Abstract

'Gaze of the phoenix' is a moral story with a fairy tale ring to it. It borrows from ancient Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, Phoenician, even Native American, mythologies of the fire bird in order to create the effect of an ancient world. The use of a phoenix, a statuette, might compel the reader to ponder if the narrative should target children. But the story alludes to sex and intimacy, hinges around romantic relationship, all themes that surround the interests of an adolescent. In this element, it presents itself as crossover text (Beckton 2014) where a child, a young adolescent (perhaps 12-13), a new adult (aged 17+, capped at 25), even an adult may read it and find enjoyment. Young adult literature has had its share of authors who have stretched boundaries (Crowe 2002: 116). Take example of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels that started off as children's stories, but gathered strength in adolescents, and adults. The use of narratological devices such as voice, theme and dialogue in 'Gaze of the phoenix' help to engage the reader, irrespective of whichever audience preconception they may approach the story with. The period of emerging adulthood is, for some, relatively free of 'the rules of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood' (Halpern-Meekin et al.: 3), but situations can occur to a young adult that stem from emotional and relational conflict, things that forge erratic behaviour where value systems are not well shaped. Perhaps this is what is evidenced in our new adult Lucia whose character manifests itself as naturally vain, where she is unable to grow into her marriage with likeable lover/husband Teron and her flaws eventually consume her.

Key words: short story, fantasy, young adult, moral story, mythology

A SPRAY OF PETALS mottled carroty hair sprawled on olive grass. Teron and Lucia lay fingers entwined, gazing at a lavender streaked with longitudes of cloud.

'Ridiculous,' Lucia said, and sat up. She touched her neck, toyed with the stained glass pendant in the necklet Teron had crafted for her.

'And that's the truth,' Teron said. He rolled, raised himself on elbows. 'A garland of flowers.' He looked at her. Charcoal eyes gleamed like enkindled coal.

Deep, deep eyes, hers, greyed with indignation. She swung her hair and tails of its tresses brushed Teron's face.

'Rubbish,' she said. 'Liken me to...flowers?'

'Exotic ones.'

'Just exotic?' A fiend hovered in her glide of eye.

'A lilium and calliandra hybrid. A rainbow fire hibiscus with mottles of peaches and cream. You are the most radiant thing. Such is your beauty there is no match, I swear, in the entire galaxy.'

'You only say that because...' She gazed at her hands, at the rhinestone in the promise ring Teron had fashioned.

'Because?'

'You want to touch my petticoats.' Giggle.

'And that's the truth, but there is more.' He clasped her hands. 'Dance with me, Lucia. Will you dance with me forever?'

As a playful wind blew on his skin, as it motioned Lucia's hair, vast possibilities spread before them. They would wed. They would love. They would give all.

* * *

On the eve of the wedding, Teron's mother Havana came with a gift for the bride. It was a paragon of a phoenix more handsome than the gifts Teron had ever bequeathed Lucia.

'But it's an heirloom!' protested Lucia. 'Your mother and her mother ... the sacred craft of your forefathers...'

'Shush.' Havana pressed the cold sculpture into her daughter-in-law's hands. 'I want you to have it.'

Lucia could have previously sworn Havana detested her. Why, the woman was always aloof. And yet this ... this wedding gift.

Lucia cradled the paragon, a majestic bird that resembled an eagle. It was sculpted in red and gold. It held rubies in its eye. It was the most fine-looking object she had ever seen.

People spoke of the wedding twelve lunars straight, perhaps more. Variant accounts of the same story existed. Each description sprigged Lucia's hair with whatever blooms were in flower at the time of the telling: flamingo grevillea, purple and green lobelia, sun jewelled portulaca, satin dusk sunflowers, velvet eyed daylilies ... but all narrations held something in common: how the groom sparkled with exuberance; how exquisite was the bride.

* * *

The first week of marriage was bliss. So was the second, and the third.

Then, slowly, the couple began to spread apart like scattered clouds. There was nothing major: just disagreements, small ones. Often, these arose because Teron, a husband now, no longer spoke without coaxing or desire of Lucia's eye-enveloping beauty. When his eye held tenderness, it was with compromise: Lucia's wifely duties. Even then, in compromise, when he spoke of it, Lucia's beauty, her glee, was startling.

