Blood and Ashes

By Hannah Carter

The troops whispered the name amongst themselves: the legend, the lore.

The Phoenix.

A creature of orange, red, and yellow plumage. The bird on fire, the power that never died.

They said that it moved from one world to the next. Once the power enshrouded in its earthly vessel had evaporated in one universe, it simply moved to the next. Reborn, person to person, in a never-ending cycle.

This was the blessing of the Phoenix.

Centuries had passed since our paltry world had been gifted by the creature. So many years, in fact, that many thought magic had died out completely. Only whispered stories remained of our people’s history.

So instead of solving our problems through pretty words of enchantments, we “solved” them with guns. With willpower.

Without mercy.

“The revolution is upon us,” the colonel said. He paced back and forth along a cliffside as the apricot-colored sun bathed the world in its light. It promised a new day—but I believed it to be a liar. “With the death of your family, monarchies die with them. When your blood is spilled, it will prove to the world that you are no more fit to rule than your ancestors before you. There is no God-given right of one unworthy family to control everything because of bloodline.”

I bowed my head, but not out of an act of deference. I bowed because the traitor held my sister by her long, auburn hair. “You speak such great promises—”

“Arielle,” Marissa whispered. “Don’t.”

I cursed my inability to keep silent. I could train my body to obey, but to tame my tongue—impossible. Even now, the words burned in my throat: You offer no reprise. You throw off a monarch for a dictator who will fatten you with empty pledges of money that will only strengthen his own coffer. How could these soldiers not see through this charade? How could they think that death could ever bring life?

Did they really think that our beloved country could rise from the blood and ashes like the Phoenix itself, like the creature emblazoned on our national flag?

Their tenuous—and false—hope was more mythical than the being itself.

“Exile us, strip us of our throne, take our jewels or money—but please don’t murder my family.” I lifted my eyes to my captor. His grip tightened on Marissa. I glanced at my parents and my brothers in turn, imploring them to agree with me.

“My daughter speaks the truth,” Papa finally said. “We will give you everything you want.”

I dug my fingers into the dirt and clenched my eyes shut. I imagined hurling the soil at the colonel’s face before clawing at him. I pictured him bleeding and screaming for clemency at my feet. My family would be aghast to know I harbored such thoughts. The images came unbidden—but not unwelcome. They boiled beneath my skin, churning my blood until I might burst.

“What I want,” the colonel hissed, “is to know that my hand exterminated the last of your filth. That I won the war.”

A crack burst past my ears. The scent of gunpowder pervaded the air.

Papa fell.

The world seemed to tilt as gunfire exploded near my face. Body after body thudded to the ground: Papa. Mama. Marissa. My brothers—Omir. Aleksander. Tiberius. Pain erupted in my stomach. I crumpled and my blood mixed with the very dirt I’d imagined throwing in our captor’s eyes.

The weak screams of my loves, their moans and cries faded as the world around me grew dark.

We could not die like this.

The certainty of that thought sparked in my heart and exploded outward, through every vein, with every struggling pulse of my heart.

The pain seeped out of me.

The metallic taste of blood faded, too.

My eyelids fluttered closed, their weight too much to bear.

Death.

No.

I would not let it be.

The agony of the bullets tearing through my flesh was faint in comparison to the new power that restarted my heart. It felt like my whole being had been tossed into an inferno from the inside out. I flung my arms out wide as fire burst from every pore, as hot as my rage, scorching my blood. Flames leapt at my command and filled the air, trapping my family’s murderers at the edge of the cliff. My fury enveloped them all until only charred ashes remained, whipped into the air by my magnificent orange wings.

Only the colonel remained. His eyes grew so wide, reflecting my fiery vengeance.

“Phoenix,” he whispered. “You exist.”

“Yes.” I rose off the ground, my newfound wings as natural to me as my hands and feet. “But you? No more.”

I swooped at him and gathered Marissa’s broken, bloodied body into my arms. As the flames devoured the colonel, I sheltered both of us in a cocoon of fiery feathers until our enemy’s screams ceased.

I rose to my feet, but my heart contorted as I surveyed the slaughter around me. I positioned Marissa’s corpse as gently as I could next to the rest of my family.

“Why me?” I reached back to my shoulder. My blood ran hot in my veins as I touched the hands of each of my family in turn.

When I touched Marissa, the dam inside of me broke. I doubled over and clutched her blouse. “What good are powers if they only preserve me? I can’t live in a world without you!”

My tears dampened Marissa’s cheeks… and her face began to glow. Soon, the light flooded her entire body.

She wheezed and coughed as her lacerations began to mend, as if stitched together by the fingers of an invisible seamstress.

“Marissa!” I clung to her, though my gaze drifted to the rest of my family, still lifeless—for now.

Hope kindled alongside the fire in my veins. Perhaps there really could be a future born from blood and ashes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Carter is just a girl who loves to dream and write, and still wakes up every day hoping this will be the day she figures out she’s secretly a mermaid. She currently has two published novellas, Amir and the Moon and Seashells. She has had over a dozen devotionals published in various magazines. She also won a competition with her short story “Lara.”

You can hear an audio narration of “Blood and Ashes” and three other of Hannah’s stories on the Finding Fantasy Reads podcast.

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