Fire Star (18 page)

R
ight,” David said, as if he ought to have guessed. “Did she follow you to Cambridge?”

“Not exactly,” Liz said, staring at the window like some Wendy looking for her Peter Pan. “She picked up on my auma and came to me because she was needed — so she said.”

David shifted uneasily on the bed. “This is to do with Lucy, right?”

Liz nodded lightly. “The arrival of Lucy changed everything. But if I’d known what I was, what lay in store for me, she might never have come into being.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want a child, David … just maybe not the way it happened.” She took a deep breath
and gathered herself. “Arthur and I were becoming very close. He was a good man. A decent man, with old-fashioned values. He’d never pushed our relationship beyond true friendship or asked for more than the warmth of my hand. But my feelings for him were beginning to run deeper. And that was when the problems started kicking in. I changed the dynamic. I wrecked it. Me.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said David. “You’re one of the sweetest people I know. You couldn’t hurt anyone if you tried.”

“I hurt him,” Liz said. “I broke his heart in so many places; I made a kaleidoscope of his life.”

David screwed up his face in confusion. “How?”

“I wanted a child. I started making eggs, and dragons breaking out of them. You know what that means, don’t you?”

David nodded, remembering how Grockle had been produced. Grockle: who should have been a boy with a dragon’s spirit. Grockle: kindled from a large, clay egg. “You quickened a bronze?”

“Not right away. It was a few weeks before that happened. But Gwilanna could sense the change in me. Those eggs are as good as a homing beacon to her. She just turned up one day, like she did here, saying I would soon give birth to a child and I needed her protection. I thought she was crazy. She’d taught me nothing about the kindling process. All we’d ever talked about regarding children was how Gwendolen’s offspring were weak and unworthy and I was Guinevere’s rightful heir.”

“Hold up,” said David. “I’m a little bit lost. I thought Gwendolen
was
Guinevere’s daughter?”

“She was a hybrid,” Liz said. “Part Guinevere, part sibyl, part dragon, part earth. She came from an egg, like Grockle, like me. She was supposed to live the life of Guinevere’s daughter, but somehow ended up with Gwilanna for company. All I can tell you is, it wasn’t a happy union. Gwendolen left her, just like I did. When she grew to be a woman, she broke free of the sibyl’s clutches and went to live among northern tribes.”

“The Inuit?”

“They may not have been the Inuit then, but it’s a
good enough name for them. A people who respected bears anyway. In those days, bears and humans were much alike in spirit. Gwilanna was always cursing the fact that Gwendolen’s allegiance was closer to them than it was to her. But that wasn’t the reason Gwilanna disowned her. Gwendolen had a child by an Inuit man. That, for Gwilanna, was tantamount to sacrilege.”

“Wow,” said David, sitting up straight. “I never knew that. Was it a boy or a girl?”

“A boy,” Liz said. “He had a strange childhood. She sent him into the company of bears, who protected him and hid his auma from the sibyl. He was seventeen before Gwilanna found out. By then, Gwendolen had birthed five more and the boy had also parented a child. Gwilanna was outraged, but there was little she could do. The births were natural and difficult to trace. There was no way she could have stopped it.”

“So are Gwendolen’s offspring still around today?”

“Oh, yes. Every now and then when I was with Gwilanna we would meet someone — usually a girl — whom she would follow around and monitor for a
while, just to assess their abilities. They were usually psychics or healers or stigmatics. None of that impressed Gwilanna much. She always sneered that Gwendolen’s line was weak, but I got the impression she was roaming the world on the lookout for someone. Someone she might adopt as her apprentice —”

“Or remove if she felt too threatened,” David muttered. He thought of Zanna then and shook a cold weight off his shoulders. The gothic girl with untapped knowledge. She must be from the line of Gwendolen herself. Why else would the bears have come to claim her? And now she was among the Inuit, too. Two sibyls. One ice cap. Not a pretty thought. He steadied his breathing and moved things on. “So what happened with Arthur?”

Liz stared at the tissue in her hands, making a series of neat, precise folds. “When Gwilanna found out I’d been producing the eggs, she forbade me to see Arthur ever again. I wish I had agreed and left with her then; it would have spared him so much pain. But I didn’t have Guinevere’s spirit for nothing. I was stubborn and
refused. I demanded to know what right she had to interfere with my future or my happiness. Then she explained the kindling process — and how
I
had come to be a part of this world.”

“You didn’t
know?
But you must have been terrified. I’m surprised you believed her.”

