Fire Star (12 page)

W
hat is it? What’s the matter?” he asked, the moment he set foot in the Pennykettles’ hall.

Liz waved a hand in front of her face as though speaking was just too much for her then. But in a breaking whisper she managed to say, “Come into the front.” And taking his arm she guided him there, making him sit in his usual chair.

“Is it Lucy?” he asked, almost bouncing straight out of it.

“No.” She motioned for him to sit again. Interlacing her fingers, she paced the floor twice. Finally, she found the wherewithal to speak. “I had a telephone call while you were out at Henry’s.”

David glanced suspiciously at the instrument, as if he’d
always suspected it of underhanded treachery. “Who from?”

“Your instructor. Dr. Bergstrom.”

“Bergstrom?” A flicker of panic crossed David’s face. He clicked his thumbnails one against the other. “What did he want?”

With one hand resting against her throat and the other picking at the sleeve of her cardigan, Liz said carefully, “There’s been an accident in the Arctic. Zanna’s gone missing.”

Across the room, on the table that stood in the bay, there was a sudden clink of pottery and Gretel emerged from behind a shallow planter. She had been collecting pollen from the trumpetlike flowers of a Christmas cactus and her paws and snout were stained bright yellow.
Hrrr?
she queried, turning her violet eyes first on David, then on Liz.

“Answer her,” said David. “What kind of accident?”

But Liz could say no more. With a short cascade of sobs, she broke down and openly started to cry. Gwillan, who’d been dusting the mantelpiece clock,
flew with haste to the tissue box and returned with a handful of paper comfort.

David immediately picked up the phone and simultaneously pulled his wallet from his jeans. He flipped through it quickly and punched out the number on the scrap of paper next to his credit card.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Liz wept.

He counted eight long rings, one for every five beats of his heart. “Pick up,” he urged, and his prayer was answered. There was a crackle and a rugged male voice broke through: “Manitoba Polar Research Base.”

David turned in his chair, pulling the base of the phone off its table, almost clouting Bonnington in his basket. “Russ? Russ, that you?”

“David?
Jeez. Where are you calling from?”

“Home. America. I just heard about Zanna.”

There was a flat, dead pause. The pilot said, “Oh.”

A ripple of fear squeezed David’s chest. “What’s happened, Russ?”

“Didn’t Anders call you?”

“He spoke to Liz, my landlady here. She says there’s
been an accident, but she’s too upset to tell me. What’s going on? I need to know.”

The pilot sighed, clouding the line for another few seconds. He muttered something that seemed to strengthen his courage, then in a solid voice he said, “OK. This morning, Zanna came out with me and Tootega to transport the bear you rumbled with in Chamberlain to a safe zone north of the town. We got caught in this … freak whiteout, and three more big ones came to party.”

“Three bears?
Together?”

“Straight off the sea ice. Almost as if they’d been waiting for us. In sixteen years of working with these animals, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

David swallowed hard and looked across at Liz. A fretful Gwillan was perched on her shoulder, desperately trying to stem her tears. Gretel appeared to have flown from the room and Bonnington had gone back to sleep in his basket.

“You still there?” asked Russ.

David gave an involuntary nod. “Was she mauled? Is she —?”

“She disappeared, David. That’s the best I can tell you.”

“Disappeared?
How?”

“Like I said, there was a storm; I couldn’t search on foot. By the time I could get the chopper in the air there was hardly a trace of Zanna or the bears. I did a fifty-mile sweep, but —”

“They
took
her?”

Russ gave out an anguished sigh.

“They
took
her?” David repeated angrily. “Why didn’t you
shoot
them?”

“It was Tootega’s call. He fired a couple of rounds, trying to scare them off. Then he just … I dunno … he just froze.”

David shook his head. “No, Russ. You’ve gotta do better than that. If Zanna was in danger, why didn’t you pull the trigger and keep on pulling? I thought that’s what you were trained to do?”

A defeated silence connected the miles. “Something went wrong. That’s all I can tell you. Tootega peed his pants. He was out of his wits when I got to him. He saw something that totally freaked him out.”

“Like
what
?”

“I don’t know,” said the pilot, on a taut and troubled rein. “He hasn’t said a word since we came back to base. And before you ask why I didn’t shoot, I had a raven in my face.”

