Pale Phoenix (24 page)

"Rebirth out of the ashes," murmured Abby. "But no chance for a normal life."

"I wonder," mused Miranda. She turned to look out the window into darkness. She could sense the deep blankets of snow, though she couldn't see them.

That night she dreamed about flying.

The next day Miranda wandered through her classes in a fog. She remembered how it felt to drift above the ground. She couldn't concentrate on her work. She had Abby on her mind.

When the final bell rang she sighed with relief. Soon she and Abby and Dan were crunching along Main Street, then around the corner to the Prindle House. A backhoe was parked in the vacant lot, shrouded with snow. The ash and rubble of the ruin seemed more real. "Soon this will be a parking lot," Miranda marveled. "Can you believe it?"

Mrs. Hooton called to them from the porch of the Prindle House. Mrs. Wainwright stepped out from behind her and waved. On the porch, Dan introduced Abby to his great-aunt, then they all went inside.

Miranda looked around with interest as they walked through the old house, but there wasn't much to see. The wide wooden floorboards were covered with white dropcloths. Wallpaper hung in tatters. Paint buckets and plastering tools lay on planks atop sawhorses. Mrs. Wainwright led them up the narrow staircase to a newly painted bedroom. The wooden floor gleamed with fresh wax. Glass cases had been installed under the window, and a banner above read
WITCHCRAFT IN GARNET?

"Welcome to the Witch House exhibit," Mrs. Wainwright said, motioning them to step closer and look. "Your parents have done a stellar job, Dan."

"Take your time." Mrs. Hooton smiled. "We'll be downstairs with the carpenters."

Miranda, Abby, and Dan crowded close to peer into the first case. A brief history on easy-to-read tagboard cards told about the hysteria that had gripped late seventeenth-century New England. An etching showed a woman tied to a chair attached to a plank held above a pond, and the caption explained that this was a ducking stool. Once used throughout New England as a punishment for wives who nagged their husbands, the ducking stool was utilized in Garnet during the witchcraft hysteria as a test to prove whether or not the accused were truly a witch. A real witch, people believed, could not drown. So if the accused drowned, then she was not guilty.

"Oh, wow," said Dan. "Not guilty, but dead anyway?"

"Looks like it," said Miranda, frowning. "I wonder if it says anything here about Willow?" She gazed down into the case, trying to read the old documents listing the accused persons and their sentences.

Dan shook his head. "I checked. Her name isn't there."

Abby moved on to the second case. She looked inside. After a moment she called to them to come look. Her voice sounded ragged.

They peered down at a torn, yellowed page from an old newspaper. "Look at the date," whispered Abby. "1755—a year before I came here to live with Matilda and Tobias Prindle. It's a letter written by Tobias himself."

Miranda frowned at the faded, oddly formed letters. "What does it say? I can't read it."

But Abby had no difficulty.

"The sins of the fathers weigh heavily upon this family. We are besmirched by the stain of our ancestors' Guilt. They who so willingly and with vigor participated in the insanity that plagued our Town some sixty years ago have left a Shadow upon all generations to follow. We cannot hope to be forgiven in the eyes of God in Heaven without first atoning here on Earth, and to our fellow Men. I therefore offer freely and without obligation Monetary Restitution to the surviving families whose members were accused and executed for the Crime of Witchcraft in Garnet. I acknowledge the responsibility of my ancestor, Josiah Prindle, in leading these Baseless Accusations, and hope to diminish the Guilt that stains my Soul and the Souls of my family by this act of most humble atonement—"

She stopped. "And the rest is torn away."

"It's enough, though, isn't it?" asked Miranda. "We know that William's father went off the deep end, but at least it sounds like later generations of Prindles were sorry."

"It's sad," murmured Dan. He put his arm around Abby's thin shoulders. "Tobias felt so ashamed, even though he hadn't been born when it was going on."

"Do you think that's how come you landed so far in the future?" asked Miranda. "The phoenix sent you on to a time when people didn't believe in witches anymore—so you would be safer."

"Safer, maybe," said Abby. "But still always on the run."

