought with the allowance Philip and Helen gave her. "It's time to start filing some things away, I think," she said, and when they arrived at the house she set straight to work. She spent the rest of the afternoon organizing her old pictures into the pages.

Miranda sat in her window seat and tried to read. She listened to the grind of the snowplows clearing the street. It was a welcome sound, the sound of a town, paralyzed by yet another snowfall, coming back to life. She closed her book and walked down the hall to Abby's room.

"Come in."

Miranda peered around the door. Abby's beaded satchel lay open on the bed. She was sorting through her belongings, placing some carefully on the pillow to keep, tossing others aside. The phoenix lay at the foot of the bed on the folded quilt.

"Hey, don't forget your old pal."

Abby shook her head. "I don't want it anymore." She went to sit at her desk and picked op a brittle-edged photograph. She pulled back the clear plastic cover of an album page and centered the picture. Pressing the plastic film firmly down, she spoke quietly. "
This
is my time now. Is has to be. If I'm never going back to 1693, then I must stop thinking about it. Having that bird around will always remind me ... of what I've lost. Having it around is like what a bottle of vodka is to a recovering alcoholic. Unnecessary temptation."

"But it was Willow's gift to you."

Abby shrugged. "Leave it on the bed. I'll do something with it."

"You could always
give
it to someone, I suppose."

Abby looked up at her. "Do you really still want it, Mandy? If you do, you may have it. But watch out."

"Oh, come on! That statue saved your life!"

"And maybe it would save your life one day, too, in the same way. Think about it."

Miranda turned the little figure over. The cold stone bird lay in her palm as if in a nest.

Dan tipped Miranda into their snow fort in the Brownes' side yard, and then tumbled in on top of her. "I've got you now, my beauty," he laughed evilly.

She squealed as the snow touched the unprotected back of her neck, and she reached up to stuff a fistful of snow down his coat.

Dan caught her wrist and held it away from him. She struggled to get him off her, overpower him, and wash his face with the fresh snow, but he was too strong. They wrestled happily for some minutes before Miranda sighed and relaxed under him. He bent his head to kiss her, and his lips were surprisingly warm.

They smiled at each other. "Peace?" he asked.

"Peace," she agreed, and he rolled off her. She sat up and leaned against him, their backs pressed against the hard wall of the snow fort.

"This is a good place to be," he said. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"Me, neither." She snuggled closer.

They sat there like that for a long time, not talking. Miranda found the quiet cold healing, soothing. Everything lately had been so strange, so unfathomable. She hoped now that Abby was indeed growing again, her own life might become less complicated. How nice it would be to have nothing more to concentrate on than Dan's nearness, their special love. Soon she would be able to relax with him, content in the knowledge that there was nothing else more vital to her. But before she could put the problems with Abby behind her, there was something else she needed to do.