Raven? David tugged at the phone cord as if he’d like to drag the entire Arctic continent down the wire and into his fist. “Where’s Bergstrom?” he asked through tightly clenched teeth.

“Heading for Toronto. He’s flying to the US — to see Zanna’s parents.”

David’s heart lurched. “No,” he said. “He knows what happened. Bergstrom always knows.”

“David, how could he? He was nowhere near.”

And though he was aware that his voice was breaking and tears were channeling down his cheeks, David
said, “No. That can’t happen. Not Zanna. She can’t be gone.”

The phone crackled and Russ said, “I’m sorry, David. I know how much you loved her. We all did, fella. But the chances of us finding her alive are —”

“No!” David cried, from a place deep within, a place he had hardly ever dared reach into. “She’s not gone. She’s not gone. She
can’t
be gone.” He felt Liz’s warm arms closing around him and fell sideways into them, dropping the phone.

“Shush,” she whispered, singing sweet dragonsong into his ear.

Russ’s disembodied voice spoke out near the floor.

“I want her back,” David wailed to Liz.

“I know,” she said, and hung up the phone. “Listen,” she whispered. “Listen to me now.” And she sang him a lullaby that could have calmed a dragon.

And long before she was finished, he was still.

I
t was the best show on Earth. Except he wasn’t on Earth. He was flying among the stars. And seeing wonders.

G’reth stretched out his paws as far as they would reach, as though to catch every passing atom. So much beauty in so much darkness. It was just like being a piece of fluff, dancing on the breeze through a garden filled with spectacular flowers. Every time he spiraled, a new cluster of lights came into view. Galaxies, billions of miles away. Turning, glistening, radiating life. If he lifted his paw in front of his snout, his thumb could blot them out as if they were salt grains. So close, and yet so far away. The universe. The playground of a wishing dragon.

For an unknown time, over an unknown distance, on an unknown winding path he traveled.

Then one day, if days there could be, the force that had gathered him brought him to a halt on the orbit of the fire star shining back to Earth.

The wisher quietly beat his wings, for he was treading space now, neither here, nor there, nor anywhere in between. And though the star was burning brightly, casting its yellow heat over his scales, it was a different kind of warmth that touched his mind.

Somewhere close was a special kind of auma.

He pushed a paw forward. Space rippled. He pulled his paw back. Space flattened out.

His wingbeats quickened. His tail flicked. He was on the edge of something. Something new. Something that did not seem to exist. Something invisible from where he was hovering. Something dark to a dragon’s eye.

I wish I knew the secret of Gawain’s fire tear.

He closed his paws and put the wish out to the universe once more.

And right there, in front of him, a
hole opened. A hole that had gathered sufficient light to give its perimeter a soft, fuzzy edge.

G’reth looked in. Saw nothing. Heard nothing. And yet felt … drawn.

He flicked his wing tips and drifted through.

He had a startling impression of emptiness now. No light. No color. No temperature. No smell. And yet he
sensed
he was not alone.

He was not.

He felt it enter through the tip of his tail, lift the scales along his spine, and whisper through the tunnels of his spiky ears. Intelligence, finding its level, like water. A youthful, happy being, fusing with his auma.

What are you?
it said, tickling his thoughts.

What are
you?
G’reth asked it.

I am Fain,
it said.
Shall we commingle?

Hrrr!
G’reth gave out a breath of surprise as the being opened his eyes from within. And in that one momentous second, the darkness cleared and G’reth could see. Not land, not water, not sky, not stars, but a different world: a world of
possibilities.

You are in the image of Godith,
said the Fain.
Will you stay with me? I will teach you things.

But G’reth, as taken as he was by this marvel, shook his head gently and repeated his wish.

The being moved to his paws and closed them.
Then, let me go with you,
it said.

The hole reopened and drew them through.

And G’reth returned to the known universe, enlightened, inspired, and more
aware
than ever.

But even he, for all his newfound sentience, could not have known just then that when a being looks into the mirror of his dreams, something in the mirror is always looking back….

W
hen David woke, he was lying on his back on the floor of the living room with his head supported by a large, fluffy cushion. Gretel was sitting in the center of his chest.