“You forget, I’d been steeped in dragon legend since the time I took my first breath. But you’re right, I was awed, especially when she showed me the quickened egg. It would be a girl, she said. A girl like me, a dragon princess. If I refused to engage with her, the child would die. I looked into the egg and completely broke down. There was a beautiful, tiny fetus. I couldn’t possibly let it die, but I knew I could never explain it to Arthur. Gwilanna insisted there was no way Arthur could be told the truth or live with us, even if he’d wanted to. So I made the only decision I could. I told Gwilanna I would go away with her and end my relationship with him. But that night, a full moon rose and the kindling process began. I couldn’t be moved. I was so, so anxious. Arthur had been away at a conference
and I knew he would come over as soon as he returned. He did, of course.”

“And met ‘Aunty Gwyneth’?”

“She told him I was ill and couldn’t be disturbed. That only made the situation worse. He brought flowers and fruit and turned up twice a day to see if there had been any change in my ‘condition.’ Gwilanna’s patience began to wear thin. She quickly realized that Arthur’s tenacity might be a major threat to our secret. So she stepped up the pressure and told him there was someone else in my life.”

David got to his feet. “Aw, that’s just cruel.”

“He debated it, of course, and that irked her even more. She insisted he wasn’t good enough for me. Arthur thought differently. He came back with an engagement ring, demanding he be allowed to see me. She laughed in his face, but let him up. I can still remember him pounding the stairs, calling out my name, ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth!’, then the door bursting open and the look on his face when he saw me holding
Lucy in my arms. He dropped the ring and backed out of the room. And that was the last I saw of him.”

“I’m so sorry,” David whispered, sighing into his hands. He now wished even more that he’d wiped out Gwilanna when he’d had the chance. He glanced at Liz in the dressing table mirror. She was turning a ring on her little finger. Fresh tears were clearing a path down her cheeks. Then she curled into a heap and started to sob. And David, true to the word of their agreement, lowered his head and walked out of the room.

N
ovember. The sky became a shroud of velvet gray. Snow fell steadily. The Earth shivered.

Television news and weather reports described it as the coldest autumn on record, while newspapers ran gloom-laden features on global warming and the greenhouse effect. Experts blamed the “premature winter” on an oscillating pattern of winds in the Arctic, driving frigid air from around the North Pole, south into the US and Europe.

People muttered about an ice age coming.

From his small house warmed by special dragons, on a comfortable sofa with a cat by his side, David Rain followed every bulletin he could, anxiously remembering Dr. Bergstrom’s warning about the effects of dragon fire
in the northern stratosphere. But not once did the news carry any strange rumors of leathery-winged creatures or new stars in the sky. No signs of Grockle. No hints of his death. One less worry in David’s nerve-racked life.

But there were other troubles. The day after he and Liz had talked about Arthur, he received two telephone calls. The first left him shaken and hollow with guilt.

When he picked up, the caller had simply said, “David?”

“Zanna!” he exclaimed, dancing the cell phone around half a circle. He really had thought the voice was hers.

“That is so sick,” the woman said. And he knew then the caller was her sister, Becky. “I thought you’d like to know we held a memorial service this morning. Some of Zanna’s friends turned up from college. Didn’t see you among them.”

“I didn’t know,” spluttered David. Would he have gone if he had?

“They
did,” she said. Bitter. Remorseless. “Why couldn’t you show your lousy face? You were all she ever talked about before that trip.”

“I’m sorry,” David said. What else
could
he say? Even though the lie was raking out his guts.

“She’s gone, and you didn’t even send a card.” David felt his breath coming through in stammers. “Becky, what do you want from me?”

“She loved you more than life itself and you —” Her voice broke into sobs. “Becky —”

There was a clunk, and then she’d hung up. Number unavailable. No contact required.

Half an hour later, the
X Files
ringtone was trilling out of his phone again. Another female. Another problem. “David? Hi. It’s Dilys Whutton.” Dilys. His editor. David sank onto his bed. “Hi,” he said.

“You sound hoarse. Do you have a cold?” “No. It’s just the weather.”

“Dreadful, isn’t it? I’ve been working from home three days a week. How about you?”

“Sorry?”

“Are you working? From home?
Three days a week?
OK, that’s my poor attempt at subtlety. How’s the book going?”

“Book?”

She gave an incredulous laugh. “Polar bears. Arctic. You can’t have forgotten with all this white stuff around?”

He stared at the laptop, closed on his desk. One giant slab of silicon guilt. On the windowsill, Gadzooks barely gave a twitch. He was at rest with his eyes gently closed, notepad and pencil held to his breast. Beside him was G’reth, squatting on his tail with his paws pressed together as if he was practicing a yoga position. Somewhere inside him, an alien being was recharging its batteries, much like the dragons all around the house. Shutting down for the winter, Liz had called it. A kind of waking hibernation. “Book? Yeah. It’s going … fine.”

