The Phoenix in the Fireplace
You will remember, of course, that when first we moved into the House at Jove’s Oak we were immediately drawn by the two identical hearths—brick arches with two stove pipe flues sharing a chimney—which are so rare to find in homes these days. The first year, your mother and I burnt many a fire in the upstairs one; it took us a year to furnish the downstairs, where you will remember many a night spent playing with Daisy on the carpet while a fire crackled off to the side.
One night in September, early into our second year in the house, I took it upon myself to clean the fireplace, which had lain in last year’s ashes and with crisped logs upon the iron grate for all of Spring and Summer. (You know quite well at this point, filia mi, what manner of things can slip my easily distracted mind.) It was a day on which the threat of autumn loomed, but on which, I assumed, the heralds only, and not the Harvest god himself, could be tasted of. It had been about a month since I had interacted directly with any of the fay people, who, as you will remember, had made themselves quite present by this time around the house and its grounds. But since the encounter with the Lady on the 15 of August, which I shall not repeat here, they had not struck up conversation for some time. I did not take it personally: it seemed to me more a matter of passing ships than parted ways. The Mushroom Gnome had returned to the deep slumber of meditation on the 6th, wishing to plumb further his darshana; occasional glimpses of the squirrel knights engaging in quests around the neighborhood evoked no interruption from either Daisy or myself, who as ever watched with quiet respect for their dignity. I saw a small tribe of fay in the park one day in early September when walking Daisy for the first time in some months (you know how she loathes the summer heat), having a community ritual the interior meaning of which was clearly lost on most of the fay children but solemnly executed by their elders.
This occurred to me by the peculiar magic of remembrance which the fay are wont to activate or suppress when suddenly I realized that I had shoveled up among the ashes of the hearth something much more heavy and solid. As I looked at it, I realized that it was also writhing: not in agony, mind, but moving about, as though stirred from a long slumber. I brought the shovel closer to my face to inspect.
The bird—it looked as though it were a bird, anyway—was small and wrinkly, and had no feathers to speak of, but it did manage as I held it to peep open an eye and look up at me. Its gentle cooing at having been disturbed was, I thought, surprisingly lenient for someone having been just woken up from a nap, not least an infant. It seemed to wish to wriggle towards my hand, so I cupped it, placed the shovel on the brick bema upon which the hearth sat, and marveled at the creature as it nuzzled the fat base of my thumb.
“About time you did something for him,” a voice came. It was the Gnome.
My head whipped about to see him wiping his nose, where only a moment before he had been plaster. I blinked in surprise. “I did not know he was there,” I replied honestly. “Was there a nest? Do you know where the mother has gone?”
“Mother and nest are one and the same for his kind,” the Gnome replied, traversing down the old record box on which he sat and heaving his way over to where I sat cross-legged, still holding the creature. I thought on his words; I glanced back at the fireplace, and then asked, “You mean the hearth?”
“Well, he is a hearthling,” the gruff fay replied. “You call them ‘phoenixes,’ I think, after the purple color they take on when they rise up into the night air.”
This echoed, but failed to quite match the mythology with which I was familiar; but for the time being I was simply so stunned that I did not know what else to say. “This is a phoenix?” I asked, blankly.
“Well, you all call it that,” the Gnome replied. “Long ago, they were born from lightning-struck trees or from wildfires in forests, or sometimes from the hearts of the flaming mountains.”
I could tell that the Gnome wanted to sound learned and worldly, and so I wanted to offer him the word without deflating him. “Volcanoes, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, that’s what you call them,” he continued. “And when you all came along, and learned the secrets of fire, they were born from those as well, and became the hearthlings. They are less wild than their ancestors, and less likely to become salamanders, or to ensoul the great fire dragons like what roamed the earth long before human time. At least,” he said, looking at me from under his cap, “if you will take care of them. Among sprites, hearthlings are often seen as a blessing, but without love, they can become stark curses: if they do not get what they need they will leave a place until they find such a host.”
