Phoenix Farm

We moved to Grandma’s farm after our apartment building burned down. But even without the fire, it had not been a good California summer, ¹ dry as popcorn and twice as salty, what with all the sweat running down our faces.

I didn’t mind so much—the fire, I mean. I hated that apartment, with its pockmarked walls and gang names scribbled on the stoop. Under my bedroom window someone had painted the words. Someday sugar you gonna find no one in this world gonna give you sweet. The grammar bothered me more than what it said.

Mama cried, though—about the photos, mostly. And about all her shoes. She has tiny feet, and her one vanity is shoes. But it wasn’t just the photos and the shoes. She cries about everything these days. It has been that way since Dad died.

Ran off. That’s what Nicky says. A week before the fire. Couldn’t take it. The recession and all. No job. No hope.

² Mama says Dad won’t be away forever, but I prefer to say he died. I can deal with it that way.

Besides, we don’t want him back.

So we got ready to head to Grandma’s farm over in the valley, with only the clothes we’d been wearing; our cat, Tambourine; and Mama’s track medals, all fused together. She found them when the firefighters let us upstairs to sort through things. Nicky grabbed a souvenir too: his old basketball. It was flat and blackened, like a pancake someone left on the stove too long.

I looked around and there was nothing I wanted to take. Nothing. All that I cared about had made it through the fire: Mama, Nicky, and Tam.

³ It was as if we could start fresh and all the rest of it had been burned away.

As we were going down the stairs—the iron stairs, not the wooden ones inside, which were all gone—I saw the most surprising thing. On the 13th step up from the bottom, tucked against the riser, was a nest. It was unburnt, unmarked, the straw that held it the rubbed-off gold of a wheat field. A piece of crimson string ran through it, almost as if it had been woven on a loom. In the nest was a single egg.

It didn’t look like any egg I’d seen before, not dull white or tan like the eggs from the store. Not even a light blue like the robin’s egg I’d found the one summer we’d spent with Grandma on her farm. This was a shiny, shimmery gray-green egg with a red vein—the red thread— cutting it in half.

“Look!” I called out.

But Mama and Nicky were already in the car, waiting.

So without thinking it through— like, what was I going to do with an egg, and what about the egg’s mother, and what if it broke in the car or, worse, hatched—I picked it up and stuck it in the pocket of my jacket. Then, on second thought, I took off the jacket and made a kind of nest of it, and carefully carried the egg and my jacket down the rest of the stairs.

When I got into the car, ⁴ it was the very first time I had ever ridden in the back all alone without complaining. And all the way to the farm, I kept the jacket-nest and its egg in my lap.

All the way.

Grandma welcomed us, saying, “I’m not surprised. Didn’t I tell you?” Meaning that Daddy wasn’t with us. She and Mama didn’t fight over it, which was a surprise on its own.

Neighbors of Grandma’s had collected clothes for us, which is an awkward feeling that makes you prickly and cranky most of the time. At least that’s how I felt until I found a green sweater that exactly matched my eyes and Nicky found a Beatles T-shirt. There were no shoes Mama’s size. And no jobs nearby either.

I stashed the egg in its jacket-nest on the dresser Mama and I shared. Nicky, being the only boy, got his own room.

Mama never said a word about the egg. It was like she didn’t even see it. I worried what she’d say if it began to smell.

But the days went by and the egg never began to stink. We got settled into our new school. I only thought about Daddy every other day. I found a best friend immediately, and for the first time, Nicky had girls calling him after dinner.

So we were OK.

Mama wasn’t happy, though. She and Grandma didn’t quarrel, but they didn’t get along either. Having gratitude for someone doesn’t make you like them. Because Mama couldn’t find a job, they were together all day long too.

Then one evening my new best friend, Ann Marie, came over. We were doing homework up in my room. It was one of those coolish evenings and the windows were closed, but it was still bright outside.

Ann Marie suddenly exclaimed, “Look! Your egg . . . it’s cracking open!”

We hadn’t noticed anything before, because the crack had run along the red line. When I put my finger on the crack, it seemed to pulse.

“Feel that,” I said.

Ann Marie touched it, then jerked back as if the egg were scalding hot.

“I’m going home now,” Ann Marie said.

“But aren’t you the one who dragged me to see all those horror movies and—”

“Movies aren’t real,” she said.

Ann Marie hastily snatched her books and ran from the room.

I didn’t say goodbye to her. The egg had all my attention. The gray-green shell seemed to be taking minute breaths, pulsing in and out, in and out, like a tiny brittle ocean. Then the crack widened, and as if there were a lamp inside, light poured out.

