“Sunbird cooks fast,” warned Crawcrustle. “Get your plates ready.”
The beers of the ancient Egyptians were flavored with cardamom and coriander, for the Egyptians had no hops; their beers were rich and flavorsome and thirst quenching. You could build pyramids after drinking that beer, and sometimes people did. On the barbecue the beer steamed the inside of the Sunbird, keeping it moist. As the heat of the charcoal reached them, the feathers of the bird burned off, igniting with a flash like a magnesium flare, so bright that the Epicureans were forced to avert their eyes.
The smell of roast fowl filled the air, richer than peacock, lusher than duck. The mouths of the assembled Epicureans began to water. It seemed like it had been cooking for no time at all, but Zebediah lifted the Sunbird from the charcoal bed and put it on the table. Then, with a carving knife, he sliced it up and placed the steaming meat on the plates. He poured a little barbecue sauce over each piece of meat. He placed the carcass directly onto the flames.
Each member of the Epicurean Club sat in the back of Mustapha Stroheim’s coffeehouse, sat around an elderly wooden table, and they ate with their fingers.
“Zebby, this is amazing!” said Virginia Boote, talking as she ate. “It melts in your mouth. It tastes like heaven.”
“It tastes like the sun,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, putting his food away as only a big man can. He had a leg in one hand, and some breast in the other. “It is the finest thing I have ever eaten, and I do not regret eating it, but I do believe that I shall miss my daughter.”
“It is perfect,” said Jackie Newhouse. “It tastes like love and fine music. It tastes like truth.”
Professor Mandalay was scribbling in the bound annals of the Epicurean Club. He was recording his reaction to the meat of the bird, and recording the reactions of the other Epicureans, and trying not to drip on the page while he wrote, for with the hand that was not writing he was holding a wing, and, fastidiously, he was nibbling the meat off it.
“It is strange,” said Jackie Newhouse, “for as I eat it, it gets hotter and hotter in my mouth and in my stomach.”
“Yup. It’ll do that. It’s best to prepare for it ahead of time,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “Eat coals and flames and lightning bugs to get used to it. Otherwise it can be a trifle hard on the system.”
Zebediah T. Crawcrustle was eating the head of the bird, crunching its bones and beak in his mouth. As he ate, the bones sparked small lightnings against his teeth. He just grinned and chewed the more.
The bones of the Sunbird’s carcass burned orange on the barbecue, and then they began to burn white. There was a thick heat haze in the courtyard at the back of Mustapha Stroheim’s coffeehouse, and in it everything shimmered, as if the people around the table were seeing the world through water or a dream.
“It is so good!” said Virginia Boote as she ate. “It is the best thing I have ever eaten. It tastes like my youth. It tastes like forever.” She licked her fingers, then picked up the last slice of meat from her plate. “The Sunbird of Suntown,” she said. “Does it have another name?”
“It is the Phoenix of Heliopolis,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “It is the bird that dies in ashes and flame, and is born again, generation after generation. It is the Bennu bird, which flew across the waters when all was dark. When its time is come it is burned on the fire of rare woods and spices and herbs, and in the ashes it is reborn, time after time, world without end.”
“Fire!” exclaimed Professor Mandalay. “It feels as if my insides are burning up!” He sipped his water, but seemed no happier.
“My fingers,” said Virginia Boote. “Look at my fingers.” She held them up. They were glowing inside, as if lit with inner flames.
Now the air was so hot you could have baked an egg in it.
There was a spark and a sputter. The two yellow feathers in Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy’s hair went up like sparklers. “Crawcrustle,” said Jackie Newhouse, aflame, “answer me truly. How long have you been eating the Phoenix?”
“A little over ten thousand years,” said Zebediah. “Give or take a few thousand. It’s not hard, once you master the trick of it; it’s just mastering the trick of it that’s hard. But this is the best Phoenix I’ve ever prepared. Or do I mean, ‘This is the best I’ve ever cooked this Phoenix’?”
“The years!” said Virginia Boote. “They are burning off you!”
“They do that,” admitted Zebediah. “You’ve got to get used to the heat, though, before you eat it. Otherwise you can just burn away.”
“Why did I not remember this?” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, through the bright flames that surrounded him. “Why did I not remember that this was how my father went, and his father before him, that each of them went to Heliopolis to eat the Phoenix? And why do I only remember it now?”
“Because the years are burning off you,” said Professor Mandalay. He had closed the leather book as soon as the page he had been writing on caught fire. The edges of the book were charred, but the rest of the book would be fine. “When the years burn, the memories of those years come back.” He looked more solid now, through the wavering burning air, and he was smiling. None of them had ever seen Professor Mandalay smile before.
“Shall we burn away to nothing?” asked Virginia, now incandescent. “Or shall we burn back to childhood and burn back to ghosts and angels and then come forward again? It does not matter. Oh Crusty, this is all such fun!”
“Perhaps,” said Jackie Newhouse, through the fire, “there might have been a little more vinegar in the sauce. I feel a meat like this could have dealt with something more robust.” And then he was gone, leaving only an afterimage.
