Part One: The Pit

At lunchtime the wind was high. The hem of his robes blew about, frustrating his pace. The sand went into his eyes. Lasos began to wonder why in all of Cegria no architect ever stopped in the Phoenix Crossroads and set to pave the streets. Then he remembered that everyone in town was merely passing through. Those few locals born to die on the warm patch of barren earth stamped into the center of the cardinal directions were fortunate to have what buildings they did.

Lasos continued to scumble across the patchwork of gray stones that surrounded the dry fountain at the town's heart. He passed the house of Lady Yaba, soothsayer. It was among the largest of private homes, but was not beautiful and did double as Yaba's place of business. Lasos regarded the sign in her window relating she was closed for tea. This meant Yaba was drinking some malicious smelling Orien brew with no more company than her many cats. He passed the Kissish bathhouse. It was too beautiful, decadent enough to be plucked up by the gods and placed in Earden City. They charged an exorbitant fee for its use and the perpetual vacancy was ghostly. Lasos always picked up his pace as he passed it by.

Finally, he reached Nikanor's Inn. Inside he did not hear the wind, only human bustle. Every manner of person traveled through the Crossroads. Some were going west to Bettan or east to Femos. Some were going to places far, of which the humble scribe had never dared dream. They were dark and light. They traveled small or in bulbous caravans with horses and camels and wagons. There were always men, women, children, and those difficult to distinguish, and Lasos enjoyed sitting elbow to elbow with them as he took his lunch. On this day they blurred into a rainbow of sameness.

After eating, the scribe resigned himself to carry some hot lamb to his Uncle Kerkyon at the library. It boasted a strong, satisfactory arcade. Among the columns Lasos always felt safe. It was only the wide cell inside the edifice, smelling of parchment and ink that felt like a prison. His cynicism was due to the inevitable day when Kerkyon's wits or eyes or hands failed him, or his life ended, and Lasos would inherit his uncle's role of town scribe. The notion of forever being chained to the Phoenix Pit, merely to record events, loomed over the younger man like an ebon cloud.

On his way to the library he passed the Pit. Lasos yawned as the latest participant walked toward the seemingly innocuous hole in the earth. When he was nearly to the edge, he dropped the hastily fashioned wood crutches and dipped his leg, and the foot that had gone missing, likely from war, into the Pit. Smoke flooded upward, past the man, whose face squished up like a fist. After some moments, under Kerkyon's watchful eyes, attendants helped pull the man backward. His foot had been restored.

Few travelers knew of the Pit's existence and the locals who were not busy in service to the passers through were generally bored of it. When the handful dispersed, Lasos ventured into the library, past the exaggerated, tall walls full of scroll storage plots, and into the main cell. Pinned up deer hides insulated the cold white walls inside, creating a contrast to the long, stark hall. Kerkyon had already dipped quill into ink and scrawled several black lines onto the fresh, opalescent parchment. His dedication to efficiency even after all these years bothered Lasos deeply and the junior scribe tightened his grip on the darker, cheaper paper in which the warm lamb shank was wrapped.

"Come in, Lasos," Kerkyon commanded in his booming alto.

The day passed slowly. There was little more Lasos could learn about his future occupation.

* * *

The next day began as a reasonable facsimile of the last. The wind was high again. Only there was a wedding procession stopped in front of the dry fountain. Funerals and weddings were rare in the Crossroads.

It was a small ceremony. By their colorful garments, repeating in crimson and black geometric patterns, Lasos recognized the participants as hailing from Kiss. Though the whole continent recognized the same wedding tradition more or less, the process was varied in severity and complexity, from country to country. People of Kiss were particularly stringent.

The process always began with the walk. On this outdoor stroll, man made his intentions known to woman. In the Cegrian city-states, the walk was usually a formality, but among the Kissish, the walk was key, sometimes initiated though the man and woman were strangers and the woman was forbidden from attending without a chaperone. The suitor next sought audience with the woman's parents to gain their final permission. Lasos remembered pretending at the walk in primary school with Old Nikanor's youngest red-haired daughter, who eventually took her true walk with a sailor and was never seen again.

The process took just four weeks and ended in the final ceremony. This was the part Lasos spied. The new husband, in his finest turban, slid the fingerless marriage glove onto his woman's left hand. Not only would the lady's marital status be visible by this glove, but her station in life too. The wealthy had lavish marriage gloves, whereas the poor wore those more humble.

It all ended with a kiss and someone throwing yellow petals into the intemperate wind. Lasos continued after to Nikanor's Inn.