“How exciting! Can you tell me anything about it? Give me a few more clues about the plot?”

“I’m still doing my research.” “You writers!” she laughed. “Always cagey. What’s your schedule, then? It must be hard to write and fit college in as well?”

“I quit college,” he said.
“Really?”

No. It was a lie, off the top of his head. But now that he thought of it, quitting felt like the right thing to do. Stay at home with Bonnington (he stroked the cat’s ears). Write. Prepare. Look after Liz.

“That’s a bold move, David.”

“I know,” he said. His next statement was bolder still. “I’ll have the book finished by the end of January.”

“Wow,” she gasped. “You can write that fast?”

David looked at Gadzooks again. “When I’m in the mood,” he said.

“No,” Liz said, when he told her of his plans. “You need an education. You mustn’t quit.”

He took the peel off an orange and split the fruit apart. “There’s nothing there for me, Liz. I don’t enjoy
it, and I’m pretty sure Zanna won’t go back. I have a contract to write my book. College is just going to get in the way. I have enough money from
Snigger
for my rent. Anyway, in three months’ time, all my education lies in the north.”

“David —”

“My mind’s made up. I’m leaving.”

Liz pushed her dinner plate aside. Bonnington, keen to have the haddock she’d rejected, sat up on his hind legs mewing like a kitten. There were tracks around his mouth where the dribbles had run. She dabbed the fur dry before feeding him some fish. “You frighten me sometimes,” she said to the tenant. “Why did I ever draw you into this?”

“You didn’t. It was meant to be,” he said. “All of this is pointing to one thing: Gawain. If Grockle isn’t successful — and as far as I can tell we have no way of knowing if he’ll ever find that piece — there is going to be some kind of conflict on that island and I am going to be a part of it.”

On the fridge top, the listening dragon shuddered.

“Everything I’ve gone through, the icefire, the writing, Bergstrom, Gwilanna, is leading me toward that February day. The only thing I don’t understand is Arthur, what part he has to play in all this.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Liz said.

“What happened to him? Have any idea?”

“None,” she said, allowing Bonnington up.

“You didn’t try to contact him after —?”

“No. Well. OK, once.” She sighed and looped her hair. “I came to Wayward Crescent after Lucy was born. I was so busy with her for the first six months, as any new mother would be. But in the quiet times, when I was alone and she was sleeping, I’d think about Arthur and wonder if he was thinking of me. Gwilanna had expressly forbidden any contact, but one day I caved in and tried to call him. There was no reply from his house, so I rang his department at the university. They told me he’d left a few months before. Quit his career. Disappeared without trace. I never tried again.”

“That’s weird,” David muttered.

“No, not really. He was a sensitive man and he was clearly distraught and I would rather not talk about this anymore, David.”

“If you told me his last name, I might be able to —”

“No,” she said firmly, making Bonnington twitch. “You drop this. Now. You’re not going after him, is that understood?” She pointed down the hall. “There’s your room. I want to see you using it. You come out for meals and use of the bathroom! You say you have a book to write. There you are. Write it.”

By Christmas, he’d completed forty thousand words. Following roughly the outline he’d given Dilys Whutton during their meeting a while before in New York, he’d begun to shape a story of the Arctic and its history, centering on a period in the late 1960s when polar bears had been hunted to near extinction. It was not the story he’d expected to write, and he’d absolutely no idea where it had come from. But throughout it, Gadzooks showed no signs of apathy and one afternoon even scribbled down a title:

White Fire

David liked it. He ran it by Liz. It was spiritual, she said. What did Henry think?

Since the onset of his writing, David had been a frequent visitor next door. Henry’s study held a useful collection of books, many of them to do with polar exploration. Though skeptical at first of David’s literary aspirations, Henry had nonetheless provided him with anything he needed for his research, including acquiring a few specialist books from the archives of the library in Scrubbley, where he worked. In return, David kept his neighbor informed of progress, using the librarian’s commonsense reactions as a gauge to test twists and turns in the plot. The arrangement was working extremely well, until one day David walked into the study asking for a book about Inuit legends, and found himself met by a stony silence.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Henry, what’s wrong?”

Henry stiffened his shoulders. For once, all the bluster had gone right out of him. “Why didn’t you tell me about Suzanna?”

David sank down into a chair. The world caught up with him and screeched to a halt. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten how well you knew her.” It was the truth, but it didn’t ease the creeping sense of shame. All this time and no one had bothered to tell Henry Bacon of Zanna’s “disappearance.” Now, behind that granite exterior, hid a shattered and slightly disturbed older man. “How did you find out?”

“Saw her library card was canceled. Did some checking. What
happened,
boy?”