“Welcome back,” said Liz. She knelt down beside him and wiped his brow. David angled his head. The curtains were drawn. “How long have I been out?”

“Long enough,” she said.

Bonnington padded up and touched his nose to the tenant’s cheek. Chicken-flavored Chunky Chunks. “Lovely,” said David.

Nyeh,
went the cat, and padded away.

With some difficulty, David focused on Gretel. She
had her paws behind her back and was tapping her foot. “What does she want?”

Gretel, who like any living creature resented being spoken about, rather than to, snorted and spiked him once with her tail.

“Ow!”

“She wants to give you something. They all do,” Liz said.

David widened the scope of his vision. On the chairs, the sofa, the coffee table, the mantelpiece — on every available surface, in fact, sat one of Liz’s special dragons. “Zanna,” he said, suddenly remembering, suddenly filled with a rush of grief.

“Later,” she soothed him. “We’ll talk about her later. Right now, stay with the dragons. They’ve found G’reth — or rather, he’s found them.”

“Really?” David tried to push up, only to be spiked by Gretel again.
“Ow-ww!
Will you please stop
doing
that! Where is he?”

“Out there,” Liz said. She gestured with her hands
to nowhere in particular. “They made contact with him through Gadzooks. He’s got a kind of plan. Something he wants you to do.”

With a flutter of wings, Gadzooks landed awkwardly on David’s chest. He, too, had his paws tucked away behind his back.

“What are they hiding?” David asked, caution in his voice. “What exactly do they want to give me?”

Liz nodded at Gretel, who showed him her paws. In them was a lump of clay. She laid it in the hollow of David’s chest. Gadzooks leaned forward and did the same. Then Gruffen. Then Gwillan. Then the listener from the kitchen. Every special dragon in turn.

“OK, what am I s’posed to do with
that?”
There was now a sizeable mound of clay staining one of David’s favorite shirts.

“Make a dragon,” Liz said, playing with the ends of her wavy red hair.

“Pardon? Are you kidding?”

“No,” she said. “That was the message. G’reth wants
you
to make a dragon.”

L
ucy loved her mother. Of course she did. She missed her from the moment she woke in the morning till the time she fell asleep through the long Arctic night. For the first few days of her life as a hostage on the Tooth of Ragnar, the floor of the cave was so wet from her tears that Gwilanna complained she could smell black mold growing in the damp rock. Lucy, by reply, would turn her back and cry into the musty, sealskin furs, hoping that Gwilanna would catch a chill when next she rolled up in them. But the sibyl never did. And the molds never grew. And in time the crying slowed, until the day came when Lucy did not weep at all. That day, she made a pact with herself. She knew by now she could do little of practical use to escape the clutches of her
so-called “aunt.” So she resolved to make the most of her strange predicament. One morning, after breakfasting on double-stewed lemming (the remains of “dinner” from the previous night) she lifted her head and said, “May I go for a walk?”

Gwilanna’s reply was tainted with scorn. “Are you planning to consort with bears?”

“I’m bored!” snapped Lucy, rocking forward, her unwashed hair lying thick around her cheeks. “I’m fed up of sitting around watching my hair grow!” She pulled her furs about her. “And where’s the sun gone? I hate this darkness. What am I doing here?”

“You are becoming attuned to the dragon,” said Gwilanna. “When the fire star moves into its rightful position, you will aid Gawain to rise.”

“How?”

“How?
By being what you are. It’s in your blood, girl. You are a child of Guinevere’s line. You will act because you have no choice. The call of the dragon will be all there is.”

“Then what?” Lucy said with a frown.

“That is for me to know and the idiots of mankind to discover,” snapped Gwilanna. “Now, no more prattle. You will stay in the cave until I say otherwise. The Arctic winter is closing in. There will be permanent darkness for a time …” she paused as the rocks beneath them shuddered, “… but the island will be lit by the fire star’s auma, and when it reaches the very top …”

“I hope Gawain chews your head off,” said Lucy.

“Clear the slops,” growled Gwilanna. She kicked the stew pot over, making Lucy squeal.

With a show of defiance Lucy kicked it back, making it crack against a nearby boulder. The pot split into two clean halves. They separated away like the husk around a horse chestnut seed.