 

Part Two: The Caged Hart

She had shiny, long, black hair, and unblemished olive skin. Her eyes were soft and without the pride of women's eyes who might rival her splendor. Were those loudly colored roses standing tall and demanding all the attention in the garden of the world, then this young woman was a lovely, symmetrical vine. Your eyes might pass over the vine for all the greenery of the garden, but when you did pause and give it study, you soon found it more appealing than any rose. Perhaps it was her deeply green eyes that made Lasos think of perfect Bettan Ivy, though he was sure she had come from the South East by her long, clean, linen dress; Nitkora perhaps.

The ivy woman sat beside a big man who looked to the scribe the spitting image of the mythic warrior O'Jaxor. The man's chest was as wide as his muscled frame could withstand. He had a bull-neck, eyes of a muddled green-brown, a clean-shaven head, and a neatly trimmed, black, short-beard that started beneath his nose and framed his lean lips. He wore no weapons or armor, yet Lasos was certain the gargantuan could crush a man.

The most unusual accessory of the strong man, the green-eyed woman's traveling companion, was what he carried with him. It was a small child. The tiny girl had not but three years and featured his same muddy eyes. The settings of their jaws were the same, too, but the little one's hair was long and thin and the color of sand. Lasos saw none of the Nitkorian in the child. He was certain the girl was the product of the big man and a rose kind of woman. In fact, the Nitkorian lady wore no marriage glove at all.

While Lasos was watching, the behemoth finished his lunch, rose, hoisted up his child, pressed his beard into the Nitkorian's ear and departed. Lasos could barely wait the span of a minute to rise and sit back down at the dark-haired woman's side.

"I am Lasos," he said in introduction, avoiding her green eyes a little. "I do hope my lady's escort has not abandoned her, but if that were the case, and you should have need of anything whilst visiting the Phoenix Crossroads, do let your servant know." His own chivalry startled him.

The attention made the lady blush but she willed the color away with majestic composure. She offered a polite smile. "My servant, Lasos? I didn't know I had any."

"You do now. Ah… miss… er… Madame." Lasos was baffled. Did she belong to the big cheek kissing man?

"Miss," she answered. "I am Prone. My escort has retired to our room."

The scribe's stomach turned. Lasos' searching eyes burned with curiosity, however her own darted his as deftly as a deer evades a lion. Surely Prone was his sister or his servant, Lasos thought.

"Miss, might your servant inquire about the man and child?"

She blinked rapidly. "Atys has asked me to marry him," she replied.

Lasos choked. Was this Atys a barbarian? He had observed none of the proper customs. Traveling with her thus made the Bettan Ivy into a harlot.

Prone continued, "His daughter is Aketa, an angel down from heaven… a little spoiled though."

"And her mother?" Lasos asked.

"Gone. Abandoned them flat," she said. Her eyebrows met each other helplessly.

"Forgive me," Lasos continued, "but good Miss Prone, do you dislike your Atys?"

She answered, "I like him more than I should and hate myself for it."

Lasos was both surprised by the Nitkorian's honesty and shaken by the gravity of the situation as related by the seriousness in her ivy colored eyes. "Then fly, Prone," he said, in an excited whisper. "Fly this instant! Go before Atys can follow."

She looked defeated. The deer of the scribe's imagination was now in a cage.

"I cannot. I am bewitched. I am lied to, and yet I cling. I am so convinced of his need for me I am made to feel the villain," she explained. "Yet, Atys respects no custom, no tradition, and not my parents who are left mourning the loss of me. His will is absolute and it has targeted me. The child, equally bewitching, also has need. I am sure she loves me.

"His body is such a vile thing," she continued, nearly as an afterthought. "I am sure it was forged by Phesuez, god of the ironworks. A look, a touch, causes me to feel gilded."

"Take the child and go," Lasos pleaded.

"She has more need of him than she shall ever have for me." Prone looked defeated, however she did not entirely dislike her present company. After some small moments passed, she decided to change the subject.

"Tell me one thing, Lasos," she said, "since you are from here. What was that gathering near the library yesterday?"

Lasos proceeded to tell Prone about the town and its pit. As he did, her eyes no longer evaded his. Prone seemed to hang on every word, and so he continued almost feverishly. At times during his tirade Prone looked like a lonely fawn.

The scribe could not finish delivering the information, for fear he'd never have Prone's attention again. He was telling the story of the rich man who had lost his fortune and made an attempt at regaining it by dipping his purse into the Phoenix Pit.