They looked at each other, then wandered through the rest of the exhibit without another word. The sound of a carpenter's drill led them down the steep stairs to Dan's mother and Mrs. Wainwright, who were watching the carpenters replacing rotten floorboards in a back room. "Ready to go?" asked Mrs. Hooton. She put on her coat and scarf. Mrs. Wainwright accompanied them to the front door, chatting cheerfully about the renovations.

"Thanks for letting us in to the exhibit early," said Dan. "It's awesome."

"But horrible," said Miranda. "I've never heard of anything so stupid as that ducking stool in my whole life."

Abby wound her scarf over her pale hair. "People were different then," she said in her quiet voice.

"Oh, don't you believe it for a minute, my girl," said Mrs. Wainwright. "That's a mistake we often make when thinking about history. But you can be sure the people in old Garnet were no different from us at all. Their ways may have been different—and some of their fears—but at heart they were like us. They hoped for what we all hope for. Good health, good friends, a family to love, enough food, and a safe place to live. They lived their lives day to day, just the same as you and I." She opened the door and they stepped out into the cold again. "That's really all we ever can do."

They said good-bye then, and Mrs. Hoooton drove carefully up the hill to their own safe, warm homes. Miranda sat silently in the backseat, lost in thought.

Miranda tried to keep up her usual cheerful banter as she helped her father wash the dishes, but the effort exhausted her. Her mind was whirling with memories, fragments of conversations, half-formed notions that might mean everything—or nothing at all. She hoped he didn't notice. Finally they finished and she hung up the towel, then wandered off to look for Abby. She found her drooping over the piano keyboard, pale hair hanging limply down her back. Miranda touched her shoulder. "Listen, I think I've figured it out. The reason why the phoenix linked us together. How I'm meant to help you, I mean."

She was disappointed that Abby's expression remained glum. "I'll always be a—a phoenix," Abby muttered. "Never a normal person."

"No, listen to me," said Miranda. "How often do you go back to the ruin?"

"You mean, how many times a day?"

"You mean you go back
that
often?"

"Well, yes. I can't stop myself." Abby's hands moved over the piano keys, playing soft chords.

Miranda suspected that Abby's need to return to the ruin was very much like an addiction to a drug—and every bit as dangerous. "So you've never tried to live like a normal person at all."

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" Abby stopped playing the piano and clasped her hands together.

"You keep going back. You've traveled through time every day for three hundred years! Regular people don't do that, Abby." She remembered what Mrs. Wainwright had said about people having no choice—they just had to live their lives, day to day. "Listen, Abby. This is the way I can help you." And she searched for the right words to explain.

Abby had Willow's gift and so was magically saved from death. Moved ahead in time, given another chance to live—but with one magical ability. She could choose to return to the place where she died. She had the choice: to live in her new present, or to go back and be a ghost. "Do you see what I mean?" asked Miranda. "It's your choice. But you miss your family and William so much, you haven't been able to accept Willow's gift properly. And I bet that's why you've never grown up in all this time."

"Are you trying to say that all my problems are in my head?" Abby's voice came out a yelp. "That all this time, if I had wanted
not
to be a ghost, I just had to stop going back to the ruin?"

"Maybe
wanting
to go back is normal," Miranda mused. "But maybe actually
going
back is the problem. Everybody misses people who have died. But they just have to carry on with their own lives. In the present." She shook her dark curls. "I know, it sounds too simple. But I think it's right." She felt shivery with the excitement of her theory. The phoenix had been a gift of new life, but would never work properly unless Abby accepted the new and did not return to the old.

Abby fumbled in her back pocket and withdrew the statue. "So if I choose to live," she said very slowly, turning the figure over in her palm, "then that means I must never ever,
ever
go back to my own time again?"

Miranda remained silent.

"But that would be so hard." Abby shook her head. "You have no idea."

"Going back is hard on you, anyway."

"I hate being a ghost," Abby murmured.

"And here you're
not
a ghost, don't you see?" Miranda clenched her fists in frustration. "It's only in 1693 that you're a ghost. And you've haunted that ruin for years and years and years." She caught her breath. "Abby! Maybe that's why the vacant lot next to the Prindle House is said to be haunted. It's haunted by
you!
"

Abby closed her eyes.

