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Author: Antosha Story: The Wisest Course Rating: Mature Setting: Pre-DH Status: Completed Reviews: 8 Words: 142,408
The first called herself Agnigita, which amused them both somewhat; she called him Shiva, which amused only her. In the beginning, for some fifteen burnings or so, they remained alone in the forest above the headwaters of the Indus and considered their natures and the nature of their fates. She argued strongly that his life echoed the circular pattern of time, the wheel that is the year; that as he is consumed and reborn in flame, as the moon is born from and returns to its own shadow, as the serpent sheds its skin, as the seed produces the tamarind which produces the fruit, so human life is cyclical and never-ending, that the dark door of death is a mere illusion of perspective. He countered as politely as he could that it was his life that was an illusion—that what seemed from her perspective to be his death and rebirth was merely a movement from one stage to another in the linear journey that was his life—a linear journey towards an unknown end. She would laugh when he argued thus, and her eyes would sparkle, and they would speak of other things for a time. In all of this time, he never wandered from his tree. Her companionship and the clarity of her thought moved something in him that he had never suspected was there, through all of the burnings that had preceded their encounter. As the moons waxed and waned, as the fruit ripened and fell, as her hair lightened from black to stark white, her tiny camp at the base of his tree became a small town, with acolytes and knowledge-seekers and farmers and hunters and herd-keepers and cooks and finally administrators swelling the encampment. Agnigita accepted the new arrivals with good humor, and he did so for her sake. She told those who would and could listen tales and parables, small exercises on the themes that she and he had discussed through the long, long time. When she died, he felt as if his chest had been opened and all of the vital organs removed. In all of his burnings, in his innumerable years, he had never suffered such a terrible feeling, and he swore he never would. Never again. He found a sound issuing from his throat, a high, ululating sound that barely gave echo to the grief that flamed within him. Vyasa, Agnigita’s oldest follower and chief scribe, sat at the foot of the tree for three days as the phoenix’s lament was heard for the very first time. Vyasa wept and wrote, catching in faint pen scratch the fleeting images of birth and death and rebirth and fire, of the monster Life devouring life. When the song was done, the phoenix flew as far from his tree by the headwaters of the Indus as he could without landing. He did not travel by fire: he wished to exhaust his body, to drown out the awful, awful feeling that three days of keening had only begun to blunt. He landed at last in a cedar tree overlooking a deep blue ocean. He stayed there, solitary and undisturbed through some hundred and sixty burnings. The feeling never disappeared, but it became simply a part of him after a time, and he learned to accept it. A gust of wind disturbs the dust in the wall slightly, and brings him a scent that tickles at his memory. It is a scent that brings to mind a cave, and a graveyard, and yet it is a pleasant scent. He cannot identify it. It must be what has drawn him here. One day, a long-tailed form flew out of the blue Mediterranean sky—one of his kind. A female. She called him after the fashion of their kind, and so he called her, and they nested together, joyously, in the upper branches of that ancient, scorched cedar. After a number of dual burnings, flaming together and rehatching together and growing together, the inhabitants of a nearby human town noticed them. The phoenix wished to leave, but his mate pointed out that the humans were respectful to a fault—they never came close to the tree and the space around their nest was treated as holy ground. In their nightly flights the pair noticed that banners showing a burning phoenix marked the new city’s territory. Eventually the small city-state took their name as its own, and as it flourished, they continued to honor the nesting pair. Through eighteen burnings the couple thrived in joy, bringing forth together two eggs—perhaps the first laid since before the first human cities’ hunger for lumber began to destroy the ancient trees that were phoenixes’ favored nesting places. The pair nurtured the eggs through three burnings, knowing that on the fourth they would hatch. They approached the last burning with more than