Tiger's Destiny

  “I have to do it.” I stroked his hair and kissed the top of his head.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I know,” I answered simply.

  Reluctantly, he let me go. He stood, angrily wiped away the tears that had turned his blue eyes even brighter and picked up his weapons with renewed determination. I stepped away from him and faced the Phoenix.

  “I’m ready.”

  The great bird unfurled and flapped its wings, which sent billows of warm air swirling around my body. My hands shook so I pressed them to my sides and waited for the pain.

  Dancing on taloned feet, the Phoenix opened its beak and sang. The notes were beautiful and sweet. When the song was finished, it said, “Now they cannot stop you.”

  “What?” I asked, spinning around.

  Ren and Kishan were encased in a box of sparkling glass. They pounded and threw themselves at the clear walls in a futile effort to shatter the glass. I could see but not hear them.

  “Can they breathe in there?” I asked.

  “The diamond cage allows them to breathe. They will not be hurt but, more importantly, they will not disturb the sacrifice. Now, I must ask you to remove your amulet.”

  My hand darted to my throat. “Why?”

  “The fire amulet protects you in this realm. If you keep it on, all the creatures of the forest, including the trees, will share your pain.”

  Immediately I reached behind my neck to unhook the clasp. “Will you promise to leave it here for Ren and Kishan? They’ll need it.”

  “I have no interest in your amulet. It will not be disturbed if you set it aside.”

  I removed the amulet and Fanindra to protect both of them. The heat of the fire world immediately enveloped me. Sweat trickled down my face, and I licked my suddenly dry lips.

  I attempted to ignore Ren and Kishan, who clearly thought that this was a bad idea, but as I turned to face the Phoenix, I knew I’d made the right choice.

  Then the Phoenix sang again, and the ground peeled back, separating me from the fiery bird. Between us lay a burning bridge of rock and gravel.

  “If you can walk the path of flame, you may cross my mountain.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Then your blackened bones will find a resting place here in this grove.”

  I swallowed dryly and placed my booted foot onto the white-hot coals. The heat overwhelmed me. My boot started smoking. Sweat dripped from my temples, ran down my neck, and beaded on my upper lip. I took another searing step and another. Although the path was rocky, I slid along as if it were an icy pond. Horrified, I realized that the rubber soles of my boots had melted into slick puddles.

  When my socked heel touched the hot rocks, I screamed. I lifted my foot and was about to leap away when the Phoenix warned, “If you leave the path, your life is forfeit.”

  I set my foot down, careful to stand only on my tiptoes, and took another few steps. A tear rolled down my cheek as I hobbled forward.

  The bird watched my progress and asked, “Why is your heart closed?”

  I gasped in pain. “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t answer. I set my left foot down, which was now bare, and hopped to my right foot. The tiny piece of shoe that was left melted away. I screamed in agony but refused to step away. What was left of the top of my sock was burning. With inhuman strength, I ripped it away and stared at my blackened feet. The skin above the ankles was bright red and terribly blistered.

  Soon the only pain I felt was up and down my calves, and I knew the fire had burned away the nerve endings in my feet. Determinedly, I took a few more steps.

  The Phoenix posed another question, “Why aren’t you with the man you love?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I am. I love Kishan.”

  Flames burst around my feet, and my shorts caught fire. I patted it out and saw the skin on my shin bone was now blackened and cracking.

  Calmly, the bird asked again, “Why aren’t you with the man you love?”

  Breathing quickly, I panted, “You’re talking about Ren, aren’t you?”

  The Phoenix remained silent.

  I took another step and cried out in pain. “Ren and I don’t . . . don’t match,” I gasped. “He is a chocolate ganache layer cake, and I am a radish. He’ll break my heart and leave me for another.”

  “You are lying. You know in your heart that he will not leave you.”

  Flames leapt around me. I screamed with a sound louder than I thought was physically possible.

  The unruffled bird said, “Your heart is hidden. Speak the truth, and the pain will lessen.”