In her craving for daily affirmation, Lucia was never tranquil. She noticed how unsettled she became especially in the presence of the phoenix. Something about the bird ... perhaps it was the ruby eyes that were dull yet questioning ... She found herself putting Teron to test after test, nudging him to raise comparisons for her beauty and how she surpassed them all:

More regal than a white peacock's tail. And that's the truth.

More exquisite than polished Bismuth crystals. And that's the truth.

More spectacular than a Koroit opal... than a meteorite... a glowing jungle ... an aurora...

She trembled when he compared her perfection to jazz, to folk music, to opera. 'How rich with soul,' he would say. 'Pulsing with such groove, such velvety resonance ... ' He would then proceed to exaggerated elaborations of the mysticism, something celestial, that he felt in her presence.

Her desire for confirmation, adulation, became a disease. It tired. It scarred. Before long, nothing Teron said about her beauty was shimmering enough, noble enough, remarkable enough to satiate Lucia's craving. It infected her happiness. Her spirit plunged into darkness. She became wretched, detached. When Teron compared her beauty to the brilliant spectrum of a fire rainbow, to the rarity of a black sun and a shower of red rain and an everlasting storm ... Lucia roared from the kitchen and chased him with a cleaver.

Teron applied himself to the task of being provider. After all, Lucia loved her fowl, and he loved the way she cooked it: with mustard, pumpkin and cloves. Her mushroom gravy was dusted with cardamom. He built hunger in his itinerant activities as a peddler, where he marketed handcrafted bracelets, pendants, rings and earrings, brought notable income as he was also personable. People adored him as much as they adored his goods, so peddling introduced friends and revenue, and he could bring home a bird more often than most folk. But Teron's work likewise abetted his evasion of Lucia as she drifted in and out of dispositions, of befuddling mood swings whose ensuing voids Teron could no longer fill. Nothing could seal the abyss that threatened to swallow Lucia. Teron never knew which place in her spirit's cycle she would be when he got home, whether he might find her mad or depressed, if she would hurl crockery and furnishings at a wall or fold into herself in a corner of the bed.

When Lucia's eye was not warring, it was distant. Beauty no longer held them together as it once did. In rare times Teron would gaze at her with a wide smile, his eyes pleading, as he tried to remember the exquisiteness that once was, but all he saw was a shrew. It was as if she made herself less ugly by finding ugliness in Teron. The timbre of her voice grew spiteful, the personal nature of her attacks brutal enough to silence and then distance him. His hair was too long, too short, too clumpy, too dirty, too stringy. He couldn't pee straight; his teeth were not white, not bright enough; his waist was too filled with spread and he was not even middle aged... He was home too much, too little.

If at one time in the beginning he tried hunting ways to please her, now he stopped entirely. Nothing could dispel the shadows, the taints, the goading of her discontent. Pleasing her was a Herculean task. As for the subject of beauty ... He said nothing. What could he say without risking the cleaver?

* * *

Lucia sat brooding on the bed. Teron was away peddling again. Absently, she stretched her hand and stroked the sculpted bird, the gift from Havana staring blankly from the dresser. Once or twice she could have sworn the phoenix regarded her sidelong.

'Teron doesn't love me,' she said to her hands, and dismissed the phoenix's personal gaze as nothing more than the edge of lunacy.

Next day, Lucia's eye again fell upon the phoenix on her dressing table, eye like a mirror. She gazed deep into the mirror-eye, looked to catch a reflection of her beauty, and found none.

That night, Teron chewed madly at a fowl's bone, cleaned his tooth with the tip of a dirty nail and said, 'How about some gravy,' between chompfuls.

Lucia hurled the half-carved bird in his direction. He ducked. The bird smacked the wall and slid to the floor, and left a trail of oil. Lucia snatched the carving knife.

Teron fell back. 'What is this!' he cried. The knife clattered somewhere behind him.

'Your appetite!'