Before he could relay the outcome to that incident, Prone's slender fingers touched the skin of the scribe's arm. He stopped speaking instantly. He stopped breathing.

"Was there any who ever put themselves into the Pit entirely?" she questioned.

Lasos nodded. "One man," he said. "He had grown old and was bent on finding his youth again."

"What happened to him?" Prone asked.

The scribe's shoulders rose toward his ears. "He disappeared. My Uncle Kerkyon believes he may have somehow returned to his mother's womb."

For the first time, Prone laughed. It was marvelous to watch. Lasos' mouth came opened and he smiled.

"I felt certain," she said eventually, "that your Pit must be the answer for me. That providence put us here. But I am wrong. I can no more put Atys inside it so that he might forget to want me, than I can place little Aketa within to stop her fondness for me. The Pit cannot make her mother return either."

 

Part Three: A Child's Foot

Lasos became alarmed. Throughout his speech about the town he had forgotten to relate the most important aspect of the Phoenix Pit. He had taken it for granted until now.

"No, no, Miss Prone. You must keep away from the Pit. It is truly unpredictable. The outcomes its seekers desire and the outcomes which it deals out are never the same."

"I do not understand. The soldier yesterday," she said. "His foot was restored."

"No, Prone," Lasos continued. "Not in the way you would expect. It was a child's foot."

"What?" Prone exclaimed.

"Yes. His foot was returned to him, but in a much newer state than he anticipated. And the poverty stricken rich man," he related, "his leather purse was not filled with gold as was his desire. Instead that leather satchel leapt out of the rushing smoke and laid him flat on the dirt. The purse was a calf again, as if it had never been killed and worked by the tanner's hands."

Lasos was pleased that his words and tone had drained color from Prone's face. He wanted only her safety and happiness and could not see where the Pit could produce these. Then her deep sadness seemed to veil over her eyes again and his gladness left him.

"There is another," he said suddenly. Yaba had always seemed a nuisance until now. "Prone, might I escort you, in all respect, to the house of the town soothsayer? She is old and wise in many things. If you are bewitched, she may know the remedy."

Prone's lips thinned. Her use of the word had not been literal. She did not believe there was any magic involved in the caging of her heart. Atys was a force of nature. He was pleasing to the eye. He needed no magic to aid him.

* * *

The wind did not seem quite so bothersome with the lady at his side. Too soon they were inside Yaba's, listening to layers of mewing voices and smelling hot spices. Prone sneezed.

"Ah, Lasos, finally you come," the short, elderly lady announced. "Reading for you? On the house," she said.

"Not for me," Lasos replied. "Please, tell us the nature of this woman's curse."

"Curse?" Lady Yaba echoed. Laughter tumbled past her wrinkled lips, as did some spit, which she dabbed away with a kerchief.

Lasos was at the edge of anger, but Yaba straightened then and motioned for Prone to give over her white hands. Yaba's own hands were warm and the skin on them loose.

"Ah, yes," Yaba said smirking. "I see," she continued, as if listening to a secret conversation.

Then the old woman was closer than Prone would have liked and she could not avoid the yellow eyes with big black irises. "It is quite simple. Old magic. The deer believed the lion could fill a space. The lion has need of this deer. But in the end he'll devour her. He's a lion. They like two puzzle pieces pounded together. Don't fit. The deer should've run away from him in the first place. Twit."

Lasos forced Prone's silky hands away. "Enough!" he ordered. "What charm will you sell us to undo this curse?"

Yaba fell into an old chair and a longhaired cat hopped into her lap. Yaba smiled.

"There is no cure for love."

Part Four: Crossroads

"Farewell, Lasos. Farewell."

The second time the small mouth formed the word, an olive-skinned hand came up and waved. The pair had been facing the bulk of town from Yaba's front porch. Prone turned so abruptly then and her figure shrank against the dust landscape. Perhaps saying goodbye to Lasos was as difficult for her as it was for him, for she seemed in a great hurry.

The sun set with the ebon haired lady passing time inside the rented room with the family that had once belonged to someone else. Prone had her own reasons to want to abandon them, and yet she was trapped now, caught in the iron jaws by her heart. Time spent in the company of others did have a way of becoming attachment. The word "twit" echoed somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

Prone overcompensated for the brief hour she'd passed with Lasos. She was playful with the girl who would never bear eyes like hers. She touched the man who refused to follow ceremony and marry her proper.