“Chacun à son goût,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, which is French for “each to his own taste,” and he licked his fingers and he shook his head. “Best it’s ever been,” he said, with enormous satisfaction.
“Good-bye, Crusty,” said Virginia. She put her flame-white hand out, and held his dark hand tightly for one moment, or perhaps for two.
And then there was nothing in the courtyard back of Mustapha Stroheim’s kahwa (or coffeehouse) in Heliopolis (which was once the city of the Sun, and is now a suburb of Cairo) but white ash, which blew up in the momentary breeze, and settled like powdered sugar or like snow; and nobody there but a young man with dark, dark hair and even, ivory-colored teeth, wearing an apron that said KISS THE COOK.
A tiny golden-purple bird stirred in the thick bed of ashes on top of the clay bricks, as if it were waking for the first time. It made a high-pitched peep! and it looked directly into the sun, as an infant looks at a parent. It stretched its wings as if to dry them, and, eventually, when it was quite ready, it flew upward, toward the sun, and nobody watched it leave but the young man in the courtyard.
There were two long golden feathers at the young man’s feet, beneath the ash that had once been a wooden table, and he gathered them up, and brushed the white ash from them and placed them, reverently, inside his jacket. Then he removed his apron, and he went upon his way.
Hollyberry TwoFeathers McCoy is a grown woman, with children of her own. There are silver hairs on her head, in there with the black, beneath the golden feathers in the bun at the back. You can see that once the feathers must have looked pretty special, but that would have been a long time ago. She is the president of the Epicurean Club—a rich and rowdy bunch—having inherited the position, many long years ago, from her father.
I hear that the Epicureans are beginning to grumble once again. They are saying that they have eaten everything.
(For HMG—a belated birthday present)
The Witch’s Headstone
T HERE WAS A WITCH buried at the edge of the graveyard; it was common knowledge. Bod had been told to keep away from that corner of the world by Mrs. Owens as far back as he could remember.
“Why?” he asked.
“’Tain’t healthy for a living body,” said Mrs. Owens. “There’s damp down that end of things. It’s
practically a marsh. You’ll catch your death.”
Mr. Owens himself was more evasive and less imaginative. “It’s not a good place” was all he said.
The graveyard proper ended at the bottom of the hill, beneath the old apple tree, with a fence of rust-brown iron railings, each topped with a small, rusting spearhead, but there was a wasteland beyond that, a mass of nettles and weeds, of brambles and autumnal rubbish, and Bod, who was a good boy, on the whole, and obedient, did not push between the railings, but he went down there and looked through. He knew he wasn’t being told the whole story, and it irritated him.
Bod went back up the hill, to the abandoned church in the middle of the graveyard, and he waited until it got dark. As twilight edged from gray to purple there was a noise in the spire, like a fluttering of heavy velvet, and Silas left his resting place in the belfry and clambered headfirst down the spire.
“What’s in the far corner of the graveyard,” asked Bod. “Past Harrison Westwood, Baker of this Parish, and his wives, Marion and Joan?”
“Why do you ask?” said his guardian, brushing the dust from his black suit with ivory fingers.
Bod shrugged. “Just wondered.”
“It’s unconsecrated ground,” said Silas. “Do you know what that means?”
“Not really,” said Bod.
Silas walked across the path without disturbing a fallen leaf, and sat down on the stone bench, beside Bod. “There are those,” he said in his silken voice, “who believe that all land is sacred. That it is sacred before we come to it, and sacred after. But here, in your land, they bless the churches and the ground they set aside to bury people in, to make it holy. But they leave land unconsecrated beside the sacred ground, potter’s fields to bury the criminals and the suicides or those who were not of the faith.”
“So the people buried in the ground on the other side of the fence are bad people?”
Silas raised one perfect eyebrow. “Mm? Oh, not at all. Let’s see, it’s been a while since I’ve been down that way. But I don’t remember anyone particularly evil. Remember, in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.”
“They kill themselves, you mean?” said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.
“Indeed.”
“Does it work? Are they happier dead?”
Silas grinned so wide and sudden that he showed his fangs. “Sometimes. Mostly, no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”
“Sort of,” said Bod.
Silas reached down and ruffled the boy’s hair.
Bod said, “What about the witch?”
“Yes. Exactly,” said Silas. “Suicides, criminals, and witches. Those who died unshriven.” He stood up, a midnight shadow in the twilight. “All this talking,” he said, “and I have not even had my breakfast. While you will be late for lessons.” In the twilight of the graveyard there was a silent implosion, a flutter of velvet darkness, and Silas was gone.
The moon had begun to rise by the time Bod reached Mr. Pennyworth’s mausoleum, and Thomes Pennyworth (here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection) was already waiting, and was not in the best of moods.
“You are late,” he said.
“Sorry, Mr. Pennyworth.”
Pennyworth tutted. The previous week Mr. Pennyworth had been teaching Bod about Elements and Humors, and Bod had kept forgetting which was which. He was expecting a test, but instead Mr. Pennyworth said, “I think it is time to spend a few days on practical matters. Time is passing, after all.”
“Is it?” asked Bod.
“I am afraid so, young Master Owens. Now, how is your Fading?”
Bod had hoped he would not be asked that question.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I mean. You know.”