Teron dodged and weaved. A chair soared an inch from his nose. A plate found his head. Lucia grabbed and overturned the table. Before she could lift a chair to fly it in his direction, Teron tackled his wife to the ground with the strength he would have used on an ox.

'You should have married your stomach! Let go of me! Let go!'

'But I love you,' he stammered.

'Like hell you do!'

She fell to her bed where she cried and cried before she noticed the phoenix, as it considered her.

* * *

Next day Teron was off peddling. In a moment of insanity Lucia posed before the paragon and said wistfully, 'Who is the most beautiful?'

The red jewel in the phoenix's eye twinkled.

'You are the most fiery,' a voice said.

Startled, Lucia glanced. The bird sat stock-still.

'Did you ... talk?' she said.

Ruby eyes regarded her evenly.

'You are the most fiery,' the bird said.

Its eye shifted and sparkled a little more.

And though Lucia's jaw dropped in wonderment, the paragon's words clung like a cloak. She was beautiful! The phoenix said so! And she couldn't agree more. The fieriest dame! How about that?

She felt free and whole, and could barely gird her ecstasy before it overwhelmed. She danced around the room. Thrice that day, the bird watching her, she asked, 'Who is the most beautiful?'

Each time, the response was the same.

Her bottom lip trembled. And right there, inside the mirror gaze of the phoenix, her beauty unfolded. Dullness lifted from her eyes and they softened, became younger, deep as deep, like before.

That evening when Teron came home, Lucia was sociable to him, even a little tender maybe. She touched his arm. 'It will be better now,' she said. 'Really. You'll see.'

She did not tell him about the bird.

Days passed without Lucia interrogating the bird. Slowly, doubt and insecurity returned. One morning she waited with impatience until Teron was gone. She mustered her question and raced to the bedroom. She stood before the phoenix.

'Who is the most beautiful?'

The sculpture's ruby eye danced like cinders of fire.

'You are the most fiery,' it said.

Inside its gaze, Lucia caught her reflection. Her beauty had increased threefold. She touched her skin. It was soft as a baby's bottom. Her hair shimmered with light. Orange tresses fell in ringlets to her waist.

More days passed.

One morn, Lucia woke depressed. She had to know, but stupid Teron was taking his time leaving the house. She pushed him out the door without a goodbye caress, and flew to the phoenix.

'Who is the most beautiful?'

The ruby eye burnt redder, brighter.

'You are the most fiery,' the bird said. Its eye gleamed like a shooting star.

Lucia laughed out loud. Her voice was a beautiful river of sound. Sun glided in and out of her locks. Her cheekbones rose higher, her bones became finer. Wind spread cream on her skin.

Everyone amazed at her radiance.

'What a spell-binding creature,' people said. 'She is oh-so-beautiful!'

'Your aura is stellar,' said Teron. 'Your sparkle is surreal, I can almost hear it tinkle. And that's the truth.'

That night Lucia straddled him of her own accord, rode him to a rainbow whose light was twice as wide and the longest he had ever seen. The reds and yellows and blues and greens were ever so bright and the spectrum ever so intense, it swallowed his cry of pleasure.

* * *

Teron was euphoric to have his old Lucia back.

So he was thrown aback when out of the blue she said, 'Take the paragon. I want you to peddle it.'

'But it's a wedding gift. One of sacred value. Why would you suggest selling it?'

Lucia burst into tears.

Teron was trite but confounded. 'I mean, I don't know... but if, if... you really want us to consider a different home for the phoenix, I'm sure Mother...' he lifted the phoenix.

With a growl in her throat Lucia snatched the paragon and cradled it.

Nothing more was spoken of the incident.

* * *

Lucia kept away from the paragon and lavished her attention on Teron. She spiced his fowl with smoked bay leaves, and garnished it with pineapple broth. The chilli-lime combination she put on a plate for him the following day he polished, and the earth-roasted bread she served with charred tomato and broccoli salad the day after he wolfed.

Inside a week, Lucia struggled to stick with Teron. She was agitated and fidgeted before the bird, but Teron this morning lingered. Finally she couldn't help herself. She tugged him by the hand and shoved him out of the house. He turned, astonished, but she slammed the door to his face.