"It's why the phoenix linked us up," Miranda said. "It isn't what we thought. I'm not supposed to change the past at all. But maybe I can help you change your future."

"But you can't keep me from going back," Abby objected. "I can be gone in a second."

"Willpower," said Miranda succinctly. "I can help you remember why you don't want to go back. Why you want to choose life. Come on, promise me now. Promise you will never, ever go back to the ruin again."

Abby sighed. "Oh, Mandy. Choosing life means going on and on and on. That isn't real, either. It isn't normal."

"But if you stop being a ghost at the ruin, I think you'll grow up at last."

"How?" Abby's voice rose eagerly.

Miranda smiled cagily, suddenly happy. "Just promise not to go back. Okay? For at least a week or two. Then we'll know."

"You mean we'll have to wait and see if I grow up, right? But that will take a long time—years and years. More than a few weeks."

Miranda's grin was true and friendly. "Just wait."

M
IRANDA WATCHED
A
BBY
carefully over the next week, but the two girls did not talk much. Abby threw herself into her piano playing—but now, surprisingly, Miranda found it did not bring on headaches anymore. The music poured through the house, music from many eras, telling Abby's story though she herself remained silent. When Abby stopped, Miranda got out her flute, badly neglected since Abby moved in, and practiced her pieces for the spring concert. One evening after dinner, while everyone was still in the big kitchen loading the dishwasher and wiping off countertops, Helen and Philip remarked on the calm.

"Or maybe it's not accurate to call it calm here," mused Helen, cocking her eyebrow at the girls. "Not calm, as in 'settled.'"

"More like 'the calm before the storm'?" Philip asked.

"Exactly," confirmed Helen. "Well, girls? What's going on? All this sweetness and light is making me nervous."

"I feel like we're waiting for something to happen," added Philip.

Miranda bit her lip and scrubbed the stove top extra hard. Abby shrugged her shoulders as she put containers of food in the refrigerator.

"Well, whatever it is," Philip said as he and Helen left the kitchen, cups of tea in hand, "I hope the weather holds."

When they were alone, Abby turned to Miranda. "I don't know why," she began with a tentative smile, "but it's been easier, somehow, living with you lately. I—I could get used to it."

Miranda knew that her answer could change the course of Abby's life. It was an awesome responsibility. "It's nice," she agreed carefully. "Now that we're not fighting every second."

Abby's pale face was as serious as Miranda's own. "You know, a lot of the bad stuff was my fault." She put away the last pot and leaned against the cupboard. "I wasn't giving anyone a chance. It's like you said. I've never been happy because I've always been so tied to the past. Lots of times I've stayed with nice families—or had good situations where I was welcome—but whenever I especially like a family or a place, I seem to get meaner than ever. Partly it's because I know I can't stay long, because I can't give them an explanation for why I never change or grow. And partly because I know I'll hurt them when I leave so suddenly. I find myself acting really rotten so that they'll
want
me to leave. It's easier to go," she said ruefully, "when no one wants you to stay."

"But I do understand why you don't grow. And I bet my parents will, too, when you tell them your story."

"I'm not telling them. And I don't want you to, either. Not yet, anyway." Abby wiped off the table with a damp sponge, then rinsed it out in the sink. "This is the longest time I've ever stayed away from the ruin, you know? I'm doing it for you. To test your theory." She wiped her hands on the dish towel and hung it neatly on the rack. "But I still don't see how you'll know whether I'm growing in only a couple weeks."

"But you promised me you'd wait. You promised!"

"I know, I know. I'm trying my hardest. But if your theory is wrong, and I can't grow up after all, do you think maybe—maybe I can still stay with your family a while? I guess then we'd have to tell your parents the truth—but I bet they'd never believe it."

"Face it, Abby, they'd
have
to believe you if you lived here for ten years and still looked exactly the same."
Ten years? Do I really want her here that long?

"I guess you're right. Do you think they'd cover for me?"

"Cover for you?" asked Miranda, puzzled.