Fire Star (13 page)

H
e told no one he was leaving the base. Two days after the incident with Zanna, with the omnipresent threat of an arctic winter keeping the sun pressed low in the sky, Tootega harnessed his dogs to his sled, drove them, tails high, out onto the frozen crust of the bay, and followed the unadorned coastline north. He knew this land. Every hump and hollow and curve of the earth was written in the vessels on his retinal membranes, every pattern in the snow was a message from the wind. After five long days spent pushing the dogs to the edge of their endurance, roaring in defiance at the whirling blizzards, his dark brown eyes took in the headland he’d been waiting for: Seal Point. On the far side of those pregnant cliffs lay the Inuit village of Savalik.

A modern settlement of twenty or thirty large wooden houses, it mirrored Chamberlain in all but size. It was snowbound on three sides, the houses huddled in a cloistered heap like Christmas presents on a large white armchair. Tootega, when he saw it this time, was reminded of something David Rain had said about Inuit settlements looking like a room that you forgot to clean. Anything an Inuk did not need, any broken-down appliance or unused item, he would cast away — but not very far. So it was in Savalik. An incongruous mix of brightly painted roofs and overhanging wires and old oil barrels and junked bent metal and columns of steam. But it was home, and the dogs knew it, too. Their noses lifted at the first scent of seal meat warming in a pot. Their tails wagged. Their paws spent less time in contact with the ice. Orak, the lead dog, whose mapping was every bit as sensitive as his master’s, was tugging his comrades toward the colony long before the whip was up.

“Yai!” cried Tootega. The seal skin cracked the air twice before its tongue was muted by a fast buzzing engine. In the distance, a figure dressed in a dark blue
parka and large purple sunglasses was bumping a snowmobile across the ice.

Tootega pulled the team to a halt as the snowmobile, smelling of diesel fumes, swung around beside them. The rider’s mouth twitched. “Welcome, brother, we’ve been expecting you.”

“How is this?” said Tootega, though he knew in his heart that Bergstrom would have worked out where he was going. Had the scientist sent word ahead? Was he here, perhaps?

“Grandfather always knows,” said the rider. He leaned back, gunning the snowmobile’s throttle. Its bull nose lifted. The skis on which it sat tap-danced on the ice.

With the rear of his glove, Tootega wiped the frost off his upper lip. “I must speak with him, Apak.”

The younger man nodded. The halo of fur around the hood of his coat glistened in the rays of a deep orange sun. “A good time to be home. Just before Sedna closes her eye.” He smiled a familiar gap-toothed smile.

“Ayah,” said Tootega, and whipped the team onward.

He released the dogs and tethered them beside an old refrigerator, using the snowmobile to lug the sled up the slope toward their grandfather’s house. While Apak secured it to a post, Tootega looked around. His arrival had not gone unnoticed. Everywhere, people were watching. He waved at Peter Amitak, who was standing by his boat with a young child whom Tootega did not recognize. He called out a greeting. Peter Amitak waved. The child stared as though it had seen a great spirit. “What’s the matter with them?” Tootega asked Apak. “Why don’t they speak?”

“You have been away a long time,” Apak replied.

But Tootega sensed there was more to their distance than unrenewed acquaintance. They seemed wary of his presence here. Frightened, perhaps.

He stepped inside the house and was glad of its warmth. The oily scent of seal meat and drying arctic char turned his belly and made it speak.

Apak laughed and clapped his brother’s shoulder. “What has become of your hunting skills that you should make your innards complain so, brother?” He clapped his hands and called out, “Nauja!”

A door opened and a young woman came to greet them.

“My wife will feed you,” Apak said, grinning.

“You —?” Tootega gaped at them both in amazement. The last time he had seen the little “seagull,” Nauja, she had still been his baby cousin. The brothers laughed and hugged and Nauja, though pleased to see them in happy spirits, bade them be quiet for their grandfather’s sake.

“Is he sleeping?” asked Tootega, blowing air at the door to the old man’s room.

A voice weathered by age and cold croaked out, “Why does my grandson not come to greet me?”

Nauja tilted her head.

