“Like, yeah man, you don’t wanna go there.”

You ask why. Is it im­pos­si­ble to get to? Heav­ily guarded?

“No, noth­in’ like that, dude, just… they’re s­trange, man. They’re d­if­fer­ent. It’s like they’re not hu­man.”

“They’re Phoenixes.”

“Yeah, that’s it ex­actly, man.”

“But I want to go there.” It’s a lead, at least.

“No, man, you re­ally don’t.”

“Then why did you tell me about it?”

“Dude. You asked.”

“I asked about the Phoenixes. You told me about their li­brary.”

“Well, yeah. That’s the news.”

“The news?”

“Yeah. There was that fire, right?”

“Right.” You have no idea what he’s talk­ing about, but Rule 23: never show ig­no­rance. “Big fire, huh?”

He looks at you strangely.

“No, man. Just a tiny wee thing. Lost The Book, though.”

You frown. What’s “The Book?” You’re not sure if you should give up on Rule 23, or if you should try to weasel it out some other way.

Well, it’s more of a guide­line, any­way.

“‘The Book?’ I don’t sup­pose you mean ‘The Bible?’”

“Never know, man, never know. Maybe the Phoenixes would, if they read.” Con­spir­a­to­ri­ally, he leans in to whis­per, “They ain’t hu­man, you know.”

You have, in­deed, been made aware. Then again you’re pretty sure they’re hu­man most of the time.

“It’s im­por­tant, then?”

“Yeah, it’s like, sup­posed to be the most im­por­tant book in the world. Ru­mor is it tells the fu­ture.”

“And it caught fire?”

“Yeah. Would­n’t even know about it if they weren’t hold­ing a show. Show­in’ off or some­thin’.”

“Did one of the spec­ta­tors set it?”

“Nah, not that the Phoenixes think, and they should be able to tell. I mean, they’ve got pow­ers, man. Pow­ers.”

“It’s not like it just set it­self,” you say, puz­zled. “Is it?”

The mag­i­cal hip­pie shrugs, and drops a foot. He’s high as a kite.
Lit­er­ally. Some­one’s fly­ing a kite next to him.

You duck, as its tail gets caught in the hip­pie’s long scrag­gly hair.

He does­n’t seem to no­tice.

You won­der why you chose to talk to him. Per­haps it was the way he was just calmly float­ing by the open win­dow as you walked by.

Hm… the kite is made from news­pa­per. Now you re­mem­ber. The hip­pie was read­ing that same news­pa­per edi­tion. Its ar­ti­cle was on the phoenix.

Your mind has been so scram­bled lately. You can be­gin a con­ver­sa­tion with a goal, and by five min­utes later, when it’s time to act to­wards that goal, en­tirely for­get what that goal was.

“Dude…”

“Yeah. Uh… what were we talk­ing about?”

“Oceans, man. Oceans. Oceans of fire. So beau­ti­ful.”

“In­deed. Some­thing about a li­brary?”

“Yeah, man. You don’t wanna go there.”

Yes, you know that bit al­ready. You ask how you get there.

“There are en­trances here and there round the world. All of them hard to get to. Don’t want every­one vis­it­ing at once, now, do they? And it’s not like they can’t just pop over to any of the en­trances any­way, so it’s no prob­lem for them.”

“Do you know where any of them are?”

“Just one, man, just one. Stum­bled across it once. Hawaii. Big is­land. A lit­tle cove. I got there at low tide, right time of year and every­thing. Easy peasy.”

You ask for a map.

He waves his hand, and a pen­cil ma­te­ri­al­izes in it. He sketches a rec­tan­gle, and lit­er­ally draws up a map for you.

It so­lid­i­fies into a heavy piece of pa­per map­ping the big is­land. And, nat­u­rally, a big X marks the spot.

“You prob­a­bly fly fast, man, you pro­lly haulin’ ass, right? Just a cou­ple hour trip, yeah?”

Yeah.

More like twelve hours of plane travel.

You can’t fly.