I recently wrote that the roosts, overdue and heavy and greying, would go up together in a single burning the city could not survive. I now realize that I may be wrong about how this would end. The phoenixes of the square lifted from their roosts and left.
If you have not walked through the square lately, walk through it now. The iron stands along the walks stand cold and bare. The great roosts on the spires, the ones that sat so crowded the dark never settled beneath them, are empty rings of ash and old feathers. The square that has never in living memory been fully dark is dark now, and the University has hung lanterns, actual lanterns, from the posts where the birds used to burn bright.
Where they went, I cannot tell you, and neither can anyone I asked. There are no accounts of a phoenix roost abandoning the city, none in the old records and none the naturalists can point to. I put the question to the aviary, to the groundskeepers, to the tower wardens who would have had the best view of any mass flight, and I came away with nothing. No one saw them go. Some in the square insist the birds went south. I record that here for what little it is worth.
A handful still remain in the aviary at the edge of the square, the oldest and greyest of the flock, the very birds Professor Orrery’s study had marked as the most overdue. They sit warm and heavy and patient as ever. But Professor Orrery told me that the camera she keeps trained on their activity has caught them in the middle of the night, hyperactive and loud, as though they were trying to escape their cage. This behavior, she said, is new to her, and has never been recorded.
If you see any phoenix in Vaelthir, please write to the Chronicle. They may be dangerous, but they are important to our city.
Perrin Callow writes for the Chronicle’s Science Desk. Anyone who witnessed the phoenixes leaving the University square, or who has seen roosting phoenixes anywhere beyond the city in recent weeks, is asked to write to the desk by owl. Accounts will be held in confidence.