conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book about Phoenix, Psammead, Carpet entitled The Phoenix and the Carpet?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Phoenix and the Carpet: This middle volume of the trilogy that begins with Five Children and It and concludes with The Story of the Amulet, and deviates somewhat from the other two in that the Psammead is mentioned only briefly, and in this volume the five children live with both their parents in the family home in London.\nIn both the other volumes, circumstances have forced the children to spend protracted periods away from their home and their father.\nA continuing theme throughout The Phoenix and the Carpet is the ancient element of fire.\nThe story begins shortly before November 5, celebrated in Britain as Guy Fawkes Night.\nThe four children have accumulated a small hoard of fireworks for the night, but they are too impatient to wait until November 5 to light them, so they set off a few samples in the nursery.\nThis results in the fire that destroys the carpet.\nTheir parents purchase a second-hand carpet which is found to contain an egg that emits a phosphorescent glow.\nThe children accidentally knock this egg into the fire: it hatches, revealing a golden Phoenix who speaks perfect English.\nIt develops that this is a magic carpet that can transport the children anywhere they wish in the present time, although it is capable of satisfying only three wishes a day.\nAccompanied by the Phoenix, the children have exotic adventures.\nThere is one moment of terror when the youngest, the baby known as the Lamb, crawls onto the carpet, babbles incoherently and vanishes, but it turns out that the Lamb only desires to be with his mother.\nAt a few points in the novel, the children find themselves in predicaments from which the Phoenix is unable to rescue them by himself, so he goes to find the Psammead and has a wish granted for the children\'s sake.\nIn addition, at the end the carpet is sent to ask the Psammead to grant the Phoenix\'s wish.\nThese offstage incidents are the only contributions made by the Psammead to this story.\nThe Phoenix and the Carpet features depictions of London during the reign of Edward VII.\nAt one point, the children and their supernatural bird visit the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company: the egotistical Phoenix assumes that this is a temple dedicated to him and that the insurance executives must be his acolytes.\nThe children also have an encounter with two older ruffians, Herb and Ike, who attempt to steal the Phoenix.\nFour of the children (without the Lamb) attend a Christmas pantomime at a theatre in the West End of London, smuggling the Phoenix along inside Robert\'s coat.\nThe Phoenix is so excited by this spectacle that he unintentionally sets fire to the theatre.\nAll ends well when the Phoenix magically reverses the damage: no one is harmed, and the theatre remains intact.\nOne aspect of The Phoenix and the Carpet that is unusual for children\'s fantasy fiction is the fact that the magical companion does not treat all the children equally.\nThe Phoenix favours Robert, the child who put his egg in the fire, albeit by accident, over his brother Cyril and their sisters.\nThis is a mixed privilege, as Robert is lumbered with the duty of smuggling the Phoenix past their parents at inconvenient moments.\nIn the novel\'s final chapter, the Phoenix announces that he has reached the end of his current lifespan and must begin the cycle again, apparently on the grounds that life with the children has left him far more exhausted than he would have been in the wilderness.\nHe lays a new egg from which he will eventually be reborn.\nUnder the Phoenix\'s direction, the children prepare an altar with sweet incense, upon which the Phoenix immolates himself.\nThe magic carpet has also reached the end of its lifespan, as it was never intended to be walked upon regularly, and, at the request of the Phoenix, it takes the egg to a place where it won\'t hatch again for 2,000 years.\nThere is a happy ending, with the children receiving a parcel of gifts from an "unknown benefactor" (the Phoenix, who arranges this gift by means of a wish granted by the Psammead) and Robert receiving a single golden feather.\nBut the feather has vanished by the evening.\nThe last volume in the trilogy, The Story of the Amulet, contains a minor episode in which the children travel thousands of years into the past and encounter the Phoenix, who does not recognise them because the events of the previous book have not happened yet.