Phoenix Without Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

began to clutch at his belly. The blackness and the lights and then—something else. Devon had never seen anything so huge. Nothing could be that large. Even the hills themselves and all the fields of Cypress Corners were dwarfed to insignificance by this thing. Shapes and lines and structures dwindled away in a perspective Devon’s eyes had never before attempted to encompass. He stared with incomprehension as his motion continued and this thing whatever-it-was began itself to shrink, diminishing with distance until it was even less than the other lights spangling the blackness.
    Then Devon felt there was nothing to touch, nothing on which to stand. Nothing, ever again.
     
    He awoke.
     

ONE
     
    Twenty kilometers above their heads, the hexagonal sun silently ticked another frame down the long track to sunset. It was early autumn, but that made no difference to the pine which shaded the couple beneath. They sat quietly, watching the village in the valley. A breeze hissed softly. A pine cone dropped to the bed of fallen needles.
    “What did you tell your parents?” said Devon suddenly.
    Rachel nestled her head against his shoulder without looking at him. “I do not lie to them, Devon. I said I would fetch thread from Master Cowley’s loom, and so I shall.”
    “Eventually.”
    “Yes, eventually.” This time she turned to face him, and this time Rachel smiled. Devon’s gray eyes, his dark hair, his slender, strong body, all pleased her.
    “You’ve never lied to your parents?”
    The smile left her lips. “Never.”
    Something made him say, “You’d not lie about this?”
    “No.” Rachel looked at him seriously. “I pray to the Creator that they never ask the right questions.”
    “You’d tell?”
    “I would tell them that I visit you here against their wishes and the directives of the Elders.”
    The silence came back between them, made more gentle by the scent of crushed pine needles. They continued to watch the valley through the screen of brush.
    The hills were rounded, falling in gentle slopes to the outlying farmsteads. Rachel and Devon were high enough to have an overview of most of Cypress Corners.
    The valley was an orderly patchwork quilt, a gridwork of farms and fields, lakes and woods. Only a few kilometers distant lay the village itself. Cypress Corners was constructed in a fashion as orderly as everything else in the world: there were the houses and the several shops laid out in a careful pattern. The four narrow roads radiated out, perfectly straight, until they were stopped by the hills which approached the sky.
    In the center of the town, the houses made up a circle around the Place of Worship. The houses were plastic and metal. The Place of Worship alone was solely constructedof wood. It was a somber temple, a plain, rectangular structure built of planks hewed from the trees that gave the world its name.
    An inner circle inside the greater, the ring of live cypresses screened off the Place of Worship from the rest of the town. Like all else, the cypress trees had each been placed as a component of the ordered design the planters sought.
    The sun sank one more frame toward the horizon.
    “I must go soon,” said Rachel. “I’ve spent too much time here.” Her elbows spread like wings as she began to wind up the long dark hair spilling down below the blades of her shoulders.
    Devon stopped her hands. He buried his face in the sweet, clean scent of her hair. The words were muffled but she still understood. “I wish we could stay here together. Forever.”
    “I know.” She gently disengaged herself. “But we cannot.”
    Devon started to say something.
    “My mother will be impatient for Master Cowley’s thread,” said Rachel. Expertly she pulled her hair into a tight bun. Dropping her hands, she indicated the wicker basket at their feet. “Master Cowley will settle for less cheese than my mother believes. The bread I baked myself. There are currants. I would not have you starve,