“What is it?”
“These people,” Arthur said, wild, peaks and valleys as his voice rose and fell. “These people. They take and they take and they take. Nothing stops them. Not you. Not me. Not anything we do or say. They will keep coming. There’s nothing we can do.”
Properly spooked, Linus took a step toward him, hands spread as if gentling a dangerous animal, and oh, was that the wrong move.
“Don’t,” Arthur said, taking a step back, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be touched.”
“All right,” Linus said, lowering his hands. “Tell me what’s happened. Tell me how to help.”
Now he did laugh, a harsh, grating sound that was as foreign as it was shocking. “What’s happened? Have you not been paying attention? They’re trying to take my children from me!”
“They won’t,” Linus said. “We won’t let them.”
Arthur scoffed derisively. “And what are we going to do if they try? Are you going to pick up arms and defend them? Are you going to give your life so that the children might have a chance to know a world without prejudice? Because that’s what I’m willing to do.”
“You know I would,” Linus said. “I would do anything for them, for you.”
“Why?” Arthur demanded. “Why here? Why now? Why none of the other children you encountered? Why did you do nothing to help them?” He shouted: “Why didn’t you save them?”
Many things happened at once:
fire blooming along his hands, his arms, a pressure building in his chest without end;
and,
Linus, eyes wide, reflecting firelight, taking a step toward him, without fear;
and,
music spilling out into the room as Lucy opened the door.
All at once, too much, and the phoenix, the phoenix rose up and up, bursting through blood and bone, flesh and memory, until it towered above Linus, Lucy, head bent to keep from scraping against the ceiling …
… only to find Linus standing in front of Lucy.
To protect him from me, Arthur and the phoenix thought as one.
The pressure intensified, his heart and lungs wrapped in a molten band of metal, and the phoenix screamed, long, loud, before turning and crashing through the window, shards of glass illuminated in orange-red, glittering as he unfurled his wings.
Into the sky, wings pumping, a trail of fire left in his wake. Muscles straining, he rose higher and higher, the stars melting, streaking across a black canvas, and he opened his beak to scream again, only to have white-hot fire pour from his mouth. Higher, higher, the horizon now curved, oxygen thin, causing him to gasp again and again.
An apex, as far as he could climb, and he cried out once more as he was consumed. He detonated in a massive explosion that lit up the night sky as if the sun had arisen anew.
The phoenix blasted apart, feathers and fire shooting off in every direction.
He’d taken to the sky as a bird. He fell toward the ocean as a man.
As fire rained down around him, Arthur plummeted, the island off to his right, the ocean a wall of blue-black rushing to meet him. Movement below, the churn of a vortex, spinning faster and faster. A column of water burst from the sea, hurtling toward Arthur. He sucked in a great breath, ribs creaking, and then he was surrounded by water, his descent slowed as he lowered into the ocean. Bubbles flooded around him, making it impossible to see. He didn’t know up from down, and time once again became soft, malleable, as he sank into the ocean.
Something bumped against his nose.
He opened his eyes, blinking against the sting of salt.
A fish floated in front of his face. Gray, a black eye on either side of its head. Small fins on either side, and one on the top. Not the biggest fish he’d ever seen, nor the smallest. Strangely, he recognized it—him.
Frank, he thought in Chauncey’s voice, bellowing at the sea.
Frank’s mouth opened and closed, gills working. He bumped Arthur’s nose again and pulled back. And then he darted down between Arthur’s legs, swirling around the right, then the left. From the depths below, more fish appeared, the same species as Frank. At first a handful, then a dozen, two dozen, three, then hundreds of gray fish swimming in a circle around him, faster and faster. The sea around him began to spin in a whirlpool—the fish becoming paint streaks of iridescent gray—but instead of being pulled farther into the depths, he began to rise.
It started out slow at first, then the speed picked up, and Arthur closed his eyes against the saltwater slamming against his face, his lungs screaming for air, lights flashing in the darkness behind his eyelids. As he breached the surface, he attempted to suck in a great, gasping breath, but before he could, he kept rising, flipping end over end and landing hard on his back on a beach, nude, sand finding its way into all his nooks and crannies almost immediately.
He sat up in a heady daze, mind still sparking and crackling, the phoenix mewling weakly inside him, ready to lapse into healing unconsciousness.
A fish poked its mouth up from the water, opening and closing.
In a hoarse voice, Arthur said, “Thank you, Frank. I won’t forget your kindness.”
Frank leapt from the water, moonlight catching his scales. And then he disappeared into the sea.
Arthur began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, arms wrapped around his middle. The first tear was a surprise, the second a warning, and then the floodgates opened: he wept for the children—both known and unknown. He wept for each raised fist. He wept in bittersweet joy, in ferocious heartbreak. He wept at the unknowable mysteries of this universe.
And for the first time, Arthur Franklin Parnassus wept for himself.
Linus found him sitting under a tree, knees drawn up against his chest. The tree—an old, cranky palm that seemed to enjoy dropping coconuts on unsuspecting heads—grew above the beach Frank had brought him to. Off to the right, in the distance, the house on the cliff, lit up like a lighthouse, a warm beacon in the dark.
“There you are,” Linus said, huffing as he crested the hill, face red, hair a mess as if he’d been running his hands through it. “You gave me such a fright!”
“Did I hurt you?” Arthur asked in a dull voice.
