“Sapphire,” said Mark. They were still walking together, ambling along the path that led from the back of Scrubs to the sad little patch of longer grass that had once been the old cricket pavilion. Even now, to her senses, the outlines of a triple summoning array remained burned into the mundane earth here. Twenty years ago, two children had tried to master a power far beyond them. They had got what they deserved. It was a very, very bad idea to enter into a direct contest of magical strength with a higher demon.

“Sapphire?”

The Phoenix turned back to her enemy, encroaching outsider, power-hungry pest. He was a threat to her territory, her school. She understood school as she never had before. It was part of her. She ruled here. She smiled at him.

“I’m afraid not,” she said.

FEBRUARY HALF TERM

SPRING II

EASTER

SUMMER I

chapter twenty-eight PHOENIX INDWELLING

You come from a desert. You have a memory, ancient, of soaring on updrafts over unforgiving red country.

You come from small beginnings. You were too small even for memory in the very earliest days. You know that you scrabbled and fought for your right to be. You imagine it in the terms that make sense in this world of motion and matter: the tearing talons, the slashing spurs.

You have grown old and strong and terrible. You have chosen a place in the world and made it your own. It is a good place. You know this word, ‘good.’ It is a safe place. You have learned this concept, ‘safe.’ You understood it first and best for yourself: but you are too old, too strong, and too terrible ever to be safe. There is a punishment for triumph, a punishment for victory, a punishment for ascension. Now you have these things, you must defend them forever.

Your safe place had a previous inhabitant, a mighty old bottom-feeder already rotting in his shell. You knew he was there. You concealed yourself, waiting. When he tried to strike, you arose in flame and cast him down. He was very stupid. Imagine being so stupid! But of course you were also, once, very stupid. The thing that soared on wings of fire knew the joy of great power, but not the purpose. It was enough, in those days, just to exist.

You are older, wiser, better than that. You have climbed past ‘exist’ and ‘endure’ and ‘succeed,’ past the hunger and the contest. You have chosen a self to become. You have examined, in memory, several articles on educational psychology, including a number of colourful triangle diagrams of progression, and so discovered that you are at the top of the pyramid. You are, in fact, self-actualising! Well done!