Writing Prompt Response #1 - Phoenix Rising

 [WP] According to legend, a phoenix is born when pure, raw emotion is baked within ash and smoke. But they placed no hope in these legends anymore. In the wee hours of morning, a young child watches transfixed as a wretched, soot-crusted creature weakly emerges from the crematorium's chimney.

Link to Original Reddit Post, courtesy of user u/not-a-dream

The creature spread overlarge sooty wings, leapt for the sky, and then tumbled head-over-tailfeathers with a startled, “Caw!” to land at Jon’s feet. Curious, cautious, he picked up the little bird; and with his touch a faint,.warm glow bloomed in his chest. He tucked the bird inside his shirt, where it nestled close to the visible hollows in his ribs. He scanned the area for guards, but found none, and hustled for the crowded prison barracks where he slept.

He tried to keep the bird a secret, but there was no room in those crowded barracks for people, let alone secrets.

Jon huddled in the corner he shared with the other children - they were kept separate, most no longer with parents to care for them, though a lucky few had at least one relative still alive. Jon was not one of those few. He released the bird from his shirt - it squawked once in protest, very quietly, for it had a cozy spot there. The other children gathered around.

“What is it?” asked Samuel, a tiny child no more than six, with huge eyes and sunken cheeks.

“Looks like a crow,” remarked Asher - whose real name was Abigail, but who had (like most of the girl-children), cut off all her hair and taken a boy’s name to avoid the depredations of the guards. It was not always effective, but every one of the prisoners played along nonetheless.

“He’s just a little dirty” Jon said defensively, holding the little bird close.

“Can we eat it?” asked Bruno, whose name had not saved him from his half-blood heritage. He had the skin folds and ravenous eyes of a child who had once been very fat, and was now as starvingly thin as the rest of them, and suffered for it.

“No!” Jon said, clutching the bird closer still - who emitted a slightly louder squawk of dismay at being so manhandled.

“Here, what’s this, then?” asked a deep, rumbling voice from the adult section of the barracks. The children, startled and guilty, scattered - save for Samuel and Asher, who stood by Jon’s side. He stood up, sheltering the bird with his hands.

Saul, eldest among the adults and de facto leader of the prisoners, walked slow but with purpose to see what was causing such fuss. His bones ached from heavy labor, his heart from the pains of his people - but there was a fire within him that kept his back straight and his wits strong. His wisdom was always listened to.

“I found him, sir,” Jon stammered, and with much stumbling over words related how the bird had clambered out of the smokestack and landed at his feet.

“Is that so?” Saul asked, and looked at the bird for a long moment. Then, deliberately, he moistened his forefinger in his mouth and drew it gently across the bird’s wing. In the wake of its passage the bird’s feathers gleamed a brilliant scarlet, lined and veined with shimmering gold.

“God weeps for His people,” Saul said softly, awed. “It is a phoenix.”

Jon had heard tales of the phoenix at his mother’s knee - but he could not think of her or her stories now, not without a stabbing bolt of loss and grief. The phoenix trilled softly and Jon felt the warm glow in his chest intensify, comforting him.

“It has come to you, and so you must be the one to care for it,” Saul continued. “You must protect it, even at the cost of your life. Do you understand me, young Jonathan?”

Jon, knowing far more of the cost of a life than any child should, nodded soberly. Saul reached out and gently stroked the top of the little bird’s head, who emitted a pleased little chirrup.

“To think that I should see such a thing in this place,” Saul said softly. “God is full of wonders, indeed.”

Saul left to rejoin the adults, and Asher silently offered Jon half of her cup of precious water. Using the tail of his overlarge shirt, Jon cleaned the bird as best he could, until the feathers gleamed in the dim light. He fell asleep that night on the hard boards of his ‘bed’ with the phoenix tucked under his chin. He dreamed of flying.

*****

For the first few days, Jonathan - as terrified to leave the phoenix alone as to carry it into danger with him - carried the little bird with him to work detail, tucked hidden in his shirt. Even children were not spared work detail, and it was brutal and exhausting labor, manufacturing armaments and the like under the cruel gazes (and often beatings) of the guards.

But the phoenix grew rapidly, and soon it was no longer possible to carry him along. In the span of a week he grew from the size of a lemon to the size of a hearty loaf of bread, and Jon had to leave him in the barracks. Every day, Jon returned from work detail in a rush, his heart in his throat lest the bird had been discovered - but every day he found the phoenix curled up on the wooden planks of his bed, feathers shining softly.