For all her pretending and forced laughter, the night still came and Prone lay, surrounded by muscle and Atys' breathing, unable to sleep. Her heart pounded. Her eyes were wide. The gloveless left hand seemed to itch and burn and swell. Would there never be a marriage glove there? Prone's thoughts were trained upon the mysterious Phoenix Pit.

Prone had measured every option the Pit offered. Lasos had warned her the outcomes were always unpredictable. There was no solution here. Then, the way lightning strikes a tree, Prone was hit with a terrible but somehow appealing idea. The Pit was untrustworthy, but Prone did not care.

When the morning sun shone brightly enough through the thin, linen curtain, Atys stirred awake. He stretched himself and all his muscles. When he did, his feet reached past the boundary of the bed. Then Atys turned to squeeze Prone in early greeting, but found her gone.

* * *

Lasos was walking from his home toward the library. Today there was no wind. Birds were singing. The break in monotony reminded the scribe of Prone. She had been a welcomed distraction from so much sameness. Lasos found himself smiling in his walk, though he believed he would never again see the sorrowful woman.

Then, like a single gull on the shore, he could see her. Prone was standing alone before the Pit. Lasos began to panic. Had she thrown her torturous family in? Surely the town magistrate would arrest her if she had! He was running toward her then. Prone was standing perfectly still, deaf to his calls. Lasos wondered how long she had been standing there. Her ivy eyes were distant, remembering a distant place.

 

Part Five: The Phoenix

Before Lasos could reach her, the shape of Prone fell into the earth and was gone, heralded only by the powerful upward swell of white smoke. The scribe's muscles burned as he pushed faster than he had ever gone against the air and sun and dirt and distance. When he stopped, out of breath, he heard a mad sound filling his ears and did not realize right away it was his own screams. His uncle's attendants were out and waving their arms madly within the hole, afraid to reach inside too far, but eager to pull back the fallen lady if it was still possible. Their blind grasping caught hold of Prone's linen dress and they both wrenched mightily and pulled her out.

Lasos stood over Prone's body, which looked small and still. He was still looking for his breath, unable to control the abrupt rising and falling of his chest. Kerkyon was suddenly beside her, too, tall and without concern.

"It must be documented," Kerkyon boomed, unfazed by his nephew's uncharacteristic display of anxiety. "What was her desire?"

Lasos put his hands on either sides of Prone's face, patting her cheeks gently, helplessly. He looked up at Kerkyon again, frowning.

"Not to love," he answered. Lasos turned white. Too late he understood Prone's dilemma. Perhaps it was neither Atys nor his child who needed to change for Prone to be free. She was the one who cared. She cared for them too much to leave. She cared too much for herself and for her parents to be content.

The scribe was startled when he felt a tickle against his hand. When he gazed downward, there was Prone, awake. Lasos' heart lept.

"Get her to her feet," one of the attendants said, and in a combined effort, she was upright, looking frightened and bewildered.

"Prone."

Lasos' eyes narrowed. He had yet to move his lips, but heard what he wanted to say. When two big arms went for Prone's shoulders, the scribe realized it had been Atys' voice he'd heard. He stepped aside mostly by instinct, giving room to Atys and his girth.

Still, Lasos watched her. He watched as though his life depended on her every move. What he saw was very strange. Prone was completely unscathed and yet there was no recognition in her ivy eyes.

"I am Prone," she said calmly to the man holding her by the shoulders. "Who are you?"

"Prone," Atys begged in a smaller voice than should have been possible. He seemed on the edge of tears. He used the back of his fingers to brush Prone's face, but she finally recoiled.

"I do not know you," she said.

A few feet away, little Aketa was still in her nightclothes. She was crying. All heads turned in the child's direction. Lasos watched Atys then, who obviously expected Prone to run to the child, though she did not.

A pain-filled smile cracked the younger scribe's face. Though her memory was gone, Prone was free. The Pit had done its work well. But what could become of her now? Lasos turned away from the scene, unable to bear the thought of his dear wandering through the world ignorant of everything. He saw Atys depart, ushering away his confused daughter. Lasos was sorry the girl would remember the abandonment of two mothers, but she was young and could forget—like Prone.

The episode was over. There was nothing left to do.

"Come, Lasos," commanded Kerkyon, who turned for the library.

Lasos dropped his head.

"L-lasos?"

The sound of her voice was like twilight shining sharply through dark trees. Lasos whirled to see ivy eyes full of recognition. His small, content smile seemed inadequate.

Prone placed her soft hand into the scribe's and together they took a walk.