“What else can you tell us?” I asked Cris.
He rippled in a way that might have been a shrug. -The books you’re trying to read are phoenix books. The others can help you with possible translations for symbols, but deciphering what the books actually say—that’s up to you.-
“And the phoenixes? You said they saw the possibility of me. How?”
-Phoenixes don’t experience time like we do. They see things all at once. They see possibilities.-
“They see the future?”
Cris gave a frustrated keen. -No. They see possibilities. Like you can see water in the creek. It’s always moving. You can see what it’s doing right now. Perhaps it will trickle into the ground later, or evaporate, or join a larger stream. Even if you knew the course of the stream, there’s still a possibility of something outside happening to the water, like being lapped up by an animal. There are a hundred possibilities. Phoenixes see those.-
It still only made half sense to me, but I nodded.
Sam frowned. “It sounds as if these phoenixes are very powerful. They see possibilities, they curse sylph, they can build prisons to hold Janan and his allies—”
All the sylph hissed and grew hot, but Cris didn’t explain their reaction. I had suspicions, though.
Sam said more carefully, “If the phoenixes have all this power and they want Janan to fail, why don’t they help? Why leave it up to sylph and one newsoul?”
Cris shivered, black roses blooming around him. -Redemption must be earned. If we want it, we will work for it, even though we can never obtain it on our own. To succeed, we need Ana’s willing help. And your help, Dossam.-
Chills swept through me. “And the phoenixes?”
-They don’t need Janan to be stopped, any more than the earth needs the moon to orbit it. The world would change without the moon, but the earth would still exist.-
I nodded, still filled with so many questions, trying to absorb so much information. I didn’t even know where to start.
Brush snapped nearby, and a wolf howled in the south.
“We should head back in.” Sam wrapped an arm around me. “The others will wonder where we are.” He placed the flute back inside its case, and sylph songs faded into the night as all but one sylph vanished back into the forest.
Cris stayed with us as we headed back to the cave, our path illuminated by the lantern Sam had brought along. Snow fell more quickly now, dimming the world beyond our little circle of light.
Back inside the cave, Whit and Stef were going over our notes on the temple books. A pile of dead rabbits lay in the corner, waiting to be dried.
I draped a cloth over the carnage. “You had a lot of luck with the snares?” We wouldn’t starve, at least.
Whit shook his head. “We took the sylph hunting. They’d find a rabbit, chase it, kill it quickly, and we’d fetch it.”
“They hunt and they cook. Who knew sylph were so useful?” I sat down beside Stef and Whit and looked over the notes they’d taken, but nothing new stood out. “Have any of you ever been to the ocean?” I asked.
“Lots of times,” Whit said. “It’s beautiful, but it can be dangerous.”
“How?” The paintings I’d seen had been gorgeous, and that glimpse the sylph gave me had made the ocean seem like another world.
“Once, a bunch of us built a ship to take us to different islands and continents. We wanted to explore. But we got lost in the middle of the sea. This was before we really understood how big the ocean is and how easy it would be to get lost, so we hadn’t done enough preparation. Fortunately, we had machines to strip the salt from the water and make it potable.”
“Salt in the water?” I gagged. “Sounds disgusting.”
Behind Whit, Stef gave a very serious nod.
Whit went on. “Even being lost with no idea where to go—that was okay. Then a kraken found us, ripped the ship into five pieces, and started eating it. I was lucky enough not to be eaten alive. I guess. It might have been faster than drowning, now that I think of it.”
I shuddered, trying not to think about all the times I’d nearly been in similar positions. If not for Menehem’s experiment, Janan would have consumed me before I was ever born. And then I’d nearly drowned in Rangedge Lake.
“This isn’t too much for you, is it?” Whit frowned at me.
“No. I was just remembering something else.”
Sam touched my hand. “The ocean can be beautiful, though. Most of the time it’s beautiful.”
Whit nodded. “And there are lots of oceans. Some cold, some warm. Some, the water is so blue it doesn’t look real. And I love the sound of waves on rocks or sand. . . .” His memory ran away with him.
How long did it take for someone to grow that somewhen-else look? One lifetime? Two? How easy was it for someone to fall back in time and lose all sense of the present?
I couldn’t imagine. The present pressed around me, harsh and sharp and real.