As the sides of the basket rose, the sweeping tail of a phoenix followed the curve.The phoenix wings became a handle on one side while the other swept up.The head appeared with a long, graceful beak that lifted away from the basket and became a sculptural element below the rim.Leander feared such a delicate structure would break too easily, and he poured his magic into it, blessing it with strength.
The rightness of the basket filled him...not with joy, but with something similar, some feeling stained with contentment and pride.When he finally broke his consciousness away from the reeds and the basket, he stared in wonder.It stood at least four feet tall, and the phoenix was in every shade of brown from the dried reeds.Thousand hues hinted at fire at life at movement.
Xi was crouching next to him .“Oh my God, that is stunning.”
Leander’s head was still swimming from the magic, and he couldn’t quite catch his breath.Xi gave him a concerned look but then sat down.The few reeds that had survived Leander’s basket-making radiated growth, their roots reaching into the soil where their fellows had vanished.
“That was intense.Were you meditating?”Xi asked.
“Maybe,” Leander said.When he’d lived in China before, his teacher had told him that meditation was the surest way to cultivate magic, but he had taught meditation as a process of letting go, and Leander held on tightly to his plants when he wove his magic.
“You sat for hours without moving.It felt like mediation.”
“It’s my magic,” Leander said.He had no other explanation.“We have to get these baskets back to the Nie house.”Besides the grand phoenix basket, he had a dozen smaller baskets in various shapes and sizes.Leander started to nest the smaller baskets inside the larger ones.
Leander considered the hillside before sending his magic out.It was sluggish and dull and tired, but it obeyed his call.The vegetation was well-rooted and firm under their hands and feet.
“Can we talk about what you said now?”Xi asked.
Leander frowned.“What did I say?”
“Joking about dying,” Xi said, his voice carrying an edge of anger.
Leander did not want to rehash this again.“We have to be very careful with the baskets.”
Xi pressed his lips together and then took a visible breath.For someone who usually controlled his emotions, he might as well wave semaphore flags.“That phoenix basket looks like it belongs in a museum.That said, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the damn baskets if you’re going to joke about your life.”
Leander left the smaller baskets stacked in an unwieldy tower and braced the phoenix basket on his hip before he started climbing the hillside.His fear of damaging the design nearly made him insist on walking a long way, but he had an overwhelming urge to get away from Xi, and wading a mile or two upstream only to double back...yeah, he didn’t have patience for that.
“Are you seriously walking away from this conversation?”Xi demanded, but at least he made himself useful by grabbing the rest of the baskets before following Leander up the slope .
“How shocking.You can recognize reality when it is five feet in front of you.”Leander was panting from the effort of climbing, but he had never let physical exertion stop him from calling out stupidity.
Xi had almost caught up, when a strange cry—halfway between a peacock’s shrill scream in a soprano’s high note—filled the air.Leaves rustled in a sudden wind, and a giant bird swooped down at Xi.Xi threw the baskets he was carrying upward.The motion left him standing on the steep slope, and his eyes grew large as gravity pulled him backward.He wasn’t sliding down but in danger of tumbling headfirst toward the rocks below.His own basket forgotten, Leander grabbed for Xi’s hand, catching it at the last second.
For one moment he hoped they had avoided disaster.Then a sharp sting in his shoulder loosened his hold, and a great flapping sent them tumbling down the hill, the peacock cry chasing them as they fell.