Tootega went in, bowing his head. The old man, famed throughout the north as a healer and shaman, commanded great respect within the community and
even more esteem at home. He gave a thin cry of joy to see his firstborn grandson and called out to Nauja,
Mattak! Mattak!
meaning she should bring them whale meat to chew. Tootega crossed the floor, surprised to find a woolen rug under his feet. It dismayed him every time he came to this house to see his grandfather a little more absorbed by southern culture. This room, with its wardrobes and lampshades and remote-controlled television, was a painful affliction of the disease called progress. Tootega could readily remember a time when this proud and happy man, now lying in a bed that had drawers in the mattress and propped up loosely on a cluster of pillows, would have been surrounded by furs and harpoons and a seal oil lamp, with blood and blubber stains under his feet. On the wall above the bed, slightly tilted at an angle, was a framed embroidered picture saying “Home, Sweet Home” in the Inuit language. To see it made Tootega want to empty his gut.

He reached out and took his grandfather’s hand, reeling himself into a firm embrace. “Your arm is strong,” he said, though it clearly was not. But it
brought a dentured smile to the wrinkled face. His grandfather’s name, Taliriktug, meant “strong arm.” With a fragile cough, he waved his visitor into a chair, clouding the space between them with smoke. He put a flimsy cigarette into an ashtray. There were burn holes in the patterned pink eiderdown.
How many more,
Tootega wondered,
in the old man’s withering lungs?

Apak, resting himself against the windowsill, said, “Have they released you from the base?”

Tootega shook his head.

“Then you have heard what has happened here? Is that what brought you?”

Tootega raised his shoulders in confusion. He was about to speak when his grandfather took a rattling breath, looked up to the ceiling, and gave a short wail. “My grandson has the scent of bears about him.”

Tootega cracked his knuckles and stared down between his knees.

“Is this true?” asked Apak. “Only —”

“Let him speak,” the old shaman commanded. “He has fled across the ice to tell us what he knows.” His
eyes closed and he began to rock back and forth, singing and begging the souls of the dead not to allow any bad thing in.

Apak raised a thin black eyebrow at his brother.

“Taliriktug looks into my soul,” said Tootega, making a fist at his mouth as he spoke. “I have been with Nanuk. I have seen … strange things.”

The old man softly moaned.

Apak said quietly, “Tell us your tale.”

“I was releasing a bear on the tundra,” said Tootega. “It woke before it should have, threatening a young
kabluna,
a girl. I was in the helicopter, answering the radio. When I saw what was happening I took up my rifle and shot at Nanuk’s ears to make him run. But he stood, bravely. Then others came.”

Apak crossed his arms. “He was walking with cubs?”

Tootega shook his head, angry that his brother should think such a thing. His face stretched with fear as he brought the scene back. “It was a male, not a mother. Other males came to join it. Two sat between
me and the girl. The other …” He stopped and pressed his palms to his temple.

Apak knelt before him. “What did you see?”

“Aiyee. Aiyee,” Tootega wailed.

Taliriktug, meanwhile, raised three fingers and clawed a sign in the air in front of him. A current of air struck the windowpanes, trying to shake them out of their frames.

“I am cursed,” said Tootega, clutching at the very roots of his hair.

“What did you see?” Apak said again. “Who has come?”

“Oomara,” their grandfather said, in a voice too deep to belong to his throat. Suddenly, his body jack-knifed forward and his eyes rolled up like hard white eggs. The ashtray and its contents spilled to the floor. Outside, the pack dogs howled. The light in the room began to flicker.

Apak cried out, “What do you see?” For the old man could travel far beyond his body and reach out into the underworld of life.

“Spirits, flying,” Taliriktug hissed.

“They were on his shoulders,” Tootega panted, clinging tight to his brother’s arms. “Spirits, like birds, with fire in their mouths.”

The door opened. Tootega did not hear it, but saw a pair of feet, in mukluks, come toward him. Apak moved aside. The visitor, a young woman, knelt down in his place. “Did one of them have paws like this?” she asked. She curled her fingers slightly and stretched them as far apart as she could.

With a scream of terror, Tootega leapt backward out of his chair, crashing it against the wardrobe door.

“Thanks. I missed you, too,” the woman said. She rose up and backed toward Apak and the door. “He saw dragons,” she informed him. “The servants of the universe. Bring him to me when his head reassures him that the sibyl, Zanna, is alive — and doing well.”

T
his is silly,” said David, rocking back in his chair. He crossed his arms firmly and stretched his long legs across the kitchen floor. On a wooden board on the table in front of him sat the chunk of clay the dragons had donated. Knives and brushes lay alongside, plus a paint-stained jar of methylated spirits. Ranged behind the clay stood the Pennykettle high command: Gadzooks, Gretel, Gruffen, etc. Behind them, in a chair, sat his landlady, Liz.

“Just pick up the clay and work it,” she said.

