Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (17 page)

“You dare question me under my own roof? The man
of the house is to be respected, not like your neutered oaf with a cabbage leaf
for a tongue and milk for blood.”

Borr swallowed, but said nothing. It was clear the
insult had struck hard.

Harriet coloured. “You call this respect,” she
said, pointing at the cowering wife and son. “She flinches every time you turn
to her. You like that? Those bruises Aedan had after we escaped the wolves.
That was you, wasn’t it? Lost your temper after losing the wagon, didn’t you?
That’s why you couldn’t look him in the eye for weeks afterwards when he tried
to impress you with all that silly hunting of his. I would guess the only time
you truly give him recognition is when you’re too angry to hold it back. Isn’t
that so?”

Aedan cringed. For once Harriet had struck the
mark. Even he felt his father’s shame and couldn’t bring himself to look at
him. He wished, though, that Harriet had understood a little more, enough to
know that her tirade would only serve to provoke. Instead she carried on.

“Clauman, it’s time I put you in your place. If
there’s one thing I know it’s how to –”

“Enough!” Clauman bellowed. The look he turned on
her was pure hatred. “Get out of my house you foolish woman before I give
you
something to flinch at.”

Suddenly, whatever ran in Borr’s veins began to
boil. He stepped in front of his wife and fixed Clauman with a look that had no
milkiness to it. “You … you speak to her like that again … I’ll … I’ll …” His
arms were pushed out, fingers twitching. Words, as usual did not serve him
well, but he made his meaning clear enough when he smacked a heavy fist into
his palm.

Even Clauman flinched at that. Borr let his eyes
linger awhile and then turned to leave, but Nessa called him back.

“Wait!” she shouted. She got to her feet and spoke
in a voice that trembled as though her very soul were quaking. “If it were just
me, I could take it. But I cannot stand by and see my son beaten like a dog
anymore. Harriet, you have finally said what has died on my tongue for years,
and if I don’t speak now, I’ll never find the courage again. Clauman, it cannot
carry on.”

Aedan wished someone would say something. The
silence that now filled the room was more threatening than any of the preceding
words. His father’s lips twitched and his eyes grew as hard as frost.

“You have chosen poorly,” he said to her with
deathly composure. “From now on you would be wise to count me among your
enemies.”

With that, he strode from the room and slammed the
door behind him, striking them harder with his leaving than he had ever done with
fists or boots. Nessa disintegrated into a flood of tears, and Harriet rushed
to her while Borr stood silently by.

Despite Harriet’s insistence, Nessa decided to
wait a week, in case Clauman changed his mind. Both Borr and Harriet looked
worried as they left. Aedan had never expected to want their company, but as
their footsteps faded down the stairwell, the fear that crept up in him was
sharp. When he and his mother were alone again in the empty little room, he
felt the weight of the city begin to swell and press from all around. Not even
in DinEilan had he felt so trapped, so vulnerable. There were enemies here he
would not even recognise, enemies against which he could take no precautions.

The day was interminable. Heat and worry exhausted
him. That night he remained awake as long as he was able, but finally a deep
sleep fell on him like a thick and heavy blanket, shutting in fatigue, shutting
out everything else.

When the town bells pealed out through the darkness, Aedan
thought it might be some midnight celebration. But then other sounds filtered
into his dreamy half-thoughts – crashing timbers, panicked voices and a deep
roar that sounded at first like a rushing wind. He opened his eyes. A ruddy
glow from the gap beneath the door revealed twisting billows of thick smoke.

“Mother!” he yelled, and burst into a fit of
coughing. Smoke was filling the room at an alarming rate, drifting up through
the floorboards. His bare feet told him that the boards were dry, for once. And
hot.

He reached his mother and began shaking her. She
surfaced slowly, dulled by the thick air, and looked around in a stupor.

“Is it day already?”

“Fire!” Aedan shouted. “We need to get out.”

She staggered to her feet, taking in the scene and
grasping its meaning. Flames began to leap up through the gaps in the floorboards
as they staggered to the door. They opened it and immediately fell backwards
from the heat of flames that surged into the room. Aedan slammed the door
closed. It felt as if the skin on his face and hands was bubbling.

For a moment he was overwhelmed with the pain in
his temporarily blinded eyes. When he was able to look around, he saw his
mother biting her fingers, eyes travelling the walls helplessly. It was clear
she had no idea what to do. Neither did Aedan. A puff of clearer air disturbing
the smoke reminded him of the permanently open window.

He rushed across, leaned out and and looked
beneath him. The walls were panelled and sheer. He might be able to climb down,
but his mother would have no chance. He looked up. Long beams projected just
over the window. It looked as if it would be possible to step from there onto
the roof and then move along the row to a building that was not on fire.