Nicky came in then, looking for change on the dresser.

“Neat!” he said when he saw the light. “Do you know what kind of bird it’s going to be? Did you look it up in Dad—”

And then he stopped, because all of Dad’s books had been consumed in the fire. Besides, we didn’t mention Dad anymore. We hadn’t heard from him at all, so it was like he really was dead.

“No,” I said. “And I don’t think it’s any ordinary bird that you would find in an ordinary book.”

“A lizard, you think?”

With my eyes locked on the egg, I shook my head. How stupid could he be? With that light coming out? ⁵ A dragon, maybe.

⁶ Then the phone rang and he ran out of the room, expecting, I guess, that it would be Courtney or Brittany or another of his girlfriends named after spaniels.

Talking to them was more important to him than my egg.

I continued to observe the egg. I was the only one watching when it hatched. How such a large bird got into such a small egg I’ll never know. ⁷ But that’s magic for you. The bird rose slowly from the shell, pushing the top part with its golden head. Its beak was golden too and curved like a scimitar. Its eyes were hooded and dark. When it stared out at me, I felt drawn in.

The bird gave a sudden shudder and heaved itself farther out of the egg, revealing its wings—all blue and scarlet and gold and shimmery, like wet seashells. It shook its wings, stretching and elongating them outward, its wingspan wide enough to touch from one side of the dresser to the other, each resplendent feather radiating sparkles of light.

Another shudder and the bird stood free of the shell entirely, though a small piece clung stubbornly to the tip of one wing. I reached over and gently freed it, only to sear my finger when I brushed the feather. The bird’s scarlet body and scaly golden feet pulsed with heat.

“What are you?” I whispered, then stuck my burnt finger in my mouth to soothe it.

If this mysterious bird could answer me, it didn’t; it just pumped its wings, which grew wider from one moment to the next. Outside, the Santa Ana winds, hot and heavy and thick, blew strong. I hurried to the window and flung it open, holding the curtain aside as a rush of air tumbled into the room.

The bird did not seem to notice my effort, but still it flew unerringly outside. I watched it land on a fence post, then on the roof of Grandma’s barn. At last, it headed straight toward the city, the setting sun making a fire in its feathers.

When I could no longer see the bird, I turned around. The room smelled odd—like the ashes of a fire, but like something else too. Cinnamon. Cloves.

I heard the doorbell. It rang once, then again, more urgently. Grandma and Mama were off visiting a neighbor. Nicky was somewhere, probably too absorbed in his phone call to hear. So I ran down the stairs and threw the door wide open. Standing there, with a new beard on his face and a duffel bag in his hands, was Dad.

“I got a job. In Phoenix. And a house rented. With a real backyard. I didn’t know about the fire, I didn’t know where you all had gone. My letters came back, and the phone didn’t connect and—”

“Dad!” I shouted, and he dropped the bag to gather me up against his chest. As I snuggled my face into his sturdy shoulder, ⁸ the scent of ashes and cinnamon and cloves washed over me.

Grandma would be furious of course. Nicky and Mama might be too.

But I didn’t care. There’s dead, and there’s not dead. Sometimes it’s better to rise up out of the ashes, singing.

^{Copyright © 1996 by Jane Yolen. Originally published in Bruce Coville’s Book of Magic, edited by Bruce Coville. Now appears in Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast, published by Harcourt Brace. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.}

There is a rare bird that is said to be immortal. It is a beautiful creature with plumage of red and gold, legs and beak of indigo, and piercing golden eyes. This bird never gets sick. It eats only the beams of the sun. It lives in complete solitude and is rarely glimpsed by human eyes, though legend says it can sometimes be seen flying into the setting sun.

This bird is called the phoenix.

When 500 years have passed—and the phoenix has seen many human ages come and go—its glorious feathers fall, one by one, to the ground, and its body begins to wither.

Its time has come.

In a palm tree, the phoenix makes itself a nest scented with aromatic golden myrrh and flecks of cinnamon. The phoenix lies down and prepares for death.

Then a startling thing happens: The bird bursts into flames—red-hot and crackling. The fire burns away and from the ash heap emerges a new phoenix—a baby with the same golden eyes, splendid red and gold feathers, and indigo beak. The new phoenix, born from the ashes of its own demise, begins a 500-year life anew.

At first the phoenix is small and weak, but with time and sunshine, it grows strong. It picks up its nest—its cradle and its tomb—and carries it across the sky, singing the most beautiful and lonely song. And in this way, the phoenix renews itself again and again and again.

^{This story was originally published in the April 2018 issue.}