I looked at the creature in my hands, and noticed that it was already seemingly growing tiny hairs all about its body. Daisy came over and sniffed it, initially to my concern, though Daisy proved, as she so often has with the fay, her friendship quickly, and the hearthling happily met her nose to nose. “What does it need?” I asked the Gnome at last.
“Well,” he said, “you’re already doing the first important thing, which is cleaning this damn hearth out,” he said. “After that, just light the fire, put him in, and it will work out fine.”
“What?” I asked with some incredulity.
“Well,” the Gnome replied, “what else would you do with an elemental spirit of fire?”
“You mean it doesn’t need food or water?”
“Water?!” the Gnome started, then rubbed his forehead and looked back up at me. “Look, young man, I would expect with all those books you keep buying and claiming to read and all those big, important conversations you seem to have that you would be a little smarter. Under no circumstances should you give this creature water, to drink or to bathe in. It needs fire.” The Gnome inspected the hearthling. “Look at how well he’s doing just with the warmth in your hands, or from the dog’s breath?”
At this, Daisy licked the Gnome, which he startled at by patting himself down in the aftermath. But as I looked at the hearthling, I noticed that it was in fact a bit bigger than it had been, and that it was now covered in a thin, fuzzy, purple fur. It looked something between a bird and a lizard, which, I realized, was true for all birds and for all lizards; it now seemed capable of smiling, and its eyes were fully open, a dazzling, resplendent emerald green.
“Alright then,” I said at last, and with the creature in one hand, I continued cleaning out the hearth.
That evening I went to gather sticks from the yard for kindling and stacked the logs upon the grate. Tinder can be difficult for a fire on an indoor hearth, because it has to burn quickly and brightly enough to catch; newspaper alone often will not suffice, especially with the sort of paper we use to make so much of our mail these days. I have often found drier lint a suitable means of ensuring quick catching, and you will remember, of course, the old skillet that I used to retain such in the laundry room. The hearthling phoenix was my companion throughout, and he had, through exposure to my body heat and now through the fire, grown to a point that he would only fit upon my shoulder. The Gnome also instructed me in some of the finer points of fay fire construction: how to lay the logs, what runes should be marked upon them, how to ensure that there were no spirits the fire was likely to harm somewhere amongst the sticks, and so forth. The fay, he remarked, usually use fire for ritual, where humans use it for heat; but he also said that in this particular case, the hearthling would benefit all the more from a well-made Gnome fire than from a casually and carelessly made human one. I found, as I often have with the Gnome, that all his wisdom came from a certain insecurity it was best to reassure through obedience, and so spoke little as he gave me instructions.
When the logs had finally caught, the hearthling was chomping at the bit: I held him a final time, now the size, I realized, of a small dog, and gave him a few pats upon the head before offering him in. As he settled, his feathers glowed a brilliant orange, then red, then blue, then gold and purple all at once: he grew to the size of the hearth and to fill the flue until all that I could see was the flaming visage of his face, and all I could hear was his song, so otherworldly and yet so familiar that I wondered afterward if all sounds of fire crackling and sizzling coals were not disparate, dissolved notes of that music. The Gnome, Daisy, and myself sat on the carpet and watched this display, until the face disappeared and the Gnome rushed us out the back door and into the yard. There we saw the phoenix in flight above the house, streaking through the evening sky like a comet soaring off through sequined spheres; and as he did we heard the horns, ram’s horns, I realized, and saw a great collection of fay assemble at the margins of the yard and in the trees of the common field. Then a jovial laugh fell upon the world: ululations and chuckles and festal dancing met it among the fay, and as the phoenix doubled back and came once more over these skies, I saw fecund Autumn himself riding thereon, Jupiter’s crown of oak woven in his hair, spiced winds fletching out from the hearthling’s expansive wings. But then the bird turned and settled, Daisy and I realized, in the great oak at the front of the house; and so, following the Gnome again, the three of us hurried to the front yard to see it perched there in its branches. And all at once the oak was greatest of all trees; there in its boughs there sat enthroned the king himself beneath a sukkah of oaken fronds; and all the fay were splayed out before him with hymn and harp and feasting. And that, my dear, was the first real Fall we had.