Phoenix: The Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

child? After all, she had disobeyed them and gone to Paoha. But the Great Spirit answered her prayers, didn’t it? As her child passed on, she was given a new one to care for. Surely, they would understand this.
    Laylah would not have to wait long for her answer. As soon as she returned to camp with the strange child, the Elders and her husband gathered at the council shelter.
    “Laylah,” her husband ordered, “you must keep watch while we meet.” Laylah’s husband took the child from her and ducked into the shelter with the Elders.
    She closed her eyes and leaned back against the bark-covered walls of the shelter, listening to the singing of her people back in the camp just over the rise. The heaviness of her milk-laden breasts was a constant reminder of the child she lost and the child whose fate the elders and her husband were deciding upon right now. Was this the Fire-Child? If so, surely the elders and her husband would see that she had been chosen to be its mother. After all, even her name, Laylah—the Protector—bore witness to that.
    An uneasy feeling shrouded Laylah’s thoughts and her eyes shot open. Something was wrong. The singing she had been enjoying stopped. She looked toward the main camp and squinted as a lone, dark figure emerged on the crest of the rise. Laylah stayed frozen in her spot, unable to move as the strides of this huge stranger brought it ever nearer. Finally, her senses returned, and she ran into the shelter.
    “Tse’nahaha! Giant!” she shrieked as she grabbed the sleeping child and dove under a large basket in a darkened corner of the room. Her husband and the elders looked towards the door as a massive body filled the space. Before they could react, The Great One stuck its head inside. Laylah closed her eyes and tried to still her breath as bones snapped and bodies slumped to the floor. She heard The Great One moving about the room and shuddered as its foot hit the basket, but the basket shifted only slightly. A few moments later, the room was silent.
    Laylah stayed under the basket until she noticed the daylight fading. The child stirred as she slowly lifted the edge to see if the giant truly was gone. The vacant stare of her husband’s dead eyes met hers as he lay on the dirt floor of the shelter, and she stifled a scream. She lifted the basket off completely, and sat in silence, staring at the mangled bodies of the five dead men in the room...
     
    Julie bolted upright in bed as a scream erupted from her throat—a scream that began in her dreams and eventually manifested itself in her sleeping vocal cords—a scream of pure terror! Her eyes flew open, and she looked around. Her frantic breathing slowed as she realized she was in her bedroom. Grabbing a pillow, she hugged it to her body and lay on her side, staring at the green glow of her digital alarm clock. Something had been chasing her ... something huge and dark and faceless. She could still feel its icy breath on the back of her neck. But it didn’t get her. Not this time.
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    Charsey leaned against a neighboring locker and watched as Julie worked the dial once again. She shook her head when it opened on the first try.
    “I really do not understand how you can do that!”
    Julie shrugged and hung up her book bag. “Mine is not to reason why...”
    It was almost as if she could hear the gears of Charsey’s brain whirring, trying to catch—trying to make sense of what she had just said.
    “What?” 
    Julie sighed. “I’m paraphrasing Tennyson.” She slammed the locker and twirled the dial.
    “Who?”
    Julie smiled and shook her head at her amazingly ditzy friend. “Just a guy who wrote poetry.”
    Purple and white football jerseys, Warrior t-shirts, and short, pleated cheerleading skirts, including the one Charsey wore, littered the hallway as the girls headed to their first class. Charsey was the junior captain of the cheerleading squad. Today she wore her hair in a perky ponytail,