Nessa was still biting her fingers, staring.

“Mother,” Aedan shouted over the growing rumble.
“We need to get onto the roof.”

His mother looked at him with something between
disbelief and horror.

“Look,” Aedan said, drawing her to the window. “We
can’t go down. The only way out is up.”

She stared for a long time at the people running
and screaming in wild confusion. Aedan looked back at the flames growing
through the floorboards, and the smoke streaming under the door. At last she agreed.

Aedan went first. Trying not to think of the fall,
he put his left leg over the windowsill and gripped the inside of the frame
with his right hand while reaching out with his left for the outer beam. Once
he had a firm hold, he released his grip on the frame, leaned out and reached
for the next beam. With his hands secure, he stood on the base of the sill,
jumped into the air between the beams he was holding – at which his mother
gasped – and straightened his elbows, taking all his weight on his arms by
pressing down with his hands. This allowed him to swing his feet onto the same
surfaces. For a light-bodied tree climber it was nothing much. A step would
take him to the roof.

He shouted encouragement down to his mother over
the rumble of the fire and the screams of those fleeing it. But something was
wrong. Even over the past days he had noticed a vacancy and slowness in her
eyes, an aimless shuffling within some deep internal labyrinths. Now the
shuffling had slowed to a halt.

“Mother!” he yelled. “You have to move or the fire
will catch us. I can’t carry you.”

She gazed at him with semi-lucid recognition, then
with no apparent awareness of the danger, repeated the motions Aedan had just demonstrated.
She might have lacked his agility, but her greater height made the manoeuvre
far less demanding. He grasped her arm and helped her onto the roof. It was built
of slippery wooden shingles and it was steep. Barefoot, they were able to creep
up to the spine. One shingle leapt out from under Aedan and almost took him
with as it spun off the roof into the waiting void.

When their heads rose over the apex, they reeled,
taking in the full force of their enemy.

The fire that they had seen in the stairwell was
but a hatchling. The surging beast that towered before them, its feet planted
in Miller’s Court, was a monster, a swelling fiend with blood-red limbs that
curled and thrashed overhead. It roared with enough force to shake the ground
as it ate its way forward. They stared and blinked, dumbstruck, their eyes
dazzled by the glare. The whole city seemed to be lit up, bright as day.

Once he had recovered his wits, Aedan looked
around for some escape. To the right, shingles burst and caught fire ahead of a
second blaze as flames surged up from below. He could feel that the roof
beneath him was warming quickly. To the left, there was no fire, only a little
smoke, but neither was there a way down or a crossing to another roof. It ended
in a sheer drop of four storeys. But if they could get into one of the rooms at
the end of the wing, Aedan thought, they might be able to find a different
stairway.

“This way,” he called, tugging his mother’s
sleeve. When they reached the end of the roof, he leaned over the edge and saw
that the shutters of the room beneath were closed, blocking that entry. He
decided that this might not be a bad thing as he didn’t want to trust his
mother with that climb again.

Making sure of his footing, he began to work a
shingle loose, careful not to drop it on the crowded street below. Once the
first was out, he found it easier to remove more. The beams under the shingles
were close together but they were weak and old. A few good kicks produced a
hole big enough to climb though. The ceiling boards were soft with rot and
broke easily, allowing him to see into the room. It was dark. He helped his
mother, lowering her down into the room, and followed after her.

With a pang of fear, he realised that there was
smoke in this room too. He ran to the door and pulled it open. Small flames and
acrid clouds filled the stairway, billowing into the room, but the heat was
bearable. It would not be that way for long.

He grabbed his mother’s hand and pulled her out
onto the landing and down the stairs. At the second floor, the flames had
spread across the stairway but were still small enough to be crossed. It was
when they reached the first floor that their good fortune ended. Two furiously burning
trusses had fallen on the stairs, blocking them. There was no way to squeeze
past without being set alight.

As Aedan looked, he heard the growing roar through
the wall partitions.

It was close, he could feel the floor shaking as
the monster rumbled forward. This was no time for careful thinking and thorough
planning.

Covering his face as well as he was able, he ran
up to the first truss and kicked it, then dived back from the heat. It still
stood. He tried again. This time he heard a crack. On the third attempt the
truss split and collapsed, but as it fell, it brought down a section of red-hot
planking that struck Aedan across the side of his head and pinned him to the
ground. The hiss and stink of burning flesh were accompanied by a pain so acute
that even his mother’s screams were dreamlike and distant. He was vaguely aware
of being dragged through the opening he had created, down the last stairs and
into the cool air of the street.

“Water! Water!” he heard her shouting, but there
was no water to be spared for burns.