There was a change in the barracks with the phoenix’s arrival. The cramped quarters had caused endless fights; but now the barracks seemed more spacious, tempers easier to control. At night, the phoenix would sing, very softly, trilling notes that eased the prisoners into a sleep more peaceful, more energizing, than any they had known. Each morning, the phoenix would sing again, a soft, bright melody that awakened and lightened their eyes gone dull with abuse and despair.

The scanty rations they were given seemed to stretch farther, too - and when Saul found Jonathan giving all but a bite of his food to the phoenix, he called all the prisoners together. From then on, each prisoner gave a bite of their food and a sip of their water to the phoenix, and all were sated.

One night, Jon dreamed that he and the phoenix sat on a tall, grassy hill underneath a clear night sky, brilliantly shining with stars. He often dreamed of the phoenix, as the bird always slept curled on his chest, but this dream was so vivid he could feel the night-dew soaking into his trousers, taste the fresh blowing breeze.

“What is your name?” he asked the phoenix … and because it was a dream, the phoenix answered him.

”Our name is Hope, among the many we have been given. I am the hope-that-is-hidden. But I will not be hidden forever. Be of good courage, for you have not been forgotten.”

Then the phoenix opened his beak and trilled his morning song, and Jon awoke. He rubbed his eyes and stood up, the phoenix fluttering to its perch on his bed - and then he saw Asher standing at the bunk across from him, shaking Samuel’s shoulder with mounting urgency.

“What is it?” Jon asked, stepping quickly to stand beside her.

“He won’t wake,” she said, with real fear in her voice. “He won’t wake, and his skin is like fire.”

Jon cautiously lay his hand on Samuel’s forehead. The boy’s tiny body burned with fever, and he moaned weakly and licked dry lips, but his eyes would not open.

“Step back!” barked Saul from behind them, and Jon and Asher jumped away from the bed, startled and confused.

Saul stepped between them and continued in a gentler voice, “Fevers spread quickly, and in this small space could be death for many. What little I can do for the boy, I shall, but the rest of you must keep your distance.

But as Saul stepped forward to tend to Samuel, there was a swift fluttering of wings, and then the phoenix sat perched beside Samuel’s shivering body. The phoenix eyed Samuel gravely for a long moment, then bent over his head. Two small, silvery tears, glimmering like starlight, dripped past the boy’s parched lips and down his throat.

The change was immediate. Samuel’s ragged breathing eased, his tremors subsiding, his skin pinking and his cheeks fuller than they had been since before the War. Saul sighed, astounded, and he and Jon and Asher shared a look brimming with a happiness they thought they’d forgotten.

Then a voice, deceptively gentle and thick with malice, spoke from behind them. “What’s all this, then?”

*****

The guard’s name was Sven, and he was among the more brutal of their captors, though none so intelligent. Saul made to block the path to Samuel’s bed, but Sven swept him aside with a heavy blow of his baton. Sven spotted the phoenix and gave a low gasp, lips curling unpleasantly. “Stealing from the henhouse?” he said. “Someone will hang for this.”

Jon leapt between the guard and the phoenix, spreading his arms wide. “You cannot have him!” he cried, but he was small and young and stick-thin, and Sven was huge with well-fed muscle.

“So you’re responsible for this,” Sven said. And twisted his fist in the collar of Jon’s shirt. With his other hand he grabbed the phoenix round the neck, and the bird went limp and docile.

“I’m taking these two to the Commandant,” Sven said. “The rest of you, get to work, or you’ll be next on the line.”

Then, with boy in one hand and bird in the other, Sven marched out of the prison barracks, taking the prisoners’ hope with him.

Jon remembered very little of that walk, though he knew it would end with his death. He knew his senses had gone very keen - seeing each granule of dirt in the ground beneath him, hearing the distant rumble of approaching thunder in the clear blue sky - but it was a detached sort of clarity.

I am going to die, he thought, and,

I must save the phoenix.

Both seemed equally impossible, and equally necessary. He was still puzzling over them in a bemused sort of way when Sven dragged them into a large stone building, up a flight of steps, down a hallway, and through a door.