'But my bag!'

She ran to fetch from under the table the bag he used for his peddling business. 'There!' she flung it out the window and latched it before Teron could think to climb into the house.

Breathless, she fired her question to the bird: 'Who is the most beautiful in galaxies and galaxies, in the whole universe?'

The phoenix smiled.

Its ruby eye sizzled like brilliant flames.

'You are the most fiery,' it said. 'And to me the most desirable.'

A blast of flame shot from its beak. A volcano rumbled and lit the room violet. A pyre of flames engulfed Lucia and devoured her to a mound of ash. The paragon jumped from the dresser, reborn.

She was a ravishing beauty of golden skin and blazing hair.

Image reproduced from Dreamscapes Myth & Magic (Law 2010: 117). Copyright @ Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, www.shadowscapes.com

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Research background

This research focuses on building upon conversations on the phenomenon of 'crossover' books and debates on traditional boundaries of literature for children and adolescents (Crowe 116). It illustrates what Denise Beckton discusses of an 'increasingly and sophisticated and diversely themed' YA fiction market (2014: 1), where genres and audiences cross. It listens to C.S.Lewis who conveys in his preface that he wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) as a gift to his godchild, a book that today adults continue to read. Through the use of narratological devices such as voice and characterisation, Lewis taps into the young mind, uses imaginary concepts (talking animals; a bottomless wardrobe) and characterisation (Edmund, Lucy, Aslan, the white witch...) to explore themes of love, fear, temptation and courage, to climax a battle between good and evil (Palmer 2005). Through all this, and more, he manages to engage a broader audience.

Kyungwon Koh interrogates a theory of radical change (2015: 2) and discusses how youth empowerment arrives through learning, creating and socialising (2015: 8). The diversified YA fiction market offers writers an innovative way to tap into and interact with the curious youth, the budding adult, basically any person who is still seeking, applying, remixing and tinkering with learnings, who is self-expressing and negotiating value-systems (Koh 2015: 8-16). The quest for empowerment allows for both receptiveness and vulnerability. Gaze of the phoenix is not quite a crossover because of its minimalism, although some romance elements may appeal to other audiences. But whichever age of its readership, the story offers an ageless moral on the follies of narcissism.

This narrative draws from ancient folklore of a fire spirit that some legend suggests has a 500-1000 year life cycle (Mythical creatures guide n.d.). Fable has it that the phoenix is a flaming bird, a wondrous and magnificent creature; that only one can exist at a given time. The phoenix symbolises life and death, beginning and end (Law 2010: 116). As the only one of its kind, the phoenix endures a solitary existence and, when the dusk of its life approaches, it builds a nest and bursts into flame, and burns to ash, from which a new phoenix regenerates (Bulfinch 2014: 478). In a few stories, the phoenix morphs into a person. Native American mythology refers to the phoenix as the thunderbird and believes it to display paradoxical attributes that link it to the trickster (Mizrach n.d.). Gaze of the phoenix uses this imagery to compound the storytelling.

Research contribution

Gaze of the phoenix challenges preconceptions of what constitutes a YA story. It bears itself as a simple story with the noble intention of counsel. It aims to convey a message, which makes it a fable, and exploits a writer's prospect to reaching the child, the adolescent, the adult, through storytelling. The story draws upon analogy, as in the traditional parable or fable (Russell-March 2009: 3). While its misleading simplicity might not prompt profound philosophical thought, as an art-tale would (2009: 9), the story works to depict Lucia as an explicit and cliched character type, but one who raises the reader's consciousness, whichever reader, of narcissism and its dangers. Being a 'literary fragment' (March-Russell 2009, p. viii), the short story gets away with an implicit conclusion, with leaving the reader to determine whether the being reborn from the phoenix is Lucia, or something else that was trapped.

Research significance

Despite the apparent simplicity of its narrative composition, Gaze of the phoenix contributes to discussion on crossover narratives and YA boundary breakers. It is being considered for publication in a reputable refereed journal.

Works cited

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Bulfinch, Thomas 2014, Bulfinch's mythology, Canterbury Classics, San Diego

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