Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

Zebediah T. Crawcrustle was eating the head of the bird, crunching its bones and beak in his mouth. As he ate, the bones sparked small lightnings against his teeth. He just grinned and chewed the more.

The bones of the Sunbird’s carcass burned orange on the barbecue, and then they began to burn white. There was a thick heat-haze in the courtyard at the back of Mustapha Stroheim’s coffeehouse, and in it everything shimmered, as if the people around the table were seeing the world through water or a dream.

“It is so good!” said Virginia Boote as she ate. “It is the best thing I have ever eaten. It tastes like my youth. It tastes like forever.” She licked her fingers, then picked up the last slice of meat from her plate. “The Sunbird of Suntown,” she said. “Does it have another name?”

“It is the Phoenix of Heliopolis,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “It is the bird that dies in ashes and flame, and is reborn, generation after generation. It is the Bennu bird, which flew across the waters when all was dark. When its time is come it is burned on the fire of rare woods and spices and herbs, and in the ashes it is reborn, time after time, world without end.”

“Fire!” exclaimed Professor Mandalay. “It feels as if my insides are burning up!” He sipped his water, but seemed no happier.

“My fingers,” said Virginia Boote. “Look at my fingers.” She held them up. They were glowing inside, as if lit with inner flames.

Now the air was so hot you could have baked an egg in it.

There was a spark and a sputter. The two yellow feathers in Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy’s hair went up like sparklers. “Crawcrustle,” said Jackie Newhouse, aflame, “answer me truly. How long have you been eating the Phoenix?”

“A little over ten thousand years,” said Zebediah. “Give or take a few thousand. It’s not hard, once you master the trick of it; it’s just mastering the trick of it that’s hard. But this is the best Phoenix I’ve ever prepared. Or do I mean, ‘this is the best I’ve ever cooked this Phoenix’?”

“The years!” said Virginia Boote. “They are burning off you!”

“They do that,” admitted Zebediah. “You’ve got to get used to the heat, though, before you eat it. Otherwise you can just burn away.”

“Why did I not remember this?” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, through the bright flames that surrounded him. “Why did I not remember that this was how my father went, and his father before him, that each of them went to Heliopolis to eat the Phoenix? And why do I only remember it now?”

“Because the years are burning off you,” said Professor Mandalay. He had closed the leather book as soon as the page he had been writing on caught fire. The edges of the book were charred, but the rest of the book would be fine. “When the years burn, the memories of those years come back.” He looked more solid now, through the wavering burning air, and he was smiling. None of them had ever seen Professor Mandalay smile before.

“Shall we burn away to nothing?” asked Virginia, now incandescent. “Or shall we burn back to childhood and burn back to ghosts and angels and then come forward again? It does not matter. Oh Crusty, this is all such fun!”

“Perhaps,” said Jackie Newhouse, through the fire, “there might have been a little more vinegar in the sauce. I feel a meat like this could have dealt with something more robust.” And then he was gone, leaving only an after-image.

“Chacun a son gout,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, which is French for “each to his own taste,” and he licked his fingers and he shook his head. “Best it’s ever been,” he said, with enormous satisfaction.

“Good-bye, Crusty,” said Virginia. She put her flame-white hand out, and held his dark hand tightly, for one moment, or perhaps for two.

And then there was nothing in the courtyard back of Mustapha Stroheim’s Kahwa (or coffeehouse) in Heliopolis (which was once the city of the Sun, and is now a suburb of Cairo) but white ash, which blew up in the momentary breeze, and settled like powdered sugar or like snow; and nobody there but a young man with dark, dark hair and even, ivory-colored teeth, wearing an apron that said KISS THE COOK.

A tiny golden-purple bird stirred in the thick bed of ashes on top of the clay bricks, as if it were waking for the first time. It made a high-pitched “peep!” and it looked directly into the sun, as an infant looks at a parent. It stretched its wings as if to dry them, and, eventually, when it was quite ready, it flew upward, toward the sun, and nobody watched it leave but the young man in the courtyard.

There were two long golden feathers at the young man’s feet, beneath the ash that had once been a wooden table, and he gathered them up, and brushed the white ash from them and placed them, reverently, inside his jacket. Then he removed his apron, and he went upon his way.