  “The truth is . . . he’s a superhero, and I’m—”

  A burst of flame encircled me, and I screamed again, trembling with weakness and emotion.

  “I made a promise to Kishan. I can’t leave him!”

  When the crackling flames surrounded me, I screamed. The bird said nothing and after the inferno finally receded, I shouted, “Here’s the truth: I’m afraid to be alone! I’m afraid he’ll die! Like Mr. Kadam! Like my parents!”

  “Death is the cause of your fear, but it is not the reason you keep him at a distance.”

  My hair was aflame. Every part of my body was burning. The red ribbon I’d tied to my hair floated away on a breeze. It was burning on one end, and I watched with fascination as it fell onto the path ahead of me and disintegrated in a puff of ash. My face felt wet. I touched it, and blackened skin flaked off.

  No longer strong enough to stand, I collapsed to my hands and knees. “Please!” I begged. “Stop the pain!”

  “Speak the truth, and the pain will stop. Why aren’t you with the man you love?”

  I gasped for breath and knew I was going to die. I stared at my ashen hands, sobbed dryly, and with my last breath, whispered, “I don’t deserve to be happy when they’re all dead.”

  “Your heart speaks true.”

  The pain washed away as if it had never been, but my torso was burned almost past the point of recognition. I didn’t care. As long as the pain was gone, I’d contentedly lie on my bed of fire and fall into “that sleep of death.”

  The Phoenix continued, “What would you give to have your parents and Mr. Kadam back again?”

  “Anything,” I whispered roughly through burned, cracked lips.

  “Would you sacrifice your young men?”

  My drifting mind focused. Would I sacrifice Ren and Kishan to get my parents back? I thought of my family’s little library, of baking cookies with my mom, of picnics by waterfalls. I remembered when I had graduated middle school, and my dad leapt to his feet, clapping, brushing tears away from beneath his glasses, even though none of the other parents stood up. I thought of Mr. Kadam and of how we enjoyed cooking dinner together in the evenings, how he loved to ramble on and on about fast cars and spices and of how much I missed him.

  But then my thoughts drifted to Ren and Kishan. I loved them both. Could I give up Kishan’s teasing or Ren’s smile? Could I give up Kishan’s bear hugs or Ren’s touch?

  I answered the Phoenix, “No, I will not trade their lives for my parents’ or Mr. Kadam’s. You can have my life though.” I coughed, my voice sounding like crackling leaves. “. . . for what it’s worth.”

  Tentatively, I reached up and felt my bald scalp. I lowered my trembling hand and managed to squeeze out a tear.

  “Poor broken fledgling,” the bird whispered. “You’re right that your life isn’t worth much. Certainly not worth the full lives of three souls who have passed beyond. Perhaps if you’d been willing to experience love and had had a few years of happiness, you might have amounted to something. As it is, your life is rather pathetic. What a waste.”

  I tried to nod in agreement, but I had lost control of my body. The Phoenix was right. I was pathetic. I had wasted my life. I’d been so afraid of losing that I’d never tried to win.

  “Still, I suppose you might amount to something someday. You certainly seem important enough to those young
men.” After a moment he continued. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer. Until I deem you ready to appreciate it, your life is mine. Come.”

  I heard the heavy thump of wings as the Phoenix rose in the air and stirred up a wind that blew around my blackened body. As it descended toward me, I heard its beautiful song once again. Then I felt the sensation of being picked up and flown through the sky. As we soared over the flaming forest through the dark sky, I fell into a deep slumber, gently rocked to sleep on the softest of clouds.

  I dreamt of a great kingdom of the past. In an ancient library, Lokesh was torturing a lowly record keeper for information on Queen Panhtwar Beikthano, the Burmese Queen of Pyu, whose brother had given her a magic drum. When she beat upon the drum, the nearby river rose up and fell upon her enemies. It also brought rain during a drought and cast off floodwaters. The evil magician smiled and murmured, “The drum was a diversion.” Lokesh’s eyes blazed with fire before the vision shifted to a dark evening.