Inside the door was a good-sized office, with shelves around the periphery and a desk in the middle of the room. The desk was meticulously organized but heavily laden, and the man who sat behind it had a quiet, cold, watchful face. He did not look up at their entry.

“Sir!” Sven barked, unable to salute with hands full, but clicking his heels to attention. “This Jew has stolen a chicken from the kitchens.”

Jon looked at Sven with frank astonishment, startled out of his reverie. A chicken?

“You bother me with this?” the man behind the desk said in a bored tone. He glanced up, once, with no change in expression, and then turned back to his papers. He continued in the same tone, “Kill the Jew. Eat the chicken.”

Jon was dumbfounded. He looked at the phoenix, at the graceful curve of long neck and tailfeathers, the brilliant fiery plumage - and all these men saw was a chicken.

 “Yes, sir!” Sven barked, and dragged boy and bird out of the office and down the hall, heading for the kitchens on the first floor. Sven chuckled brutally as they walked.

“This chicken is some sort of pet to you, yes? Then you shall have the first bite, once it is roasted. And then I will shoot you in the head.”

“I will not!” Jon cried, horrified and nauseated.

“Then we will eat it, and I will shoot you in the gut, and you will spend days in dying.”

They entered the kitchens. There were half a dozen cooks and assistants bustling through their tasks. Racks of ovens, stacks of implements, crates and barrels of foodstuffs filled the large room until it almost seemed cramped, and against the far wall a massive stone fireplace blazed merrily. Through a window Jon could see the blue of the sky, the approaching thunder louder now, as if Nature herself abhorred the evil that was about to take place.  Jon, stumbling and lightheaded with fear, could only think:

I am going to die.

I must save the phoenix.

“Got something for the pot, Myra!” Sven said jovially.

A heavyset woman with round red cheeks looked up from her cutting board. “Which one?” she replied, looking from boy to bird and back again. “They neither of them look like they got much meat on ‘em.”

The two shared a mean sort of laugh over this, and as Sven proffered the hand with the bird, Jon seized his chance.

He raised his arms and slid out of his oversized shirt, leaping for the phoenix. Who, also sensing opportunity, suddenly reared up and pecked viciously at Sven’s fingers. Sven swore in pain and shook out his hand, and then the phoenix was in Jon’s arms once more as he raced through the kitchen. There were cries of alarm, and the cooks moved to block the exits - but that was not Jon’s intent. Clutching the phoenix close to his bare chest, he raced to the far end of the room and leapt straight into the heart of the hearthfire.

There was pain, as the flames licked at his skin, but he held tight to his purpose and stretched out his arms, holding the phoenix in the fire. Then the phoenix unfurled his brilliantly shining wings wide, so wide they blotted out Jon’s view, and distantly, like an echo, he heard, “Be of good courage.” Then everything was light, brilliantly shining golden light, and his senses left him, and he knew no more.

*****

He awoke, lying spread-eagled on the ground staring at the blue sky and extremely confused. There were birds flying by overhead, strange angular birds with snubbed heads … no, not birds, they were ….

“Jon!” he heard Asher’s voice cry out, thick with tears, and found he had just enough strength to pull himself to a sitting position. He realized he was naked and, bemused, watched the last of his trousers flake away to ash with his movement. He should feel some sort of way about that, he reflected, but he couldn’t remember exactly how. 

He looked around. The entire stone headquarters of the camp had exploded, stones tumbled every which way and still steaming with heat. None, strangely enough, anywhere near him.

“Jon!” Asher cried again, and then she was there, throwing her arms around him and clinging to him tight. And he remembered that he was naked, and how to feel embarrassed.

“Asher,” he said. “I’ve got no clothes on.”

She looked at him, blushed - and he did, too - and then she pragmatically scrambled out of her own trousers.

“Here,” she said, handing them to him. Her prison tunic was long enough to serve as a makeshift dress, the hemline hanging at her knees.

“What’s happened?” Jon asked, scrambling into the trousers and cinching the drawstring.

“The Allies!” Asher said, near delirious with joy. “They’re marching up the road right now, tanks and all! The guards are dropping their guns and running for it! We’re free, Jon, free!”

They both looked up then, for some reason they would never be able to name, and there in the sky blazed a bolt of scarlet and gold, streaking across the sky. With hearts filled nigh to bursting, they went to meet the approaching army, unafraid.