“There’s no point,” David replied, tartly. “I’m absolutely useless with it. I tried it at school, once. We were told to make a personalized teacup, in Art. Mine came out warped, like an oven-baked ashtray. If Salvador
Dalí had painted it as still life, he’d have made a small fortune.”

“Salvador
who?”
someone hurred to Gruffen.

Gruffen checked in his book of dragon instructions. Nothing appropriate came up under
S.

“He was an artist,” said Liz, “and all artists start somewhere. So can you, David.”

“But why? What’s the point?” he argued back.

Gretel tapped a foot and hurred impatiently.

“I don’t know,” said Liz, her green eyes flaring. “But right now, we don’t have a better option. If G’reth wanted this, then you should do it. He’s part of you, and part of Lucy, too. For both your sakes, I’d like to see what happens. Now, take the clay. In both hands. Come on.”

Reluctantly, David wriggled upright in his seat and closed his hands around the chunk, working it silkily through his fingers. “Don’t blame me if it comes out like a pudding. What do you start with? Head or body?”

“Either. Body is usually easiest. Break it up until you think you’ve got the right amount.”

David tore the clay apart and selected a chunk. “Now what?”

Hrrrr,
went Gretel, puffing smoke. She made a few model poses, sarcastically suggesting David should copy one.

He tried. He really did. For a good ninety seconds he molded the clay as best he could. His final effort came out resembling a pear.

The dragons ground their teeth in disappointment.

The tenant threw up his hands in defeat. “There. See? Told you I was useless.”

“That’s it,” said Liz, snapping her fingers. “Seeing. You’re seeing too much. Trying too hard. You should be following your heart, not your head. Close your eyes.”

“What?”

Is this wise?
Gruffen hurred to the rest of the group, pointing to a few spots of clay on the ceiling, the result of David’s gesture of failure.

Bonnington, pushing his food around his bowl, gave up and hid behind the ironing board. If clay was going to fly, he was taking no chances.

“Close your eyes,” Liz repeated.

David muttered, “This is dumb.” All the same, he did as he was told.

“Now, dream it,” said Liz. “Let your hands move to the dragon that comes to you, not how you think the average dragon ought to look.”

David waited several seconds, then sighed and drummed his fingers. “Can’t see one.”

“Dream
one. Think about G’reth. Think about Gawain. Let it just appear at the front of your mind.”

So David let his fingers knead and squeeze. It wasn’t long before he heard a hurr of modest astonishment and guessed he must be doing something right.

The dragon in his mind’s eye stretched its wings. They were as fragile as butterflies and shaped like harps. David let his thumbs describe their form, then fumbled around and pressed them to the body. Feet followed. Quick and graceful feet. And a handsome head, with less flare in the snout than Liz would have given to one of her creations. (David thought he heard Gretel give a kind of whistle, and guessed he might be making a young male
dragon.) The tail he gave an upward curving sweep, finishing off with a perfect little triangle at the tip. Lastly came the arms. These proved tricky, for the dragon kept moving them about such a lot. Yet, somehow, David tuned his fingers to the movements, as if the dragon was helping to make itself. Light flooded his mind and the image disappeared. David sat back and rubbed his eyes (leaving clay on the ridges of his cheekbones).

“Jeez,” he gasped as he took away his fists. “Did I do that?”

There, on the board, stood a wondrous replica of the dragon in his mind. It was gray, of course, and had no eyes or patterns for its scales, but it was
there.
A clay figure. A work of art.

“Well, well,” said Liz, her green eyes sparkling slightly violet. “He’s quite … fascinating.”

“Is it a ‘he’? How can you tell?”

Liz smiled, but didn’t reply.

Gretel, who had circled the dragon twice by now, hooded her eyes and pointed to a blob in the creature’s right paw.
What’s it holding?
she hurred.

David shrugged. “In the dream, I couldn’t tell.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Liz. “It’ll be clear when we kiln him. Do you want to name him now?”

David shook his head. “Later. Is he going to be … y’know, special? Don’t you have to use the icefire for that?”

Liz touched the dragon’s back with her little finger. “That depends on the maker, David. Do you feel you need to use it?”

“Dunno. Not especially.”

“Then we won’t. Here, draw his eyes.” She handed him a stick.

He put it straight down. “Can’t. Didn’t see them.”

He had no eyes?
the crowd of dragons hurred.

“Yes, he had eyes,” David reassured them. “I just didn’t see him open them, that’s all.”

Liz was at a loss to understand this, but knowing better than to question the workings of the universe, she patiently helped David to reconstruct the face, as if they were building a police sketch. She also showed him how to score the surface of the body, making an
unusual pattern of scales that in Gretel’s opinion was completely unfashionable.