  Next, I saw Lokesh try to barter with the queen’s grandson for his piece of the amulet, but he refused to sell. Lokesh killed him and then bent over the dead man and slipped a gold ring from the grandson’s finger onto his own hand. Lokesh smirked and stretched his hand over a fountain. Water lifted from the basin and swirled in a circle. Then the dream ended.

  Water, I thought. One of the pieces of Lokesh’s amulet controlled water.

  When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the pink skin of my hand. My nails were perfectly round and shiny. The Phoenix was nowhere to be seen. I reached up to touch my hair and found it thick and full and silky. When I rubbed the skin on my arm it was as soft as down. My body was clothed in a golden dress, and instead of boots, I now wore soft slippers.

  I sat up and realized I was in a large nest next to dozens of gem-like eggs. The nest was resting on a precarious ledge at the top of a black rock mountain thousands of feet high. There was no way for me to climb down, not without the Scarf’s ropes. A forest of fire trees stretched out over the hills as far as I could see.

  My stomach growled, and I guessed breakfast was several hours, if not days, behind me.

  On a nearby mountain, a molten flow of lava plummeted over a jagged cliff. It tumbled through the air, slightly cooling in the process. The radiant falls dropped into a fiery pool below, and the molten liquid sprayed up in a lava fountain that splashed against the surrounding rocks, coating them with darkening layers. Woodland fire trees thickly ringed the pool and seemed to lap up the hot magma as if it was the freshest of spring water.

  A musical voice broke the silence. “It’s like a newborn’s.”

  I raised my eyes to the Phoenix, who was perched on a ledge overhead, preening its feathers.

  “What is like a newborn’s?” I asked.

  “Your skin. Your hair and nails.”

  “You healed me?”

  “You healed yourself. When you admitted the truth, your heart healed you. A part of you fought to live.” The Phoenix tilted its feathered head to peer at me. “I wonder if you will squander this gift.”

  “Did you need a companion? Is that why you wanted a Sati wife?”

  “The Sati wife is a symbol of fidelity and devotion. It gave me no pleasure to see you burn, but I wanted to teach you that the body is immaterial. It is the fire, the passion of the heart, I wished to examine. This heart-fire never ebbs and will never still. It burns brightly, faithfully, for millennia. I could sense your troubled heart when you entered the forest and knew what you needed.

  “I have offered you the rare opportunity to purge the sadness that weighs down your soul, but you now have a choice to make: the choice to either take up that burden once again or to remain free of it. Once, we Phoenixes offered our cleansing fire to humans all over Earth, but humankind has forgotten our power, and their hearts suffer all the more for it.”

  “Sometimes I think that the sadness helps me to remember them,” I told the Phoenix.

  “That is a false belief.”

  I drew my knees to my chest and inquired, “What would you do, if you were in my place?”

  “And what place are you in exactly, young woman?”

  “You know better than anyone. How do I get past my fears? Make a life for myself? Risk loving someone? When death is all that waits for you, what’s the point in trying to have a life?”

  The bird flapped its wings and then folded them and hopped into the nest beside me. “Do you know much about the life of a Phoenix?”

  “Not really. Most of the myths I study end up being wrong.”

  “Most stories are fictionalized, but a careful reader can always find a smattering of truth. Would you like to learn about my kind while we wait for your young men?”

  “They’re coming here?”

  “Undoubtedly. I released them from the diamond cage. They saw me fly off with you, and it’s only a matter of time before they seek out my nest. They think you’re dead, you see.”

  “But why would they seek you out if they thought I was dead?”

  “Because,” he laughed musically, “they want to kill me. I read the truth of their intentions in their hearts. The blue-eyed one regrets the act but is determined to kill or be killed and the brawnier one thinks only of wringing the life from me with his bare hands.”

  I picked up a turquoise egg and polished it gently on my shirt.

  “Do I see regret in your heart?” the Phoenix asked gently.

  “Did . . . did they hear everything I said?”

  “No. They could only see what happened to you.”

  I sighed with momentary relief.

  “It would have been easier for you if they knew.”

