Green Phoenix by Thomas Burnett Swann

Author:Thomas Burnett Swann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Greece, Troy, fantasy, Aeneas, myth, legend, fairy tale
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2011-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m not coming back,” she said to Ascanius when they were beyond Aeneas’ hearing, shut from the camp by slender elm trees which looked like Dryads dancing in the moon. “I can’t come back. Volumna has threatened to burn my tree.”

Ascanius gasped. “To kill you?”

“Yes. She came with some of her friends and called me down from my house — ‘Bring your hand-loom, Mellonia’ — and made me watch as they laid brush wood against the trunk. ‘I have only to strike a flint-stone and the whole tree will become a pillar of fire.’”

“Can you find another tree?”

“No. The tree in which I was born will die with me, or I will die with her. But Volumna has made me a promise.”

“What, Mellonia?”

“Not to strike the flint if I make a promise to her. To leave Aeneas. Never to see him again.”

“Of course you shall see him again,” he cried, feeling for his dagger, feeling warrior and son. “We’ve only to capture the grove and save your tree. We can even make you the queen!”

“Some of your men would die. We have our poisons, you know. And stealth. And all of my people would die before they would yield their trees. Yes, you could probably capture the grove. The Fauns would no doubt help you. They have never liked us, except asleep. But I would live among corpses. Do you think I would want to lose my people, Phoenix? I could leave them, and gladly, if my blood were red like yours. But condemn them to death, never.”

“They deserve no better.”

“You don’t know them. Some are my friends. Dearer than Bounder, and just as innocent. Do you want to kill them too?”

Yes, he wanted to kill them! It seemed to him that there were two kinds of Dryad, Mellonia and Volumna, and Mellonia’s so-called friends were like their queen, or why did they let her rule? But that, he knew, was one of his flaws; he was over-quick to anger and judge; unwilling to sift the amber from the seaweed.

“Do you, Phoenix?”

“No,” he faltered.

“Tell your father that — that — oh, Phoenix, he does like pretty words, and I can’t seem to think of anything. Except I’m glad he came to this land, and came to me in the Sacred Oak. He spoke of a curse. He thought he was going to hurt me. Well, he did. But I don’t mind. Did you ever see those fat, silken lilies the Centaurs grow in their gardens? And tend and water and cover with moss in a heavy thunderstorm? They’re pretty enough, graceful as hyacinths, but you won’t find a true feeling among them. Cut down a flower, and what does the one beside her think? ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me.’

“I hurt your father too. But he was festering with old wounds. Perhaps in time he will see me not as another wound but as a salve of basil and horehound, which burns at first but finally draws out the pain.”

She threw

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