“No, Master Owens. I do not know. Why do you not demonstrate for me?”
Bod’s heart sank. He took a deep breath, and did his best, squinching up his eyes and trying to fade away.
Mr. Pennyworth was not impressed.
“Pah. That’s not the kind of thing. Not the kind of thing at all. Slipping and fading, boy, the way of the dead. Slip through shadows. Fade from awareness. Try again.”
Bod tried harder.
“You’re as plain as the nose on your face,” said Mr. Pennyworth. “And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody.”
Bod tried again. He closed his eyes and imagined himself fading into the stained stonework of the mausoleum wall, becoming a shadow on the night and nothing more. He sneezed.
“Dreadful,” said Mr. Pennyworth with a sigh. “Quite dreadful. I believe I shall have a word with your guardian about this.” He shook his head. “So. The humors. List them.”
“Um. Sanguine. Choleric. Phlegmatic. And the other one. Um, Melancholic, I think.”
And so it went, until it was time for Grammar and Composition with Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of this Parish (Who Did No Harm to No Man all the Dais of Her Life. Reader, Can You Say Lykewise?). Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the coziness of her little crypt, and that she could all too easily be led off the subject.
“They say there’s a witch in the uncons—unconsecrated ground,” he said.
“Yes, dear. But you don’t want to go over there.”
“Why not?”
Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. “They aren’t our sort of people,” she said.
“But it is the graveyard, isn’t it? I mean, I’m allowed to go there if I want to?”
“That,” said Miss Borrows, “would not be advisable.”
Bod was obedient but curious, and so, when lessons were done for the night, he walked past Harrison Westwood, Baker, and family’s memorial, a broken-headed angel, but did not climb down the hill to the potter’s field. Instead he walked up the side of the hill to where a picnic some thirty years before had left its mark in the shape of a large apple tree.
There were some lessons that Bod had mastered. He had eaten a bellyful of unripe apples, sour and white-pipped, from the tree some years before, and had regretted it for days, his guts cramping and painful while Mrs. Owens lectured him on what not to eat. Now he waited until the apples were ripe before eating them, and never ate more than two or three a night. He had finished the last of the apples the week before, but he liked the apple tree as a place to think.
He edged up the trunk, to his favorite place in the crook of two branches, and looked down at the potter’s field below him, a brambly patch of weeds and unmown grass in the moonlight. He wondered whether the witch would be old and iron-toothed and travel in a house on chicken legs, or whether she would be thin and sharp-nosed and carry a broomstick.
And then he was hungry. He wished he had not devoured all the apples on the tree. That he had left just one…
He glanced up, and thought he saw something. He looked once, looked twice to be certain. An apple, red and ripe.
Bod prided himself on his tree-climbing skills. He swung himself up, branch by branch, and imagined he was Silas swarming smoothly up a sheer brick wall. The apple, the red of it almost black in the moonlight, hung just out of reach. Bod moved slowly forward along the branch, until he was just below the apple. Then he stretched up, and the tips of his fingers touched the perfect apple.
He was never to taste it.
A snap, loud as a hunter’s gun, as the branch gave way beneath him.
A flash of pain woke him, sharp as ice, the col
or of slow thunder, down in the weeds that summer’s night.
The ground beneath him seemed relatively soft, and oddly warm. He pushed a hand down and felt something like warm fur beneath him. He had landed on the grass pile, where the graveyard’s gardener threw the cuttings from the mower, and it had broken his fall. Still, there was a pain in his chest, and his leg hurt as if he had landed on it first and twisted it.
Bod moaned.
“Hush-a-you-hush-a-boy,” said a voice from behind him. “Where did you come from? Dropping like a thunderstone. What way is that to carry on?”
“I was in the apple tree,” said Bod.
“Ah. Let me see your leg. Broken like the tree’s limb, I’ll be bound.” Cool fingers prodded his left leg. “Not broken. Twisted, yes, sprained perhaps. You have the Devil’s own luck, boy, falling into the compost. ’Tain’t the end of the world.”
“Oh, good,” said Bod. “Hurts, though.”
He turned his head, looked up and behind him. She was older than him but not a grown-up, and she looked neither friendly nor unfriendly. Wary, mostly. She had a face that was intelligent and not even a little bit beautiful.
“I’m Bod,” he said.
“The live boy?” she asked.
Bod nodded.
“I thought you must be,” she said. “We’ve heard of you, even over here, in the potter’s field. What do they call you?”
“Owens,” he said. “Nobody Owens. Bod, for short.”
“How-de-do, young Master Bod.”
Bod looked her up and down. She wore a plain white shift. Her hair was mousy and long, and there was something of the goblin in her face—a sideways hint of a smile that seemed to linger, no matter what the rest of her face was doing.
“Were you a suicide?” he asked. “Did you steal a shilling?”
“Never stole nuffink,” she said, “not even a handkerchief. Anyway,” she said pertly, “the suicides is all over there, on the other side of that hawthorn, and the gallows birds are in the blackberry patch, both of them. One was a coiner, t’other a highwayman, or so he says, although if you ask me I doubt he was more than a common footpad and nightwalker.”