The sea of darkness within Gwilanna’s cruel eyes boiled. “Well, child, now you have something to keep you from idleness. While I’m gone today, you will make another pot.”

“How?”

“With your hands and the dirt and dust you see around you. You are a Pennykettle. Find clay. Shape it. Or else.”

The “else” made Lucy shudder. For there were times when she imagined that, while it might be preferable for Gwilanna to have a descendant of Guinevere present when the last dragon in the world was raised, it was not completely essential. It frightened her to think she was probably dispensable, but, determined not to show it, she hit straight back. “Why don’t you teach me something? You’re always complaining that I don’t know things.”

“And what, child, would you like to learn?”

“Magics,” said Lucy, surprising herself. Though terrified by Gwilanna’s powers, she envied the sibyl as well. Once or twice she’d caught herself snapping her fingers at the embers of the fire, trying, without luck, to make them dance. Gwilanna commanded such elements with ease.

The sibyl gave an unkind hoot of laughter. “Guinevere’s line couldn’t charm a flea. You have too little of Gwendolen in you. You’re not capable of any form of enchantment.”

“Mom is. She made Gadzooks — and Gretel.”

“Hmph, with the aid of the shaman bear. Without
the icefire, your mother’s pathetic creations would be no more use than doorstops or bookends.”

“That’s not true!”

Gwilanna waved her away. “I have work to do,” she snapped, and shrank into a dark-eyed raven again. She stretched her wings and flapped them twice, creating a widespread blanket of dust.

Lucy pressed herself tight up against the wall. Even now, these transformations made her start. “Where are you going?”

“To find the girl.”

Zanna. Lucy’s hopes of company rose. “Are you bringing her here?”

“No,” the bird spat. “I’m going to observe her. She’s dangerous. She is —”

“Like you,” said Lucy. “A sibyl. I know. She’s one of us, isn’t she? Is she my sister?”

“She is the youngest of Gwendolen’s line,” said the raven, “and therefore your part-sister. She is a natural born. She has a human father. Somehow, despite
these … impurities, she has a remarkable degree of untouched power….”

“Don’t you hurt her,” said Lucy, curling her fingers.

“When the time of the dragon comes,” said Gwilanna, rolling her blue-black eyes fully forward, “the girl will wish she had died on the tundra.”

She stretched her wings for flight.

“What about Gwendolen?” Lucy said suddenly, forcing the raven to abandon its takeoff.

“What about her?” it screeched.

“She lived with you. Did you teach
her
things?”

The mountain rumbled, rocking the bird from side to side. “Everything,” it said, with bittersweet resentment. “I taught her everything.” And away it flew, a dwindling black line in the oval of the cavemouth.

Like the slow, pendulous tick of a clock, the heart of the mountain moved on another beat. The broken pot clinked. Silage fell from the high dark places. Bored, frustrated, tired of being showered, Lucy picked up a firestick and decided she would change her position yet again. She had done this several times already in her search for the
safest, warmest spot to sit. It had not been a very fruitful endeavor. Fear of the unknown (strange creepy crawlies, if she was honest) had forced her to roost in the open, by the firelight, even though this was the worst place for debris. But there were several unexplored areas of the cave. Many cheerless alcoves, for instance, most of them barely a superficial notch in the jagged wall of stone that faced the cavemouth. But there were deeper cuts, too, all of which Lucy had so far avoided. They had as much appeal as a lonely alley or a bottomless well. Nevertheless, she did approach one, pushing her timid carnation of fire into the eye of the island’s secrets. Almost immediately, the rocks groaned again and released a genielike wind around her ankles. Lucy shivered and the furs slipped off her shoulders, leaving her in sneakers, jeans, and sweater. And how incongruous a sight was that? A sweet young girl, used to all the comforts that a modern life could offer, standing in the throat of an Arctic island, bravely trying to reassure herself that she had an inherited right to be there. She rested her hand on the smooth dry wall and with a gulp she said, “It’s all right. I’m your friend.” It
was not the first time she had spoken to Gawain, but it was the first time she had thought to use dragontongue — and the first time she received a reply.

From somewhere deep within the belly of the island, she heard a whistling moan.

“Who’s there?!” she gasped, and jumped away.

No reply.