  I changed the subject. “Tell me what it’s like being a Phoenix.”

  The majestic bird shifted in the nest, tapped on a ruby egg with its beak, and listened intently. After a moment it began to speak.

  “A Phoenix can purify poisoned lakes or streams by dipping in its beak. With a blast of fiery breath, we can cleanse the earth, making wastelands fertile and thriving.”

  “Have you done that?”

  “Regretfully, no. But I’ve seen it done through the eyes of my ancestors.”

  “How does that work, exactly? Do you have all their memories?”

  “When a new Phoenix is born, the life-spark of those who came before enter its body. A Phoenix is born with the knowledge and the abilities possessed by its forebears. For example, I can cure illness, bring luck to those who glimpse me as I fly past, and I know every language of Earth, even those that have faded away over time. With a flap of my wings, I can level a mountain. I can sing men and beasts to sleep with my song. I can turn living creatures into stone or ash, though I’ve never had reason to do that. The less altruistic Phoenixes of the past have dried up lakes to dine on fresh fish and carried off elephants to eat, but this is the extent of our mischief making.”

  “How do you eat an elephant?”

  “We eat the same way other raptors do. If the animal is alive, we carry it up to a great height and then drop it.”

  “Holy cow!”

  “Exactly. In my mind, I’ve watched the destruction of the world and its subsequent rebirth three times. A Phoenix possesses the knowledge of the ages that has been passed to each of us with the expectation that we will guard it and grant wisdom to humankind only when they have proved their merit.”

  “Mr. Kadam sure would’ve liked to have had a conversation with you.”

  The Phoenix shook its head and ruffled its crest before relaxing.

  I ventured, “So are you really born of the flame? I’ve heard that a Phoenix can live for a thousand years before dying and being reborn.”

  “A thousand years!” it scoffed. “If only that were true, I could accomplish so many, many things in that time.”

  “Then . . . how long do you live?”

  “My time is not measured by even one of your days.”

  “What?”

  It pierced me with a glowing eye. “I
will live until this day is over. At dawn, a new Phoenix will rise. It was not always so.”

  “But then how did you accomplish so many things? How did you learn all those languages? Amass all that wisdom?”

  “I didn’t. My ancestors did. In ancient times, a Phoenix lived for eons. That was when humankind believed in us, needed us. We were their inspiration, their hope for a better future, a symbol of renewal, rebirth, truth, loyalty, and fidelity. We were asked to bless new marriages for we brought luck, and we helped young couples find harmony and contentment as they began their lives together.

  “Then the world began to change. Humans forgot not only the Phoenix but also the ideas we’d come to symbolize. We were no longer needed, so we disappeared. Now we’re caretakers of the fire forest. We nurture the flames at the center of this world, for in the center is the heart. You asked me before how to get past your fears and make a life for yourself. How you could risk loving someone when death was all that awaited you.

  “The end of the day nears, and as I look into the eyes of my own death, I will tell you that love is the only thing in this universe worth risking all for. The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and to follow the truths found in your own heart. If you do this, you will be happy, but if you waste your life being miserable due to your choices, or lack thereof, the deaths of your parents and of Mr. Kadam will have had no purpose, no meaning. Live each day as if it was the last. Do not forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  The Phoenix stood up and stretched its wings to their full span. Flapping them lightly, it raised its head and sang softly. A comet streaked slowly through the dark sky, and the voice of the Phoenix vibrated through my body as it called out, “I am called Sunset, the twilight Phoenix. Accept my sacrifice so that the keeper of the Knowledge of the Ages, the Watcher of Mankind, the Fire Found in All Hearts, will live again!”

  With that said it folded his wings around its body, tucked its head into its chest, and exploded in a fiery inferno that consumed its body completely in a matter of moments. As I shielded my eyes, I heard the Phoenix’s triumphant song echo through the blaze. The comet streaked toward our mountain, and a white light rose from the still burning creature and shot into the ruby egg at its feet. The egg glowed briefly and then was covered in hot, black ash that rained down from the smoldering Phoenix.