the usual excitement. Yet when the day came, a Greek named Ophios approached their pristine compound. Once the parents had burned, but before the eggs could hatch, he spiked the shells with iron. The chicks died. The phoenix rehatched to find himself alone. His mate never stirred again from her bed of ash. This time, the phoenix’s song was terrible indeed. The Phoenicians, the people of Tyre, mourned with him. Their city fell. But the curse of the phoenix fell upon the desecrating invaders as well; the Greeks were conquered in turn, and did not gain their freedom for another two thousand years. The phoenix flew then and sought out solitude—it found a small western island were it howled its new triple loss and raged in flame through nearly a hundred burnings. Three figures appear at the bottom of the hill with a barely audible pop. They are robed in black. They approach the large piece of red marble at the bottom of the hill. One of the figures approaches the marble, kneeling beside it. The other two hang back. He felt at last as if he were truly alone—as if he might never again be forced to suffer loss. He hunted snakes and drakes and Basilisks until none were left on his small island, or on the larger islands that neighbored it. It was, of course, at precisely this point that a human arrived upon his island. She too was seeking solitude, and wisdom. And her eyes sparkled, and her hair was red as a phoenix’s tail, and for all that her skin was paler than Agnigita’s teeth had been, and the flame upon her head was hair, not feathers, she reminded him of all that he had lost. And he found that he didn’t much mind. Her name was Gid. She called him Lugh. She didn’t much believe in rebirth. Nor did she fear death. When her time came, he felt loss again, but it was not a shock. He sang for her, long and slow and sad, and he can still hear the echoes of that song in the airs of the people of these islands even now. He traveled further west, to jungle lands that reminded him of the Indus where he was known there as Quetzalcoatl, and then to beautiful deserts—drier even than ancient Tyre—where he was called Binesi. And in each place he found wisdom, and insight, and stories about where life came from and where it went. And in each place he rediscovered loss. But from burning to burning he learned that life mattered less than love and loyalty—he, who had lived longer than the oldest human civilization, could affirm that fact with certainty. And so he loved, and loved, and loved. He is not sure what it was that tempted him back to the island where he and Gid had shared companionable solitude for so long. But there he was, alone on the small rock but for his memories of the Irish witch and the miserable company of an Augurey who seemed to think of nothing but rain and eating fairies, when a tall, auburn-haired wizard popped into being at the foot of their tree. The man’s blue eyes twinkled, and the phoenix knew that he was in trouble. Albus was pleasant company in many ways. He was bright and passionate. He was far less self-centered than most humans that the phoenix encountered. He had a truly peculiar sense of humor. And he had a sense of loyalty and justice that touched the phoenix deeply. It almost made up for the fact that Albus dubbed him Fawkes. The kneeling figure beneath the tree stands, and the other two approach it. There is something familiar about the one that’s just stood. Over the course of more than twenty burnings—longer than he spent with any human since Agnigita—the phoenix made the wizard’s loves and battles his own. Through all of the ages, and especially after the death of his mate, he watched humanity’s wars from a distance. And yet, caught up in Albus’s struggle against what both man and phoenix perceived to be true evil, and remembering the face of evil in the Greek who had destroyed his progeny, he fought at his companion’s side against three Dark Lords and a host of Dark creatures, from Lethifolds to vampires to Inferi. On one memorable occasion, he blinded and bloodied the largest Basilisk that either he or Albus ever heard tell of—all to help to save a girl and a boy… The center figure—the one that had been kneeling—begins to walk toward the shattered house. The phoenix knows that figure: he smells of this place and it smells of him. The other figures resolve themselves into familiarity as well—a girl who visited the Headmaster’s office on several occasions. A boy with hair the exact shade of Gid’s, and of the girl in the cave. The shade of his mate’s tail. They approach the ruined house timidly. They are looking down, not at the phoenix. As they approach the building, he