As he lay on the ground, he caught a glimpse of a
man running wildly down the road. There was something wrong with him because he
was glowing as brightly as the fire. Someone doused him with a bucket and Aedan
recognised the landlord. All his oily skin was burned away. He stood shuddering
for a moment, looking at his red hands, before uttering a single sob and dropping
forward onto the ground. Aedan could think no more ill of him, and only wished
he would get to his feet.

Then the pain found him again and he cried out. It
felt as if there were glowing embers still clinging to the side of his head. He
was on fire himself! He reached up to brush the coals away, but all he felt was
a soft ooze, and the sudden agony kept him from touching it again. The street
grew brighter and his mother dragged him away from the heat to the city’s outer
wall. She crouched down as the whole wing erupted in angry fire. The great
beast now towered over all of South Lane.

Aedan looked around at the people leaping from
windows, perched on collapsing roofs, and fleeing between buildings that rained
fiery projectiles among them. It felt unreal. The bells had grown distant. Even
the screams were muted, lost somewhere in the foggy glare. His mother sat
beside him with her arms clasped about her, staring vacantly, rocking in a
childlike trance.

It was morning by the time the blaze had lost its
fury and retreated into the blackened ruins. Smoke hung in the air, darkening
the sun’s light. When Borr and Harriet appeared, they were clearly exhausted
from searching. It was as if Aedan had been waiting to hand over the watch, for
in the moment he recognised their voices, his head fell.

–––

The chatter of birds and the flow of a cool breeze
caused him to stir. It was the second time in a year he had awoken in bandages.
He looked around, taking in the small space of a loft where he had been placed
on a cushioned bed. He reached for his head which still felt as if it were on
fire, but his fingers met with only bandages. The gentle pressure hurt, even
through the dressing.

He climbed from the bed and waited until the
pounding in his head subsided enough to be bearable. It left him giddy; he had
to be careful while descending the ladder into the room beneath. Nessa sat in a
chair, staring out the window.

“Mother,” he said.

She didn’t move. “No sign of your father,” she
said, her voice soft, eyes unfocussed.

Aedan had expected as much, yet the words struck a
hollowness inside him that rang with a note near to loneliness, but with
intruding overtones of anger like the buzz of a string or the rattle of a gong.

Then Nessa’s look cleared somewhat and she turned
to Aedan. “What kind of mother have I been? I never stood up to him, never
asked for help to protect you. Even during the fire, what good was I to you? If
it hadn’t been for me, you might not have been burned.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Aedan said, sitting beside
her on the couch and taking her hand. “I didn’t want to tell anyone about him
beating us either. And anyway, you
did
ask for help, and it was
you
who pulled me out of the fire in the end and got burned doing it. Don’t try to
hide the bandage on your other hand. I saw it when I walked in.”

She smiled and ruffled his hair. “In some things,
you always were older than your age, if that makes sense. You always wanted to
be as old as Kalry … Oh, I miss her …”

Aedan had to look away until the blurriness left
his vision. After a long silence, he decided it was time to be open, to share
the plan he had been nurturing. “I’m going to make sure that what happened to
her is brought to a stop,” he said. “So I’ve decided I want to become a
soldier, like the great generals.”

Nessa looked at him with her quiet eyes. “A
soldier … So that’s why we read all those war books on the way here?”

Aedan nodded and waited.

“You no longer want to be a forester? Do none of
the other trades interest you?”

“No.”

“Have you thought this through properly? Are you
sure?”

“I’m sure, very sure.”

Nessa sighed. “No mother would have the military
as her first choice,” she said, “but I suppose if all mothers kept their sons
from the army, we would all fall victim to those like Quin.” She looked at him
again. “I know it would not have been your father’s first choice either, but he
would not be displeased.
My
father would have been proud.”

“So … you don’t mind?”

“I would rather you become a scrivener or a clerk
in some high tower where you’d be safe, but I think you’d just die slowly –
your veins are filled with as much fire as blood.” She eyed his bandage. “Wait
until your injuries have healed, and then perhaps Borr can take you to the
barracks. You will need money, and I’m afraid I have none, but I’m sure Harriet
will help. She has been a good friend to us.”

“But she’s such a …” He was about to name the
four-legged beast well known to dairy farmers when Harriet, as if drawn by the
mention of her name, bustled into the room and began scolding Aedan loudly
enough to make his tender head ring. “Off with you,” she said. “Stop disturbing
your mother. She needs time to rest, and so do you.” She took him by the arm and
returned him to the ladder.

Later, Aedan climbed down again, but his mother
had been moved to another room. He tried the doors that were not locked but all
he found was Harriet busy at the sink. He closed the door quietly and retreated
to his loft.