“I don’t know,” David said, as sincerely as he could. “I was already home when I was told she was missing. I’m sorry, Henry. Really I am. You’re right, I should have told you, but I’m still in shock myself.”

Henry grunted and flipped out a handkerchief. He ran it quickly under his nose. “No news of her?”

“Nothing.”

“Gone, then?”

“Yes. I … there was a service. I’m sorry, this is very difficult.”

Mr. Bacon nodded and stiffened his lip. “Liked you, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She did.”

“Got a dedication in mind for your book?”

That pierced David right to the core. He shuffled his feet, hardly knowing where to look.

“Bright girl. Would have been proud of your efforts. Course, I haven’t read it yet. Might be useless.”

David laughed, but on the inside everything was crying. Only Henry, with his characteristic old-school bluntness, could have defused a situation like that. He stood up, clutching the Inuit book. “Thanks for the loan.”

Henry pointed at the shelves. “Want to see yours there one day, boy.”

David nodded. “I’m working on it. I won’t let you — or Zanna — down.”

If such warmth from Henry was considered rare, the cordiality reached an astonishing peak a few weeks later when he invited the Pennykettle family plus tenant to join him for a home-cooked, pre-Christmas dinner. The date was December the twenty-third. Liz was so flabbergasted she almost brought Gretel out of winter stasis to provide her with a dose of smelling salts. She changed into a stylish black dress, put on some earrings, and found some Belgian chocolates for a present.

“Is this OK?” she asked David before they set out. “Too formal? Should I do something with my hair?”

David, who thought he looked shabby by comparison, in corduroy jeans and a white linen shirt, made her do a twirl on the spot. “You look great,” he said. And he meant it. He’d never really seen her dressed up before. Never even thought of her as a real woman. But here she was, his landlady, with wild red hair and flashing green eyes and not a bad figure (though he tried not to look). She resembled Lucy so very much. Flawless skin. Perfect mouth. Beautiful in a childlike way. Was this what Guinevere had been like, he wondered? Wow.
What a gene pool. No wonder the dragon, Gawain, had been charmed.

Lucy, of course, could not be present. That had caused Liz a flutter or two and made her think twice about going at all. But with David’s support she bravely rose above it and explained her daughter’s absence by saying she was expected home the very next day (when Henry would be visiting relatives in Framingham), and would be gone again back to her Aunty Gwyneth’s by the time he returned. Wasn’t that a shame? Henry, who had never much cared for the company of children, took it as a kind of stoical mercy and invited them both to take places at his table.

It was a good dinner. An extraordinary dinner. Henry had cooked a spectacular turkey, which he carved with such culinary expertise that the meat almost fell into supermarket-ready slices. He had also concocted a homemade punch that he insisted could not make a goldfish dizzy but had Liz giggling after one large glassful.

As the afternoon wore on, Henry took orders for
coffee and felt his way to the kitchen. While he was gone, David turned in his chair and cast his eye about the room.

“What you after?” asked Liz, covering her mouth to stifle a bubble of returning punch.

“Remote,” said David. “It’s Saturday. Want to check the soccer results.”

“You can’t do that. You’re a guest in someone’s house.”

“I used to live here,” David reminded her. “Henry won’t mind. Besides….”

“Wozz the madder?” Liz said, befuddled by the pause.

He had stopped at the edge of the shaggy white rug as if he was suddenly afraid to cross it. “Something’s happening,” he said, putting out his hand. The air above the rug was rippling like a heat haze. Everything beyond it, the TV, the sideboard, was swimming way out of focus, as though his eyes were wrapped in a layer of polythene. Then, something extraordinary happened. At
rug level, a wicker basket pulsed into view. It was the one Liz had found when Lucy had been taken. The one that Snigger had been jailed in and released from. He was in it again now, gnawing at a corner. Chewing through it. Breaking out.
This can’t be right,
David thought, his brain all at sea. But when he tried to say so his voice was muted, as though he was caught in a waking nightmare. The air shimmered again, and suddenly he understood what was happening. He was seeing a replay of Lucy’s abduction — or rather, a second or two after that incident. The air movement was a rip in space, a rip that was fast resetting itself. But not fast enough to beat a nimble squirrel. Snigger leaped forward, and with a pop as quiet as a soap bubble bursting, he completely disappeared. The wicker cage dissolved from view.

The room returned to normal.

David swept around. “Did you see that?”

Liz was falling forward, holding her head. “Feel tired,” she mumbled. “Brainz gone to sleep.”

“There was a disturbance,” said David. “Some sort
of time slip. I saw Snigger, going through a kind of wormhole. I thought you told me you’d released him in the garden?” He shook her to her senses.