trills to them. Green eyes flash up. They are not flickering, but they are aflame—cool, green flame—and the phoenix knows that he is in trouble again. Hello, Harry Potter, he sings. The green eyes widen. Hello, Fawkes. The phoenix cannot hide his surprise. You have learned to listen. “A bit,” Harry says aloud, and the phoenix gets an image of the werewolf, Lupin. “I’m still not very good, though.” Yet you hear me. “I…” The boy shifts as the two who stand at either of his shoulders raise their eyebrows. “Harry?” says the girl. “I…. He’s… talking to me,” says Harry. “With Legilimency.” Through your Legilimency. “Great,” mutters the boy with hair like flame. “First snakes and now birds.” Harry laughs, but it is mirthless laughter. I’m sorry, Fawkes… About Dumbledore. It was his time, sings the phoenix sadly. All have their time. In all of my burnings I have seen many come and go, and yet the only wisdom that I have ever gleaned is that when it is time for the last ember to cool, it is time. There is nothing that you or I or anyone else can do about it. Albus knew that it was his time. He did not fear it. “He…?” Harry gapes. He knew? How could he not? Perplexed, the phoenix considers Harry. Did you not look into his bowl of memories? His bowl of memories? The boy blinks, and then he sees it in Harry’s mind’s eye: a stone bowl swirling with memories. “His Pensieve!” He left many memories for you there. Harry blinks again. The girl puts her hand on his shoulder. “Whose Pensieve, Harry?” “Albus’s—Dumbledore’s. He…” The boy flicks his head up at the phoenix. “He says that Dumbledore left memories in his Pensieve.” For you, Harry. Harry nods. “Bloody hell,” murmurs the redhead. “That would be—” “—amazingly useful,” finishes the girl. Minerva will give it to you, warbles the phoenix. Green eyes look up again. I don’t know if I can look at his memories. You can. You will. How can you stand it? Harry thinks, and his mind strikes a keening note that the phoenix knows all too well. I mean, how can you just… go on? I’ve lost so many… He glances back down at the marble slab at the bottom of the hill. I too have lost many, more than you can possibly imagine, Harry, and I have mourned each and every one, the phoenix sings, and it opens its mind to the boy. As he feels Harry flashing through millennia of memories, through all of his losses, the phoenix looks at the boy’s mind—at his spirit. There is strength here, and a sense of right and of loyalty as deep as Albus’s. Not, perhaps, the mad sense of humor, but that is to be expected. The phoenix cannot help but see a sea of faces in the boy’s mind: the two who accompany him; a family with hair to match the redhead, and at their center a girl who flames in the boy’s memory; the half-giant of whom Albus was always so fond, and Albus himself; the boy’s parents, who lie beneath the marble below; the werewolf and his friend; a blonde girl with eyes like moonlight—the one who liked to quote Agnigita’s sayings when she spoke with Albus—and a round-faced, brown-haired boy; and many, many more. Towards all and each, Harry projects a stream of feeling as intense as any that the phoenix has ever seen. I have mourned and mourned, the phoenix trills, and yet life is to be lived. Now is not the time for mourning. For some, the path to Paradise leads through fire. When Harry reaches the end—when he relives the phoenix’s memory of flying away from the tree at the headwaters of the Indus—the boy lets out a groan. At his side, the redhead moves to hold Harry up, and the girl cries out, “Fawkes! Fawkes! What are you doing to him?” “It’s okay, Hermione,” Harry sobs. “He was just telling me… showing me his past.” The boy shakes his head. “He’s been around for… for over fourteen thousand years. It’s a bit… overwhelming." The girl certainly looks overwhelmed. Harry laughs moistly at this, which the phoenix takes to be a good sign. The boy smiles up at the phoenix and says, “And his name isn’t really Fawkes. That was just Albus—Dumbledore’s nickname for him.” “Well,” says the girl, still looking a bit nervous—perhaps at the thought of her friend conversing with a creature who has survived through nearly two hundred burnings, and possibly because Harry does not seem the type to sob—“what should we call him then?” Harry takes off his round spectacles and squints up, the flame in his eyes even more evident. The phoenix feels the boy’s mind touch his own once again. “I… The thing that comes to my mind… I think his name is Firesong,” Harry murmurs. That will do quite nicely, trumpets the phoenix, and ruffles his feathers with pleasure.
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