Her firestick went out.

Frightened, she ran back to her sleeping area for another. But by the time she had returned, she had no need of it. A new and beautiful light was shining. Starlight. Falling through the mouth of the cave.

Lucy traced it back into the open air. The sky glittered. Beneath it floated the parchment of sea ice, faintly reflecting the night like a bruise. On the horizon, low down like a setting sun, one bright yellow star was throwing its radiance onto the island. Lucy put out her hand and let its magic stream over her, watching it weave through the furrows of her palm. Then she turned and ran back into the cave again, to see what the light of the star wished to show her.

At first, nothing but a plain slab of granite, set back a little like a recessed door. Or was it a plugged-up tunnel, Lucy wondered? She raised her firestick and thought she could see a chink or a vent on the uppermost surface. Wedging the light into a crevice, she scrambled over a loose mound of boulders, put her hands into the chink, and pulled with all her might. Hardly a pebble came away. She tried again and again, but the barrier would not budge. Frustrated, she hit it with the heel of one hand. There was the faintest of cracks, but something definitely moved. She hit the wall again, with both hands this time, and the whole structure collapsed inward, carrying her forward and down.

With a squeal of terror, she rolled to a halt and found herself looking back the way she’d come, up a dimly lit tunnel that was roughly the diameter of a very large washing machine drum. She leaped to her feet and squealed again, as her hair caught on a frozen spike of rock. There was just enough light from the treacherous star (for that was how she thought of it now) to show her she was in some kind of den. Its depth was barely
double its height, and the walls — what she could see of them — were slightly rounded, scooped out like a Halloween pumpkin. She took a pace forward, crushing something underfoot. With a gasp she halted, not daring to look down, wondering what ghost she might have disturbed. When no specter materialized, she bent her knees and felt warily around the floor. Straightaway, something dry and powdery came into contact with her trembling fingers. Courageously, she closed her fingers around it, long enough to work out its structure and shape. It was a bone. She had stood on and crushed a piece of bone.

Out of that hole, like a hare, she went. She sat among the furs for a timeless time, quaking with fear and humming sweet dragonsong. And maybe it was that which soothed her mind and told her she should not be afraid to go back, because surely only the living could hurt her and nothing
dead
had come to haunt her. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she now knew something about this island that Gwilanna did not. For the sibyl had never spoken of a tomb. But who would
have the arrogance to rot away here, overshadowed by the petrified remains of a dragon?

She slithered back in with a good, strong light. It was indeed a tomb, for there were two complete skeletons laid out in the center. One was small and clearly human. The other, lying nearby, was enormous. She guessed it was the carcass of a polar bear. At first she came to think that the bear must have caught a careless human hunter and brought it here to eat, then been trapped by a landslide. But she soon realized this could not be so. Both sets of bones were in perfect order, not scattered as the human ones would have been if the body had been torn apart. So had the person come here to die, she wondered, with the bear lying down beside them, like a guardian? These thoughts brought a lump to her throat and moved her closer to the human frame. Just below the skull lay a necklace of charms: teeth, a bear claw, hanks of fur, and several small carvings made from a stone Lucy did not recognize. She raised it from the shreds of rotted clothing, severing through the crumbling neck bones. “Sorry,” she whispered to the staring skull. “It’s beautiful. May I
keep it?” The bones did not reply. So Lucy slipped the necklace over her head, gathering it softly against her chest. Then she noticed something else. In the skeleton’s hand was a small stone vessel. It was the height and shape of a slim tea mug and had a bound, hinged top made from some kind of animal hide. Lucy prized it from the grasping bones. The binding snagged and all but disintegrated. Around the walls of the cave, a wind from another world began to blow. Lucy opened the lid and tipped out the contents. Two objects fell into the palm of her hand. The first was a braid of red and cream tresses (human hair and the fur of a bear, forever intertwined). The second was a small triangular piece of matter that most people would have mistaken for leather or a tough chunk of peel from a tropical fruit. But Lucy knew right away it was precious. The first moment it touched her skin she felt its power race along her veins and set fire to her youthful, quivering heart. She was holding a piece of dragon scale. The only part of the beast she had ever heard her mother give a proper name to. The
isoscele.
The very tip of the spiky tail.