And thus it was that the dragon was born. “He needs kilning now,” said Liz. “Wave good-bye. It will be about two days before you can see him next.”

“Can’t I come and watch?”

“No,” she said emphatically and, calling all the special dragons to her, she took the new creation down the hall and disappeared with it into the Dragon’s Den.

Those two days seemed to be the longest of David’s life. While he waited, he couldn’t help but think of Zanna, and that drew him down into a spiral of dejection. Not even the sight of bright white snowflakes falling past his window could lift his spirits. In fact, it made them worse. For snow meant ice, and ice meant the Arctic, and that meant polar bears and that meant sorrow.

On the second day, he put on his overcoat and boots, cleared an inch of snow off the garden bench, and sat outside, hoping he might see Snigger. That was
one thing he couldn’t work out. What purpose could the young gray squirrel have in this?

A quick sharp screech cut across the garden.

Or, for that matter, a crow?

Sitting on Mr. Bacon’s fence was Caractacus, the crow they had once done battle with to save the life of a squirrel known as Conker. David stared at the bird and thought about his story.

Caark,
it went again, as if it might have news for him.

“Fly north,” David whispered. “Find her for me. Tell her I love her.”

The bird tilted its head.

Then it caarked again and spread its wings, disappearing into the glare of the morning.

On the third day, David was back in the kitchen, unshaven, unwashed, and drifting around aimlessly in his pajamas, when Liz and her posse returned with the new dragon.

“Wow,” he managed when she handed it to him. “Why is it so light?”

“I don’t know,” said Liz. “I don’t know why its scales are silver-blue either, or why its eyes are closed … and I still don’t know what this is for.” She bent down a little and touched the small object in the dragon’s paw. “Looks like a toolbox,” David said. “Mmm,” Liz nodded. “He’s yours now. Time to name him.”

David whistled. “Gosh,” he said, “I —” He paused. The dragon had blinked its eyes.

Is that it?
Gretel hurred, flying up to the fridge to confer with the listener.
Gosh?

“That was an exclamation of surprise.” David sighed. “Seemed to do the trick all the same,” Liz said. David wrinkled his nose. “I can’t call him Gosh!” The dragon blinked again.

The other dragons murmured among themselves. Gadzooks was dispatched to David’s shoulder, where he whispered another suggestion.

“Or Gollygosh,” said David, frowning at him.

The new dragon yawned and spread its wings.

Every Pennykettle dragon gasped in awe. The newcomer’s wings were completely
translucent.

“Name him, officially. Now,” Liz insisted.

David brought the dragon up to eye level. Its eyes were blue, the same shade as his. “OK, I name you … Gollygosh Golightly — until I can think of something better.”

This started a
real
rumble. Gruffen was urged to consult his book to see if a dragon might have a double name, even if they did both begin with a
G.
Gruffen checked, but could find nothing to the contrary. So the listener duly recorded the new dragon as Gollygosh Golightly. “Golly” for short.

“Do you speak dragontongue?” David asked him (using the dialect of hurrs and growls).

Gollygosh blew a smoke ring and nodded.

“You seem restless,” David said a little warily, feeling the claws pricking into his palm. No one knew, yet, what this dragon could do.

Golly’s eyes slid sideways. He turned his head and looked at the toaster.

“That’s a toaster,” David said, trying to be helpful. “It scorches bread — at least it does when it works.”

The dragon flew to it and picked up the plug.

“What’s he doing?” David muttered, as every dragon present craned its neck to see.

Golly frowned thoughtfully and put down his toolbox. It opened automatically with a cantilever action and an asterisk of light seemed to jump straight out of it and into his paw. Something resembling a screwdriver appeared there.

“What
is
he doing?” David repeated, watching his creation unscrew the plug and lift out the fuse. The dragon held it, ends on, between his paws. Within seconds, a spark of light had zipped along its length, giving out a faint electrical crackle. The dragon, looking rather pleased with its efforts, quickly fitted the plug back together and plugged the toaster in. A hot red glow began to seep from its elements.

“Oh my, what
have
you done?” gasped Liz.

“It would appear I’ve made a do-it-yourself dragon,” said David.

“Oh no. You’ve done more than that. I never thought I’d see one. Not in my lifetime.”

“One what?” said David. “What does he do — besides home improvements?”

Liz called to Gollygosh, who turned and flew to her.
“He
is very special
indeed,”
she said, running her fingers over his spine. “You’ve made a natural healing dragon.”